Impact

by Adam Baker

  Arming the warhead for manual detonation would take all the cold-sweat delicacy associated with defusing an IED. The slightest error would transform the weapon into a giant paperweight.

  A nine-pin data port bedded in the surface of the confinement case.

  He placed the laptop on the sand floor of the bomb bay. Flickering boot sequence. He ran cable and jacked into the warhead.

  A winking cursor.

  A black plastic tag hung round his neck on a lanyard. He lifted the lanyard over his head, snapped the tag in two and removed a small slip of paper.

  He unfolded the paper and typed the ten digit authenticator code:

  The code input field was immediately replaced by a status screen. The arming sequence and fuse system. The heartbeat of the weapon.

  Permissive Action Links.

  A five-stage authorisation protocol which would enable the bomb. Unless the weapon were activated in sequence a series of barometric, impact, and rate-of descent lock-outs would render the warhead inert to prevent accidental detonation. It could be consumed by fire or dropped thousands of feet with no chance of triggering thermonuclear reaction. It could only be detonated by specific human intent.

  Four of the PAL cut-outs flashed green. Final authorisation flashed red.

  The B-52 crashed on target approach, just before it reached the hold coordinates, the point at which Hancock would have checked in with USSTRATCOM and requested go/no-go authorisation. Once the order had been received, Frost would have armed the warhead and directed Noble to jettison the missile.

  A deliberately fragmented protocol that would ensure a lone individual couldn’t launch a nuke on a whim.

  A single ten-digit code would complete the arming sequence and render the warhead live.

  He booted the satcom, unfolded the antenna and set it on the sand floor of the bomb bay facing east.

  REQUEST GO TO ARM WEAPON

  He waited.

  The reply:

  CONFIRM EXEC AUTHORITY TO DEPLOY

  He typed:

  WHAT IS SECONDARY ARM CODE

  Reply:

  RADAR NAV

  HOLDS FINAL AUTHENTICATION

  He typed:

  RADAR NAV NON-OPERATIONAL

  UNABLE TO PROVIDE FINAL AUTHENTICATION

  REQUEST OVERRIDE CODE

  FOR SINGLE KEY LAUNCH

  Reply:

  RADAR NAV

  HOLDS FINAL AUTHENTICATION

  He sat back and massaged chin stubble.

  Frost, the radar navigator, held the final code. It was printed on a small strip of laminated paper sealed in a plastic tag hung round her neck.

  Without her ten-digit authenticator, he couldn’t detonate the warhead.

  28

  Frost held a scrap of thermal print in her hand.

  EMERGENCY ACTION MESSAGE

  PRIORITY COMMAND

  COMPLETE MISSION

  PROCEED TO TARGET SITE AND INITIATE

  PACKAGE

  ACKNOWLEDGE

  Message time-stamped one hour earlier.

  She handed the note to Noble. He studied it.

  She turned to Hancock.

  ‘Did the sender identify themselves?’

  ‘USSTRATCOM.’

  ‘For sure? Did they actually authenticate as Roundhouse?’

  ‘They had full knowledge of our mission and payload. Couldn’t be anyone else.’

  ‘To be clear: they did not use their designated comsec call sign, is that right? They didn’t identify themselves as Roundhouse?’

  ‘Disrupted chain of command. Can’t expect rigid protocol.’ He pointed to the paper in her hand. ‘The order is clear.’

  ‘I can’t assent to the deployment of a nuke based on an anonymous message,’ said Frost.

  ‘We received clear confirmation of our orders back at Vegas, direct and unequivocal: launch the missile. We have to abide by the doctrine of Commander’s Intent. We have received no further communication from STRATCOM, nothing that countermands our original instructions. The mission still stands.’

  ‘I respectfully disagree. Fluid circumstances. We have significant circumstantial reasons to believe the mission parameters have changed. We need to confer with STRATCOM, establish their current intent. Until they are back on air, I cannot assent to deploy. Anyway, why are we even having this discussion? Whole thing is academic. We lost the plane. We have no means of launching the missile.’

  ‘We could carry it.’

