Rogue Element

by David Rollins

  The country was falling apart. Morale was nonexistent. And then suddenly, virtually overnight, the money started pouring in. Spares and fuel became available, and he logged more hours in the next six months than over the previous three years. Flying, dogfighting, was why he joined the air force. Now he felt invincible. Let me go head-to-head with one of those Australian F/A-18s, he often wished. Shooting down a Qantas 747 was hardly the contest he’d hoped for. He reminded himself of the briefing officer’s assertion that there were sound tactical reasons for the action.

  The Indonesian pilot swooped behind the 747. He hung above his quarry’s tail, keeping the distance between the two aircraft constant, and depressed the radio transmission button on the throttle a half dozen times, broadcasting clicks in a pre-agreed sequence that announced he was in position to make the shot. Raptor allowed his F-16 to fall back behind the 747; the AIM-9L sidewinder needed more air to get a lock on the Boeing’s giant Rolls-Royce turbo fans.

  He activated the missile’s targeting system and watched the glowing red diamond float across the Head Up Display searching for prey. A tone sounded through his helmet phones. The missile’s fire control system had locked on to the 747’s right-hand, outboard engine. Raptor expected that. The AIM-9 was a heater. It was attracted to an object’s infrared signature, its heat output, and an outboard engine had a greater heat differential between itself and the surrounding freezing high-altitude air than an inboard turbine snuggled against the warm fuselage.

  Seconds later, he received the clicks from Hasanuddin AFB, confirmation that gave him permission, or rather the order, to fire the missile. A moment of doubt punctured Raptor’s conscience. But the uncertainty lasted for the briefest instant in a part of his brain that had long been subdued by hundreds of hours of training.

  His finger depressed the fire button on his side stick controller. It was a subconscious reaction to the command, like the way a leg twitched when the knee was tapped with a hammer. The missile slid from its rail. He watched it snake until its guidance system stabilised the missile and delivered the warhead unerringly to the target. It flew up the tail pipe of the Rolls-Royce engine where the fragmentation warhead, packed with 3.6 kilos of HE, detonated. Red-hot metal spikes ripped through the engine and annihilated its delicate balance. The massive turbine, now with smashed bearings and spinning at 3 500 rpm, leapt out of its housings, blasting the shattered titanium fan blades into the thin air.

  Raptor watched the destruction from his dress-circle position. The 747’s outboard engine was utterly destroyed. The monster staggered, smoke trailing from the wound like a long piece of gauze dressing.

  ‘Jesus, what the hell . . .’ said Joe as the plane bucked and kicked unexpectedly, bouncing the Apple off his table and into his lap. The sleeping passengers woke, bewildered. The cabin was rapidly filling with engine noise and the smell of burning grease. Joe looked around to see what was happening. There was confusion on the faces of the passengers he could see. Their mouths were slightly open and they were looking around, like him, trying to establish what was going on.

  Joe was immune to the usual aircraft noises and jolts he considered normal. He believed himself a comfortable flyer because he had done so much of it. The whirrs, pops and bangs that usually alarmed less seasoned travellers he took in his stride. But now that the plane was behaving in a manner outside his experience, Joe realised how genuinely afraid of flying he was. There was obviously something very wrong, only his conscious mind was refusing to accept the full and terrifying implications. Namely, that the aircraft was somehow poised on a knife’s edge of destruction and that, as a consequence, so was he.

  The groan of metal tearing and breaking underscored the vibration increasing in intensity. Joe realised then that the plane was ripping itself apart.

  The last of the sleeping passengers woke. The quiet, vaguely uncomfortable environment they’d dozed off in was now filled with ear-splitting noise and a shaking that was jarring them out of their seats. Their reaction to this frightening new dawn was unanimous. They panicked.

  The routine work of the flight deck suddenly became anything but. The sudden jolt followed by a high frequency vibration told them that there was a serious problem somewhere. Alarms began to sound. Both pilots scoured the sea of lights and dials to discover exactly what that problem was.

  ‘Disengaging autopilot,’ said Flemming.

