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  ‘Not this deep in the desert. Nothing can survive out here.’

  They climbed inside.

  The tail section of the plane had been designed to house four 20mm Vulcan cannons remote-operated by a gunner stationed on the flight deck. The quad weapon and feed chutes had long since been removed and the gun ports welded shut. The compartment was now home to a rack of electronic countermeasure gear. Ammo drums replaced by a radome and omnirange antennas. Access via a crawlway that ran the length of the plane from the crew cabin, through the bomb bay, to the rear.

  Hancock shuffled along a short section of access tunnel on his hands and knees. Sheet metal slick with hydraulic fluid. Dancing flashlight beam.

  Noble squeezed into the tight compartment. They crouched shoulder-to-shoulder, ignoring each other’s body odour.

  The flight recorder. Mission data housed in a steel cylinder:

  FINDER’S INSTRUCTIONS – US GOVERNMENT PROPERTY. IF FOUND PLEASE RETURN TO THE NEAREST US GOVERNMENT OFFICE.

  The UHF beacon. A winking green light confirmed the beacon was active, operating on internal power, broadcasting a homing signal on SAR.

  ‘How long will she transmit?’ asked Hancock.

  ‘Four weeks, give or take.’

  The backup cell. Twice the size of an automobile battery.

  CAUTION – SHOCK HAZARD.

  ‘Is that it?’ asked Noble.

  ‘Yeah.’

  He disconnected the terminals.

  ‘Watch yourself.’

  They unscrewed hex bolts and jerked the unit from its rack.

  Noble constructed a sledge from a section of deck plate. He cut a length of power cable and lashed it as tow rope.

  Hancock watched him work.

  ‘Feel like an idiot. Sitting here while you break sweat.’

  ‘Best kick back awhile. Take it easy.’

  ‘Head keeps spinning. Can’t hardly see straight.’

  ‘You need rest. No use pretending otherwise. Normal circumstances, a head wound that bad would have you laid up in ICU a long while. CAT scans, the works. Weeks before the nurses let you throw back the sheet and put your feet on the floor. Soon as we get back to the plane, you ought to shoot some morphine. Pop a couple of Motrins, at least. You need to recuperate.’

  ‘Fuck that shit.’

  ‘You got to be dispassionate. Set the macho bullshit aside. Your body is equipment in need of repair. Treat it as such.’

  ‘Let you in on a secret,’ said Hancock, contemplating the dunes. ‘Truth is, I love it out here in the desert. I want to be awake every awful minute. Yeah, the situation is desperate. I want to get home same as you guys. But this is why I joined the military. Didn’t want to stare at the world through an office window. Wanted a mission. Clarity of purpose. Something real. Something fundamental.’

  ‘A true believer.’

  ‘You’re goddam right.’

  Noble loaded the battery onto the deck plate.

  ‘Hold on,’ said Hancock. ‘I got to fetch something from inside.’

  He struggled to his feet, climbed into the tight crawlspace and retrieved a ballistic Peli case from behind the battery rack.

  Noble helped drag the Peli case from the tail.

  ‘What’s in this thing?’ asked Noble as he stacked it on the sled.

  ‘Something that might save our collective ass.’

  A star shell to the south. Frost. A flare to guide them home.

  They gripped the tow rope and began to haul the battery across the sand.

  The nose.

  Noble reached up and brushed dust from the hull of the plane. He flipped latches and unhinged a panel beneath the cockpit window.

  A seven-pin power receptacle: four pos/negs, two grounds and a redundancy.

  Frost dumped the battery in the sand beneath the open power panel. She ran jump leads from the battery pack to the terminals, clamped them with heavy alligator clips. Crack and spark as she applied the second clip. She snatched her hand away.

  ‘Better watch out,’ said Noble. ‘Whole fuselage is soaked in fuel.’

  Frost sat in the pilot seat. Noble stood behind her.

  He held a flashlight trained on the AC switch panel.

  ‘Here goes.’

  Frost cranked the selector from AUX to EXT.

  Spark-shower from the overhead air refuel panel. They ducked and shielded their eyes.

  Power up hum. Winking console indicators. Cabin lights fluttered and glowed steady.

