“Chiyo, everything’s going to be okay. Got any snacks with you?”
“Mommy gave me this piece of candy…”
“Candy, huh? I love candy, too. It’s so sweet, and it really helps you relax, doesn’t it?”
“Dazai—”
“I’ve got this… Chiyo, first, I want you to really take your time enjoying that piece of candy. After that, I’m going to need you to take that device you’re talking into and bring it to the captain’s room. Do you know where the captain’s room is?”
Chiyo nods, wiping the tears from her eyes.
“Don’t worry. There’s nobody screaming in there, and I bet your mommy will be feeling better in no time.”
“B-but I… I can’t go alone. I can’t leave Mommy behind…”
“Your mommy’s gonna be just fine. The pilot will make things all better. So I’m going to need you to take that device to their room and give it to them, okay?”
The little girl stares at the floor for a few moments, then takes the candy out of her pocket and stands, albeit trembling. From there, she starts walking toward the cockpit. My hand tightens around the steering wheel.
“This is the captain of flight 815S. We are currently experiencing engine failure and are unable to make contact with any control towers, so we’ve had to resort to internal navigation. Who am I speaking to?” The captain takes the call. He appears to be an experienced pilot a little over forty years old.
Facing the communicator, I reply, “We’re with the Armed Detective Agency. The military’s deployment forces won’t make it in time, so we will be handling the situation. I need you to be specific about what’s happening to the airplane.”
“The Armed Detective Agency? …You mean those detectives who let those missing people get killed? Just great. Just in case something happens to us—”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but we’re the only ones who understand what’s going on here. It would take several hours before the military could grasp the situation and orchestrate a rescue mission.”
“We don’t have ‘several hours’! Nearly every electronic device on this plane has quit working, so we can’t increase or decrease speed, let alone roll. If my calculations are correct, we have only an hour before we crash!”
“Listen to me. The airplane was purposefully sabotaged. Are there any strange devices on board? Or was anything destroyed?”
“…My copilot discovered a large iron box in the freight room. We found out that it was connected to some wires, but the iron box itself was welded to the aircraft. We wouldn’t be able to move or destroy it with what we have available.”
I see. The device must be interfering with the aircraft system. The enemy must have sneaked into a hangar where the aircraft was being stored, then welded a device that would temporarily paralyze the plane’s control system. After takeoff, they must have remotely activated the device to prevent the aircraft from staying airborne.
I remember reading something similar to this for work once. The now-defunct National Defense Force had been developing equipment capable of crippling aircraft functions. Eventually, however, they learned that you would first have to carry the device onto the aircraft, so they abandoned the project. In spite of that, it bears a lot of similarities to this case. If the same type of device has been brought into this aircraft, then signals being sent from the ground are controlling interference. In short, cutting off the control unit’s signal on the ground could very likely restore control on the aircraft.
“Captain, we are going to remove the source of the problem. I need you to be prepared to regulate the airplane’s altitude when I give you the signal.”
“Roger that. Just know that I won’t be able to gain altitude if we get too close to the ground. I need you to hurry. We have four hundred and ten passengers on board, and according to my calculations, we have only an hour before we crash around Yokohama’s designated tax haven.”
Only an hour.
There most likely wouldn’t be any survivors, regardless of how the plane crashes. To make matters worse, if it crashes in a densely populated industrial area such as the designated tax haven, then the damage it would bring would be devastating. Alamta’s bomb would have been nothing compared with the disaster this would cause.
There’s no time.
I step on the accelerator.
Following the tracker device, we race through the mountains of Yokohama. There’s not a house in sight, and the rough bushlands cast shadows onto the car.
“Looks like this is it.”
I stop the vehicle. Built into the mountain face is a black iron door. It leads to an air-raid shelter built during the war for the now-defunct National Defense Force. Never used, the crumbling military base has succumbed to the unforgiving flow of time.
I see now—shooting off a cannon inside wouldn’t even catch anyone’s attention, much less bring the device here.
That’s when out of nowhere, the sound of gunfire assaults our ears from both sides. The company car shrieks as bullets rain down on it.