Newton’s Fire (41 page)

‘What will it do to the plane?’ asked Rachel. ‘Aren’t they built to withstand lightning strikes?’

‘Only because their outer hulls are insulated from their inner hulls,’ said Luke. ‘So lightning can’t get through. But that also means that an electrical surge inside can’t escape so easily. Everything could get frazzled.’

‘Including us?’

He grimaced. ‘It’s our only chance.’ The air was thin and vaporous. Their movements grew increasingly clumsy from lack of oxygen, their eyes watering with migraines. But they kept disgorging bottles until finally the Ark was full. They heaved its lid back on, then Luke stooped by the electric motor. ‘Ready?’ he asked.

‘Ready,’ said Rachel.

He flipped the switch and took a step back, fearful of something extraordinary. But nothing happened. Rachel looked at him. ‘It’ll take time,’ he said.

The Ark began to steam and smoke, filling the hold with noxious fumes. Then it seemed almost to crackle. The air, despite its thinness, became increasingly charged. Luke’s skin began to tingle. The tingling turned to itching, his skin infested by swarms of invisible insects that now burrowed inside him, squeezing his organs, pumping his heart, making his blood fizz like some madcap experiment.

‘What’s it doing?’ asked Rachel, rubbing her forearms.

He looked down at the floor where threads of cheap carpeting stood up like wires. They needed to get off it. They needed insulation. He was about to tell Rachel when the Ark unleashed a violent spark that jolted up his arm and into his chest like some angelic taser. He fell to the floor. Rachel tried to catch him but he took her down too. His limbs wouldn’t work. He couldn’t breathe. Something was lodged in his throat. He began to gag, fighting for breath. Rachel turned him onto his back and hooked a finger into his mouth, pulled his tongue free. He rolled onto his side. ‘The pallets,’ he gasped. ‘Wood.’

She nodded and helped him onto their insulated sanctuary. They turned to look at the Ark, flaming and sparking wildly. An electrical arch sprang up between the twin golden cherubs kneeling on its lid, glowing and fizzing like the filament of some impossible bulb, so that they had to close their eyes and turn away. Then a brilliant single blaze of light burst forth, bright as the sun, so bright that Luke could see it even through his tightly clenched eyelids and the noise it made was like nothing he’d ever heard before, a crackling kind of boom that made the whole aircraft shudder.

Both engines instantly sputtered and then failed. The plane began to plunge. The humpback-bridge moment of weightlessness went on and on and on. Everyone shrieked, in the hold and in the main cabin, a feedback loop of terror at the certainty of imminent violent death. But the pilot was still fighting and he managed to wrest back some measure of control. An injured engine whined as it strained heroically against gravity and momentum. The wings and fuselage shuddered as they fought horrific loads. Lockers fell open, disgorging their contents. The oak chests rattled and empty bottles danced crazily. Then gravity returned with a vengeance, pressing Luke and Rachel down on the pallet. Their trajectory flattened and they pulled up level. They’d lost so much altitude that the air was thicker here and began to reverse its flow, making breathing easier, blunting the sharpest edges of their headaches.

It was Rachel who heard the noise. ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

‘What’s what?’

‘That whining,’ she said. ‘Can’t you hear it?’

Luke looked at the electric motor. ‘Oh, Christ,’ he said, as the Ark began to glow once more. ‘It’s recharging.’

Avram watched in horror as the plane plunged towards the sea. It was too far away to identify, but what else could it be but Croke’s jet? What else could it be but the Ark? He cried out in anguish and rage.

They’d shot them down. They must have known what the consequences would be but they’d shot them down anyway.

