by Adam Baker
Soothing, like a mother:
‘Yeah. That’s right. That’s the good shit. Ride it all the way.’
Pinback. Fourteen-year veteran. His resolute, hard-ass demeanour replaced by pain and confusion.
She’d hoped to find him unhurt, hoped he would take charge, think on her behalf. Instead, here he was, helpless.
She lifted the blast screens to get more light.
She stood over the pilot seat, unbuckled his chin-strap and lifted his helmet clear.
She ran fingers through his hair.
‘Take it easy. Just got to sit tight until Trenchman decides to show up.’
His lips moved.
She leaned close.
‘Get me out of here,’ he whispered.
‘Help will come soon.’
‘Get me out of this fucking chair.’
‘Not such a great idea. You’ve suffered a significant thoracic injury.’
‘I don’t want to die strapped to this fucking thing.’
‘You’re not dying anywhere, sir.’
Pinback impatiently swiped his hand as if her bullshit, you’ll-be-fine platitudes were buzzing his head like mosquitoes.
‘Help me up, Lieutenant.’
‘You’ve hurt your back, sir. Probably broken. Don’t want to make a bad injury worse.’
‘I’m fucked beyond repair. Moving me around won’t make a damned difference.’
‘Best wait for the EMTs.’
‘Do as you are told, airman. Get me out of this chair.’
‘Afraid I cannot comply with that order.’
‘Come on. Don’t leave me scrunched like waste paper. I’m done, anyway you cut it. Lay me out, let me have a little dignity.’
She thought it over.
‘I’ll get the WALK.’
She fetched the trauma kit. Brought it up from the cabin below slung over her shoulder.
She threw it down.
Headrush. She lay a while and tried to recover her strength.
The back-frame of the WALK pack was a bunch of self-locking aluminium rods which snapped together to form a litter.
Frost assembled the stretcher and laid it on the flight-deck floor behind the pilot seat.
‘No two ways. This is going to hurt.’
‘Just do it,’ said Pinback.
‘Internal injuries, sir. It’s a concern.’
Tabloid horror stories from the New York subway. Commuter slips and falls as a train pulls into the station. Gets pinned between the subway car and the platform. Twisted at the waist like a corkscrew. So there he is, the besuited commuter, trapped but feeling fine, trading wisecracks with first responders. He waits for the fire department to show, tilt the train with a Hurst tool and pull him clear. He wants to call his employer, let them know he has been delayed, promise to work late to make up the time. It’s a glitch in his day, an anecdote to tell co-workers when he reaches the office. But MTA cops lay the hard truth: ‘Dude, you’re beyond help. Your spine is shattered, your insides are messed up. Moment we tilt this train, you’ll bleed out and die. Anyone you want to call? Any message we can pass on?’
‘Reluctant to move you around, Daniel. Might have repercussions.’
‘Want me to beg? I’m all-the-way fucked. Help me die, Lieutenant. Least you can do.’
Frost leant over the injured man and unclipped his harness.
‘Got to ask one last question, sir, before I pull you out the chair. Did you transmit a Mayday? As they plane went down, did you broadcast a distress?’
‘We were squawking on all channels.’
‘Did you get a response? Do they have our grids?’
‘No. Couldn’t raise a soul.’
‘Christ.’
‘Come on. Get me out of here. Make it quick.’
She put a hand between his shoulder blades and pushed him forwards. He barked in pain.
‘Want me to stop?’
‘No.’ Panting through clenched teeth. ‘Keep going. Get it done.’
She stood behind him and hooked her hands beneath his armpits. She slowly toppled sideways dragging him from his seat, across the centre console and onto the floor. They both screamed. His back. Her leg.
She caught her breath.
‘Finish it,’ he hissed.
She dragged him onto the litter. More screams.
She arranged tie-down straps, got ready to buckle him tight. He pushed her hands away.
‘We ought to get you rigid, sir. Put you in a neck brace.’
‘Forget it.’
She unclipped the drogue chute from his seat and put it behind his head as a pillow.
She crawled across the deck and sat with her back to the cabin wall.
