by Adam Baker
He craned round the high-back frames.
No sign of Frost.
Something on the pilot’s seat. A video camera. Frost’s gaunt, weathered face in the playback window.
‘… Fuck it. If those bastards outside want my hide, they’ll have to work for it. Make them pay a heavy price …’
Pinback slammed across the head by an empty extinguisher. He reeled. He turned. Frost wielding the canister.
She threw the cylinder at his head. He ducked. It bounced off avionics.
He lunged, left arm outstretched.
She snatched the pistol from her shoulder holster and fired. Three bullets smacked into his chest, knocked him sprawling across the refuel controls.
She tried to get a clear shot at his head. He rolled aside. A couple of mis-aimed rounds smashed fuel gauges.
He stood up.
He shielded his face with his hand. Bullet punched through his hand. Bloodless entry, neat stigmata. The round shattered his cheekbone. Pinback ducked a couple more headshots. One of them caught his clavicle, span him one-eighty and threw him against the wall.
Frost took aim: split-second opportunity to put a round in the base of his neck.
Gun jam.
She struggled to clear the breech. No good. The slide gummed with sand.
Pinback turned to face her.
She tossed the weapon, pivoted on her good leg and delivered a belly kick that sent him to the floor. Jarring pain from her injured shin.
Knife snatched from its sheath.
He reached for her leg.
She swept the blade, slashed his arm, sliced flesh to the bone.
She lunged at his left eye socket. He deflected the blow. The knife slit open his forehead.
She danced round his prone body. He tried to get up. She kicked him in the face. She stabbed downwards, once again aiming for his eye. He jerked his head clean. The tip of the blade shrieked across deck plate.
He gripped her ankle, threw her balance and sent her stumbling backwards. She fell between the pilots’ seats, thrust levers jammed in the small of her back. She dropped the knife.
Fingers gripped her hair. Hancock crouched on the nose outside, reaching through a broken cockpit window. She punched his arm, tried to tear her head free. She reached for her knife wedged between the arm rest and seat cushion of the pilot chair. Out of reach.
Rotted hands gripped her head and shoulders. She was slowly pulled through the window, out into the storm. She kicked and squirmed, tried to hook her legs round the window frame as she was pulled onto the nose of the plane. She lost grip, fell fifteen feet, and hit the sand below.
Face down in the sand. She spat dust from her mouth.
Boots. She looked up. Noble and Hancock looking down at her.
Noble: a fleshless, grinning skull face.
Hancock: empty eye socket, grey skin, face slack and dead.
She scrambled to her feet. She put her back to the wind, to shield her eyes from driving sand.
The two creatures stood motionless.
She balled her fists.
So here it was. The moment of her death.
The dojo above Suds Laundromat. Monday night. Rain-lashed windows.
Frost and her Sensei circling on the mats.
Kumite: block, punch, kick. Orange belt versus black belt, fourth dan.
Frost was exhausted. Panting for air, gi hanging dark and heavy with sweat.
Sensei jabbed at her face. She blocked the blow.
‘Breathe. Breathe like I showed you.’
Feint to the head. She raised her arm to block and got punched in the side. She staggered backwards, cursing with frustration.
‘You done?’ asked the instructor. ‘Been a long session. You looked wiped out.’
She nodded and dropped her guard.
‘Want to quit for the night?’
She nodded.
Sensei smiled.
‘Nice work. You busted your ass tonight.’
He held out his hand for a shake. She took it. He twisted her fingers back, sent her to the floor. She lay, snorting with pain, arm twisted at near-breaking point.
‘Today’s lesson. The fight doesn’t end just because you want a rest. When you are at your lowest, when you are beaten down, exhausted, ready to quit and crawl away, that’s when you are truly tested. Seen it countless times. In here, out on the street. When the battle seems to be over, that’s when it truly begins.’
He released her arm and stepped back.
‘Now get up and fight.’
‘So what are you waiting for?’
Noble and Hancock immediately diverged and began to circle. Frost backed away, careful not to be caught between them.