  ‘The sled? You want to drag the missile on the sled? It weighs over three thousand pounds. We’d need a dozen able-bodied men to make it budge an inch. A friggin’ team of oxen.’

  ‘The warhead could be removed. We could transport the core, the physics package, to the target.’

  ‘I refuse to throw away my life.’

  ‘You took an oath.’

  ‘To a nation that no longer exists.’

  Hancock fetched satcom gear from the bomb bay. He hefted it up the ladder to the flight deck.

  He angled the antenna and booted the transceiver.

  A blank screen. A winking cursor.

  He turned to Frost and swept his arm in a be-my-guest gesture, inviting her to sit and type.

  She lowered herself to the deck in front of the transceiver, laid her bad leg straight.

  She keyed:

  THIS IS MT66

  USB52H LIBERTY BELL

  STRATCOM HAIL

  PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE

  She hit Send.

  Immediate response:

  TRANSMISSION FAIL

  ‘Atmospherics,’ said Hancock. ‘The signal comes and goes.’

  Frost leant back against the flight-deck wall.

  ‘I don’t mean to pry into your private life, sir. We’re all hurting. We’ve all lost family. But you must have someone, somewhere, who needs you to live.’

  He waved a dismissive hand.

  ‘I could talk about duty and honour, but I doubt the words mean a whole lot to you. You’re clearly the type who joined for the benefits.’

  ‘Surely it’s time to be pragmatic. Why die here, in this miserable corner of desert? What’s the use? What good will it serve? No one will know. No one will care. If we get out of this damn place we might be able to find some folks who actually need our help.’

  ‘I have tactical command, Lieutenant. This isn’t some kind of town hall debate. I’m still AC. And I say we complete the mission.’

  She pressed Resend.

  TRANSMISSION FAIL

  TRANSMISSION FAIL

  TRANSMISSION FAIL

  TRANSMISSION FAIL

  TRANSMISSION FAIL

  TRANSMISSION FAIL

  Frost climbed into the crawlway. She sucked pipe hanging from the water tank, drew liquid and refilled her canteen.

  Someone tapped her leg. She craned around. Noble. She squirmed from the crawlspace.

  ‘What?’

  He mimed hush and beckoned her outside.

  Noble took a folded photograph from his pocket. He handed it to Frost. She rubbed her eyes, let them adjust to sudden sunlight.

  She studied the picture.

  ‘What am I looking at?’

  ‘The target site. Bunch of pictures in Hancock’s dossier. This is the only photograph that shows any activity on the ground.’

  Criss-cross tyre tracks. Black SUVs.

  ‘What are those? Couple of house trailers?’

  ‘Looks like,’ said Noble.

  ‘Hardly seems worth a bomb.’

  ‘I suspect they are a preliminary outpost. The start of something bigger. Look at the vehicles. Four-by-fours. What do you reckon? Suburbans?’

  ‘Hard to say.’

  ‘What if they are still there? Could be our ticket out of this mess.’

  ‘Shit, yeah.’

  ‘Let’s face facts. You got a bust leg, and Hancock’s got a split skull. Neither of you in much shape to travel. But I could make the journey. I can move real fast on my own.’

  ‘Got
to admit, it makes sense.’

  ‘Hancock won’t like it.’

  ‘Fuck Hancock. Get your shit together. Leave at sundown. I’ll explain the situation after you’ve gone.’

  TRANSMISSION FAIL

  TRANSMISSION FAIL

  TRANSMISSION FAIL

  TRANSMISSION FAIL

  TRANSMISSION FAIL

  TRANSMISSION FAIL

  Hancock hit Break and cleared the screen. He leant forward, used the black glass as a mirror.

  He tried to lift the bandage wrapped round his head. Gummed by fresh blood. He peeled it loose. He glimpsed inflamed flesh. Rot stink. He pulled the bandage back in place.

  Hand to his forehead. Running a fever.

  He lectured his reflection:

  ‘We’re all in fucked-up shape. No use whining about it.’

  He dragged the trauma kit closer, unzipped internal pockets and popped tablets from a strip of Tylenol into his palm.

