‘No!’ He is racked with grief. Corey only came along because Judd asked him to.
**
49
Horrified, Dirk watches the Loach and the Galaxy tail tumble towards the Tiger.
‘What did you
do
?’ Big Bird’s voice rattles in his headset as he tips the chopper into a steep, diving bank to avoid the wall of wreckage.
**
The rope around Judd’s waist twangs tight, cuts into his hip, almost wrenches his hands off the hooks. He looks over his left shoulder.
Corey!
He’s holding the end of the rope with both hands, slapping against the shuttle’s fuselage like a ribbon in a breeze. Judd’s so delighted he laughs out loud.
**
The Galaxy convulses. Kelvin wrestles the controls. He instinctively knows the Galaxy has lost its tail and rear stabiliser. It takes every ounce of his experience to stop the jet from nosing over and diving towards the ocean.
Nico panics. ‘What’s going on? Can we still make it to Virginia?’
Kelvin doesn’t look at him. ‘We’ll be lucky to make it back to land.’
**
The Galaxy’s turbofans spool up, then down, then up again, sounds like a braying animal. Judd realises the pilot is using thrust vectoring, increasing engine power on one wing, then the other, to keep the jet stable. It is the option of last resort and means Judd must get
Atlantis
free of the Galaxy
now.
He pushes his head over the viewport as the shuttle lurches and tilts down. It’s good and bad. Good because Judd slides straight into the cabin, bad because
Atlantis
and the Galaxy now head towards the ocean.
Judd lands on his chest and a volt of pain shoots through his cauterised wound. He ignores it, finds his feet as the rope around his waist wrenches him back towards the viewport. He turns to Rhonda. ‘Can you get us off this thing?’
She can barely shake her head. Her white face is a stark contrast to the pool of dark blood she lies in. She’s dying. Judd knows it as clearly as he’s known anything in his life. He wants to go to her, help her, but the rope is so tight he can barely move. He turns, grabs it, braces a foot against the side of the cabin and pulls hard.
**
‘Whoah!’ Corey thumps along the fuselage towards the viewport. It’s 2 metres away. His hands are numb from holding the rope but he’s not letting go. He’s yanked forward again ...
**
Corey slides through the viewport and Judd breaks his fall as he thumps to the floor. ‘You okay?’
The Australian finds his feet, nods. ‘The lucky bucket didn’t work. Tango in Berlin’s chopper’s back there.’
‘Right. Christ.’ Judd nods at the viewport. ‘Keep your eye on him.’ Corey nods, moves to it as Judd kneels beside Rhonda. He slides his arms under her back and legs, gently lifts her into the pilot’s chair, straps her in. Leaving his singlet on, he pulls off his shirt, wraps it around her wound, then places her right hand on top of it. ‘Keep pressure on it and stay awake.’ Rhonda nods faintly.
Judd slides into the commander’s chair, the rope still knotted around his waist. There’s no time to take it off. He scans the instrument panel. The flight deck has power and all systems appear to be operational. He glances at the altimeter. Four thousand, three hundred feet and dropping like a stone.
Atlantis
is pointed at the green-blue expanse of water below.
They’re just a minute from auguring in. His left hand grasps the rotational controller and his right hand reaches for a small toggle switch on the panel above. He knows what will happen when he triggers it but can’t see another way forward.
He flicks the switch.
The three explosive bolts on the underside of
Atlantis
fire and release the spacecraft.
**
Through the windscreen of the Galaxy, Kelvin watches the shuttle sweep away to the starboard side. The Galaxy instantly shudders and noses down at an even steeper angle. It needs a tail and a vertical stabiliser to fly. The only thing that kept it aloft this long was the shuttle’s wings and tail.
Kelvin wrestles the controls but it’s useless. He’d hoped to turn the jet around, land it somewhere near the coast. That will not happen now. His eyes flick to the altimeter. Three thousand, eight hundred feet and falling fast. The nose drops again and the jet picks up speed.
The Galaxy shudders and metal tears. It’s a terrible sound. Kelvin knows it means a wing has detached, the airframe not designed to travel at this speed. The jet rolls around its axis and noses down again, almost vertical now. Beside him Nico closes his eyes.
Kelvin stares out the windscreen as the blue-green water rushes up to greet him. Maybe he should have crashed into that herd of cattle after all. The irony is he’d wanted to die somewhere in the Pacific, he just never thought it would be
in
the Pacific.
Above the passenger compartment the fuselage rips open. Buffeted by the wind, Martie sits with the rest of Henri’s crew and looks through the jagged tear in the fuselage above. She has no regrets. She will see her mother again soon.
The Galaxy hits the ocean travelling at 700 knots and blows apart.
**
Judd doesn’t watch. He has other things on his plate, like trying to work out where to land this spacecraft.
He tips
Atlantis
into a steep right turn, can see the Australian coast in the distance but knows they won’t make it. The shuttle has no engines, so there’s no way to throttle up and fly it back to land, and it’s not much of a glider either, which, of course, is Teddy Kennedy’s fault.
Where can he land it? He searches the ocean. An island would be good. Even a reef would be better than open water, but that’s all he can see.
He glances at the altimeter. Two thousand, seven hundred feet and dropping like a stone. He turns to Rhonda beside him. She stares, her eyes unfocused.
‘You need to hold on.’
She can barely nod.
**
Dirk stares down at the Galaxy’s wreckage, spread wide across the surging ocean, and feels sick to the stomach. The people he’d spent the better part of two decades with, friends and workmates, all gone.
Through his headset he can hear Big Bird berate him in German, his voice laced with a pain and invective Dirk’s never heard from his countryman before. What he’s saying is true. It
is
Dirk’s fault. He should have been more careful when he fired at the Loach.
