Combustion Read online

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  Combustion

  [Purchase & Bell 02]

  Steve Worland

  No copyright 2013 by MadMaxAU eBooks

  *

  PROLOGUE

  Boom.

  Corey Purchase watches the football leave Pete Roland’s boot. He’s marked a thousand kicks from this guy over the years, but their speed always surprises him. Without exception the ball arrives earlier than Corey expects, even when he expects it to arrive early.

  Bloody hell, it’s quick.

  The football spirals through the night sky like a laser-guided missile and again Corey is surprised. It’s not only super fast but super accurate. The fifteen-year-old reaches out, extends his hands -

  Bam. It lands right on his fingertips.

  Whoa! Corey missteps and the football slides out of his grasp, hits the grass, bounces up. He drags it back to his chest and clamps it there.

  What the hell was that?

  It felt like the ground moved under him. He ignores it and swings towards the goalposts. He needs to come up with something and he needs to do it fast. There’s fifteen seconds left on the clock, if that. Only a goal and six points will win this game.

  The goalposts are fifty metres to the left, at a sharp angle to his current position. None of his teammates are free so a kick to the goal square is too risky. Instead, he steps left and goes himself. The five-hundred-strong crowd who pack the old wooden grandstand at Burra High School rise as one.

  He bounces the football, runs hard.

  Fifty metres becomes thirty-five.

  The crowd roars.

  Out of the corner of his eye he sees a defender sprint across the field to cut him off. The guy trips, falls, crashes to the ground.

  Too bad, so sad.

  Corey bounces the football again, keeps running.

  Thirty-five metres becomes twenty-five.

  Corey loses his balance again - then instantly regains it.

  What on earth?

  He can’t worry about it. The goalposts are right there. They’re still on an angle but much closer, just twenty metres away. He steps right, drops the football, swings his right foot and unleashes a thunderbolt.

  Boom. The football soars between the uprights.

  Goal! The crowd goes nuts.

  And the siren sounds.

  Game over.

  Corey punches the air then turns to the grandstand, searches for Roberta. She always sits in the middle at the back so she has a bird’s-eye view -

  Crack. The wooden structure shudders violently, then lurches to the left.

  ‘What was that —’

  The ground beneath Corey rises sharply. ‘Hey!’ He’s thrown off balance, crashes to the turf, can smell the freshly cut grass. He scrambles to his feet but the ground shakes with a fierce lateral movement and it’s impossible to stay upright. He’s tossed to the ground again.

  Earthquake.

  Corey looks up. Wood shatters and bolts snap on the grandstand. Parents, teachers and students rush to the exits, create a bottleneck in both aisles. The grandstand tilts wildly. The ground splits underneath the left side and swallows the cement foundation.

  ‘Jesus.’

  Where’s Roberta?

  Corey scans the panicked faces in the grandstand. There! Exactly where he thought she’d be, in the middle at the rear. She grasps the back railing, hasn’t followed the mass of people who surge to the exits.

  He must help her. He rises to his feet. It’s difficult to stay balanced but he drives himself forward, slow at first - then faster - then faster still. He sprints towards the grandstand forty metres away. He has no idea what he’ll do when he gets there, he just knows he must get there.

  Screams fill the air as Corey reaches the right side of the heaving structure and circles around to the back. He looks up, locks eyes with Roberta, her face a portrait of terror. ‘Hold on!’

  How does he fix this? He searches the grandstand, looks for a way up to her. There must be a route - he just can’t find it. It’s happening too fast.

  The shuddering intensifies. The chasm widens and the left side of the grandstand tips over at an even steeper angle, slides into the widening fissure like it’s being swallowed whole. Roberta holds on to the railing.

  He’ll catch her. Yes. That’s what he’ll do. He rushes forward -

  The earth tears and rises in front of him, pitches him to the ground. He looks up. The railing Roberta holds is wrenched from its moorings. She hangs in the air for a terrible moment - then silently falls into the chasm.

  ‘No!’ Corey finds his feet and sprints towards it, to grab her and pull her out.

  Crack. The left side of the grandstand collapses - and drops into the chasm after her.