  Faces lit harsh white. Each shocked by the deterioration they saw in their companion’s condition. Exhaustion and thirst. Stubble, sunburn, peeling skin.

  They laughed. High-fives.

  ‘About time we caught a break,’ said Noble.

  ‘Well, let’s not waste precious volts,’ said Frost. ‘Pass me the headset.’

  He handed her the pilot helmet. Brim stencil: PINBACK.

  She hesitated for a moment, then pulled on the helmet, creeped to be sharing skullspace with a dead man.

  She plugged the interphone jack into the side-console, switched on the command panel above her head and began to flip through pre-programmed frequencies.

  She switched from INTER to VOX. Speaker hiss filled the cabin.

  She keyed the radio.

  ‘Mayday, Mayday, anyone copy, over? This is B-52 Liberty Bell, tail MT66 requesting aid, please respond.’

  White noise.

  ‘Mayday, Mayday, this is B-52 Liberty Bell. We have crashed in the desert north-east of the Panamint Range, we require urgent assistance, over.’

  The unbroken susurration of empty wavebands.

  She flicked toggles, turned dials.

  ‘No good?’ queried Noble.

  ‘Quick II is giving me nothing on Guard. DAMA and AFSAT are returning No Comms. Line-of-sight is no fucking good with these mountains boxing us in. Best bet is the ARC one-ninety. Sooner or later, someone ought to respond. Don’t want to believe we’re the only folks broadcasting in the entire western hemisphere.’

  Frost turned to Noble.

  ‘No point waiting around. Might take a while to raise anyone. Best if we take half-hour shifts. This could be a long night.’

  Frost, alone on the flight deck, feet propped on the avionics in front of her. She had removed the pilot’s helmet. She toyed with the CSEL in her lap.

  She’d managed to pick up fragments of BBC World Service. A news update which was, she suspected, days old, cycling from a console in an abandoned studio somewhere in central London.

  British voice:

  ‘… extent of the pandemic … research centres across the world … no firm hope of a cure …’

  The transmission momentarily overwhelmed by a strange tocking sound, an electronic pulse that rose and fell as it washed across the wavebands.

  ‘… refuge centres overrun … advise extreme caution … place of safety … away from major cities …’

  Feedback whine. She tweaked Acquisition.

  ‘… asting from the United Sta … taken command of the continuity government … ecretary of State … sworn in at NORAD headquarters … continued state of emergency … executive posi … recall of overseas forces … concluded with a prayer … their trust in God …’

  She shut off the CSEL and threw it aside.

  America’s slow death evidently playing out like the final hours of Hitler’s entourage sealed in their Reichstag bunker. Guys awarding themselves meaningless titles. Studying maps, debating strategy, issuing futile orders. Pathologically competitive alpha males jostling for status even as the power failed, the lights and air con died, and they were left in choking darkness. Bad fucking joke.

  She reached above her head and powered the ARC-190. She held the oxygen mask to her mouth and keyed the mask-mike.

  ‘Mayday, Mayday, this is the crew of B-52 Liberty Bell requesting urgent assistance. Can any military personnel copy this transmission?’

  She scanned wavebands.

  ‘Anyone out there, over? Anyon
e at all?’

  A ghost-murmur behind interference. She sat still, held her breath.

  Could be an auditory hallucination. Maybe she was creating syllables out of static, brain-shaping patterns from chaos.

  She upped the volume.

  ‘Say again, please. Say again your last.’

  A voice. Male. Distant, desperate.

  ‘… For the love of God, can anyone hear me? Please, tell me I’m not alone …’

  ‘Hey. I’m listening.’

  ‘… Tired. Dog tired. Don’t know how long I’ve been …’

  ‘… I’m right here, I’m right here, brother. Talk to me …’

  ‘… can’t be the last. Have to be others …’

  The plane’s UHF transmitter too weak to make contact. No way to boost the signal.

  She sat back and listened to the phantom voice.

  Frost and her distant companion. Two lost souls, pleading with the airwaves, voices shot with hopeless resignation, overwhelmed by the pathetic message-in-a-bottle futility of committing Maydays to the ether.

  She stepped outside.

  She leant against the fuselage and listened to the silence.