Hancock stepped close and grabbed her arm. She twisted free, pivoted on her good foot to deliver a knee-break kick to his leg. Mistimed. He backed off.
Sixth sense: Noble behind her. She turned, ducked beneath grasping arms and shouldered him to the ground. She tried to stamp on his face. He rolled out of reach and got to his feet.
They moved in, trying to crowd her. She skipped clear.
She lunged at Noble. A sharp shuto strike should have crushed his larynx, but he took the blow like it was nothing and straightened up.
Kick to the chest. She heard ribs break.
She backed off and flexed her shoulders. Faint smile on her face. Fear turning to weird exultation. This was her last dance. She would go down fighting, go down throwing a punch.
An emaciated hand erupted from the sand and gripped her ankle.
‘Fuck.’
She tried to wrench free. She kicked at the fingers. Her boot tore skin from knuckles, but the hand didn’t slacken its grip.
Hancock and Noble moving in to finish the fight.
‘Yeah, come on, you pricks.’
A shotei strike to Hancock’s chest sent him staggering backwards. A right-hook to Noble’s head sent him reeling sideways.
A hand grabbed Frost’s other foot. She was dragged knee-deep into the sand. She fell on her back. She tried to deliver a knee-break punch to Noble’s leg. Couldn’t reach.
Hauled waist-deep
‘Utter fucks. Utter pieces of shit.’
Chest deep.
She tried to kick free. She pawed and clawed at the sand as she was dragged further below ground.
Neck deep.
Pinback. He hugged her tight, pulled her down.
A last glimpse of storm-lashed desert. Noble and Hancock standing over her.
‘You can all go to hell,’ she spat, then sand closed over her head and she was gone.
55
Frost rolled on deck plate and vomited sand. She clawed it from her eyes, snorted it from her nose. She choked, gagged, gasped for breath.
She looked around, tried to blink away blurred vision.
Bright light. She was lying on the floor of the lower cabin. She looked up. Hancock, Pinback and Noble stared down at her.
She closed her eyes and shook her head. Sickening memory of suffocation and buried-alive immobility.
She threw up a fresh bout of bile and sand.
She rubbed her eyes. Someone sat in the Navigator seat. Early. His pulped body held in place by harness straps.
Guthrie. A scorched cadaver propped at the radar nav station.
The cabin lit harsh white. Lamps on full. Residual power from the batteries.
Frost looked down at her arms and legs. She ran gloved hands over her body.
‘Am I bitten?’ she coughed. ‘Did you bastards infect me?’
She ran hands over her face, checked her fingers for blood, any sign of broken skin. Nothing.
‘Kill me. Have done with it.’
Hancock crouched beside her. Close-up view of the man’s face. Death pallor. His remaining eyeball cataract white.
He opened a pocket of his survival vest and took out a morphine auto injector. He fumbled the cap, jabbed Frost in the thigh and hit the plunger.
‘Fuck are you doing?’
He threw the spent needle aside. He took another hypo from his pocket, cracked the cap and jabbed her thigh.
She tried to crawl away, head spinning from the sudden opiate rush.
Another needle jab to the back of her calf. And another.
‘Bastards.’
Hancock uncapped another couple of hypos.
Frost looked up at Noble’s skinless face.
‘This is all about you, isn’t it? Everything that has happened since we crashed. All part of your fucking death wish.’
Two more shots to the small of her back.
She rolled foetal, lay in a slack-jawed stupor.
‘Cunts.’
Hancock crouched by her side.
‘The code,’ he grunted, his one dead eye staring unfocused beyond her shoulder.
‘Is it you talking?’ asked Frost, ‘or is Noble pulling your strings?’
‘Don’t tell us the code. Whatever happens, you mustn’t tell us the code.’
Frost shook her head. Tried to clear the opiate fog. She lay back and closed her eyes.
‘You have to keep the code to yourself. You know the digit sequence. You have it clear in your mind. But you must keep your secret.’
Frost lost in memories, halfway between waking and sleep.
