Velocity Read online

  ‘What’s happening? Is it in position?’

  No, it isn’t. It’s not even close. Gerhard ignores Cobbin and pushes the red button again, looks back at the Mack truck.

  Diesel smoke blasts from its exhaust stack. The engine’s running. There’s no time to be relieved. He very gently presses the throttle lever forward. The Mack accelerates towards the runway.

  The Galaxy’s nose tips up and Gerhard’s view of the truck is obstructed by the jet’s wing. He looks right.

  The F-16s clear the line of parked C-130s. Side by side they pivot, bring their weapons to bear on the Galaxy as it rushes along the tarmac.

  The fighter jets’ Gatling guns erupt. Blurs of white light streak across the airfield. Gerhard involuntarily flinches as the rounds thump into the Galaxy’s fuselage.

  The big jet’s wheels leave the tarmac and it lumbers into a steep climb, engines whining in four-part harmony. Gerhard’s thumb touches the green button at the top of the remote. His eyes find the Mack as it races onto the runway. He can’t press the button until it’s in position, and it’s not there yet.

  A flash from the wingtip of the closest F-16. A Sidewinder missile rockets towards the Galaxy. Gerhard sees it and knows he’s out of time. He closes his eyes and mashes the green button and prays it works.

  The earth quakes and the first half-kilometre of runway disappears. In its place burns a crater the size of a football field. Chunks of dirt and bitumen rain down from the mushroom cloud that billows into the sky above.

  The F-16s make it into the air, but not in the way they were designed. The explosion picks them up and flips them over like leaves in a summer breeze, scuttles them across the taxiway on their canopies, slams them into that line of parked C-130s.

  Halfway to the Galaxy, the Sidewinder missile is enveloped by the explosion and vaporised.

  The blast wave hits the Galaxy like a runaway locomotive, violently shoves up its tail. Its vast wings flex to the edge of their design parameters and the airframe groans like a prehistoric beast in its death throes.

  ‘That’s me!’ On the flight deck Kelvin seizes control of the aircraft. Jeez-us! The Galaxy’s nose points at the ground, the view beyond the windscreen showing nothing but suburbia, row after row of sleeping houses, not what you want to see when travelling at 320 kilometres an hour, barely 2000 feet off the ground.

  He has ten seconds to get the jet level. Feet stroke the rudder pedals, right hand caresses the throttle levers, left hand plays the flight stick. He works the controls with finesse.

  The Galaxy’s nose pulls up, but rises too far. In an instant it wipes off the plane’s speed. The air stalls under the wings and steals their lift. The engines scream but the aircraft isn’t moving forward. It hangs in the ink-black sky, nose pointed at the stars.

  Tail first, the aircraft drops in a lazy arc towards the houses below. Kelvin goes in search of lift. Finesse abandoned, he fights the controls, tries to bring the nose down, get the jet horizontal and reset the wings’ angle of attack.

  He kills the power. The plane falls. He works the stick. The nose tilts down, but slowly. It’s 700 feet off the ground. He plays the flaps. The nose drops again, the aircraft almost horizontal.

  Close enough. Kelvin jams the throttle levers to full power. The engines run up, shove the aircraft forward. It gathers speed. The wings grab air, regain some lift. The Galaxy slips out of the stall, but it’s low. A hundred feet above the rooftops, if that. He’s about to drop this thing into some poor schmuck’s swimming pool.

  The Galaxy skims the rooftops. Jet wash blows off tiles like they’re confetti. He’s certain he hears a dog bark. He eases back on the stick. Nothing. He does it again. ‘Come on!’

  The heavy nose rises. Slowly, then faster. The Galaxy climbs.

  ‘Christ.’ He hasn’t taken a breath in what feels like a week. He exhales, his right hand gripping the control stick so tightly it’s numb. He releases it and looks at the Frenchman.