  ‘Autopilot disengaged,’ confirmed Granger after the appropriate switch had been flicked. Flemming instantly felt an unusual weight on his control column.

  The digital temperature readout for number four engine was unbelievably high, and climbing. While he watched it with a morbid interest, the Engine Overheat light illuminated, followed an instant later by the warning bell. The Fire Warning switch also glowed with an array of other lights that had, only moments before, been dim.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ exclaimed Granger. ‘Engine fire!’ What the hell caused that? He hit the Bell Cutout switch on the glare shield, silencing the alarm that filled the cockpit and his ’phones.

  ‘Identify fire,’ said Flemming.

  ‘Engine fire number four,’ Granger replied.

  Luke stared at the electronic dials on the panel between them. Temps in the right-hand outboard engine had climbed way into the danger zone. All the instruments for fuel flow, even temperatures, had been absolutely normal not five minutes ago. Whatever it was, it was catastrophic. From the vicious shaking of the aircraft, it was probably a severe engine failure caused by . . . ? What? Jet engines, while delicately balanced, were also extremely robust.

  What they had here was not a phantom problem, neither was it a drill. A fire on an aircraft, no matter how big or small the plane, was a major concern. The temperatures produced inside a jet turbine were easily hot enough to melt aluminium, and that’s exactly what the wing above the engine was made of.

  ‘Number four thrust lever,’ called Flemming.

  ‘Confirmed,’ said Granger, seeing his captain’s hand on the correct lever.

  Flemming responded by snapping closed the throttle lever for number four engine. ‘Closed,’ he said.

  ‘Number four cut-off switch,’ said Flemming. When he saw that Granger’s hand was on the correct switch he commanded, ‘Cut off!’

  Granger shifted the switch to the appropriate position. ‘Cut off,’ he confirmed.

  ‘Number four fire warning switch,’ Flemming said. Granger had fallen behind the sequence. Granger quickly placed his hand on the glowing switch. He glanced at Flemming.

  ‘Pull!’ commanded the captain.

  Granger tugged the switch. ‘Pulled!’

  Instantly, shut-off valves for the hydraulic, engine bleed air and fuel were activated, starving the fire of combustible mixtures.

  Flemming and Granger both stared at the Fire Warning light. It remained illuminated.

  ‘Fire the bottle,’ said Flemming.

  Granger rotated the switch that discharged a canister containing fire-suppressing foam in the engine nacelle. ‘Bottle fired!’ A light came on announcing that the bottle had indeed been discharged.

  Luke found himself leaning forward in his seat, willing the array of illuminated fire warning lights in front of him to go out. They did not. The engine was shut down, starved of fuel, oil and air, covered in fire retardant foam but, according to the instrument lights, a fire still burned out there under the wing. Jesus!

  ‘Fire the second bottle,’ Flemming said.

  Granger rotated the switch the opposite way. ‘Bottle fired!’

  Surely the fire would now be extinguished. The pilots focused on the warning light, willing it to wink off. It didn’t.

  Shockwaves pulsed through the 747. They shook the plane so hard that Granger’s teeth clattered.

  ‘We’re going to have to land asap,’ said Captain Flemming, busily setting the aircraft up for an orderly descent to an altitude where the 747 could fly slower in thicker air. ‘What’s the nearest airport?’

  Grang
er knew every strip along his route sector, but there was only one within range long enough to take a 747. ‘Hasanuddin Air Force Base. Force landed there once before with the squadron. Doubles as a civilian airport. But we’ll have to turn around. It’s a twenty-minute backtrack.’

  ‘Okay.’ Flemming paused and added, ‘I hate to think what’s going on behind us.’

  Luke nodded.

  ‘Better let the poor buggers know what’s going on,’ Flemming said. ‘Once we level off, Luke, go back and have a look out the window. You probably won’t see much, but you never know.’

  The intense heat of the fire burned through the bolts that fixed the engine under the wing and it dropped away like a bomb.

