Then he felt a shudder run through his own plane.
He found the fuel indicator—his pump appeared to be malfunctioning. The flow rate from the tank to the engine started dropping. Something had blown, just like in Barfman’s jet. “Oh, shit,” he said.
The speakers crackled to life. “Navy Zero Sixer, we have lost your squawk. We are standing by. Please engage your transponder. Estimate has you northwest of Double Eagle airport in Albuquerque. Do you copy?”
Bobby shook his head to clear the shock that gripped him. Adrenaline flushed his system of cobwebs, making him sharp. His altimeter showed that he had climbed back up to twelve thousand feet, and aside from the faulty reading on the pump flow indicator, there was nothing to show he was in any trouble. Not yet. He knew he should be doing something: trying to land his craft so he wouldn’t be taken by surprise like his friend. He still saw no sign of Barfman’s parachute.
Life or death. He squelched the fear, the helplessness. No time for that now. Bobby shoved the throttles to full, kicking in the afterburners. As the surge of acceleration hit him, he realized he might have only minutes to find a place to land, especially if the sudden plague of breakdowns hit his own A/F 18.
He keyed his transponder and spoke into the mike. “Mayday, mayday, Albuquerque control. Navy Zero Six declaring an emergency. Attempting to reach Double Eagle airport. One plane in our flight is down, approximately thirty miles behind me. My flow pump reads faulty, and if I lose engine power I will not be able to transmit. Request immediate emergency assistance, foam and emergency vehicles—”
“We have you fifteen miles out, Navy Zero Sixer. Please be advised there is no emergency equipment at Double Eagle. I say again, no emergency equipment available.”
“Great,” muttered Bobby. From what he had seen on the map, he’d have to fly over the city of Albuquerque to reach the municipal airport, which meant putting thousands of people at risk if he couldn’t nurse his plane all the way to the runway.
He pushed the aircraft as fast as he dared, hoping to reach the Double Eagle airport before everything crapped out on him. He tried to keep a balance between altitude and speed, knowing that he could trade off one for the other; but he also didn’t want to fall into the same trap as Barfman, and lose stability while wrestling with the hydraulic controls.
The humped line of the Sandia mountains loomed in the distance. Below him the ground smoothed out, leaving the rugged terrain behind. He might make it.
“Navy Zero Six, please be advised—” The speaker went dead and the cockpit sounded weirdly silent except for the rushing wind. At the same instant he felt a gigantic sagging as the engines died, the A/F-18’s electrical systems shut down. What the hell happened to the backup? The system was isolated from the main engine—this couldn’t happen!
Adrenalin and split-second fear switched off the questions in his mind. Deal with them later. Bobby immediately pushed as hard as he could to lower all flaps to extend the camber in an attempt to increase his lift.
He spotted Double Eagle airport off to the left; he had vectored in too far south. Cursing under his breath, he inched the fighter’s nose to the left, trying not to do anything that would send the already precarious craft out of control. He had to punch out—no way could he bring this fighter in. No way.
But what had gone wrong with Barfman? Had he tried to eject, only to fail for some unknown reason? Or had Barfman simply waited too long, kept his head buried in the controls?
He saw a long stretch of green in front of him—the Rio Grande river. What a place to run out of gas! He frantically tried to turn the craft, but felt a growing wobble.
The craft would lose it any second now. Slamming his helmeted head against the back of his seat, he reached down and grasped the ejection handles. He’d crash through the canopy if it didn’t blow open, but better that than staying with the jet and digging a crater in the desert. He looked straight ahead, closed his eyes, and pulled up as hard as he could.
An instant later he felt the shock of cold air, a sound that overwhelmed him—wind, crashing, tearing. His right leg and mouth felt torn apart. He was thrown from the seat, twisting. Attached to the parachute a line in front of him snaked out, ripped into the howling wind.
He felt himself tumbling. The parachute started to open. He had to clamp his mouth shut to keep from vomiting.
It was going to be one mother of a hard landing. Bobby gritted his teeth and tried to keep conscious. The parachute tugged him upward in an effort to slow his plunge.
Below him, he watched his jet explode into the desert floor.
Chapter 31
Iris Shikozu’s portable phone no longer worked, but the clunky old model in the bedroom of her apartment still functioned. Different plastics broke down at different rates. The plague was spreading like a flood, wiping out the entire city.
She carefully pushed buttons, hoping the equipment wouldn’t fall to pieces as she dialed. She had to talk to somebody. The world seemed to close around her as everything broke down. On her bedroom wall, posters of middle-aged rock groups stared down at her, offering silent sympathy for her predicament.
In only a day the news had become intermittent . The plague had been spreading quietly since the Prometheus spraying, infecting numerous items, metabolizing gasoline first and then attacking other polymers, until components began to break down all at once. All at the same time.
The radio news told stories of riots in South Africa, a major stock exchange crash in Tokyo, communications blackouts from various parts of the world. The President himself was stranded out of the country, and now the Vice President had been stuck in Chicago when all aircraft were grounded. Everything was happening too fast.
She listened to the buzzing ring against her ear as she waited for someone to answer. More often than not, the phones had been out of order. She suspected that plastics in the various telephone substations had dissolved, but the phone company had managed to reroute most of the calls. So far.
Francis Plerry, her contact at EPI, answered the phone; Iris launched into her rehearsed speech before he could hang up on her.
“I’ve been waiting for you to return my calls, Mr. Plerry. I called five times yesterday. I have some information regarding the spread of the Prometheus plague and how it is attacking plastics.” She sat down on her double bed, pulling the phone after her, calmed now that she could finally speak to someone. “I need to be put in touch with the other research teams addressing the issue. Have you even established other teams?”
“Miss Shikozu,” Plerry said, “I received your messages, and I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back to you. This place has been a zoo since rumors of the plague started. Er… I’m sure you understand that a lot of these people don’t want to talk to you.”
Iris felt like he had slapped her in the face. “No, I don’t understand that at all. Why wouldn’t they want to talk to me?”
“Well…” Plerry sounded flustered. “You were the one who inspected the Prometheus microorganism and deemed it safe. Obviously, few people are interested in your theories after you so grossly misinterpreted the data.”
“That’s bullshit, Plerry! Dr. Kramer gave me a bogus control sample to analyze, then sprayed something completely different on the oil spill—”
Plerry kept right on talking. “—there may actually be certain charges of criminal negligence and endangerment of public health when all this blows over.”
Iris rolled her eyes. When all this blows over? Right! Todd Severyn had Plerry pegged from his first impression: this guy is out of touch with reality.