Bolt Action (36 page)

On board PK412

T
he torch lights up what’s left of the cavity ahead . . . Tristie’s wedged sideways against the roof, frozen, naked and greased-up, and she’s made it beyond the first-class galley on the right side of the aircraft. The olive oil worked a treat. But now the fuselage cladding sucks at the clamminess of her skin, like tentacles . . . frosted breath is all she can see for a moment . . . wait, girl, and it will clear. Wait . . . she thinks of Captain Salahuddin and his Tussauds biro, the span from his thumb to the middle finger . . .

I would be astonished, absolutely amazed, if there was more than the length of this pen in crawl space . . .

Well, Captain, no need to be astonished. The dimensions of the Mount Everest that lies ahead is the height of a foam mattress and the width of a coffin. And pinching in tight from all sides.

She’s on her front, trying to worm
over
a cross-spar, while at the same time sliding
around
a stainless-steel box, an electrical bus of some sort. Body arched both backwards and to the side, a mermaid in mid-kick trying to squeeze around an S-bend. The smallest matter in all this is what’s beneath her. A half-dozen broken-ended shafts of cotter pins, which are piercing her skin, snagging her stomach in place.

Just don’t pull any of the wiring . . .

Four bundles of multicoloured wires snake ahead of her . . . her body feels spent, but in her brain there’s enough gas in the lighter to keep a low flame flickering. You’ve done it before, Tristie, rappelling, climbing walls, this is a piece of cake . . .

The wiring feeds into an access panel within the floor, a grey metal surround. Only a tennis racket’s length from her fingertip. Might as well be on the other side of the world. If only she could move . . . just that little bit . . .
Just don’t pull any of the wiring.

Yes, and so what, Captain, if I do break your bloody plane . . .

A surge of helplessness, her pulse hammering in her neck, and a sudden blood-rush darkness of mind. Her fingers coil and tighten around the wiring cables, as if she’s about to wring the life out of them . . .

The virus leaks past her every defence, insidiously, without fanfare. The great unravelling. Her sanity. All its carefully contrived normality creaks, splinters, falls away. Wedged tight, no way forward or back, for the first time it enters her mind that she will die . . .
watch and learn, this is how people go to pieces
. . . and the most intriguing headline will be ‘Naked Female Found In Pocket of Aircraft Fuselage’. Someone with an itch to write is bound to scratch
that
curious wrinkle, spouting endless theories.

. . .
Terrible forces fuse in her mind . . . the black holes of childhood engulf her. . .

. . . Social Services-docketed, tagged, abandoned and abused . . . a soul rotting from the inside out
. . .

And yet. And yet. Where does determination come from? The torchlight of determination sparks, explodes, takes over every fibre and particle of her existence . . .

Sympathetic detonation, they call it in the army . . . one anger detonating another . . . fast cook-off time, in terms of explosives . . .

Grappling. Hauling now on the electric cables, nudging forward, inch . . . by inch. Pain, the pain is nothing.

The first crack as a wire bundle shorts, and sparks arc and dance in front of her almost visionless eyes. She keeps pulling, mechanically, one hand over another amid a kaleidoscope of flashes, bright, skittering around like snowflakes . . . fingertips reaching . . . slowly, her life squeezing out of her in this aluminium vice . . .

‘Echo Whisky’

FA-18E Super Hornet

The Fighting 103rd, Jolly Rogers

Eight minutes to point of engagement . . .

O
n one level the pilot, call-signed Cletus, understands the momentous nature of what is happening, what he and his wingman are being asked to do. Not a witness to history, but history itself. No doubt, in time, he will dwell on the gravity of his orders.

‘
Echo Whisky, you are weapons free when combatant aircraft reaches . . .
’ and a long list of coordinates spells out a point of engagement just a short distance away. After this, it’s in his discretion when to initiate contact.

. . . But on another level, he’s glad this thing is coming to a climax. The tension. The exhaustion. Make it difficult to feel ‘removed’. Or alert even . . . Holding position five miles astern of the Boeing 777, checking, rechecking his systems and armaments, then re-rechecking. Listening to the same call go out from air traffic controllers on the international distress channel and their standard Gander frequency . . . ‘
Pakistan 412, request you acknowledge immediately . . . Pakistan 412, request . . .
’ That slow, measured Canadian accent. On and on, and on. Like the sleep-inducing midnight chimes of a grandfather clock.

