Daring Dooz (The Implosion Trilogy (Book 2)) (21 page)

Chapter 48

‘That bloke you can see out of your
blister,’ said Mick. ‘Is there anything else?’

‘Yeah.’ said Jim in a strangled sort of
voice, ‘it looks like he’s sat in a MiG-15.’

‘Same on my side,’ replied Mick.

‘Shall we give them a wave?’

‘I don’t think they’ve flown up from ‘fuck
knows where’ for some pleasant social interaction. They look really pissed off.
And, yes, James - those are fucking rockets hanging off the wings.’

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, I must ask you to
moderate you language,’ said Mrs Hathaway over the intercom.

‘It wasn’t me swearing,’ said Jim, ‘it
was Mick.’

She ignored the remark.

‘I can see what you’re talking about,’
she said calmly. ‘I suggest you give them a wave to stall for time, then make
your way through to me with your cameras.
Now
please!’

They waved. The pilots didn't wave back.
Mick started to record as he walked through to the cockpit and Jim took the
lens cap off the stills camera.

‘Good,’ she said, as they strapped
themselves into the cockpit seats, ‘get as much footage and shots as you can.
We shan’t be seeing them for much longer.’

‘Sorry,’ said Mick, ‘but they look as
though they mean serious business.’

‘So do I,’ said Mrs Hathaway.

‘If I remember correctly from my
manuals, our current speed is about the same as the MiG-15’s stall speed. Those
cheeky chappies just can’t go any slower.’

She throttled back suddenly. Mick and
Jim lurched, and the MiGs shot forward.

The pilots were obviously annoyed at
being outmanoeuvred, and a few seconds later criss-crossed a quarter of a mile
in front of the Catalina, and shot upwards at frightening speed.

‘Great,’ said Jim, ‘you saw them off.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Mrs Hathaway. ‘I very
much doubt it. Brace yourself, but keep the cameras, what do you say, rolling.’

‘Why should we brace...’

Jim’s words were drowned out by a
thunderous roar as the two MiGs screamed down out of the sun and flashed by,
about 400 feet from the Catalina’s nose.

The flying boat gave an almighty shudder
as it passed through the MiG’s exhausts. Mick clung on to a side strut and
swung the camera with one hand. Jim fell to his knees but kept the camera
firing on repeat.

‘Fuck me,’ screamed Mick.

‘Fuck me, as well,’ cried Jim.

For once, the expletives drew no
admonishment from Mrs Hathaway. She just stared calmly straight ahead.

‘Here they come again.’

This time they shot by even closer - the
roar was deafening. The Catalina shook convulsively. They could feel the heat
from the engines.

Despite the mayhem, and some fairly high
levels of panic, Mick and Jim got another set of shots, but that was it - their
professionalism had run out of gas.

Not even ‘They Win. You Lose.’ could
exert its normal calming influence.

‘Shit a hod load of bricks, we’ve had
it,’ shouted Mick.

‘Where’s the fucking parachutes?’
screamed Jim.

‘Decorum, gentlemen, decorum’ said Mrs
Hathaway quietly.

‘See that low bank of sea fog about five
miles away?’

They stopped and looked.

 
‘I’m going to head for it, then we’ll be
hidden from view. It’ll give us some time to collect our thoughts.’

Jim had no thoughts left, and the only
thing he wanted was to collect was his parachute.

Mick grabbed him by the lapels.

‘Forget the parachute, we’re only 200
feet up, you twonk. Get your camera and let’s do what we were paid for.’

‘That’s the spirit,’ cried Mrs Hathaway,
who, they could both see, was definitely up for it. She slammed open the
throttle.

‘Come on Implosion Productions!’ she
cried, waving one hand in the air.

‘Get those cameras ready. If anything
else happens I want it captured for posterity.’

She turned and smiled.

 
‘Not that anything else can happen, we’re only
30 seconds away from the fog bank.’

And she remained absolutely confident of
that fact - at least for the next 15 seconds.

Chapter 49

‘Shit,’ shouted Mick, ‘they’ve fired
rockets.’

High up to the left they could see
bright trails heading straight towards them.

Mrs Hathaway didn’t take her eyes of the
fast approaching fog bank and virtually wrenched the throttle out of its
housing.

‘We’re not going to make it!’ screamed
Jim.

Looking up, Mick could now count the
rockets. At least one had to get lucky.

‘Five more seconds,’ said Mrs Hathaway.

‘Nearly there.’

‘Three.’

‘Two,’

‘Shit!’ screamed Mick and Jim.