Both of them pale, sweating, exhausted.
‘What’s the time?’ asked Pinback.
Frost looked out the cockpit windows. Long shadows. The sun heading for the horizon. The sky tinged red.
‘Late afternoon, heading into evening.’
‘What day? How long have I been here?’
‘The plane crashed this morning.’
‘This morning?’
‘You’ve been here fourteen hours, give or take.’
‘Feels like a lifetime.’
‘Yeah. Yeah, it does.’
‘What happened to your leg?’ croaked Pinback, gesturing to the splint clamped to her calf.
‘Took a knock when I punched out.’
‘Broken?’
‘No idea. Hurts like a son of a bitch.’
‘Cry me a fucking river. Give anything to feel my legs right now.’
‘Yeah. Well. Looks like we’ll both be eating hospital food a while.’
He nodded. Eyes struggling to focus, like he was fighting sleep.
He raised his hand and fumbled the zip-pull of his sleeve pocket. Frost leaned forward, gently pushed his hand aside and took out his two remaining morphine injectors.
‘What’s up? Need another shot?’
He shook his head.
‘For you.’
‘You’re messed up, sir. You’ll need them.’
‘No,’ he said. Sad smile. ‘No, I won’t.’
Frost unscrewed her canteen. She lifted his head, held capfuls of water to his lips and let him sip.
He lay back, nodding gratitude.
‘What about the others?’ he asked.
‘Guthrie’s dead. Infected. Must have been hiding it the whole time.’
‘Infected. Jesus. When?’
‘Vegas, at a guess. Someone in the camp wasn’t quite what he seemed.’
‘Anyone else make it?’
She shook her head.
‘Far as I can tell, just you and me.’
She gently wiped his face with towelettes.
‘So what happened up there?’ she asked. ‘Why did the engines fail?’
‘Wild guess: tainted fuel. Simple as that. Sediment in the tanks.’
‘Yeah?’
‘You saw the situation back at Vegas. Place was falling apart. Barely enough guys to man the wire. Some poor, half-trained bastard filled the tanks with sour JP8. Fuel must have been sitting in that truck a long while.’
‘And that was the flame-out?’
‘Sure. Pod two choked and blew, peppered the wing with debris. Took out the firewall isolator valves. Ruptured the lines. We were fucked from that point on. Losing fuel, losing oil pressure. Pod one starts to burn, and suddenly we had electrical fires all over. Pods two and three die in a matter of minutes. Pointless to apportion blame. We caught a dose of bad luck. Leave it at that.’
‘Yeah,’ said Frost, thinking it over. ‘I buy it.’
‘Cascading system failures. It’s like you said. This bird belongs in a museum. She shouldn’t have been in the air.’
He winced.
‘Sure you don’t want a shot?’
He shook his head.
‘You should have punched out,’ said Frost.
‘Thought I could bring her level. Thought I could bring her home.’
&n
bsp; Frost gave him more water.
‘So what was the objective? Why were we out here, in the middle of nowhere, prepped to bomb dirt?’
‘Classified.’
‘Come on, Cap.’
‘Classified. Seriously. They gave me coordinates. A map with a cross. That’s all. It was Hancock’s deal. He was running the show. S2 intelligence. That’s why they put him aboard the flight.’
‘Where’s the target data?’
Pinback gestured to a soft vinyl document wallet propped beside the co-pilot position.
‘There are the particulars. Be my guest.’
Frost retrieved the wallet.
Cover stamp: RESTRICTED ACCESS. CO-PILOT ONLY.
Zipper.
She thumbed pages.
Latitude/longitude.
A grease-pencil flight path plotted on a map.
A sheaf of National Recon Office aerial photographs: dunes and a limestone escarpment.
‘Doesn’t make sense. A ten kiloton strike on absolutely nothing. Sand. Rocks.’
‘Think of the effort that went into this operation. Trying to marshal the resources for a nuclear drop while the word falls apart. Didn’t happen on a whim. The continuity government, bunch of generals and politicians, wanted to hit this site real bad. Sealed in their bunker, shouting orders down the phone. Expended their remaining assets to see the mission carried out. Must have been a big deal.’
