Adam Baker - Impact

‘This is Lieutenant Frost, US-B52 Liberty Bell , anyone copy, over?’

No response.

‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is Lieutenant Frost, United States Air Force, navigator tail MT66 broadcasting on SAR, anyone copy?’

She was transmitting on the standard military Search and Rescue frequency. The mid-watch radioman back at the Vegas compound should be on air demanding comsec validation: her day-word and a digit from her authentication number.

Nothing.

She cupped a hand over the screen to shield it from glare.

GPS hung at ACQUIRING SIGNAL. All base stations returned NO COMMS.

She shut off the radio to conserve power.

She unwrapped a stubby marine flare. She flipped the striker and tossed the pyro.

She lay back and watched red smoke curl into a cloudless sky.

Crawling up a steep gradient on hands and knees. Her lame leg gouged a trench.

She crested a dune. She shielded her eyes.

A rippling sandscape stretched to the horizon. Primal nothing, like something out of dreams. It was as if she had turned inwards and was traversing her own deep cortical terrain, a race memory bequeathed by early hominids. The hunt: tracking prey across sun-baked, sub-Saharan wilderness, spear in hand.

She checked her sleeve pocket. Two more morphine shots.

Somewhere among the dunes lay the slate-grey wreckage of Liberty Bell . A UHF beacon bedded in the debris transmitting a homing tocsin on 121 and 243 MHz.

Somewhere, in the Vegas garrison, a radioman would pick up the distress signal. Trenchman would call Flight Quarters. Alert 60. He would assemble a TRAP squad and order immediate scramble. The team would strap their vests, buckle helmets, distribute live ammo. The Chinook would be marshalled out of the hangar. Strap in, spin up, head west tracking their beacon. Touch down at the crash site, rotors kicking up a storm. The squad would descend the loading ramp. They would cut the twisted fuselage with oxy-acetylene gear, slice open the belly of the aircraft, suit up and take Geiger readings before entering the payload bay to retrieve the warhead. Finally they would fry sensitive electronics with thermite grenades, and begin a radial search for survivors. Scan the dunes for the six personnel that ejected from the craft.

She checked her watch. Chipped bezel, smashed face, hands jammed at the moment of egress: four-ten.

She unbuckled the watch and threw it away.

Sun high overhead. Merciless heat.

She peeled off her gloves and tucked them in a pocket. She unclipped her survival vest, unzipped her flight suit and tied the sleeves round her waist. An olive-drab T-shirt blotched with sweat.

Her face was glazed with perspiration. Half-remembered advice from survival school, Thompson Falls, Montana. Her instructor, Major Coplin: ‘Don’t towel sweat. It has a function. Let perspiration cool your skin by slow evaporation.’

She should have retained the parachute. Used it to make a headdress. Hung it for shade.

She spoke, just to break the awful silence:

‘Get it together, bitch. Don’t let morphine mess your thoughts.’

The chute lay a hundred yards distant, pasted to the side of a dune.

Best move before analgesia wore off.

She slung the survival vest round her shoulders and began to crawl.

A journey out of nightmares. Fingers raked mineral dust. Massive muscular effort to advance a single inch.

Steep gradients. Sliding sand. Every time she stopped for breath she began to lose ground.

She paused at the top of each dune and sat a while, raised her head greedy for any kind of breeze.

An ass-skid descent. She spread her arms to slow her slide. An uncontrolled tumble might rip open her fractured leg. Jagged bone could tear through skin. Turn a painful injury into a life-threatening crisis. She would quickly bleed out, fresh arterial blood soaking into sand as she struggled to push flaps of wet muscle back into her calf and choke the wound with a boot-lace tourniquet.

She crawled the steep gradient on her belly and dug deep with her hands like she was swimming through dust.

She hauled herself to the crest.

The chute was gone.

She looked around. The breeze had dragged the parachute a quarter mile distant, far out of reach.

‘Christ.’

She lay in the sand awhile, head in the dust, robbed of strength by an enervating wave of defeat.

Fierce, unwavering sun.

She galvanised heavy limbs, took off her T-shirt, draped it over her head and shoulders. The sweat-sodden cotton burned dry in seconds, leaving salt rime at the seams. The sun seared her bare back.

She unzipped a vest pocket. Three small water sachets bound by a rubber band. Vinyl envelopes of vacuum-sealed liquid squirmed between her fingers. She ran her tongue over parched lips. She gripped a tear-tab, fought the urge to rip open a packet, throw back her head and suck it dry. Three hundred and seventy-five millimetres in total. Best conserve liquid as long as possible. She rezipped the pocket.

She shielded her eyes and scanned the horizon. Distant mountains veiled by heat haze. Venusian peaks. Cliffs, buttes and mesas, insubstantial as cloud. Might be the Panamint Range. The plane was on target approach when the engines crapped out. Seven minutes from the drop, crew psyching themselves to launch the ALCM. Which put her somewhere in Death Valley and a long way from help.

No smoke plume. No sign of wreckage.

She cupped her hands. Loud as she could:

‘Pinback? Guthrie?’

She held her breath, listened hard.

‘Hello? Can anyone hear me?’

Silence.

She thought back to her final moments aboard the B-52. The plane tearing itself apart. Thick smoke. Shudder and jolt. Flickering cabin lights. Shrill stall warnings, Master Caution and ENGINE FIRE panel alerts. Frantic chatter over the interphone as Pinback and Hancock fought to save the plane:

‘Two’s down. Shutting crossfeeds.’

‘We need to put her on the deck.’

‘No time. Give me more thrust.’

‘That’s all she’s got.’

‘Nose up. Nose up.’

‘Power warning on Four. Wild RPMs. We’re losing her.’

‘Restart.’

‘Nothing. No response.’

‘Full shut down and restart.’

‘Negative. She’s not spooling.’

‘Hit the ignition override.’

‘She’s stone dead. Time to call it.’

‘One more go. Come on, girl. Give me some lift.’

‘Losing airspeed. Can’t keep the nose. I’m getting hydraulic failure. Oil pressure is dropping through the floor. I got red lights all over.’

Momentary pause. Pinback running options, trying to figure some way to save the plane.

‘All right. That’s it. She’s going down. Out of here, guys. Eject, eject, eject.’

The crew punched out one by one as the plane slowed to a fatal stall. Tripped their ejector seats before the crushing g-force of a nosedive froze them in their chairs. They adopted the posture: elbows tight, back straight, then wrenched the trigger handle between their legs. Hatches blew, rockets fired. Pilots through the roof, navigators through the floor. They must have landed miles apart.

Channel select from Guard to Alpha.

‘This is Frost anyone copy, over?’

NO SIG.

‘Pinback? Early? Anyone out there, over?’

NO SIG.

‘Come on, guys. Sound off.’

No response.

She set the handset to Acquisition, held it up and watched numerals flicker as it scanned wavebands.

Nothing. No military traffic, no civilian.

Sudden signal spike. A weak analogue broadcast. She held the handset at arm’s length, swung it three-sixty and tried to get a lock.