Apocalypse

8

‘You’re not serious.’

Lopez stared at the drab olive overalls as she pulled them on, along with the heavy black boots and the over-suit festooned with tubes and cables.

Ethan yanked on his flight suit and was handed a helmet with a glossy black mirrored visor, oxygen mask and a pair of fire-retardant gloves. He watched as Lopez struggled into her own flight suit and then followed as an ensign directed them out of the building in which they stood and into the bright sunshine. The sound of countless jet engines whined, and Ethan saw a giant KC-135 re-fuelling tanker slip off the runway and soar into the clear blue sky. But it was not the big aircraft lining the servicing area that caught his attention.

Two sleek, angular fighter jets sat on the tarmac awaiting them, technicians swarming around the craft as they approached. Jarvis gestured to them.

‘F-15E Eagles from the 85th Test and Evaluation Squadron at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida,’ he said. ‘Requisitioned by me to ensure a swift arrival on site. I’ll follow you down on an Air Force transport and brief you when you’re airborne on a secure channel.’

Ethan stared at the fearsome-looking aircraft and then at the two female pilots awaiting them. Ethan raised a surprised eyebrow.

‘You got a problem with women drivers?’ Lopez challenged. ‘Man up.’

A woman almost a foot shorter than Ethan, who looked no more than twenty-five, her blonde hair tied in a neat ponytail, extended a hand to him.

‘Captain Emma Rawlings,’ she said, smiling brightly. ‘I’ll be your pilot for today. If you’d like to get aboard?’

Ethan nodded, lost for words as he climbed the ladder beside the cockpit and clambered in. A bewildering array of dials, switches, television screens and lights faced him on the control panel as a crewman strapped him into the ejection seat. He looked across at Lopez, who was being strapped into the other aircraft, and saw her make the sign of a crucifix across her chest as her pilot closed the canopy and began starting the Eagle’s engines.

Ethan wasn’t afraid of flying. Throughout his time with the Marines, both in training and on deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq, he had flown in various types of aircraft — CH-47 Chinooks, Black Hawks, Hercules and Super Stallions, to name but a few. But they were all helicopters. This was a fighter jet, the real deal, the kind he’d seen screaming overhead in battle zones, dropping ordnance powerful enough to vaporize small villages.

The canopy on Ethan’s F-15 closed and he heard a distant whining sound as the turbofan engines started. Captain Rawlings fired off a quick broadside of radio commands to the control tower, and within minutes they were priority taxiing to the active runway right behind Lopez’s aircraft. The two jets lined up on the runway in a tight formation and then, with another barked command, Captain Rawlings eased the throttles forward. A distant roar erupted from somewhere behind Ethan and he saw bright jets of flame blast from the nearby Eagle’s exhausts as it thundered down the runway, its wingtip mere feet from that of his own aircraft. A terrific acceleration pinned Ethan into his ejection seat as the jets roared along the dark asphalt, and then suddenly both aircraft lifted off the runway, undercarriages rolling up as they climbed steeply away from the airfield in close formation. A scattering of cumulus cloud shot past them as Ethan saw the altimeter spin through five thousand feet.

‘Jesus,’ he uttered, his voice distorted by both the aircraft’s intercom system and his tightly fitting oxygen mask, ‘that would have taken two hours in an airliner.’

Captain Rawlings’ voice chortled back to him over the radio.

‘We were being gentle,’ she replied. ‘We only use minimum afterburner when we take off in formation.’

Ethan watched as Lopez’s aircraft led them up through the cloud layers to twenty thousand feet, the long teardrop canopy of the F-15 affording him a vertiginous view of the world below, hazy fields and glittering towns beneath a scattered patchwork of small clouds trailing shadows. The other F-15 was so close he felt as though he could reach out and touch it as it bobbed and weaved on the wind currents as the east coast passed by beneath them.

Ethan saw Lopez’s F-15 drift away out of formation until it was a silvery speck on the hazy band of the horizon.

‘Where are they going?’ he asked.

‘We’re moving to battle flight,’ Captain Rawlings explained, ‘to avoid the shockwaves.’

