by James Harden
We got off on the top floor and made our way up the fire escape to the roof. There was a helicopter waiting for us. I guess he was talking to the pilot before. As soon as we were safely inside, the chopper climbed quickly and banked sharply. I could see the bright lights of LAX airport and its runways not far off. But to my surprise we started to fly in the opposite direction.
Daniel handed me some large oversized head phones so I could hear him speak.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"Technically, that's classified."
"Don't give me that crap."
"We're going to the Mojave Desert. There’s a jet waiting for us."
"Oh. So I gather we're not flying commercial?"
"No."
"Will we have more leg room?"
"Not really. But we’ll be flying at about sixteen times the speed of sound. So we should arrive in New Zealand in about an hour."
"One hour?" I asked in disbelief. "From here all the way to New Zealand?"
"Yeah."
"All the way across the Pacific Ocean, to the other side of the world in sixty minutes?"
"Yeah. It's a hypersonic jet. What it lacks in leg room and in-flight movies, it makes up for in speed. Ridiculous speed."
"Woah."
"Oh, and you can't tell anyone about it. Technically this jet doesn't exist. There are other ones like it but they're not as fast and they don't have stealth capabilities. Or nuclear payloads."
"OK, you’re kinda scaring me now. Is this thing safe?"
"Depends."
"Depends on what?"
"Whose side you’re on."
Thirty minutes later we landed in the Mojave Desert in the pitch black of night, under a chandelier of stars.
The helicopter pilot shook hands with Daniel. "Good luck, soldier. The X-wing is prepped and ready for takeoff."
Daniel nodded.
"X wing?" I asked. "Like, from Star Wars?"
Daniel laughed. "No. The jet has an experimental wing design. And it’s top secret. It doesn’t really have a name yet so everyone just calls it the X-wing."
Daniel opened the cabin door and stepped out. He motioned for me to follow. I dropped out of the cabin and Daniel caught me and helped me down. I could barely see anything it was so dark. And I could barely hear anything thanks to the roar of the engine and the rotor blades. Daniel led me away from the helicopter and when we were maybe fifty yards away, the chopper took off and disappeared into the night sky.
The hypersonic jet was sitting there in the dark desert, waiting for us. I couldn’t see it clearly but it looked like a giant, black arrow head.
We climbed up, into the cabin area. Daniel sat me down and buckled me in. "I can do this, you know. I'm a big girl."
"Sorry, I’m just making sure everything is secure."
"Relax. Maybe you should worry about your own seat belt."
"I won’t be sitting back here."
"Got a first class ticket do you?"
"No. I'll be in the cockpit. I’ll be your pilot this evening."
"Say what?"
"I’m the pilot."
"You can fly?"
"Well no, I can't fly," he said jokingly. "But I can pilot a plane. Or a hypersonic jet, or a helicopter."
"Very funny," I replied completely unamused. "So tell me, how did you find the time to get your pilot’s license?"
"It pays to be multi-skilled in my line of work."
"But is this like, normal procedure?"
"No. Usually I prep the jet myself. I hate having someone else do it. But we're running short on time."
"Seriously though, shouldn't we have a real pilot for a mission like this?"
"I am a real pilot."
"You know what I mean. I mean a full time pilot."
"Just relax. We'll be on the other side of the planet and back on solid ground before you know it. If you need anything just use this phone on the wall here."
Daniel finished adjusting the straps on my safety harness and then he disappeared into the cockpit. A few seconds later the engines roared to life, sending a deep shudder through the cabin.
I began to feel like I was on a roller coaster. I felt like we were at that moment just before the big dip. A few more seconds passed and the jet began to accelerate for takeoff. I was pushed back into my seat. My stomach dropped as the jet pointed its nose towards the dark heavens and took off.
And then we were on our way; flying off into the night for the other side of the world at sixteen times the speed of sound. It was fast. Too fast. But there was no turning back now.
"This is what I want," I whispered to myself as I gripped the armrests of my seat. "This is what I need to do."
Chapter 5
Once the jet stopped climbing and leveled out, it didn’t even feel like we were going that fast. It was a smooth ride with barely any turbulence.
I remember the first time I flew to Australia with my mother. It was the first time I’d been on a plane, it was the first time I'd been overseas. I was so anxious and excited and scared that I couldn’t sleep. It was an overnight flight, fourteen hours in total. And I didn’t sleep at all, not one wink.
I think I was just as nervous this time around as I was then. Maybe for different reasons but I was still a wreck. Unfortunately, this particular jet didn’t have any entertainment facilities to distract me. No TV, no music. But I guess it was travelling at Mach sixteen or whatever so that was pretty cool.
Since it was just me and Daniel and Daniel was in the cockpit supposedly flying this thing, I had the whole cabin area to myself. It looked like there were about twelve other seats. It felt weird being on a jet alone. I felt like some sort of billionaire with their own private jet or a rock star on a world tour. I guess whoever was paying for this trip or mission had deep, deep pockets.
After about twenty minutes the phone next to me rang. It was Daniel inviting me into to the cockpit.
