John Birmingham - Without warning

‘You are right,’ Mirsaad conceded. ‘I apologise. I sound like some ill-bred street Arab falling on conspiracy talk like a scabrous dog on a bone. Tell me truthfully, Bret, what do you think your military will do?’

He shook his head. ‘I have no idea, Sadie. Leave you all to it, I expect. We’re out of the superpower business as of last week. Go ask the Chinese, or whoever’s running India. If Pakistan hasn’t nuked them yet.’

They fell into an uncomfortable silence as the PA called flights out to Paris, Rotterdam and Bangkok. Melton attempted to find a position in which he could recline without putting pressure on his injured butt cheek or shoulder. It was difficult. But at least for the first time in weeks he was clean, and dressed in luxuriously soft and well-fitting civilian clothes. The BBC had sent him payment in euros for the copy he’d filed before he was wounded, and had advanced him another, larger sum, on the basis of the interviews he had taken at the transit facility out in the desert. As he’d expected, they were most interested in any European angle.

Their money was still worth something in Kuwait, at least in the hermetically sealed environment of the international airport. He was able to buy clothes and replace some lost and damaged equipment. Even better than that, he’d managed to fill a few prescriptions at a pharmacy on the main concourse and, now that he had escaped the Kafkaesque frustrations of the military transport system, he could eat when he felt like it.

‘What will you do when you get to London?’ asked Mirsaad.

‘I got a bunch of studio interviews to do,’ he said. ‘You know, glamorously wounded foreign correspondent stuff. I’ve promised to write up a couple of thousand words for their website, and I really want to push ahead with this book I’ve been thinking about. I wouldn’t be surprised if they asked me to turn around and come right back, though. They lost a lot of people yesterday. Reporters in bureaux throughout the region. They’re gonna be hiring, but it’ll mean heading back here.’

‘Do you want to?’

‘Nope. Well… I don’t know what I want. Something normal would be nice – do you miss normal, Sadie? I do. I can’t go home, so all the conventional nostalgia bullshit is out. Truthfully? I’d just like to sit on my busted ass somewhere, write my book and, I dunno, look around and not see guys armed to the fucking teeth. How about you?’

‘I am an Arab,’ Mirsaad answered glumly. ‘I grew up surrounded by men who were armed to the teeth.’

‘Hey, I grew up in Kentucky. Me too.’

The PA system announced that his flight to London was boarding and Melton suddenly felt a soft pressure in his chest and throat. ‘Well, Sadie, I gotta be going, bud. I might be back, but you know… I just want to say thanks for finding me. I think I might still be doing the zombie shuffle through TRANSCOM’s twilight zone if you hadn’t grabbed me up.’

Mirsaad stuck out his hand and they shook, awkwardly because of Bret’s wounds.

‘It was nothing, a trifling favour for a friend at the Beeb, and one I was happy to do as it helped another friend… I hope we still stay friends, Bret. If we live.’

‘Yup. A big if, Sadie,’ Melton agreed. ‘Take care. I’ll contact you though the network when I get settled.’

The Jordanian patted him gently on the arm and picked up his bags for the short walk to the departure gate. Most of the passengers lining up there were civilians, their numbers split evenly between Arabs and Europeans, although, Melton reminded himself, they might well all be British citizens. Nobody looked happy to be travelling. Either because of what they were heading towards – parts of England were under martial law, and it was being strictly and harshly enforced – or perhaps because of a well-founded fear they might never get there. Thousands of people had died when their aircraft were knocked out of the sky by the same electromagnetic pulses the Israelis had set off to cripple their enemies.

Neither reporter spoke again until Melton had swiped his boarding pass. The BA hostess was as smooth and pleasant as ever, which only served to heighten the sense of brittle weirdness and impending doom.

‘Good luck. And thanks again,’ said Melton.

‘A safe journey to you, my friend, God willing,’ replied Mirsaad.

He was pathetically grateful for a business-class seat. It was like settling into an overstuffed hotel bed compared to the steel benches, hard plastic seats and stinking kitbags on which he’d mostly fetched up while in transit. It was possible, while sipping at the complimentary orange juice, as they waited to taxi, to imagine that things were entirely normal. The business-class section was full, but remained decadently spacious and agreeable. His fellow bizoids, with one exception, were all male. The one woman looked like a banker or lawyer and had no sooner strapped in than she began opening files to work on. She plugged herself into an iPod and radiated a fierce repeller field, lest anyone should attempt to approach or interrupt her. An old hand, then.

The man sitting next to him, in the window seat, nodded brusquely before returning to his BlackBerry. He kept stabbing at the keyboard without any observable result. ‘It was working this morning,’ he kept muttering to himself. Melton ignored him all too easily.

A hostess, noticing his injuries as he’d levered himself into his seat, offered extra pillows and a blanket to lie on. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, he’d have derided such indulgences as ‘snivel gear’; it took him a long time, after getting out, to throw off some of the dumber attitudes of his time in service. He took the pillows and thanked her, settling into them after washing down a couple of painkillers with the last of the orange juice. As the engines spooled up, the captain came on to announce that they would be taking a very circuitous route to avoid any hazards from hostilities to the north. Melton didn’t bother to pay attention to the announcements. He didn’t care how they got out of this mess, only that they did so.

He was going to miss Sayad, and felt yet again that he was simply allowing events to sweep him along and away from another friend, one whose own future looked very bleak. Melton didn’t see anything good happening in this part of the world any time soon. There was no way the US could sustain a presence here, but it remained an area of vital importance to the surviving great powers. How long could it be before Chinese, Indian and Russian warships replaced the US Navy on permanent station in the Gulf? As his eyelids drooped and he tried to suppress the snoring he knew was going to piss off his fellow passengers, he sought to get his head around the strategic and economic wreckage of the Israeli strike, but he was too tired and the seat too comfortable, and before long he was asleep.

He woke briefly, thousands of miles later in Gibraltar, but popped another couple of pills, drank some water and went back to sleep. After that he didn’t stir again until the plane began to descend. A flight attendant appeared at his elbow to gently rouse him and the BlackBerry addict, and to ask that they put their seats into the upright position for landing.

‘We’re in London?’ he croaked.

The young woman, a rare beauty of Caribbean heritage by the look of her, seemed distracted and anxious. ‘No,’ she replied with a shake of her head. ‘No. We’re stopping in Paris. It’s… unscheduled… but nothing to worry about. We’ll refuel and be on our way.’

That brought him awake.

‘We won’t be going to London,’ said his travelling companion, whom he’d avoided talking to so far.

‘I’ve been out of it, sorry,’ said Melton, still feeling groggy. ‘I snore. Has something happened?’