Into Thin Air: The Disappearance of Flight MH370

Into Thin Air

The Disappearance of Flight MH370

Copyright 2016 Joshua Merrick Smashwords Edition

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Prologue 3 Easy Street 152

The Company Men 12 Bad Blood 162

Encoding 101 29 Flying High 172

The City of Lights 34 Playing Straight 179

Red Team 41 Tickets Please 187

In the Dark 46 SIT NORM 196

A Safe Place 67 Into Thin Air 211

Re-Activation 78 Clean Up 228

Walking Papers 98 Survival 239

Reunited 110 Epilogue 247

House Hunting 124

Prologue:

Pouria had been living on his own for several months now, as he attended the university – before that he spent several years living in the back room of his father’s spartan apartments in Tehran. His mother had left many years before that when his father’s drinking and womanizing became too much for her to bear. She confronted him late one morning after he returned, drunk and smelling of a strange perfume. Pouria had cried when he heard them shouting, but when he heard a muffled sound like a melon that is dropped onto a hardened path, followed by his mother’s screams and a slamming door, he cowered under his bed for hours. He hid there under his bed until the next morning, whimpering in the silent apartment and waiting for a sound that would mean someone was still alive and would come for him. It was his father who finally found him, still under his bed and half paralyzed with fear. His ‘Baba’ was drunk again, and he had just stumbled back through the doors of the apartment as the sun arose. His father cried then, long and bitter tears he cried while he cradled his ‘poikanen’, his little boy. But soon the tears turned once more to alcohol, and the soft words to harsh shouts of accusation and anger. Pouria hid under the bed often during those times, and locked himself in his room when he had outgrown his hiding place. He found little refuge in the world outside – he was raised as a Christian by his mother. Though he was no longer actively practicing, he still could not see why so many of his countrymen embraced the Muslim faith – or why they so hated and despised the Christians.

In time, Pouria’s mother wrote to him, begging him to leave his father and come to her in Holland where she had found refuge.

No more will you be persecuted in your own home for your belief in the Christ!’ she wrote. ‘Here, you will be once more, as always, my greatest treasure, and now that you are nearly a man, you may help support your mother in her lengthening years. I will always love your father, as I once knew him, but I cannot live with a drunkard and a majid, and I cannot bear to think how he has hurt you!

She wrote him several letters, each time encouraging him to learn and to grow, to become a man of Christ and to honor his mother in all he did. He finally determined to leave his father’s house on the day that he stood tall before him and contended a point in a religious disagreement, which resulted in his father striking him a heavy blow on the head. When the boy awakened, he was once more in the shelter of his room, where his father had thrown his unconscious body after he fell.

They spoke little after that incident. Pouria devoted himself to his studies, returning each night to hide in his room and surf the ever-inviting internet. He met a few friends online, and became involved in many blogs debating political and theological themes. His comments were often debated, and he was encouraged by several of his online peers to continue his education at the collegiate level. Soon, he found himself enrolling in the University where he began to study Chemical Engineering. He did well in his classes, earning good marks and the praise of his professors, but his true love was computers. Pouria spent countless hours with his computers, learning how to manipulate them like a child who plays with Legos. He had programmed his first virus while still in high school, with the help and advice of his information technology teacher. The thrill of knowing he could overpower the coding of others and render their works to his own purposes was a prize like no other! He began to work on his ultimate project the same year he graduated from high school, it was a hack that would allow him to take control of any remote automated guidance systems that used a GPS link to acquire location updates!

***

At university, Pouria felt he had finally found his best friend in a fellow engineering student named Delayar. Delayar was a puzzling sort of man, though he was Pouria’s senior by twenty years, he too was a student at the University. He told Pouria that he was a third year student when they met that first evening at the commons, but that he had taken a few years off for a family emergency so he didn’t know a lot of people on campus. He was a quiet man, not so outgoing like most of the advanced students. It wasn’t that he didn’t fit in – the other students thought him great fun, and he was certainly knowledgeable about many things, but he just seemed a little different. Maybe that was why Pouria had grown so close to him, because he knew what it was like not to fit in. They did share one thing that few at the University understood – they were both Christians, and secretly longed to move to another country where they could live in peace with their fellows. Delayar had traveled much, and spoke often of his journeys to Europe and the Americas. He spoke late into the night with Pouria of how the Christians had formed those countries out of hardship and made them into lands of freedom and industry. After Delayar would leave him, Pouria would dream of the unending opportunities for young men such as himself to do wonderful things, exciting things in the great Christian nations!