I unclipped myself and walked up to the cockpit door and knocked. It slid open.
Daniel was sitting in front of the controls.
"You sure I’m allowed up here?" I asked.
"Yeah. As long as you don’t pull a gun on me or try and take over the plane and start making terrorist threats."
The control panel looked like something out of a science fiction movie.
"So, this is a pretty cool jet." I said.
"Yeah, it’s completely state of the art," he said, boasting like a proud father talking about his new born baby. "It’s the latest generation high speed jet. It’s mainly used for stealth bombing missions, or for deploying small reconnaissance teams anywhere in the world in as minimal time as possible."
"Like right now for example?" I asked.
"Yeah. It was first used in combat in 2001 after the attack on the World Trade Centre. Special Forces troops were sent into Afghanistan immediately after the attack. My father led the team."
"Your father served in Afghanistan?"
"Yeah. He wasn’t stationed there or anything. But he would lead small teams on reconnaissance missions. Sometimes he would be behind enemy lines for weeks at a time. All his missions were classified. Black Ops is what they call it. Basically means, if they went missing, if they got hurt, if they were captured or killed, our government would deny they ever existed. They would deny they knew anything about them."
"Sounds dangerous."
"Yeah. Funny thing was whenever he returned home he used to tell me all about these top secret missions. He wasn’t supposed to of course, but that never stopped him."
"So what happened after the attack on the World Trade Center?"
"My father got the call up. They took an earlier model of the X-wing in. The top speed reached was Mach fifteen or about ten thousand miles per hour, which was a new world record at the time. Not that they could celebrate it or announce it to the world but it was a pretty amazing achievement. My father and his team were on the ground in Afghanistan in less than two hours. They took a chopper into the moun
tains," he said as his voice trailed off.
He stopped suddenly but I was interested in the rest of the story. "What happened next?"
"That’s classified," he whispered.
I then realized this story didn't have a happy ending.
"But they found them," he said after awhile. "The only problem was they were outnumbered. It was like they had uncovered a nest of snakes, a hive of killer bees or something. They never anticipated that there would be so many of them in the one place. They never stood a chance. But before they were killed they managed to transmit their coordinates. And over the next few weeks the US commenced bombing of the area."
"I’m so sorry," I said. "I... I lost my father too." I don’t know why I told him that. I never tell anyone. I guess I was trying to let him know that I understood how he felt, that I could relate and that he wasn’t alone.
He looked away at something on the horizon. "I know. I read your file. You’re a strong girl. Never forget that."
Why does he keep calling me strong? It made me feel like a fraud, like any second now he would find out that I’m a complete scaredy cat.
And what did he mean by ‘Read my file’?
I started to feel strangely exposed. I knew he must've had access to all kinds of top secret, classified information. After all, he was able to intercept the footage of the failed rescue attempt by the military. That would've taken some serious skill and know how. But it made me wonder what else he knew. I wonder if he knew about me and Kenji. I wonder if he knew about Doctor Hunter and Doctor West and the experiments on refugees. I’d never asked him before because I guess I’d been scared into obedience by the military. And up until a couple of hours ago I thought he was military.
But now I wasn’t sure. I had no idea who he worked for.
I wondered if he was hiding anything from me. I wondered if he kissed me because he was trying to get close to me to get information or whatever. Did he really have feelings for me? Or was he just using me? It was confusing to think about. And I guess in the grand scheme of things it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was that we were going to save my friends; we were going to save Maria.
And on the plus side it was less awkward between us now that we had a mission to focus on.
But it was hard not to think about how much he knew.
"Do you know if anyone else survived?" I asked. "Whenever I asked the military guys if anyone else had survived they kept going on about how it was all classified information and all that crap."
"I'm not sure. Australia is a big country with a lot of open space. I spent a couple of months in Western Australia at a training facility out in the middle of nowhere."
"Wait, you've been to Australia?"
"Yeah. Part of the reason I agreed to go on this mission was because I know the terrain. Anyways, the property we used was once a cattle farm. But it had become too dry over the years to be used for farming so they converted it into a training facility. Bombing range, shooting range. Stuff like that. The area was massive. It was one of the bigger properties and the only way to get around to the different areas was by chopper or light aircraft."
"Sounds like fun."
"It was. Especially when we had target practice while hanging out of a chopper."
"Target practice? What were you shooting?"
"Mainly kangaroos. But also wild buffalo, wild dogs, wild boar."
"Excuse me? You shot kangaroos?"
"Yeah. And wild buffalo and wild dogs and wild boar. But there are more kangaroos than people in Australia. It was like population control. And all the introduced animals are pests. The huge buffalo herds destroy the vegetation and cause soil erosion. And the wild dogs kill anything and everything. They completely mess up the ecosystem. So we were helping, really. The real test was when we tried to shoot rabbits. That was damn near impossible while hanging out of a chopper. My record was five."
"I don’t think I could ever shoot a kangaroo. They're so cute. And bunny rabbits? You guys are murderers."
"It makes it easier when you're starving and the only thing on the menu is Kangaroo burgers or rabbit stew."
