A Time to Die (15 page)

In a flash the corporal drew his sidearm and swung it cross-body, connecting with the side of the officer’s head. The man let go of the sergeant and rolled to the rear of the transport, coming up on hands and knees, looking right at Kathy.

“Oh shit,” she said, and backpedaled. Blood and meat dripping from his lips, he screeched an inhuman sound and jumped at her. Kathy just managed to cut sideways so all his outstretched arms got was her shirt sleeve. But he got it in an iron grip. Kathy tried to pull away, almost jerking the insane officer off his feet despite his grip. Her pull turned into a spin as she desperately tried to keep him at arm’s length, the whole thing turning into a macabre ballet of death. The officer pulled at her sleeve, his jaws snapping, his hunger insatiable. Kathy screamed and her shirt tore.

The officer stumbled, looked at the half of her torn shirt in his bloody hand then threw it aside as he regained his balance and relocated her. Released from the centrifugal force of their spin, Kathy fetched up against the side of the truck, hard. The impact knocked the breath out of her and her legs collapsed. The officer came around, spotted her and made a primal snarl and he prepared to leap.

A series of thunderclaps behind her assailed Kathy’s head with enough concussive force to make her scream out and put her hands to her ears. The upper part of the man’s torso exploded with in a shower of blood and gore. What was left hit the gas stations concrete pad with a wet thud.

Several .50 caliber Browning casings clattered off the back of the truck and landed next to Kathy who was standing there, hands still over her ears and shaking almost uncontrollably. One of the rounds had missed the officer and passed through a gas pump, ricocheted off the blacktop, and punched a whole clean through the convenience store. The upper third of the officer’s chest and head lay twitching less than a foot from her feet. She shook once, leaned over, and puked all over the truck tire.

“You okay, ma’am?” asked the corporal when he came around the back of the truck. He took no real notice of the slaughtered officer who’d been trying to kill them only moments before.

“Yeah,” she said, her ears ringing, and wiped her mouth on her arm. She noticed that half her shirt was gone, exposing one breast, flecks of blood covering its curved shape. She didn’t really care.

The soldier eyed her breast for a moment, his expression somewhere between clinical and indifferent. Then he spoke “I think we have some shirts,” he offered.

“I got this,” she said and got unsteadily to her feet. The back of her head hurt too where it had struck the truck. She walked a little stiffly over to her ATV. Taking off the shredded shirt she stood nearly naked and used it to wipe blood from her breasts and stomach as the corporal watched. He didn’t appear interested in the way a man might have been in watching an attractive half naked woman in any other situation. He only seemed to be observing. With as much of the gore cleaned off as possible, she tossed the shirt into the dirt and fished out a clean one from her pack.

“Maybe you ought to come with us,” the gunner said. He was back in his seat where he’d killed the officer, calmly applying a pressure bandage to his profusely bleeding forearm.

Kathy remembered the scene from Dante that awaited her in the back of the truck. How many other injured were there back there? Where they potentially insane like that officer? In her mind there was no doubt that what she’d just seen was connected with the recordings she’d made in Mexico only days ago. “I don’t think so,” she said. Without thinking about how the soldiers might react she retrieved her .38 Smith & Wesson and stuck it in her waistband within easy reach. “I think I’ll stick it out alone.”

The gunner watched her tuck the gun with a nod. “As you wish. Mount up, Corporal.”

“But sir?”

“You heard the woman,” he said and made a sweeping gesture with one hand. On the road another pair of trucks were pulling up. One had so many wounded some were riding the running boards. She heard screaming from the back of another.

The big truck roared to life and pulled out, the other truck pulling right in behind it. A soldier jumped down and headed towards the store. Kathy noticed that the gas pump that had been hit was smoldering and decided it was time to go.

* * *

“Fucking engineers,” Andrew Tobin growled as he entered another command into the slide-out computer screen. Flying the plane was like trying to hack the Pentagon computer networks. “We’re supposed to be pilots, not computer programmers!”

