Velocity (27 page)

She’s pleased the dislocated shoulder prompted her to give up mountain biking for Pilates, something she was doing long before it became fashionable, because it had greatly increased her arm’s strength.

**

Henri and Nico climb down the aluminium ladder from the shuttle’s hatch. The Frenchman steps onto the desert like he owns it and, in a way, he does, at least for the next few hours.

Henri triggers his walkie, the message broadcast to the whole crew.
‘Atlantis
will be loaded and ready for wheels up by sunrise.’

On cue, a diesel engine barks to life. The enormous yellow Kato mobile crane belches a cloud of black exhaust from its stack then rolls from behind the Galaxy towards
Atlantis.

Two hundred metres to the left, Dirk and Big Bird’s Tiger lifts off in a blizzard of dust. The Frenchman turns and watches it skim the desert until it outruns the glow of the runway lights and disappears.

**

29

Judd lies at the top of the ravine and focuses the telescope on the black chopper. He really hopes it doesn’t fly towards him.

It flies directly towards him - then breaks left. Relieved, he pans the telescope, focuses on the yellow mobile crane as it trundles towards
Atlantis.
He pans the telescope again, focuses on the circus tent. It’s being lowered. Behind it the tarps are being removed from the big jet, which he can now confirm is a Galaxy.

Blue-white sparks arc from two positions high on the big jet’s fuselage, one at the front, one at the rear. He immediately knows they’re welding connection points for
Atlantis
to lock onto.

The jet will be gone before the cavalry arrives, he’s sure of it. He’ll need to go over and retrieve Rhonda himself. There’s no choice. She’s just there, just over there. The idea of sitting here and watching the jet leave is not an option. Of course he doesn’t know if they’ll even take her with them but then he knows nothing at this point.

Actually, he knows this: Deke Slayton would go and get his wife. Gordo Cooper would go and get his wife. Neil Armstrong would go and get his wife. Those astronauts would work out a plan and execute it, no matter the situation, no matter the odds, because they were steely-eyed missile men.

‘I’m going over there.’

‘Are you crazy?’

Ten metres away Corey works under the Loach’s instrument panel. The yellow chopper looks awful, pockmarked by gunfire and blackened by oil smoke. The Australian looks almost as bad. Pale and drawn, his clothes dirty and burnt. The evening has taken its toll.

‘They’re leaving.’

‘And so are we. Come on, dog.’ He clicks his fingers and Spike hops inside.

Judd stands, moves to the chopper. ‘I want you to stay. I’m going to get Rhonda and I need you to fly us out of here.’

‘Sorry, but no way. It won’t be long before they come looking for that.’ Corey nods at the remains of the black chopper still smouldering in the ravine below. ‘And I’m not going to be here when they turn up.’

‘I need to get her before the shuttle leaves.’

‘The guy on the phone told you to wait for the cavalry.’

‘They won’t be here in time. Please, I need your help.’

‘Mate, that runway is lit up like New Year’s Eve. They’ll see you coming a mile off.
Literally
a mile off. Trust me, you don’t want to die here. I was born here and even I don’t wanna die here. It’s a flat, dusty, lonely place. Now come on, get in.’

‘I can’t.’

Corey exhales and hits a switch. The Loach’s turbine whines. He whispers: ‘Please-baby-please-baby-please —’

The turbine screams to life and blades turn. Corey looks at Judd, shouts over the noise: ‘Last call, Mandy.’

‘I can’t leave.’

‘And I can’t stay. I’m sorry.’

Judd believes him. Even though the Australian’s face is only lit by the dull glow of the instrument panel he can read his conflicted expression.

The dog barks.

‘I know he didn’t teach me how to tie the knot!’ Corey works the controls and the Loach lifts off, pivots 180 degrees then thunders away, its running lights blinking softly against the night.

Judd watches it vanish into the darkness as the thump of rotor blades fades. Left alone in the darkness he realises he has to do it all on his own. He rubs his face, takes a breath. ‘Christ.’

