by Dean M. Cole
Major Lee slowly shook her head. “It’s just like they said.”
Rourke nodded. Even from a hundred meters away, he could tell that the vehicles were truly empty.
As the four of them stared into the vacated cars and trucks, Rourke realized that this was the doctor’s disappearance all over again. It removed any lingering doubts about the veracity of what they had been told.
He felt a pat on the shoulder.
It was Commander Bingham. “Come on, mate. We need to find a way to Ellington Field.”
Turning, Rourke saw that the two ladies had already started to walk back toward the vacuum chamber. Major Lee had a comforting arm draped across Monique’s shoulders. Rourke and the wing commander followed them.
Reaching the van, they changed back into their clothes in profound silence. The three astronaut candidates each wore their blue, one-piece flight suits while Rourke changed back into his tweed suit, electing to leave off the tie and lab coat.
Commander Bingham eyed the controls of the van. He shook his head. “I don’t think this lorry has enough ground clearance to get us around what likely lies between here and Ellington Field.”
Digging in his pocket, Rourke produced the keys to McCree’s four-by-four. He held them up for the others to see. “I think the director’s truck should get us there.”
Bingham nodded appreciably. “Nice work, chap.”
They exited the van and walked across the parking lot.
Major Lee pointed at the truck. “Rourky, you drive. You already have experience with this monstrosity.”
After giving her a nervous glance, Rourke nodded.
They piled into the vehicle and soon had it through the Space Center’s rear gate. The traffic had been lighter there, so they encountered fewer crashed cars. However, they soon came upon a completely clogged intersection. It took some maneuvering, but Rourke was able to guide the truck over the curb and around the worst of it.
They elected to stop by the living quarters they’d been assigned by NASA, ostensibly to collect some belongings for the trip ahead. However, Rourke believed that it was to get a measure of closure for those who had family in the dwellings—be they human or cat. Neither Rourke nor Major Lee had relatives in the area. The two of them returned from their apartments with bags packed. However, Wing Commander Bingham and Navy Lieutenant Monique Gheist emerged from their apartments sometime later. They returned to the truck with backpacks slung over their shoulders, their eyes glistening.
The four of them continued the trek to Ellington Field in shocked silence.
Usually, the trip would have taken less than half an hour, but with the need to circumnavigate multiple collisions and crashes as well as a few fires, it took more than an hour to get there.
Finally, they reached Ellington Field. On the way, Rourke learned that it was a retired Air Force base that had long ago been converted to a municipal field. It still housed multiple military units, including the National Guard unit through which Major Lee had maintained her helicopter proficiency. The latter part came in handy when they reached a barricade. Rachel entered her code, and it slid open.
Rourke drove through, and they soon passed between the last of the buildings and emerged onto the tarmac.
The vehicle coasted to a stop as each of them stared at a northern horizon choked with columns of churning, black smoke.
Wing Commander Bingham found his voice first. “That must be the refineries that line the Houston Ship Channel. Singleton warned us to avoid the area.”
Major Lee patted Rourke on the shoulder and directed him toward a pair of dark Army helicopters. He guessed that they were the Black Hawks that Captain Singleton had mentioned.
He stopped the truck between the two aircraft.
The major inspected one of the helicopters and its logbooks. She said it was already topped off with fuel.
They loaded up their gear.
Major Lee held up a hand. “Give me a few minutes. I’ll be right back.” She jumped into the truck and took off. A short time later, she returned.
“Rourky, help me with this stuff.”
He nodded and jogged over to meet her at the back of the vehicle. Bingham and Gheist joined them as well.
Dropping the tailgate, Major Lee jumped into the bed of the truck. She opened a dark green crate.
Bingham whistled appreciably. “Hell’s teeth, mate! Where did you get those bits ‘n bobs?”
The major reached into the crate and extracted a gun. She handed it to the commander. “These bits ‘n bobs, as you so eloquently put it, came from the unit’s armory.”
As Rachel finished handing out the weapons, Rourke looked at the rifle she had given him and gave her a questioning look. “Why do we need these things?”
“I don’t know …” The major shrugged. “Zombies?”
Commander Bingham patted Rourke on the back and gave him an uncharacteristic smile. “’Tis better to have and not need than the other way round.”
Monique pursed her lips and then said, “It’s around.”
“Pardon me, Leftenant?”
“It’s the other way around not round.”
The commander shook his head. “Damned Yank grammar Nazi.” He gave her a grin. “You use your bastardized English, and I’ll stick with the Queen’s.”
After loading a crate of munitions that the major had also brought from the armory, they started boarding the helicopter.
Once Monique and Rourke were strapped in, Major Lee climbed into the pilot’s seat. Commander Bingham occupied the opposite one.
Rourke looked at Monique. “You’re not a pilot?”
The tall, dark woman shook her head. “I am a nuclear engineer. I have a double doctorate in nuclear physics and in computer engineering.” She smirked and cast a glance at Bingham. “With a bachelor’s in English.” Looking away from the man, she continued. “I started out in the Navy as a Nuclear Surface Warfare Officer, although my last assignment, before coming to NASA, had me working at DARPA.”
