Impact

by Adam Baker

  ‘Nose up.’

  In the ruins of his mind, they took to the sky.

  He leant back in his seat as if, somewhere with the collapsing architecture of his mind, he pictured Liberty Bell leaving the runway, engines at full thrust. They climbed and banked, eight black fume-trails tracing the massive bomber’s ascent.

  ‘Gear retract.’

  Brief pause like he was receiving confirmation from base ATC.

  ‘Roger that. Ascend twenty thousand, maintain bearing two-two-zero.’

  He gripped the flight controls and stared, unseeing, into the storm as he ascended to cruising altitude, mind’s eye showed him empty skies.

  Thickening smoke from overhead vents. Electrical fires spreading through wall conduits.

  The cockpit shook. The plane’s one remaining engine sending jolting tremors through the airframe. Frost craned and looked out the window. The jetwash from the bedded engine was kicking up a hurricane of sand. The twin turbofans shook on their pylon and spat flame.

  Hancock checked cabin pressure and released his oxygen mask.

  Frost turned in her seat. She fought the dope, fought to be present and alert.

  ‘Hey. Jim,’ she shouted. ‘Why are you doing this? You’re dying. But why does everyone have to die with you? Why destroy everyone and everything.’

  Noble turned to look at her. He answered through Hancock.

  ‘The bomb is a doorway. A route out of this world. At the moment of detonation a quantum singularity will exist for a millionth of a second. A tear in the fabric of the real. And we will pass through to the other side.’

  ‘You want to fly this plane to an alternate universe? You’re out of your fucking mind.’

  She used the moment of conversation to check for weapons. Pinback’s holster was empty. Hancock and Noble were packing 9mm Berettas. Both weapons were caked with dirt. Doubtful they would fire.

  Something dug into her thigh.

  The hilt of her father’s knife. She’d dropped it on the pilot seat earlier. But her wrists were firmly bound to the arm rests by paracord. No matter how hard she stretched her fingers, the knife remained four inches out of reach.

  ‘Roger that. Ascend thirty thousand. Maintain course two-two-zero.’

  She could see the brightly lit cabin behind her reflected in cockpit polycarbon.

  She studied Pinback slumped in the EWO seat. The screen in front him, the cracked sheet of black glass, should have been delivering a constant radar sweep, RWR sensors ready to beep an alert tocsin if the plane were targeted by enemy acquisition radar.

  She checked out Noble. He sat patiently staring at the emerald Go lights of the weapons panel. Pre-arms active. If he were recreating their bomb run to the target site, he would expect to reach the missile drop point fifteen minutes from the target site. According to the original mission plan, the bomb-bay doors would whine open and the ALCM would be released from its retainer clamps. A moment of freefall as the Tomahawk left the plane, then wings would unfold and the solid fuel booster would fire. It would head for the target using terrain recognition and inertial navigation for guidance. It would enter a terminal dive a quarter of a mile from the aim point, then blink out of existence.

  But on this flight, this earthbound non-journey, the missile would never leave the payload compartment. Every PAL failsafe had been circumvented. The instant the Tomahawk received the launch command, the moment the B-52 weapon control system ceded full independent control, the barometric trigger would detonate the warhead. No pause. No countdown. Soon as Noble lifted the switch cover, and flicked WPN REL, Liberty Bell and the surrounding quarter mile of desert would transmute to vapour.

  ‘Why me? Why do I have a front row seat?’

  ‘Because you are part of the crew. You belong with us.’

  Hancock performed a routine instrumentation check.

  ‘Adjust heading two-two-five. Visibility good.’ Pause. ‘Yeah,’ he said, answering a query only he could hear. ‘No traffic. We got a straight run.’

  The wind picked up. It screamed through breaks in the cockpit glass. Frost caught a face full of sand. She spat grit and blinked her eyes clear.

  The fuselage around her shook and groaned. Thrust from the misfiring engine threatening to tear the airframe apart.

  Movement outside. Figures at the periphery of light thrown by wing strobes. She glimpsed red prison fatigues.

  Frost took deep breaths and got her shit together.

  As far as Noble and Hancock were concerned, they had just taken off from Runway One, McCarran International, Vegas. They had passed over the southern suburbs and were now banking west.

  A couple of hours to target.

  She had three options:

  One. Escape her restraints, then take out Noble. Do it quick and clean before he had the opportunity to trigger the bomb. Hancock wouldn’t be a problem. He was an extension of Noble’s will. The instant Noble were dead, Hancock would probably flop to the floor like a puppet with cut strings.

  Two. Escape her restraints, then somehow flee the plane. The Tomahawk was tipped with a tactical nuke, not a high-yield city-killer. If she could put five or six miles between herself and the bomb, she might be able to survive the blast.

  Three. Stay put and die.

  She shifted her foot. Clink of broken glass.