  She glanced down. Pinback, shrouded in the stars and stripes, dusted in sand, slowly claimed by the desert.

  14

  The upper cabin.

  They sat cross-legged on the deck and contemplated their remaining water.

  Frost spoke what they could already see:

  ‘Six pouches. Two canteens: one full, one pretty much drained.’

  ‘Won’t last long,’ said Noble. He picked up one of the canteens and shook it. It sloshed near-empty. ‘Two or three days, at most. Shit, I could drink the whole lot right now. Would barely touch my thirst.’

  ‘Gallon a day. That’s what they recommend for deep desert. Plenty of water, rest, and shade. We’re so fucked it’s almost funny.’

  ‘Ought to check out the plane. Might be able to drain some liquid from the sub-systems. Won’t taste too pretty, but who cares, right?’

  ‘Best limit perspiration,’ said Hancock. ‘Sleep by day. Stay out the sun.’

  ‘Someone ought to carry the water pouches in their pocket. Body heat. If the temperature drops much further they could freeze and burst.’

  Noble picked up one of the energy bars.

  ‘This all we got? Meal bars?’

  ‘Least of our worries. Die of dehydration long before we get hungry.’

  The cabin lights flickered.

  ‘How long will that power cell last?’ asked Hancock.

  ‘Longer than us,’ said Frost.

  ‘Any luck with the radio?’

  ‘I would have mentioned it.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘A weak signal. Some poor bastard calling for help. We can’t reach him, he can’t reach us. Pretty much the state of the world. So yeah, we’ll keep transmitting an SOS. But it looks like we’ll have to help ourselves.’

  Noble pushed aside canteens to make space for the map. He moved the water pouches as carefully as he could. If one of the plastic envelopes snagged on a floor-bolt and tore, they would have to get down on their knees and lap moisture from the deck like a pack of dogs.

  He shook open the chart and laid it on the floor.

  He contemplated featureless terrain. Saltpans and washes.

  ‘Every time I look at this damn map I hope to see something I missed,’ said Noble. ‘A water hole. A Park Ranger station. Something that might save our asses. It’s like I’m working through Kübler-Ross. I’ve done denial and anger. Now I’ve moved onto bargaining. Been pleading with God, in my head. Each time I open the chart, hoping to find a symbol magically appeared. He hasn’t obliged so far.’

  He tapped the red grease-pencil circle at the centre of the map.

  ‘Like I said. Pretty sure that’s our grid. Might be a little further north-west, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference. Several days from any roads, any habitation. A true country mile any direction we take. In this heat? We’d tap out pretty quick. We’d be crow bait within hours.’

  ‘It can be done,’ said Hancock. ‘Weaker men have overcome tougher odds. Just got to set our minds. Sleep by day, walk by night. It’s not like we have a whole lot to carry.’

  ‘Last resort,’ said Frost. ‘But I guess we’ve already reached last resort territory.’

  ‘There is another option,’ said Noble. ‘You’ve cracked your head, and Frost has messed up her leg. Neither of you are in much condition to undertake a long desert trek. But I could go. I’m in good shape. I could cover a lot of ground on my own. Move at my own pace. If I climbed the mountains and reached blacktop road, I could summon help.’

  ‘How much water would you be looking to take on this expedition?’ asked Hancock.

  ‘I’d need to cover twenty miles each night. That’s a punishing pace.’

  ‘So how much water?’

  ‘A bunch.’

  ‘Yeah. That’s what I thought. If it’s all the same to you, we’ll stick with a straight three-way split.’

  The debris trench.

  Scattered wreckage half submerged in sand.

  Frost held a flashlight while Noble crouched and dug. He slowly excavated a massive tyre.

  Frost helped him heave the wheel upright. Chest-high, white aluminium hub. Part of the aircraft’s forward quad-bogie, ripped from its wheel-well during the crash.

  Frayed rubber. The tyre abraded by countless runway touchdowns.

  ‘Jeez,’ said Frost. ‘Virtually no tread. Damn thing is as smooth as an egg. When was the last time this plane got an overhaul?’

  Noble shook his head.

  ‘Pinback was right. Should have aborted take-off and put her back in the hangar.’

