Combustion (27 page)

He drags the chopper hard left, aims it at the building’s ground floor entrance. It’s a narrow archway.

Judd sees it and braces himself. ‘You sure that’s wide enough?’

‘Not really!’

‘I don’t think we’re going to make it!’

‘Neither do I!’

The Loach flies through the entrance -

Zzzrt!
The tips of the rotor blades touch the sides - and the Loach enters the cavernous foyer intact.

Corey grins his crooked grin. ‘No wuckers.’

Lola furiously waves at a dumbfounded group of office workers who stand and stare as the chopper thumps towards them. ‘Out of the way, ladies!’ They scurry clear.

Smash.
Corey swings the Loach around as the stream of cement and glass slams into the road outside. It gets heavier and louder - then stops abruptly.

Judd claps Corey on the shoulder. ‘Good call.’

A deep thump and a high-pitched whine reverberate within the foyer.

Judd listens. ‘The Air-Crane.’

They wait.

It gets louder.

Lola points to the entrance. ‘There.’ The shadow of the giant chopper drifts across the rubble outside. She swallows hard. ‘It’s searching for us.’

Corey nods. ‘I won’t be able to outrun a missile in here.’

The Air-Crane’s shadow eases to a stop.

They hold their breath.

~ * ~

From the cockpit of the hovering Tyrannosaur, Bunsen surveys the giant mounds of rubble and wreckage on the road below. He’s seen no sign of the yellow Loach since the missile hit the building.

Enrico turns to him. ‘What’s the call? Do we keep looking?’

Bunsen studies the rubble for a long moment - then shakes his head. ‘No. It’s under there. Let’s put this to bed.’

Enrico nods and pushes the Tyrannosaur onwards. It gains altitude quickly.

Seeing the yellow chopper airborne answered one question for Bunsen. They had used the counteragent, which raised two more questions: did they have more than one canister and had they given it to the authorities? Bunsen will need to investigate this when Phase Three is complete, though he assumes that what remained of the counteragent is buried under that rubble with Judd Bell and the chopper.

~ * ~

Judd, Corey and Lola watch the Tyrannosaur’s shadow slide across the rubble and disappear. They breathe out as one, their relief golden.

Judd leans forward. ‘We need to follow it.’

‘Say what?’ Corey turns to him, stunned. ‘Why?’

‘They’re going to detonate a bomb.’

Corey’s both confused and unhappy. ‘There’s a
bomb?’

Judd nods. ‘A big one, it’s hanging under the Air-Crane’s fuselage - you didn’t see it?’

‘I was too busy saving your arse, mate.’

‘And I really appreciate that. Thank you.’

‘Any time. Do you know where they’re taking —’ Corey sighs. ‘— this bomb?’

Judd shakes his head. ‘That’s why we need to follow it.’

‘Before we can do that we need to find a way out of here.’ Lola points to the archway where they entered the foyer. It is now blocked with debris and there is no other spot large enough for the chopper to exit.

Corey scans the foyer and his eyes land on something to the far left. He glances at Judd. ‘You still have Ponytail’s pistol?’

Judd draws it from his belt line. ‘May I ask why you need it?’

‘Got an idea.’ Corey holds out a hand. Judd passes it over.

Corey pivots the Loach to the left. Office workers mill about everywhere, gawk at the thundering chopper that hovers in the middle of their foyer. The crowd blocks the way and there’s no room to go over them because of the long, oval-shaped light fixtures that hang from the ceiling.

‘Spike! Plough the road.’

The dog barks once, leaps out the pilot’s side door and lands on the marble floor two metres below. His paws scrabble for traction on the floor then he finds grip and bounds into the crowd, barking, growling and nipping at ankles. Startled, people hop and jump out of the way - and the crowd parts like the Red Sea.

Corey works the controls and the Loach’s nose tips down as it thumps along the freshly cleared path - towards a giant window. It approaches fast.