The thump of rotor blades returns. ‘He’s coming back.’ Judd’s elated. Relief floods over him. He won’t have to do it on his own after all.

The thump of rotor blades draws closer but the sound is different: deeper, fatter. Judd looks up. A shape appears in the sky before him, silhouetted against the radiant star field. It’s not the Loach.

‘Damn.’ He turns and runs as hard as he can. It’s pitch black and he can’t see a damn thing. Then a bright light splashes across the desert and he can see everything. He’s at the edge of an incline. It’s only five metres high but it’s steep. Momentum carries him over and he falls, hits the ground, rolls.

His head hits something hard and he stops dead. His skull vibrates like a tuning fork. Groggy, he forces his eyes open. Fifty metres away the black chopper hovers above the ravine. Its searchlight points down, illuminating what remains of the wreck below.

There’s something wet in Judd’s eyes, on his face. He tastes it. Blood, from a gash on his forehead. He looks at what caused it. A boulder, large and blasted smooth by an aeon of desert wind.

The black chopper pivots, swings its searchlight towards Judd. He moves as fast as he can, drags himself behind the boulder. Was he seen? He awaits the answer, a blast of cannon fire or a missile that will vaporise this very old rock and his life along with it.

**

In the Tiger, Dirk surveys the other chopper’s wreckage, Claude and Cobbin’s remains visible inside the burnt-out cockpit. The German finds it almost impossible to believe the Loach brought down a state-of-the-art attack chopper. Claude must have screwed up and flown it into the ground. It’s very disappointing, not only for the loss of Claude and Cobbin, but because he was hoping they had solved his Judd Bell problem. Unfortunately there’s no sign the yellow chopper was destroyed.

So the Loach is still out there and now they’re a Tiger down. From a tactical perspective it’s a concern. The choppers were an insurance policy against a military or law enforcement attempt to disrupt the mission. To make matters worse, Dirk just received word that the Loach and its occupants, Judd Bell, a pilot and a dog, had reached Kinabara Dish and managed, somehow, to subdue both the operatives placed there
and
take their satellite phone. The German grits his teeth in frustration.

Something rushes from behind a large boulder in the desert in front of him. Dirk looks closer. It’s large but he can’t see it clearly. Whatever it is, it’s moving like there’s no tomorrow, a day it will not see if Dirk has anything to do with it. He aims the Top Hawk and the targeting grid locks on. He blinks and bullets zip across the desert.

It’s a kangaroo. It makes it to another rock and disappears. The German’s genuinely happy the marsupial got away. It momentarily lifts his mood, then the frustration floods back and all he wants is to spend every second he has before departure searching for the astronaut.

‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.’ He says it to himself and takes a breath, remembers this mission is for his commander, the man who gave Dirk the life he is so hell bent on protecting. Now that they’re a chopper down
and
the astronaut has the satellite phone it’s even more important that Dirk get back to base camp, make sure they depart on time and be prepared for any threat that might present itself.

‘Okay, let’s get back.’

Big Bird grunts an affirmative and swings the Tiger around, aims it towards the runway.

The sound of the black chopper retreats.

Judd’s head throbs. He needs to get up and get moving but the smooth boulder against his face feels fantastic. It’s like a cool pillow on a balmy night. Just like the pillow in that hotel. What was it called? The one in Hawaii. He can’t remember its name. It was pink. It doesn’t matter. He needs to get up and get moving - The Royal Hawaiian! That’s the name. His eyelids are heavy. He decides to close them for a moment. He’s not going to sleep because he needs to get moving, he’s just going to have a little rest, just for a minute.

Judd closes his eyes and passes out.

**

30

The Article is one of its names. Habu is another, comparing it to a particularly tenacious Okinawan pit viper. Archangel is a third. The Sled is preferred by some, though the wider world knew it by only one designation.

Blackbird SR-71. The fastest aircraft ever built.

Will Thompkins is happy to call it the Article. If it was good enough for Kelly Johnson, the man who designed it, then it was good enough for him.

