by P A Vasey
However, I felt weirdly calm and composed. The same surge traveled through my body as when I’d faced the strangers outside the Bolton’s house. I’d been plugged in again, supercharged. I put a hand on Matt’s chest.
“Trust me,” I said.
Then I leaped onto the pilot.
The wind continued to howl through the open window hurricane-like, but it felt as if I was wearing magnetic boots or my feet were part of the airplane’s structure.
The pilot’s arms came up and he started flailing at me but I ignored the wild swings and grabbed his seatbelt. I ripped it off the arm of his chair, tearing the fabric like paper, and grabbed him by the front of his shirt. In a single movement I lifted him up and over the yoke and threw him at the open front windshield. He careered through the HUD display and his leg got caught on the way and wrapped around the top of the screen, snapping at a wicked angle, blood spraying into the cockpit with the wind.
Then he was gone.
FOURTEEN
I sat in the pilot’s chair and squinted at the controls, the fierce buffeting air making it almost impossible to look forward. Matt climbed into the seat on the left and strapped himself in. The attitude indicator was blue at the top and brown underneath in equal amounts, indicating that the aircraft was level for the moment at least. Our airspeed was 255 knots, altitude was 3650 feet but slowly ticking downward.
I took hold of the yoke and pulled it gently to bring the nose up.
“Do you know how to fly?” shouted Matt. “Cause I sure as hell don’t.”
“How hard can it be?” I yelled back.
I did seem to understand what all the controls were for, but that was like knowing all the ingredients that made up a curry and having no idea how to put them all together in the right order. Despite the convincing scenarios shown in movies and television shows, no untrained passengers have ever had to fly and land a large aircraft like this in the real world.
I closed my eyes, mainly to stop myself being overwhelmed with the sensory overload and the seriousness of the situation. Breathing deeply helped me focus, and I told my body that I was in control, and to calm the fuck down.
My hands hovered over the autopilot control as I wondered what would happen if I engaged it and we were too low. I guessed that if everything went tits-up I could just turn it off again. Fuck it. I pressed the AFS button and took my hands off the yoke. The aircraft continued to fly at the same altitude, and at the same speed.
“Yay,” I said.
Matt seemed too terrified to take his eyes off the sea.
The co-pilot’s headset was lying on the center console wrapped around the throttle, so I ducked under the hurricane and put it on. There was a PTT button on the yoke, which I activated and pulled the microphone close to my lips. I found the transponder LCD and flicked it to 7700, the emergency code.
“Mayday, Mayday. This is Qantas five-six repeat this is Qantas five-six. We have an emergency. We are …” I checked my watch “… about two hours out from Brisbane. We’ve lost both pilots and need assistance. Over?”
I had shouted as loud as I could, but the noise in the cockpit was still deafening and I wasn’t sure whether anyone would be able to hear me. I turned to Matt.
“So you’re definitely not a trained pilot then?” I yelled.
He shook his head and sat back in the chair, looking pale and clammy.
Right.
I squeezed out of the chair, and leaned close, my lips touching his ear. “We should be okay for now.” I pointed at the airspeed indicator. “Keep an eye on the speed. We need to stay at this velocity. Big jets like this can’t stay in the air at less than 150 knots or so. We go too slow, we stall and crash.”
He nodded, looking like a deer caught in headlights.
My hand moved over the LCD dials and switches, moving instinctively to the right controls, flicking a switch here and there.
I wondered if I could fly this thing.
“Just make sure the needle there stays in the green zone,” I continued. “The autopilot should keep us going at this level. If the airspeed starts increasing we’re probably going down, so disengage the autopilot and pull gently back on the yoke.”
He reached out and grabbed my wrist. “Why … where are you going?”
I flicked my head to the rear. “I’m going to see if the co-pilot is dead or just knocked out.”
“Wait up,” he said, eyes boring into mine, fear written all over his face. “Who are you? How did you do that?”
“Do what?” I said.
“The pilot,” he shouted. “You threw him out of the window like he weighed nothing.”