Dammit. He’s feeling another crimp of that tension in the old bladder. Cletus has had to use the relief bag twice on this flight; threading your wanger twice through long underwear, a liner suit, an exposure suit, then a G-suit . . . too much.

The two naval pilots had experienced a supercharged dose of adrenalin when this thing kicked off, and they’d taken to the skies, afterburners engaged. But nothing bleeds away adrenalin more quickly than plugging into tedious routine, leaving the body chewed out, like stale gum, and the mind sagging. The longer this pattern of nothingness drags on, the more operational degradation will occur. Mental fatigue. And Cletus knows, pilots can make a terrible hash of the most simple decisions, even telling left from right, if they suddenly have to rush into action after a long period of watching displays, twiddling fingers. Which is why Cletus’s first reaction is delight, on hearing the Gander controller’s final sign-off.

‘
Pakistan 412. You have not acknowledged Gander’s repeated request for clarification of your intent. You will shortly be entering Canadian territorial airspace. The next transmission will be from a defensive unit of the North American Aerospace Defense Command . . .
’ The controller holds his mike open. A last thought. Now and in the future, there would be pilots across the Atlantic, radio hams, colleagues, supervisors, journalists, union reps, lawyers, academics, scrutinising this valedictory fare. It’d be up on YouTube in a flash.

‘
Pakistan 412 . . .This is Gander, wishing you . . . Godspeed.
’

No response.

Enough already. Cletus takes one last sweep of the cockpit array of flight systems, all liquid crystal, colour displays. Lingers for a moment over the display status of his Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missiles, especially the diagnostics for the on-board radar system. The heart of the AMRAAM’s capability. All showing green. This is a genuine fire-and-forget weapon . . .

He looks along both wings to the white-tipped, sleek, grey spears that hang there. Straining to be unleashed, top speed Mach 4.

. . . so smart, that they don’t ram themselves into the target and take the risk that some microcircuit gets whacked out of kilter and doesn’t detonate. Instead, an AMRAAM has a 22-kilo
hollow-charge, blast-effect warhead, which detonates above, behind or to the side of the target, whenever the missile’s proximity system judges it in lethal range. The warhead’s nickname, Slammer, comes from the almost two hundred rod-shaped projectiles that blast outwards, many times supersonic speed, slamming into, instantly shredding, anything in their path. Engines, control surfaces, wing roots, fuselage skin, personnel.

With his gloved finger, Cletus lightly
tap-taps
the shiny, glass-faced system one last time. Willing it not to flicker red . . . the AMRAAM is so smart the computer reads which side of the target the missile is approaching, and focuses the projectile blast in a giant plume, left or right, up or down, depending on target position. Optimising the destructive power.

He keys his radio mike. Time to take over.

‘Pakistan 412, course 210. Speed 490. Altitude 360 . . . this is call sign Echo Whisky, US Navy Super Hornet.’ He looks forward and to his left. Beyond the heads-up display is the Boeing 777. Cruising, wings level. About five hundred feet below. His wingman, Sneaker, is starboard-side, gives a clear thumbs-up, showing the white of the palm of his Nomex flight glove.

‘Your intentions are not clear at this time . . . You may be subject to joint US–Canada defensive measures for violation of NORAD airspace . . . request you reply, confirm your intentions immediately.’

Silence.

In the cockpit of PK412

T
he thirty-milligram capsules of temazepam, brand name Restoril, should have been enough for a medium-sized horse. Six of them, maroon-and-blue capsules. Knocked back with a bottle of water,
glug, glug
, immediately after he’d shuttered the cockpit door. But Zaafir has come to, lying on his back. Scratching like mad, every inch of his skin, dipped in hellfire. A not uncommon allergic reaction.

As he stares up at the roof of the cockpit, his mind is all over the place, hallucinating, disoriented, never clear or lucid. The familiar cries of Sami Yusuf.
Allah o Allah Hasbi Rabbi.
Mainly wondering whether – and this is the magical spell of benzodiazepines – this is heaven, or some staging post?