  Joe had stopped panicking. He had retreated into shock, along with most of his fellow passengers. The plane felt like it was falling, sliding sideways and downwards. People around him were screaming, but Joe didn’t hear them. Something caught his attention. There was a yellow glow coming from somewhere outside the cabin. He wondered if it was an angel come to their rescue. He looked out the small window, squashing his face against the cold Perspex to get a better view. Whatever it was, it was somewhere out on the end of the wing. He couldn’t quite work out exactly what it was, but it wasn’t an angel. Joe realised it was a fireball, just as it fell away from sight into the blackness below. Was that an engine? he wondered, before discounting the possibility.

  Instantly the pitch of the vibration changed. It stopped almost completely, along with the loud rumble that sounded like a freight train running over points just beside his head.

  Flight attendants were working the aisles, moving back and forth in an attempt to calm the inconsolable. But any reassurances they gave were at odds with the reality of the moment. Screams continued to fill the cabin. Some people, Joe saw, had already assumed the crash position. His stomach convulsed and he vomited onto the floor between his feet.

  Raptor was vaguely disappointed. He had hoped a second missile wouldn’t be needed. That was wasteful.

  The F-16’s fire control system was still activated. He toggled through the missile’s target acquisition options, shifting the little red diamond presented on the HUD from one engine to another. He considered which engine to take out next. He let the diamond settle on the right-hand inboard turbine.

  His F-16 was only carrying two AIM-9 sidewinders, so this one had to finish the job. He wondered if the 747 had self-sealing fuel cells. If not, a hot sliver of metal – perhaps a burning fan blade – puncturing a wing tank would do the job nicely. Tone sounded in his headphones and he depressed the firing button on the control column operated by his right hand. Raptor gave a mental shrug as the missile flew on its way. The animal was wounded. All he was doing was putting it out of its misery.

  Flying at greater than Mach three, the AIM-9 closed the distance in an instant. The warhead smashed into the Rolls-Royce’s exhaust. The explosion blew a large section of the engine’s secondary compression rotor into the adjacent fuselage, ripping a hole more than a metre wide in the side of the plane. The 747’s cabin instantly depressurised.

  The titanium blades torn from the engine became shrapnel. The deadly cloud of spikes speared the fuselage in the economy section, shredding three friends sitting together, all of whom were so drunk that, thankfully, they had no idea what was going on. The three, still strapped in their row of seats, were blown out of the hole in the side of the 747 and into the freezing vacuum of the upper atmosphere.

  There was an explosion followed by a shockwave that rippled down the skin of the plane, and the air turned instantly milky white with mist. Frost glazed the window beside Joe’s face. He was startled, and frightened, but he felt removed from the scene at the same time, as if watching a movie. A roaring sound filled his ears, along with intense pain in his eardrums. The screams were all around him and the loudest of all, he realised, rose from his own throat.

  Raptor saw what appeared to be a group of seats tumble out of the hole in the fuselage, but he wasn’t sure. The jumbo’s wounds now appeared mortal. It was falling away to the right. Slowly at first, then faster. The fall became a plunge. Raptor followed the 747 into the accelerating dive. The two aircraft picked up speed, engine thrust and gravity combining with frightening exuberance.

  The F-16’s altimeter wound down, counting back through the thousands of feet in a matter of seconds.

  Granger and Flemming were checking their instruments, and Rivers was setting up the coordinates of Hasanuddin in the Flight Management Computer, when the second missile hit. The 747 yawed violently with the blow.

  The flight deck instantly filled with mist as the rapid pressure change condensed all the water vapour out of the air. ‘Jesus Christ!’ shouted Granger as warning lights illuminated and flashed, lighting up the panel in front of him like a city after sunset. His ears popped viciously with the sudden change in pressure. The cabin rate-of-climb indicator was racing. A warning horn sounded. Granger hit the Alt Horn Cutout switch to silence it. The air pressure inside the 747 was rapidly equalising with the air pressure outside – at around 30 000 feet, an environment lethal to humans.

