Adam Baker - Impact

‘Today’s lesson. The fight doesn’t end just because you want a rest. When you are at your lowest, when you are beaten down, exhausted, ready to quit and crawl away, that’s when you are truly tested. Seen it countless times. In here, out on the street. When the battle seems to be over, that’s when it truly begins.’

He released her arm and stepped back.

‘Now get up and fight.’

‘So what are you waiting for?’

Noble and Hancock immediately diverged and began to circle. Frost backed away, careful not to be caught between them.

Hancock stepped close and grabbed her arm. She twisted free, pivoted on her good foot to deliver a knee-break kick to his leg. Mistimed. He backed off.

Sixth sense: Noble behind her. She turned, ducked beneath grasping arms and shouldered him to the ground. She tried to stamp on his face. He rolled out of reach and got to his feet.

They moved in, trying to crowd her. She skipped clear.

She lunged at Noble. A sharp shuto strike should have crushed his larynx, but he took the blow like it was nothing and straightened up.

Kick to the chest. She heard ribs break.

She backed off and flexed her shoulders. Faint smile on her face. Fear turning to weird exultation. This was her last dance. She would go down fighting, go down throwing a punch.

An emaciated hand erupted from the sand and gripped her ankle.

‘Fuck.’

She tried to wrench free. She kicked at the fingers. Her boot tore skin from knuckles, but the hand didn’t slacken its grip.

Hancock and Noble moving in to finish the fight.

‘Yeah, come on, you pricks.’

A shotei strike to Hancock’s chest sent him staggering backwards. A right-hook to Noble’s head sent him reeling sideways.

A hand grabbed Frost’s other foot. She was dragged knee-deep into the sand. She fell on her back. She tried to deliver a knee-break punch to Noble’s leg. Couldn’t reach.

Hauled waist-deep

‘Utter fucks. Utter pieces of shit.’

Chest deep.

She tried to kick free. She pawed and clawed at the sand as she was dragged further below ground.

Neck deep.

Pinback. He hugged her tight, pulled her down.

A last glimpse of storm-lashed desert. Noble and Hancock standing over her.

‘You can all go to hell,’ she spat, then sand closed over her head and she was gone.

Frost rolled on deck plate and vomited sand. She clawed it from her eyes, snorted it from her nose. She choked, gagged, gasped for breath.

She looked around, tried to blink away blurred vision.

Bright light. She was lying on the floor of the lower cabin. She looked up. Hancock, Pinback and Noble stared down at her.

She closed her eyes and shook her head. Sickening memory of suffocation and buried-alive immobility.

She threw up a fresh bout of bile and sand.

She rubbed her eyes. Someone sat in the Navigator seat. Early. His pulped body held in place by harness straps.

Guthrie. A scorched cadaver propped at the radar nav station.

The cabin lit harsh white. Lamps on full. Residual power from the batteries.

Frost looked down at her arms and legs. She ran gloved hands over her body.

‘Am I bitten?’ she coughed. ‘Did you bastards infect me?’

She ran hands over her face, checked her fingers for blood, any sign of broken skin. Nothing.

‘Kill me. Have done with it.’

Hancock crouched beside her. Close-up view of the man’s face. Death pallor. His remaining eyeball cataract white.

He opened a pocket of his survival vest and took out a morphine auto injector. He fumbled the cap, jabbed Frost in the thigh and hit the plunger.

‘Fuck are you doing?’

He threw the spent needle aside. He took another hypo from his pocket, cracked the cap and jabbed her thigh.

She tried to crawl away, head spinning from the sudden opiate rush.

Another needle jab to the back of her calf. And another.

‘Bastards.’

Hancock uncapped another couple of hypos.

Frost looked up at Noble’s skinless face.

‘This is all about you, isn’t it? Everything that has happened since we crashed. All part of your fucking death wish.’

Two more shots to the small of her back.

She rolled foetal, lay in a slack-jawed stupor.

‘Cunts.’

Hancock crouched by her side.

‘The code,’ he grunted, his one dead eye staring unfocused beyond her shoulder.

‘Is it you talking?’ asked Frost, ‘or is Noble pulling your strings?’

‘Don’t tell us the code. Whatever happens, you mustn’t tell us the code.’

Frost shook her head. Tried to clear the opiate fog. She lay back and closed her eyes.

‘You have to keep the code to yourself. You know the digit sequence. You have it clear in your mind. But you must keep your secret.’

Frost lost in memories, halfway between waking and sleep.

Interrogation training, Montana. Succession of Air Force personnel hooded and hog-tied, given the full POW treatment.

Deep forest. Cellar of an abandoned house.

The Red Room.

Lying stripped, bound and cold. Loud music and strobe lights. Sleep dep and stress positions.

‘Give up your key word. Just say it. Say the word, then you can rest.’

She lasted thirty-nine hours. Beat most of her class. One hard-ass held out the full three days. Sent back to his unit marked for potential transfer and BUDS.

Hancock’s guttural slur:

‘Don’t tell us the code. Keep it in your head. Keep it to yourself.’

Frost’s mind drawn back to the moment she stood at the signal fire, broke open the plastic code tab and removed the digit strip. A febrile, opiate-fuelled vision. Vivid, like she was reliving the moment all over again.

She could feel the heat of the flames.

She could feel sand beneath her boots.

She could see the digit strip in her hand.

A distant voice, sounded like her own:

‘X-ray. Five.’

Montana. Blindfold, zip-tied to a chair. The interrogator screaming in her ear.

‘Give up the word. Give up the fucking word.’

Frost trying to blank it all out, concentrate on the music blasting from the speaker on a table behind her. Sounded like Daft Punk ‘Derezzed’ played backwards.

‘Seven. November.’

‘You mustn’t speak the words aloud, Frost. They must remain sealed in your head.’

That vivid memory. Thin strip of laminated paper between her fingers.

‘Tango. Delta. Four. Four.’

Flicking open her Zippo. Wafting the paper above the flame, watching it brown and curl.

‘Foxtrot.’

‘You got to hold out as long as you can. Name and rank. Nothing else. This is the moment you prove your strength, your endurance. You’ve got to tough it out. Lives depend. You mustn’t break.’

‘Three.’

‘You’re doing great. Doing yourself proud.’

‘X-ray. Five. Seven. November. Tango. Delta. Four. Four. Foxtrot. Three.’

‘Thank you, airman.’

The payload compartment.

Blood-red light.

Noble squirmed from the crawlway and got to his feet.

The Tomahawk hung from its cradle at shoulder height. Cable hanging from the exposed physics package. The laptop sitting on the hull of the missile, beside the intake.

Noble booted the laptop from sleep mode and typed the final authorisation sequence.

He hit Enter. The screen cleared and flashed:

Frost felt herself lifted from the floor and pushed towards the ladder. Rotted, skeletal hands raised her up, hauled her onto the flight deck and dragged her towards the pilot seat. Her head hung limp. Her boots dragged across the deck plate. She tried to struggle, tried to galvanise numb limbs, but couldn’t find the strength.