Hancock slowly circled.
‘Hate to do it,’ he said. ‘But I can’t have you running off again.’
He checked knotted wire, made sure she was bound tight.
‘This can end any time you want. We can start treating each other as adults. All you have to do is cooperate.’
Frost didn’t reply.
‘It’ll be a cold night. Any time you want to come back inside, holler. I got a blanket, if you’re willing to work for it. Back in a while. Think it over.’
Hancock retreated to the plane for a couple of hours. He got some sleep.
He woke and decided to check on Frost.
She was still knelt in the sand, head bowed, arms pinned wide. Her skin and hair were white with dust. Her lips were cracked and dry.
Hancock sat crossed legged beside her. He sipped water. He made it torture. He slurped and smacked his lips. He sloshed the canteen.
‘How are you feeling?’
She didn’t look up. She didn’t reply.
‘I’m sorry. Appalled it came to this. Hoped we could resolve our issues by reasoned discussion.’
Frost licked parched lips.
‘You pulled a gun.’
‘Had no choice.’
‘Cut me free.’
‘You know I can’t do that.’
‘You’ve gone crazy. Think. Just think. Step back a moment. You must be able to see. This stopped being about the mission a long time ago. This is some kind of death trip.’
‘I have to believe there’s still a government out there, trying to salvage what’s left of America.’
‘Come on. That old tune. We’re on our own. Anything else is a wish, a daydream. The best we can do for the world is survive.’
Hancock shook his head and turned away. He limped back to the plane.
‘What about Guthrie?’ shouted Frost. ‘His buddies. You’ll need me. When they come. You’ll need all the help you can get.’
He kept walking.
Hancock switched on the bomb bay light. Blood-red glow.
He sat on the sand floor of the payload compartment and powered up the satcom unit.
Internal battery at 18%. The power level dropped to 17% as he watched.
His only contact with the wider world: a thin-as-gossamer thread of data, likely to be cut within hours.
The unit winked an alert.
Incoming EAM:
He typed:
An almost instantaneous reply:
He typed:
No reply.
He typed:
No reply.
He typed:
No reply.
No reply.
He stared at the winking cursor a long while. He powered down the satcom and closed the lid. He pushed the unit away.
He turned his attention to the laptop jacked to the warhead. He wiped dust from the screen. A request for a ten-digit sequence.
The final arming sequence. Simple as withdrawing money from an ATM.
He caressed the Return key. The little square of plastic that would end his life once he delivered the warhead to its designated target. There would be no countdown, no chance to get clear. The moment he hit Enter to confirm the detonation command, the hotwired nuke would fire. He would wink out of existence. Delete himself with a single key-tap.
He sat with his head in his hands. Turmoil. The will to live overwhelmed by exhaustion and despair.
Flashback to Bagram.
The canteen hall. Mortar-proof hard shell. One of the chefs brought a fresh tray of fusilli to the pasta bar. He noticed a local translator in the queue. Guy had his shirt buttoned to his neck. He was sweating, despite a torrent of cool air from an overhead duct.
Two minutes later the canteen was clear. Upturned chairs and tables. Spilt food.
The translator sat in the middle of the hall, shirt unbuttoned, C4 patties taped to his belly and a command wire running down his arm to a push-button trigger in his hand.
Hancock cautiously entered the empty canteen, set a chair upright and sat down. He sat fifty feet away and tried to talk the man down.
‘The moment has passed,’ argued Hancock. ‘You came here to kill a bunch of Americans. So what now? Your death will amount to nothing. If you press that button, all you will do is wreck some furniture.’
The translator didn’t reply. He sat, finger on the button, panting with indecision.
Hancock tried a different approach.
‘What did he tell you? The man that strapped you into that vest? How did he persuade you to throw your life away? What would it achieve?’
The translator’s fear and indecision was replaced by a beatific smile.
‘They said it will be like stepping through a doorway into a perfumed garden.’
Hancock threw himself from the chair and hit the floor. They pulled him from the wrecked canteen fifteen minutes later suffering from tinnitus and smoke inhalation.
Frost knelt in the sand, head bowed, dripping sweat.
Flashback to Thompson Falls, Montana.
Escape and evasion. Forty-eight hours fleeing through woodland, Frost finally brought to her knees by a German Shepherd dispatched by a Delta pursuit team.
The next phase of the SERE exercise: interrogation.
Hooded and zip-tied, curled on the floor of a flatbed truck as it jolted down a forest track.
Dragged from the vehicle and nudged down concrete steps to an unheated basement, gun at her back. Stink of mildew and rot.
They called it The Red Room.
Buckets of cold water. High-decibel Slipknot.
Endless hours.
The desolate, Arctic terrain of sleep deprivation.
Periodically propped in a chair, unhooded, dazzled by strobes.
‘Just give up your key word, and it will all be over.’
Stripped, beaten, compelled to remain in a stress position for hours. Sticking to name, rank and number until she finally heard herself blurt ‘flintlock’ and the suffering stopped.
‘How long did I last?’ she asked, as they draped a blanket round her shoulders and gave her water.
‘Thirty-eight hours, forty-nine minutes.’
‘How does that compare to the others?’
‘Irrelevant. You battle yourself. Always.’
Frost talked it through with other members of the class as they rode the bus back to base.
Plenty of bravado:
‘Blow my fucking brains out rather than be taken alive. No way I’m letting myself get beheaded for some sick-ass jihadi video. Wouldn’t give those ragheads the satisfaction.’
Each of them secretly wondering if, when their moment came, they could tough-out adversity, or would break and beg for mommy.
Sunset.
Stars in a darkening sky.
Frost tethered to a tyre. Hancock crossed the sand and stood over her.
‘Feeling a little more circumspect?’