‘Crazy.’
‘Rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight. Same as it ever was. Above our pay grade, Frost. Don’t sweat it.’
Pinback suddenly gripped the side-poles of the litter and screamed through clenched teeth. Frost punched another morphine shot into his neck. He slowly relaxed.
They sat a while and watched sunset turn the cabin interior gold.
Pinback started to shiver.
‘Damn,’ he murmured. ‘Freezing in here.’
She checked him out. His face was white. His lips were blue. She put a hand on his forehead. Running hot.
‘Guess it’s the evening chill,’ she lied. ‘Night falls fast in the desert.’
He exhaled, like he was trying to see his breath steam in cold air.
‘Got a blanket or something?’
‘Think I saw a coat down below.’
‘I’d be obliged.’
Frost gestured to her injured leg.
‘Got me running all over the damn place, you sadistic fuck.’
He smiled.
She climbed down the ladder to the lower cabin. An NB3 parka wadded and lashed to the wall.
Easiest way to carry the heavy coat up the ladder was to wear it.
When she got back to the flight deck Pinback was dead.
She took off the coat and laid it over his body so she wouldn’t have to look at his face.
10
A backpack stashed in the EWO footwell.
Frost sat in the pilot seat, held the bag in her lap and unzipped the main compartment. Noble’s stuff:
A handful of snack bars.
A video camera.
A copy of The Little Prince.
She examined the book. She flipped pages.
To Malcolm, Have a very happy birthday, All my love, Dad.
She’d met a bunch of military personnel in the past few months. Most ditched keepsakes. Eschewed reminders of all they had lost. Kids, partners, parents. Out of contact, almost certainly dead. Hard to think of them without succumbing to suicidal despair. Better to be surrounded by impersonal PX-issue clothes and accoutrements. Olive-drab, mil-spec gear that held no evocative power.
She turned the camera in her hands.
Noble had been ordered to film the blast.
How it should have played out:
The target run.
Frost, strapped in her seat at the radar navigation console. She and Guthrie plot course; make sure the aircraft reaches the precise drop point.
Hancock maintains heading.
Pinback rides the throttles, monitors airspeed.
Couple of minutes from target Pinback radios Vegas for permission to deploy. He gets the Go. Hancock and Frost formally concur. They hand their authentication codes to Noble. He keys the digit sequence into the weapons console and arms the device.
Cue for Frost to unzip her breast pocket, take out a stopwatch and call the sixty second count.
Twenty seconds to target: low rumble/thud as the bomb bay doors fold open and lock.
Pinback issues the final command: proceed with launch sequence.
Countdown from ten.
Noble reaches for the overhead Special Weapons panel, lifts switch covers and hits WPN REL.
Clamps retract and the ALCM drops from the payload compartment. Solid fuel boosters fire, fins unfold, and the missile begins its journey to the target site. Warhead: a Mod 4 CS-67 tactical nuke dialled for a ten kiloton yield.
The plane banks and enters a holding pattern. Standoff until detonation.
They drop blast screens and wait. Minutes pass.
Pinback:
‘Brace, brace, brace.’
A shuddering shockwave buffets the aircraft. Noble unbuckles, crouches between the pilot seats with his camera, and lifts one of the blast screens. He and the pilots are bathed in the unholy light of a slow unfurling mushroom cloud.
The crew had sat in the plane while it was hangared at McCarran and drilled the procedure until it was instinctual. Everyone knew their part.
But then the centre console flashed ENGINE FIRE. An ominous moment that seemed to signal bifurcating reality. One timeline in which the plane completed its mission and returned to base. Another in which Frost found herself marooned among wreckage.
Frost set the camera on the avionics console and pressed REC.
‘LaNitra Frost, Lieutenant, Second Bomb Wing. Radar nav aboard Liberty Bell MT66.
‘We crashed in the desert a few hours ago. Lieutenant Guthrie and Captain Pinback are both KIA. Noble, Hancock and Early are missing. As far as I can ascertain, I am the sole survivor.
