by Adam Baker
The storm at its height.
The fuselage buffeted by a heavy crosswind. Slam and jolt, like in-flight turbulence.
Hancock sat in the pilot seat. He balanced a signal mirror on the flight console, angled it so he could see his reflection. He flicked open his lock knife and attempted to shave. He slowly dragged the blade across stubble.
The cabin shook.
He cut his upper lip.
Brief flash of anger. Fingers tight around the knife hilt in a white-knuckle death grip, like he wanted to stab.
He gently massaged his bandaged scalp, breathed slow and willed shit-happens acceptance.
He blotted a bead of blood on the cuff of his flight suit.
‘You okay?’ asked Noble.
Hancock ignored him. He looked out of one of the unbroken windows and watched swirling vortices of dust.
Noble got to his feet. He gripped a wall spar and braced against the roll.
Energy bars scattered on the gunner’s console. He ripped a wrapper with his teeth, spat plastic, then ate.
He offered Hancock a bar.
‘Hungry?’
‘Better save those,’ said Hancock. ‘We’ll need them for the trip.’
Noble gathered up the bars and stuffed them into a backpack.
‘What time is it?’ asked Hancock.
‘Eleven, give or take.’
‘Aim to set out around eighteen hundred. Sundown. Day turning to evening, desert starting to cool. We ought to get some sleep in the meantime, I guess.’
A sudden gust shook the plane. The flight deck shuddered. A blast curtain tore open. Hancock flinched from the stinging sand-blast. He reattached fasteners, lashed the screen back in place with fresh tape.
Frost leant across the pilot seat and looked out of one of the intact windows at the storm.
‘How long before it lets up, do you think?’
Hancock shrugged.
‘No idea. Got to blow itself out sooner or later.’
Frost looked down on Hancock’s head. Swollen, angry flesh beneath the chute bandage.
Faint smell of rot.
‘How long since that wound got cleaned out?’
‘About twelve hours.’
‘Maybe I should take a look. Dress it fresh.’
‘I’m okay.’
‘Looks pretty inflamed.’
‘Unless you can pull a fully manned ICU out your ass, there’s not much to be done.’
Frost sat next to the backpack. She took a map from a side pocket and shook it open.
‘We reckon to cover between ten and fifteen miles a night, is that right?’
‘Yeah. Although we have no real way of charting our progress, no way to measure the miles. Basically, we walk until we reach water or drop dead in the dirt.’
‘I’ve been mulling it over,’ said Frost. ‘We’ve got to head north. Not right away. But once we reach habitation and get ourselves fixed with a vehicle, we ought to head north soon as we can. Best chance to escape radiation. Bombs were just the start. Sooner or later every nuclear power station in the world will blow. Failsafe cooling systems can keep reactors stable for a while. After that: meltdown. There are a bunch of atomic power plants to our south in California. Diablo Canyon. San Onofre. Another big one at Palo Verde, Arizona. Best head in the opposite direction, put them far behind us. I vote we head for British Columbia.’
Hancock shifted in his seat. He folded his arms and closed his eyes.
‘No need to over-think the situation,’ he said. ‘No need for elaborate plans. Got to take things day by day. Right now, all we can do is walk and hope to strike lucky. Best thing we can do is rest.’
Noble lay on the floor and dozed, soothed by gentle white noise from the CSEL positioned near his head.
He snapped awake.
He snatched up the radio and held it to his ear.
‘Hear that?’
Frost jolted from sleep. She rubbed her eyes.
‘What?’
Noble upped volume and held out the radio.
Steady hiss.
‘All I can hear is static.’
‘There’s a voice,’ insisted Noble.
Frost took the handset. She held it to her ear and listened hard.
‘Nope. Can’t hear a thing.’
‘A voice. I heard “Liberty Bell”. I heard “rescue”.’
Frost listened a full minute. She shook her head.
‘No. Nothing.’
Noble grabbed the radio from her hand. He pressed Transmit.