Interrogation training, Montana. Succession of Air Force personnel hooded and hog-tied, given the full POW treatment.
Deep forest. Cellar of an abandoned house.
The Red Room.
Lying stripped, bound and cold. Loud music and strobe lights. Sleep dep and stress positions.
‘Give up your key word. Just say it. Say the word, then you can rest.’
She lasted thirty-nine hours. Beat most of her class. One hard-ass held out the full three days. Sent back to his unit marked for potential transfer and BUDS.
Hancock’s guttural slur:
‘Don’t tell us the code. Keep it in your head. Keep it to yourself.’
Frost’s mind drawn back to the moment she stood at the signal fire, broke open the plastic code tab and removed the digit strip. A febrile, opiate-fuelled vision. Vivid, like she was reliving the moment all over again.
She could feel the heat of the flames.
She could feel sand beneath her boots.
She could see the digit strip in her hand.
A distant voice, sounded like her own:
‘X-ray. Five.’
Montana. Blindfold, zip-tied to a chair. The interrogator screaming in her ear.
‘Give up the word. Give up the fucking word.’
Frost trying to blank it all out, concentrate on the music blasting from the speaker on a table behind her. Sounded like Daft Punk ‘Derezzed’ played backwards.
‘Seven. November.’
‘You mustn’t speak the words aloud, Frost. They must remain sealed in your head.’
That vivid memory. Thin strip of laminated paper between her fingers.
‘Tango. Delta. Four. Four.’
Flicking open her Zippo. Wafting the paper above the flame, watching it brown and curl.
‘Foxtrot.’
‘You got to hold out as long as you can. Name and rank. Nothing else. This is the moment you prove your strength, your endurance. You’ve got to tough it out. Lives depend. You mustn’t break.’
‘Three.’
‘You’re doing great. Doing yourself proud.’
‘X-ray. Five. Seven. November. Tango. Delta. Four. Four. Foxtrot. Three.’
‘Thank you, airman.’
The payload compartment.
Blood-red light.
Noble squirmed from the crawlway and got to his feet.
The Tomahawk hung from its cradle at shoulder height. Cable hanging from the exposed physics package. The laptop sitting on the hull of the missile, beside the intake.
Noble booted the laptop from sleep mode and typed the final authorisation sequence.
He hit Enter. The screen cleared and flashed:
Frost felt herself lifted from the floor and pushed towards the ladder. Rotted, skeletal hands raised her up, hauled her onto the flight deck and dragged her towards the pilot seat. Her head hung limp. Her boots dragged across the deck plate. She tried to struggle, tried to galvanise numb limbs, but couldn’t find the strength.
They sat her in the pilot seat, buckled her harness and lashed her arms to the rests with paracord. Too weak to resist. She lolled, doped, barely conscious.
She fought to raise her eyelids, raise her head. Dimly aware of movement around her. Shuffling feet. Click of harness buckles. Men wordlessly taking position on the cramped and crowded flight deck.
Someone climbing into the co-pilot seat beside her. She tried to focus. Hancock. He smelled faintly of shit. Bowels must have evacuated during the interval he spent dead. Smothered by sand then, minutes later his heart and lower cortex booted back to life as the virus colonised his inert body.
He leant forwards, tore duct tape and raised each blast screen. He folded the nylon blinds and pegged them above each window.
The swirling dust storm. Orange, Venusian light. Wind gusted through broken windows. Low, whistling moan. Dust immediately began to accumulate on the floor, control surfaces, Frost’s forearms and legs.
Hancock sat forwards, looked out the windows left and right with his blank dead eye. Took a moment before Frost recognised the familiar movement. A standard pre-flight check. The guy was establishing the power cart had been unhitched, the fuel truck had finished decanting JP8 and withdrawn, chocks had been pulled from the undercarriage bogies, engine intake/duct plugs had been removed.
He gave a thumbs-up to a non-existent crew chief, confirmed the plane was on internal power.
He sat back in his seat and fumbled the five-point harness, locked the straps one by one.
