desert.’
He exhaled, like he was trying to see his breath steam in cold air.
‘Got a blanket or something?’
‘Think I saw a coat down below.’
‘I’d be obliged.’
Frost gestured to her injured leg.
‘Got me running all over the damn place, you sadistic fuck.’
He smiled.
She climbed down the ladder to the lower cabin. An NB3 parka wadded and lashed to the wall.
Easiest way to carry the heavy coat up the ladder was to wear it.
When she got back to the flight deck Pinback was dead.
She took off the coat and laid it over his body so she wouldn’t have to look at his face.
10
A backpack stashed in the EWO footwell.
Frost sat in the pilot seat, held the bag in her lap and unzipped the main compartment. Noble’s stuff:
A handful of snack bars.
A video camera.
A copy of
The Little Prince.
She examined the book. She flipped pages.
To Malcolm, Have a very happy birthday, All my love, Dad.
She’d met a bunch of military personnel in the past few months. Most ditched keepsakes. Eschewed reminders of all they had lost. Kids, partners, parents. Out of contact, almost certainly dead. Hard to think of them without succumbing to suicidal despair. Better to be surrounded by impersonal PX-issue clothes and accoutrements. Olive-drab, mil-spec gear that held no evocative power.
She turned the camera in her hands.
Noble had been ordered to film the blast.
How it should have played out:
The target run.
Frost, strapped in her seat at the radar navigation console. She and Guthrie plot course; make sure the aircraft reaches the precise drop point.
Hancock maintains heading.
Pinback rides the throttles, monitors airspeed.
Couple of minutes from target Pinback radios Vegas for permission to deploy. He gets the Go. Hancock and Frost formally concur. They hand their authentication codes to Noble. He keys the digit sequence into the weapons console and arms the device.
Cue for Frost to unzip her breast pocket, take out a stopwatch and call the sixty second count.
Twenty seconds to target: low rumble/thud as the bomb bay doors fold open and lock.
Pinback issues the final command: proceed with launch sequence.
Countdown from ten.
Noble reaches for the overhead Special Weapons panel, lifts switch covers and hits WPN REL.
Clamps retract and the ALCM drops from the payload compartment. Solid fuel boosters fire, fins unfold, and the missile begins its journey to the target site. Warhead: a Mod 4 CS-67 tactical nuke dialled for a ten kiloton yield.
The plane banks and enters a holding pattern. Standoff until detonation.
They drop blast screens and wait. Minutes pass.
Pinback:
‘Brace, brace, brace.’
A shuddering shockwave buffets the aircraft. Noble unbuckles, crouches between the pilot seats with his camera, and lifts one of the blast screens. He and the pilots are bathed in the unholy light of a slow unfurling mushroom cloud.
The crew had sat in the plane while it was hangared at McCarran and drilled the procedure until it was instinctual. Everyone knew their part.
But then the centre console flashed ENGINE FIRE. An ominous moment that seemed to signal bifurcating reality. One timeline in which the plane completed its mission and returned to base. Another in which Frost found herself marooned among wreckage.
Frost set the camera on the avionics console and pressed REC.
‘LaNitra Frost, Lieutenant, Second Bomb Wing. Radar nav aboard
Liberty Bell
MT66.
‘We crashed in the desert a few hours ago. Lieutenant Guthrie and Captain Pinback are both KIA. Noble, Hancock and Early are missing. As far as I can ascertain, I am the sole survivor.
‘Sun is about to set. Must be twenty-one-hundred, or thereabouts.’
She could see her own face in the camera’s little playback screen. Sunburn. Cracked lips. Crazy, sand-dusted hair. Looked like the kind of raddled meth casualty you might see shaking a cup on a street corner. She reangled the screen so she didn’t have to look at herself.
‘I spoke with
He exhaled, like he was trying to see his breath steam in cold air.
‘Got a blanket or something?’
‘Think I saw a coat down below.’
‘I’d be obliged.’
Frost gestured to her injured leg.
‘Got me running all over the damn place, you sadistic fuck.’
He smiled.
She climbed down the ladder to the lower cabin. An NB3 parka wadded and lashed to the wall.
Easiest way to carry the heavy coat up the ladder was to wear it.
When she got back to the flight deck Pinback was dead.
She took off the coat and laid it over his body so she wouldn’t have to look at his face.
10
A backpack stashed in the EWO footwell.
Frost sat in the pilot seat, held the bag in her lap and unzipped the main compartment. Noble’s stuff:
A handful of snack bars.
A video camera.
A copy of
The Little Prince.
She examined the book. She flipped pages.
To Malcolm, Have a very happy birthday, All my love, Dad.
She’d met a bunch of military personnel in the past few months. Most ditched keepsakes. Eschewed reminders of all they had lost. Kids, partners, parents. Out of contact, almost certainly dead. Hard to think of them without succumbing to suicidal despair. Better to be surrounded by impersonal PX-issue clothes and accoutrements. Olive-drab, mil-spec gear that held no evocative power.
She turned the camera in her hands.
Noble had been ordered to film the blast.
How it should have played out:
The target run.
Frost, strapped in her seat at the radar navigation console. She and Guthrie plot course; make sure the aircraft reaches the precise drop point.
Hancock maintains heading.
Pinback rides the throttles, monitors airspeed.
Couple of minutes from target Pinback radios Vegas for permission to deploy. He gets the Go. Hancock and Frost formally concur. They hand their authentication codes to Noble. He keys the digit sequence into the weapons console and arms the device.
Cue for Frost to unzip her breast pocket, take out a stopwatch and call the sixty second count.
Twenty seconds to target: low rumble/thud as the bomb bay doors fold open and lock.
Pinback issues the final command: proceed with launch sequence.
Countdown from ten.
Noble reaches for the overhead Special Weapons panel, lifts switch covers and hits WPN REL.
Clamps retract and the ALCM drops from the payload compartment. Solid fuel boosters fire, fins unfold, and the missile begins its journey to the target site. Warhead: a Mod 4 CS-67 tactical nuke dialled for a ten kiloton yield.
The plane banks and enters a holding pattern. Standoff until detonation.
They drop blast screens and wait. Minutes pass.
Pinback:
‘Brace, brace, brace.’
A shuddering shockwave buffets the aircraft. Noble unbuckles, crouches between the pilot seats with his camera, and lifts one of the blast screens. He and the pilots are bathed in the unholy light of a slow unfurling mushroom cloud.
The crew had sat in the plane while it was hangared at McCarran and drilled the procedure until it was instinctual. Everyone knew their part.
But then the centre console flashed ENGINE FIRE. An ominous moment that seemed to signal bifurcating reality. One timeline in which the plane completed its mission and returned to base. Another in which Frost found herself marooned among wreckage.
Frost set the camera on the avionics console and pressed REC.
‘LaNitra Frost, Lieutenant, Second Bomb Wing. Radar nav aboard
Liberty Bell
MT66.
‘We crashed in the desert a few hours ago. Lieutenant Guthrie and Captain Pinback are both KIA. Noble, Hancock and Early are missing. As far as I can ascertain, I am the sole survivor.
‘Sun is about to set. Must be twenty-one-hundred, or thereabouts.’
She could see her own face in the camera’s little playback screen. Sunburn. Cracked lips. Crazy, sand-dusted hair. Looked like the kind of raddled meth casualty you might see shaking a cup on a street corner. She reangled the screen so she didn’t have to look at herself.
‘I spoke with
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