Station Breaker

35 Co-Pilot

As I eat my fifth serving of Cap'n Crunch, a JAS 39 Gripen, a delta-wing attack and reconnaissance plane made by Saab, flies about a hundred feet to the port side of my cockpit and the navigator aims a huge camera lens right at me.

I'd been expecting this. It was only a matter of time before the Brazilians sent the air force to intercept me.

Right now the only way I can keep anything resembling an upper hand is by manipulating their uncertainty. I took a flight attendant's apron from the galley and made it into an improvised balaclava. It appears real enough, but smells like burnt coffee.

I just don't want them looking through the window and seeing dumb old David Dixon flying a plane all by his lonesome.

While I can ignore the radio, if the pilot of the Gripen decides to start flashing me Morse code, they would expect David Dixon to be able to figure out what they're saying.

Commercial airline pilots don't have to know it — they just use a manual — an astronaut pilot like myself is expected to understand a variety of low-bandwidth communications methods.

Once they know they can talk to me, they'll start getting into my head. If I had to bet on me or some terrorist negotiator who has dealt with dozens of high-stakes situations, my money is on him. I'm not cut out for this.

All they have to do is get my mom on the phone and have her yell at me that I'm grounded and I'm done for.

Oh, god. My mother. She's the principal of a middle school. I called her on the way to the base, waking her up, and told her that I was finally going into space.

That's when she said she'd have the whole school watch the launch.

Jesus.

What do you think of your hero now, kids? What do you think of your son, mom?

You know what? Let's not worry about that right now. My primary concern is the Brazilian jet next to the cockpit and the two far off blinking lights on either side that have started shadowing me.

Russian MiGs? I'm still too far out of range of their Venezuelan air base, but they have access out of Bolivia…

Capricorn said they would try to shoot me down when I was in the spaceship. Would they do the same to a French passenger jet ostensibly loaded with people?

I'm real glad I took the time to close some of the windows. My claim of hostages won't stand up to the claim of the pilot whom I stole the plane from.

I hope that while he's insisting the plane is empty, the authorities are nervous that the hijacker may have snuck some onboard — hell they have to know it's me by now, the pilots would have pointed to my photo and said that's the asshole.

All the more reason not to talk to them. I'd crumble if they asked to speak to a hostage.

"Well… um… they're in the bathroom right now…"

BOOM! And they shoot me from the sky.

"What would you do, Cap'n?" I ask the smiling face I tore from the cereal box and stuck to the co-pilot's chair.

Oh crap, they probably got a photo of him too.

Wonderful. Maybe I should find some Rice Crispies and recruit Snap, Crackle and Pop into my terrorist organization?

Let them figure out the political significance of that.

I ignore my escorts and decide to worry about how I'm going to land and not die or spend my life in prison.

Although I told them my destination was LAX — realizing the panic that's probably causing, I now think that was a mistake, um, oh well, next time I'll figure out a better solution. I can't actually land there unless I have some brilliant master plan to evade the most highly trained terrorist response teams in the world.

Fun fact: The Los Angeles Police Department actually invented SWAT. And I chose there of all places.

Of course, it'll be the FBI team that probably launches the assault. They have actual airplane fuselages that they train on practicing these scenarios. But they won't even need to board the plane. One sniper in an elevated position will be able to fire an armor piercing round straight through the cockpit window before I even power down the engines.

Nope. There's no good outcome in that situation unless I get on the radio and announce that I'm ready to surrender.

And that will lead to another scenario without a good outcome.

What's my story? That some guy on a broken sat phone told me to do this? The plastic square with the Russian letters? What will that prove, other than the fact that I stole something from the K1 space station?

That's all assuming I can trust the government folks that handle this. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but Capricorn's warning that there's someone very highly placed working with the Russians isn't out of the question. All it takes is one CIA chief to make something up and nobody will believe me. I mean clearly I'm a lunatic.

I take the pilot charts out and start considering my options. Obviously LAX is out of the question if I'm going to try to avoid arrest or a rapid lead injection.

Bailing out of the airplane would be an option if I had a parachute and was willing to smash $400 million-dollars-worth of aircraft into some hopefully uninhabited area — only to find out the black square in my pocket contained evidence of some really minor infraction, like stealing satellite television on the K1.

So… no jumping out.

I have to land this thing in a place where the cops can't get to me quickly.

I run my finger along South and Central America searching for a potentially friendly country that might give me asylum. All I realize is that I know next to nothing about international politics.

I need some other option besides a diplomatic one.

A little spot on the map catches my eye.

There's a thought…

But to make it work I'll have to crash this plane.