  She craned to look down, discretely as she could.

  A couple of nuggets of thick polycarbon on the footwell floor.

  She pinched the glass between her feet, shuffled a shard until it rested on the sole-seam of her boot. She slowly crossed her leg, bringing her boot up to her hand.

  Looking around out the corner of her eye. Noble couldn’t see what she was doing. She was shielded by the ejector seat. Hancock engrossed by dead avionics.

  She stretched fingers towards her boot and snagged the shard. She held it between her knees and sawed the wrist-cord back and forth across the jagged edge. Nylon weave began to fray.

  The cord broke and immediately slackened.

  She psyched herself.

  ‘One … two … three …’

  She snatched the knife from beneath her thigh.

  She sliced the cord binding her left arm to the chair.

  Hancock reached for her.

  She gripped the knife ready to stab, swung her arm and buried the blade in Hancock’s throat, nailing him to the backrest of the chair. He croaked and spluttered, fumbled the knife hilt and tried to pull it free.

  She snatched the gun from his chest holster, jammed the barrel against his good eye and put a bullet in his brain. He slumped limp.

  She twisted round, tried to take aim at Noble while simultaneously scrabbling at the release catch of her seat harness. He had already drawn his Beretta. Simultaneous exchange of fire. Rounds blowing bloodless holes in Noble’s chest. Bullets sparking off Frost’s seat back, puncturing control surfaces, blowing out a window.

  She tossed the gun, faced front, primed the arm rests and wrenched the ejection trigger between her legs.

  Deafening roar.

  Horrific g-force.

  Hurled up and out into the storm.

  The flight deck filled with smoke and typhoon backwash.

  Noble released his seat harness and got to his feet. He walked to the vacant pilot position and looked up through the open ejection hatchway. He raised his pistol like he intended to fire into the storm raging above the plane then slowly, wearily, lowered his arm.

  The seat rockets propelled Frost two hundred feet into the air. The chair detached and she was in freefall, chute unfurling behind her. Not enough height for the canopy to fully deploy, but enough to slow her descent.

  She slammed into the side of a dune and rolled.

  She released her harness and untangled chute cord.

  Last glimpse of Liberty Bell. The plane lit by the unearthly light from wing spots and strobes. The misfiring engine vented fire, turbojet scream merging with the howling wind.

  The sagging flag pole. Tattered
stars and stripes fluttering over the wreck site.

  Spectral figures ringed the plane. Grotesque silhouettes part-veiled by driving sand.

  She turned and ran.

  Noble wrenched the knife from Hancock’s throat and threw it aside. He hauled the corpse from the chair and dumped it on the deck.

  He took the co-pilot seat and checked inert instrumentation. He adjusted the throttle, adjusted the yoke, settled back in his chair and continued to pilot a plane full of dead men on their journey to nowhere.

  56

  Frost turned her back on the wreck sight and ran. A journey out of nightmares. Minutes to put as much distance as she could between herself and the plane, yet each footfall bedded deep in sand. Each gradient was a laborious scramble. Each down-slope turned to a tumbling avalanche

  She sprinted headlong into the storm. Driving sand. She nose-breathed, kept her eyes screwed shut much as she could. Dust in her hair, her ears, working into her flight suit.

  Heading west. Not that it mattered. If she could cover six, seven miles in an hour, she might survive the bomb.

  Noble sat at the flight controls. He adjusted altitude and heading.

  The fuselage shook. Overhead cable runs smouldered and sparked.

  Dual perception:

  Dead avionics. Smashed gauges, all needles resting at zero. Indicator lights extinguished. All screens dead.

  But at the same time he saw switch panels winking green, altitude gimbal holding steady, EVS screen relaying desert terrain twenty thousand fleet below.

  Part of him understood he was sitting in the broken hulk of a crashed plane, going nowhere, but another part of his mind was plotting course and flight time to the target sight. Gnawing confusion. He would reach his destination in a little over an hour, then all ambiguities would be resolved.

  How far had she run? One mile? Two?

  Might have been better to stay aboard the plane. Ground zero. Would have been instant, painless. But if she were caught three or four miles from the blast she would die in agony. The firestorm would wash over her. Slow incineration.

  Panting for air.

  She settled her mind, steadied her respiration, and doubled her pace.

  Noble checked his watch. Twenty minutes to the drop point.

  ‘Captain Pinback,’ he called over his shoulder.

  Pinback clumsily unbuckled his harness and left the EWO station. He stood at Noble’s shoulder.

  ‘Take over. Fly the plane.’

  Noble stood up. Pinback sat in the remaining pilot seat, secured straps and checked instrumentation. Hand on the thrust lever, hand on the stick. The twin portholes of his blast helmet reflected the storm beyond the cockpit windows.

  Noble patted him on the shoulder.

  ‘Thank you, Captain.’

