Hijacked
I’m sixteen when my mother tells me my dad died. It was an airplane accident. More precise, an airplane traffic accident. Dad had fallen overboard the USS Nimitz in the Mediterranean, strapped into in his FA 18 fighter jet, taxiing on deck, after a long mission over Pakistan. The ground crew had instructed him to park the jet near the edge, and that’s when it happened. I looked it up. The US Navy lost three other jets this year to similar accidents. My dad was number four. 70 million dollar a piece. How can that happen? I guess, on an aircraft carrier, it’s a matter of inches.
I’m sitting next to my mother. Her eyes are blood shot. I don’t know if she’s slept since we were visited by the Navy officers who rang the doorbell and then handed mother a flag and some other things. We’re sitting in row thirty-four on a United Airlines flight to Munich. We’re retrieving dad’s body. He was flown to Rammstein Airbase inside a steel coffin. The infamous American naval base in Germany. A German Metal band named after it. Some of my friends listen to their music. I hate it. It’s too loud. Too angry.
The pilot, I guess he’s the captain, judging by his four yellow stripes on his shoulders, walks down the aisle and kneels in front of me. He looks at me and shakes my hand.
“Your father died a hero. I was a squadron leader just like him.”
He gives me a toy metal airplane, a 737 Max, the one we’re flying. What should I do with that, I wonder. Mother starts bawling. The flight attendant comes by and ushers us a few rows up to premium economy. The captain offered his airline miles to upgrade us, she says.
“Miss, alcohol is free in this section,” the overworked flight attendant says. Mother orders a Bloody Mary while I keep playing Mario Cart on my jail broken iPhone. You see, I’m a tech nerd, at least that’s what my mother calls me. I don’t have real friends but hundreds of connections around the world. All online. All virtual. I know their handles and nick names, but not their real names. Nor do I know where they live. I can only guess by the time zone they’re in, and when they’re online. I chat with them but never hear their voices. I guess we are considered subculture. We’re a band of brothers, and some sisters, I assume. Others would call us hackers or worse, criminals. A nuisance to society. I myself have never extorted anyone or any company, for breaching into their systems. I do it for fun, just to prove myself how good I am. I never brag about it to anyone else. Sometimes I even reach out and tell them I hacked them, so they can protect themselves better.
I can stay online whenever I want. Even when my mother shuts everything down, you know parental controls and things, I have ways to keep going. You see, I hacked her phone and installed a developer iOS version that I completely control. When she turns off the wifi to my Xbox at home, I have a failover switch that triggers a cellular connection.
Anyway, I need to stay online twenty-four seven. The only problem is, we’re cruising at 30,000 feet, and there is no cellular service here. The antennas down on earth are pointed horizontally. That makes sense. My mother won’t buy me the wifi service on the plane. It’s too expensive. That means I need to hack into it. My small chrome book is already inside my vest, already connected to the plane’s wifi network. I tell mother I need to use the restroom. I lock the door and spend a few minutes tunneling my way into the plane’s internet router, the one connected to the satellite receiver. Makes sense. Most of the barriers are easy to breach. But then I get stuck by what looks like a wormhole. I need to be cautious here. It could trigger a call back that would terminate the connection and block me indefinitely. Maybe even send a warning to the pilots.
There is a frantic knock on the door. A muffled voice tells me it’s an emergency. I open the door and see a commotion down the aisle, near the cockpit. The purser who talks to me looks pale, tells me that a flight attendant collapsed up in business class. They are dragging her down the aisle towards me. She has a bloody nose, and her eyes are rolled back in her skull. I squeeze by them. Some passengers moan and cry out at the sight. Mother grabs me and drags me back to our seats. When she doesn’t look, I take a sip of her drink. It tastes awful, like blood. My mother looks pale as well. A loud bing sounds in the cabin. I see other flight attendants hurry and pick up the intercom receivers. They have concerned looks on their faces. Everyone looks sickly. I hear one of the passengers whispering about an issue with the air ventilation. It smells damp. I see a pilot come out of the cockpit. He trips, then pulls up piece of carpet in the aisle. He uses a key to turn something and then opens a hatch. He disappears below. My guess is that it’s the compartment which houses the flight computers. I’ve seen YouTube videos about it. I failed to mention that the pilot was wearing an oxygen mask, connected by a hose to a small bottle. I assume it’s oxygen.
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The plane suddenly banks to the left, then to the right, then it jerks up and then nose dives. People scream. Passengers bounce up in the air. It looks like a cartoon. I’m not scared. Why am I not scared? One older, heavyset man hits the ceiling of the plane. A thump and a moan. He falls back down, crashes onto a beverage cart. His head hits metal. He doesn’t move. Is he dead? The man is splayed out across the cart and blocks the aisle. Passengers try to move him. They struggle because he is so large. Then I hear my mother curse. Filthy, loud curses come from her mouth. I’m shocked. I’ve never heard so many filthy words come from an adult human being. Then she passes out. A bit of foam pools around the edges of her mouth. I try to wiggle her back to consciousness. Oxygen masks suddenly drop from the ceiling with a loud puff. I instinctively grab one and put it over my mother’s face. The man behind me grabs my mask and puts it over his own face. He looks so angry. What about me? I don’t say anything. I huff some oxygen from my mom’s mask and put it back on her. A strange, computer-generated voice sounds across the PA system. The voice explains that our airplane has been hijacked by an autonomous system, and that they are going to crash our plane. They turned off the oxygen supply and had full control of our aircraft, remotely. My heart races.
