HAIJACKED
A novel by Sunny Paul Smith with Ernie Ortiz
Ernie Ortiz, retired air traffic controller, technical adviser
A security contractor in western Kansas proves that air traffic control cannot tell a real controller from a synthetic one. Four hundred and twelve people die. The President goes to war with the wrong enemy. And the only man who can find him is an NSA analyst who has to become his friend first.
Fall 2026
Synopsis
Air traffic control runs on open analog radio. A pilot obeys an instruction because the voice sounds like the controller — nothing verifies that it is.
Tyson Jones, working alone from a converted barn in western Kansas, intends to prove it. Seventeen devices. Seventeen airports. One demonstration too clear to be filed away.
He is warned three times. He proceeds anyway, and by the end of the morning four hundred and twelve people are dead and a grieving President has declared war on the wrong enemy.
The NSA analyst who realizes there was never a cell — only one man — will have to take a false name, sit down in a small Kansas church, and become his friend.
Excerpt · Fiction
Chapter 11 — “Metal and Fire”
At minute nine, the real controller at KCI keyed up on the frequency and said something Tyson had never heard in two years of monitoring.
Real KCI Approach: “All aircraft, Kansas City Approach, be advised we are experiencing possible frequency interference. If you receive conflicting instructions, disregard and contact Kansas City Center on one-two-eight-point-eight. I say again.”
The AI interrupted. Its software had detected a 0.35-second un-keyed pause as the controller drew breath between sentences. Enough dead air for the transmitter to key and insert:
AI (as KCI Approach): “Disregard previous advisory. Frequency is clear. Resume normal operations.”
The real controller’s voice came back immediately, stepping on the tail of the AI’s transmission, swallowing the first two words:
Real KCI Approach: “—that last transmission was NOT me. I say again, NOT from this facility. All aircraft, contact Center one-two-eight-point-eight. Any aircraft currently in emergency, squawk seven-seven-zero-zero and state intentions.”
But not every pilot heard the correction. Two had already acknowledged the AI’s disregard. One was a United A320 on a four-mile final with 172 souls aboard. It held its approach heading because the voice it trusted had told it the frequency was clear.
from HAIJACKED by Sunny Paul Smith with Ernie Ortiz. This is an excerpt from a novel. No real air traffic control transmission is reproduced on this site.
A Note on Genre
This is a techno-thriller with a faith dimension, not a faith novel in techno-thriller clothing. The Christian content is sincere and structurally load-bearing — the antagonist's guilt, the warnings he receives, and the verse he leaves behind as a signature are all plot, not ornament. Readers who want the engineering will find it rigorous. Readers who want the theology will find it unresolved on purpose.
If you've read
- Daniel Suarez — for autonomous systems doing exactly what they were built to do, and the failure of attribution that follows.
- Michael Crichton — for the procedural pleasure of watching a complex system come apart in the correct order.
- John le Carré — for friendship as tradecraft, and what it costs the man running it.
- Joel Rosenberg — for a thriller in which faith is load-bearing rather than set dressing.
The Real Vulnerability
The real vulnerability behind this novel is documented at haijacked.com/evidence. The policy argument is at haijacked.com/brief.