Impact (26 page)

Crude plan: listen out for Hancock. The guy was messed up, struggling to stand. Laboured breathing, dragging steps. He couldn’t move around without making a racket. She would wait until she heard him beneath the wing, then jump his ass.

Rustle of flight-suit fabric. Muffled cough. Hancock had emerged from the plane and was standing close by.

She listened hard, tried to gauge his location.

Silence.

Had he moved away? Was he creeping around the wreck site, trying to hunt her down? Or was he standing still, stifling his breath, waiting for her to make a move?

Faint crackle. Her radio. The static squelch that preceded an incoming transmission. She quickly rolled onto her chest-pouch to smother the sound.

Muffled radio voice mixing with Hancock’s voice from down below:

‘Where are you, Frost?’

She lay still as she could.

‘Here kitty, kitty.’

She lay flat, pressed herself against hot aluminium, willed her body to merge with the wing.

Her POV: a vista of rivet-seamed metal rippling heat.

She waited. Long minutes.

She thought she could smell Hancock, just for a moment. The sour stink of flesh-rot carried on the breeze.

Did she actually want to kill him? The guy pulled a gun. But he was sick, clearly not thinking straight. Succumbing to fever and delirium. He needed help.

Never the less, she might have to cut Hancock in order to subdue him. She resolved to aim for muscle, if she could. Avoid major organs, major blood vessels.

Insidious voice in her head:
If you tussle over a gun, you may have no option but to kill him. And then you could keep all the remaining water for yourself.

She lifted her head.

Slow commando crawl to the lip of the wing, sliding on sand-dusted metal. She psyched, prepped to launch and stab.

She reared up, knife raised above her head, then froze. Hancock was gone. A disturbance in the sand like he stepped from the plane, walked a couple of yards, then turned and headed back inside.

Voice from above:

‘Be obliged if you dropped the knife.’

She looked up.

Hancock standing on the roof of the aircraft. The sun was behind him, his body fringed by a brilliant halo.

He must have returned to the flight deck and climbed through one of the vacant escape hatches.

Frost slowly got to her feet. She shielded her eyes.

‘How about we call time-out?’ said Frost. ‘This bullshit is escalating way too fast. Maybe we should hit Pause, talk it through.’

‘Drop the knife.’

‘Really want to shoot me?’

‘I need you alive and conscious. Rest is up to you.’

‘These wings are full of kerosene vapour. Bullet might send us both to hell.’

Gunshot. A 9mm round punched a neat hole in the aluminium panel between Frost’s feet. Wisp of smoke.

He took aim a second time.

‘Ever played Russian Roulette?’ said Hancock. Gunshot. Frost flinched. A second smouldering hole punched in the wing metal at her feet. ‘Want to see how far our luck will hold?’

She threw the knife aside. It fell and stabbed deep into sand.

Hancock lashed Frost’s wrists with wire. Gun to her back. He forced her to climb the ladder to the flight deck. They sat facing each other. Sullen silence.

Time passed slow.

‘What do you hope to achieve by all this shit?’ she asked.

‘Encourage a little cooperation.’

She curled and pretended to doze.

She waited until Hancock’s eyelid drooped closed and the pistol slackened in his hand. Finger light on the trigger, barrel angled at the floor.

She leaned forwards and reached for the gun. He shifted in his sleep. Brief hesitation. She abandoned her attempt to snatch the Beretta. She slid down the ladder and fled the plane once again.

She limped across the sand, hands still bound at the wrist.

She crawled up a dune and rolled down the shadow side. Her vague plan: travel in a wide arc. Put as much distance as she could between herself and the B-52. Create the illusion she had headed into the desert. A trail of footprints stretching to the horizon. She would then circle back to the wreck site in the early hours of the morning and plunder supplies. Creep into the lower cabin while Hancock lay beneath survival blankets in the cockpit. Stealthily remove food, meds, water. Then head east.

She tried to walk. Her legs gave out so she crawled on her knees.

Panting ascent of the next dune. Uncontrolled roll down the other side.

A splinter of her consciousness watched her progress with detached interest. How much pain could she endure? How much suffering could she shoulder while willing her limbs to keep moving forwards? When would her body finally fail, pitching her face-forwards in the sand, motionless, muscles finally no longer able to respond to her will?

She kept crawling. She threw a long shadow.

A second shadow by her side. A figure keeping pace.

‘I admire your determination,’ said Hancock. ‘Hotter than hell. Crack an egg on the ground and watch it fry. Yet here you are. Exhausted, thirsty, broken. But determined to fight. Admirable.’

She rolled and looked up.

‘It’s a shame,’ said Hancock. ‘You put me in a difficult position.’

Hancock laid the crutch across Frost’s shoulders like a yoke. He lashed her arms with wiring stripped from the flight-deck walls, forcing her cruciform.

He tied a length of data cable round her neck as a leash. He dragged her stumbling across the sand to the dead signal fire. A tyre half buried in sand. He tied the leash to the hub.

Shove to the back. She fell to her knees, head bowed, arms forced wide.

Hancock slowly circled.

‘Hate to do it,’ he said. ‘But I can’t have you running off again.’

He checked knotted wire, made sure she was bound tight.

‘This can end any time you want. We can start treating each other as adults. All you have to do is cooperate.’

Frost didn’t reply.

‘It’ll be a cold night. Any time you want to come back inside, holler. I got a blanket, if you’re willing to work for it. Back in a while. Think it over.’

