by Ralph Kern
Grayson craned his neck up and squinted. Parts of the ship looked out of place. A number of boxy protuberances nestled above and below the deck line. He tapped Dillon’s shoulder and silently pointed.
“Shit,” Dillon murmured as he squinted in the direction of Grayson’s finger. “They look like goddamn box missile-launchers. If I didn’t know better, it looks like they’re RIM116 RAM boxes.” He pointed at another box, further down the hull. “There, those are Harpoon tubes. And those, they look like Mark 143 Tomahawk boxes.”
“He’s kitting out this thing to be a warship? Why the hell would he do that? To become one of the Pirates of the Caribbean?” Grayson hissed.
“I don’t know, but, Karl, that’s real advanced military-grade shit.” Dillon pulled out his camera and began clicking away, taking a multitude of shots of the craft.
Grayson squinted as he looked at the ship. It appeared to have been heavily modified. The once-gorgeous vessel now had elements bolted on all over her. Whatever Conrad Wakefield was setting her up for meant she would be able to more than look after herself. But why? Even with all this, what was the point in spending tens of millions when the ship would surely get impounded the second anyone saw all that weaponry on her? It wasn’t exactly subtle, after all. There was no attempt to hide it.
“You think he wants an end run?” Grayson whispered.
“Say what?”
“A Jimmy Doolittle end run. He wants to sail this big bitch up the Hudson and let rip with every one of those weapons. He could shoot down a dozen aircraft, level half of Manhattan, and sink every ship in the vicinity with all that hardware.”
“I don’t know—”
“Hey,” a voice called out from the deck. Grayson looked across. One of the crew was pointing down at them while waving with his free hand, seemingly gesturing others over.
“Shit, we’ve been made.” Grayson twisted back into the workshop as the sounds of shouting echoed through the hanger. “Time to move. You got the pics?”
Dillon waggled the camera in his hand and slipped it into his webbing. From the gantry outside, the sound of running footsteps could be heard.
The door burst open as if it had been kicked and a technician sporting a handgun entered, the weapon waving in a one-handed arc toward Grayson.
Grayson snapped his rifle into his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The weapon gave a quiet popping noise. A red bloom appeared on the man’s chest and he sank to the floor with a grunt.
The sound of voices outside the room suggested there were more where the unfortunate first guy had come from.
“Move!” Grayson grabbed a flash-bang from his harness, pulled the pin, and rolled it through the door. Dillon leapt through the window as Grayson turned away and plugged his ears with his fingers. Even through his closed eyes, the bright light pierced into his retinas as the distraction device exploded deafeningly.
“Moving!” Grayson gave a shake of his head to clear the ringing from his ears as he pulled himself through the window. Dillon grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him bodily outside. Grayson landed on the dirt and glanced over at Dillon to see him turn to cover down one side of the building. He dropped to his knee, pointing the other way.
“Cover on,” he hissed, looking intently for any telltale movement among the industrial machinery and piping. The sounds of sirens permeated through the night air, and pulsating blue lights illuminated the smoke pouring from the vicinity of the destroyed tank.
“Moving.”
Dillon picked himself up and ran to a cluster of crates a few yards away and took up position, the muzzle of his weapon snapping back and forth along both axis of the building line. “Cover.”
“Mov—” Grayson saw a collection of figures running into cover positions. Shit, the PMCs were coming into play. Grayson whistled. Dillon glanced at him and he pointed two fingers at his eyes then at the figures. Coming to a half-crouch, he ran toward Dillon.
He heard a zipping noise, followed a fraction of a second by the sound of gunshots as the PMCs opened fire on them. He skidded behind the crate before coming up on one knee and pointing his rifle toward the enemy. “Cover on.”
“Moving,” Dillon’s voice rang out.
Grayson sighted through his Aimpoint scope as Dillon sprinted away. The red dot within settled on a figure and he smoothly squeezed the trigger. His SCAR-H rifle popped in response. The man dipped behind a forklift as sparks flew off its yellow flank.
“Cover on,” Dillon called. Now the enemy knew where they were, keeping quiet was irrelevant.
Ignoring the bullets thudding into the crate, Grayson sighted another figure and squeezed the trigger again. The man bent over double as he took the shot in his chest, the 7.62 armor-piercing round slicing through the Kevlar vest like a hot knife through butter. The PMC slumped to the floor in a bizarre kneeling position. “Moving.”
Grayson ran to the SEAL’s position as his partner continued firing in a smooth, measured rhythm. “Cover on.”
“Moving.”
Shit, they’d really kicked the hornet’s nest here. At least a dozen figures were advancing on them, using the same leap-frogging maneuvers as they were using to retreat. They were trained, and what’s worse, had clearly trained together as a unit. And they had the weight of numbers. This wasn’t looking good.
“Fall back one,” Grayson called at Dillon and ran, this time angling himself past a flatbed truck. “Cover off.”
His partner continued firing as he twisted behind the truck and unscrewed the silencer, feeling its heat even through his gloves. But the time for stealth was over. He needed the deterrent of the shots firing to keep them down, and to provide a focus to draw the enemy into the position he needed them so the trap could be sprung. “Cover on.”