What could I tell him that would help our situation? Not much …
I caught movement behind us and saw that the co-pilot was trying to ease himself up from the floor. His eyes were flicking left and right, beats of nystagmus hinting at a concussion. A spot of blood bubbled from his right nostril.
“Hey, it’s okay. How you feeling?” I said.
“I’m …” he started, and then twisted over and vomited.
I kneeled by him as his abdominal muscles stopped contracting and the heaving ceased. I offered him a cloth, which was lying on the floor, to wipe his mouth. He gratefully accepted it and sat back against the bulkhead, breathing deeply. He looked a shade of green I’d not seen outside of a Grinch movie.
“Where’s Tom?” he said, looking at Matt in the pilot’s chair. Then he seemed to register the gaping hole in the window and the gale force wind blowing through the cabin. “What happened?”
Matt turned and gave a manic laugh. “She threw him out of the window, mate.”
I gave him a ‘shut the fuck up’ kind of look and put a hand on the co-pilot’s arm. “Listen …”
“Peter,” he said.
“Listen, Peter. The pilot’s dead. Gone. We’re two hours from Brisbane. I’ve got us flying level on autopilot. Do you think you can take over? Get us home?”
He winced but nodded, so I helped him to his feet. He swayed a bit but seemed fairly steady after a second or two. He put his hand on the back of the co-pilot’s chair and shakily slid into the seat and buckled up. Matt looked over and reached out for a shake, ducking under the wind.
“Hi, I’m Matt. No clue what I’m doing here, but happy to help.”
Peter nodded again and settled his hands over the controls. He hovered them, like a concert pianist, and closed his eyes. Almost like he was looking for inspiration. I tapped him on the shoulder to break his concentration.
“You sure you’re okay?” I said.
“Yes, yes. Really.”
“You’ve landed this before, haven’t you?”
He swallowed. Looked me in the eye. The twitching of his eyeballs had decreased in amplitude.
“Over a hundred landings. All simulated.” He smiled, apologetically. “We generally land on autopilot.”
“Can you do that from this altitude?” I asked.
He gave a dismissive shake of his head. “We’re much too low. We have to climb up and make a proper approach.”
I stared at him, unblinking, as Cain’s words echoed again.
I have given you what you need. You will know when to use it.
I put my hand out and touched his temple. A jolt of electricity like a build-up of static charge traveled between us. He gave a little jerk and sat upright, his face taking on a serene, composed look.
“You can do this,” I said.
“I can do this,” he repeated.
“Okay then, get us down.”
Matt was looking at me strangely. “What did you just do to him?”
I ignored the question again and looked away. “You’ll need to help. You good with that?”
His brows furrowed. “I guess, but what’re you going to do?”
“I’m going to check on the passengers. Make sure everyone’s okay. Let them know what’s happening.”
He put out a hand to stop me. “What the hell just happened?”
&nbs
p; I wasn’t sure what to tell him that wouldn’t make him think I was insane. But then, after what he’d just witnessed, the truth might appear less crazy than my wildest fabrication.
“Later,” I said. “Once we’re on the ground.”
FIFTEEN
We descended into Brisbane just as the sun was coming up, brilliant gold and orange hues exploding like a furnace in the east as the first slither of sun peeked over the skyline and the river glowed liquid gold and silver. We’d come in over a huge metropolitan area, larger than Los Angeles, sprawling in all directions along the floodplain of the river valley toward the Great Dividing Range in the west. I was surprised when Matt told me the population was only 2.5 million. LA would have crammed ten times that number of souls into the same area.
A huge and not unexpected cheer erupted from all cabins as the wheels touched the tarmac, like a charter aircraft taking novice flyers and the elderly on their first trip abroad. As we taxied in, dozens of fire trucks and police vehicles accompanied (forcibly escorted, probably a better description) us to our temporary stand four hundred yards from the main terminal. I squeezed Peter’s shoulder in a gesture of ‘well done’, and he slumped forward in his seat after shutting down the engines. He fumbled with the mic and announced to the passengers that everyone was to stay sitting until the police had been through the aircraft, and the accident investigators and fire chief had given the all clear to disembark.
