‘A flare. Somebody else survived.’
Hancock and Frost stood at the ridgeline. They looked out over moonlit desert.
She flagged a Maglite back and forth.
‘Sure it was a starshell?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How far?’
‘Couple of miles.’
She continued to flag the light.
An hour later:
‘Hey.’
A voice calling from the desert darkness.
‘Who’s out there?’ shouted Hancock, hand on the butt of his pistol.
‘Noble, two-nine-five-five-six.’
Frost trained the Maglite.
A figure strode towards them across the sand. Noble. He wore a chute fabric headdress. He shielded his face with his hand.
‘Get that light out my eyes.’
He climbed the dune to meet them.
‘Good to see you, Frosty.’ Back-slapping hug.
She looked him up and down. No sign of injury.
‘You all right?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m good.’ He gestured to the splint lashed to her leg. ‘How about you?’
She waved the question away.
‘Glad you made it,’ said Hancock. Brief handshake. ‘Thought we’d lost you.’
Noble checked out the bloody bandage wrapped round his head.
‘Looks like you both took a bruising.’
They stood a while and contemplated the wrecked war machine.
‘Breaks my heart to see a bird like that in the dirt,’ said Noble.
‘Yeah.’
‘Iraq. Afghanistan. Not a scratch.’
‘Hunk of metal,’ said Frost. ‘No earthly use getting weepy. Want some water?’
He licked parched lips.
‘I want all the water in the world.’
She led Noble down the side of the dune.
She stumbled. Noble put an arm round her shoulder and helped her walk back towards the plane.
The lower cabin. They sat cross-legged on floor plates.
Noble gulped from the canteen.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘We could put up flares. Fire them at intervals. You never know. If Early is out there, stumbling around the desert, it might lead him home.’
‘Not much point,’ said Hancock. ‘Judging by the direction of footprints, Early headed away from the plane, away from help. Maybe he panicked. Maybe his compass was fucked. Either way, the guy is almost certainly dead.’
‘We can’t give up on the kid.’
Frost nodded.
‘It won’t hurt to send up a shell at the top of each hour.’
Noble spread a map on the deck. Frost trained her flashlight on the chart.
Miles of beige nothing. Shallow contour lines. Grid squares chequered with the legend: dunes.
‘Hard to get a fix on our exact location. Couldn’t get a clear lensatic reading. Couldn’t raise a soul on the CSEL, either.’
‘Plenty of metal deposits hereabouts,’ said Frost. ‘Iron salts. Manganese. Uranium. All kinds of shit. We’re probably sitting in the middle of some weird electromagnetic anomaly. Won’t clear radio interference until we reach the mountains and climb.’
‘Given our direction of travel, given that we were about six or seven minutes from the drop point, I’d say we were here.’
He circled a central section of wilderness.
‘That’s a long fucking walk,’ said Frost. ‘A shitload of desert any direction you care to choose. On foot? Person couldn’t last more than a couple of days in this kind of environment.’
‘It would have to be our very last resort. But hey. There’s always the chance Trenchman will show up at first light. Long shot. But he might have spent the day fixing a fault with their Chinook, trying to get it back in the air. Can’t rule it out. This time tomorrow we could be feet-up in Vegas sipping a cold one.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Frost. ‘But I’d feel a whole lot better if we got power to the flight deck and actually raised someone on the damned radio.’
13
The upper cabin.
Frost sat in the pilot seat and cycled the AC selector.
Noble, from below:
‘Anything?’
She tapped a volt gauge. The needle remained unresponsive.
‘Total flatline.’
The lower cabin.
Noble helped Frost lift a fuse panel from the wall behind the EWO console. The primary distribution bus. He held the flashlight steady while she examined tangled cable.
Burnouts. They trimmed and spliced cable.
They replaced the fuse panel. All load switches set to green. She returned to the pilot seat and toggled for power.
Nothing.
‘We should be getting twenty-eight volts DC from the auxiliaries. Enough to restore essential systems.’
‘Line break?’
Frost shook her head.
‘Cells must have shorted out, drained dry.’
‘Dammit.’
‘We’ve got one more shot,’ said Frost. ‘There is a backup power cell, a nickel-cadmium battery in the aft of the plane.’
‘Yeah?’
‘So I guess someone will have to take a walk and find the tail.’
Noble and Hancock looked out over the moonlit dunescape.
A wide debris trench, like preliminary construction for a highway. The trench was littered with wreckage. Structural spars, scraps of fuselage, a massive undercarriage bogie ripped from a wheel-well.
‘Can’t be too far,’ said Hancock.
They set off.
Noble looked towards the horizon. Pinnacles and flat-top mesas, a jagged ribbon of black against a fabulous dusting of stars.
‘Funny. You can make out the mountains clearer than day.’
Hancock stumbled a couple of times.
‘You all right?’ asked Noble.
‘Concussion.’
‘Maybe you should sit this one out.’
‘It’ll pass.’
‘How much ground you reckon we’ve covered?’ asked Noble.
‘Quarter of a mile, give or take.’
‘Can’t be too far.’
‘Better watch where you tread,’ said Hancock, stepping over a torn wing panel. ‘This shit wants to cut you wide open. Like walking through a field of razors.’
‘Think we’re the first humans to set foot on this patch of ground? Sure, plenty of people criss-crossed the desert. Pioneers. Prospectors. But this particular stretch of sand. Think we’re the first?’
‘Pretty good chance we’ll be the last.’
They kept walking.
Their breath fogged the air.
‘Freezing.’
‘Enjoy it,’ said Noble. ‘Sunrise in a while. Another hot day.’
‘Shame about Early.’
‘Let’s not write him off just yet. He’s green, but he’s not stupid.’
‘You and Frost are pretty tight, yeah?’ asked Hancock.
‘The whole crew. Been flying a long while. Four, five years.’
The tail section sat in the middle of the debris trench a quarter of a mile from the main fuselage. A massive cruciform silhouette against the stars.
They trudged towards the wreckage until they were within the moon-shadow of the stabiliser fins.
Tail number: MT66.
The sand was carpeted with fluttering foil strips spilt by the underwing chaff dispensers.
The orange brake chute was spread on sand behind the empennage. Fabric wafted and rippled.
The rudder gently creaked and swung in the night breeze.
They kicked through foil.
Noble banged his fist on the fuselage. Hollow gong.
‘Early? Yo. Nick. You in there?’
No reply.
Hancock looked around.
‘No footprints, that I can see. Nobody here but us.’
They peered into the cave-dark of the fuselage interior. The flashlight beam played over twisted spars and ripped fuselage panels.