Chapter 19
Arctic
Crash Site
Survival was all about adaptation. But in the punishing conditions they were facing, Kasey knew that if adaptation didn’t come fast, people were going to die.
“More to the left,” she said.
She watched Sharpe and the two grad students drag one of the giant life rafts sideways.
The raft had been Sharpe’s idea, a makeshift windbreak to cover the giant opening at the back of the fuselage. The temperature outside was roughly 20 degrees Fahrenheit and the wind was ferocious, making protection from the elements paramount.
Sharpe had extracted the uninflated raft from its ceiling stowage compartment and hauled it outside.
When he jerked the activation lanyard, a bottle of compressed air had inflated the rubber shell to its full size in less than a minute.
It was bigger than Kasey imagined, over twenty feet in diameter.
And its circular shape was a near-perfect fit to seal the cylindrical fuselage.
The raft was designed to hold fifty passengers in the open ocean, but it was being converted to a new use in a very different survival situation: protection from ruthless cold.
“That’s good, right there!” she shouted.
Nick and Sharpe held the raft in place from the outside while Kasey and Sofia secured it.
Using a dozen precut segments of rope from the handhold lines encircling the raft, they secured tie-downs to seats, bin hinges, and whatever other hard points they could find.
Five minutes later, twelve anchors were attached.
The raft sealed the sheared-open fuselage almost completely.
“Okay, I think that’s good,” she called out.
Sharpe entered the cabin, shouldering through a narrow gap at one side. He eyed the jury-rigged plug. “Not perfect, but it’s almost the same diameter as the airplane.”
“It definitely cuts down the wind, and hopefully it will hold in some of the warmth our bodies are generating.”
“The raft comes with a canopy. If I hang that across the gap on the left, it can serve as a door.” He looked up at the ceiling where one gash remained in the fuselage.
“That’s the last problem but it should be easy enough to deal with.
The gap’s only a few inches wide, so we can seal it with torn carpet or clothing. ”
“What we really could use is a fire,” Nick said, appearing from the left.
“That would be a plus,” Sharpe agreed. “I’m sure we could find a cigarette lighter or two, but like I told Kasey, the nearest firewood is about a thousand miles south of here.”
Kasey surveyed the cabin. “There’s plenty of foam and upholstery that looks combustible, but all of that is synthetic. It would be like lighting off a burn pit.”
“I agree,” said Nick. “Not only would you get chemical smoke, but a fire like that could be hard to control. The last thing we need is to set our only shelter on fire.”
Sharpe weighed the dilemma. “We were carrying a fair amount of cargo. I’ll go up to the flight deck and see if I can find the manifest. The forward hold is partially crushed, but if I can reach the containers, there might be something in one of them that will burn cleanly.
I was planning on going through the checked luggage anyway to hopefully find better winter clothing. ”
They had already scavenged at least one extra layer of clothing for everyone from carry-ons in the overhead bins. The result was a ridiculous collection of wardrobes—mismatched colors and clashing designer labels, most of it ill-fitting. But it was keeping them alive.
Kasey said, “It’s about to get darker in here.” She nodded up at one of the four emergency-exit floodlights. All were still illuminated, but their output was distinctly less than it had been an hour earlier. “How long will those batteries last?”
“I have no idea,” Sharpe admitted. “Obviously they’re going to die, but I found four flashlights in the forward galley, so we’ll have those. And even though it’s dim outside, we’ll have the midnight sun—it shouldn’t ever get completely dark.”
Kasey’s eyes shifted to the front of the cabin where the other survivors were clustered.
Aside from the man with two broken legs, who was in critical shape, they looked relatively comfortable.
They had carefully moved the severely injured man using a seat cushion, much as they’d done with Chen, but he had passed out from the pain and hadn’t regained consciousness since.
Sharpe had inquired whether there were health care professionals among the survivors, and the unfortunate answer was no.
The closest was Sofia, who’d taken a few Red Cross courses, and whose mother was a doctor.
For that reason, he’d designated her to be head nurse, and she had begun tracking the direly injured man’s vital signs.
His pulse was irregular, and using the cuff from the emergency medical kit, she’d determined that his blood pressure was dangerously low.
They were doing all they could for him with the assets at their disposal, but he seemed to be clinging to life by a thread.
Kasey liked how Sharpe was handling the situation.
He had a mission-oriented mindset, which suggested he was former military.
As the lone surviving crewmember, it was his duty to assume control, but he was taking it on like a natural leader.
She saw him gauging everyone’s strengths, delegating tasks.
The older couple, who turned out to be Chinese, spoke virtually no English, but Sharpe had used a mix of hand signals and tortured Chinese to have them look after the older woman, whose name was Beverly, and the wandering man who’d taken a blow to the head and still seemed disoriented.