He looked at the trigger in his left hand. He steeled himself to release the safety and press it. But then, like a miracle, the plane began to pull out of its dive. It was at an angle to the camera so that he could watch it fighting gravity until finally it levelled off. He cried out again, but in exaltation this time. What more proof could anyone want that the Lord, praise His Name, was truly on their side? Tears prickled his eyes as—

The plane’s rear windows began to glow, as though reflecting the dawn. But it couldn’t be. The sun wasn’t up yet. And anyway, the light seemed to be coming from inside the plane. The camera zoomed in closer. The light grew brighter and brighter and then the whole plane lit up like a star going supernova. The flare lasted barely a second before it died away, leaving the morning darker than before. Flame flickered from both the aircraft’s engines and twin trails of thick black smoke scoured the grey sky. The plane began to lose altitude once more. It wasn’t quite in free-fall, but with both engines on fire even Avram could see that there was only one possible outcome now: its crash into the sea and total
obliteration
. His heart seemed to break apart inside his chest. The Ark was lost. Without it, no Jewish uprising. Without it, no Third Temple. Without it, his Lord was nothing but a sham.

His wail echoed through the Dome. He glared down at the remote control. He released the safety then made to stab the trigger with his thumb.

Luke took Rachel in his arms as the Ark discharged a second time. He didn’t need to look outside to know that the engines were gone, that the plane had received its death blow. He couldn’t believe it was going to end like this. He couldn’t accept that he was responsible for bringing this on Rachel. He looked around for some glimmer of hope, saw it in the large oak chest. He grabbed her hand and pulled her to it. ‘Get in,’ he said.

‘It won’t be strong enough.’

‘Newton built it to protect the Ark,’ he told her. ‘It will be strong enough.’

She nodded and climbed inside, fitted her feet into the hollow at the far end. The plane was hurtling downwards, wreaking havoc on the hold. He picked up the mirror half of the Ark’s protective moulding and made to enclose Rachel in its protective womb, but she fought him off. ‘No! You have to get in too.’

‘There isn’t room. Not for both of us.’

‘There is if we use life jackets.’

He felt a fierce surge of joy and pride and hope. The overhead lockers had all tumbled open and spilled their guts onto the floor. He grabbed life jackets from all around and tossed them into the chest. Through a window, the sea was rushing up fast. No more time. He grabbed the chest’s end panel, fitted it into its grooves then climbed inside and let it drop down like a portcullis behind him, enclosing both him and Rachel in its protective walls. The chest was too short for him and he had to bend his knees, adopt the brace position. The life jackets were all around them. In the darkness they felt for and pulled toggles, inflating the jackets like balloons, creating a buffer between themselves and the chest walls, packing themselves tighter and tighter until they couldn’t move, and his chest was pressed against hers, and his chin was on her shoulder. The screaming of their descent grew louder as it echoed off the water. Any second now. Any second. He wrapped his arms around Rachel and hugged her hard, felt her hugging him back with equal intensity, and if it had to end for them both, then best like this, best like this, best like—

A deafening crash. The fuselage jumped and shuddered. The oak chest was flung forwards, spinning and tumbling like a die cast by some outraged god. They crashed into and through the internal bulkhead, would surely have broken apart had the Ark not already smashed a path for them. The impact was still so violent that Luke banged his head hard even through the life jackets, leaving him dazed and only vaguely aware of hideous noises all around him, of shrieking metal and things breaking and popping and splintering. Their forward motion stopped abruptly. He felt utterly disoriented and for a moment wondered whether this was what death felt like. But then he realized he was merely upside down, that blood was rushing to his head and pain was reporting in from the various parts of his body, telling him that he was very much alive.

Rachel was still in his arms, still pressed against him by the swell of life jackets. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked. His voice was slurred and disembodied, but the biggest surprise was hearing it at all.

Rachel didn’t reply. His hand was pinned behind her back but some of the life jackets had punctured and were slowly deflating, allowing him to work it free. He touched her throat, felt nothing. His heart twisted. ‘Rachel!’ he cried.

He tried her wrist instead and this time felt something, not strong but steady. No time to celebrate, however. Metal groaned outside, stretched beyond its capacity. The chest lurched and tipped onto its side. He heard splashing. His right hip grew wet; then his thigh and calf. And he realized, belatedly, they were shipping water fast through the hole Newton had cut in the chest’s floor in order to accommodate the base of the Ark.