  The shaking stops. Corey runs to the mound of debris, but there’s nothing he can do.

  He drops to his knees, stricken.

  The fifth of March, 1997.

  The Burra earthquake occurs between the Para and Eden-Burnside fault lines, one hundred and sixty kilometres north of Adelaide. It registers 5.0 on the Richter scale and claims the lives of three people, including Roberta Purchase, Corey’s mother, three days before his sixteenth birthday.

  *

  1

  11:57 P.M.

  ‘Won’t be long now.’

  From his position on the overpass, Zac Bunsen stares down the desolate 110 Freeway through miniature Nikon binoculars. Traffic is light and the moon is high as it illuminates the sprawling City of Angels before him.

  A winner in the genetic lottery, the thirty-nine-year-old resembles Brad Pitt’s better looking cousin. Dressed in black, he checks his Patek Philippe Nautilus again, then adjusts the volume on his iPhone and returns it to his jacket pocket.

  He’s not listening to music through his headset. Back in 2004, researchers at the University of Bonn developed a microphone that captured soundwaves inaudible to the human ear. The researchers trapped the ethylene gas released when the stem of a plant was cut, then bombarded it with calibrated laser beams, causing it to vibrate, which produced a soundwave that was recorded by the new microphone. The more a plant was cut, the louder the sound.

  At first Bunsen found the recordings unbearable to hear. They were like screams of torture. Then he realised that’s what they were - an audible representation of the pain human beings have inflicted on the natural world for centuries. So now he listens to them when he needs to pump himself up, like a boxer listening to ‘Eye of the Tiger’ before the big fight. He’s listened to them a lot recently, in preparation for the biggest fight of his life - a fight that begins tonight.

  He looks through the binoculars again and picks up three dark shapes on the freeway. They’re distant but move towards him fast. He pockets the binoculars and kills the sound in his headset: ‘We are live.’

  Two men stand beside him on the overpass: his second in command, the weather-beaten head of security, Kilroy Jones, with the unapologetically long, grey ponytail, and the fresh-faced Jacob Ryan, with the severe buzz cut. Like Bunsen they are both dressed in black, and wear backpacks and miniature headsets.

  Bunsen can see the dark shapes clearly now. Three vehicles drive in convoy. A black sedan leads a large, tall, dark blue van, which is followed by another black sedan. They move quickly: five hundred metres and closing.

  Bunsen turns to the others. ‘Ready?’

  They nod. They’ve trained long and hard for this moment. They know exactly what must be done. As one they step up to the guardrail.

  Bunsen takes a breath. He remembers the lyric of a song his mother loved back in the day: ‘You’ve gotta be cruel to be kind.’ For Bunsen, this is the beginning of cruel. Kind will come later, but only after he has been very, very cruel.

  The vehicles are right ther
e.

  ‘Go.’

  The three men step off the overpass.

  Thump, thump, thump. They hit the roof of the van five metres below and move with purpose. Kilroy kneels, pulls off his backpack and draws out a pneumatic rivet gun attached to a small compressed air cylinder. Jacob pivots to the front of the van and swings down to the cabin. Bunsen turns to the rear of the vehicle and takes in the sedan that follows close behind. He extracts two half-metre lengths of pipe from his backpack and slides them together with a sharp clack.

  The two uniformed men inside the sedan stare up at him, astonished. Then the passenger frantically draws a pistol and rolls down his window.

  Bunsen fires the RPG-7 grenade launcher.

  Boom. The warhead slams into the bonnet of the sedan and the engine detonates, lifts the vehicle a metre off the road. It hangs in the air for a frozen moment, then drops back down with a snap-crunch. The left front wheel separates from the chassis, the axle stub digs into the tarmac and the sedan flips, lands on its roof and slides to the side of the freeway.

  Bunsen then turns to see Jacob drop to the driver’s front step, draw a 9mm pistol and fire into the cabin twice. He yanks the door open, drags the driver’s limp body onto the street, then slides behind the wheel. His voice buzzes in Bunsen’s headset: ‘I’m in.’

  ‘Roger that.’ Bunsen reloads the RPG-7 and fires at the vehicle in front.

