Combustion Read online

  Severson pushes up his eye mask, annoyed. ‘Omigod, Nagatha Christie, what?’

  She points at the touchscreen. ‘What’s going on here?’

  He blinks rapidly and takes a moment to focus on it. ‘What? Oh. Is that - why is that - is that purple?’

  ‘Ever seen anything like it?’

  He shakes his head, unnerved. ‘Never.’

  Rhonda turns and sees the aircraft’s captain, grey-haired, mid-fifties with a slight paunch, exit the cockpit and move down the aisle with a concerned expression. The passengers quietly watch as he stops midway down the fuselage, five rows ahead of Rhonda and Severson, leans across the empty seats and looks out at the engine. He studies it for a long moment and his expression morphs from concerned to troubled.

  Severson watches him. ‘That doesn’t look good.’

  A strange noise cuts across the soundscape, reverberates like gravel inside a cement mixer. Rhonda looks out at the turbofan again. ‘And that doesn’t sound good —’

  *

  Bang!

  All the air abruptly leaves the aircraft.

  Rhonda is yanked against her safety belt by the cabin’s explosive decompression. Dust swirls through the air, momentarily blinds her as the airframe convulses and yellow oxygen masks drop from the ceiling. She blinks the grit from her eyes and takes a moment to find her bearings.

  Five rows in front of her there is now a gaping, two-metre long gash in the starboard side of the fuselage. The captain is gone, and so is the row of seats he was leaning across. The gash is like a giant vacuum and sucks everything into it. Stunned, she looks out the window and sees the starboard turbofan is gone, a smoking nub all that remains. It has exploded.

  The 737 noses down abruptly and Rhonda realises the shrill noise she can hear is not just the rush of air leaving the cockpit but the screams of passengers. She looks up the aisle to the cockpit. The vibrations are severe and the door swings open and shut so she can’t see very clearly - and then she can. One of the aircraft’s cabin crew, a flight attendant, is kissing the copilot. What the hell?

  Rhonda looks closer. No, the flight attendant isn’t kissing the copilot, she’s giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Oh damn. The flight attendant turns and sprints from the cockpit as the copilot slumps in his seat, a large gash across his head.

  The flight attendant runs down the aisle, fights to keep her balance, reaches a point three rows before the gash in the fuselage and shouts at the top of her lungs. Rhonda can just hear it over the screaming passengers and the roaring air: ‘Can anybody fly a plane?’

  Rhonda unbuckles her belt, levers herself over Severson and lands in the aisle -

  Hey! The 737 noses down again and Rhonda grabs hold of the nearest seat back to stay on her feet. She moves forward, but the torrent of air is overpowering and drags her towards the gash in the fuselage. She keeps a tight hold of the seat back beside her, then grabs the next, then the next, edges past the gash - and reaches the flight attendant. ‘I’m Rhonda Jacolby. I’m a pilot.’

  The expression on the flight attendant’s face is one of abject relief. ‘Come with me, please.’ They turn and head for the cockpit as a smattering of applause rises from the passengers.

  Severson’s worst nightmare, of dying in an aircraft accident, is about to come true. His second-worst nightmare, of someone else getting all the kudos, is also about to come true. The combination is a particularly unpleasant double whammy. If they die they die, but if they survive he’ll be the one who sat around and did nothing while Rhonda Jacolby saved the day. He can’t have that. He has to at least look like he’s involved.

  He unbuckles his belt, pulls himself out of the seat and moves down the aisle towards the cockpit, grabs hold of seat backs as he goes. He watched Rhonda do exactly the same thing only a moment ago so it can’t be that hard -

  Whoa! The jet lurches to the right and he loses his grip. The buffeting rush of air drags him towards the gash. He grabs a seat back with his right hand, stops himself from being sucked out, the rip in the fuselage just a metre behind him. The blast of air is overpowering. His hand slips. He won’t be able to hold it for long. He glances back, sees nothing but blue sky and clouds through the jagged tear. His hand slips again. He’s about to die because he couldn’t stand the idea of someone else getting all the credit. His hand slides off the chair and he’s dragged out of the aircraft -

  Slwump. Rhonda grabs his hand, yanks him away from the gash and pulls him down the aisle to safety. He takes a breath, his pale face a portrait of relief and terror. ‘Thank you.’

