Rogue Element Read Online Free PDF

position and announced it.
    ‘Closed!’ yelled Granger into his mask.
    The captain and first officer were themselves operating on a kind of autopilot with routines ingrained through hours of simulator time. They continued through the checklist, setting up the aircraft for the emergency descent.
    The 747 began to pick up speed as it dived steeply towards the earth. The numbers on the altimeter rolled off backwards.
    The seatbelt across Joe’s lap was done up so tightly that he was getting pins and needles in his feet. The mask dropped down in front of his face and he looked at it dumbly, not immediately knowing what it was for. Then he felt as if he was plunging over a waterfall. He grabbed the seat in front of him, reaching out to it in an attempt to stop the fall. The engine pitch increased to a wail. Joe believed the end was near.
    Granger called out their altitude in increments of 5000 feet as the aircraft accelerated. ‘Flight Level three-zero-zero!’
    Their rate of descent increased to the near vertical and the big aircraft shook frighteningly. ‘Two-five-zero!’
    Raptor watched his prey lurch viciously in its dive. He had expected the aircraft to explode in a ball of flame and was disappointed that it hadn’t.
    Still, the fighter pilot had seen enough file footage from gun cameras to know a kill when he saw one. There was only one possible outcome for the stricken 747. He retarded the throttle and slipped back a safe distance behind the giant. If the 747 did explode and his F-16 was too close, he risked bits of the disintegrating Boeing being inhaled into his engine, with disastrous results.
    Joe strained against his seatbelt as the 747 screamed in its dive. He sucked oxygen from the yellow cup, the tangle of masks hanging like jellyfish tentacles in front of his face. He blinked through the frigid mist. His window was glazed with frost. The pain in his ears was searing. His stomach cramped in agony.
    Across the aisle a middle-aged man’s face had turned blue, white froth bubbling from purple lips. Joe stretched over and tried to pull an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth, but his arm felt heavy, like it was strapped with weights. It took him several attempts to get the mask on. Every time he almost managed to secure the cup over the man’s face, the aircraft’s pitching jolted his hands, spoiling the attempt.
    Joe could see people screaming, but he couldn’t hear the sounds they made. He wondered whether he was experiencing some kind of sensory overload, then realised it was because the roar coming from somewhere inside the aircraft was deafening, obliterating everything else.
    Some people weren’t yelling, having retreated into a semiconscious, almost primal state. They cried or whimpered, rocking in their seats. Some were just clutching eachother, even people who had been complete strangers only minutes before.
    The aisles were blocked by the contents of the overhead lockers that had burst open. Two rows in front of Joe, a heavy briefcase fell from an overhead locker and clubbed a woman senseless.
    Unidentifiable lumps were tumbling down the aisles. It dawned on Joe’s slow, oxygen-starved brain that the objects were people whose seatbelts probably hadn’t been buckled. The bodies accumulated at the forward bulkhead. Joe noted that most of the faces he could see in the growing pile of rags were blue. He stared at them as an observer removed from reality, in shock, disbelieving. Perhaps they’re dead, he thought, and then he realised that they were.
    The thin air provided little in the way of resistance and the 747’s descent rate built frighteningly. ‘Two-zero-zero!’ shouted Granger. ‘One-five-zero!’ The aircraft shook and trembled. The speed increased. The air protested as the monster tore a hole through it. The cockpit filled with the shriek. The numbers winding backwards on the altimeter transfixed the three pilots. The 747 nudged its speed of maximum operation, 0.92 Mach. And then its