“Moving,” Dillon called.
Repeating the bounds, they pulled back closer and closer to the fence line. The PMCs were catching up, their heavier covering fire allowing them to take longer runs between cover. But they got the enemy just where they wanted them. “Here. Go for it, Max.”
“Fire in the hole.” Dillon punched the detonator and twisted down into a hunkered position.
The second set of propane tanks they’d placed a thermite charge on erupted. This one between them and their pursuers. Another billowing fireball washed across the port and hunks of burning-hot metal sizzled through the night sky in sparkling arcs.
Grayson winced as a piercing wail came from near the seat of the explosion. Someone had been caught in the blast of superheated gas. Grayson put it out of his mind. Whoever that was had taken the paycheck and knew the risks. C’est La Vie. Or probably not, in this case.
Now that their pursuers had something else to think about, Grayson picked himself up of the ground and sprinted after Dillon toward the hole they had cut in the fence earlier to enter the port.
Chapter Twenty – The Present
Mack and her companions reached the furrow which had been ploughed into the soil and foliage. It was clearly the result of where the huge aircraft had slid to a halt. There was the same amount of plant growth in the aircraft’s tracks as away from it.
The plane had definitely come down a while ago. Probably years.
Rays from the midday sun lanced down through the leafy canopy, creating spotlights on the floor. Maybe it was her non-existent skills as a botanist but, not for the first time, Mack noted all the plants appeared to be of the same breed. Tough solid rubbery trunks, surrounded by thick, fleshy leaves which tracked the sun’s position.
The huge tail section of the 777 loomed over them as they approached from the rear. It canted over to one side. If Mack had to guess, the landing gear on the port side had failed, or been ripped off in the crash landing. As she looked at what she could see of the fuselage, she was somewhat surprised at the lack of damage to the aircraft in general, though. She would have expected more from a soft field landing into a forest environment.
“How many people can one of these things carry?�
� Laurie asked as she looked up at the dirt-streaked fuselage.
Mack shrugged. Of course, she had an interest in all things flying, but exact numbers were beyond her when it came to civil aviation. She simply didn’t need to know and was more a geek about military hardware. “Three to four hundred, I’d guess. But I suppose that would depend on the configuration.”
They maneuvered their way through the dark undergrowth under the fuselage. The forest, as ever in this strange world, was eerily quiet. She couldn’t even hear the scampering of animals she would have expected in the past.
“Stop.” Mack held up her hand and knelt down to a clump of plants. A hint of metal lay beneath the foliage and she brushed it to one side, revealing the metal frame of a passenger seat.
Seeing her actions, Donovan likewise brushed aside other plants, revealing another seat and some luggage. The suitcases were stacked in neat order on top of each other, while the seats surrounded the pile. To Mack’s eye, it looked like a make shift table.
“Looks like there were survivors,” Laurie murmured. “This has to have been removed after the crash.”
“Yeah, but where have they gone?” Mack stood and looked up at the aircraft. “Come on. I want to try and get up inside.”
The doors of the aircraft were high above them. It took Mack a few minutes to figure out the survivors must have been using the slanted wing on the same side as the failed landing gear as a ramp to access the fuselage.
“Sir,” Mack addressed the Commander. “If you would stay out here with the others, I’ll go have a look-see inside.”
“Mack, you’re our pilot,” Donovan said as he looked up the wing toward the open hatch. “If something happens to you, we’re all in trouble. I’m going in.”
“But, sir—”
“I’m going, Lieutenant.” Donovan’s tone was firm as he slung his carbine over his back and hoisted himself up onto the wingtip. He began walking toward the fuselage, stopping every few feet to call out. “Hello. Anyone in there? We’re here to help.”
As he reached the hatch, he stuck his head in and spent a moment looking left and right before turning back to the three of them. “No one seems to be inside. I’m going in.”
Donovan ducked inside as they waited. Mack gazed around the surroundings, trying to discern some type of clue as to where the crew and passengers had gone. There had been people who had made it out alive—the hatch was open, there were items which had been pulled out of the aircraft. Had they all just starved? Dying a slow lingering death here? Confused and alone. Or had they moved on, having found somewhere where they could sustain a settlement. That was almost a warming thought, that there might be other communities out here who might have managed to make something of this world.
The one thing she was hoping the forest didn’t contain was four hundred skeletons who had decayed over an indeterminate number of years since they had put down.
“There’s definitely no one inside,” Donovan reappeared after a minute and shouted from the hatch. “Come on up.”
“Let’s go.” Mack marched up the wing and passed through into the interior.
The darkness inside was punctuated by dusty shafts of light coming through the porthole-sized windows. Within, the aircraft had been stripped, the seats having been moved with the clear intention of creating a dormitory for people to sleep in.
“Looks like they were here for a while.” Donovan gestured around the echoing interior. “But it’s strange. Everything seems to have been stripped down to bare plastic and metal. There’s no cloth, no carpets, nothing like that.”
“Weird,” Mack agreed as she looked up the long, low cabin. The aged windows had taken on a yellow tint. “I need to go up to the flight deck.”
“What are you looking for?” Laurie asked.
