Rogue Element

Niko was a romantic about Bali and its people, but when it came to his job, he was rigorous, rational and pragmatic. He sat in front of a screen and directed international air traffic, handing aircraft from his chunk of sky to the next controller’s chunk of sky. That was his job. It was routine work in a sector that was rarely busy, and not exactly taxing if one had a systematic mind. And Abe Niko had such a mind. It was because of this that he was troubled. He really had no idea what was going on. Niko had immediately reviewed the disks from his control board after he had called the authorities. The seven-four was at Flight Level 350 (35 000 feet), and then it was gone. Blink, then nothing. QF-1 had vanished from his screen without warning, no radio calls — complete silence — in a way that suggested the worst.

Immediately, however, the police had confiscated his disks, the ones that recorded the information collected by the traffic control system displayed on his screen. That was bad. But what had really got under his skin was a news report that made him sound like he didn’t know what the hell he was doing. In his view QF-1 had probably been blown out of the sky. Terror. Yet what the authorities were saying — and quoting him, apparently — was that QF1 had suffered some kind of cataclysmic system failure and that it had probably come down outside Indonesian airspace. That was stupid. The Qantas plane would turn up pasted against a mountain in Sulawesi like a bug against a car radiator grille and everyone would look like amateurs. Especially him. Why would they say such rubbish? And who were ‘they’ anyhow? The more he thought about it, the more worked up he became. What possible motive would anyone have for trying to conceal a plane crash? Or delaying the discovery of the wreckage?

He turned off the main road and started to descend through the palms, tamarind and mango trees along the track that led to his home. Niko was tired. He wanted to get home, have a shower and go to bed. He’d sleep first and then call a friend of his who worked in the newsroom of a major TV station in Jakarta. The nameless authorities had gotten it totally wrong. Worse, they’d gotten it wrong in his name! Just thinking about it made him angry. And edgy. Maybe I shouldn’t wait, he thought, and decided he’d phone his TV friend as soon as he arrived home, to set the record straight. Sometimes these second-world countries did and said the dumbest things, but what on earth was the motive for this stupidity? The question kept repeating itself in his head. And then, suddenly, he knew. The answer was obvious. The plane had been shot down. He wouldn’t wait to get home, he’d make that call now.

Niko fumbled with his mobile phone, turning it on as he rounded a corner. An army truck blocked the road. He saw it too late, swerved and braked hard, locking up the wheels on the slick mud surface. The car slid and spun, almost in slow motion, but nothing Niko could do prevented it from slipping off the road’s soft edges and down the steep gully. The Honda gathered speed slowly at first, then accelerated as it fell through the trees. A front wheel hit a large stone, caving in the front suspension. The car rolled, then flipped. The front doors were flung open, the mounting centrifugal forces ripping them off their hinges.

Niko was still conscious when the car came to rest upside down in the creek that ran rapidly through the gully at the base of the hill. He’d had the wind crushed out of him but his air-bag had saved his life. It started to deflate and he felt less restricted, but his leg was jammed somewhere under the dashboard. He tried to free it, but couldn’t. Upside down, the blood rushed to his head and the pressure built. His eyes felt like they were being squeezed out of their sockets. He saw his phone. It was sitting on a bit of plastic under the passenger glove box. He tried to reach it, but it was just beyond his fingertips.

Water filled the upturned roof space below his head. He heard it first, then felt the cold wetness on his scalp. He tried to lift his head up towards the dashboard trapping his knees, but his stomach muscles gave out. He yelled for help, screamed for it, as the water gurgled relentlessly into his mouth, making him cough and hack. Silence. The water was nearly up to his eyes, which were bulging with panic.

Somewhere there was the hiss of steam as water ran over hot engine parts. He managed to get his mouth out of the water for one last desperate plea for help. Exhausted, the water invaded his nostrils. He gagged, spluttered. Niko registered that the hissing sound had changed pitch now that his ears were under the surface. The water was malevolent, a force with an almost conscious determination to kill. He struggled again, hopelessly, to free his legs.