From a thousand different backgrounds, many keeping
a secret for months or even years, along a thousand different paths of
enlightenment, it had finally come down to this. All of them would have the
satisfaction of drawing attention to their cause and to their willingness to
sacrifice for it.
It had that much going for it.
Fred closed the passenger manifest and muttered
something.
“What?”
“Nicely apportioned.”
Barney snorted, having read the thing right
alongside of his captain.
They had a mix of M.A.D.D. people, Right-to-Lifers,
Pro-Choicers, animal-rights activists, and one or two who had steadfastly
labeled themselves tourists and kept their motivations to themselves. There
were quite a number of Ovaltine Party Members hoping to score some points as it
was budget time again in their country.
A small contingent of jilted lovers, with
kind of a disproportionate number from Pajan, rounded out the ensemble.
The bulbous form of the Airbus 640-P for Pilgrim sat
poised on the end of the runway at Brobdinak’sInternational Airport. The runway
shimmered in heat haze, but the interior was cool enough.
The Pilot, Fred and his Second Officer/Copilot
Barney, strictly humourous code-names but useful still, ran through the
pre-take-off check-list one more time. The heavily-modified aircraft was unlike
anything they had ever flown previously.
They had never seen each other before being selected
for this mission, and hopefully, would never see each other again.
Yet they had grown into a strangely intimate
friendship over the past few months.
With the 640-P stressed for seven golly-gees, and
capable of spanning well over half a globe un-refuelled, they had spent a
thousand hours in the flight simulators and hundreds of hours in real-time cockpit
familiarization for this inaugural mission.
Aboard were a thousand of the faithful, each to his
own persuasion, all of whom had paid a million Upottsian dollars for the
privilege of this one-way flight.
“Ready.”
Fred looked over with full confidence evident in his
features. That’s not to say there weren’t a few butterflies in either man’s
stomach.
“Roger that.”
The copilot touched a button and spoke into his
throat microphone, his features obscured by his combat helmet, flash goggles
and face-mask, still hanging loose from one side as it wasn’t necessary to do
it up yet.
Not for minutes would they need it.
In the meantime, they had taken the place of a
regularly scheduled flight, flight number six-seven-one, Brobdinak to Upottsia.
Timing was crucial, but so far nothing had gone wrong.
“Tower, this is Pilgrim Airlines six-seven-one,
requesting clearance for takeoff.”
“Roger, tower here. You have clearance for take-off.
Proceed to altitude thirty-one and please do not deviate while transiting
military area B-67-f-niner-smegma. Over.”
“Roger that.” Barney repeated the instructions,
which were simple and familiar enough to the former airline pilots.
The men reached up and snapped on the masks.
With Fred holding the yoke, Barney began sliding the
four coupled throttles and then the plane began to move…ever so slowly at
first, as he stopped the throttles against the end of the gate, and then it
went faster and faster until the lines, lights and markers coming up under the
nose were just a blur.
The numbers on the speedometer soon cleared the
safety zone, a figure calculated according to fuel load, number of passengers
and their total weight, and then it was time. For this flight there was no
luggage, and little in the way of disposables, just three days worth of meals
and coffee for the six crew members, which included four flight officers and
two stewards/bouncers. One guy had specifically asked for chocolate milk, and
in fact it had been provided.
“Rotate.”
Fred pulled back on the stick, using a bit of left
rudder to counteract a light crosswind, and then the big jet began to climb
out, the dim shape of the city dropping away in their peripheral vision.
Barney kept an eye on the speed, angle-of-attack,
engine performance and altimeter. All the radio and navigation systems were
fully functional as Fred turned the yoke and the plane rolled into its first
clearing turn, continuing to gain altitude all the while.
Barney glanced over, noting the sheen of sweat on
the small patches of skin visible around the eyes and forehead.
“How does she handle?”
“Not bad. Pretty much the way she did in the
simulator.” Actually, the controls seemed a bit heavier, but he was convinced
that was just his own stress.
You could throw the ship around pretty easily in the
simulator, but the price of a mistake was nil. This was different.
“Yep.” Fred turned. “God is great, my young friend.”
They were on their way and once out of Brobdinakian
airspace, they would follow a Great Circle route, over the bulk of East Midwestern
Eurasia and then over the vast Specific Ocean.
“Thirteen-point-one hours to first destination.” Barney
checked all of his figures repeatedly, but it appeared he hadn’t missed
anything.
For security reasons, if there was a problem, now
was the time to turn back.
“All systems are go.”
“Thirty-one thousand…coming up. Mark.”