‘What shockwaves?’

Captain Rawlings didn’t reply to Ethan, instead broadcasting to her fellow pilot in the other jet.

‘Scorcher flight, buster-buster!’

A moment later Ethan felt the F-15 surge forward as the throttles hit the firewall. Full afterburner launched the aircraft toward the horizon as though it had been fired from a cannon, and suddenly he realized what she had meant. They were going supersonic. The airspeed indicator shot through Mach 1 as Captain Rawlings hauled the F-15 up into a steep climb. G-force slammed Ethan down into his seat, straining his neck as the aircraft soared up into the atmosphere. Rawlings slowly rolled the F-15 upside down, and the sun flashed through the sky around Ethan before the cockpit was plunged into shadow. The straps from his harnesses dangled before his eyes, the upside-down world and the curve of the earth easily visible some fifty thousand feet beneath them.

Ethan’s senses reconnected themselves as the colossal G-force eased, and he saw the coast of Virginia passing by beneath rippled blankets of cloud as Rawlings rolled the F-15 right-side up. The sky above was almost black, the sleek fighter flirting with the edge of space.

‘How fast are we going?’ he enquired, as a vague sense of nausea poisoned his innards.

The reply came back as casually as though Emma Rawlings were driving a car.

‘Just over Mach 2, faster than a rifle bullet. We’ll have you in Florida in an hour. I’m opening a three-way data-link channel with your boss, stand-by.’

Ethan heard a hiss and a squawk across the airwaves, and then Jarvis’s voice crackled in his ear as one of the screens in the cockpit showed the old man’s face as he spoke from the cavernous interior of a transport aircraft. A second screen showed most of Lopez’s face obscured by her oxygen mask and helmet, only her exotic almond eyes visible.

‘Ethan, Nicola, pay attention. If the situation in Miami is not resolved within twelve hours, then we feel certain that the answers we seek at the Defense Intelligence Agency will be lost forever.’

Ethan frowned beneath his oxygen mask.

‘Why the time limit?’ he asked Jarvis.

‘I told you that Charles Purcell was involved in research into the nature of time at NASA,’ Jarvis explained. ‘It would appear that after leaving the space agency he continued his work. When he contacted the police at the scene of his family’s murder, Charles Purcell accurately predicted future events as they unfolded.’

Lopez’s voice crackled over the radio.

‘No way! I’ve read about things like that. You can’t see into the future, it’s impossible. Physics won’t allow it. You’re saying you pulled us off eighteen thousand dollars of bond money for pure fantasy?’

‘That may be so,’ Jarvis responded. ‘But fact is fact and this guy got it right several times during a single conversation. He also claimed that he wasn’t responsible for the murder of his family, and would himself be murdered sometime today.’

‘He knows that this will happen?’ Ethan asked in surprise.

‘Apparently so,’ Jarvis replied. ‘He even stated that his killer does not yet know he will commit the act.’

‘Which is why we’re being rushed down there,’ Ethan said. ‘To try to stop it before it happens.’

‘Correct,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Whatever this guy’s been up to, he’s either an exceedingly clever psychopath or exceedingly desperate to prove his innocence. The FBI has written the case off as nothing more than the ramblings of a madman, sheer coincidence. I only saw the paperwork myself four hours ago, and managed to get control of the case.’

‘It sounds like Purcell’s smart enough to fool people into thinking he’s seen the future,’ Lopez suggested. ‘If he’s lost his mind he could be presenting like a classic psychopath — severe narcissism combined with a god complex.’

‘Where do we start?’ Ethan asked Jarvis.

‘Captain Kyle Sears of the Miami-Dade Police will meet you at Homestead Joint Air Reserve Base. He’ll be your liaison. I’ll meet you when we arrive. For now, you’d best be on your way.’

A thought crossed Ethan’s mind.

‘How do you know that we’ve only got twelve hours left to solve this case?’

Jarvis’s voice sounded ominous over the radio as he replied.

‘You’ll have to see that to believe it. Jarvis out.’