  He looked around. His canteen rested on the flight controls.

  He got to his feet, eased himself into the pilot seat and swigged back the pills.

  He had, in his previous life been stationed at Bagram and charged with providing preliminary intel assessments of captured insurgents. Despite the belligerence broadcast by the morale patches on his sleeve, ‘DON’T TREAD ON ME’ and ‘PORK EATING INFIDEL’, he had thumbed through a Qur’an while drowsing in his bunk late at night and developed a furtive admiration for the Taliban and their Spartan ideology. He was particularly struck by the injunction to avoid intoxicants. Couldn’t help feeling nostalgic for the sun-blasted purity of the Hindu Kush once he found himself back in the Birmingham suburbs surrounded by purposeless folk smothering ennui with Prozac, Adderall and bourbon.

  He lifted the blast screen and sat back, gazed at the sandscape with a half-closed eye.

  Brief glimpse through blurred vision. Three figures standing on a distant dune, backlit by the glare of the afternoon sun.

  He sat bolt upright.

  His uncapped canteen hit the floor and spilt water across the deck plate. He snatched it up and secured the cap.

  He leant forwards and stared out the window, blinked and struggled to focus. He shielded his remaining eye, tried to mask sun-glare.

  Three silent sentinels.

  Looked like they were wearing flight suits.

  Hancock ran from the plane out into harsh sunlight. He ran for the dunes in front of the plane.

  He stumbled and fell face down. He got to his feet spitting sand. He waded the steep slope, struggled to chamber his pistol.

  He crested the dune, came to a panting halt, Beretta raised.

  Nothing. Empty terrain.

  He lowered the pistol. He wiped his brow with the sleeve of his flight suit.

  Frost’s distant voice:

  ‘What’s going on?’

  He hauled himself upright and slowly headed back to the aircraft.

  ‘What’s up, boss?’ asked Frost, as he walked past.

  He didn’t reply. He returned to the fetid cave-dark of the flight deck.

  The payload bay.

  The missile bathed in blood red light.

  Frost ran her hand across the million-dollar weapon’s hardened steel hull, intake to radome.

  She coughed.

  During the past couple of days she had grown used to the vastness of the desert, the way it drew power from her words, rendering her voice thin and small. But the tight confines of the bomb bay rendered every sound, every breath and footfall, oppressively loud.

  She sat cross-legged on the floor. She set the camcorder on a horizontal wall girder and pressed REC.

  ‘It’s late afternoon. Losing track of time. The days, the nights, last for ever out here. Honestly not sure if this is my second or third day marooned in the desert.

  ‘It’s grim. A killer sandstorm replaced by merciless heat. And later tonight, we’ll freeze. Fucking place is utterly hostile to life.

  ‘We’re pretty strung out. Morale is low. Each of us trapped in our own misery, getting weaker by the hour.

  ‘Remember that plane crash in the Andes years back? The one where survivors turned cannibal, had to eat the bodies of their friends? I read a book about it. Those guys froze on a mountainside a whole month before a couple of them got their shit together and walked to fetch help. I couldn’t understand it. Why wait a whole month? I wanted to shout at the pages: Move. Act. Save yourselves. But now, here I am, marooned and dying of thirst. I understand the trauma, the debilitating shock. One of the reasons I’m talking to a camera. Trying to organise my thoughts.’

  She swigged from her canteen.

  ‘Hancock wants to drag the bomb to the aim point. Happy to let him plot and scheme. He isn’t going anywhere. His head wound smells bad. Septicaemia. Hate to say it, but if he doesn’t get help soon, he’ll die.

  ‘Noble is holding up well. Sure, he’s feeling the pressure. Lost it for a while. Thought he could hear choppers. But he’s in good physical shape. He intends to walk out of here tonight. Take some water, some food. Our lives are in his hands.

  ‘Maybe one day someone will find this recording and play it back. A messed-up flygirl recounting her dying days.

  ‘This is a pitiless place. We’re parched, exhausted, pretty much at the end of the line. Looks like I got to make some hard decisions.

