Rogue Element

Next, he joined high and low yo-yos together, pulling five and six-g climbing and descending turns, creeping up on clouds then blasting holes through them exuberantly. He was congratulating himself on having the best job in the world when a small explosion rocked the Tiger and filled the cabin with smoke. The smell of an electrical fire found its way into his oxygen mask. The stick felt heavy and he deflected it slightly to the right to see how the aircraft would respond. Something was very wrong. The Tiger continued to roll to the right once the stick was centred. Indeed, the stick position had no effect on the aileron’s deflection. They had locked up solid. The fighter rolled once, twice, three times around its longitudinal axis before the nose started to dip, and the arc scribed by the nose became more elliptical.

Raptor tried to reduce the roll rate by using a little left rudder and retarding the throttle. This worked to some degree, but the plane continued to roll. Too much rudder input would cause a cascade of other stability problems he could well do without, so Raptor kept his foot pressure to a minimum. He found that he did have some control over the aircraft’s pitch but not to a significant degree.

A Mayday call was made in the calmest voice he could muster, giving his position and a brief account of his difficulties. ATC responded that it would immediately dispatch SAR to his position.

Raptor wrestled the aircraft down to 3000 feet and still it rolled around its longitudinal axis. He kept his cool and his spatial orientation. Raptor was a good pilot, but this aircraft was determined to drill a hole in mother earth and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. Raptor waited until the Tiger was at the top of its roll before pulling the yellow and black striped rubber ejector release handles between his legs. He tugged hard. Nothing. He tried again. A sudden explosion should have sent him and his seat skywards to safety, away from the metal coffin spinning to its doom. Raptor fought the Tiger all the way to his death. The aircraft hit the sea nose low and inverted. The impact tore the aircraft, and his body, into very small chunks.

Air Force Colonel Ari Ajirake received the report of the death of one of his pilots at breakfast. The lieutenant, who phoned him with the news, thought his commanding officer took it well.

NSA HQ, Fort Meade, Maryland, 2330 Zulu, Wednesday, 29 April

Bob Gioco stared at the computer screen as he ate dinner.

A musical chord sounded on his computer announcing the arrival of another slip in his etray. He opened it and read the accompanying note. ‘Hello, Bob. Add this to your Sulawesi jigsaw and see if the picture starts ringing your alarm bells too. Ruth S.’

It was not unheard of for an IAE to make a personal approach to an analyst, but it was not entirely regular either. Ruth Styles. That’s right, Gioco remembered her now. Formidable old duck, but she seemed to like him and that made it easier for him to like her. He apologised to the ether for thinking of her as a battleaxe. He scanned the information troubling the woman sitting in a bunker on the other side of the world. A company called Tropical Pulp and Paper had lost one of its forward survey teams in the jungles of Sulawesi. Apparently, the campsite had made its routine report that morning and everything was fine. An hour later, they were off the air. Totally. Nothing from the camp’s VHF or UH frequencies, the sat phones were dead as were all computer comms. Alright, so something was definitely rotten in Denmark. Or rather, Sulawesi.

Bob stared at the slip. He pinned it on his virtual noticeboard and read through some of the others. There were around thirty or so that he’d highlighted with a red electronic exclamation mark, the ones he thought he should keep an eye on to see what, if anything, developed.

There was something about a group of mercenaries training on the border between Vietnam and Cambodia. An unusual virus had again jumped from the pig population to humans in a remote part of Malaysia. Unionists had sabotaged some stevedoring gear in a port in Western Australia (but there was a counterclaim by them that the damage was actually caused by company thugs). A number of schools had been torched in a systematic attack in Sydney. There was plenty of military traffic, some interesting, some routine, some plain odd. There were the reports from A-6, the Australian agent in Sulawesi. Sulawesi… He reread her first one about a squad of Kopassus troops heading north. He then read the second report, as it seemed an addendum to the first. He decided on a whim to dig a little deeper into this one.