  She looks him straight in the eye. ‘I saved your life so we’re even. Never speak of what happened at Imax again.’

  He nods, surprised. ‘I didn’t know it bothered you so much —’

  ‘Shhh! What do you think “never speak of” means? Now come on, we’re going to land this aeroplane now.’ She turns and moves up the aisle. Severson takes another breath and follows her into the cockpit.

  *

  Rhonda slides into the captain’s seat, takes the controls in hand and slowly but surely levels out the jet. Beside her Severson lifts the unconscious copilot out of his seat and parks him in the jump seat in the galley behind the cockpit.

  Rhonda scans the instrument panel. The jet is currently at 38 765 feet and descending, but not that quickly. Its speed is seven hundred and twenty kilometres an hour and slowing, but gradually. ‘Okay. It’s under control. We’re gliding.’

  Severson tentatively approaches the copilot’s seat but doesn’t sit.

  She glances at him. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just - girding my loins.’

  ‘Gird ‘em on your own time. Sit down.’

  He does it. ‘So what happened?’

  ‘We’ve lost one engine and the other has been shut down. I’m guessing they did it after the first one exploded.’

  ‘Christ, so we have no power?’ Severson looks even paler than he did a moment ago.

  She turns to him, her voice low and flint hard: ‘Listen, if you want to sit up at the big kids’ table you stay positive and do as I say. Otherwise, go take your seat with the rest of the passengers and I’ll get one of the flight attendants to help out. Is that clear?’

  Severson nods. ‘Crystal.’

  ‘Good. Get air traffic control on the horn. They need to know what happened and that we have to land ASAP.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Read.’

  He looks at her like she’s mad. ‘Read? Read what?’

  She pulls an iPad from a rack beside the pilot’s seat and holds it up. ‘The flight manual. I have to learn how to fly this thing - without engines.’

  *

  23

  Kilroy’s eyes flutter open. His head aches and his vision is blurry and the left side of his face is numb from where the airbag hit.

  Christ, he is screwing this up. Maybe he should retire before he really hurts himself. He has enough money to do it in style, both Bunsen and his father always paid him well.

  He pushes the thought from his mind. He’s not going to retire. What the hell would he do all day? Play golf? Tomorrow the world will be a very different place and Bunsen will need him around. And it was just one accident, after all. It could have happened to anyone. He was so focused on the guy riding the bike that he misjudged the braking distance and hit the cement retaining wall, a part of which then, it seems, took a trip down the hill in front of him.

  The front of the Prius is crumpled but the damage doesn’t look terminal from the driver’s seat. He cranks the electric engine and it starts first time. Relieved, he engages reverse and the vehicle shudders as it backs up. He slots it into drive and the Prius pulls away with a slight crab to the left and a deep scraping sound that sets his teeth on edge. It’s not perfect, but it works. Now he just needs to find those guys.

  He sees them on the road below, three specks on North Cahuenga Boulevard. They’re maybe a kilometre away, riding the bikes, the do
g beside them. Good. He needs to finish this job so he can meet up with Bunsen.

  Third time had better be the charm.

  *

  24

  A colossal fireball splits the sky.

  Bunsen takes in the explosion from the Tyrannosaur. A reservoir tank buried beneath a gas station, owned by BP, has detonated, causing the surrounding ground to subside. He smiles. The company can consider it payback for the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico that spewed five million barrels of crude oil into the ocean back in 2010.

  Bunsen may feel regret regarding the human damage of his actions today, but he will never regret the destruction of petroleum industry infrastructure. Considering the overwhelming devastation that business has inflicted on the planet over the last century it only seems fair they get a little of their own back. Or more than a little.