  Noble headed to the back of the flight deck. He ducked beneath viscous drip-strands of melted insulation hanging from overhead cable runs as if they were cobwebs.

  He settled in the gunner seat in front of the launch controls, and buckled his harness.

  He checked his watch.

  Seventeen minutes to target.

  Frost’s leg gave out.

  Pain grew until she could feel the jarring impact of each footfall in her fingers, her teeth.

  She covered a full mile so consumed by agony it filled her senses, rendered her near deaf and blind.

  Then her leg simply ceased to function and she fell face down in the sand.

  She massaged the limb, punched it, cursed it. She tried to get to her feet, but immediately fell on her ass.

  How far was she from the plane?

  Had she reached safe distance?

  She dragged herself up a high dune and rolled down the other side. She took shelter in a deep depression, hoping to avoid the worst of the gamma flash.

  She unhooked her belt canteen and shook it. Dregs. She emptied the bottle, shook last drops into her mouth, and tossed it.

  She looked at the sky. The storm was clearing.

  Weird serenity. She had done what she could to survive. Live or die. It was out of her hands.

  She touched the empty sheath strapped to her chest rig, stroked the Ranger insignia stamped on the leather. She put up a good fight. Her father would have been proud. He would have nodded approval, said, ‘Good job.’

  The gas mask pouch, still slung round her chest and shoulder. She pulled the hood over her head and secured the mask.

  She pictured the warhead, sitting in the blood-red light of the payload bay. A simple steel canister bedded into the flight-frame of the missile. The exposed physics package, trailing cable, ready to fire the moment the Tomahawk received the Go signal from the B-52’s weapon management system and became a self-governing entity.

  She sat and waited for the blast.

  Noble checked his watch.

  ‘Sixty seconds. Hold her steady.’

  He flipped open the twin WPN REL switch covers.

  Missile status panel: all green.

  His battered copy of The Little Prince sat on the console beside him. He picked it up and hugged it to his chest.

  He stared at his G-Shock and counted down the final seconds.

  He reached forwards, put his fingers on the twin release switches.

  ‘Ten … nine … eight … seven …’

  Mix of exhaustion and relief in his voice, like a guy making it home after a long, long journey.

  ‘… three … two … one.’

  One moment Liberty Bell lay broke-backed and beached in sand. Next moment she was consumed by unholy light.

  57

  Frost sat looking down at her gloved hands. She thought about being alive, the fact of existence.

  Gamma flash.

  For an instant she could see finger bones, look right through her hand like an X-ray.

  She blinked her vision clear.

  She ought to duck-and-cover, but the instinct to take shelter was overcome by a compulsion to see the blast.

  She scrambled to the top of the dune.

  Ten megaton ground burst. Stellar heat. The fission core rose over the desert like a second sun, a dust vortex drawn skywards, blossoming into a vertiginous mushroom cloud.

  The monstrous thunderclap of detonation.

  The firestorm rushed towards her across the desert. An oncoming juggernaut of flame.

  She threw herself against the side of the dune, scrambled and squirmed to get beneath the sand before she was engulfed by a wave of superheated air.

  58

  Miles of desert fused to iridescent glass.

  Scalloped dunes, shaped by blast-wind, formed the petrified troughs and waves of a frozen ocean. Sand, momentarily liquefied by supernova heat, frothed at the crest of each ridgeline like delicate, glassy foam.

  An infernal, smouldering landscape. Gunshot cracks as the crystalline crust began to cool.

  A gloved fist punched through vitrified dust. A succession of blows broke an aperture wide enough for Frost to twist and squirm free.

  She climbed to her feet. Dust streamed from her flight suit and respirator. Boots slid on silica glazed slick as ice. She struggled to retain her balance.

  Heart-hammering asphyxia. She tore off her mask and threw it aside, part suffocated by sand-clogged filters. She bent double, whooped for air.

  She caught her breath and straightened up.

  She climbed to the crest of the dune, each footstep crunching through a brittle layer of trinitite, and stood looking east towards the crash site.

  The mushroom cloud risen thirty thousand feet, a mighty column of dust and smoke blocking the sun, turning day to red twilight.

  She stared in awe.

  Somewhere, within the cloud, were the remains of Liberty Bell and her crew. They had been reduced to their constituent atoms, transmuted to rare isotopes, and were now diffused among the mesosphere.

  She tied a bandana over her mouth and nose. A rudimentary fallout mask. One last glance at the thunderous cloud, then she turned and headed fo
r the mountains.

  Lacquered dunes glittered red sunlight. Her boots crunched glass as she travelled west across a transformed world.

  LaNitra Frost. A solitary figure limping across a crystal sea.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank Charles Walker and Katy Jones at United Agents, and Oliver Johnson and Anne Perry at Hodder.

  All illustrations by Noel Baker.