Нил Стивенсон - Termination Shock

ST. PATRICK’S

Well, that escalated quickly!” T.R. said.

Some combination of pure oxygen from the mask and a precipitous drop in altitude had revived Willem to the point where he was able to be annoyed by the joke. It was a callout to an old Internet meme. He decided to let it go. “Yes,” he said, “but it kind of seems like you were expecting it.”

“We were prepared for it.”

Amelia wasn’t having it. “You have multiple fifty-cal emplacements with interlocking fields of fire. The whole mountaintop is diced up into compartments with anti-personnel and anti-vehicle barriers. Choppers keep their engines running so they can get out fast if mortar rounds come in. It is a straight-up combat zone.”

“Well, it is today ,” T.R. allowed. “Most days it ain’t. It’s probably over and done with already. These are pinprick raids. They happen once a year, tops.”

“Papuan nationalists?”

“Or Indonesian black ops angling for a budget hike,” T.R. said. “Impossible to tell, since they do exactly the same shit. What they have in common is that they don’t actually want to destroy the cash cow.”

“The mine?”

“The mine.” A thought occurred to T.R. “Hey, you still have that Glock?”

“No.”

Amelia held it out, action locked open, magazine removed. “I took the liberty. You want it?”

“No,” T.R. said, “I just don’t like loose ends.”

Amelia shrugged, then slid the weapon across the floor to Willem. The magazine followed a moment later. Willem decided to keep them separate for now. He normally carried a shoulder bag, which his father derisively called a man-purse and Remi just called a purse. This was now somewhere on top of Sneeuwberg. So he put the pistol into his belt at the small of his back and slipped the magazine into his pocket.

T.R. had been summoned forward by the pilot, who had put the chopper into a banking turn. Then he leveled it out and angled it back a hair until they were basically hovering, perhaps a thousand meters above the jungle. They were about halfway from Sneeuwberg to Tuaba. The land beneath them had shed most of its altitude and flattened out somewhat. From the jungle below they could see a pall of smoke swirling around a clearing near the highway. “Aw, shit, that’s the pump station,” T.R. said. “Those fucking assholes.”

On a closer look the clearing was a puddle of gray liquid, like wet cement, spreading out into the surrounding jungle. “System should shut off automatically before the spill gets too much worse,” T.R. said. He came back into the cabin, checking his phone. “Aaand the fucking cell towers are down.” He called back to the pilot. “Get on the horn back to Sneeuwberg and make sure they are aware the slurry pipeline has been breached.”

“Roger that,” came the answer. T.R. slammed down into his seat as the chopper tilted forward to resume its flight back to Tuaba. “Fucking assholes,” T.R. said. “They do this every few years. Blow up the pipeline. They know it’s how copper leaves the island. But it’s also the only reason money comes in. Very self-destructive. It is an escalation to be sure.”

“So, just to calibrate,” Willem said, “shooting up Sneeuwberg and detonating some ANFO is a common occurrence but blowing a hole in the pipeline is a big deal.”

“Correct. Forces us to shut a whole lot of things down, higher up. The mine is like an engineered avalanche, running on gravity, material in motion on a scale you can’t believe until you see it. Momentum that is inconceivable. To stop it is like diving in front of a freight train.” T.R. checked his phone again but the look on his face said he wasn’t getting any bars. Finally he slapped it down, put his chin in his hand, and looked out the window. They were almost there. Looking out, Willem could see the outskirts of a town passing below them. And there was only one town.

“We’re gonna land on top of the Sam,” T.R. explained, suddenly remembering his duties as gracious host. He meant the Sam Houston, which was one of the Western-style hotels that had been put up in Tuaba as a base of operations for visiting engineers, business executives, and the like. “From the helipad there, we can get you down to a room where you can hang out while we arrange a convoy to take you to Ed’s compound. Or anywhere else you prefer.” Beyond him, through the chopper’s side window, Willem caught sight of the airport’s control tower in the middle distance. The Sam Houston was in the belt of Western-style hotels and amenities near the airport, so they must be close.

But instead of banking toward the Sam, the pilot swung the other way and put the chopper into a climb. The world rotated slowly around them, and in a few moments the Sam Houston Hotel complex came into view out the window on Willem’s side. It looked like any other generic modern hotel, rising a dozen-and-a-half stories above a parking lot ringed by palm and banana trees.

But the grounds were a lake of flashing cop lights. Hundreds of people were milling around, but almost all of them had been banished beyond a radius of a few hundred meters from the structure. Inside that radius were just a few cops and some stragglers—hotel employees, it looked like—being hustled away from the building.

“The Sam is evacuated,” the pilot reported. “Suspicious vehicle.”

“What’s so suspicious about it?”

“It crashed into the lobby and the driver ran away.”

“We okay on fuel?”

“Fine, sir.”

“Where would you like to go?” T.R. asked Willem. “There’s enough room in Ed’s compound we could set this thing down right in the middle.”

Willem liked that idea. Amelia didn’t: “With respect, landing a Brazos RoDuSh chopper anywhere marks the location as a target. We won’t be doing Uncle Ed any favors—”

“Painting a bull’s-eye on his property. Understood,” T.R. said.

“Saint Patrick’s has a helipad,” the pilot pointed out.

“That’s it,” T.R. said. “Go there.”

“The hospital,” Willem explained, in case Amelia didn’t catch the reference. Though the hospital was just the biggest part of a complex that included a school, convent, and church.

“A chopper landing there is just gonna look like a medevac flight,” T.R. said, “bringing casualties down from the mine. If it’s really Papuans behind this—well, they know the R.C.s are on their side.”

“R.C.s?” Amelia asked.

“Roman Catholics. If it’s the Indonesians pretending to be Papuans, they gotta do what the Papuans would do—leave the R.C.s alone.”

Some part of Willem’s brain was registering an objection to this gambit on ethical grounds. They were not, in fact, casualties in need of medical care. But he was not in control of this helicopter. And in any case it took a little while for such high-flown considerations to form up in one’s brain; Tuaba was tiny; and jet helicopters were fast.

So fast, as a matter of fact, and so convenient that some less noble part of Willem’s brain was beginning to question the wisdom of disembarking from this one. Might this thing have enough fuel to reach the coast? Or even Australia? Could they just get the fuck out of here?

Anyway the decision was made for him as the Sam Houston Hotel, still clearly visible perhaps a kilometer away, exploded. It happened as the chopper was settling in for a landing on the flat roof of the tallest building in the St. Patrick’s compound, a modern ten-story structure. Because of the prevailing atmospheric conditions—humid, just above dew point—the explosion manifested as a bolt of yellow light almost immediately snuffed out by a sphere of white vapor expanding outward from the blast at the speed of sound. It took all of about three seconds for this thing to strike the helicopter: long enough that everyone knew that it was coming, and knew that they were going to get hit, but too quickly for the pilot to do anything about it. And what could he have done, really? The chopper—which was aimed almost directly toward the Sam Houston—rocked backward, nose pitching sharply up as if it had just taken an uppercut from King Kong. It skidded back across the helipad until it was stopped by a parapet running along the edge of the building’s roof. It all happened more slowly and with less overt violence than you might think. Or maybe Willem’s brain just couldn’t run fast enough to process the violence in real time. The chopper settled back down on its landing gear as the pilot killed the engine. But it was obvious just from the sounds that this thing was not going to take off again anytime soon. And that was confirmed when they got out—which they did very, very hastily—and had a look. The tail rotor had been gnawed down to fibrous stumps and the tail itself was bent upward.