Chapter 15
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
The champagne cork flew from the bottle with such force it dented a ceiling panel. Bubbly splattered on the floor and a raucous cheer erupted. The party at the CIA’s operations directorate was going strong.
As the big jet swept smoothly toward New York, the mood at Langley lightened with every mile. An agency welcoming committee was set to greet Chen at JFK Airport, and a team of technicians were already assembled to exploit the device in his possession.
With the dicey part of the op behind them, and nothing left to do but wait another eight hours, the staff had migrated to the break room for an impromptu celebration.
Liquor appeared out of desk drawers. DoorDash beer and wings were retrieved from the lobby.
Shoulders were slapped and bottlenecks clinked.
The cheap champagne had appeared out of nowhere.
The festivities were just peaking when the first sign of trouble hit.
Deputy Director for Operations David Flynn felt his phone vibrate and saw an urgent message from the overnight skeleton crew in the ops center.
New information had arrived from the Federal Aviation Administration.
All communications with Hemisphere Flight 777, which was flagged for close surveillance, had been lost.
Flynn immediately dropped his half-full beer in a trash can. In the few minutes it took him to reach the ops center, the situation had changed.
“What’s up?” he asked the duty officer.
“We had a temporary disruption of all polar satellite communications. It lasted roughly forty minutes but came back up a short time ago.”
“Any idea what caused it?”
“Most outages like that are atmospheric events—solar flares and such. But this feels different. There was nothing in the forecast and it was oddly regional.”
“But things are working again now?”
“Yeah… and that’s the problem. Since the comms came back up, neither Hemisphere Airlines nor Canadian air traffic controllers have been able to establish contact with Flight 777.
The jet’s automated data-tracking system has also gone dark.
Two other airliners, on the fringes of the same airspace, have been contacted without issue. ”
The DDO didn’t need to hear more. Within minutes, everyone in the break room was back on duty. For twenty minutes, rapid-fire queries were sent to sister intelligence agencies, the FAA, and one very concerned Hemisphere Airlines flight dispatcher.
The lack of information from all of them became an answer in itself. The deputy director turned to the comms desk.
“Get me the Pentagon, highest priority. I need to know what assets we’ve got in the area.”