There was a blinding flash of pure white
light, a high-voltage crackling electronic sound and an enormous bang. Not an
explosion. But a huge bang.

Then silence. Complete silence.

‘So this is it,’ said Jim. ‘We’re dead.’

He looked down.

‘Nice to see they let you bring your
camera.’

Despite her tan, Mrs Hathaway looked
white as a sheet.

‘The instruments have all gone down,
there’s no controls and the compass is spinning.’

‘No good worrying about that, now we’re
dead,’ said Jim.

‘The video camera’s still working.’

‘Hm!’ said Jim, firing off a few shots,
‘same with the Nikon.’

‘Keep shooting,’ ordered Mrs Hathaway.
‘Something’s going on.’

Jim was about to say that that was the
understatement of the fucking year, but he remembered the Enfield Bin footage,
and decided to hold his counsel.

The propellers had stopped. All they
could hear was a faint sound of rushing wind.

The fog was thick, but it seemed backlit
with pink and gold lighting. After about 30 seconds, they realised they were
falling at quite a steep angle down a tunnel which had formed in the swirling
mist.

The Catalina, with its useless controls
and equally useless occupants, was in freefall.

‘We should have hit the water by now,’
said Jim.

Suddenly, the backlighting disappeared
and they continued their fall in total darkness.

‘Keep shooting,’ repeated Mrs Hathaway.

‘Shoot what?’ shouted Mick. ‘It’s
fucking pitch black.’

Just as he made that observation, violent
lightning discharges smashed across the front of the cockpit, then spread to
tunnel walls where it continued to whiplash and pulsate around the surface.

‘I got it!’ shouted Mick.

There was no sensation of movement.

‘We should be 300 feet under the sea by
now,’ said Jim.

‘Oh, so you’ve decided you’re not dead
now, have you?’ said Mick.

‘Please be quiet you two. I don’t know
what’s happening, but I think we should remain calm and just sit it out.
Everything seems to have settled down.’

As she spoke, there was a second
enormous bang. A bolt of lightning headed straight for the cockpit, then, at
the last second, split into a thousand electrical discharges, which stabbed,
darted and exploded around the plane, the propellers and inside the cockpit
itself.

‘Did you get that?’ shouted Mrs
Hathaway.

‘Oh sorry!’ shouted Mick, rubbing the
back of his hand across his singed eyebrows, ‘that was a bit on the subtle
side. Could you get them to do it again?’

The high-voltage assault continued for
another 10 minutes, during which all three occupants of the cockpit, once they
realised they were coming to little harm, became rather immune to the
relentless cataclysmic violence going on just outside the aircraft.

‘That one was the best,’ said Jim.

‘No,’ said Mick, ‘the one, before the
one, before that one, was the best. The DBs - nine out of 10.’

‘No, that was a nine point five. Reckon
yours was about a seven.’

‘Seven? You’ve got to be joking - anyone
with more brain cells than a badly-watered geranium could see mine was nine and
that last crapola one was six, max.’

And so it went on - quibbling away their
newly acquired boredom, while only a sheet of glass separated them from instant
death. That was until Mrs Hathaway interrupted.

‘Strap yourselves in tighter,
something’s changing.’

All three of them stared out of the
cockpit window where the lighting was being replaced by more of the foggy, gold
and pink tunnel.

‘That’s a bit more like it,’ said Jim.

‘You both know we are
still
going down,’ said Mrs Hathaway.’

‘Maybe it’s a group illusion brought on
by sensory deprivation,’ suggested Mick.

‘And none of the instruments has worked
for 15 minutes.’

‘Oh.’

‘And none of the controls have worked
for 15 minutes.’

‘Well,’ said Mick, ‘whatever’s going on,
clearly isn’t life-threatening.’

At that point there was a blinding flash
of white light and another very large bang. The plane shook like thunder. Mick
and Jim both shouted ‘Fuck!’ and Mrs Hathaway, ignoring them, yet again, stared
straight ahead - this time, into a clear, cloudless sky.

‘Where the hell
are
we?’ shouted Jim.

‘Out!’ shouted Mick. Understandably, he
sounded ecstatic. ‘We’re out - and in one piece - well, three pieces if you think
about it.’

It had suddenly become very cold and
they were all struggling for breath.

‘We’re going up,’ croaked Mrs Hathaway,
‘we’re going up fast. Any ideas, gentlemen?’

‘Any controls?

‘No.’

‘Any engines?’

‘No.’

‘Can you see the sea?’

‘Long way down.’

‘Any instruments?’

