Adam Baker - Impact

Something dug into her thigh.

The hilt of her father’s knife. She’d dropped it on the pilot seat earlier. But her wrists were firmly bound to the arm rests by paracord. No matter how hard she stretched her fingers, the knife remained four inches out of reach.

‘Roger that. Ascend thirty thousand. Maintain course two-two-zero.’

She could see the brightly lit cabin behind her reflected in cockpit polycarbon.

She studied Pinback slumped in the EWO seat. The screen in front him, the cracked sheet of black glass, should have been delivering a constant radar sweep, RWR sensors ready to beep an alert tocsin if the plane were targeted by enemy acquisition radar.

She checked out Noble. He sat patiently staring at the emerald Go lights of the weapons panel. Pre-arms active. If he were recreating their bomb run to the target site, he would expect to reach the missile drop point fifteen minutes from the target site. According to the original mission plan, the bomb-bay doors would whine open and the ALCM would be released from its retainer clamps. A moment of freefall as the Tomahawk left the plane, then wings would unfold and the solid fuel booster would fire. It would head for the target using terrain recognition and inertial navigation for guidance. It would enter a terminal dive a quarter of a mile from the aim point, then blink out of existence.

But on this flight, this earthbound non-journey, the missile would never leave the payload compartment. Every PAL failsafe had been circumvented. The instant the Tomahawk received the launch command, the moment the B-52 weapon control system ceded full independent control, the barometric trigger would detonate the warhead. No pause. No countdown. Soon as Noble lifted the switch cover, and flicked WPN REL, Liberty Bell and the surrounding quarter mile of desert would transmute to vapour.

‘Why me? Why do I have a front row seat?’

‘Because you are part of the crew. You belong with us.’

Hancock performed a routine instrumentation check.

‘Adjust heading two-two-five. Visibility good.’ Pause. ‘Yeah,’ he said, answering a query only he could hear. ‘No traffic. We got a straight run.’

The wind picked up. It screamed through breaks in the cockpit glass. Frost caught a face full of sand. She spat grit and blinked her eyes clear.

The fuselage around her shook and groaned. Thrust from the misfiring engine threatening to tear the airframe apart.

Movement outside. Figures at the periphery of light thrown by wing strobes. She glimpsed red prison fatigues.

Frost took deep breaths and got her shit together.

As far as Noble and Hancock were concerned, they had just taken off from Runway One, McCarran International, Vegas. They had passed over the southern suburbs and were now banking west.

A couple of hours to target.

She had three options:

One. Escape her restraints, then take out Noble. Do it quick and clean before he had the opportunity to trigger the bomb. Hancock wouldn’t be a problem. He was an extension of Noble’s will. The instant Noble were dead, Hancock would probably flop to the floor like a puppet with cut strings.

Two. Escape her restraints, then somehow flee the plane. The Tomahawk was tipped with a tactical nuke, not a high-yield city-killer. If she could put five or six miles between herself and the bomb, she might be able to survive the blast.

Three. Stay put and die.

She shifted her foot. Clink of broken glass.

She craned to look down, discretely as she could.

A couple of nuggets of thick polycarbon on the footwell floor.

She pinched the glass between her feet, shuffled a shard until it rested on the sole-seam of her boot. She slowly crossed her leg, bringing her boot up to her hand.

Looking around out the corner of her eye. Noble couldn’t see what she was doing. She was shielded by the ejector seat. Hancock engrossed by dead avionics.

She stretched fingers towards her boot and snagged the shard. She held it between her knees and sawed the wrist-cord back and forth across the jagged edge. Nylon weave began to fray.

The cord broke and immediately slackened.

She psyched herself.

‘One… two… three…’

She snatched the knife from beneath her thigh.

She sliced the cord binding her left arm to the chair.

Hancock reached for her.

She gripped the knife ready to stab, swung her arm and buried the blade in Hancock’s throat, nailing him to the backrest of the chair. He croaked and spluttered, fumbled the knife hilt and tried to pull it free.

She snatched the gun from his chest holster, jammed the barrel against his good eye and put a bullet in his brain. He slumped limp.

She twisted round, tried to take aim at Noble while simultaneously scrabbling at the release catch of her seat harness. He had already drawn his Beretta. Simultaneous exchange of fire. Rounds blowing bloodless holes in Noble’s chest. Bullets sparking off Frost’s seat back, puncturing control surfaces, blowing out a window.

She tossed the gun, faced front, primed the arm rests and wrenched the ejection trigger between her legs.

Deafening roar.

Horrific g-force.

Hurled up and out into the storm.

The flight deck filled with smoke and typhoon backwash.

Noble released his seat harness and got to his feet. He walked to the vacant pilot position and looked up through the open ejection hatchway. He raised his pistol like he intended to fire into the storm raging above the plane then slowly, wearily, lowered his arm.

The seat rockets propelled Frost two hundred feet into the air. The chair detached and she was in freefall, chute unfurling behind her. Not enough height for the canopy to fully deploy, but enough to slow her descent.

She slammed into the side of a dune and rolled.

She released her harness and untangled chute cord.

Last glimpse of Liberty Bell . The plane lit by the unearthly light from wing spots and strobes. The misfiring engine vented fire, turbojet scream merging with the howling wind.

The sagging flag pole. Tattered stars and stripes fluttering over the wreck site.

Spectral figures ringed the plane. Grotesque silhouettes part-veiled by driving sand.

She turned and ran.

Noble wrenched the knife from Hancock’s throat and threw it aside. He hauled the corpse from the chair and dumped it on the deck.

He took the co-pilot seat and checked inert instrumentation. He adjusted the throttle, adjusted the yoke, settled back in his chair and continued to pilot a plane full of dead men on their journey to nowhere.

Frost turned her back on the wreck sight and ran. A journey out of nightmares. Minutes to put as much distance as she could between herself and the plane, yet each footfall bedded deep in sand. Each gradient was a laborious scramble. Each down-slope turned to a tumbling avalanche

She sprinted headlong into the storm. Driving sand. She nose-breathed, kept her eyes screwed shut much as she could. Dust in her hair, her ears, working into her flight suit.

Heading west. Not that it mattered. If she could cover six, seven miles in an hour, she might survive the bomb.

Noble sat at the flight controls. He adjusted altitude and heading.

The fuselage shook. Overhead cable runs smouldered and sparked.

Dual perception:

Dead avionics. Smashed gauges, all needles resting at zero. Indicator lights extinguished. All screens dead.

But at the same time he saw switch panels winking green, altitude gimbal holding steady, EVS screen relaying desert terrain twenty thousand fleet below.