  ‘Just remember: you got no right to judge.’

  She reached forward and pressed Off.

  29

  Trenchman and Akingbola sprinted across the sand. They scrambled up dunes, tumbled down gradients in a cascade of dust. Exhausted. Dehydrated. Cooked by merciless sun.

  They looked around as they ran, regarded the featureless sandscape with terror.

  Akingbola stumbled and fell to his knees. He panted with fatigue. Trenchman grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet.

  ‘Don’t stop. For God’s sake keep moving.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Trenchman cuffed him round the head.

  ‘Move your ass.’

  They stumbled onwards. The limestone peaks of the Panamint Range emerged from the heat haze up ahead, ghost-crags taking solid form.

  ‘There,’ pointed Trenchman. The nearest outcrop was half a mile away. ‘Firm ground.’

  They sprinted, fast as they could, burned last reserves of strength as they made for the rocks.

  They reached boulders projecting from the sand. Jumped, gripped, hauled themselves up onto sun-baked rock. They climbed higher, anxious to be away from the dunes. They turned, sat and looked back at the silicone ocean.

  Wordless exhaustion.

  Trenchman looked around. He pointed to an overhang.

  ‘Shade,’ he croaked.

  They crawled on hands and knees, dragged themselves to shadow.

  Akingbola cracked a Coke, sucked froth, and shared the can.

  Ochre rocks. Oxidised iron salts stained boulders the colour of rust.

  ‘I’d say we were moderately fucked.’

  ‘I will not allow fortune to pass sentence on myself,’ said Trenchman.

  ‘Pershing?’

  ‘Seneca.’

  ‘Want to rest here?’ asked Akingbola. ‘Sleep out the day?’

  Trenchman shook his head.

  ‘We ought to get further from the desert. A mile at least. Then we can rest. Take turns to keep watch.’

  They slowly got to their feet and began to haul themselves upwards. One plateau after another. Rocks marbled with mica, manganese and iron salts. Pinks, yellows and purples. They scrabbled for hand-holds. They helped each other climb ledge to ledge.

  ‘Watch out for Diamondbacks.’

  They reached a pinnacle. Trenchman threw his head back and basked in a gentle breeze.

  ‘Man, that’s sweet.’

  Akingbola checked out the view.

  ‘Dude. Better take a look at this.’

  A steep gradient leading down to dunes. They hadn’t reached the mountains. They were sitting on an island
of rock. Another hundred yards of desert before they reached the comparative safety of the Panamint Range.

  ‘A short sprint,’ said Akingbola.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Cross it in a few seconds.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Can’t imagine any those infected fucks followed us all the way out here. Crazy to think they’d be lurking in the dust like freakin’ piranhas.’

  Trenchman nodded.

  ‘We ought to rest a moment, get our strength back. Then make the run.’

  They sat a while and relished the parched desert breeze.

  Trenchman looked up at the sky.

  ‘I’ve been trying to make sense of it. Infected burrowing beneath the sand. Must be hiding from the sun. I mean, lizards and snakes burrow to escape the desert heat, right? Maybe these bastards are trying to prolong their lives. Wouldn’t last a day or two in the open. Their bodies would putrefy, their brains would cook in their skulls. So they head below ground.’

  ‘Hard to credit them with that kind of intelligence.’

  ‘Maybe the virus is thinking on their behalf. Maybe it has a game plan.’

  Akingbola shook his head.

  ‘It’s a disease, no better than gonorrhoea. It doesn’t follow any grand strategy.’

  They stood and stretched, shook out tired limbs.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yeah. Fuck it.’

  Akingbola got fifty yards before an emaciated hand erupted from the sand, gripped his leg and began to haul him below ground.

  ‘It’s got me. It’s fucking got me.’

  Trenchman doubled back. He fired into the sand. He grabbed Akingbola’s arms and pulled.

  Akingbola’s leg jerked free, minus a boot. He got to his feet. He slapped Trenchman on the back:

  ‘Go. Just go.’

  Trenchman ran. He covered the last fifty yards tensed like a sprint across a minefield: each footfall a coin-flip with death.