Hancock retreated to the plane for a couple of hours. He got some sleep.

He woke and decided to check on Frost.

She was still knelt in the sand, head bowed, arms pinned wide. Her skin and hair were white with dust. Her lips were cracked and dry.

Hancock sat crossed legged beside her. He sipped water. He made it torture. He slurped and smacked his lips. He sloshed the canteen.

‘How are you feeling?’

She didn’t look up. She didn’t reply.

‘I’m sorry. Appalled it came to this. Hoped we could resolve our issues by reasoned discussion.’

Frost licked parched lips.

‘You pulled a gun.’

‘Had no choice.’

‘Cut me free.’

‘You know I can’t do that.’

‘You’ve gone crazy. Think. Just think. Step back a moment. You must be able to see. This stopped being about the mission a long time ago. This is some kind of death trip.’

‘I have to believe there’s still a government out there, trying to salvage what’s left of America.’

‘Come on. That old tune. We’re on our own. Anything else is a wish, a daydream. The best we can do for the world is survive.’

Hancock shook his head and turned away. He limped back to the plane.

‘What about Guthrie?’ shouted Frost. ‘His buddies. You’ll need me. When they come. You’ll need all the help you can get.’

He kept walking.

Hancock switched on the bomb bay light. Blood-red glow.

He sat on the sand floor of the payload compartment and powered up the satcom unit.

Internal battery at 18%. The power level dropped to 17% as he watched.

His only contact with the wider world: a thin-as-gossamer thread of data, likely to be cut within hours.

The unit winked an alert.

Incoming EAM:

URGENT

PROVIDE STATUS UPDATE

He typed:

RADAR NAV

UNCOOPERATIVE.

REQUEST SECOND TRIGGER CODE.

An almost instantaneous reply:

TRIGGER CODE UNAVAILABLE

LIEUTENANT FROST MUST

SUPPLY ARMING SEQUENCE

USE ANY MEANS NECESSARY

TO FORCE COOPERATION

He typed:

CLARIFICATION.

WHY CAN USSTRATCOM NOT SUPPLY TRIGGER CODE?

No reply.

He typed:

REQUEST STATUS OF USSTRATCOM.

No reply.

He typed:

REQUEST STATUS OF SECOND BOMB WING, VEGAS.

REQUEST INFO

RE: POSSIBLE SAR EXTRACTION.

No reply.

WHO AM I TALKING TO?

REQUEST COMSEC IDENT AND LOCATION.

No reply.

WHO ARE YOU?

He stared at the winking cursor a long while. He powered down the satcom and closed the lid. He pushed the unit away.

He turned his attention to the laptop jacked to the warhead. He wiped dust from the screen. A request for a ten-digit sequence.

The final arming sequence. Simple as withdrawing money from an ATM.

He caressed the Return key. The little square of plastic that would end his life once he delivered the warhead to its designated target. There would be no countdown, no chance to get clear. The moment he hit Enter to confirm the detonation command, the hotwired nuke would fire. He would wink out of existence. Delete himself with a single key-tap.

He sat with his head in his hands. Turmoil. The will to live overwhelmed by exhaustion and despair.

Flashback to Bagram.

The canteen hall. Mortar-proof hard shell. One of the chefs brought a fresh tray of fusilli to the pasta bar. He noticed a local translator in the queue. Guy had his shirt buttoned to his neck. He was sweating, despite a torrent of cool air from an overhead duct.

Two minutes later the canteen was clear. Upturned chairs and tables. Spilt food.

The translator sat in the middle of the hall, shirt unbuttoned, C4 patties taped to his belly and a command wire running down his arm to a push-button trigger in his hand.

Hancock cautiously entered the empty canteen, set a chair upright and sat down. He sat fifty feet away and tried to talk the man down.

‘The moment has passed,’ argued Hancock. ‘You came here to kill a bunch of Americans. So what now? Your death will amount to nothing. If you press that button, all you will do is wreck some furniture.’

The translator didn’t reply. He sat, finger on the button, panting with indecision.

Hancock tried a different approach.

‘What did he tell you? The man that strapped you into that vest? How did he persuade you to throw your life away? What would it achieve?’

The translator’s fear and indecision was replaced by a beatific smile.

‘They said it will be like stepping through a doorway into a perfumed garden.’

Hancock threw himself from the chair and hit the floor. They pulled him from the wrecked canteen fifteen minutes later suffering from tinnitus and smoke inhalation.

Frost knelt in the sand, head bowed, dripping sweat.

Flashback to Thompson Falls, Montana.

Escape and evasion. Forty-eight hours fleeing through woodland, Frost finally brought to her knees by a German Shepherd dispatched by a Delta pursuit team.

The next phase of the SERE exercise: interrogation.

Hooded and zip-tied, curled on the floor of a flatbed truck as it jolted down a forest track.

Dragged from the vehicle and nudged down concrete steps to an unheated basement, gun at her back. Stink of mildew and rot.

They called it The Red Room.

Buckets of cold water. High-decibel Slipknot.

Endless hours.

The desolate, Arctic terrain of sleep deprivation.

Periodically propped in a chair, unhooded, dazzled by strobes.

‘Just give up your key word, and it will all be over.’

Stripped, beaten, compelled to remain in a stress position for hours. Sticking to name, rank and number until she finally heard herself blurt ‘flintlock’ and the suffering stopped.

‘How long did I last?’ she asked, as they draped a blanket round her shoulders and gave her water.

‘Thirty-eight hours, forty-nine minutes.’