Admittedly, Kasey had a more selfish reason to be glad Sharpe was taking charge. Without him, she herself would have been the most likely candidate to take over. As it stood, she could contribute, but also not lose sight of her reason for being here.
Dr. Chen’s condition hadn’t changed. His vital signs were stable, but the pallor remained, and he still had not regained consciousness. She desperately hoped he would turn a corner soon, both for his sake and because she wanted to talk to him about the crash and Sky Fire.
Sofia approached from the front. The look on her face was grim. “He’s gone,” she said.
They all knew who she was referring to.
“His blood pressure kept dropping, and then… he just stopped breathing.”
Sharpe took a moment to process the news. Kasey could almost feel his pain. Another passenger had died on his watch. One more name added to an ever-growing list.
“Thank you for your help,” he replied quietly. “I know you did what you could.”
Sofia paused, as if silently paying her respects, and then asked, “Should we move him somewhere?”
“I’ll figure something out. For now, let’s cover him with a blanket. We should also go through his pockets, see if he’s got any ID so we can match his name to the manifest.”
The woman nodded and went back up front.
“I’m sorry,” Kasey said.
“I wish I could have done more,” Sharpe said.
Kasey felt for the man, but she needed to get him back on task.
“Looks like the windbreak is working,” she said. “It feels warmer in here already. What do we need to do next?”
The gears of his mind seemed to reengage. “To begin, we should go through every piece of carry-on. Maybe somebody brought a satellite phone aboard.”
“I’ll recruit some help and get on it,” she replied, knowing that even in a circumstance this dire, the CIA would expect her to continue to keep the existence of Sky Fire top secret.
“Thanks. I’m going to go up front and look for the cargo manifest. We all had a copy on our iPads, and hopefully one of those survived the crash.
Between the cargo bay and the luggage in the overheads, there’s bound to be a few things that’ll help our situation.
It’ll take some time to go over the manifest. When I’m done, I’ll head outside and start digging through the forward bay. ”
“I can help you with that,” Kasey said almost reflexively. “It’ll go faster with two people.”
“That’d be great.” He set off toward the damaged flight deck.
With the injured passengers triaged and their improvised shelter giving them protection from the elements, Kasey watched him head up front. Sky Fire was now her top priority.
She was all but certain that the United States and China would be in a race to reach the crash site, both desperate to learn what had become of Chen and his creation.
Having been given a rudimentary briefing on how the system worked, she also realized that Sky Fire—if it wasn’t damaged, and if it even functioned at this latitude—could be decisive in determining who arrived first.
The greater concept was as ingenious as it was devious.
Sky Fire was essentially a communications device designed to seize control of operating systems. It probed the RF spectrum until a digital handshake could be achieved, after which Chen’s unique AI software attacked encryption and bypassed security protocols until Sky Fire took command of the hardware.
Only when Kasey had seen it in operation, when Chen created multiple distractions to facilitate their escape from Macau, did the extent of Sky Fire’s potential hit her.
A hijacked robotaxi, access to camera feeds, manipulated traffic lights, deceptive cell phone tracking.
Used on a battlefield, it would be nothing short of military-grade chaos.
This was Kasey’s basic understanding of Sky Fire. For her role in the operation—helping Chen defect—she’d had no need to know more. Now she wondered what the system might truly be capable of. Could it help extricate them from this disastrous situation?
She assumed the device was secured by a password, or possibly biometrics.
Either way, only Chen could grant her access and explain how it worked.
She realized that if used carelessly, Sky Fire could actually harm their prospects—it was, after all, a Chinese device, and it was conceivable that there was no way to bypass those channels.
And the last thing she wanted to do was feed the MSS information.
On the other hand, if she could get the system up and running, and connect discreetly to the CIA, she could forward a vital SITREP that would both expedite their rescue and secure Sky Fire.
If nothing else, Kasey realized that her priorities were recalibrating.
In the chaotic minutes after the crash, she had made an uncharacteristic mistake by giving Sharpe her real name.
Now that the situation had stabilized, the deep-seated code of operational security she lived by was firmly back in place.
The fact that Walter had paid the ultimate price today only hardened her resolve to deliver Sky Fire into safe hands.
She glanced discreetly at the black case.
It remained wedged beneath a nearby seat and was still covered by the bloody sweater.
On appearances it was a generic briefcase, but anyone who opened it would see the unique dish antenna.
Sharpe, in particular, would recognize it as a communications device.
Until Kasey learned how to use it, how to leverage Sky Fire to affect the right rescue, she needed to keep it under wraps.
She shot a guarded look toward the front. Sharpe had disappeared into the wrecked cockpit. Everyone else was assembled in the forward cabin. No one was looking in her direction. Kasey casually sidestepped over a few bits of wreckage, leaned down, and pulled the red-stained sweater away.
For the first time, she took Sky Fire in her hands.