Confusing things even more is this mechanical voice, nibbling at his consciousness. ‘
Your intentions are not clear at this time . . .
’

Yes. Think clearly, he says to himself, trying to swim up through the mist of sedatives.
Is this heaven?
Well, what had been promised . . .?

The Martyr . . . He does not feel the pain of his wounds and He is forgiven for all his sins; He sees his seat in Paradise; He is saved from the torment of the grave; He is saved from the great horror of Judgement Day; He marries ‘the black-eyed’; He vouches for seventy of his family members; He gains the crown of honour, the precious stone of which is better than this entire world and everything in it.

Resigned gloom descends upon the young Pakistani.

Scratching furiously, arms, legs, knuckles, back of knees, Zaafir takes a deep breath. Resigned. Not heaven. But maybe a ledge on the pathway to Paradise . . .?

In his drugged, confused state, casting around for positive omens, he’s intrigued by a tapping sound from above.
Kertink-kertink-kertink
. Metal on metal. Insistent. From above.
Perhaps
. . . and his mood lifts
. . . an angel calling for me?

He tries to focus his wandering vision on the ceiling, but it slides alarmingly this way and that. He places his fingers either side of his eyes, tightens the skin. Be still, he pleads, and finally earns a semblance of stability.

The roof slopes at an angle towards the flight deck. Above him rows and rows of black dots, wandering in geometric patterns like ants. From a far corner of his mind, the word circuit-breaker comes. Circuit-breaker, yes. But that effort alone makes him nauseous, ready to swoon again . . .

‘. . .
confirm your intentions immediately.
’

. . . until he remembers Mohamed Atta, ringleader of the 9/11 hijackings, his final words of encouragement, ‘The virgins are calling you.’

Kertink-kertink-kertink
.

How reassuring. Those virgins are calling . . .
kertink-kertinkkertink
. Zaafir notices the D-ring handle in the ceiling, the edges of the access panel barely noticeable in the upholstered roof of the cockpit. A blind door.

D-ring . . . Opening . . . Paradise . . . Virgins. Sweet. A perfect row of dominoes waiting to tumble.

It takes Zaafir a minute to stand, for the walls to stop bending away from him. There’s a black, box-like pilot’s case in the corner, perfect to stand on.
Stop your swaying, hold it
, and then he is ready. His time has come.

Paradise awaits.

In Echo Whisky Cletus feels a tightness in his scalp, and that stinging in his bladder. After this it gets serious . . . one last sweep of the system displays. AMRAAMs looking perfect.

‘Pakistan 412, course 210. Speed 490. Altitude 360 . . . Echo Whisky, US Navy Super Hornet. You have now entered territorial airspace of the North American Aerospace Defense Command. This is your final warning. You will be subject to joint US–Canada defensive interdiction . . . request you reply, confirm your intentions immediately. Repeat. This is your final warning.’

This little squeak of light from PK412’s cockpit opens in front of Tristie. Like a baby trapdoor, hinged on the far side, it makes a
whuup
sound as it pops up. Then two black, beady eyes glare up. At her. Through her. Right past her.

A big frown breaks over the staring face.

Whuup.
The panel closes. Not so fast. She’s jammed the tips of her fingers under the rim, and the lid snaps shut on top of them. His strength against her fingers.

From deep inside, from the very marrow of her existence, comes a surge of rage, hatred and pure madness. ‘No chance. Not today. Don’t mess with me now.’ Not a scream, but a roar. ‘I AM NOT READY TO DIE.’ Say it again . . . Full throated, straining lungs, bursting throat. A noise that shakes and kicks and never lets go . . .

Next thing she knows, the panel is open, abandoned . . . fingers numb, sensory system far past registering such mundane things.

She tumbles through the tiny aperture. Freefalling from seven feet. Naked, straight down. Catching the top of her shoulder as she crashes on the jump seat, snapping her collarbone, just tucking her head in, before impact with the floor. Upside down, wiped out. Don’t try this at home.