‘No. Wait - yes! Yes! 20,000 feet.’

‘What!’ shrieked Mick. ‘We were at
bloody 200 feet and going down. Now we’re at 20,000 feet, going up!’

‘Keep filming,’ said Mrs Hathaway.

‘I haven’t stopped,’ said Mick, although,
in the last minute, he wasn’t quite sure where he’d been pointing the camera.

‘We’re going to be alright,’ said Mrs
Hathaway.

‘Oh bloody super-duper,’ said Jim.
‘We’re in a World War II scrapheap at 20,000 feet with no engines and no
controls, and the cleaning lady says we’re going to be alright. Fetch my
quilted smoking jacket, Michael, and a copy of The Times - I must check to see
if Arabella’s lobotomy has made it into the social columns.’

Jim didn’t know how close he came to a
Kyusho pressure point
slap,
which given his advanced state of delirium, was probably just as well.

‘We’re levelling out,’
said Mrs Hathaway, calmly.

‘What next?’ said Mick.

‘We drop, more or less
like a stone, ‘til we get to about 13,500 feet - that’s what the manual calls
our ceiling - then I’ll try and restart the engines.’

The Catalina was going
into an uncontrolled shallow dive, which was getting steeper by the second.
Mick had seen countless black and white films where there was rapid, but not
too
rapid, cutting between exterior
footage of the plunging plan, close-ups of the falling altimeter and
dramatically lit images of the pilot’s panicking face as he struggled to regain
control. But their situation had an extra dimension - stark-naked terror,
something completely missing from the celluloid versions.

She mustn’t have seen
the same films, thought Mick, as he shot close-ups of Mrs Hathaway’s calm,
concentrating face, from a low angle, with the motionless turbo-props
artistically out of focus in the background. If he could concentrate on filming,
he might just make it with unsoiled boxers.

‘17,000 feet.’

She looked across at
Jim and made a mental note that a
Kyusho
slap would have been unnecessary. He was in
a dead faint.

‘15,000 feet.’

By now, the Catalina
was shaking violently and falling at a steep angle. All three of them were
relying on their seat belts to stop them smashing into the cockpit windows.

‘Get ready to film me
pressing the starter button,’ shouted Mrs Hathaway, ‘then shoot the props as
they get going.’

‘14,000 feet! I’m going
to do it
now
.’

Suddenly, she turned to Mick.

‘Michael, could you open the manual and
just check the starter sequence for me.’

By now, Mick’s teeth were rattling
inside his head, he was being thrown violently around, and the camera had
flipped up and nearly bashed his brains in. He was not in the mood for reading
through the troubleshooting section of a 60-year-old, badly printed, A4
booklet.

‘Press the fucking button!’ he yelled,
with as much volume as he could muster.

She did. And the Pratt & Whitney R-1830s
sang the sweetest song Mick’s ears had ever heard.

There was still the question of
returning the Catalina to level flight. The controls were back, and Mrs
Hathaway worked them with the strength of 10 men, or, if you used Jim’s useless
form as a benchmark, the strength of 100 men. She reduced the shallowness of
the dive, eventually reaching controlled level flight at 5,000 feet.

Jim regained consciousness and asked if
anything was going on. He was ignored.

‘Tallulah, may I call you Tallulah?’
said Mick, breathing deeply and wiping the sweat from his forehead. ‘I’d just
like to say how delighted I am to be alive. That was amazing, absolutely
amazing!’

‘Ah,’ said Mrs Hathaway, with a smile,
‘but if you hadn’t read the manual so quickly, we might
never
have got the engines started.’

It was all coming back to Jim.

“We were going along, then there those
fighters and missiles, then flash, bang, we’re in that foggy tunnel with all
that lightning then, flash, bang and we’re out, miles up and falling. What’s going
on? And, where the hell
are
we?

With the effort of getting the plane
back under control, Mrs Hathaway had not had time to look at the sat nav
graphic screen.

She looked, gasped, tapped the screen,
then gasped again.

‘It’s impossible!’ she cried. ‘Absolutely
impossible!’

She turned to Mick.

‘Michael, what would you say if your saw
the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen in your life - staring you right in the
face?’

‘What, honest?’

‘Yes, honest.’

‘I’d say, fuck me, gently.’

‘Thank you, Michael that’s a great
help.’

She swivelled her seat, took a deep
breath and looked Mick and Jim straight in the eye.

‘Fuck me gently,’ she said without a
trace of embarrassment, ‘we’re fifteen miles off the mouth of the Amazon.’