Silent Enemy (19 page)
Authors: Tom Young
And the noise just made it worse. The god-awful howl of transonic wind right up against metal. Like the scream of a tornado about to blow apart a car, with the moment stopped and the sound sustained.
Still on his hands and knees, Parson balanced on the catwalk and cradled his oxygen bottle and flashlight. Then he stood carefully, fearful of falling and losing his mask. He knew if that happened, he’d have only minutes to find it in the dark before he passed out.
On his feet now, the vibration of the torque deck transmitted itself up through his boots. As a career flier, he knew well the stresses placed on an airplane in flight. But to feel them with human senses brought a whole new perspective. It reminded him of when he had once put on a protective glove and touched a live wire, felt the pulse and surge. It gave him frightening comprehension of a force he had understood only academically.
Parson took small steps as he made his way aft. At the ladder leading up through the vertical stabilizer, he shone his light on another warning placard: TORQUE DECK SECTION. USE CAUTION WHEN WORKING OR TRAVERSING THIS AREA. So the designers of the C-5 considered it dangerous to be screwing around back here, he thought, and that was with the airplane sitting stock-still in a hangar. What would they think of all this?
A shaft of light streamed from the negative pressure valves. The sight comforted Parson. That meant Gold was holding open one of the valves, watching him, but she was staying out of the tail like he’d told her. Dunne had confessed that Gold had rescued him when he lost consciousness. Parson knew he had to hurry up and finish the job or she’d have to rescue him, too. You could suck the oxygen out of these MA-1 bottles faster than you’d expect.
He hung the oxygen bottle from his shoulder and placed the flashlight in a thigh pocket, still switched on. Then he mounted the ladder and climbed through the cramped space. The ladder twisted and buckled with the movement of the aircraft, as if it were trying to shake him off. About ten rungs up, Parson reached the compartment that held the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, twin orange boxes.
He aimed his light at the recorders—and there it was, right between them. A green duffel bag, stuffed full with God only knew what. Wiring visible at the open end. Two prominent black wires leading from something—maybe a kind of sensor—taped to the outside of the bag. A cardboard box behind it, with no visible wires. More boxes and bags in the recesses of the tail section. What the hell have Dunne and I breathed in back here? Parson wondered.
It became harder to inhale through the mask. Better hurry, he thought. The resistance meant the oxygen was running out. He would have liked to carry a spare bottle, but even one was cumbersome enough.
Holding on to the ladder by the crook of his right arm, Parson placed the flashlight back in one pocket and withdrew the camera from another. With fingers numbed by cold, he fumbled to turn on the camera. He almost dropped it into sheet metal crevices below him, where it would have been irretrievable. When he finally got it powered up, he snapped a photo of the bomb. The flash hurt his eyes, but he took several more shots. It made him think of muzzle flashes in the night. Then he eased back down the ladder.
As he moved, he thought about the placement of the bomb. It couldn’t be much worse. If it exploded where it was, it would almost certainly rip the tail off. He wondered if it would destroy the recorders, too. They were designed to withstand a crash, but what about a bomb right next to them? Not that they would do Parson and his crew and passengers any good. He just hoped the underwater acoustic beacon, mounted on the back of the voice recorder, would still work. It was designed to activate when it hit the water. Then it would send out signals for thirty days so search ships could find the wreckage. At least that way the families might get some closure, knowing what happened and where.
Back down on the catwalk, Parson tried to take a deep breath. But he got only a whiff, and the rubber mask collapsed against his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. Damned bottle is already empty, he thought. That means I got maybe three minutes of useful consciousness.
He stepped forward, walking toward Gold and the light. The cold grew deeper, and Parson realized the blanket had slipped from around his shoulders; it must have caught on some part of the aircraft structure. He took a moment to look around for it. He didn’t care about losing the blanket, but he couldn’t have a foreign object bouncing around back here, fouling control cables. There were enough problems already.
His light played across the catwalk, and the metal stringers and formers. Nothing. He retraced his steps back to the ladder and shone the Maglite up the rungs. Not there.
