Flight 12 to Rome: A Nick Bracco Novella by Gary Ponzo Page B

what’s in the bag?”
    Greko didn’t hesitate. He handed Bennett the black bag and waited while the CEO rummaged through his personal items. After a minute, Bennett seemed satisfied and pointed for him to continue. Greko allowed himself a guilt peek at his two pilot colleagues, who simply stared at him with disdain.
    Bennett stuck his head into the cockpit and Nick’s longshot gamble was about to expose itself. He was completely unsure of his theory and just hoped that Bennett’s intel was solid.
    Cory stood by the open doorway with his gun dangling in his hand and a serene look on his face. Nick would have to challenge him soon. To his left, Nick could see Kirk Weston in a window seat with a gash across his forehead. When Nick made eye contact with him, the air marshal seemed ready to make a suicidal plunge. Go out fighting.
    After a few minutes, Bennett emerged from the cockpit wearing a giant grin across his face and holding up an inhaler for everyone to see.
    “You are a very clever man, Agent Bracco.”
    Nick let out a breath. There was the slightest drip of hope running through his veins, but he knew that could evaporate with a simple nod from Bennett.

Chapter 10
    From his office window in Washington, DC, the administrator of the FAA, Henry Schaffer, could see the National Mall and the Smithsonian, but all he wanted to see right now was a Flight 12 sighting. He was on his third cup of coffee and it wasn’t even six o’clock.
    Sitting across his desk were a handful of his closest advisors, all staring at their tablets trying to communicate with varying control centers around the globe, attempting to locate the missing 767.
    “We’re up to a five-hundred-mile circumference,” Deputy Administrator Lance Hawkins said. “Every hour that passes, that circumference increases by four hundred miles.”
    “Keep that perimeter tight,” Schaffer said. “Anything outside five hundred miles and it turns into something completely different.”
    “Hank, if we keep the search field too narrow, we might lose valuable—”
    “Too bad,” Schaffer said, rising to his feet and circling around to the front of his desk. “We already have the USS Kidd and three naval carriers heading that direction. If we have them searching the entire Atlantic, we’ll never find them.”
    On the eighty-four-inch monitor at the back of his office, an animated version of that night’s scheduled flight plans over the Atlantic lit up the screen. Including Flight 12.
    “Shanwick is reporting headwind of over fifty miles per hour,” Hawkins said. “Otherwise, no other weather in the area.”
    Schaffer pointed to another staff member. “You spoke with Rolls Royce?”
    “Yes, they said it was impossible. Less than one-tenth of one percent.”
    Schaffer’s greatest talent was his ability to delegate. He acquired his job almost exclusively on that basis alone. Previous regimes would have to run everything through the administrator, but not Schaffer. He encouraged free thinking.
    “Hank,” Hawkins said. “Rescue flights are just arriving on the scene. They have nothing to report.”
    “Remind me,” Schaffer said, “how long between waypoint check-ins?”
    “Reykjavik lost him at 2:34,” Oscar Chang said. “There was a fifty-minute lag between check-in and zero contact. That’s our target range. If it’s mechanical, we’ll be over the site all day long.”
    Schaffer walked over to his window where the sun was just beginning to brighten the streets below him. Business people were starting their day without ever understanding the responsibility he felt trying to keep them safe while they moved from one city to the next at thirty thousand feet.
    “We’ll find them, Hank,” Chang said. “It’s only a matter of time.”
    “Sir,” Anne Johnson said, glued to her tablet, “secondary radar system show Flight 12 on its flight plan sixty minutes out of JFK.”
    Schaffer shook his head. “That’s not helpful. Their HF signal came an