Adam Baker - Impact

‘Nope. Can’t hear a thing.’

‘A voice. I heard “ Liberty Bell ”. I heard “rescue”.’

Frost listened a full minute. She shook her head.

‘No. Nothing.’

Noble grabbed the radio from her hand. He pressed Transmit.

‘This is US Air Force Liberty Bell , MT66, do you copy this message, over?’

White noise.

‘There,’ said Noble. ‘Hear that? A response. Can’t make out words. But they can hear us. They know we’re alive.’

‘Your mind is playing tricks. There’s nothing.’

Noble impatiently turned his back and listened some more.

‘I heard them. I heard them for sure. Voices. Got to be close by, right? So much interference. We couldn’t pick them up otherwise.’

He slowly lowered the radio and looked towards the ceiling.

‘Listen.’

‘Can’t hear a thing.’

Noble mimed hush. He cocked his head.

‘Rotors. Yeah, rotors. They’re here. They found us.’

‘Ain’t nothing but the wind.’

‘We’ve got to get out there, put up a flare. This weather, they could fly right over our position and not see a damned thing.’

He slid down the ladder to the lower cabin.

‘Nothing out there, dude,’ shouted Frost from above. ‘Sandstorm. Choppers can’t fly in this shit.’

Noble ignored her. He began to haul aside the equipment trunks that blocked the fissure in the fuselage wall.

Hancock stood at the head of the ladderway and looked down into the lower cabin. Sand blew through the split seam in the wall, dusting the deck plate.

No chopper noise. Just the mournful moan of desert wind.

Frost stood in the wall fissure, shielding her eyes, looking out into the storm.

‘Is he okay?’ shouted Hancock.

Frost didn’t reply.

Best leave Noble to his madness.

Hancock headed back to the pilot seat, holding the wall for support.

He stepped round the satcom case, attention immediately drawn to a winking green light.

He crouched beside the transceiver and lifted the lid. The screen blinked to life.

Comsec sign-in:

He keyed:

He hit Enter.

He keyed:

He hit Enter.

He sat back and watched a loading bar slowly progress towards 100%.

Noble stumbled from the plane and was immediately brought to his knees by a gust of typhoon wind which hit him between the shoulder blades like a shove to the back.

He tied a bandana round his face, masked his mouth and nose bandit-style. He cupped hands over his eyes to shield them from driving sand particles.

Rotor noise. A deep, pulsating beat audible beneath the wind-howl.

He shouted into his radio:

‘This is Liberty Bell . You are above our position. You are right overhead. Put down immediately.’

He switched his CSEL to transponder mode. He held it above his head, let it chirp a homing signal, an urgent electronic tocsin pulsing through the swirling electromagnetism of the storm.

Chopper noise getting stronger. A heavy, powerful machine. Sounded like a Chinook.

He braced for lacerating downwash, expecting to see the helicopter’s belly-shadow descending from the dust churning above his head.

Hancock’s CSEL on the floor next to the pilot seat.

The tiny speaker relayed Noble’s voice as he tried to raise the phantom rescue party:

‘This is Liberty Bell . You are above our position. You are right overhead. Put down immediately.’

Hancock ignored the CSEL.

He crouched beside his satcom unit and contemplated the decrypted communication.

He cleared the screen.

Winking cursor.

He typed:

He hit Enter the sat back, cross-legged, and waited for a response.

Deafening chopper noise.

Noble stood buffeted by wind, hand shielding his eyes, staring up into the broiling sky.

He waited for the belly of a Chinook to descend from of the storm, wheels settling on the desert floor.

Nothing.

Engine noise began to dwindle.

Noble threw the CSEL aside. He fumbled a marine pyro from his pocket. He held it above his head and fired. The star shell rocketed into the cyclone and glowed like a darting, storm-tossed sun.

‘Hey. Hey, we’re right here.’

He screamed into the typhoon, spat and coughed sand.

The spent shell dropped out of the storm and hit the ground in front of him, smouldering like a hot coal.

And then the flare was abruptly pulled beneath the sand leaving nothing but a wisp of smoke snatched away on the wind.

The storm abated.

Frost left the plane and took a look around.

The nose section of the fuselage was banked like a heavy snowdrift. Every upper surface, wings, fuselage, nose radome, loaded with dust.

A transformed landscape. Peaks and valleys, grown familiar over the past twenty-four hours, replaced with a new topography. A fresh maze of peaks and depressions.

A residual breeze stirred the dust, made the dunes smoulder like brimstone.

The tyre that served as a signal fire was completely submerged.

High sun burned through a residual red haze. Noonday heat cooked the plane.

Sand had accreted against the starboard engines. Dust choked the intakes, the turbine blades.

Noble emerged from the plane and sat near the nose, back to the fuselage, shifting position every couple of minutes to stay within a shrinking shadow. He looked tired, subdued.

Frost limped across the sand and joined him.

‘You okay?’

‘Thought I heard something on the radio. A voice, shouting our call sign. Thought we were about to get rescued.’

‘Really?’

‘And I heard a chopper. Deafening. Sounded like it was hovering over our position, ready to land.’

‘All I heard was the wind.’

‘It was right overhead. A Chinook. Real as anything.’

‘Helicopter couldn’t fly in that kind of brown-out. Choke their filters. Couldn’t leave the ground.’

‘Hancock said I wasn’t thinking straight. Said it was all in my mind. Guess he was right. Know what? I thought I was holding it together pretty good. Congratulating myself for keeping a clear head. The madness. It sneaks up on you.’

Frost shrugged, traced patterns in the sand with her boot.

‘Desert can fuck with a person’s head. If we stay here long enough, we’ll all go batshit. End up talking to thin air, sipping JP8 like fine wine, swimming in the dust like we’re splashing in a pool. Won’t take much to push us over the edge. Just a couple more days cooking in this heat.’

Hancock pulled down the remaining blast screens to block out the sun.

Fetid cave dark.

He sat on the flight-deck floor beside the satcom unit.

An incoming message:

He reflexively touched the crude bandage that patched his empty eye socket and bound his fractured skull.

He typed:

He pulled off the bandage and scratched his scalp. He leant forwards and examined his head wound, using the transceiver screen as a dark mirror.

Crude stitches. The swollen, puckered gash across his forehead. The empty eye socket.

Another incoming transmission. Buffering, then:

He sipped from his canteen.