Rogue Element

Granger rotated the switch the opposite way. ‘Bottle fired!’

Surely the fire would now be extinguished. The pilots focused on the warning light, willing it to wink off. It didn’t.

Shockwaves pulsed through the 747. They shook the plane so hard that Granger’s teeth clattered.

‘We’re going to have to land asap,’ said Captain Flemming, busily setting the aircraft up for an orderly descent to an altitude where the 747 could fly slower in thicker air. ‘What’s the nearest airport?’

Granger knew every strip along his route sector, but there was only one within range long enough to take a 747. ‘Hasanuddin Air Force Base. Force landed there once before with the squadron. Doubles as a civilian airport. But we’ll have to turn around. It’s a twenty-minute backtrack.’

‘Okay.’ Flemming paused and added, ‘I hate to think what’s going on behind us.’

Luke nodded.

‘Better let the poor buggers know what’s going on,’ Flemming said. ‘Once we level off, Luke, go back and have a look out the window. You probably won’t see much, but you never know.’

The intense heat of the fire burned through the bolts that fixed the engine under the wing and it dropped away like a bomb.

Joe had stopped panicking. He had retreated into shock, along with most of his fellow passengers. The plane felt like it was falling, sliding sideways and downwards. People around him were screaming, but Joe didn’t hear them. Something caught his attention. There was a yellow glow coming from somewhere outside the cabin. He wondered if it was an angel come to their rescue. He looked out the small window, squashing his face against the cold Perspex to get a better view. Whatever it was, it was somewhere out on the end of the wing. He couldn’t quite work out exactly what it was, but it wasn’t an angel. Joe realised it was a fireball, just as it fell away from sight into the blackness below. Was that an engine? he wondered, before discounting the possibility.

Instantly the pitch of the vibration changed. It stopped almost completely, along with the loud rumble that sounded like a freight train running over points just beside his head.

Flight attendants were working the aisles, moving back and forth in an attempt to calm the inconsolable. But any reassurances they gave were at odds with the reality of the moment. Screams continued to fill the cabin. Some people, Joe saw, had already assumed the crash position. His stomach convulsed and he vomited onto the floor between his feet.

Raptor was vaguely disappointed. He had hoped a second missile wouldn’t be needed. That was wasteful.

The F-16’s fire control system was still activated. He toggled through the missile’s target acquisition options, shifting the little red diamond presented on the HUD from one engine to another. He considered which engine to take out next. He let the diamond settle on the right-hand inboard turbine.

His F-16 was only carrying two AIM-9 sidewinders, so this one had to finish the job. He wondered if the 747 had self-sealing fuel cells. If not, a hot sliver of metal — perhaps a burning fan blade — puncturing a wing tank would do the job nicely. Tone sounded in his headphones and he depressed the firing button on the control column operated by his right hand. Raptor gave a mental shrug as the missile flew on its way. The animal was wounded. All he was doing was putting it out of its misery.

Flying at greater than Mach three, the AIM-9 closed the distance in an instant. The warhead smashed into the Rolls-Royce’s exhaust. The explosion blew a large section of the engine’s secondary compression rotor into the adjacent fuselage, ripping a hole more than a metre wide in the side of the plane. The 747’s cabin instantly depressurised.

The titanium blades torn from the engine became shrapnel. The deadly cloud of spikes speared the fuselage in the economy section, shredding three friends sitting together, all of whom were so drunk that, thankfully, they had no idea what was going on. The three, still strapped in their row of seats, were blown out of the hole in the side of the 747 and into the freezing vacuum of the upper atmosphere.

There was an explosion followed by a shockwave that rippled down the skin of the plane, and the air turned instantly milky white with mist. Frost glazed the window beside Joe’s face. He was startled, and frightened, but he felt removed from the scene at the same time, as if watching a movie. A roaring sound filled his ears, along with intense pain in his eardrums. The screams were all around him and the loudest of all, he realised, rose from his own throat.

Raptor saw what appeared to be a group of seats tumble out of the hole in the fuselage, but he wasn’t sure. The jumbo’s wounds now appeared mortal. It was falling away to the right. Slowly at first, then faster. The fall became a plunge. Raptor followed the 747 into the accelerating dive. The two aircraft picked up speed, engine thrust and gravity combining with frightening exuberance.