Tilting his head, Rourke said, “DARPA? That sounds familiar.”
“Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”
Rourke nodded his understanding. “I remember now. If memory serves, it’s the agency of the Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies.”
“Yes, for use in future military applications.” Pausing, the thin naval lieutenant regarded Rourke with a tight smile. “What about you …?” She raised her eyebrows. “Geller?”
Rourke nodded and extended a hand. “Yes, ma’am, Doctor Rourke Geller.”
Keeping her eyebrows raised, she nodded appreciably and shook the offered hand. “Doctor? You look rather young. Wasn’t McCree calling you an intern?”
Rourke smirked and canted his head. “He found me outside the vacuum chamber this morning. Guess he assumed I was an intern. I’m actually thirty, but a lot of people mistake me for someone younger.”
“Why didn’t you correct him?”
“Didn’t seem important at first. I mean, I knew who he was. Everyone does, right?” He shrugged. “Figured anonymity was my friend. Better for the bigwigs not to know your name and all that.” He gestured through the helicopter’s side window, indicating a nearby fire. “Then he started talking about all this, and it no longer mattered.”
Major Lee began to start the helicopter’s engines.
Staring at a distant column of rising smoke, Monique nodded thoughtfully and then looked at Rourke. “So, Doctor Geller, what were you doing before McCree wrangled you into this?” She said the last part while staring at the nearby burning remnant of a small airplane.
“I was part of the team that was testing the space telescope in the vacuum chamber.”
The naval lieutenant looked at Rourke, understanding dawning on her face. “No wonder you were so shocked when you came back with the mats.”
Rourke chuckled wryly. “Shocked doesn’t come close to capturing the true sense of what I felt, but yeah,
you got the idea.”
The noise of the engines and whirling rotor blades rose to painful levels, so he and Monique donned their headsets.
Major Lee’s voice suddenly crackled through the speakers. “Can everyone hear me?”
The three of them said they could.
Rachel glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “So it’s Doctor Rourky, huh?”
He shrugged and stared out the window. “That suddenly seems a lot less important.”
Wing Commander Bingham looked back. “A doctor? That’s great! Good to have someone on the team to keep an eye on our health.”
“Not that kind of doctor, Bingham.” Monique patted Rourke’s leg. “What is your field, Doctor Geller?”
“Astrophysics.” He gave Monique a meaningful look. “My minor was in computer programming.”
The woman gave him an approving nod. However, Commander Bingham’s smile dissolved into a frown. He turned to face the front of the helicopter. “Wonderful, we have another certified nerd onboard. I’ll certainly defer to you for all astrophysical calculations.” His helmet shook side to side. “What the hell was McCree thinking, sticking us with this airy-fairy?!”
Major Lee’s head snapped left. She gave the wing commander a hard look. “Watch it, Bingham. I may not have that fifty thousand-dollar boot, but I’ll happily introduce you to the US Army combat boot suppository.”
Bingham gave her a second glance. The self-assured, smug look evaporated from the man’s face.
Monique looked at Rourke and winked. She covered up the microphone of her headset and leaned in conspiratorially. “He knows she can back it up, too. Major Lee was the first woman to complete Army Ranger training.”
“I thought she was an Apache pilot.”
Lieutenant Gheist nodded. “She aced Army flight training as well as Navy Test Pilot School after completing multiple combat deployments in Spec Ops.”
“Spec Ops?”
“Special Operations. She was a Green Beret.” Monique paused and glanced forward. Then she leaned in closer. “Word is, she has dozens of killed Tangos to her name, both in and out of the cockpit.”
“She’s killed terrorists?”
Monique nodded.
Major Lee looked back. As she did, her scowl changed into a broad smile. She gave them a thumbs-up. “You guys all secure back there?”
Monique returned the gesture.
Rourke held his thumb up and nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Good to—”
The helicopter rocked.
Rourke felt his insides shake. At the same moment, he felt pressure on his eardrums.
As one, they all turned to look to the north as a massive mushroom cloud rose above the roiling columns of black smoke.
Bingham pointed. “Something big just blew up in the Ship Channel.”
Rachel nodded. “I think it’s time we get the hell out of here.”
Rourke shook his head. “The Ship Channel is miles from here. We should be safe.”
Both pilots glanced back at him with indiscernible expressions.
The pitch of the helicopter engines changed as the major began to manipulate the flight controls. A moment later, the aircraft rose a few feet into the air. Then Major Lee had it accelerating across the tarmac.
Rourke stared at the still expanding mushroom cloud. Trails of smoke cut through the partly cloudy sky, arcing away from the blast point in every direction.
“Bloody hell!” Commander Bingham pointed. “Must have been an entire ship.”
Rachel nodded. “Probably a tanker.”
Suddenly, a massive chunk of red and black smoldering steel slammed into the pavement in front of the helicopter.
Rachel yanked the controls sideways, and the aircraft lurched, narrowly avoiding the hunk of metal. She continued to bank the helicopter left. “I’m going to put some distance between us and that shitstorm.”
After she’d turned the aircraft one hundred and eighty degrees, the major leveled it out and continued accelerating, now heading southbound, away from the Ship Channel.
