Obsessed by Angela Ford

Chapter One

    June 26, 2015

    Have a hard landing.
    Mike strained his eyes. His eyebrows curved and heavy creases formed between them. Utter confusion consumed him as he re-read the message on his phone. He had just thought about the airplane coordinates. Seconds before he received the message, he’d glanced out the window and noticed the thick blanket of clouds. He figured they were about twenty miles outside the airport but it was difficult to see any landmarks on such a cloudy day. He thought about how difficult it would be to know your direction without flight coordinates.
    “What the heck?”
    Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) Mike Turner’s words startled Special Agent (SA) Gina Edwards who sat next to him on the FBI ISTF (Internet Safety Task Force) team jet.
    “What now?”
    He flipped the phone in her direction so she could see the message.
    “What the hell does that mean, Mike? Who sent you that?”
    In a state of confusion he answered, “Nikki.”
    Before Gina could remark, the plane’s normal descent picked up speed and an eerie quiet filled the air.
    The pilot’s voice came over the speaker in a frantic tone. “We’ve lost power. We have no control. Mike, I need you in the cockpit, now!”
    Mike rushed toward the cockpit as he heard Gina cry out, “Oh shit! We’re going down!” He turned to see Gina desperately search for her seatbelt. He looked over at agents Eric Matthews and Dave Malcolm. He nodded his head slightly in Gina’s direction. He hoped they’d help to calm her down. Eric moved to the seat beside Gina and reached for her hand. The look of fear in her eyes grabbed at Mike’s heart as he watched a single tear roll down her cheek. It only filled him with desperation to save them. He turned quickly and raced to the cockpit.
    Mike noticed the co-pilot frantically testing the flight control switches as beads of sweat reached his brow. The pilot, in a desperate attempt for communication, shook his head which told Mike he’d lost all connections. Their expressions alone told Mike they were screwed.
    “What do you think happened?”
    “Is it possible to hack into the controls, Mike?”
    Mike remembered the Hack in the Box conference he’d recently attended. Hacking and hijacking planes by pressing a few buttons on an Android mobile app happened in the movies. But this conference delivered the worry and fear of a couple of technologies that were massively insecure and susceptible to attacks. One was a surveillance broadcast which sent the aircraft’s position, altitude and such, through an on-board transmitter to air traffic controllers. It also allowed aircrafts to receive flight, traffic and weather information about other aircrafts in their vicinity. The other technology that could be susceptible was the communications reporting system, used to exchange messages between the aircrafts and air traffic controllers via radio or satellite, and automatically deliver flight phase information. Either one could deliver malicious messages to affect the behavior of the plane if someone knew what they were doing.
    The pilot’s horrific expression jolted Mike when he heard him continue. “We’ve lost everything Mike—power, control and radio. We’re descending too fast and we’re still twenty miles outside of the airport. We’re in for a hard landing, unless you can hack in and gain control over the landing gear.”
    His words, “hard landing” only made Mike remember Nikki’s message. As quickly as it entered his mind, he shook off the thought and focused on their potential crash. Mike’s computer skills made his reputation in the FBI. He knew his ‘genius-hacking ability’ was the reason the FBI hired him. He opened his laptop and worked his magic. Limited power came back abruptly but no radio contact. They had limited control of the landing equipment but nothing much else.
    “Somebody’s playing with the controls.” Mike informed the pilot. He knew if anyone could hack into the