  Henri’s unruffled, like the whole thing was no big deal. He turns to Kelvin with that strange half-smile and nods. Kelvin’s sure this is Henri’s version of high praise, but right at this moment he doesn’t care. He turns back to the controls and scans the instruments with a practised eye. ‘Doesn’t look like we picked up any serious damage. I’ll check once we’re on the ground.’

  ‘Good.’ Henri speaks into his headset’s microphone. ‘Cobbin, how’d it go down there?’ Kelvin can’t hear Cobbin’s reply but he can hear the Frenchman. ‘Okay, close the hatch.’

  Kelvin sets the Galaxy on a southward track. Saving their arses had momentarily taken his mind off his situation, but now all he can think about is how these people just blew up an air-force base. An air-force base! He knew they were up to no good, but christal-mighty! He had no idea. Yes, Kelvin wants the million bucks but not like this. He needs to find a way out of this, but how does he escape these people without bringing his already shortened life to an even more premature conclusion? He doesn’t know, but needs to find a way. Fast.

  **

  Gerhard stands by the open hatch and watches the mushroom cloud shrink into the distance. The 100 kilograms of C-4 plastic explosive strapped to the underside of the Mack’s tanker had worked as planned, or almost as planned. The Mack was supposed to detonate in the middle of the runway, but Gerhard didn’t quite get it there. Still, no one would be following them from that runway tonight, which was the point. He turns to Cobbin and grins. ‘So, I did okay?’

  Cobbin answers by gently pushing Gerhard in the chest. He falls out of the hatch, his mouth open in a soundless scream.

  Cobbin watches Gerhard drop into the darkness then turns and hits a button beside the hatch. The door swings shut and settles into the fuselage as he speaks into his headset’s microphone. ‘It’s done.’

  **

  Henri leans back, closes his eyes, and his thoughts, as they so often do, lead to his wife. On this mission he will push the envelope as far as he can because he does not fear death. Death cannot be worse than the pain he endures every day since she passed.

  He knows he should he happy with this success but he isn’t. He’s struck by the unease he always suffers when things go too well. Where will the error occur? The error that derails the whole enterprise.

  Le doute fou. That’s what she called it. Foolish doubt. With a quiet word she could always dispel his concerns. If he concentrates hard enough he can almost hear her say it.

  **

  2

  The sea of glass LCD screens lights up the flight deck of space shuttle Discovery like it’s a Christmas tree, albeit the most expensive and complicated Christmas tree ever devised.

  A gloved hand holds the rotational controller, moves the joystick firmly to the left. The hand belongs to Judd Bell. He wears a flight suit, a helmet and his game face.

  The Discovery cabin smoothly tilts right and maintains the steep angle of its roll-reversal turn. Judd’s eyes flick to the console and find one of those five LCD screens. Discovery is at a height of 180000 feet, travelling at 13350 kilometres an hour.

  Judd looks out the windscreen. The view is breathtaking, the pitch black of space fading into a dark-blue sky that brightens before it touches the curvature of the Earth. He speaks into his helmet’s microphone: ‘Control, this is Discovery. Do you copy? Over.’

  There’s no response.

  Twelve minutes ago Judd kicked Discovery out of orbit and back into the clutches of Earth’s gravity. The little shuttle slammed into the upper atmosphere at a touch over 27000 kilometres an hour, the soft silica tiles glued to its underside and the carbon-carbon leading wing edges doing a perfect job of deflecting the 1500 degrees Celsius it generated on re-entry. That intense heat strips the electrons from the air around the spacecraft and blocks all communication with the ground, causing loss of signal, or LOS. Communication will be restored once the shuttle drops into the lower atmosphere’s thicker air and the heat dissipates.

>   Judd knows Columbia didn’t make it this far. Moments after launch a chunk of insulating foam the size of a briefcase fell off the external tank and punched a hole in the leading edge of its left wing. With that the crew’s fate was sealed, ten days before the shuttle broke up over Texas. The crew didn’t know about the hole, and even if they had there was nothing they could have done about it. During re-entry the superheated air blew straight into the wing and within seconds those 1500 degrees melted the spacecraft’s structure from the inside out.