  Boom. The grenade enters the sedan through the rear window and explodes. The burning car veers hard left then ploughs into the guardrail.

  Bunsen is pleased. In under a minute they have taken control of the van and both its escorts have been neutralised. He turns to Kilroy. The old man works fast, uses the rivet gun expertly. ‘How long?’

  ‘Almost there.’

  Jacob’s voice rattles in Bunsen’s ears again. ‘Company ahead.’

  Bunsen turns. A pair of police cruisers speed along the freeway towards them, lights flashing.

  Sirens. Bunsen looks over his shoulder and his eyes find another pair of police cruisers advancing from the rear. Seven hundred metres away and closing fast.

  They’re surrounded.

  Bunsen barks into his headset: ‘Send in the Tyrannosaur.’

  To the left a piercing banshee scream cuts across the landscape as a giant black beast rises from beside the freeway. It pivots and thumps towards the van, low and fast, its ear-splitting howl fused with a ground-shaking throb that blots out all trace of the police sirens.

  Bunsen watches the S64 Erickson Air-Crane Heavy Lift helicopter hover overhead, twin Pratt & Whitney turbines driving gigantic twenty-metre-long rotor blades that buffet the van with the turbulence of a Category 7 hurricane.

  Four hooks swing on chains from beneath the giant chopper. Bunsen and Kilroy each grab two and latch them to the metal hoops Kilroy just riveted to the van’s roof.

  ‘Go!’ Bunsen shouts into his headset and there’s an almighty jolt. The van is yanked off the road and hoisted into the sky like a child’s toy. Bunsen looks down at the gobsmacked police officers as they watch the van soar overhead.

  The Tyrannosaur is at three thousand feet within a minute. A rope ladder is attached to one of the chains. Kilroy grabs it and climbs towards the rear-facing cabin behind the cockpit. Considering the buffeting wind, he moves fast for a guy pushing sixty. Next, Jacob clambers onto the roof and follows Kilroy up the ladder.

  Bunsen’s about to do the same when he notices blinking lights five hundred metres to the right. He turns, takes in the sleek silhouette of a Bell JetRanger helicopter.

  A Los Angeles Police Department JetRanger helicopter.

  And everything had been going so well.

  The Tyrannosaur may have a 2600-gallon water-bombing capability, may be able to lift five tonnes, but it’s not fast. It can’t outrun a JetRanger and doesn’t have its range either. The JetRanger will be able to follow it for as long as it needs, then identify where it lands. And unless the JetRanger moves closer, the RPG-7 is of no use, its effective range barely two hundred metres.

  Damn it. There’s only one thing to do.

  Bunsen crouches at the back of the van and looks over the edge at the rear roller door. It is padlocked. He draws a 9mm pistol from his jacket, aims, blows off the lock with the first shot, grabs the door, rolls it up, lowers himself over the edge and swings inside.

  He lands in front of four olive-green cases that are strapped down and look like oversized coffins, each three metres long by half a metre wide.

  They are the reason for tonight’s mission.

  Bunsen lays the RPG-7 on the floor and kneels beside the middle case. He unlatches the heavy lid, pushes it open, looks inside - and smiles.

  A BLU-I16.

  He unclips the case so both sides and both ends lie flat against the floor then works the BLU-I16’s control panel, hears a high-pitched whir as it spins to life.

  He speaks into his headset: ‘Enrico, swing me round.’

  ‘Roger that.’ In the Tyrannosaur’s cockpit, the stocky pilot plays the controls. The big chopper pivots gracefully.

  Bunsen stares out the van’s rear opening, waits for the moment.

  The blinking lights of the JetRanger glide into view, silhouetted against the black sky, still following five hundred metres behind. ‘That’s it.’ The Tyrannosaur stops turning.

  Bunsen works the BLU-I16’s control panel again.

  Boom. Its rocket motor fires.

  The two-and-a-half-metre-long missile takes two seconds to cross the black sky and reach its target.

  Ka-boom. The JetRanger explodes in a vivid white-orange fireball that momentarily lights up the city.

