The Fire Baby

Начало книги

East of Ely, above the bone-dry peatfields, a great red dust storm drifts across the moon, throwing an amber shadow on the old cathedral. Overhead a single, winking plane crosses the star-spangled sky. Flight MH336, just airborne from the US military base at Mildenhall, flies into the tumbling cauldron of dust.

The diamond-hard sand begins to shred the turning turbines and the dislodged blades scythe each other like spinning knives. The fuselage dips as the engine suffocates, and begins a descent of such violence that the passengers float, despite their seatbelts, in a weightless fall towards their deaths.

At precisely 11.08 pm, according to the pilot’s watch recovered at the scene, the fuselage buries itself in the soft earth. The distant cathedral tower shudders with the impact and the crows, roosting on the Octagon Tower, rise in a single cloud. Heads turn ten miles away at Littleport with the earthy thud of the crash, followed by the crackling combustion of the airfuel.

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