‘Sun is about to set. Must be twenty-one-hundred, or thereabouts.’
She could see her own face in the camera’s little playback screen. Sunburn. Cracked lips. Crazy, sand-dusted hair. Looked like the kind of raddled meth casualty you might see shaking a cup on a street corner. She reangled the screen so she didn’t have to look at herself.
‘I spoke with Captain Pinback prior to his death. It was his supposition that the explosion of engine two triggered a sequence of systems failures which, in turn, caused the plane to lose airspeed and stall. There will be no investigation, no forensic examination of debris, so I guess we’ll never know for sure.
‘Pinback sent a bunch of distress calls before the crash. There are multiple locator beacons broadcasting from this site. The plane, the missile, the ejector seats are all transmitting a homing signal. Hopefully the guys at Vegas will scramble their chopper and pick me up.’
She wiped her brow.
‘It’s hot. Too damned hot. Truth be told, it’s been a long fucking day. Guess there’s nothing I can do but sit tight and wait for rescue.’
She pressed OFF.
She turned in the pilot seat and looked over her shoulder.
Pinback lying dead on the flight-deck floor. An Arctic parka draped over his face. Frost could see the outline of his head.
The mystery of death. Hard to believe there was no longer a person under the coat. Speaking to the guy a moment ago. Injured but animated. Strong voice. An entire universe behind those eyes. Now her friend and Captain was a cooling slab of meat. Mind and memory dissipated the moment his heart stopped beating.
Better move the body. She didn’t want to share the cabin with a putrefying corpse. It wouldn’t be long before he started to stink.
She grabbed his feet and dragged him to the ladder way. She gripped his wrists and lowered him through the hatch. He hung for a moment, feet brushing the deck of the lower cabin, standing upright one last time. Then Frost released her gri
p and he fell dead-weight to the floor.
She slid down the ladder and stood next to the grotesquely sprawled corpse. Ought to feel bad about throwing the dead man around, think of it as brutal desecration, but that kind of sentiment died months back with the rest of the human race.
She dragged him outside, hauled him through the rip in the cabin wall, flight suit shredded on torn metal.
Pinback laid out on the sand. Lips parted, eyes closed, face already mortuary white.
She placed his hands across his chest, wrapped a parka round his legs. She fetched the flag from the locker, a cheap Walmart stars and stripes evidently used as a dust cover for the avionics. She tucked it round his upper body like she was saying goodnight. His head shrouded in stars.
Sunset. Pale azure. Delicious evening cool. Day heat already evaporating into a cloudless sky as the earth turned and put her on the dark side.
Frost climbed a high dune in front of the plane.
She sat awhile and massaged her leg, glad to be away from the stink of aviation fuel and burned cable insulation.
She powered up her CSEL and extended the antenna.
‘Mayday, Mayday, this is Lieutenant LaNitra Frost, United States Air Force, requesting urgent assistance, over.’
Nothing.
‘Can anyone hear me, over? Air Force personnel hailing all channels, please respond. Does anyone copy this transmission?’
Nothing.
‘If anyone, anywhere, can hear my voice, please answer.’
The backlit screen: NO COMMS.
She shut off the radio.
A rippling ocean of silica. Pale dune crests, deep wells of shadow.
She could see tracks in the sand, the trail left as she crossed the desert and approached the plane. The footprints had begun to soften and blur. In a couple of days, all trace of her passage would be erased.
Skin-crawling unease. She pictured herself dead of thirst. A desiccated corpse consumed by the desert. Nothing left but bleached bone next to a corroded fuselage. A few tattered scraps of flight suit. A couple of wind-scoured dog tags. A sand-filled skull.
She had never felt so small, so utterly alone.
She pressed REC.
‘Night is falling. Couldn’t raise anyone on the CSEL. Hoped a change in atmospherics might extend the range, but I guess not. Half remembered something they taught us during Basic: high frequency analogue signals are less likely to be absorbed by the ionosphere at night. Doesn’t seem to have made much difference, though. Haven’t reached a soul.