‘I refuse to throw away my life.’
‘You took an oath.’
‘To a nation that no longer exists.’
Hancock fetched satcom gear from the bomb bay. He hefted it up the ladder to the flight deck.
He angled the antenna and booted the transceiver.
A blank screen. A winking cursor.
He turned to Frost and swept his arm in a be-my-guest gesture, inviting her to sit and type.
She lowered herself to the deck in front of the transceiver, laid her bad leg straight.
She keyed:
She hit Send.
Immediate response:
‘Atmospherics,’ said Hancock. ‘The signal comes and goes.’
Frost leant back against the flight-deck wall.
‘I don’t mean to pry into your private life, sir. We’re all hurting. We’ve all lost family. But you must have someone, somewhere, who needs you to live.’
He waved a dismissive hand.
‘I could talk about duty and honour, but I doubt the words mean a whole lot to you. You’re clearly the type who joined for the benefits.’
‘Surely it’s time to be pragmatic. Why die here, in this miserable corner of desert? What’s the use? What good will it serve? No one will know. No one will care. If we get out of this damn place we might be able to find some folks who actually need our help.’
‘I have tactical command, Lieutenant. This isn’t some kind of town hall debate. I’m still AC. And I say we complete the mission.’
She pressed Resend.
Frost climbed into the crawlway. She sucked pipe hanging from the water tank, drew liquid and refilled her canteen.
Someone tapped her leg. She craned around. Noble. She squirmed from the crawlspace.
‘What?’
He mimed hush and beckoned her outside.
Noble took a folded photograph from his pocket. He handed it to Frost. She rubbed her eyes, let them adjust to sudden sunlight.
She studied the picture.
‘What am I looking at?’
‘The target site. Bunch of pictures in Hancock’s dossier. This is the only photograph that shows any activity on the ground.’
Criss-cross tyre tracks. Black SUVs.
‘What are those? Couple of house trailers?’
‘Looks like,’ said Noble.
‘Hardly seems worth a bomb.’
‘I suspect they are a preliminary outpost. The start of something bigger. Look at the vehicles. Four-by-fours. What do you reckon? Suburbans?’
‘Hard to say.’
‘What if they are still there? Could be our ticket out of this mess.’
‘Shit, yeah.’
‘Let’s face facts. You got a bust leg, and Hancock’s got a split skull. Neither of you in much shape to travel. But I could make the journey. I can move real fast on my own.’
‘Got to admit, it makes sense.’
‘Hancock won’t like it.’
‘Fuck Hancock. Get your shit together. Leave at sundown. I’ll explain the situation after you’ve gone.’
Hancock hit Break and cleared the screen. He leant forward, used the black glass as a mirror.
He tried to lift the bandage wrapped round his head. Gummed by fresh blood. He peeled it loose. He glimpsed inflamed flesh. Rot stink. He pulled the bandage back in place.
Hand to his forehead. Running a fever.
He lectured his reflection:
‘We’re all in fucked-up shape. No use whining about it.’
He dragged the trauma kit closer, unzipped internal pockets and popped tablets from a strip of Tylenol into his palm.
He looked around. His canteen rested on the flight controls.
He got to his feet, eased himself into the pilot seat and swigged back the pills.
He had, in his previous life been stationed at Bagram and charged with providing preliminary intel assessments of captured insurgents. Despite the belligerence broadcast by the morale patches on his sleeve, ‘DON’T TREAD ON ME’ and ‘PORK EATING INFIDEL’, he had thumbed through a Qur’an while drowsing in his bunk late at night and developed a furtive admiration for the Taliban and their Spartan ideology. He was particularly struck by the injunction to avoid intoxicants. Couldn’t help feeling nostalgic for the sun-blasted purity of the Hindu Kush once he found himself back in the Birmingham suburbs surrounded by purposeless folk smothering ennui with Prozac, Adderall and bourbon.
He lifted the blast screen and sat back, gazed at the sandscape with a half-closed eye.
Brief glimpse through blurred vision. Three figures standing on a distant dune, backlit by the glare of the afternoon sun.
He sat bolt upright.
His uncapped canteen hit the floor and spilt water across the deck plate. He snatched it up and secured the cap.
He leant forwards and stared out the window, blinked and struggled to focus. He shielded his remaining eye, tried to mask sun-glare.
Three silent sentinels.
Looked like they were wearing flight suits.
Hancock ran from the plane out into harsh sunlight. He ran for the dunes in front of the plane.
He stumbled and fell face down. He got to his feet spitting sand. He waded the steep slope, struggled to chamber his pistol.
He crested the dune, came to a panting halt, Beretta raised.
Nothing. Empty terrain.
He lowered the pistol. He wiped his brow with the sleeve of his flight suit.
Frost’s distant voice:
‘What’s going on?’
He hauled himself upright and slowly headed back to the aircraft.
‘What’s up, boss?’ asked Frost, as he walked past.
He didn’t reply. He returned to the fetid cave-dark of the flight deck.
The payload bay.
The missile bathed in blood red light.
Frost ran her hand across the million-dollar weapon’s hardened steel hull, intake to radome.
She coughed.
During the past couple of days she had grown used to the vastness of the desert, the way it drew power from her words, rendering her voice thin and small. But the tight confines of the bomb bay rendered every sound, every breath and footfall, oppressively loud.
She sat cross-legged on the floor. She set the camcorder on a horizontal wall girder and pressed REC.
‘It’s late afternoon. Losing track of time. The days, the nights, last for ever out here. Honestly not sure if this is my second or third day marooned in the desert.
‘It’s grim. A killer sandstorm replaced by merciless heat. And later tonight, we’ll freeze. Fucking place is utterly hostile to life.
‘We’re pretty strung out. Morale is low. Each of us trapped in our own misery, getting weaker by the hour.
‘Remember that plane crash in the Andes years back? The one where survivors turned cannibal, had to eat the bodies of their friends? I read a book about it. Those guys froze on a mountainside a whole month before a couple of them got their shit together and walked to fetch help. I couldn’t understand it. Why wait a whole month? I wanted to shout at the pages: Move. Act. Save yourselves. But now, here I am, marooned and dying of thirst. I understand the trauma, the debilitating shock. One of the reasons I’m talking to a camera. Trying to organise my thoughts.’