Thompkins strides across the tarmac towards the jet, baking like a gator in the Florida sun. Major Clark Mahoney, his Reconnaissance Systems Officer, follows.

This is the last Article still flight-certified and operational. After the air force decommissioned the Blackbird SR-71 fleet in 1998, NASA kept this one for one simple reason: nearly fifty years after it was designed, it was still the best platform for testing new technologies at high speed and high altitude.

Thompkins takes in the aircraft’s flat, razor-sharp outline, painted a muted, heat-emitting dark blue. He glances underneath, sees the puddles of JP-7 avgas that drip from the fuel tank’s panels, panels that will swell and seal once the aircraft is at speed and its titanium skin has been sufficiently heated by air resistance.

Memories flood back as he mounts the ladder to the cockpit and climbs inside. He remembers one reconn mission he flew over Libya back in the day. Some of the locals took exception to having their photo taken so they fired on the aircraft. Thompkins was forced to take drastic evasive action, which meant pressing the Article’s throttle levers full forward. The aircraft accelerated to Mach 3.6, or 4000 feet per second, and easily outran the threat.

It also outran its KC-10 aerial refueler. With dry tanks Thompkins circled back and managed to lock on to the refuelling boom twelve seconds before the flight computer performed an engine unstart, which was a fancy way of saying, ‘You just ran out of gas, moron, so I’m shutting down the engines - best of luck with the ejection’.

Thompkins grins at the memory as he attaches his helmet then connects his suit to the life-support system, straps himself in, closes the canopy then begins his pre-flight checklist. It’s been almost a year since he flew the Article and he’s surprised by how much he missed it.

As soon as Thompkins hung up from Judd Bell he met with NASA’s Administrator Charlie Cunningham and advised him of
Atlantis
’s location. The marine commander overseeing the shuttle’s retrieval was then notified and a force dispatched to the position. The marines’ ETA was between three and four hours. But there would be no satellites in place to photograph the area until the next day and unmanned Predator reconn drones were too slow to get there before that. The marines needed photographic intel and Thompkins knew the only way to obtain it in time was to use the Article.

Over the past decade NASA had secretly enhanced the aircraft, designated 844 on its tail fins, with a raft of twenty-first-century technologies. Not only did it utilise a live datalink that had not been available earlier in its operational life, it also incorporated improved avionics and, most importantly, two Pratt & Whitney J5 8 engines with upgraded compressor inlets. The new inlets allowed the engines to run much hotter and meant a top speed of low Mach 6, almost twice as fast as before. Incredibly, the Article’s increased speed did not affect its fuel consumption. With the engine’s unique turbofan within a ram-jet design, it became more fuel efficient the faster it travelled.

So Thompkins would fly the Article over
Atlantis’s
position at 80000 feet. Mahoney would take photographs and document the area in minute detail, right down to the brand of footwear anyone in the vicinity happened to be wearing. The digital images would then be datalinked directly to the approaching marines and give them an invaluable tactical advantage.

The Article taxis towards the runway’s threshold, its wings vibrating over the uneven tarmac.

‘So where are we going, Horshack?’ Strapped in behind him, RSO Mahoney’s voice buzzes in Thompkins’ headset. He uses the nickname he gave Thompkins twenty years ago, when they first flew together in the air force and discovered that they both loved watching reruns of
Welcome Back, Kotter
when they were kids.

‘Need to know, Epstein.’

‘That important, huh?’

‘Yep, that important.’

The Article’s flight plan was classified because Thompkins couldn’t risk word getting out that they knew
Atlantis
’s position. Only Administrator Cunningham and the marines had that information.

‘I’ll tell you as soon as you need to know.’

‘Roger that.’

Thompkins and Mahoney had been inseparable during their time in the air force. They did everything together, from sharing an apartment to being each other’s wingman while out tomcattin’ the ladies. That changed once they transferred to NASA to become the Article’s primary flight team and Thompkins’ career moved to the fast track. Over time, Thompkins found himself actively avoiding Mahoney because his career so outstripped his old friend’s that he was embarrassed and didn’t how to act around him.