Another piece of smoking metal slammed into the ground a few hundred meters to the left, but after that, nothing else threatened.
A few moments later, Major Lee banked the helicopter to the right. “Going to head west for a little while. We’ll circle around that side of the city and then head north for Nebraska. Should keep us clear of the worst.”
Rourke glanced out the left window, and his eyes went wide. He pointed. “There’s an airplane …! Flying!”
Everyone turned and looked.
“Bob’s your uncle! The token nerd is right.”
As Rachel rolled the helicopter level again, the passenger jet flew ahead of them and continued flying to the northwest. It appeared to be descending.
Estimating its trajectory, Rourke glanced ahead and then realized where the plane must be going.
He pointed between the two pilots. “It’s heading toward Hobby Airport. They’re going to land!”
“The chap is right.” The wing commander glanced at Major Lee. “Let’s give it a see.”
Next to Rourke, Monique shook her head. “What makes you think there’ll be anybody in that thing?”
Bingham turned in his seat. “The altitude might have saved them. I think it’s worth a look.”
Rachel screwed up her face. “I don’t know. Singleton was pretty adamant about staying away from airports.”
Commander Bingham held up his hands. “We are in a helicopter, Major. Just stay sufficiently far enough away to keep us safe.”
Rachel considered his words for a moment and then nodded reluctantly. She adjusted the controls and fell in behind the much faster aircraft.
As the helicopter rolled level, the wing commander pointed ahead. “Appears there’s been a crash on the airfield.”
Staring through the windshield, Rourke nodded. One of the roiling columns of smoke they’d seen earlier was coming from Houston’s southern airport. Major Lee guided the helicopter low over the city. The large passenger aircraft continued its steady descent toward the airport. That’s when Rourke realized something was wrong. He pointed. “Look. The landing gear is still up.”
Rachel nodded. “I know.” She glanced at Bingham. “I think it’s empty, just like everything else.”
The four of them fell silent as the passenger jet drew ever closer to its appointment with the airport’s runway. A moment later, it pancaked into the concrete and slid down the paved surface in a spray of sparks.
Lieutenant Gheist placed a hand over her mouth, giving her words a muffled sound. “Hell’s bells!”
Unable to look away, Rourke watched as the large airplane slammed into the piled wreckage at the far end of the runway and exploded. A boiling cloud of orange fire churned into the sky.
Rourke tried to work his suddenly dry mouth, but it took him a moment to get the words out. “This … This is what Singleton was talking about.”
The other three occupants of the helicopter nodded slowly.
Suddenly, an automated voice broke over the intercom system. “Traffic! Traffic!”
Major Lee looked down and stared at one of the displays. A yellow symbol drifted across its screen. “Where did that come from?”
The icon turned red, and the automated voice returned. “Climb! Climb!”
Rachel’s eyes widened. “Oh shit!”
She yanked up on the control stick in her left hand.
The seat pressed into Rourke.
The engines screamed as their whining pitch amplified.
Then the computer-generated voice came back, now sounding even more insistent. “Increase climb!”
Rachel yanked the other stick to the side and started screaming. “Shit! Shit! Shit! It’s right behind us!”
The G-forces increased.
Rourke felt his face sagging.
The world turned ninety degrees as the aircraft responded to Rachel’s inputs and banked hard to the right.
Something big and bright zippe
d past just beneath the right window, too close for Rourke to see more than its metallic white skin.
Then it was gone.
Rourke slammed painfully into the shoulder harness as the helicopter spun like a falling leaf caught in a wind gust.
Monique screamed. Her arms flailed overhead.
Only their shoulder harnesses kept the four of them from falling to the ceiling.
The engines oscillated manically.
All the while, Rachel fought with the controls, struggling to rein in the gyrating aircraft.
The outside world spun around the helicopter. One moment, sky filled its windows, the next, buildings, streets, and green fields zipped past.
Rourke’s heart pounded against his chest wall as he watched each rotation take them closer to the ground.
As the helicopter oscillated wildly, Major Lee continued to fight the controls, cursing all the while. “Come on, you piece of shit!”
One rotation later, she finally righted the aircraft.
Breathing heavily, the four of them exchanged horrified glances.
“Holy shit!” Major Lee shook her head. “That was a goddamn Antonov!”
As she spoke, Rachel turned the helicopter back toward the west. “I’m getting us the hell out of the way of any other aircraft.”
Wing Commander Bingham was staring after the large airplane. “What in the hell was an Antonov doing coming to Hobby Airport? They don’t land here.”
Rachel shook her head. “Must have diverted here when the shit started hitting the fan.”
Staring after the airplane, Rourke held his stomach and shook his head. He felt as if he were going to be sick. “What’s an Antonov? And what happened to the helicopter?”
Next to him, Monique was holding her stomach as well and panting for breath.
Commander Bingham pointed at the aircraft. “That, Mister Geller, is the largest airplane in the world. And we got caught in its wake turbulence.”
Monique leaned forward, her face pale and sweaty. She narrowed her eyes. “He is Doctor Geller, Wing Commander Bingham.”