‘This is US Air Force Liberty Bell, MT66, do you copy this message, over?’
White noise.
‘There,’ said Noble. ‘Hear that? A response. Can’t make out words. But they can hear us. They know we’re alive.’
‘Your mind is playing tricks. There’s nothing.’
Noble impatiently turned his back and listened some more.
‘I heard them. I heard them for sure. Voices. Got to be close by, right? So much interference. We couldn’t pick them up otherwise.’
He slowly lowered the radio and looked towards the ceiling.
‘Listen.’
‘Can’t hear a thing.’
Noble mimed hush. He cocked his head.
‘Rotors. Yeah, rotors. They’re here. They found us.’
‘Ain’t nothing but the wind.’
‘We’ve got to get out there, put up a flare. This weather, they could fly right over our position and not see a damned thing.’
He slid down the ladder to the lower cabin.
‘Nothing out there, dude,’ shouted Frost from above. ‘Sandstorm. Choppers can’t fly in this shit.’
Noble ignored her. He began to haul aside the equipment trunks that blocked the fissure in the fuselage wall.
Hancock stood at the head of the ladderway and looked down into the lower cabin. Sand blew through the split seam in the wall, dusting the deck plate.
No chopper noise. Just the mournful moan of desert wind.
Frost stood in the wall fissure, shielding her eyes, looking out into the storm.
‘Is he okay?’ shouted Hancock.
Frost didn’t reply.
Best leave Noble to his madness.
Hancock headed back to the pilot seat, holding the wall for support.
He stepped round the satcom case, attention immediately drawn to a winking green light.
He crouched beside the transceiver and lifted the lid. The screen blinked to life.
Comsec sign-in:
AUTHENTICATE
He keyed:
VERMILLION
He hit Enter.
FIRST AND NINTH DIGITS
OF PERSONNEL CODE
He keyed:
4 3
He hit Enter.
INCOMING EAM
He sat back and watched a loading bar slowly progress towards 100%.
Noble stumbled from the plane and was immediately brought to his knees by a gust of typhoon wind which hit him between the shoulder blades like a shove to the back.
He tied a bandana round his face, masked his mouth and nose bandit-style. He cupped hands over his eyes to shield them from driving sand particles.
Rotor noise. A deep, pulsating beat audible beneath the wind-howl.
He shouted into his radio:
‘This is Liberty Bell. You are above our position. You are right overhead. Put down immediately.’
He switched his CSEL to transponder mode. He held it above his head, let it chirp a homing signal, an urgent electronic tocsin pulsing through the swirling electromagnetism of the storm.
Chopper noise getting stronger. A heavy, powerful machine. Sounded like a Chinook.
He braced for lacerating downwash, expecting to see the helicopter’s belly-shadow descending from the dust churning above his head.
Hancock’s CSEL on the floor next to the pilot seat.
The tiny speaker relayed Noble’s voice as he tried to raise the phantom rescue party:
‘This is L
iberty Bell. You are above our position. You are right overhead. Put down immediately.’
Hancock ignored the CSEL.
He crouched beside his satcom unit and contemplated the decrypted communication.
CONFIRM STATUS ACTION-READY
He cleared the screen.
Winking cursor.
He typed:
REQUEST IDENT
He hit Enter the sat back, cross-legged, and waited for a response.
Deafening chopper noise.
Noble stood buffeted by wind, hand shielding his eyes, staring up into the broiling sky.
He waited for the belly of a Chinook to descend from of the storm, wheels settling on the desert floor.
Nothing.
Engine noise began to dwindle.
Noble threw the CSEL aside. He fumbled a marine pyro from his pocket. He held it above his head and fired. The star shell rocketed into the cyclone and glowed like a darting, storm-tossed sun.
‘Hey. Hey, we’re right here.’
He screamed into the typhoon, spat and coughed sand.
The spent shell dropped out of the storm and hit the ground in front of him, smouldering like a hot coal.