  He rolled the wheel hand over hand back towards the plane. Frost walked beside him, trained the flashlight.

  They ducked as they rolled the tyre beneath the wing.

  ‘Keep going,’ said Frost. ‘Want to get well away from the fuel before we light her up.’

  They rolled the tyre fifty yards in front of the nose.

  ‘Here’s good.’

  Noble kicked the tyre. It toppled flat.

  Frost limped back to the plane. She fetched a wad of pages from the flight manual.

  A wing reservoir leaked fuel. She held the paper beneath the leak, let steady drips of JP8 soak into the pages, stain them translucent.

  She returned to the tyre and scattered the sheaf of papers.

  She took a Zippo from her pocket. Burnished brass. Ranger insignia.

  ‘That belong to your father?’ asked Noble.

  ‘Yeah. Three tours.’

  ‘And that old knife?’

  ‘His too.’

  ‘Did he make it?’

  ‘Yeah, he got home.’

  She crouched.

  ‘Stand back.’

  She held the Zippo at arm’s length, flipped the lid and sparked a flame. Fuel vapour combusted with a thud. A mini-mushroom cloud blossomed into the night, lit the crash site flickering red.

  Paper blackened and crisped. The tyre began to smoke and melt. Ethereal blue flames.

  ‘Burn a long while,’ said Frost. ‘Won’t smell too pretty, but it’ll put out a shitload of smoke. Visible for miles during daylight. If Early is out there, he’ll see it.’

  Noble covered his mouth and nose.

  ‘Man, that stinks.’

  ‘Should be okay as long as we sit back from it. Tell Hancock to get over here if he wants to keep warm.’

  Frost climbed a dune and put up another flare. The white starshell screamed skyward. She stared into distant darkness in case, miles away, Early put up a reciprocal shell to alert them he was alive.

  The flare lit the crash site cold white, lit Hancock dragging a Peli trunk towards the fire.

  Frost descended the dune to meet him.

  He had a balled-up parka beneath his arm. He threw it to Frost.

  ‘Thought you might be cold.’<
br />
  Frost threw it back.

  ‘Thanks. But I can’t walk around snug while everyone else shivers.’

  ‘There aren’t enough coats for us all.’

  ‘Then I guess we just sit and look at it.’

  Hancock flipped latches and opened the trunk.

  Frost craned to see inside. Comms gear. A folded tripod antenna.

  ‘What the hell is this?’

  ‘Uplink to STRATCOM. Back-channel authentication for the bomb.’

  ‘Why the fuck didn’t you mention it earlier?’

  ‘The digital equipment in the aircraft, the CSELs, the onboard, rely on the same satellite network as this thing. If the plane couldn’t get a lock on the command net, I doubt the spectrum analyser on this kit will pick up a signal. Truth be told, I’m booting it up because we’ve got hours to kill and nothing to do.’

  He unfolded the dish antenna and planted it in the sand facing east. He ran cable to the uplink.

  Boot sequence. Flickering loading bars. A brief function menu, then the screen hung at ACQUISITION.

  They watched the screen a while. A clock glyph cycled as the terminal tried to raise a response from a low orbit milsat.

  ‘There’s got to be someone out there,’ murmured Hancock as he studied the screen. ‘The entire US military. Got to be someone left alive.’

  Frost turned away. She sat on the sand and massaged her leg.

  Rubber bubbled and popped like gum. A column of filthy smoke rose into the night sky.

  ‘Can you navigate off the stars?’ asked Hancock. ‘Appreciate it’s been a long time since Basic. If we had to walk out of here, could you orient yourself?’

  Frost shrugged.

  ‘I can find Polaris easy enough. Truth is, doesn’t matter much which direction we go. Desert and mountains on all sides. Same quotient of suffering, all points of the compass.’

  She looked at the surrounding dunes, a dark ridgeline against the stars. She thought about the bleak, pre-human wasteland surrounding the plane, the journey that might lie ahead. Dunes seared by merciless sun, scoured by freezing night wind.

  She stared into flames and heard herself say:

  ‘We’re all going to die out here.’

  15

  McCarran International Airport, Las Vegas.

  The hangar office.