The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
The words were tattooed across Dirk’s back yet he’d failed to heed their message. His obsession with killing the astronaut destroyed his crew and yet Judd Bell is
still
alive. Dirk saw him tip into one of the shuttle’s viewports, which was somehow missing its glass panel, just before
Atlantis
separated from the Galaxy.
Dirk locks eyes on the spacecraft. ‘Get closer.’
Big Bird works the controls and the chopper surges towards the shuttle.
A man’s head pokes up through
Atlantis’
s open viewport. It’s not Henri.
Dirk speaks into his headset: ‘Commander, do you read?’
There’s no response.
‘Henri, do you copy?’
Nothing.
He aims the Top Hawk helmet at
Atlantis.
A tone beeps as the targeting grid skips across the sky.
‘What are you doing?’ Big Bird’s frantic voice buzzes in Dirk’s headset. ‘The commander’s on board.’
‘Why doesn’t he respond?’
‘He could be injured, he - the radio could be out.’
‘No. It’s over.’
A long pause. ‘What do we do?’ Big Bird’s voice is small, his question not just about this moment but their future.
‘We destroy the shuttle, land this thing, go home and rebuild the crew.’
Dirk can’t imagine doing anything else. So he will start again. He has the resources, almost seventy million in various bank accounts scattered around the globe, and three major assignments already contracted for the next year.
Big Bird speaks again. ‘I will be 2IC.’
‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’ Dirk doesn’t know if Henri’s alive or not. Maybe Big Bird is right, maybe he’s just injured or the radio is out, either way he can’t take a risk. The astronaut knows who Dirk is and so must die.
The targeting grid finds
Atlantis,
the tone turns solid.
‘I’m sorry, Henri.’
Dirk blinks.
**
50
The missile blasts away from the black chopper.
Corey sees it, shouts into the cabin: ‘Missile! On the way!’
‘Okay!’ Judd wrenches
Atlantis
into a steep right turn. The missile alters direction and follows, grey exhaust vapour trailing behind it.
Corey watches it close in. It’s so fast there’s no way they can outrun it. He thinks about Spike, wonders who’ll look after him. ‘I’m sorry, mate . . .’
Shards of white light streak across the sky, slam into the missile.
It detonates in a ball of fire.
**
‘Got it!’ Disser grins, tips the Harrier into a hard right bank.
Behind him Severson’s eyes are squeezed shut, his face drained of colour. His voice is little more than a whisper. ‘Great.’
Disser holds the Harrier in the bank, searches the sky for the aircraft that launched the missile.
‘There!’ Disser pinpoints a black chopper. He drags the targeting sight towards it but he’s too slow. The black chopper’s cannons blaze.
Bullets rip into the Harrier’s fuselage. Severson’s eyes spring open. ‘Oh Jesus!’ A bullet ricochets around the cabin. He prays it doesn’t hit him.
‘Ahhh! Christ!’ It hits Disser.
‘You okay?’
The marine’s voice is weak. ‘Hit - in the - arm.’
‘Oh, man. Are you going to be able to land this thing?’
Disser’s breathing is laboured. ‘Stupid - question. Take out - that chopper.’
‘What?! I can’t do that.’
‘Don’t be - a pussy —’
‘I can’t do it! You need to rally.’
There’s no response.
‘Disser! Are you rallying?’
He is not.
The Harrier shudders and falls out of the sky. Mortified, Severson stares at the vibrating control stick between his knees. His eyes flick to the altimeter, which spins down. He wishes he’d never answered the damn phone.
**
Corey watches the Harrier drop into a cloudbank and disappear. He looks up and locks eyes on the black chopper. It surges towards
Atlantis
again.
‘What’s going on back there?’
Corey hears Judd’s question. What does he tell him? That there’s no way out of this? That they’re all about to die? Is it better if that kind of information comes as a surprise? He doesn’t answer, just watches the black chopper approach.
**
Dirk focuses on
Atlantis.
‘As close as you can.’
‘Copy that.’ Big Bird pushes the Tiger towards the spacecraft.
Dirk flicks the switch from cannons to missiles and aims the Top Hawk helmet at
Atlantis
for the last time. The tone beeps as the targeting grid skips across the sky. It locks on and the tone turns solid, like the ECG of a flatlining patient.
He blinks.
The black chopper explodes in a vivid fireball.
**
‘Severson Burke, you
magnificent
bastard!’ Severson grips the Harrier’s control stick so hard his hand is numb. Yes, he’s petrified, but it beats the hell out of the alternative, a horrible death on the ocean below.
**
Corey flinches, astonished, relieved and euphoric all at once. He has no idea how it happened - then he sees the Harrier punch through the wall of orange flames and knows exactly.
Burning chunks of the black chopper tumble towards the ocean, trailing thin ribbons of smoke behind them. Corey watches them fall, notices something, far below, leans to get a better view but loses sight of it under the shuttle’s wing.
He looks up as the rasp of the Harrier’s engine cuts across the soundscape. It approaches off the shuttle’s port side.
Something catches Judd’s eye to the left. He turns and looks out the windscreen. ‘What the hell?’
It’s a Marine Harrier, 30 metres away. The pilot is slumped in his seat. Behind him sits another guy. He unclips his oxygen mask and grins.
‘Severson?’
He gives Judd a wave.
‘You’ve got to be kidding.’
Corey drops down from the viewport. ‘He destroyed the chopper!’
Severson nods as if he heard what the Australian said.
The hand Rhonda holds to her wound falls to her lap. Judd turns to Corey, nods at her. ‘Keep pressure on the wound.’
Corey kneels beside her, presses her hand to the wound. ‘How’re you going?’
She doesn’t respond, her eyes now closed. He leans close to her, listens, then turns to Judd, grim. ‘She’s hardly breathing, mate.’