The glass cockpit environment was configurable in more ways than he’d thought possible. Fighters were straightforward in their layout. Climb out of a 1970s F-14 Tomcat and into an F-22 and you’d find a lot of similar stuff in the same places. The A-380 was simply stunning in its sheer complexity of systems. He was frankly amazed it didn’t fly with a flight engineer, like planes used to back in the day. The fact was that it pulled that feat off with a large amount of computer automation. Now, with that automation mostly out, he was feeling increasingly screwed.

He looked back to the manual sitting across his knee and tried to ignore the pounding on the door. “Fuel Low,” an audible warning piped up. He stabbed the override without thinking, found a code on the page and keyed it in. The problem he was having was that many of the configurable touch screens were trashed. When the pilot got his throat ripped out, it had sprayed blood all over the place. More than half the displays were screwed, either on the blink from the bloodbath or broken in the struggle. The code went in, and all the screens went blank, even the ones that were still working.

“Well, that’s not good.” However, on a computer screen, the only one still working, was a series of icons with dropdowns. He’d managed to access the maintenance configuration screen and could now assign any data to any screen. “Yes!” he said and immediately began assigning critical info to his three working panels.

Navigation with altitude and course as well as radar came up, the radar flashing to tell him this was the backup (main radar was out). Next screen got consumables and power management. The final screen his meatball (artificial horizon), and flight surface feedback.

They were doing 650 knots at flight level 250, 25,000 feet. “Why the hell are we that low?” he wondered. Normally he’d instantly begin climbing out of the storm. One glance at the fuel gauge killed that idea. He tapped the icon and then the ‘Endurance’ option that appeared. “24 minutes” flashed in response, shaded a bright red. Andrew stared at it for a moment until it changed to 23. “Jesus Christ.”

Before he even looked at Nav he reached to the autopilot controls, luckily still on their own little working panel, and input instructions. He decreased speed from cruise to minimum to maintain altitude. The power management system showed all four turbines spool down and the elevators changed angle to compensate, angling the huge aircraft’s nose up slightly. The endurance display jumped to 36. That would buy him some time, and that was everything. “As long as you’re flying, you’re living,” his first flight instructor had told him years ago.

Nav was next. It took some fiddling to get the malfunctioning system to work. It kept trying to act with their route interactively and was having trouble, as evidenced by the failure of the automated flight path. According to the ETA display they should have landed a half an hour ago. When he eventually got a basic map locator it made him hiss in frustration. They were over central Mexico! He glanced out the window, half expecting to see a Mexican F-15 on his wing. He saw only clouds and lightning.

The radio was on its own panel as well, and was redundant. He flipped to a regional ATC channel by memory and pressed the Trans button on the stick. “This is Air Saudi Flight 66 Heavy over Mexican air space, and I am declaring an emergency. Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is Air Saudi Flight 66, I say again, mayday, mayday, mayday.” Andrew released the button and waited. Nothing. He repeated the call. “I add, this flight was destined for Houston. We have experienced…” what the fuck could he say? “We’ve experienced a sickness on board. The captain and flight crew are disabled. We have lost autopilot and have strayed off course. I have less than thirty minutes of fuel on board and need directions for an emergency landing, soonest! Mayday, mayday, mayday!”

“Air Saudi 66,” another voice spoke, “this is Latin Air 4566.”

Andrew let his head fall forward for a moment and heaved a sigh. At least someone had responded, though not ATC. “Go ahead, Latin 4566.”

“We are not getting a response from ATC either. There are more than forty flights in your vicinity that are seeking direction as well. Did you say your fuel is critical?”

“That’s correct,” he replied. The plane leveled off and the engines started to spin up and the endurance fell. He dialed down the speed on the autopilot until the alarm sounded and wouldn’t let him go any lower. They’d slowed to under 350 knots.

“Are you a 767 or something similar? I show you not far from Torreon.”