“Huh?” Barney looked around in confusion, but then
grinned slyly. “Oh. Right.”
Fred had a small smile on his face. His young
accomplice was incorrigible. Whatever the Seven Purgatories that actually
meant.
Fred eased his pressure on the stick and levelled the
aircraft. After a sweep of the instrument panel, he engaged the autopilot and
then he could finally relax.
The men took their masks off as if by some unspoken
agreement to heighten the Victorian melodramatic effect of it all.
“Ah, shit.”
“What?” The shock of adrenalin was small, the tone
wasn’t all that urgent.
“Message from the Monkeyman.”
Fred grunted, albeit with a calm, neutral visage.
His copilot wasn’t all that enamoured of their Fearless Leader, who, if truth
be told, was more of a puppet of the corporate mullahs and conservative public
opinion—the only kind there was in Brobdinak, or Upottsia either, not these
days.
“Instructions?”
“We’re supposed to play it over the whole system.”
This would allow passengers and crew to hear what the fellow had to say,
probably something fatuous and ostensibly inspirational at the same time. “Holy
crap, he’s thanking all of our sponsors.”
“Okay.”
Barney pushed the button and as the deep, sing-song,
oddly nasal voice of Fearless Leader harangued them one more time, both crew
settled in to try and catch some sleep. They had a long night ahead of them.
The message, predictably, was a long one, and after a minute or two he turned
the sound down.
He had a rough idea of what he would be saying
anyways.
***
At their cruising speed of five hundred eighty-five
knots, there was plenty of time for a meal and some rest, but both were in
their seats, taking over from Beta Crew for the run-in to the target area.
Observing all normal flight rules, descending as if
they were indeed landing at San Upottsia, when the big aircraft disappeared off
radar, the well-trained Upottsian air controllers, assuming a crash in the sea,
immediately declared an emergency and scrambled all available search and rescue
craft to the last known point on their flight path.
If they had any inkling that the Airbus was now
flying nap-of-the-earth, down to three hundred and fifty knots, and weaving its
way in through the coastal mountains and then out over the desert, the reaction
if anything would have been much stronger.
As it was, two pairs of fighter jets were scrambled
as a precaution. The Upottsians had been taken by surprise before, but all they
did was to climb and orbit in a racetrack pattern, waiting for further
instructions, while ground staff tried to confirm the facts and locate the
crash site.
They watched, giggling, on the radar warning sets,
but their plane had been designed to absorb radar and all kinds of stuff.
Since dawn was still two hours away, and there was
nothing to find, this might take some time.
The big Airbus had been designed, a one-off
prototype, as a bomber, or at least that was what all of the North-Western and
even the Southern-Midwestern/Eastern intelligence services thought. And it was
even true and everything, but the nature of the load they carried would have
surprised the most jaded and sanguine intelligence analysts. They might have
figured it out all on their own, one never knew. Of course it was a question of
timing and surprise. Both men had dropped hard bombs before, and Fred had once even
machine-gunned a school bus full of Salivian tribes-kids, all of this earlier in
their careers, but this was something just a little bit different.
By that time the Martyr Charter would be approaching
the target area…at that time there was nothing that could stop or seriously
interfere with the mission.
***
The aircraft streaked low over the desert, the
morning sun just below the horizon but the sky lightening perceptibly. Using
the terrain to mask their presence from the ever-watchful radar, jinking
through valleys and scraping through the mountain passes, the golly-gee-forces
were at times considerable.
In a steep, low-level turn, with the one wing
pointing crazily skyward, and the other one seemingly inches from a cliff-face,
Fred noted a small creak from up somewhere in the right corner of the cockpit,
but with its bamboo-fibre laminate construction and considerable internal
strengthening from the launch tubes, he wasn’t too worried. It was just his job
to observe and make notes and so that’s what he did.
The impression of speed was magnificent, but with accurate
celestial mapping, the machine knew everything that lay ahead of it, and if a
little minor altitude or speed compensation was necessary, it was more than
capable of doing it in good time.
A small buzzer sounded in Fred’s earphones.
“We have reached the Initial Point.” From here on in
they must really keep an eye on the thing.
Fred nodded. He keyed the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please leave your seats now
and enter the drop tube located directly in front of you. We have seven minutes
until drop.”
The nose camera was already picking up a gleam of
white far off in the distance. In all simulations, it was found that people
could get into their luxuriously-padded yet easily-washable tube within two and a half minutes.
Both pilot and copilot watched the graphic display
in awful suspense until all the green section lights flashed on.
The voice of the senior flight attendant came over
their headphones.