Zaafir’s brain has shut down, leaving him just . . . shocked. Catatonic. Only one mental cue card is left.
What is happening here?

He backs towards the cockpit door. Unsure of his facts, unstable in his wooziness. Scratching furiously at the webs of
skin between his fingers. His hopes still clutching to the faint possibility this creature is some sort of herald . . .

The temazepam speaks: but a naked woman cannot be a chaste woman. And she did not look at you with downcast eyes . . .

The woman staggers to her feet. Wild eyed. Clutching her useless right arm. Open flesh wounds. Blood streaking down her body. Naked. Her breasts . . . oh my, those breasts. Zaafir, even without a head galloping with sedatives, struggles with breasts in general . . . those breasts in particular.

Oh my . . . he could almost reach out and touch.

The woman advances, stalks towards him, a look of pure hatred engulfing her features. Her functioning arm cups her left breast, bounces it towards the hijacker . . . taunting him. You want some?

Oh my, those lovely, full, bouncing breasts . . .
Allah Akhbar.

This, the final significant thought that passes through his head. He dies, knowing a little of what Paradise might look like. The woman named Tristesse, sad product of a meaningless one-night stand, puts every last atom of effort into a kick between Zaafir’s legs that drops him to his knees like a wretched supplicant.

Oooooooh
. Zaafir’s voice box gets a final workout, up several octaves.

His body teeters forward as she slams her knee up into his nose; a coming together of hard matter travelling fast, and soft mush doing not a great deal. It produces an ejaculation of blood and trauma to the brain from which he never recovers. The cerebral cortex loose inside his skull, like dice in a cup.

She stands over him . . . waits. Tries to bring the various pieces of herself back together.

The door . . . open the door
. The voice comes from the other side.
Tristie . . . Open the door.

The shock . . . shock is setting in. Pale and shaking. Cold and confused. Tristie looks around. Her mind blanking, some kind of memory lapse . . .

From the far side of the door, Salahuddin screeches.
Two point five amps. Find the circuit-breaker
. Pounding on the door.

The Sami Yusuf recording wailing . . .
Allah o Allah Hasbi Rabbi.

Tristie, lost in dissociative amnesia. Glass cockpit, a thousand shades of colour, dials and buttons, flashing lights, shimmering in mesmerising, paralysing detail.

Two point five amps . . .

‘Control, Echo Whisky.’

‘
Echo Whisky, go ahead.
’

‘Control, can you confirm . . .’ Cletus pauses. He looks to his eleven o’clock at the PIA jet, cruising along like any other jetliner. He thinks, my question should be,
You really sure you want me to do this?
‘Control, can you confirm this mission is weapons free at this time.’

‘
Echo Whisky stand by.
’

Someone rings to check with someone else, who’s probably got to buzz through to someone a level higher. Possibly the president himself. Perhaps because he needs more time himself, perhaps because he knows the form-filling involved in something simple like a fender-bender, Cletus hopes this final confirmation will take a while.

In fact, it takes less than ten seconds.

‘
Echo Whisky, Control. Confirm, you are weapons free. Interdiction now required.
’

Tristie’s feeling particularly fragile and put upon, her body sliding down the wrong side of a huge high. ‘Don’t shout at me . . .’ she hears herself mumble, her fingers not quite under control, but enough to pull the suction cup off the cockpit phone. She throws down the MP3 player with
Sami Yusuf Sings the Classics
, whatever that racket is.

She’s seriously running on remote control now. With her functioning left arm, she feels for a pulse, but the two captains are stone dead. A spray of orange phlegm across the windscreen.

Banging on the door. Everybody shouting. Circuit-breaker. Two point five amps.

OK. Here we go. She looks up at the two overhead maintenance panels. Feels a tremble of dizziness as her neck straightens . . . all those circuit-breakers. Twenty-fives. Sevens, fives, a fifteen, a ten, even a half-amp. Here we go . . . two and a half amps. She chooses the one badged WARN SPKR, right next to STICK SHAKER, pokes it in and, obligingly, the capsule pops out. Like a Pez dispenser.

‘It will be a line above . . .’ Salahuddin positively squeaking with anxiety.

‘Got it . . .’ And she feeds it into the slot. DOOR.