Lola sees it coming, winces. ‘Oh, good Lord.’

And so does Judd. ‘Christ.’

Corey points the pistol out the pilot’s door. ‘I know today’s been pretty full on —’

Bam, bam, bam. Click.
Three bullets thud into the window. The glass hangs in place for an impossibly long moment, then collapses in a cascade of sparkling fragments. The Loach soars through the window’s frame and into the courtyard outside.

‘— but there’s no reason we can’t have some fun.’ Corey grins and passes the pistol back to Judd. ‘Sorry, it’s out of ammo.’

Corey dips the chopper low and Spike bounds towards the open passenger door, leaps high and lands beside Lola. ‘Oh!’ Surprised but delighted, she pats the dog. ‘You’re a good boy.’

‘Back seat.’ Spike jumps into the back as Corey pulls on the controls and the Loach ascends.

Judd grabs the brass telescope from the leather pouch on the side of the pilot’s seat and extends it. It’s weighty and a full thirty-eight inches long. ‘This is much nicer than the one you had in Australia.’ He pans it across the cityscape, searches for the Air-Crane. ‘Where the hell are you?’

~ * ~

Lola glances at Corey. He smiles at her politely. Again. She realises she wants more than that from him. She knows it’s a strange thing to be thinking about right now, with everything that’s going on, but there you go - the heart wants what the heart wants. The irony is she’s been searching for a
man
rather than a
boy,
but didn’t realise this one had been staring her in the face the whole time.

Gee, she really screwed this up.

So how does she fix it? If she comes right out and says she made a mistake, that she likes him and Scott is toast, will she come across like some flighty schoolgirl who can’t make up her mind, or worse, changes it on a whim? Of course she will, and that’s not the kind of person you take seriously, or trust with your heart.

Gee, she
really
screwed this up.

~ * ~

‘I see it!’ Eye pressed to the brass telescope, Judd focuses on the Air-Crane in the distance. ‘To the far right, three o’clock, about - five clicks away.’

Corey scans the area, takes in a black dot slicing through the purple-grey smoke haze. ‘Righto. Got it.’

‘Can you catch it?’

‘This thing isn’t exactly a speed demon but I can try. I’ll stay low. Don’t want them to see us and fire any more of those missiles.’

Corey drops the Loach low, barely fifty metres off the ground, guns the turbine and sets a course for the Air-Crane. They fly on for a moment, then he realises something. ‘Sorry! Where are my manners. Lola, Judd, Judd, Lola.’

They exchange nods and hellos and shake hands, then Corey turns to Judd. ‘So, what were those guys doing at the high school?’

The astronaut shakes his head. ‘Not sure exactly, but it had something to do with the oil well.’

~ * ~

37

The Southwest 737 glides silently across the wild blue yonder.

Severson turns to Rhonda. ‘We should see LA any minute now.’

‘Thanks.’ Rhonda scans the Boeing’s controls. This plane glides so much better than a shuttle. The spacecraft’s glide ratio is 1:1, which means for every one foot the shuttle flies forward it also drops one foot. The 737 is currently providing her with a glide ratio of 12:1, twelve feet forward to every one foot down. To lighten the jet’s weight and extend that glide range further, she read the relevant section in the flight manual on the pilot’s iPad and worked out how to dump fuel from its wing tanks. She ditched three quarters of the av-gas twenty minutes ago.

The jet is currently at 28,000 feet so they have a hundred kilometres of range. Since Los Angeles is only seventy kilometres away they will reach their destination with altitude to spare. The autopilot is set to direct them to the airport, and then to the runway, where Rhonda will land the unpowered jet just as she has landed the unpowered shuttle two times for real and over five hundred times in the simulator.