  The Tyrannosaur drops towards his Santa Monica compound and lands with a blast of dust on the helipad. This changeover had been well rehearsed, but always with four people. They are two men down today. Bunsen will have to push through with Enrico and do it as quickly as possible. It’s not ideal but he has no choice.

  They climb out of the cockpit. Enrico instantly wheels the cradle under the water tank that contained the Swarm, then goes to work removing the bolts which hold it to the central section of the chopper’s airframe.

  To the right Bunsen unlocks the garage’s roller door and pushes it up.

  It sits on a trolley in the middle of the garage.

  It is both terrible and beautiful.

  Alvy did a sterling job designing and, along with Enrico, building the Item, as they named it after spending a week trying to think of a suitably understated name. Three metres long by two metres wide, it is the centrepiece of Phase Three.

  He locates the electric water pump Enrico used earlier, still with its hoses attached, and removes the lid on top of a hundred-litre rhino drum that contains the Swarm. He pushes in a hose then unscrews what looks like a radiator cap on top of the Item and pushes in the other hose. He then fires up the pump. It whirs to life and the Swarm sloshes along the hoses from drum to Item. Once this drum is empty Bunsen will need to repeat the process four more times.

  He glances at his Patek. He still hasn’t heard from Kilroy. He hopes the old codger is okay. It’d hurt Kilroy’s pride to call for help, but he’d do it if he really needed it. Bunsen adores the man, but he can, at times, be the bane of his life. The trouble stems from the fact that although Kilroy is an employee, he is also family, which can make the relationship difficult. Bunsen can never fire him, or discipline him, or even hold him to account. He just has to trust the old bastard will do a good job, which he usually does, and hope for the best. And if Bunsen ever wants to do something that he knows Kilroy won’t agree with, then he has to lie about it, or accept that he’s going to hear the old fella bitch and moan about it.

  The water pump whirs steadily as Bunsen checks the first rhino drum. It’s only half empty. This will take a while. He heads out of the garage to help Enrico remove the water tank.

  *

  25

  Lola Jacklin’s eyes flutter open.

  It takes a moment before she remembers she’s not waking up at home in bed but in a building full of storage lockers on Doheny Drive.

  She takes a deep breath. She can move both arms and her right leg, but her left thigh is trapped under a heavy metal beam and hurts like hell. She must get it off quickly or risk suffering crush syndrome, which she knows all about from an episode of Grey’s Anatomy one of her clients wrote. She remembers that it occurs when a ruptured muscle dumps an excess of chemicals, usually potassium and phosphate, into the bloodstream, which can then cause cardiac arrest. The longer the muscle is crushed, the more intense the release of chemicals.

  She takes a deep breath, grabs the beam with both hands - it’s about a foot square - and pushes upwards.

  Good God! She manages to raise it half an inch and take some pressure off her thigh, but that’s it. It’s just too heavy. She can’t even wriggle free. She holds it up, her yoga-toned arms take the strain admirably for a good ten seconds, then they start to shake uncontrollably and she has to let it down. Reintroducing the beam to her thigh hurts like an absolute mofo.

  ‘Hello? Need some help over here!’

  There is no response.

  ‘Can anybody hear me?’

  It would seem they cannot.

  ‘Damn it.’ She takes a breath, tries to process what’s happened. She knows when you live in LA you must always expect some kind of disaster to befall you at some point. It’s a dangerous place. For example, wildfires are common, so you must take precautions. Earthquakes are not so much common as a daily occurrence so, again, you must take precautions, and if you’re clever like Lola, you study the fault lines, even the ones that are lesser known, and make sure you don’t buy a house on one. But this? Exploding vehicles all over town? Well, she can’t imagine how you could ever prepare for that.

  With difficulty she drags the iPhone from her back pocket, swipes it open with her thumb and is surprised to find it has a pretty strong signal in spite of everything that’s happened. She dials 911.

  It’s busy.

  ‘Of course it is!’ She dials another number. Bowen. ‘Come-on-Matty-come-on-Matty.’ It goes to voicemail. ‘Christ.’ She leaves a detailed message which describes her predicament. She then hangs up and dials another number. It rings - and is answered.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Scott!’

