Simon Morden - The Curve of The Earth

Two options: either it was insignificant, and there was nothing of importance inside — just discarded rubbish, blowing on the Arctic wind — or it had been deliberately dropped, right outside the hotel where he and Newcomen were the only guests.

The envelope was small enough to tuck in the top of one of his mukluks. He swapped the foot he was supposedly checking and knocked the axe off his bag, so that it fell in the snow. When he picked it up, he had both envelope and haft in his hand.

The axe went back on the bag, and the envelope was in his boot.

He stood up and straightened his clothing, then stooped again to pick up his bag.

There was a man a couple of hundred metres distant, by the corner of a building. He appeared not to be doing anything in particular, just dawdling on his way somewhere else. He was muffled up, and Petrovitch couldn’t tell who it was. The man was short enough not to be genengineered, but he was wearing ARCO gear all the same.

Petrovitch gave him no more than a glance, but on his way to the airfield, he replayed that glance over and over again. The sharp corner of the envelope dug into his ankle with every step.

Obviously, he was being watched. That was a given. But he knew he’d been spotted picking up the package as he approached the hangar: maybe it had taken them that long to review the images from outside the hotel, compile a sequence of events from multiple angles, and come to the conclusion that there’d been a drop.

They’d missed it as it happened, but they weren’t going to compound their error. Over at Ben and Jerry’s not-so-secret base of operations, the whole anthill of operatives spilled out and into their vehicles.

Petrovitch had no wish to be tasered again. He had his gun and his axe: he’d make a fight of it this time, but depending on what was in the envelope, they might actually not need him any more. They could just shoot him and take what they wanted without having to go through the rigmarole of asking.

“Newcomen?”

“I’m coming, okay? Just the other side of the runway to you.”

“Yeah. There’ve been some developments, not necessarily for the better.” He opened the hangar door and slipped inside. He had a minute. If that. “Even if you run, you’re not going to make it in time. Turn around, go back towards the hotel. Walk quickly.”

“I’m coming anyway. You need me with you.”

“No. Not now I don’t.”

Petrovitch looked around and assessed his assets. Even as his heart spun faster, he realised that he didn’t just have one plane. He might have an airforce.

“ Yobany stos . Michael?”

[Sasha.]

“We need to get as many of these up in the air as possible.”

[The ARCO planes do not respond to my initial commands. They are not in a standby mode. They are completely shut down and require manual activation.]

“ Chyort . Plan B.”

[Is it a good plan, Sasha?]

“No. No, it’s not,” he said, even as he fired up his own plane and ran towards it. “But frankly, it’s all I’ve got. Permission to go off the reservation?”

The plane’s door opened and the ladder extended, but he ignored them for the moment. There was the fuel bowser he’d left parked the night before. He opened his bag, and started to rummage.

[I have an ad-hoc on standby. You have thirty seconds until contact.]

“Enough of the stopwatch already.” His hand came up, clutching the appropriate munitions and a roll of tape.

Mittens, in bag. Bomb, on the tank. Tape, ripped between his clenched teeth. One piece and stick. Two pieces, because it absolutely mustn’t come off. A third piece of tape nipped off. He thumbed the cold, cold switch and pulled the handle to start the bowser moving, then quickly wrapped the tape around the handle so that it stayed on.

It lurched out into the hangar, and Petrovitch pointed it roughly in the direction of the doors.

[You have no guarantee that it will steer straight.]

“No shit, Sherlock. In the absence of a low-orbit ion cannon I can use, it’s what I’m left with.”

[No one has a low-orbit ion cannon.]

“Only because I don’t have time to do everything.” Even with the bowser rumbling towards the far end of the hangar, he made no attempt to board the plane. “How’s the ad-hoc doing?”

[It would help them if they knew what you were up to. Sasha? The plan?]

His beautiful executive jet rose into the air, and the turbines started to turn.

“Yeah. About that plan. It sucked anyway.” He picked up his bag and ran to the dangling ladder, latching on with his free hand. Theatre, nothing more. Dangerous theatre, a stunt that could get him killed. But he needed to be seen, just for one last moment.

The bowser had wandered: rather than going straight, it had curved gracefully to the left, but had managed to avoid the front skids of one of the ARCO planes. It banged up against the hangar door, and started to edge further leftwards.

“Tell me they’re right outside.” The plane rose further, and him with it.

[They are right outside. Sasha, I think you should reconsider…]

“I don’t. Go or no go?”

[Go.]

He triggered the bomb.

A white flash lit up the hangar. The pop of the explosive was lost beneath the hot roar of the plane’s turbines as they cranked up. The tank of fuel ripped apart, and the liquid inside vaporised as the shock wave hit it.

“Cameras. Now.”

The fireball lit with a dirty orange roar, and he let go of the ladder. Higher than he’d like, he fell to the concrete floor, and landed in a heap. The heat from the burning cloud of fuel washed over him, and he pressed himself against the ground.

[Hangar cameras are offline. Sasha?]

“Yeah, yeah.” He looked up and the structure was ablaze. The external doors had blown out, with the remains of the steel shutters lying on several cars. Flames met falling snow in the dark pre-dawn, and inside, bright blue fire was running in rivers towards him. There was shouting and screaming, but none of that seemed to be coming from him.

Over his head, his plane was moving towards the newly exposed opening. Its white paintwork was black and bubbling at the nose, and both engines seemed to be labouring. Still, it didn’t have to fly that far. He launched it forward.

Inevitably, all eyes still capable of seeing watched it leave, bursting from the bank of churning flame and trailing smoke. Barely aloft, it skimmed the runway as it limped across the airfield.

Using the distraction, Petrovitch picked himself and his bag up, and ran for the back door. His ankle turned. He blinked away the pain and kept going.

The explosion had weakened the hangar’s structure. Fire had done the rest. It groaned and creaked, and started to fall. First the arch sagged, then the walls failed.

On the far side of the runway, Petrovitch’s plane ploughed into Ben and Jerry’s control centre. It tore through the building, breaking itself and whatever was inside the one-storey prefab. At some point before it came to rest, its fractured fuel tanks gave up their load, and a second fireball rose into the Arctic sky, red reflected against the underside of the clouds.

[They are completely blind.]

Hot metal was falling from above, peppering him and the other planes at the far end of the hangar. There was the door. He didn’t stop, just aimed a two-footed kick on the lock.

He fell outside, in the swirling snow. It was dark, and no one knew he was there.

The hangar was still collapsing, and as the ARCO planes underneath cooked, they added more fuel to the fire. Something went bang, and shrapnel sang by. It was a singularly unhealthy place to be, but his ankle was giving him all kinds of trouble. The pain he could deal with — it was making sure he kept his foot pointing in the right direction that was the problem.