Adam Baker - Impact

Frost spoke slow and clear, super-calm, placating a madman.

‘I haven’t got the code.’

Hancock lowered the pistol and took aim like he was about to put a bullet in Frost’s good foot.

‘Seriously, I swear I haven’t got the code.’

‘I think we’ve already established, by your willingness to disregard the oaths you took when you put on that uniform, your word isn’t worth a damn.’

Frost cautiously reached up, unzipped her flight suit and pulled at her shirt to demonstrate nothing hung round her neck.

‘Where is it?’

‘I burned it.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Check outside. The signal fire. You’ll find the clasp somewhere in the ashes.’

‘The code. The paper slip. You watched it burn?’

‘To a crisp.’

‘But you read it. You read the code before you set it alight.’

‘No.’

Hancock smiled and shook his head.

‘You’re lying. You looked at the digits.’

‘No.’

‘The authorisation slip was sealed in a heavy plastic tag. In order to destroy the code you must have cracked open the tag and unfolded the paper. Only way to ensure the slip got totally incinerated. Which means, as you flicked open your Zippo and sparked a flame, you looked at the digits. You saw the code sequence, an instant before it burned. And now it’s in your head. Just got to wheedle it out.’

‘And how do you intend to do that? Hypnosis?’

Frost deploying a standard bar brawl distraction technique. The urge to completion.

Throw your glass in the air. Your opponent will watch its trajectory, wait for it to hit the floor and smash. Use the pause as an opportunity to aim a jab at their throat.

Or ask your opponent a question. What the fuck did you call me? Wait till they start to speak, then crush the bridge of their nose with the heel of your palm.

‘I’m sure, given a big enough incentive, you can…’

Frost snatched up her crutch and lashed the pistol from his hand. The Beretta hit the wall and fell to the floor.

She drove the crutch into his face. Roar of pain and anger. Hancock snatched the crutch from her hand.

She lunged for the pistol. Hancock was crippled by pain, but managed to throw himself forwards and pin the weapon beneath his body, putting it out of her reach.

Frost scrambled for the ladderwell.

She pushed the barricade aside. Tumbling equipment cases. She stumbled into the sun, momentarily overwhelmed by heat and light.

She couldn’t outrun Hancock. Too lame. Her only chance of safety: ambush the guy as he tried to hunt her down.

She quickly limped towards the ridgeline, then hurriedly retraced her path, matching her footprints like she was jumping stepping stones across a stream.

She reached the wing tip. She reached up, gripped the lips of the aerofoil and hauled herself onto the wing surface. She hobbled back towards the body of the plane, boots scuffing dusted metal.

The flight deck.

Hancock curled foetal and clutched his head. His hands were smeared red. He could feel his scalp wound through the chute-fabric bandage. Sutures binding torn flesh had ripped open. Fresh blood leaked from the improvised dressing.

He rolled onto his side and retrieved the pistol. He crawled to the ladderwell and part-climbed, part-fell to the cabin below.

He leant against the ragged metal of the wall fissure, shielded his eyes against the sun.

Footprints led across sand to the crest of the ridgeline.

He adjusted his grasp of the Beretta. His palm was gummed to the polymer butt-grip by blood. He stepped from the plane, but immediately brought himself to a halt.

Frost was smart. She wouldn’t run into the desert leaving a follow-me trail of prints.

Stark shadows on the ground around him. The curve of the wing. The flag pole. His own silhouette, stretching across the sand ahead of him.

His attention was drawn by an irregularity in the wing shadow. A slight prominence, as if something were resting on the upper surface.

Hancock trained his pistol on the lip of the wing. He swayed. He leant against the fuselage to restore his aim.

He kept his attention trained on the wing while his left hand groped for the radio tucked in a chest pouch. He raised the handset to his mouth and keyed Transmit:

‘Where are you, Frost?’

Frost lay on the starboard wing. Baking metal. Drops of sweat ran down her face, dripped from her nose, splashed on the dust-matted aluminium in front of her.

She gripped her knife. Palm-sweat greased the leather grip. Seven-inch blade poised to stab.

Crude plan: listen out for Hancock. The guy was messed up, struggling to stand. Laboured breathing, dragging steps. He couldn’t move around without making a racket. She would wait until she heard him beneath the wing, then jump his ass.

Rustle of flight-suit fabric. Muffled cough. Hancock had emerged from the plane and was standing close by.

She listened hard, tried to gauge his location.

Silence.

Had he moved away? Was he creeping around the wreck site, trying to hunt her down? Or was he standing still, stifling his breath, waiting for her to make a move?

Faint crackle. Her radio. The static squelch that preceded an incoming transmission. She quickly rolled onto her chest-pouch to smother the sound.

Muffled radio voice mixing with Hancock’s voice from down below:

‘Where are you, Frost?’

She lay still as she could.

‘Here kitty, kitty.’

She lay flat, pressed herself against hot aluminium, willed her body to merge with the wing.

Her POV: a vista of rivet-seamed metal rippling heat.

She waited. Long minutes.

She thought she could smell Hancock, just for a moment. The sour stink of flesh-rot carried on the breeze.

Did she actually want to kill him? The guy pulled a gun. But he was sick, clearly not thinking straight. Succumbing to fever and delirium. He needed help.

Never the less, she might have to cut Hancock in order to subdue him. She resolved to aim for muscle, if she could. Avoid major organs, major blood vessels.

Insidious voice in her head: If you tussle over a gun, you may have no option but to kill him. And then you could keep all the remaining water for yourself.

She lifted her head.

Slow commando crawl to the lip of the wing, sliding on sand-dusted metal. She psyched, prepped to launch and stab.

She reared up, knife raised above her head, then froze. Hancock was gone. A disturbance in the sand like he stepped from the plane, walked a couple of yards, then turned and headed back inside.

Voice from above:

‘Be obliged if you dropped the knife.’

She looked up.

Hancock standing on the roof of the aircraft. The sun was behind him, his body fringed by a brilliant halo.

He must have returned to the flight deck and climbed through one of the vacant escape hatches.

Frost slowly got to her feet. She shielded her eyes.

‘How about we call time-out?’ said Frost. ‘This bullshit is escalating way too fast. Maybe we should hit Pause, talk it through.’

‘Drop the knife.’

‘Really want to shoot me?’

‘I need you alive and conscious. Rest is up to you.’

‘These wings are full of kerosene vapour. Bullet might send us both to hell.’

Gunshot. A 9mm round punched a neat hole in the aluminium panel between Frost’s feet. Wisp of smoke.

He took aim a second time.

‘Ever played Russian Roulette?’ said Hancock. Gunshot. Frost flinched. A second smouldering hole punched in the wing metal at her feet. ‘Want to see how far our luck will hold?’

She threw the knife aside. It fell and stabbed deep into sand.