Rhonda feels like she has everything under control. She managed to deal with the cabin’s depressurisation, work out how to maintain an optimum glide speed, dump the excess fuel, restart the remaining engine if need be, even use reverse thrust for landing. There’s only one problem. They can’t raise anyone on the radio, air traffic control included. Severson’s been trying ever since they took charge of the aircraft, but they’ve heard nothing but static. She hopes the turbofan’s explosion didn’t affect the airliner’s communication systems. They’re going to need priority to land and she’d really like the tower at LAX to know the situation before they arrive at the airport unannounced.

The 737 drops through a cloud bank and they see Los Angeles for the first time.

Rhonda catches her breath. ‘What the hell?’

Even from seventy kilometres out, the city looks like a war zone,
worse
than a war zone. Thousands of fires dot the horizon as smoke pyres feed a strange purple-tinged smog cloud that hovers above the city like a giant alien spacecraft.

Severson’s voice is a stunned whisper. ‘Guess that’s why we can’t raise anyone on the radio.’

Rhonda’s first thought is for Judd. Fear rises in her chest. He’s been there for
hours.
Is he okay?
Christalmighty.
She hasn’t told him she loves him in almost a year. She thought it showed weakness, probably because that’s what her father always said -

Stop it.
Focus on the job at hand. ‘Try the emergency frequency again.’

Severson changes the radio channel, tunes in the emergency frequency. Through their headsets they hear the distant echo of a woman’s voice:

‘— affecting the greater Los Angeles area. The public are strongly advised to stay indoors. Do not operate combustion engines. If there is a combustion engine in operation it must be shut off immediately. If the exhaust from the combustion engine is purple in colour vacate the area immediately. All airports are closed and the airspace above the city is a no-fly zone until further notice. All aircraft are to proceed to their alternate airports. This message is part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency Alert System and will be updated half-hourly. There is an unspecified threat —’

Severson turns to Rhonda. ‘Well, fuck-a-doodle-do.’

She nods in agreement. ‘We saw the purple exhaust. That’s why the starboard turbofan exploded. The pilots shut down the port engine before it blew.’

Rhonda no longer feels like she has everything under control. The FEMA message told her the one thing she didn’t want to hear: that all airports are closed due, she could only guess, to problems similar to the one this jet experienced. As for proceeding to their alternative airport, which the pilot’s iPad told her was San Diego, well, they wouldn’t make it a quarter of the way there without engine power. It was LA or bust, no-fly zone or not.

She takes a deep breath, can feel her heart rate increase. This is how she feels in the Orion simulator when the techs throw the kitchen sink at her. This is when she needs to think on her feet to solve the problem, when time is critical and she can’t go by the book. Trouble is she loves the book, she’s done everything by the book her whole life and it has always worked out well for her. But now she must throw the book away and - literally - wing it. For a moment she wonders if she can pass the responsibility to Severson, let him land this jet, but as soon as she thinks it she realises it’s crazy. Even if he’d agree, he’s not half the pilot she is.

Severson turns to her. ‘We need to think outside the box.’

She nods. ‘It’s not my - strong suit.’ Admitting even that, especially to the person she respects
least
at NASA, a person who would happily trade personal information to benefit his own career, is one of the hardest things she’s ever done.

‘There are seventy people on this plane that need it to be.’

‘I don’t know if I can.’ Her voice is small.

‘You can. Improvise.’

‘I’m landing a jet, not doing stand-up. There’s no room for improv.’

‘But there is. A little. And your job is to find it.’ He smiles. ‘I’ve been seat-of-the-pantsing-it-and-making-it-up-as-I-go-alonging-it my whole life. You just need to - loosen up a little. I can help.’

She looks at him, breathes out to steady her nerves, then nods. ‘Okay. So we rule out both LAX and Santa Monica airports. That means we need to find something very flat, long and straight —’

‘And close. Let’s have a look.’ He picks up the pilot’s iPad, swipes it open and consults the map of Southern California.

She takes another breath and steels herself. The irony is, as lazy and hopeless as Severson was during their trip to Wisconsin, he just might be the best person to be stuck in this plane with.

Or then again maybe not.