Matt had gotten up from his seat and was stretching, looking out of the broken cockpit window at the terminal building and the rising sun behind it. Hundreds of faces could be seen behind glass viewing areas watching with excitement the full emergency services on standby and gawking at the damage to our aircraft. I hoped there were no remnants of the pilot smeared along the paintwork from the window.
The guilt sat not on my chest but inside my brain. What I’d done I couldn’t undo. I’d killed another man. Alright, a man possessed by an alien who was trying to kill me, and everyone on the airplane, but an innocent human being all the same. Could I have saved the pilot and killed the Vu-Hak, or was the human mind in there already dead? I thought about Navarro and tried to remember whether I could sense him as he tried to kill Stillman and me. I didn’t think so, but I didn’t know for sure.
There was a knock on the cockpit door and it opened to reveal Stillman herself, and a couple of severe-looking police officers. She looked at the devastation and shook her head slowly before giving me a smile and opening her arms, leaning in for a hug. The hug was very welcome; I felt tears welling up as I buried my head into her shoulder and her hair.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, “you’re here. I heard all about it. You had no choice.”
I pulled out of her embrace, irritably wiping my eyes, keeping my voice low too. “It’s not okay though, is it? How can we be safe? They seem to be able to easily find us.”
She frowned. “I know. I wonder if that’s just a function of their numbers. Plus bad luck on our part.”
I looked around the cockpit, only now taking in the mess, broken dials, torn leather and bits of plastic and glass strewn around. Smears of blood were coating the windows.
Stillman saw me looking and put a finger up to my face. “Hey. We need to focus. Hubert’ll be waiting for us. I’m getting you out of here A-SAP.”
“How’re we going to explain this away?”
“A ‘birdstrike’,” she whispered. “You flew through a flock of seabirds. The local authorities will take it from here. They’ve been briefed. The Australian Federal Police are on board. No one’ll know the truth, and that’s how it’ll stay.”
“This guy, Matt. He was there. He saw what happened.”
Matt had been watching our exchange with interest. His hair was still disheveled and a bruise was spreading over his scratched cheek. This actually made him more attractive, but I suppressed the thought. He gave a shrug and an almost apologetic smile.
“Sorry,” he said.
Stillman let go of me and walked over to him. They stared at each other for a second and then she burst into a big grin. “You idiot. I said look after her, but really … landing a 787?”
He smirked and flicked his head at Peter who was still slumped in his chair, eyes red and baggy. “Nah, it was all this guy. I just did what he told me to do.” He then looked at me and his face went all serious. “Actually, it was Kate who saved us all. Oh, and I still haven’t figured out how you did what you did, by the way.”
I turned to Stillman, eyes wide. “You know this guy?”
She gave a half smile and a semi-apologetic shrug. “I guess introductions are in order. Kate, this is Matthew Hamilton. Matt works for the FBI. I asked him to babysit you, incognito.”
I felt my face reddening. “Babysit me?”
At that moment, thankfully, a couple of armed police officers entered the flight deck. Stillman conferred with them for a minute before turning back to me.
“We gotta go, hon,” she said and held out a hand.
I reluctantly took it and let her pull me out of the seat. The police officers led the way and we threaded down the aisle past the devastated cabin and onto a disembarkation ladder. As we exited the airplane a fierce heat reflected off the tarmac into my face. The air was humid and heavy and smelled of aviation fuel and I was sweating even before I’d reached the bottom of the steps. It was hard to breathe; Brisbane was a sub-tropical city, and it was early summer.
We were bustled into a white airport van and driven at speed around the taxiways to the airport’s administration block. We pulled up outside a set of sliding doors and another van swung in behind us, disgorging half a dozen heavily armed police officers. Stillman led the way into an office painted grey with one floor-to-ceiling window facing a bland corridor, which led to the lost-goods store. A wall-mounted A/C unit was blasting frigid air at maximum into the small space, and I shuffled underneath it, feeling instantly better.