The light from the negative pressure valves became brighter. Gold had opened one of them wider, and Parson suspected she was thinking about coming in after him. Maybe she believes I’ve gone hypoxic, he thought. Just stay where you are, Sergeant Major.
Parson decided to give ten more seconds to his search. One Mississippi. He moved his flashlight beam around a cluster of hydraulic lines. Still nothing. Five Mississippi. He searched around the rack that held the HF receiver/transmitters. Eight Mississippi. He looked toward the stabilizer access hatch and found the blanket there, crumpled over the hatch. Parson bent down and grabbed it, then headed for the negative pressure valves to get out of the tail section.
The light coming through the valves was fading, turning from yellow to gray. Parson could see only directly in front of him; his peripheral vision was gone. He could not recall exactly where he was, and he wanted to sit down and rest. Why was he so tired? It was too damned cold to hunt today, anyway. And where was his rifle?
Some part of his mind told him to keep heading for the light. That’s where the cabin was.
He kneeled at the pressure valves and crawled through the lower one. Someone had him by the arms, and he closed his eyes, drifted off into a warm sleep....
Gold’s face appeared above him. The sight brought him a vague sense of well-being. This person was someone he loved. And she could help him fix the problem. She would know—know what? Parson tried to remember this thing, this trouble he had to deal with.
He lay on his back and saw Gold’s hands around the refill port of his MA-1 cylinder. In one breath, all his responsibilities came flooding back. He felt embarrassed that he’d let himself pass out; he’d thought Dunne careless when it happened to him. We’ve been to the altitude chamber, he thought, and we should know better. But that was a controlled environment and this was a real emergency.
“Thanks,” he shouted through his mask. “I guess you’re two for two now.”
“Sir,” she said, “this isn’t working. Next time, we need to set up a firemen’s relay to hand fresh oxygen bottles back there to you.”
Parson nodded as he got to his feet. She had a point. We have plenty of oxygen, he considered. And some of the crew and passengers are offering decent ideas. Those are about the only things in our favor, he thought. Might as well use them.
GOLD ACCOMPANIED PARSON BACK TO THE COCKPIT
. She wanted to keep an eye on him since he had just passed out, but he appeared sure-footed enough as he climbed the flight deck ladder.
. She wanted to keep an eye on him since he had just passed out, but he appeared sure-footed enough as he climbed the flight deck ladder.
He lowered himself into the pilot’s seat, picked up his headset, and exchanged the portable oxygen mask for the one at his crew station. He and Colman seemed to confer about something, and Gold put on her own headset just in time to hear Parson say, “Oh, shit.”
He was looking at his radar screen. Colorful blotches spread across it: greens, yellows, and reds. The green and yellow smears encircled red cores, except in a couple of places where the reds stood apart and took on an odd fishhook shape. To Gold, it seemed a hightech Rorschach test, and the crew interpreted every pattern as a threat.
“What’s all that?” Gold asked.
“Thunderstorms,” Parson said. “Strong motherfuckers.”
“Oh.”
“Let’s repressurize and start climbing,” Parson said, “so we can get our asses over and around these things.”
“Cabin’s coming down,” Dunne said as he turned a knob.
“Did you get the photo?” Colman asked.
“Yeah,” Parson answered. “We’ll send it once we make sure these storms don’t tear us apart.”
Colman advanced the throttles just as Gold felt the aircraft rock with the first jolt of turbulence.
“Everybody strap in tight,” Parson said. “MCD—ma’am, you probably want to secure the patients.”
“In progress,” came the answer over interphone.
Parson moved a selector on his comm panel, keyed his mike, and said, “Santa Maria, Air Evac Eight-Four needs deviations left and right of course for weather.”
“Air Evac Eight-Four,” the controller said, “approved as requested.”
Gold looked outside at utter darkness—no moon, stars, or ships. Then a golden vein of lightning arced between two clouds. Daylight for an instant. And in that instant, Gold saw thunderheads like canyon walls. Mountains of cumulonimbus, roiling with energy. Weapons of angry gods.
