Adam Baker - Impact

Hancock threw himself into the pilot seat. He shielded his remaining eye from the gale. He pressed the curtain back in place, secured brass popper studs set in the window pillars.

‘Get tape,’ he shouted, fighting to keep the screen from ripping open once more.

Frost fetched duct tape.

Hancock tore strips and lashed the curtain with a triple layer.

He sat back. He rubbed sand from his ears and spat dust.

‘Check the hatches. See if they are secure.’

Noble trained a flashlight and inspected the hatch seals.

‘Good. So far.’

A sudden buffet slammed the fuselage. Groaning metal. The cabin gently listed starboard.

Noble stumbled, then regained his balance like he was walking the deck of a ship in high seas.

‘Jesus,’ said Noble. ‘This thing isn’t going to roll, is it?’

‘She’s bedded pretty tight.’

‘What can you see from the window?’

‘Not a damned thing.’

Frost sat cross-legged on the deck plate, back to the wall.

She switched on Hancock’s survival radio. Thirty-seven per cent battery. She set it for Acquisition and watched numerals flicker.

‘Why bother?’ asked Hancock. ‘We know the score. The world is in flames. We’re on our own.’

‘What if someone is trying to contact us? One in million. But what if they were? And we were off air?’

She sat, staring into the speaker grille, listening to whistling interference. The symphonic storm. Charged particles. Swirling, shimmering waves of electromagnetic interference.

Song of the desert. A living landscape. Vast. Unearthly. Implacably hostile to human life.

‘This is B-52 Liberty Bell , crew in urgent need of assistance, anyone copy, over?’

She broadcast a Mayday every sixty seconds.

‘This is the crew of Liberty Bell , tail MT66, hailing anyone who can hear my voice. Please respond, over.’

‘Seriously. Forget it.’

‘The storm might work in our favour. Atmospherics. You never know. It might extend our range.’

‘Doubt it.’

Flickering strength-bars. Brief signal lock.

Frost maxed the volume. White noise merged with raging wind. She retuned. A woman’s voice. Calm, digitised:

‘…four, seven, two, three, zero, four, three, nine, three…’

‘What the hell is that?’ asked Noble.

‘Sounds like a long-range numbers code. Odd to hear on this frequency. Usually broadcast on shortwave.’

‘…two, five, zero, zero, zero…’

‘What do you reckon it means?’

‘Wild guess: blanket instructions for US service personnel overseas. Battleships patrolling the Strait of Hormuz. Arctic subs cruising beneath the ice. Imagine the message cedes command authority. Tells crewmen they are on their own. Better find safe harbour where they can. Head for the southern hemisphere. Australia. New Zealand. Some place like that. Good place to hold up.’

‘God bless them,’ said Noble.

‘Tough break for the commanding officers.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Those vessels are a radiation hazard. A floating Chernobyl, a floating Fukushima. Reactor-powered engines, nuclear-tipped missiles in the firing tubes. Can’t leave them moored, unmaintained. Death-traps. I guess they’ll drop most of the crewmen in the antipodes, then a skeleton team will sail back north. Scuttle the boats in deep water. Position themselves over an Atlantic trench, then fire a bunch of hull charges.’

Hancock turned in his seat and watched Frost continue to scan wavebands.

‘You know, it’s okay to enjoy it.’

‘Enjoy what?’ she asked.

‘Doomsday. The enormity of the destruction. We got a front-row seat. Get to witness the dying days of humanity. No shame admitting there is an element of dark exhilaration.’

‘Can’t say I ever rubbernecked.’

‘Come on. New York in ruins. The mushroom cloud. The falling towers. Admit it. Must have been quite a show.’

A new voice from the radio. Male, shouting in panic and fear.

Hancock and Noble sat forward.

‘Is that English?’ asked Noble. ‘Can’t make out a word.’

‘Think it might be Russian. Some poor bastard in the Vegas suburbs, most like. An émigré, cowering in a cellar. Sick, irradiated, convinced he’s back in Minsk.’

Frost pressed transmit.

‘Mayday, Mayday, we are US Air Force personnel in urgent need of assistance, do you copy, over?’

The Russian continued to sob and plead.

‘He can’t hear you,’ said Hancock.

‘Mayday, Mayday, do you copy this transmission?’

‘He can’t hear a word you’re saying.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Might be a ghost signal.’

‘A what?’

Hancock stood and stretched.

‘Ever seen a mirage?’

‘Saw plenty of thermals yesterday, out in the desert. Shimmering lakes.’

‘I saw a bunch back in the day. Rode on a few supply runs between Baghdad and Sadr City. We saw some weird shit out in the desert.

‘One time we pulled over to the side of the highway for a piss break. Needless risk, plenty of insurgents, but after a while you get careless. War becomes a game.

‘Mid afternoon. Rippling heat. Hot. Hotter than this, but we had air con and water, so we didn’t give a shit.

‘So anyway, I was standing in the middle of nowhere, unzipped, looking out over the dunes. Then I saw a car. A white Land Cruiser, riding along, a couple of miles out in the sand. It pulled up. A guy got out. Fat guy. Blue uniform. Looked like a local cop. Acting real furtive. He took a pair of binoculars and checked around. Seemed to be looking straight at us. We waved, tried to get his attention. Trained our weapons, signalled “hands up”. Fucker ignored us.

‘He dropped the tailgate, dragged out a couple of heavy garbage bags and dumped them on the ground. Then he got back in the Jeep and drove off, quick as he could. Span the wheels, kicked up a ton of dust, then floored it.

‘We drove out to the spot he dumped the bags. You know what? No bags. No tyre tracks. No trace of any kind.’

‘Jeez.’

‘The guy was real enough. He wasn’t a ghost. Somewhere, out in that desert, he stopped his car and dumped a couple of bags. Might have been over a hundred miles away. But heat played tricks. Refracted his image, projected it miles from his actual position.’

‘You think the sandstorm could echo a radio signal?’ asked Noble. ‘Bounce it around?’

‘That Russian could be a thousand miles away. Shit, he might even be in Moscow. A big-ass static storm could turn physics on its head.’

Frost shut off the radio.

‘So what do you reckon was in those garbage bags?’

‘Glad I never found out.’

The target dossier protruded from Hancock’s backpack.

RESTRICTED ACCESS. CO-PILOT ONLY.

Frost unzipped the vinyl document wallet.

‘Hey,’ said Hancock. ‘That’s classified.’

‘Hardly matters, does it, Cap? No secrets worth keeping any more.’

She thumbed pages.

The flight-path map. Red dashes across featureless terrain. Staging coordinates.

National Recon photos. Dunes and a limestone escarpment. Bleak as the Sea of Tranquillity. Each image stamped EYES ONLY.

‘Hundred miles to the aim point, give or take. We were so damned close. What the hell were we supposed to bomb, Captain? Was it Chinese Whispers? Bunch of guys passing bad orders down the line without question?’

Hancock shook his head.

‘The mission parameters were very clear. They knew what they were doing.’

A target image. Desert wilderness, and the centre of the picture, a black redaction.

Frost held up the picture.

‘What’s this? What’s hidden? What are we not allowed to see?’

Hancock didn’t reply.