  The BLU-I16 Bunker Buster, with a weight of almost a tonne, including 110 kilograms of PBXN high explosive, was designed to destroy hard targets through the deep penetration of rock or cement. It was too much weapon for the job of taking out a single JetRanger but that was all he had on hand so he had to use it. Fortunately, Bunsen has three more BLUs, which will be enough for what comes next. This shipment had been on route from the manufacturer in Pasadena to the Los Angeles Air Force base in El Segundo, for deployment in the Middle East. Bunsen will deploy the remaining weapons in a place far removed from the mountains of Afghanistan.

  ‘Okay, take us home.’

  The Tyrannosaur, so named by Bunsen for its sinister dark colour and hulking shape, swings around and resumes its course.

  Bunsen watches the JetRanger’s burning debris drift and flutter to the ground, then climbs to the van’s roof, then the Tyrannosaur’s cabin, pushing against the savage rotor wash as he goes.

  Phase One has been a success. He observes the lines of traffic that crisscross the city below, the lights of countless vehicles blinking in the darkness. California has more cars per capita than any place on the planet - the state profoundly influences the worldwide automotive industry in every conceivable way, from vehicle design to road safety legislation - and yet, of all those motor vehicles Bunsen can see below, he knows that less than one per cent are pure electric, with no exhaust emissions. Less than one per cent. That’s why he’s doing what he’s doing. To increase that one per cent, and put a halt to the greenhouse gases that choke and smother this planet.

  Bunsen reaches the Tyrannosaur’s cockpit, climbs in and buckles up. He will stop at nothing, use everything at his disposal, including the vast fortune he inherited, to reach his goal. He’s glad he’s finally found a purpose for the money. To him it represents nothing but the frivolous waste of his father’s intellect: a life spent writing television shows, bad sitcoms no less, disposable entertainment forgotten the moment they aired.

  Bunsen will not make the same mistake. His work will never be forgotten. He will spend his father’s money, every last dollar if necessary, to change this world for the better - or he will die trying.

  *

  2

  ‘Throttling engines to fifty per cent.’

  Judd Bell stares out of the rectangular portal and takes in the rust
red surface below. The landscape reminds him of the Central Australian desert he knows so well, though he’s a long way from the Northern Territory today. He is, in fact, two thousand feet above the surface of Mars in the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle. In front of him a Heads Up Display (HUD) projects an outline of the spacecraft’s descent trajectory onto the portal’s glass. He peers through it, scans the dark red planet for the landing point.

  ‘I see it.’ It’s a kilometre in the distance. He works the hand controller and fires the manoeuvring thrusters, pushes Orion towards it. ‘Sixteen hundred feet, down seventy.’

  The astronaut’s mouth is dry. Apart from that he feels good, considering he’s spent seven months with five other astronauts sardined into a spacecraft the size of a small condominium. He’s sure his current goodwill is the result of the pure oxygen being pumped into his bubble helmet, which is also the reason for his dry mouth.

  An alarm sounds in his headset. Judd’s eyes don’t move from the portal as he speaks into his helmet’s microphone: ‘What’s that?’

  The question is directed at Delroy ‘Del’ Tennison, the thin, balding copilot standing beside Judd and studying a bank of LED screens and gauges. The Florida native references a screen as he kills the piercing drone. ‘Program alarm eleven-oh-seven.’

  ‘Why?’ Judd knows that alarm has something to do with the landing computer being overwhelmed with data but he doesn’t know how serious it is. It’s Del’s job to find out. He manages Orion’s systems, Judd just flies it.

  ‘On it.’ Del’s eyes flick between three LED screens, searching for an answer.

  Judd breathes in and focuses on the Marscape below. He caresses the controller and eases the spacecraft onwards. Orion is similar to the Lunar Module that landed on the Moon - except it’s five times larger and carries three times as many people. Shaped like a short, fat bullet it has four levels housing crew quarters, scientific equipment and supplies for a month-long stay on the red planet. On the top level is the flight deck, where Judd and Del currently stand, side by side, strapped into harnesses. Behind them are their four crewmates, suited, helmeted and belted into their chairs. They sit silently. At this point theirs is a watching brief.