There was much about Delayar that young Pouria did not know, much that the elder man hid from all eyes. Delayar Seyed Mohammadreza was not Iranian at all, he was an American, a student of the Middle East – and he worked for the CIA. The company kept a very close eye on the Middle Eastern countries, and Iran in particular. Iran, it seemed, was well known in the intelligence world for producing two things in abundance: die-hard jihadists, and brilliant computer hackers. Pouria’s high school technology teacher had been under surveillance for some time after three of his most promising students successfully hacked into the U S Navy’s enlistment database. The company’s interest in Iran was renewed with fervor when they claimed (though many sources maintain it was not fact) that they had brought down an Air Force surveillance drone with a computer virus. Based on these and other successes, Pouria was a prime candidate for recruitment either by a terror organization, or by the United States Government. (It’s either us or them! the chief had said. And I’d rather he take sides with us when he decides he’s had enough of this old world!)

Delayar had been assigned by his station chief to befriend and, if possible, recruit the young student. At the very least, they suggested that the boy could be persuaded to move from his native country, where the risk of his involvement in a terror organization was far less. Too, the CIA had a great interest in any native-speakers as linguists and analysts, and once they learned that Pouria was a Christian, lived with an abusive single parent, and was dissatisfied with the political climate in Iran, they all but ran to his doorstep. After months of analysis and preparation, they finally chose Delayar as the most compatible handler for the youth. His grandparents had fled Syria during the fighting in the 60’s and 70’s, and while Delayar never visited his country of origin until well after his tenure as a CIA analyst, he spoke with un-erring fluency, and could readily adapt to most dialects throughout the region. He quickly proved himself invaluable as a linguist, but recent activity led the agency to place more assets in the field, especially those who looked and spoke the part. After a crash course at the farm, he was approved for limited field duty and sent to Iran. Delayar was in Tehran for nearly two months before he was authorized to approach Pouria – it was standard procedure to ‘acclimate’ a plant prior to initiating a mission. In part, this was to allow the agent to build a profile, make some friends, find a job and get a good working cover, but this also allowed the agent (especially those new to the field) time to get their head into the game and lose their JV jitters.

It was a stroke of genius convincing their target to enroll in the University, otherwise it would have proven extremely difficult to place Delayar in a manner that was not suspicious. A team of specially trained counter-intel agents carefully dogged Pouria’s footsteps on the internet for months, creating aliases and joining blogs to bring him in line with their plans. He had been under near constant surveillance for the better part of a year by the time Delayar was assigned to him. Under advisement of the university staff, and the input from his high school teachers, Pouria chose a course study in the field of chemical engineering, with a minor emphasis in computer systems and programming. Delayar was enrolled soon after, but with an emphasis in mechanical engineering – it would not do to put him in too close proximity with the professors they suspected of recruiting suitable youths for the terror networks. All of the engineering students dormed in the same section of campus, and spent hours each day studying at the reference library and computer lab. It was at these study sessions that Delayar first approached his target.

***

The Company Men:

There were easily a dozen ‘company’ men seated around the table for the morning Directors Meeting. The overhead video projector was dim and forgotten now that the discussion had begun in earnest. Represented around the large conference table were the Director (DIR) and Deputy Director of National Clandestine Services (DDIR(NCS)), the Chief Officers of Counter Terrorism (CO(CT)), and Counter Intelligence (CO(CINT)), and the Directors of Operations (DIR(OPS)), Intelligence (DIR(INTEL)), Science & Technology (DIR(SCT)), and Support (DIR(SPRT)). Opening the day’s debate was DIR(SCT), Scott Grady.

What I can’t understand is why in god’s name we’re always the last department to hear about these kids! he griped. I mean, Technology is kind of our department, but we can’t expect to be capable of generating a response to threats of this nature without being advised of the threat in advance!

We had to analyze the data first to be sure there was any validity to it! countered DIR(INTEL), Darrell Montrose. If we gave you everything that wanders across our screens, it’d fry your hard drive – you have no idea how much shit we sift through before we can bring you the real gems.

You ought to be happy you’re seeing it at all, CO(CT), James Jim Thibodeaux interrupted. "Some of my people wanted to move in and eliminate the threat as soon as they heard the words