“All secured. Confirm ready to drop. We are in our
seats and strapped in.”
“Any problems?” Fred was concerned with this part of
the mission, which was out of his control.
“Naw. Had to knock a couple on the head, but that’s
about it.”
“Thank you.” Barney was feeling left out.
“All secured. Ready to drop.” Barney glanced at the
chronometer and reached for the microphone button.
“Ladies and gentleman, four
and a half minutes to drop. God is watching! And thank you for flying Martyr
Airways.”
They watched as the readouts on time and distance
clocked downwards towards zero.
Red lights came on over the bombardier handle—there
was no other way to describe it, although if things continued to go well, the
drop would be fully automatic. The pilot gripped the handle firmly, just in
case.
Fred marvelled at the calmness in his heart, although
there was tension in his midriff, and a cold, icy feeling at the base of each
kidney. He kept his left-hand fingertips lightly touching the yoke.
“I have it on visual.”
Fred sat up a little straighter, being shorter than Barney,
and peered over the high dashboard.
“Ah…beautiful.” The target, Keebler Dam, was dead ahead.
“If this doesn’t send a strong message to the dirty Imperialist heathen East-South-Central/Western
dogs, I don’t know what will.”
“Two minutes.” It passed more quickly if you watched
the numbers and forgot that your own fate was involved, Barney found.
Fred looked over quickly.
“You left out infidels.”
“Hah!” Barney spit theatrically, careful to keep it
pretty dry and spotty because of all the electronics.
There was the slightest change in pitch of the
background noise. Rows of yellow lights turned green.
“Drop doors open. All are green for go.”
Fred spoke without looking over. He was totally
focused on the machine’s performance.
“Thank you, my friend.”
Barney nodded in a professional manner.
“Damned glad to be here, sir!”
“It don’t mean nothing.”
They loved Upottsian movies.
They grinned like idiots, and then the last thirty
seconds were winding down with a strident ‘wheep-wheep-wheep’ in the
headphones. Barney was thinking of saying something about just wanting to learn
how to cook but thought better of it.
The plane surged upwards as a thousand pilgrims launched
into heaven and found their way to fame, to forgiveness, to paradise, perhaps
even to eternal bliss, for surely ignorance is a kind of bliss.
For whatever reason, they were gone.
On tactical screen one, the scene was observed by a
small, pilot-less, camera-equipped aircraft, dropped immediately prior to the
full passenger drop, showing a cluster of white-shrouded objects spinning and
tumbling through the air…the signal was strong and clear and they were getting
good pictures.
“Schmuck!” Fred looked over, a sick feeling in his
guts, but what were you supposed to do?
A big gob of what looked like nothing more than
strawberry jam slowly oozed down the face of the dam.
The water at the bast of
the power-house foamed red and there was gore all over both sides of the
canyon, and even rolling up and over the lip of the dam. The screen went fuzzy
and the picture went black.
“Nice work.”
They had just made history, and in his own case, a
hundred million dollars, although the other was said to be getting somewhat
less.
A beatific grin came over him.
“Let’s see that again.”
Barney’s hand obligingly reached for the controls on
the recording device.
The right wing came up and the nose came down again,
and then they were streaking for the Kanatski-Terra border and ultimately Humpson’s
Bay and a trans-Blarctic trajectory that would bring them by a circuitous route
to rendezvous with a tanker orbiting over Greeseland. With a substantially
smaller load now, the speed crept up reassuringly.
From Greeseland, it would be down the Schmedlantic,
around the Crape and up the Indjun Ocean, and finally home in about a day and a
half. Apparently they were having noodles for dinner and Fred was really
looking forward to that.
Barney looked over.
“Send data-packet?” This would include all flight
and drop information, including that from their drone.
“Roger that.”
With the throttle to the stops, it looked like they
would be over Kanatski-Terra before the Upottsians could figure it all out and
get some fighters in the air. Surely the authorities at the dam would be
screaming into their telephones by now…screaming their damn-fool heads off.
Barney had earned some unofficial recognition, at
least in Fred’s eyes.
“I’ll tell you what. When we get feet wet again,
I’ll let you fly it for a while.”
“Can I sit in your chair?”
Fred nodded brightly.
“Uh-huh.”
Unable to speak, eyes shiny with the suggestion of
tears, all the other could do was to nod in speculative appreciation, grip Fred’s
forearm strongly and bite his lip in anticipation of unforeseen eventualities.
“Thank you! I’m quite looking forward to it.”
There was still much that could go wrong. Yet Barney’s
gut instinct was that they had gotten away with it so far.
END