  ‘Hello, sweetness.’ That’s what Scott Ford calls her. Sweetness. ‘Everything okay?’

  She keeps it upbeat. ‘Well, yeah, actually I’m trapped. I have a - I think it’s a metal beam - lying across my thigh and I can’t seem to move it.’ She says it like it’s some minor inconvenience she often has to deal with.

  In fact she says it in such a breezy manner that Scott thinks it’s a joke. ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, absolutely.’

  ‘Oh, man. That’s terrible. Jeezus.’ He sounds concerned. ‘Can anyone help you?’

  ‘Well, no, the place seems to be empty. When the explosions started I took shelter in a building thinking it’d be safer inside. So I was wrong about that. Anyway, there was a huge blast, part of the building caved in and, well, here I am.’

  ‘That’s terrible. I hear it’s pretty bad out there.’

  ‘It is. Anyway, I know it’s a big favour, but can you come and help me?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Doheny, near Pico. It’s a big storage building painted white and blue. I’m on the ground floor.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, we shot Galaxy Chef around there.’

  Lola remembers that last year Scott starred in a film about a time-travelling, universe-hopping, short-order cook who’s searching for a long-lost recipe book but ends up saving the planet from annihilation in an intergalactic bake-off. It managed to capture the Zeitgeist by fusing the audience’s long-standing love of science fiction with its newfound interest in cooking competitions. It did 250 million domestic and 400 foreign and wasn’t even in 3D.

  ‘I’ll be there ASAP. Might take a while. I can’t drive, obviously.’

  ‘No, and if you see a car, or any kind of vehicle, with exhaust that’s purple, or turning black, get away from it fast because it’s about to explode.’

  ‘Yeah, they’ve been saying that on the TV.’

  ‘You should tweet it if you can.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, good idea. Okay. Hang in there.’

  ‘I will. If I manage to get free I’ll call you.’

  ‘Okay, sweetness.’

  He hangs up and she looks at the phone for a moment. That seemed kind of - formal, but then his usual laid-back, half-mast, gravelly-voiced flirty talk wouldn’t have been appropriate considering the situation. What’s important is that he said he’d come. She remembers reading somewhere, probably in one of her clients’ screenplays, that you get a true sense of someone’s character in a
crisis situation. Well, so far so good. Scott had volunteered to help her immediately.

  Lola’s leg is really throbbing now so she decides to lift the beam again to alleviate the pressure. She grabs hold of it, takes the strain and pushes it upwards. Man! It seems even heavier than before, takes all her effort to raise it half an inch, and she can only hold it for five seconds this time. She rests it back on her thigh and it hurts like a bastard, makes her eyes water.

  She smells something. Pungent, sharp. She lifts her head, scans her surroundings.

  Smoke.

  A light haze hangs in the air. It must have blown in from outside -

  A flame jumps to the right. The smoke didn’t blow in. Fifteen metres away a clump of insulation burns, must have been set alight by the explosion. The flames are not big, not yet anyway, but they’re big enough.

  ‘Perfect!’ She needs to get out of here.

  Very soon.

  *

  26

  The sun drops through the purple-grey smog towards the horizon and casts a dull, eerie glow across the city.

  Corey finally has the hang of this riding thing, almost finds the rhythmic tick of the gears relaxing as he follows Judd down Santa Monica Boulevard; Spike is close behind.

  The Australian glances behind him to make sure the ponytailed mofo isn’t following in the Prius. He isn’t, but if he was he’d have a tough time navigating Santa Monica Boulevard this afternoon. Not only is it gridlocked by the smoking hulks and flaming wreckage of every kind of vehicle imaginable, but scores of people wander through the destruction in a daze.

  Corey’s never seen anything like it. ‘How much further, mate?’

  ‘It’s close. This way.’ Judd takes a right turn, navigates a sidewalk, passes a burnt-out van and crosses onto a quiet street. A line of towering eucalyptus trees casts a large shadow across a row of neat apartment blocks. ‘What was the number again?’