She reached the wing tip. She reached up, gripped the lips of the aerofoil and hauled herself onto the wing surface. She hobbled back towards the body of the plane, boots scuffing dusted metal.
The flight deck.
Hancock curled foetal and clutched his head. His hands were smeared red. He could feel his scalp wound through the chute-fabric bandage. Sutures binding torn flesh had ripped open. Fresh blood leaked from the improvised dressing.
He rolled onto his side and retrieved the pistol. He crawled to the ladderwell and part-climbed, part-fell to the cabin below.
He leant against the ragged metal of the wall fissure, shielded his eyes against the sun.
Footprints led across sand to the crest of the ridgeline.
He adjusted his grasp of the Beretta. His palm was gummed to the polymer butt-grip by blood. He stepped from the plane, but immediately brought himself to a halt.
Frost was smart. She wouldn’t run into the desert leaving a follow-me trail of prints.
Stark shadows on the ground around him. The curve of the wing. The flag pole. His own silhouette, stretching across the sand ahead of him.
His attention was drawn by an irregularity in the wing shadow. A slight prominence, as if something were resting on the upper surface.
Hancock trained his pistol on the lip of the wing. He swayed. He leant against the fuselage to restore his aim.
He kept his attention trained on the wing while his left hand groped for the radio tucked in a chest pouch. He raised the handset to his mouth and keyed Transmit:
‘Where are you, Frost?’
Frost lay on the starboard wing. Baking metal. Drops of sweat ran down her face, dripped from her nose, splashed on the dust-matted aluminium in front of her.
She gripped her knife. Palm-sweat greased the leather grip. Seven-inch blade poised to stab.
Crude plan: listen out for Hancock. The guy was messed up, struggling to stand. Laboured breathing, dragging steps. He couldn’t move around without making a racket. She would wait until she heard him beneath the wing, then jump his ass.
Rustle of flight-suit fabric. Muffled cough. Hancock had emerged from the plane and was standing close by.
She listened hard, tried to gauge his location.
Silence.
Had he moved away? Was he creeping around the wreck site, trying to hunt her down? Or was he standing still, stifling his breath, waiting for her to make a move?
Faint crackle. Her radio. The static squelch that preceded an incoming transmission. She quickly rolled onto her chest-pouch to smother the sound.
Muffled radio voice mixing with Hancock’s voice from down below:
‘Where are you, Frost?’
She lay still as she could.
‘Here kitty, kitty.’
She lay flat, pressed herself against hot aluminium, willed her body to merge with the wing.
Her POV: a vista of rivet-seamed metal rippling heat.
She waited. Long minutes.
She thought she could smell Hancock, just for a moment. The sour stink of flesh-rot carried on the breeze.
Did she actually want to kill him? The guy pulled a gun. But he was sick, clearly not thinking straight. Succumbing to fever and delirium. He needed help.
Never the less, she might have to cut Hancock in order to subdue him. She resolved to aim for muscle, if she could. Avoid major organs, major blood vessels.
Insidious voice in her head: If you tussle over a gun, you may have no option but to kill him. And then you could keep all the remaining water for yourself.
She lifted her head.
Slow commando crawl to the lip of the wing, sliding on sand-dusted metal. She psyched, prepped to launch and stab.
She reared up, knife raised above her head, then froze. Hancock was gone. A disturbance in the sand like he stepped from the plane, walked a couple of yards, then turned and headed back inside.
Voice from above:
‘Be obliged if you dropped the knife.’
She looked up.
Hancock standing on the roof of the aircraft. The sun was behind him, his body fringed by a brilliant halo.
He must have returned to the flight deck and climbed through one of the vacant escape hatches.
Frost slowly got to her feet. She shielded her eyes.
‘How about we call time-out?’ said Frost. ‘This bullshit is escalating way too fast. Maybe we should hit Pause, talk it through.’
‘Drop the knife.’
‘Really want to shoot me?’
‘I need you alive and conscious. Rest is up to you.’
‘These wings are full of kerosene vapour. Bullet might send us both to hell.’
Gunshot. A 9mm round punched a neat hole in the aluminium panel between Frost’s feet. Wisp of smoke.
He took aim a second time.
‘Ever played Russian Roulette?’ said Hancock. Gunshot. Frost flinched. A second smouldering hole punched in the wing metal at her feet. ‘Want to see how far our luck will hold?’
She threw the knife aside. It fell and stabbed deep into sand.
38
Hancock lashed Frost’s wrists with wire. Gun to her back. He forced her to climb the ladder to the flight deck. They sat facing each other. Sullen silence.
Time passed slow.
‘What do you hope to achieve by all this shit?’ she asked.
‘Encourage a little cooperation.’
She curled and pretended to doze.
She waited until Hancock’s eyelid drooped closed and the pistol slackened in his hand. Finger light on the trigger, barrel angled at the floor.
She leaned forwards and reached for the gun. He shifted in his sleep. Brief hesitation. She abandoned her attempt to snatch the Beretta. She slid down the ladder and fled the plane once again.
She limped across the sand, hands still bound at the wrist.
She crawled up a dune and rolled down the shadow side. Her vague plan: travel in a wide arc. Put as much distance as she could between herself and the B-52. Create the illusion she had headed into the desert. A trail of footprints stretching to the horizon. She would then circle back to the wreck site in the early hours of the morning and plunder supplies. Creep into the lower cabin while Hancock lay beneath survival blankets in the cockpit. Stealthily remove food, meds, water. Then head east.
She tried to walk. Her legs gave out so she crawled on her knees.
Panting ascent of the next dune. Uncontrolled roll down the other side.
A splinter of her consciousness watched her progress with detached interest. How much pain could she endure? How much suffering could she shoulder while willing her limbs to keep moving forwards? When would her body finally fail, pitching her face-forwards in the sand, motionless, muscles finally no longer able to respond to her will?
She kept crawling. She threw a long shadow.
A second shadow by her side. A figure keeping pace.
‘I admire your determination,’ said Hancock. ‘Hotter than hell. Crack an egg on the ground and watch it fry. Yet here you are. Exhausted, thirsty, broken. But determined to fight. Admirable.’
She rolled and looked up.
‘It’s a shame,’ said Hancock. ‘You put me in a difficult position.’
Hancock laid the crutch across Frost’s shoulders like a yoke. He lashed her arms with wiring stripped from the flight-deck walls, forcing her cruciform.
He tied a length of data cable round her neck as a leash. He dragged her stumbling across the sand to the dead signal fire. A tyre half buried in sand. He tied the leash to the hub.
Shove to the back. She fell to her knees, head bowed, arms forced wide.