"I think I'm gonna be sick."
"Trust me, you get accustomed to bush tucker after awhile. Especially since there's really no other alternatives. You have to live off the land. You have to co-exist with it. Otherwise you’re dead. The aboriginals of Australia have been living out there in one of the harshest climates for over 60,000 years. So it can be done. And I guess it’s a real possibility there are other survivors out there."
"You really think so?"
"Yeah I do. I mean, out there, in the desert, the aboriginals call it ‘the Never Never’ because it’s such a huge and never ending place. At the training facility in Western Australia, we were three full days travel from the nearest town. There were no other living souls for hundreds of miles in all directions. People could be hiding out there; people could be out there and not even know there's a problem. So there has to be other survivors. We know for certain that you were the only one who made it out."
"And Kim," I added.
"Sorry. And Kim. I meant you were the only one who was allowed to leave the New Zealand quarantine facility and made it back to America. But I’m positive there'll be other survivors, there just has to be."
I asked Daniel if there was a chance we might be able to see Kim when we landed in New Zealand but he said there was no time. And besides, the last he heard she was still in isolation.
It must have been so awful and so lonely to be there all by herself. I wonder if she had access to television. I wonder if she saw my interview. I wonder if she knows the worst of it.
About thirty minutes into the flight Daniel announced that we were roughly halfway. I guess we were somewhere over the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It was dizzying to think about how fast we were flying. I was just about to ask Daniel exactly how fast we were going when he received a phone call.
He answered a larger oversized mobile. It reminded me of the phone Doctor West had used to call in the military when he found out Maria was immune. I guess it had special capabilities or long range capabilities.
He spoke briefly, giving short answers. "Yes, sir. Understood. I have the coordinates. ETA is sixty-two minutes. Yes, sir."
Daniel hung up the phone but he had a worried expression on his face; his eyeballs were darting back and forth like he was reading an invisible book, like he was mentally playing out a scenario in his head, a bad scenario.
"What is it?" I asked.
"There's been an outbreak in New Zealand."
My stomach dropped again. But this time it wasn’t from the acceleration of take off. It was because my worst fears had been realized.
An outbreak in another country.
Somehow the virus had made it across two thousand miles of water, across the Tasman Sea. The Oz virus was starting to spread around the world.
"An outbreak?" I asked in disbelief. "Where? How bad is it? Is Kim all right? Is she safe?"
"I don't know. But there's been a change of plans."
I was shaking my head. "How the hell did it get to New Zealand?"
"I don't know," he repeated.
My mind was racing. Was it Kim’s fault? Was she responsible? Maybe she was somehow infected? No, that's impossible, I thought. She wasn’t infected. She’d been shot in the arm. She hadn’t been bitten. She was not infected.
"What do we do now?" I asked. "What’s the change of plans?"
"We can't land in New Zealand anymore. It’s too dangerous. The government and New Zealand forces will be on high alert. We can't risk being spotted."
"So what the hell do we do? We're not going to abort the mission are we?"
"No. We're going directly to Australia. We go dark. We fly in stealth mode. They won't see us."
"We're going in by ourselves? Into Australia? Are you nuts?"
"We'll meet the others there. Rendezvous point is a temporary camp situated in the Nullarbor plains. It's a s
parsely populated area in South Australia," he said as he pointed to a map on a display monitor. "The military forces, the US navy, Australian navy and UN have set up a blockade around the entire Australian coastline. But this section of coastline is not that populated. There’s a small but substantial gap in the blockade. We can avoid radar detection."
Daniel told me that a stealth jet isn't totally invisible to radar; it just limits the radar's effective range.
"We’ll set down about three hundred clicks inland on the plains," he continued. "The guys are already on their way. They’ll set up a small base of operations. Out there it's about as isolated as you can get. There'll be minimal military presence."
"And hopefully minimal infection right?"
"Yeah, that's what we're hoping."
"Hoping? You mean you don't know for sure?"
"No, we haven't been able to obtain any recent satellite imagery that shows the spread of infection. Infra red heat images are ineffective and there's been a lot of interference from that dust storm."
"So we're going in blind?"
"Relax, it's the Australian outback, there's nothing out there. It's a desert. A wasteland. We'll be fine."
I looked at the map. The section of coastline was called ‘The Great Australian Bight’. And the area Daniel pointed to was called the Nullabor Plains.
He said it was a huge area of nothingness. He said we’ll be fine.
I wanted to believe him.
But I didn't.
Chapter 6
We got through the blockade and over the coastline without incident. A few minutes later we began our descent for landing.
The first thing I noticed when we broke through the clouds was just how red everything was. A dusty, deep, burgundy red. The color of blood.
We landed as the sun was setting on what appeared to be an abandoned road in the middle of nowhere. As we came to a stop at the end of the makeshift runway and turned around I saw a large helicopter with two massive rotor blades take off in a mini-tornado of red dust.
"What's that?" I asked Daniel.
"That's our supply drop. It drops in fuel, food, ammo. But it's heading back to the Dark Crystal."