Nighthawk (NUMA Files 14)

“Inertial dampers failing,” the copilot said. “Vibration reaching critical.”

“Where is this coming from?”

“We’re getting a strain on the lockdown bolts,” the flight engineer called out. “It’s the Nighthawk; there’s a flutter in the control surfaces.”

The pilot’s next response was unintelligible. He was grunting and breathing hard as he fought the controls.

A call went through the radio. “Blackjack 2, we have a problem. Nighthawk is trying to go active. I repeat, the Nighthawk has woken up. Falconer, use the alpha codes. Shut it down.”

The return call was far calmer. “Are you certain, Blackjack 1? We show no activity. Our board is green. You should not be having any issues.”

The pilot shouted his response. “I’m telling you that damned thing is trying to break free. Boost your signal and order it to shut down—now!”

Whatever Blackjack 2 did in response, the vibration only grew worse. The sound of alarms filled the cockpit. Warning lights came on all over the board.

“Hydraulics,” Priya said. “Vertical stabilizer . . . Inertial dampers.”

The pilot’s breathing was labored. His words marked by cursing and desperation. On the external video feed, the Nighthawk could be seen shaking violently in its locked-down position. Its own flight control surfaces could be seen fluttering. Ailerons moving up and down. Rudder snaking back and forth.

And then it was gone.

In the blink of an eye, the captured aircraft ripped free of its moorings and peeled away, taking a chunk of the bomber’s fuselage with it. Hydraulic fluid and white vapor streamed from the gaping hole it left behind.

“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” the pilot called out. “We have an emergency situation.”

Despite his frantic efforts, the plane rolled over slowly and began corkscrewing dizzily toward the ocean. Mercifully, the camera failed a short time later. From that point, only the audio remained, filled with desperate shouts and garbled radio calls, until even the pilots went silent and all that could be heard was the aircraft’s computer warning the pilots repeatedly to Pull up . . . Pull up. And then suddenly everything stopped.

Utter silence filled both rooms.

“We think they blacked out,” Hiram said.

“Why didn’t they eject?” Emma asked.

No one knew the answer.

The Russians might have been their political adversaries and opponents, but the pilots were just men doing their jobs. Men taking a tremendous gamble, and almost pulling it off, before paying with their lives.

“You can’t help but admire their guts,” Kurt said, breaking the silence. “If it wasn’t our plane they were trying to steal, I’d be sitting here wishing they’d succeeded.”

Everyone around him nodded.

“Any idea what went wrong?” Emma asked.

Hiram replied. “As long as the Russian bomber continued on the Nighthawk’s original course, all went well. As soon as the pilot turned away from that course, the Nighthawk went active again, attempting to steer itself back onto the initial heading. That started the vibration which led to separation and the crash.”

“Why would it do that?” Kurt asked.

“We think the Russians hacked the navigation system,” Hiram replied. “They reprogrammed it to head south and rendezvous with the bomber, but they forgot to shut the inertial navigation system off before they commenced the turn to the north.”

“Alpha code is the NSA term for a reboot command. The equivalent of hitting the Ctrl–Alt–Delete buttons on your computer. It’s supposed to break everything and reset the operating system.”

“Any idea what they meant when they called out to the Falconer?”

Emma hesitated for a moment and then spoke. “I’m not sure,” she admitted, “but several years ago we received intel suggesting that the NSA’s space program had been penetrated. Either by a mole working at Vandenberg or through a Trojan horse computer program. There was no way to confirm the information and there were few details in the lead itself. Just a suggestion that vast amounts of data were being passed on to either the Chinese or the Russians. Other than that, we had only the code name.”

“Falconer,” Rudi said, “interesting choice. A falconer trains raptors to fly free and then return to him.”

“The concept was lost on no one,” Emma assured him, “as that’s exactly what we were trying to do with the Nighthawk. Even so, a thorough investigation revealed no evidence that the agency had been compromised. The idea was written off as a red herring. You’d be surprised how much bad and false information is passed along. Most of it deliberately. We do it, too. All part of the game.”