The office had a single desk in the corner holding a computer, an open notebook and a stack of papers under a rock-shaped paperweight. There were a dozen or so swivel chairs surrounding an oval table and a bookshelf laden with papers and files was in the other corner. A plasma TV on a wall was tuned to a local news channel. Above the sliding doors a camera swiveled on an insectoid stalk, red light blinking. Stillman gestured to the chairs and so we all took seats around the table with Hamilton and Stillman sitting either side, almost like they were protecting me. Maybe they were. Two of the police officers sat opposite me, both fit and tanned and far too young. One of them brought out his walkie-talkie, keyed a channel and said, sotto voce, “They’re here.”
Stillman gave me a poker face.
The door opened again and a man walked in, three-day stubble clashing with his neatly pressed suit, the kind you only see on high-priced lawyers. Or gangsters. He had grey hair pulled back in a tight ponytail and his clear blue eyes took in the room with a single sweep. He pulled up a chair and fished in his pocket to extract a big mobile phone which he placed face up on the table between us.
“Just so you know, I’m recording this,” he drawled.
“Who are you?” I said, irked.
He gave me a weird smile and played with the buttons on his phone. Stillman leaned sideways and placed a hand on my arm.
“Kate, this is Cole Harvey. He’s with the American consulate here in Brisbane. He can help us.”
Harvey finally stopped fucking around with his phone and looked at me, his eyes as immobile as the rest of his face.
“I’ve been in touch with Director Hubert while you’ve been in the air. I’ve organized your transport to Hobart. The RAAF are going to take you there. Amberley Air Force Base is about forty klicks south west of here. We’ve got an Airbus KC-30A coming in tonight, and it’ll fly you down there in the morning.”
“No more commercial flights,” said Stillman. “We’re going under the radar. Off the grid.”
I tried to match Harvey’s stare, waiting for him to blink. Waiting for s
ome sign of subterfuge or betrayal. He obviously knew enough about what was going on, and who we were, and that didn’t make me feel any safer.
“I was under the impression that the fewer people knew, the better?” I hissed to Stillman, an edge to my voice.
She sighed and sat back in her chair. “Kate, while you’ve been in the air, there’ve been developments.”
“Such as?”
Harvey took this as his cue and stood up. He walked across to the wall TV and picked up the controller from a little nook on its flank. He flicked through the channels to find a saved FOXTEL newscast. “Yes, developments. Things are spiraling out of control. Things that aren’t going to be easy to contain for much longer.”
He pointed the controller at the screen and clicked play. The program was CNN’s The Situation Room, and its lead anchor, Wolf Blitzer, was speaking while green-screened behind him was a large office building’s main entrance. There, dozens of uniformed soldiers were running across the lawns toward a pillared door where two bodies were lying on the grass next to the public benches along the concrete pathway. The soldiers were approaching the bodies cautiously, guns pointing, circling and giving hand signals to each other.
Blitzer was saying “… the suspects were killed as they exited the building, having ignored calls to drop their weapons and surrender. We have obtained video from inside the building, taken on a phone and uploaded to YouTube a few minutes ago. Please be aware that some viewers might find this footage – which is unedited – disturbing.”
The picture transitioned to a shaky video taken from behind a table where the phone’s owner was huddled. There was a blazing fire coming from a corridor to the left, dark black clouds billowing horizontally as if blown by a fan. Crashes could be heard in the distance. Gunfire. Screams. Cries.
Two men in dark suits emerged through the smoke. Both were wearing lanyards and were clean cut, Special Agent-types. They were carrying guns in both hands and firing indiscriminately. People could be seen cowering against walls, behind upturned chairs and tables, hugging each other and screaming hysterically. A soldier appeared from off camera and started firing at the men. The impacts of the bullets caused them to jerk backwards and clouds of crimson puffed horribly into the air. I expected them to go down but they didn’t fall, and to my horror directed their fire at the soldier who twitched and danced before collapsing in a crumpled heap.