  The flight crew immediately fitted their oxygen masks. Granger checked that the breathing system for the flight crew was correctly pressurised, and that the Pass. Oxygen On light was illuminated, indicating that the passengers were also getting theirs. The captain hit the switch that instructed the passengers to fasten their seatbelts. It was an odd thing to do in the circumstances, thought Granger, as if the passengers were all standing around in the aisles, unperturbed and unaware of the current critical situation. But it was procedure and couldn’t be argued with.

  ‘Emergency descent,’ said Flemming loudly, his voice muffled by the oxygen mask. He selected the PA and announced as calmly as he could, ‘This is the captain. Emergency descent.’

  Granger immediately dialled up the frequency for Air Traffic Control to advise them of QF-1’s intention to descend to 3000 metres, and obtain the QNH for the area – the correct local air pressure at sea level that would allow them to rescale their altimeters for an accurate altitude reading.

  He made the call and listened. Nothing. He tried again. Nothing. He checked the communications panel quickly. Jesus! It was completely dead, not even receiving power. They had no communications. They were completely cut off. Adrift. He couldn’t let that distract them so he kept the knowledge to himself.

  Flemming relentlessly continued the checklist for an emergency descent. ‘Engine start switches.’

  The number three engine now had a fire. They shut it down and fired both bottles. Granger, Flemming and Rivers had punishing earaches and stomach cramps from the gases expanding inside them. They were in excruciating pain, as was everyone in the aircraft. At this altitude, their blood was almost at boiling point and there was intense pressure building up in the cavities in their heads. Blood flowed freely from Flemming’s nostrils into his oxygen mask. Start switches for engines one and two were selected to the On position.

  ‘Thrust levers.’ Flemming pulled the levers to the closed position and announced it.

  ‘Closed!’ yelled Granger into his mask.

  The captain and first officer were themselves operating on a kind of autopilot with routines ingrained through hours of simulator time. They continued through the checklist, setting up the aircraft for the emergency descent.

  The 747 began to pick up speed as it dived steeply towards the earth. The numbers on the altimeter rolled off backwards.

  The seatbelt across Joe’s lap was done up so tightly that he was getting pins and needles in his feet. The mask dropped down in front of his face and he looked at it dumbly, not immediately knowing what it was for. Then he felt as if he was plunging over a waterfall. He grabbed the seat in front of him, reaching out to it in an attempt to stop the fall. The engine pitch increased to a wail. Joe believed the end was near.

  Granger called out their altitude in increments of 5000 feet as the aircraft accelerated. ‘Flight Lev
el three-zero-zero!’

  Their rate of descent increased to the near vertical and the big aircraft shook frighteningly. ‘Two-five-zero!’

  Raptor watched his prey lurch viciously in its dive. He had expected the aircraft to explode in a ball of flame and was disappointed that it hadn’t.

  Still, the fighter pilot had seen enough file footage from gun cameras to know a kill when he saw one. There was only one possible outcome for the stricken 747. He retarded the throttle and slipped back a safe distance behind the giant. If the 747 did explode and his F-16 was too close, he risked bits of the disintegrating Boeing being inhaled into his engine, with disastrous results.

  Joe strained against his seatbelt as the 747 screamed in its dive. He sucked oxygen from the yellow cup, the tangle of masks hanging like jellyfish tentacles in front of his face. He blinked through the frigid mist. His window was glazed with frost. The pain in his ears was searing. His stomach cramped in agony.

  Across the aisle a middle-aged man’s face had turned blue, white froth bubbling from purple lips. Joe stretched over and tried to pull an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, but his arm felt heavy, like it was strapped with weights. It took him several attempts to get the mask on. Every time he almost managed to secure the cup over the man’s face, the aircraft’s pitching jolted his hands, spoiling the attempt.

  Joe could see people screaming, but he couldn’t hear the sounds they made. He wondered whether he was experiencing some kind of sensory overload, then realised it was because the roar coming from somewhere inside the aircraft was deafening, obliterating everything else.

  Some people weren’t yelling, having retreated into a semiconscious, almost primal state. They cried or whimpered, rocking in their seats. Some were just clutching each other, even people who had been complete strangers only minutes before.