Impact (17 page)

‘What if someone is trying to contact us? One in million. But what if they were? And we were off air?’

She sat, staring into the speaker grille, listening to whistling interference. The symphonic storm. Charged particles. Swirling, shimmering waves of electromagnetic interference.

Song of the desert. A living landscape. Vast. Unearthly. Implacably hostile to human life.

‘This is B-52
Liberty Bell
, crew in urgent need of assistance, anyone copy, over?’

She broadcast a Mayday every sixty seconds.

‘This is the crew of
Liberty Bell
, tail MT66, hailing anyone who can hear my voice. Please respond, over.’

‘Seriously. Forget it.’

‘The storm might work in our favour. Atmospherics. You never know. It might extend our range.’

‘Doubt it.’

Flickering strength-bars. Brief signal lock.

Frost maxed the volume. White noise merged with raging wind. She retuned. A woman’s voice. Calm, digitised:

‘… four, seven, two, three, zero, four, three, nine, three …’

‘What the hell is that?’ asked Noble.

‘Sounds like a long-range numbers code. Odd to hear on this frequency. Usually broadcast on shortwave.’

‘… two, five, zero, zero, zero …’

‘What do you reckon it means?’

‘Wild guess: blanket instructions for US service personnel overseas. Battleships patrolling the Strait of Hormuz. Arctic subs cruising beneath the ice. Imagine the message cedes command authority. Tells crewmen they are on their own. Better find safe harbour where they can. Head for the southern hemisphere. Australia. New Zealand. Some place like that. Good place to hold up.’

‘God bless them,’ said Noble.

‘Tough break for the commanding officers.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Those vessels are a radiation hazard. A floating Chernobyl, a floating Fukushima. Reactor-powered engines, nuclear-tipped missiles in the firing tubes. Can’t leave them moored, unmaintained. Death-traps. I guess they’ll drop most of the crewmen in the antipodes, then a skeleton team will sail back north. Scuttle the boats in deep water. Position themselves over an Atlantic trench, then fire a bunch of hull charges.’

Hancock turned in his seat and watched Frost continue to scan wavebands.

‘You know, it’s okay to enjoy it.’

‘Enjoy what?’ she asked.

‘Doomsday. The enormity of the destruction. We got a front-row seat. Get to witness the dying days of humanity. No shame admitting there is an element of dark exhilaration.’

‘Can’t say I ever rubbernecked.’

‘Come on. New York in ruins. The mushroom cloud. The falling towers. Admit it. Must have been quite a show.’

A new voice from the radio. Male, shouting in panic and fear.

Hancock and Noble sat forward.

‘Is that English?’ asked Noble. ‘Can’t make out a word.’

‘Think it might be Russian. Some poor bastard in the Vegas suburbs, most like. An émigré, cowering in a cellar. Sick, irradiated, convinced he’s back in Minsk.’

Frost pressed transmit.

‘Mayday, Mayday, we are US Air Force personnel in urgent need of assistance, do you copy, over?’

The Russian continued to sob and plead.

‘He can’t hear you,’ said Hancock.

‘Mayday, Mayday, do you copy this transmission?’

‘He can’t hear a word you’re saying.’

‘Fuck.’

‘Might be a ghost signal.’

‘A what?’

Hancock stood and stretched.

‘Ever seen a mirage?’

‘Saw plenty of thermals yesterday, out in the desert. Shimmering lakes.’

‘I saw a bunch back in the day. Rode on a few supply runs between Baghdad and Sadr City. We saw some weird shit out in the desert.

‘One time we pulled over to the side of the highway for a piss break. Needless risk, plenty of insurgents, but after a while you get careless. War becomes a game.

‘Mid afternoon. Rippling heat. Hot. Hotter than this, but we had air con and water, so we didn’t give a shit.

‘So anyway, I was standing in the middle of nowhere, unzipped, looking out over the dunes. Then I saw a car. A white Land Cruiser, riding along, a couple of miles out in the sand. It pulled up. A guy got out. Fat guy. Blue uniform. Looked like a local cop. Acting real furtive. He took a pair of binoculars and checked around. Seemed to be looking straight at us. We waved, tried to get his attention. Trained our weapons, signalled “hands up”. Fucker ignored us.