  ‘Control, this is Discovery. Do you copy? Over.’

  A burst of static in his ear, then: ‘We copy, Discovery. All systems nominal. Over.’ The capcom’s voice is female, all business. ‘Institute speed braking.’

  ‘Copy that.’ Time to bleed the speed. Judd grasps the speed brake handle and moves it until the LCD indicator shows 100 per cent. The speed brake splits the shuttle’s tail rudder in two, disrupting the air travelling past. Combined with the roll-reversal turns it helped to slow the shuttle from its current hypersonic speed to a more manageable 350 kilometres per hour for landing.

  Judd glances at his copilot, Severson Burke. His eyes are locked on a screen before him and an anxious furrow creases his 44-year-old brow. It’s no cause for alarm, he always look like that when he flies.

  Judd turns back to the console. He eases the controller to the right and the shuttle slides out of the left turn and tips gently into a right turn, bleeds more speed.

  If navigating the upper reaches of the atmosphere in the shuttle is a relatively simple endeavour, landing one is a heart-in-mouth exercise. It’s not like bringing in a regular aircraft. You can’t abort, throttle up, fly around and take another crack at it. The shuttle’s engines are only operational at launch. After that, it’s a very heavy glider that doesn’t glide very well because its swept-back delta wings don’t generate much lift. When it’s gliding in to land it drops to the ground at an angle seven times steeper than a commercial aircraft of the same size. Even the northern flying squirrel does a better job than that.

  Landing is Judd’s least favourite part of the mission. The only thing comparable is putting an F-14 Tomcat on the heaving deck of a carrier in rough sea, something he’d done many times as a naval aviator before he was recruited by NASA.

  Judd looks through the windscreen as the sky lightens and the first wisps of cloud slip past. His eyes move back to the LCDs and he lies back the speed brake to 65 per cent.

  Severson leans forward and hits two switches. ‘Air data probes deployed.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Severson. Four minutes to landing.’ The air passing by outside is loud. Judd takes a breath, eases the shuttle out of its right turn.

  Through the windscreen he can see the shuttle landing facility in the far distance, three kilometres of runway sitting in a Florida swamp, glistening in the afternoon sun. Gators often strayed onto the runway to catch a little shut-eye in the baking heat. There was a dedicated team to move them along whenever a shuttle was due.

  ‘Control, this is Discovery. We are at TAEM interface. How are the crosswinds at Kennedy?’

  ‘Crosswinds nominal. Everything looks fine.’

  Judd leans, triggers a switch. ‘Control, we have acquired autoland, over.’

  ‘We copy, Discovery —’

  The cabin shudders. It stops as soon as it starts. Judd glances at Severson. ‘What was that —’

  The cabin shudders again but this time it doesn’t stop. Severson reads an LCD. ‘Autoland system alarm. We’ve lost glidescope.’

  ‘Initiate backup.’

  Severson flicks a series of switches, studies the LCD. Bad news blinks back at him. ‘Autoland system failure.’

  Judd takes it in, breathes out. He’s a steely-eyed missile man. He can fix this.

  The vibration intensifies. The wind now a roar. The radio crackles in Judd’s ear: ‘Discovery, this is Control. We read autoland failure. Confirm. Over.’

  ‘Autoland failure confirmed. Over.’

  ‘Discovery, assume manual control for approach and landing. Over.’

  Judd’s eyes are pulled to the windscreen. Past the cloud cover he can see the ground approaching fast.

  Severson reads an LCD. The altimeter spirals down. Thirteen thousand, three hundred feet. Eleven thousand, seven hundred. Ten thousand, four hundred. ‘Altitude drop rate warning. Velocity critical. Engaging speed brake.’

  Severson’s hand moves to the speed brake. The cabin convulses again and his head jolts right, slams against the side of the flight deck. Judd looks across at him. ‘Severson? Severson!’