Interior inspection. He examined the thigh window-pocket of his flight suit like he was running through a tick-list. He checked avionic pre-sets. Adjusted dials and switch panels.
Rasp of dead, dirt-clogged vocal chords:
‘Battery start.’
The plane was already on internal power, draining dregs from the tail cell, but he reached for the switch anyway and made a perfunctory performance of turning to On.
He tripped the wing lamps. The nose and surrounding dunes suddenly illuminated harsh white. Sand swirled in the twin light-cones.
Trim check. Another thumbs-up for the phantom chief.
Frost turned in her seat and craned to see the crew positions behind her.
Pinback, head hooded by a nuclear blast helmet, slumped in front of dead banks of Electronic Warfare instrumentation.
Noble sat in the gunner’s seat, checked missile launch controls.
Hancock pulled on a helmet. He fixed the mask. The torn oxygen hose and frayed interphone cable hung loose.
‘Engine start.’
Thud. Jolt. Flash of flame outside.
Frost craned as best she could.
The plane’s remaining starboard engine pod attempting a cartridge start.
‘Hey,’ grunted Frost, fighting through the opiate fog. ‘Hey. Going to blow us to hell.’
Second thud. More flame from the engine exhaust. Black smoke. Turbofans trying to turn over.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
Gruff motor roar. The turbofan caught and settled to a spluttering idle, sucking residual kerosene from starboard wing tanks. The engine out-take blasted a sand plume. The airframe shuddered like the fuselage was shaking itself apart.
Hancock:
‘Starting one, starting two …’
He adjusted throttles, checked dead rpm dials.
‘Clear to taxi.’
Flaps lowered. Brakes released.
Hancock eased the throttles forwards.
Another flame-crack from outside. The starboard engine sucked sand, jerked and torqued the wing.
‘That thing could blow any minute.’
She pictured catastrophic engine failure, whirling fragments, shards of
turbine blade puncturing the hull of the plane, slicing through the flight deck like the lethal flechettes of an anti-personnel mine, transforming crew to meat-pulp in an instant.
‘Gonna get us all killed,’ she slurred. Empty warning. The men around her were already pretty much dead.
Pop and spark. She flinched as the mid-air refuel panel to her right shorted out. First wisps of smoke from overhead vents. Reignition of the electrical fire that brought the plane down.
Hancock stared forwards, rode the thrust levers, adjusted the stick.
Frost wondered what was going on in the dead man’s head. Was he drawing dim memories of previous flights? Did the cockpit appear intact? Were dead control panels responsive, blinking green? Did he see inert output needles twitch and rise?
He stared ahead at wind-lashed dunes like he was rolling the B-52 out the hangar onto a floodlit slip, heading for the runway, jinking to align the plane with the strip.
Did he see runway strobes receding to the distance?
Did he hear the ghost-voice of tower control talk him through final checks?
Frost turned in her seat.
‘Noble. Hey, Noble. Look at me.’
Noble turned in his seat. Grinning, bloody, skull mask.
‘This is your deal, right? You’re pulling the strings. Come on. What are you trying to achieve?’
No reply.
‘The missile is primed. You realise that, right? Moment you hit Weapon Release the barometric fuse will detonate the warhead.’
He turned back to the missile panel.
‘You’ll die. You’ll all die. Is that what you want?’
As if in response Hancock gripped the throttle levers and eased them further forwards. The airspeed indicator rested at zero but he fixed his attention like the plane was heading down the runway, approaching take-off speed.
He leant back in his seat, as if subject to acceleration only he could feel.
He shouted like he was fighting to be heard over escalating engine roar:
‘… Twenty knots. Thirty …’
‘Hancock. Hey. Jim. Look at me. Look at me, you fuck. You in there? Any of you left? Think. Think about what you’re doing. This is madness.’
Hancock looked straight ahead, as if gauging how much runway he had left.
‘… sixty, sixty five …’
Attention fixed on the dead airspeed clock like he was urging it to hit seventy.