‘He dropped the tailgate, dragged out a couple of heavy garbage bags and dumped them on the ground. Then he got back in the Jeep and drove off, quick as he could. Span the wheels, kicked up a ton of dust, then floored it.

‘We drove out to the spot he dumped the bags. You know what? No bags. No tyre tracks. No trace of any kind.’

‘Jeez.’

‘The guy was real enough. He wasn’t a ghost. Somewhere, out in that desert, he stopped his car and dumped a couple of bags. Might have been over a hundred miles away. But heat played tricks. Refracted his image, projected it miles from his actual position.’

‘You think the sandstorm could echo a radio signal?’ asked Noble. ‘Bounce it around?’

‘That Russian could be a thousand miles away. Shit, he might even be in Moscow. A big-ass static storm could turn physics on its head.’

Frost shut off the radio.

‘So what do you reckon was in those garbage bags?’

‘Glad I never found out.’

The target dossier protruded from Hancock’s backpack.

RESTRICTED ACCESS. CO-PILOT ONLY.

Frost unzipped the vinyl document wallet.

‘Hey,’ said Hancock. ‘That’s classified.’

‘Hardly matters, does it, Cap? No secrets worth keeping any more.’

She thumbed pages.

The flight-path map. Red dashes across featureless terrain. Staging coordinates.

National Recon photos. Dunes and a limestone escarpment. Bleak as the Sea of Tranquillity. Each image stamped EYES ONLY.

‘Hundred miles to the aim point, give or take. We were so damned close. What the hell were we supposed to bomb, Captain? Was it Chinese Whispers? Bunch of guys passing bad orders down the line without question?’

Hancock shook his head.

‘The mission parameters were very clear. They knew what they were doing.’

A target image. Desert wilderness, and the centre of the picture, a black redaction.

Frost held up the picture.

‘What’s this? What’s hidden? What are we not allowed to see?’

Hancock didn’t reply.

‘But you were briefed, right? They told you the nature of the target?’

Hancock crossed the flight deck and took the sheaf of notes from her hand. He stuffed the wad of documents into his backpack.

‘Like I said. Classified.’

The limo swerved between dunes.

Osborne had the wheel. Trenchman sat beside him.

‘I know you want to be a hero,’ said Osborne. ‘I know you want to ride to the rescue. But let’s face it, we can’t travel much further. We were okay back on the salt flats. Smooth driving. Here? We’re going to bog down and stall any minute.’

‘She’s a big V8. Good tread, plenty of clearance. She can cope.’

‘We don’t even know where we are headed.’

‘We know the plane’s target and flight path. That gives us a pretty tight search field. Soon or later, we’ll find wreckage.’

Trenchman pointed to a level stretch of sand up ahead.

‘Stop there, would you?’

‘Best if we kept rolling.’

‘Stop for a moment. I got to check something out.’

They pulled up.

Osborne jumped from the Humvee. Cool air con replaced by desert heat.

He beckoned to Trenchman.

‘Thought I could feel her pulling to the left. Looks like we’ve got a flat.’

Trenchman crouched and examined the flaccid tyre. Something white embedded in rubber. He worked the shard lose and held it in his palm.

‘What is it?’ asked Osborne.

‘I believe it’s a chunk of human bone.’

‘Hope to God we have a spare wheel.’

‘We do. It’s in the trunk.’

Morgan climbed a dune and looked out over the sandscape. Akingbola joined him.

‘Can you feel it?’ asked Morgan. ‘A rising wind.’

‘Air getting colder by the minute. How often do you reckon it rains in a place like this?’

‘Once a decade at a guess. You can bet it’s a big fucking deluge.’

They looked around.

‘You’d think there would be smoke. A fuelled-up B-52 nosedives into the desert. You’d think there would be a big-ass crater.’

‘Check it out,’ said Akingbola. He pointed east. ‘Something on the horizon. See? A red blur.’

Morgan shielded his eyes and peered at the distant haze.

‘Christ. Sandstorm. Heading this way.’

Trenchman climbed onto the limo roof. He cracked a cream soda, took a swig, and set the can down by his feet.