  There’s no response. He’s out cold.

  ‘Christ!’ Judd stares at his copilot, horrified. How could the situation unravel so quickly?

  The radio buzzes in Judd’s ear again: ‘Discovery, disengage autoland and assume manual control.’

  Judd doesn’t do it. He freezes. Brain lock.

  ‘Discovery! Do you read!’ The capcom’s voice now a shout.

  It snaps Judd out of his daze. He blinks hard and with one hand pulls the speed brake to 100 per cent, with the other moves the controller, chases the pitching and yawing spacecraft, tries to level it out. Through the windscreen the last cloud races by and the runway looms before him. It’s close.

  ‘Discovery, engage landing gear.’

  Judd triggers a switch. The landing gear lowers and locks with a clunk below him.

  ‘Discovery, you’re flying to the right, realign.’

  Through the windscreen the heaving runway rushes towards him. It’s way off-centre. Judd wrestles the controller, tries to catch hold of the lurching spacecraft. He can’t do it; he’s always one step behind.

  ‘Discovery, landing attack angle is too steep. Pull up!’

  It’s too late. The runway fills the windscreen.

  ‘Discovery, pull up!’

  **

  A door flies open, slams against the side of the motion-based crew station, one of two shuttle mission simulators at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Judd steps out and yanks off his helmet, his face wet with sweat. He looks younger than his thirty-eight years, a light crazing of lines around his eyes the only thing that distinguishes him from the tall, dark-haired guy who watched Columbia break apart eight years ago.

  Judd clanks down the grey metal stairs to ground level. He’s furious. With himself. With the sim that caught him out. With the world. He wants to get away from here as fast as he can, away from the scene of his latest, and greatest, failure. He strides past the giant hydraulic rams that support the white, angular simulator. The machine, built in 1977 for one hundred million dollars, was created to test shuttle pilots in over 6000 malfunction and emergency simulations, and to do it with hyperaccurate cabin movement, sound effects and visual representations. It was money well spent. Better to buy the farm here than fly a shuttle into the ground for real and dig a three-billion-dollar barbecue pit.

  He realises, unhappily, that he is now, officially, that guy. Everyone knows one: a guy who did the most interesting and meaningful thing in his life when he was young. Judd is the one who flew into orbit once but never did it again, the aerospace equivalent of a one-hit wonder.

  The harsh fluorescent lights get in his eyes as he moves along the ground-floor corridor, kick-starting a pain behind his right temple that he knows will become a migraine within the hour. He should deal with it now, head it off with a tablet of Zomig, get out of the stiflingly hot, bright-orange flight suit and take a shower. He doesn’t. He shoulders open the nearest exit and steps outside.

  As he leans against the side of the building a light breeze makes his head feel a little better, but the migraine is still coming. He unzips the flight suit, reaches inside and pulls out a zippo and a Marlboro softpack. There’s one crumpled cigarette inside. He slips it in his mouth and flips open the lighter. He knows the cigarette will make him feel better, but only for seven seconds. That initial draw of smoke, mixed with the lingerin
g aroma of zippo fluid, is heaven. Then it’s all downhill. He’ll feel sweaty and nauseous and anxious about dying of cancer, but those first seven seconds, well, they were just the ticket.

  ‘You can’t smoke in a flight suit.’

  He turns. It’s Severson, trying to lighten the mood.

  ‘Oh, fuck off.’ Judd exhales, turns to Severson with an apologetic grimace. Severson nods an acceptance, does not take offence.

  Judd rubs his temple, the unlit cigarette jammed between his teeth. ‘Well, we’re dead.’

  ‘I know, and I was a helluva guy. How’d you like my performance as unconscious copilot number one? I thought it delightfully subtle.’

  ‘Sorry, missed it. I was too busy crashing a space shuttle.’ Judd turns and stares into the distance, still perplexed by the turn of events. ‘Christ, how did I let that happen?’