Benyamin had vowed to attend every minute of the trial of the four young Palestinian men who’d murdered his wife, two daughters and seven others. But it had proved a farce. They hadn’t even offered a defence. At least, their defence had been a simple political statement: they were soldiers fighting a war in which they themselves had lost parents, brothers, sisters, children and friends. And there’d been no trials for
those
killings. No justice for
their
bereavements.

To his surprise, Benyamin had found this line of defence deeply disturbing. It had troubled him enough that he’d skipped the foregone conclusion of the verdict and the sentencing. It was easier to hate people when you didn’t know them; it was easier to believe that your lust for vengeance was somehow different, nobler. But it wasn’t different. He saw that now. He saw it in the sheer ugliness of Avram’s expression as he released the safety and made to press the trigger.

Benyamin didn’t even think. He simply hurled himself at him and they tumbled together onto the Foundation Stone. The impact knocked the remote from Avram’s hand and it skittered away across the Kevlar blanket. They both went after it, scrambling on their hands and knees, while everyone looked around to watch.

That was when it happened. All the windows burst open at once, raining glass on the floor. Stun grenades exploded in midair, a compressed storm of light and thunder. Figures swathed in black swarmed in through doors and windows, firing as they came, punishing each and every hint of resistance with instant death. The shock of it made Benyamin falter, allowing Avram to reach the remote first. He raised his hand and was bringing it down to slap the trigger when the fusillade of high velocity rounds shredded him and flung him onto his back, his eyes wide and staring upwards, so that the last thing he’d ever have seen was the Dome towering high above him, still standing.

The seawater was already up to Luke’s chest. He put his hands above his head and fumbled through the deflating life jackets for the sliding end panel. He’d been twisted around so much that he couldn’t be sure which way was up, which way to push. Panic got to him; he kept trying different directions, hoping one might work. None did. Maybe the impact had jammed it. Maybe he was only making it worse. He forced himself to calm down, to think. He felt around and quickly found the hole in the chest’s floor. Now at least he could orient himself with confidence. The end panel slid upwards. He pushed it hard. Nothing.

Water reached his throat. He had to lift up Rachel’s face so she could breathe. He remembered Jay finding this chest earlier, how he’d struggled to open it until he’d tried pushing the panel inwards and
then
lifting it. There was nothing on the inside for Luke to pull towards him. He tried to grip its edges with his fingernails, but it was useless. Water rose above his mouth. The pressure was building on his sinuses too. As the chest had enough air in it to float, the implication had to be that they were still trapped inside the fuselage, and sinking with it.

He let go of Rachel. The only thing he could do for her was to get them both out. He took a deep breath from the small pocket of air, fitted his right foot through the hole in the floor, felt fuselage. He pushed the chest along until something outside stopped him. He took another breath then pushed as hard as he could, using whatever obstacle he’d encountered outside to depress the end panel. It yielded and slid upwards, but only a little way. And it let out the last of the air, so that the urge to breathe became almost irresistible. He pushed against the chest’s wall until it tipped onto its side, allowing him finally to slide the panel free.

Luke hauled himself out, dragging Rachel with him. They were already deep enough underwater for it to be almost dark. His eyes were so blurry that he could only gain the vaguest impression of his surroundings. The tube of the passenger cabin, a carnage of dead bodies strapped into white leather seats in a doomed effort to survive the impact; but also a jagged-edged ring of lighter blue above him, where the jet had sheared in two, offering a glimpse of surface high above.

He kicked towards it, fighting the screaming of his lungs, and finally he breached the surface and opened his mouth and gasped the air and kept on gasping until his need was sated. He turned belatedly to Rachel, lifted up her head. He’d never had CPR training, had only seen it in the movies, but he understood the principles: chest compressions and assisted breathing. He couldn’t lay her down on her back to press on her chest, so he hugged her tight three times instead, pinched her nostrils, put his mouth to hers, breathed into her. He hugged her again. On the second hug her mouth opened and she coughed and choked and spluttered and then vomited out a small stream of discoloured seawater, and then she gasped and began breathing by herself, replenishing her oxygen-starved body.