“A log book, flight recorder, anything which can tell us what happened to these people and where they went.”
Passing through the passenger cabin, Mack arrived at the open door and ducked through it. The dirty smeared windows allowed more light to pass into the cockpit than the cabin. She spent a moment looking around the complicated arrangements of instruments. She had as much direct experience with civil aircraft as the average layman, but she knew roughly what everything did, and knew what she needed.
“Right, I need to get at the FDRS.” She looked at Laurie who had followed her up. “That’s the Flight Data Recording System or black box. There will be one here in the cockpit, and the other in the tail if we strike out up here. Either way, we should be able to listen in to the last few minutes of the flight.”
Seeing a small cabinet near the door, she opened it and pulled out a book with age-yellowed pages. She thumbed through to the page she needed and quickly absorbed the information. Good, she didn’t need any tools to get at the FDRS, and even better, it was one of the self-contained modern units which could be played back without specialist equipment.
With the manual in one hand, Mack looked around and saw the solid, robust-looking hatch where it was located against the rear-bulkhead and flicked the clasps up and opened it up.
She slid the heavy, rugged orange box out placed it on the deck. She unclasped the lid and tilted it up. The lid formed a laptop-style screen and it automatically whirred to life. Lines of code wrote themselves onto the screen as it booted up, and a few seconds later, a text-menu system appeared.
Taking a second to familiarize herself with the display, Mack selected playback. The screen filled with a selection of instruments. Altimeter, directional equipment, coms, and a display showing what control inputs had been put in on the yoke, pedals and throttle—all the stuff someone would need to piece together what the pilots had done during an aircraft’s last few minutes of flight.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday,” a flustered voice emerged from the box, and the display showed the pilot had keyed the mic. He released the transmit button so he was only talking to his copilot. “Goddamn it, where the hell is everyone?”
“We’re running out of fuel and options here,” a softer voice said. “We’re gonna have to put down soon.”
“Yeah, man, I ain’t too keen on that.”
“We need to do it while we can still choose somewhere and not have the decision taken out of our hands.”
“Choose what? This whole fucking desert looks the same.”
“Desert?” Laurie mouthed. Mack shrugged in response. That didn’t sound anything like what was in the vicinity as far as they had explored. Which admittedly wasn’t that far.
“There, if we put down there, at least we’ll be close to a river,” the soft voice said. “It’d be a good landmark to vector in rescue.”
“Okay, fine,” the flustered voice said. “I’ll bring us around and approach from upwind. Start prepping the cabin crew for a crash landing. I’m gonna make the announcement now.”
After a short delay. “This is Captain Garrison. We have suffered a major navigational malfunction and have made the decision to affect a controlled soft-field landing in the desert you see through the window. Please be assured, we train for this, and while it will be tough on the aircraft, you will be safe. But as a precaution, the cabin staff will be instructing you to adopt crash positions. Please follow their orders to the letter so that we can all land safely. We will be a little busy up here, so we won’t be able to keep you updated, but please take that no news is good news.”
“Thanks for flying All-American Airlines,” the other voice said dryly after the captain had shut down the PA system. “Okay, I’ve got us prepped for a soft-field landing.”
Mack listened to the exchanges between the crew intently as the poor bastards prepared the aircraft as much as they could and began their descent. They seemed as calm as they could be, considering the circumstances. On the instrument display, she watched as the altimeter steadily wound down.
“500 feet. Gear down and locked. Airbrakes fully deployed. 250 feet. 100 feet.”
“Flaring,” A strained voice said. A juddering noise c
ame over from the box. “We’re down. Contact down. Reversing thrust. Shit.”
A crashing noise. “We’ve lost the port gear. No, no, let us roll on the others. Shit. It must be fucking mud out there. We’re losing lift on the wings. Ok, we’re going to go over. Kill the fuel feed to the engines. That’s is. That’s it. We’re going over brace... brace... brace!”
Another thudding noise. “We’re over. We’re down. Shutting down. Cabin crew—evacuate, evacuate, evacuate. You too, Ricky. I’ll secure off in here. Just get clear until we’re sure we ain’t pissing fuel.”
“Okay, going.” A rustling noise came then came the sound of someone frantically hitting switches and buttons. The instrument displays blinked off one after another as the pilot killed the power. Then there was nothing.
“That’s it?” Laurie asked.
“That’s it,” Mack said, sitting back against the bulkhead, contemplating what they’d heard. “A desert? Unless I’m wrong, the earliest they could have arrived was ten years or so ago. How the hell has this forest grown out of a desert in ten years?”
“I don’t know? They said it was more like mud when they got down, so maybe it wasn’t a desert?” Laurie frowned. “Maybe all this plant life came later?”
“Okay, we ain’t gonna get all the answers this time out,” Mack said. She closed the black box and picked it up by its handle. “We can review this back at the fleet properly and send an expedition out here to figure out where the survivors have gone. For now, I don’t want to burn any more daylight. Our focus has to be on the mountain.”
Chapter Twenty-One – The Past
“Come on, come on, get dressed. We need to go!” the man who Wakefield had called Milo shouted as he crashed into the suite where the girls were trying on the various clothing the personal shopper had bought them.