And then the flare was abruptly pulled beneath the sand leaving nothing but a wisp of smoke snatched away on the wind.
27
The storm abated.
Frost left the plane and took a look around.
The nose section of the fuselage was banked like a heavy snowdrift. Every upper surface, wings, fuselage, nose radome, loaded with dust.
A transformed landscape. Peaks and valleys, grown familiar over the past twenty-four hours, replaced with a new topography. A fresh maze of peaks and depressions.
A residual breeze stirred the dust, made the dunes smoulder like brimstone.
The tyre that served as a signal fire was completely submerged.
High sun burned through a residual red haze. Noonday heat cooked the plane.
Sand had accreted against the starboard engines. Dust choked the intakes, the turbine blades.
Noble emerged from the plane and sat near the nose, back to the fuselage, shifting position every couple of minutes to stay within a shrinking shadow. He looked tired, subdued.
Frost limped across the sand and joined him.
‘You okay?’
‘Thought I heard something on the radio. A voice, shouting our call sign. Thought we were about to get rescued.’
‘Really?’
‘And I heard a chopper. Deafening. Sounded like it was hovering over our position, ready to land.’
‘All I heard was the wind.’
‘It was right overhead. A Chinook. Real as anything.’
‘Helicopter couldn’t fly in that kind of brown-out. Choke their filters. Couldn’t leave the ground.’
‘Hancock said I wasn’t thinking straight. Said it was all in my mind. Guess he was right. Know what? I thought I was holding it together pretty good. Congratulating myself for keeping a clear head. The madness. It sneaks up on you.’
Frost shrugged, traced patterns in the sand with her boot.
‘Desert can fuck with a person’s head. If we stay here long enough, we’ll all go batshit. End up talking to thin air, sipping JP8 like fine wine, swimming in the dust like we’re splashing in a pool. Won’t take much to push us over the edge. Just a couple more days cooking in this heat.’
Hancock pulled down the remaining blast screens to block out the sun.
Fetid cave dark.
He sat on the flight-deck floor beside the satcom unit.
An incoming message:
CONFIRM YOUR STATUS ACTION-READY
He reflexively touched the crude bandage that patched his empty eye socket and bound his fractured skull.
He typed:
CONFIRM ACTION-READY
He pulled off the bandage and scratched his scalp. He leant forwards and examined his head wound, using the transceiver screen as a dark mirror.
Crude stitches. The swollen, puckered gash across his forehead. The empty eye socket.
Another incoming transmission. Buffering, then:
PRIORITY COMMAND
COMPLETE MISSION
PROCEED TO TARGET SITE AND INITIATE PACKAGE
ACKNOWLEDGE
He sipped from his canteen.
He typed:
PLEASE IDENTIFY YOURSELF
He waited a long while. No response.
PLEASE VERIFY AUTHORITY
DESIGNATED COMSEC PROTOCOL
AS PER MISSION SPEC
No reply.
He typed:
WHO AM I TALKING TO
Incoming:
ABSOLUTE PRIORITY
CONVEY WARHEAD TO TARGET SITE
INITIATE PACKAGE
ACKNOWLEDGE
ACKNOWLEDGE
ACKNOWLEDGE
ACKNOWLEDGE
ACKNOWLEDGE
The screen continued to scroll Acknowledge until he hit Break.
He thought a long while, then typed:
MESSAGE RECEIVED
CONFIRM COMMAND
PROCEED TO DESIGNATED MARKER AND
TRIGGER DEVICE
Frost watched, mesmerised, as heat rippled from the upper surfaces of the starboard wing. Hallucinatory haze turned the wide expanse of metal to a shimmering, insubstantial thing so ghostly she felt, if she were to reach out to touch the steel and aluminium structure, her fingers would pass through it as if it were smoke.
The sandstorm had shielded the crash site from the morning sun. But now there was no respite. Searing, blistering light.