Andrew fished around in the pilot’s seat pouch, found the pilot’s iPad and powered it up. Luckily the man hadn’t password protected it. Most of the planets airport approach maps and runway details were there. He quickly found Torreon. It was Francisco Sarabia International Airport, and it was small. “I’m in an A380, Air Latin.”

“Roger that,” the other pilot in a definitive tone, and a long silence followed. Andrew paged around and found Mexico City International. He used the iPad’s navigational aid, it was more reliable than the plane’s just now. Over 250 miles. He would be lucky to make 100 before he was a dead stick.

“Can you make Mexico City?” asked the Air Latin pilot.

“Negative,” Andrew replied. He was finally leaving the storm behind, but a new fear was beginning to take hold. He could see a bit of the land below him through clouds. It was rocky and bleak. The airport in Torreon was listed at 1,700 meters. The book said that for a normal landing he’d need 1,900 meters. Now he’d be light on fuel, so maybe he could trim a hundred meters. But he’d never landed a commercial jet, and this pig was the biggest of them all. And who knew what kind of damage that storm had done?

“Air Saudi 66,” a new female voice chimed in and for a moment his heart faced. Was ATC back?

“Air Saudi 66, go ahead!”

“This is Air Mexico 1244,” the voice came back and he crashed again. “Can you make Monterrey?”

Monterrey, he thought, and punched it up on the iPad. Runway 16/34 was only 1,600 meters, but 11/29 was 1,800 meters! Trying not to get too excited, he punched in the navigation information. It was about eighty miles. He didn’t need a second to think about it and instantly put the plane into a bank for a course of 225 on a bearing for Monterrey.

“Air Mexico, thanks,” he said, “I think you just saved our lives.”

“The wind is usually from the south this time of year,” the female pilot warned him, “and you’ll have to use 11/29 which is east/west, but it’s better than a highway.”

“For sure, Air Mexico. I don’t think they make highways big enough for this thing.”

“God speed,” Air Latin offered. A few others jumped in with advice on approach and well wishes. Two even turned to follow him, a 747 out of Brisbane and an A320 that had come up from Rio.  None of them were as fuel critical as he was, but they were short on options as well.

When you were almost out of fuel, eighty miles seemed like a trip to the Moon. Especially as the low fuel alarm was going off every minute on the instrument panel of the five hundred and sixty ton airplane you really didn’t know how to fly. He completed the turn using the autopilot then set it for a quick descent. Eighty miles was actually less distance than he should have used to descend this aircraft for 25,000 feet. However, since he’d slowed to only 315 knots, it wouldn’t be that difficult.

He knew he was within twenty-five miles and was using the barely functioning radar navigational system to try and locate the Monterrey airport beacon. It wasn’t there. He tried their published ATC frequency, and just like earlier, got nothing. The storm was behind him now and the early morning sky, while cloudy, below 10,000, was clear where he was. He’d been on the descent approach vector for several minutes, dropping below 3,000 feet. Ahead and to the north was a low mountain and as he passed he got his first look at the resort city of Monterrey. “Oh fuck me,” he said.

The city was built on and around a series of low hills. Housing areas were clustered around shopping districts, historic districts, and a few industrial zones. The smoke from ten thousand fires spiraled into the sky over the devastated city. The center of the city, once a series of rather modern high rise buildings built around turn of the century structures was a crater a half mile across. There was only one possibility. Someone had nuked Monterrey. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he cursed and grabbed the dead pilot’s iPad again.

Landing maps that pilots carried held relatively limited information. Basically they included the flight approach patterns, runways, and taxiway layouts of an airport. There were some details on the surrounding terrain, mostly to warn a pilot of hills, high radio towers or buildings. He knew he had to stay above 1,000 feet to clear the hills he’d just gone over and their radio towers. The towers were no longer a concern. All that remained were charred stumps.

Monterrey airport was not very close to the downtown area, but how close? It was to the southeast of the charred remains of the city center. He looked at the airport runway, now less than twenty miles away, and then towards the ruins. “Maybe eight miles,” he guessed. It was difficult to see past the city. Smoke was obscuring his vision.