She didn’t know weather like an aviator, but she had heard of these oceanic clusters of storms. They raged in low-pressure areas, and if they lasted long enough, air would begin to swirl around the low’s center, gathering speed, moisture, and strength. The birth of a hurricane.
An eerie blue glow began to dance on the windscreen. It spilled across the side windows, behaving more like liquid than light. Sheets of it pulsed and shimmered like a miniature aurora borealis.
“What the hell is wrong with the windscreen?” Colman asked. “Should I turn off the heat to it?”
“Nah,” Parson said. “It’s just Saint Elmo’s fire. Don’t worry about it.”
The ride grew rougher, and the shoulder straps of the nav seat’s harness dug into Gold’s shoulders. The airplane seemed to hit unseen obstacles, rocks in the sky.
“Are we going to make it over this stuff?” Dunne asked.
“Not all of it,” Parson said.
Rain started to lash the windscreen, adding a deeper roar to the hiss of the slipstream. Then the sound changed to something like that of gravel thrown against the aircraft. Hail, Gold realized.
Another lightning bolt stabbed into the sea, so bright it hurt her eyes. The flash revealed whitecaps on a heaving ocean, with skeins of foam stretching between the crests.
Gold began to hear the electrical storm as well as see it. Blasts of static fried in her headset. The crackles erupted far more often than she actually saw lightning. She supposed she was hearing the strikes of bolts obscured by clouds.
“Give me continuous ignition, please,” Dunne said.
Parson moved an overhead switch and said, “On.”
With the next rip of lightning, Gold saw a tremendous cloud mass ahead, its top shaped like an anvil from hell’s own forge. She wasn’t used to judging distances in the air, but it looked like the C-5 would never clear the top of it. But no turn in any direction looked like a better option. The radar showed a phalanx of similar monsters on all sides.
Parson moved something on his console, and the plane banked a few degrees left. Perhaps he was trying to avoid the very worst of it. Gold wondered if the turbulence and electrical interference might set off the bomb. Everyone else had to wonder the same thing, she thought, but there was no point in discussing it because no one could do anything about it. As it was, the crew had their hands full in the tormented air with a plane trying to go anywhere but where they wanted it.
The hail’s pounding grew worse, so loud that Gold turned up her interphone volume just to hear the crew talk. At that moment, something popped like a gunshot.
“What was that?” Colman asked.
“Hail just cracked the windscreen,” Parson said.
“Did it get both layers?” Dunne asked.
Parson scratched at the glass with his fingernail. He had to try it a couple of times because the turbulence made his arm flail.
“No,” he said, “just the outer ply.”
“It’ll hold, then,” Dunne said.
Another fire stream of lightning. Closer this time. It exposed the building storms in ominous relief: gray walls closing in, hurling stones of ice and spears of fire. It occurred to Gold that in these remote reaches of the Atlantic, she was encountering air, vapor, and water in their most powerful forms. The elements could become an enemy for ground troops, to be sure. But she was learning that for fliers, the weather presented a constant threat, sometimes more dangerous than missiles or tracers.
A laptop that Parson had placed on the nav table nearly slid off. Gold held on to it to keep it from crashing to the floor. Unlike the engineer’s computer, this one wasn’t bolted down. Gold had paid little attention to it before, but now, protecting it, she saw it was apparently some kind of navigational backup. On the screen, a miniature airplane inched along a green course line, steady and unmolested. The moving map display showed a serene sea marked by waypoints and jet routes. This computer program evidently knew exactly where they were, but had no idea what was happening to them.
Saint Elmo’s fire enveloped the windscreen entirely, as if a translucent blue shroud had been draped over the plane. The starts and fits of static in Gold’s headset joined one another in a constant cacophony, a wall of white noise. The storms outside attacked all her senses at once, with neon in her eyes, overload in her ears, and nausea in her gut.
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