He powered up his radio, extended the antenna and did a three-sixty sweep.

‘Anything?’ asked Osborne, standing beneath him.

‘Think I got some weak transponder hits. Hear that? The tone? Very weak. Can’t get a lock.’

‘Atmospherics?’

Trenchman gestured to distant crags.

‘All kinds of metal in those hills. Copper. Nickel. Uranium. Playing merry hell with the signal. They could be sitting in the sand a hundred yards away, broadcasting Mayday after Mayday. We wouldn’t know a damned thing about it.’

Osborne opened the trunk. He pulled back carpet and lifted the heavy wheel free. He rolled it to the front of the vehicle and propped it against the wing.

He returned to the trunk to fetch the jack.

‘How’s it going?’ asked Akingbola.

‘Five minute job. No big deal.’

‘Looks like there’s a sandstorm heading this way.’

‘How close?’

‘Miles out. Looks big.’

‘We’ll be all right. Just climb in the limo and sit it out. Might have to do a little digging once the storm has passed.’

Akingbola gestured to Trenchman standing on top of the limo. He spoke low so he couldn’t be overheard:

‘I guess you and the colonel are pretty tight.’

‘Give or take.’

‘He wants to save the aircrew. That’s great. That’s admirable. But we’re putting our necks at serious risk out here. Totally reliant on the limo. If anything happens to the vehicle, we’re fucked. We lost one wheel. What happens if we lose a second? Long fucking walk.’

‘He saved your ass back at the airfield. Remember that.’

‘Yeah, I get it. Believe me, I’m grateful. But it won’t help a soul if we die out here on some kamikaze rescue mission. Talk to him. Make him see sense. We need to find a highway, start making long-term plans.’

Osborne grabbed the jack from the trunk. He threw it down beside the flat wheel. He ducked inside the passenger compartment and ripped the door from the snack cabinet.

He shoved the laminate door beneath the front axle, used it as a base to stop the jack sinking into sand.

He took off his field jacket, stretched his arms, then began to work the crank. The wheel slowly lifted out of the sand.

He crouched and prised the chrome hub. He threw it aside, skimmed it like a Frisbee.

He unscrewed retaining nuts with a four-way cross wrench and lifted the heavy radial clear.

He turned to Akingbola:

‘Check the ignition is shut off, okay? Don’t want to kill the battery.’

He examined the burst tyre. It was a run-flat, military spec, should have retained pressure even when punctured. But a chunk of femur had punched a hole big enough for his finger. Put the tyre beyond repair.

Faint cry behind him.

He turned around.

Morgan, gesticulating from the crest of a high dune.

He waved back.

‘Yeah. I know. Sandstorm.’

‘Help,’ screamed Morgan. ‘Jesus Christ, help.’

Osborne sprinted up the steep gradient.

Morgan was waist deep in sand and sinking fast.

Osborne gripped his arms and pulled. Trenchman and Akingbola joined him.

‘Something’s got me,’ said Morgan. ‘Something’s got my legs.’

‘Quicksand?’

‘There’s something in the sand. Something alive. It’s gripped my leg.’

The three gripped Morgan’s arms and pulled hard as they could. Hard to get a firm footing on sand. Morgan screamed and grimaced, shoulders at the point of dislocation.

‘A snake?’ asked Trenchman, desperately trying to make sense of the situation. ‘Some kind of sand snake?’

Morgan was now wrenched neck deep.

‘Oh Jesus, help me.’

Osborne and Akingbola gripped his wrists and pulled. Trenchman crouched behind Morgan and dug with both hands, feverishly scooped sand aside like a dog burying a bone.

Morgan’s head hauled below the sand. He screamed and coughed dust. Osborne and Akingbola fell to their knees and dug to expose his mouth and nose, restore his airway.

‘Mother of God.’

Trenchman stood back, drew his side arm and expended a full clip into the sand behind Morgan.

A final, whimpering scream, then Morgan was jerked below ground. Osborne gripped the stricken man’s hand.

Final wrench.

Morgan was gone.

They stood back and contemplated the depression in the sand.

‘What the fuck just happened?’ said Akingbola.