The Nemesis Program

Chapter Forty-Eight

Minutes passed without anyone speaking, then more minutes. By now they had overflown the Sumatra coastline and were heading inland over the undulating green landscape. Here and there scattered buildings, small towns, industrial installations and swathes of decimated tropical forest passed under the shadow of the little ST-1 and its hulking escorts.

‘You have to do something,’ Daniel finally groaned in a shaky voice.

Ben activated the radio again. ‘This is Sierra Indigo four-two-nine-oh. We’re getting low on fuel here. Request to divert course to a nearer landing site. Come back. Over.’

Moments later the message came back. ‘Negative, Sierra Indigo four-two-nine-oh. Proceed on course as instructed. Over.’

‘That might be a little easier said than done, boys,’ Ben muttered, looking at the dwindling fuel gauge.

There was a tense silence in the cockpit that lasted a long time. Roberta was gripping the arm rests of the co-pilot seat so tightly that her fingers were white. Daniel was pacing nervously up and down the passenger aisle, chewing at his nails. Ben stared fixedly ahead in silence as his mind raced frantically. All the while, the F16s remained steadily either side, guiding them inexorably away from their original flight path. After thirty more fraught minutes, Medan passed by, far out of sight, several miles to the northeast.

And soon afterwards Ben’s blood went a little colder as he saw that his fuel calculations had been all too accurate — his last chance of a margin of error was gone. The gauge was dropping lower and lower into the danger zone with every passing minute.

They weren’t going to make it.

He tried the radio one more time. ‘Unable to reach destination. I repeat, unable to reach destination. Require alternative landing within’ — glancing at the constantly-diminishing fuel readout — ‘within ten miles. Situation urgent. Over.’

Once again, the inflexible reply rasped in his earpiece. ‘Sierra Indigo four-two-nine-oh, you have been warned. Any deviation off course will entail serious consequences. Over.’

‘Well?’ Roberta asked breathlessly.

Ben shook his head. ‘They won’t play ball. They think we’re pulling a trick on them, and they know we can touch down in places they can’t. We make one false move, they’re going to assume we’re taking evasive action and they’ll open fire.’

‘Oh, Jesus. There has to be something we can do. What’s that beeping?’

The amber warning light that had been flashing for some time on the instrument panel was now pulsing an angry red.

‘Critical fuel alert,’ Ben said. ‘This is it. Daniel,’ he yelled over his shoulder, ‘for Christ’s sake, stop pacing and buckle yourself into a seat back there.’

Roberta had tears of terror in her eyes. ‘Ben—’

‘We’re going to be fine,’ he said, keeping his own rising fear out of his voice. He glanced down out of the cockpit window. A solid green canopy of trees was racing by in a blur beneath them. All around were rolling hills and deep wooded valleys. He’d lost track of their position. All he knew was that there was nowhere to touch safely down. Nowhere at all …

That was when the port engine stuttered, coughed and then died. The left-side propeller was suddenly, horribly, static. The high-pitched beeping seemed to become more shrilly insistent. The red light flashed like a pulse of pain. Ben felt the shocking imbalance of the crippled aircraft through the controls and wrestled to stop the left wing from dipping downwards.

‘Oh my God!’ Roberta gasped. A cry of panic came from the rear as Daniel huddled in his seat.

‘I can hold it,’ Ben said through gritted teeth. But he knew he couldn’t. The gauges were in a flurry. The aircraft was losing altitude and no force on earth could keep its nose from slanting downwards in a shallow dive. The alarm was piercing his ears. He smashed the red warning light with his fist, but the shrill beeping kept on.

Then the starboard engine cut out too. Ben turned to stare in grim dismay at the stalled propeller.

In the awful silence, the ST-1 began to fall out of the air.

Ben’s radio earpieces were immediately buzzing with warning commands to stay on course. He tore the headset off and flung it away. His heart was icy cold. Every muscle in his body locked tight. They were going down and there was nothing he could do.

The stricken aircraft skimmed the treetops in a steepening dive, raking the upper branches with a violent crackling that sounded like the belly of the fuselage being ripped away. Then suddenly, just as it seemed they were about to plunge into the thick of the trees and be dashed to pieces in a fireball of exploding aviation fuel, the green canopy that was rushing up to meet them disappeared. In its place a vast, panoramic stretch of water came into view up ahead, twinkling in the sunlight and dotted with small islands.

Now Ben realised where he was. Lake Toba. A hundred kilometres long and thirty wide. The largest volcanic lake in the world, site of an enormous eruption seventy thousand years ago. He’d read about it once. Just never thought he’d have to ditch an aircraft into it.

This was it. Their one chance of survival. How slender a chance, they were about to find out.

‘Brace yourselves!’ he yelled.

Seeing their captive break off course, the F16s took instant action. With lightning agility and a deafening sonic boom from their jets they peeled off and looped upwards, barrelling over, then came arcing back at terrifying speed towards the stricken turboprop. Inside their cockpits, the pilots were arming their weapons, ready to blast their target to pieces.

Ben barely even registered the jets streaking into attack position. All he could see were the sun-dappled waters of the lake hurtling towards him. He fought to keep the nose of the falling aircraft at a shallow angle to lessen the impact.

Getting closer … closer. Racing across the water, almost touching.

Roberta screamed.

And then they hit.