The lever came up easily; as it reached its open point and clicked into place, Gallen felt the cargo strap pull back on his waist. He was scared, but felt safe with McCann at his six.
‘Okay, Donny,’ he said into his mic. ‘I’ve got it up, now I’m gonna push this fucker out.’
‘I gotcha, boss.’
Gallen felt the cargo strap solid against his belly, pushing up slightly against the abalone BlackBerry that was sitting in the front pocket of his arctic parka.
He shoved, but the door wouldn’t budge. Gallen repositioned his feet and pushed with his body weight. Still nothing.
‘Think like a defensive tackle,’ said McCann and Gallen shifted his feet again, this time putting his legs and hips into it, not just his arms and shoulders. The door gave slightly and an unholy hissing started from the crack, turning to a high-pitched howling as he got it open three inches. As he pushed more and got it to four inches, he flinched as a siren screamed. The emergency lights went on in the cabin and oxygen masks fell from the capsules over the seats.
From the washroom, he could hear a female’s scream.
‘One more block, boss,’ said McCann, and Gallen drove up with his legs and hips. As he did so, the door was ripped away, thrown outwards along its horizontal hinge.
The cold tore the air out of Gallen’s lungs. Immediately his body went into shock, the same kind of reaction the Marines had tried to induce in the special forces guys all those years ago at the Mountain Warfare Training Center in California, where the instructors would make the candidates take a plunge in ice-cold water and then get them to perform small actions like unlocking a padlock or dialling a phone. By the end of that day, the trainees got the point: the cold makes you uncoordinated, it makes you slow, it makes you fuck things up. The lesson: don’t get cold.
As the noise and cold ripped at him, messing with his orientation, Gallen could feel the air trying to drag him out while McCann pulled on the cargo strap.
The wind smashed the hood of the parka around his face, deafening him, as he peered out of the Thinsulate balaclava, trying to concentrate on the job. Reaching for his parka pocket, against the pressure of the wind, he found the BlackBerry but couldn’t make his gloved hand close around it. The wind-driven cold was intense and he could feel his body shutting down fast.
‘Fuck,’ he said, as the BlackBerry refused to stick in his hand. He couldn’t form a grip, couldn’t make his hand operate properly
‘You got it, boss,’ said McCann. ‘Take your time.’
Gallen realised he was running out of oxygen. He couldn’t take a breath of the fifty-below air and his lungs were shutting down. He couldn’t feel his legs or his face, didn’t know if he could move his lips to talk. Grabbing at the BlackBerry again, he finally held it in his hand with a chicken-grip, his vision blurry as ice formed over his eyeballs.
‘Throw it,’ said McCann over the headset and Gallen pushed his hand outside the plane, where the rushing air tried to rip off his arm. He was clumsy now and didn’t realise until he focused on his hand — as if it were some disembodied thing hanging outside the plane — that the BlackBerry was no longer in it.
‘Did I get it?’ said Gallen, slurring like he was tired and drunk.
McCann’s voice screamed over the radio: ‘It’s on the floor! You dropped it!’
Looking down, slowly, as though walking on the moon, Gallen saw the glittering abalone of the BlackBerry between his feet, like it was a hundred miles away, separated by a storm of noise and confusion.
‘Kick it, boss!’ McCann’s panicked voice rose above the terrible noise.
Using his last vestiges of consciousness, Gallen wondered what would happen if he kicked the bomb. Would it trigger the timer? He kicked at the phone clumsily, connecting with his toe.
The BlackBerry slid with aching slowness to the aluminium rails along which the door would seal, and then the air caught the device, hurtling it to the left so fast that it disappeared. Leaning back to concentrate on closing the cabin door, Gallen saw a flash of orange and white and felt the quick scorch of heat. The blast knocked him back into the cabin and falling to the floor he felt the plane lurch and a new sound start, a screaming death-noise.
‘Fire,’ said McCann, pulling back on the cargo strap and dragging Gallen into the cabin. Gallen’s legs and mind had become useless; he felt like a passenger in his own body, as if he was looking down on his lethargic self in a dream. He was in shock from the cold and felt McCann pull him into the forward-facing seat, giving him an oxygen mask; he was gasping to breathe, but had no strength for it. McCann wrapped him with the cargo strap as the open door continued its screaming suction attempts, creating a tornado of paper and cushions, shoes, coffee cups and pens.
Gallen wanted to tell McCann to look after himself, to stay away from the suck of that door, but he couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe.
Then there was a loud bang from the aft cabin area, way down behind the washroom. It shook the cabin frame and one of the cabin windows popped out, creating another source of the screeching howl, and then the air was filled with clothes, swirling at high speed and blowing out the door like smoke in an exhaust fan.
Looking back, McCann’s mouth fell open. ‘Fucking cargo hold exploded!’
Gallen tried to voice a question but the plane lurched violently, first left and then to the right, in a swinging barrel roll that didn’t stop, just took them over and over like a clothes dryer.
The hastily secured cargo strap gave way on the third loop and as Gallen’s face raced down towards the ceiling console, he wondered if that was smoke he was smelling.
The ceiling accelerated at him and then there was nothing.
CHAPTER 19
The light came in slowly, edging into his head like a flashlight beam under a door. Gallen was aware of warm on cold, and pain, a dull ache in his head, not unlike a hangover, not unlike the morning after a fist-fight.
Opening one eye, he saw snow and rapidly closed the eye again as a splitting, glare-induced headache threatened. Moving his mouth, he felt blood and missing teeth: the upper right incisor and the one behind it.
As he sucked, he opened his eyes again. He was surrounded by snow, with daylight visible, and he could hear a groaning sound.
Trying to keep his breathing low, remembering the arctic survival lessons about not panicking when buried in snow, he moved his head and found an air pocket.
Breathing shallowly, he made a quick check of his faculties: he could see, he could hear and he could distinguish hot and cold. Wiggling his left toes, he could just feel them. Didn’t feel like anything was broken, but his foot was certainly cold. It was the same on the other foot and he wondered how long he’d lain like that.
His arms moved too, and by circling his wrists he managed to hollow out a small passage so he could bring his hands up to his face. Touching his cheeks and jaw, he found no breaks, at least not bad enough that he couldn’t eat.
He looked at his gloves in the snow-filtered light and saw a wet sheen. Licking it, he confirmed blood: his face had been smashed and he’d lost some teeth, but the pain was being managed by the intense cold of the snow.
Moans rang out. He had no idea which way was up or down, and pushing his hands down to the front pockets of his arctic parka, he fossicked for a cigarette lighter. His hands were too numb and he couldn’t find the lighter, but as he dragged his hand back, it rubbed against something under his parka. Pulling at the chin domes, Gallen got his thumb under a cord of some sort and pulled out the bear’s head he’d been given by Billy and Sami at the kayak workshop. The black eyes glinted and what was yellowish tusk in daylight now came into its own: it had a faint luminescence in the half-light, its carved face glowing at the edges, creating a mesmerising effect. As he held it up by the cord, the head dangled down by his chin, telling him that upwards was a line that rose perpendicular from his left shoulder.