Are we in a movie? Is this real? This could be a Disney ride, I think. Put a fuselage on hydraulics and simulate a hijacking and then a crash. Charge people $199. It hits me quite hard. This ride is real. We’re all going to die. I guess even if we survive whatever this is, we’re going to die. I look around and one by one, passengers faint. The entire back of the plane is filled with slumped over passengers. A bunch of babies are crawling up and down the aisles. I guess that’s good? For me? More oxygen for me? I feel ok. Slightly dizzy. I think. How would they control the plane? It would have to be through the satellite connection. The same one that powers the plane’s wifi. The one I just tried to hack into. I see the pilot coming back up from below. He drops the mask and canister next to the hatch and stumbles back into the cockpit, like a drunk.
That’s my cue. I jump up and nearly faint and fall. It seems like we’re making a wide turn. We are losing altitude. Quickly. Through the small window, I see a big city in the distance. We just took off from Newark. I crawl my way across business class and grab the mask the pilot left. I look at the pressure gauge. It’s somewhere in the middle. Why the pilot dropped it, I don’t know. I put it on and instantly, can breathe. My brain fog is lifting. Feet first, I crawl down into the belly of the plane. Why? Because I’m a tech nerd. The metal of the ladder is freezing cold. I stand in front of a giant rack of equipment. The noise of all the flight computer fans is so loud, I have to cover my ears. Louder than the jet engines. I pull out my chrome book, grab my ethernet cable and plug it into what looks like the main router switch. All the cables are labeled and secured with zip ties, some even with glue. To make sure nothing gets unplugged. There seems to be two, or even three, of each device. Redundancies keep airplanes in the air. I start with the terminal window and begin an IP scan. In the meantime, I search for anything that has a screen or buttons, or anything that could help me. Help the plane. Then I’m in. I see what’s happening. The main frame of the flight avionics has been breached. I see that someone has overridden the flight controls and disabled the auto pilot. There is an mp3 file that is playing the hijacker’s message on a loop. It’s the first thing I disable. Fuck those guys. I quickly track the IP address of them to Belarus. Even though they are using a VPN through Pakistan, I can track it through. I tunnel my way backwards and end up in their internal network, a laptop camera unsecured. I watch a bunch of guys huddled over a screen in a filthy looking basement. They all have beards and mustaches. Even though I can’t understand them, I can tell they are confused. They’re on to me. Panicked, they try to terminate my connection. But I already locked them out. Time is of the essence. My oxygen tank is down to a quarter. Worse, I see someone climbing down into the bay. It’s the captain, whose miles got us into premium economy. He’s not wearing a mask because I’m wearing his. He is pale and looks unwell, holding a fire extinguisher. Judging by the look on his face, he thinks I’m the culprit. He lunges at me and swings the extinguisher as hard as he can at me. He misses and falls. The captain slowly gets up while I yell, under my mask, that I’m innocent. I just want to help. We need to retrieve my dad’s body. He swings again and again, but his movements are getting slower. Finally, he drops again and passes out.
I focus as hard as I can. I find the controls to the electrical, hydraulic and ventilation systems. There it is. The oxygen management system. The controls are greyed out. They must have created a super admin access level. Time to cut them lose. I manage to disable the Starlink router’s external access. The video feed goes black. My only hope is to reboot the system and login again. It works. Super admin is not an option. I override the Linux source control code, so I can access the system without a root password. I turn the oxygen flow back on. I can hear hissing sounds. Problem is, the autopilot is still locked. The coordinates don’t look good. New York City. Somewhere downtown. Not again. I can’t let it happen. I launch my open-source flight sim app, and begin mapping controls, just in case I get access. Most important ones are throttles, rudder, ailerons and elevators. I have to trust my instincts. I don’t have a joystick. If I disable the autopilot, it should override to manual flight. Three, two, one. I pull the plug from the back of the unit. Nothing. It’s still on. There is a redundant power cable. I yank that. The fans spin down. Lights out. Autopilot down. I feel the plane slowly banking and pitching downward. We’re in manual flight. Moment of truth. I gently press the up arrow on my Chromebook. Bingo. The altitude bug creeps up a click. The plane pitches up. I press the right key, the one I mapped to the ailerons. The plane straightens out. Then I noticed input commands coming from the cockpit. I hear air traffic control chatter. The first officer reports that they have control of the plane again. I smile. Time to unplug. I take off the mask and put it on the captain’s face. I gently climb over him and make my way up the ladder. The groggy passengers in business class are too busy to notice me. They’re panicked, barely awake, gasping for air, holding their throats.
After ten minutes, the pilots make an announcement. People clap. Then I see my mom down the aisle. She is crying and holding my backpack. When she sees me, sadness turns to relief, then to anger. She grabs me so hard, I think my forearm broke. She squeezes me when I sit down next to her. I nearly suffocate. She keeps asking where I was. I tell her she passed out, and that I had to use the bathroom in business class. She says I’m not allowed in business class, even though we sit in premium economy.
Half an hour later, the captain announces that we are returning to Newark. Before we land, the captain walks down the aisle again. Straight towards me. How can I explain the situation? All I did was trying to help. He kneels next to me. He doesn’t recognize me from down there, it seems. He was groggy and I was wearing a mask.
“Son. Today we experienced a miracle. We’re going to be ok.”
He shakes my mothers’ hands and expresses his sympathies once more.
“I will personally make sure you two make it to Munich in time to pick up pop.”
He walks away but then stops and turns around.
“Son. I believe this belongs to you.”
He hands me an ethernet cable, my ethernet cable, winks at me, and disappears.