Whiffler’s voice. ‘OK, OK. Power’s back on.’

She imagines Salahuddin flagging him to shut up. ‘Quickly now. Go to the door.’

Easy for you to say. She tugs on Zaafir’s body with one arm, flopping it away from the door. A small thought worries at her. About the radio, about telling someone . . . but in the pain and fuzziness of her brain, it doesn’t happen.

Too much urgency on the other side of the Door. Heavy hands pounding. The Door.

‘You must reset the door . . .’ The Captain’s muffled voice.
Quiet, damn you, quiet
, she can hear him shouting.

‘How do I do that?’

‘Get a biro. Anything with a sharp tip.’ Pause. ‘Check the pilots.’ Pilots. Oh yeah. Corpse in the left-hand seat . . . she rolls him back enough to snake her left hand into his breast pocket, pickpocketing a dead man. ID card. Name card holder. She can feel his matted chest hair. Creepy . . . Ooop. Yes. Got it.

And back to the door. Stabbing the white reset button, blanking the previous code from its memory. ‘Punch in a code, any code . . . one – one – one – one.’

When the LED screen is full of ones, she pauses for a moment, her weight slumped against the door. Bit of housekeeping to be done . . .

‘Listen, Salahuddin, I need you to stand back from the door. Get behind my men.’

‘
Stand back?
Are you mad?’

‘Trust me, with three dead bodies it’s like a morgue in here. One of them’s sitting in the chair you need, looking very heavy and permanent . . . Button, Whiffler. Listen. I don’t care who does what, but you two go in first. Think it through between yourselves. Head straight for the chair on the left. I’ve unhooked the pilot’s straps. Straight body lift, tug him up and back, drop him to the rear . . . then let Salahuddin through.’

Button’s voice. ‘He’s stood behind us, Tristie, nodding his head. Let’s get it on.’

‘One other thing, boys, I don’t want you to fall over yourselves here . . .’ She holds down the reset and entry buttons. Five seconds. The new code flashes. Flashes. Flashes. Then blank. New door code ‘. . . I’ve got no clothes on. This is not for your benefit. Remember. Or there will be consequences.’ Moments later the door bangs open. Button and Whiffler burst through. Like Formula One mechanics working a pit stop – there’s a blur of movement, sharp grunts, explosive power, and the whole thing is over. One empty left-hand seat. No distraction.

Salahuddin’s turn. He hesitates for a moment, framed in the doorway, struggling to take in the sacrilege. Eyes widening. Bodies, vomit on the windscreen, wisps of burning smoke curl downwards from the access panel.

Button has moved in front of Tristie, shielding her nakedness. ‘Captain . . .’ She reaches her arm out, touches Salahuddin’s shoulder, the pain almost taking her breath away. ‘Captain, we really need a hero, round about now . . .’

But already, they’ve taken too long.

On board Cletus’s Super Hornet, a series of green check lights mean the AMRAAM has a lock on the Boeing 777, drawing its guidance from the Hornet’s own radar image. Location, direction and speed. From this, the missile plots an interception track
until its own radar takes over and achieves autonomous self-guidance.

So. This is it.

Cletus pushes lightly against the tension. Feels the resistance. Holds. Pause. Then pushes through. There’s the barest tremble through the wing frame as the missile’s actuation system fires up, a great gout of flame shooting from the rear. Then the 350-pound warhead streaks away . . . making a perfect track towards,
Lord have mercy on their souls
, a civilian airliner.

Cletus keys his mike, heart heavy. ‘Fox Three.’ His controllers would understand the brevity code. The AMRAAM is on its way.

He has to drag his gaze back to his display systems. Concentrate. Wait for the computer hand-off. One panel goes from green to black, another from red to green. Target acquired. The missile is now self-homing. Touching the dizzy pulse of Mach 4.

Cletus calls in again, suddenly weary. ‘Pitbull.’ They’d all be holding their breath now . . . various control and situation rooms, waiting for his visual confirmation of the kill. Coming soon . . .

Crackle of static, then a shrill voice. ‘
Pakistan 412 declaring an emergency . . . hijack attempt has been ended.
’