Better cover as much skin as possible. She zipped her flight suit, pulled on gloves and turned up her collar.
Hancock emerged from the plane. He dug beside the nose.
‘What’s he after?’ asked Noble.
‘No idea.’
They watched him work.
‘Need any help?’
Hancock ignored them.
Frost sat in the pilot seat. She lifted a blast screen. The vast dunescape. Barren mountains veiled by heat haze.
From her position in the cockpit she could look down on Hancock as he worked outside. He was digging in the sand, excavating something buried by the storm.
The sled. Deck plate lashed with a cable tow rope. The chunk of grate he used to drag the battery from the tail section. He gripped the cable and hauled it clear of the sand.
Noble climbed the ladder to the flight deck. He stood beside Frost and looked out the window.
‘Think he’s lost it?’
‘Hard to say.’
They watched Hancock pull a long length of injector pipe from the sand. He shook out the dust-matted flag and tied it to the pole.
He stabbed the pole into the ground. The flag hung limp.
Inverted stars and stripes. A futile signal of distress.
The crawlway.
A tight, steel-sided tunnel, little wider than an air duct.
Hancock on his hands and knees. He held a flashlight between his teeth like a cigar. He pushed the backpack ahead of him. He dragged the satcom unit behind.
The bomb bay pressure door. A heavy hatch secured by crank handles.
He turned the handles. The door wouldn’t open. The frame had distorted during the crash. He curled foetal, turned in the tight crawlspace and kicked at the door with booted feet. Metal shriek. The door swung open.
Stifling darkness.
He crawled inside and stood upright. A wall-mounted toggled switch. He flicked On. Immediate crack and spark-shower from cabling above his head. He flinched from the sparks and flicked Off. He traced cable with the beam of his flashlight until he found a frayed break in the line. He stripped and twisted copper wire.
He flicked the switch again.
Secondary lights burned steady. The compartment lit blood red.
He surveyed the vaulted weapons bay.
Dead power cable and data lines hung from roof conduits like jungle vine. He ducked beneath them.
His boots crunched sand. The payload doors had been ripped away, leaving a wide aperture in the floor open to the desert.
The centre of the bay was dominated by a rotary launcher: a drum-rack that could house at max five ALCMs and position them, one by one, above the open payload doors ready for deployment.
An eighteen-foot Tomahawk missile held by clamps. Solid-propellant power plant and intakes at the rear. TERCOM terrain mapping radome in the nose.
The warhead was housed in the payload section behind the nose. A Mod 4 CS-67 tactical nuke prepped for a ten kiloton yield.
He ran his hand over the surface of the weapon. White lacquer, like bathroom porcelain. The missile appeared undamaged.
He took a compact Geiger counter from his pocket. He took a reading, passed the sensor the length of the bomb. Steady background.
He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a flat Peli trunk the size of an attaché case. He flipped clasps and opened the trunk.
A laptop bedded in foam. Beside it: tools, cables, replacement fuses. Battlefield triage. Everything he would need to monitor and maintain the missile up to the moment it was jettisoned from the plane.
Titanium torque keys. He selected a key, lifted it from its foam trough and set to work.
The payload compartment of the ALCM was studded with twenty-four hex screws. A laborious task to release each screw. He had to crouch beneath the weapon with a flashlight. Had to pause every couple of minutes to shake fatigue from his fingers.
The final bolt. He set it turning, threw the wrench aside, and unscrewed by hand.
A faint click as the bolt cleared the thread. The cowling dropped loose. He carefully lifted the panel clear. It was heavy. Hardened steel alloy.
The core. An anti-radiation jacket held in a titanium frame. A featureless cylinder wired to a bundle of fusing and firing circuits. Uranium 235 hemispheres, plutonium 239 and a tritium/deuterium booster, all of it jacketed with hexagonal plates of high explosive to force a millisecond of super-compression.
Critical mass. Cascading fission. Stellar light. Nova heat.
