by James Blatch
“Sure. I’ll do it.”
Rob headed off to the equipment hatch; a few minutes later Millie saw him walk out to a waiting aircraft with Brunson.
He headed over to the admin hatch.
The flight lieutenant smiled. “How can we help you, Millie?”
“I’ve got some extra Guiding Light paperwork for tomorrow’s meeting. It needs to go into the secure cabinet, please.”
“No problem.” The junior officer unhooked a set of keys from a large board on the inside of the admin area. He appeared out of the office and led Millie to a row of green metal cabinets, each adorned with a padlock.
He handed Millie a clipboard. “Paw print, please, Millie.”
Millie retrieved his pen and signed for the keys. As he did so, the previous signature caught his eye. Corporal Ratcliffe. A name he didn’t know.
Beneath him, on his knees, the flight lieutenant opened the cabinet.
Millie stared.
It was empty, apart from a few folders of paperwork.
Not one of the dozens of recorded reels of tape was present.
He looked closer, in case he was missing something.
Not a single tape.
“Where are they?” he asked, turning toward the admin officer.
The man consulted the clipboard. “Corporal Ratcliffe removed the tapes this morning.”
“Why?”
“Can’t say, Millie, but it was all above board. Wing Commander Kilton signed the release form.”
“But you don’t know where the tapes went?”
“Not sure. Best ask the boss.”
Millie placed his report in the cabinet.
“Everything alright, Millie?”
“Yes. Just lost in thought.”
Millie walked over to Kilton’s office and peered in. It was empty. He opened the door of the neighbouring office, where Kilton’s secretary was typing with a cigarette hanging from her mouth, peering through half-moon spectacles.
“Jean, is the boss around?”
She looked up and removed the cigarette.
“Millie, darling, how lovely to see you. How’s that gorgeous Georgina of yours?”
Millie smiled. “She’s very well. I’ll send her your best.”
“You do that, Millie. Now, the good wing commander is over in station HQ. Is it urgent?”
“No, it’s fine. Will he be back today?”
“I don’t think so.”
“OK. Thank you, my dear. Most helpful as always.”
“Anything for you, Millie.” She re-inserted the cigarette and resumed her typing.
Back at his desk, Millie sat before a pile of unrelated project work. He looked across at Secure Cabinet 3.
All those hours of recorded data.
Gone.
Kilton did not return, as predicted by Jean. Rob bustled in around 4PM, all smiles after a trip in the TFU Lightning with Brunson.
“There aren’t many places where you can fly a bomber in the morning and supersonic fighter in the afternoon,” Rob said as he passed.
The pilots walked off to the mess bar and Millie headed to his car.
The seats were almost too hot to sit on, and he had to grab the steering wheel on and off until it cooled under his touch.
Outside the main gate, he paused as a group of barely dressed youngsters sauntered by. A woman with a flower behind her ear stared at him for a moment. She broke off her gaze and the group retreated down the road.
“Odd lot,” he said to the guard.
“More than odd, sir.” The sergeant handed back his ID form.
As he drove out of the station, Millie recalled the chatter from the Vulcan cockpit. Were the youngsters part of the camping party at the end of the runway?
Georgina was in the back garden when he arrived home.
She kissed him. “I’ll get us a drink.”
Millie plonked himself in a garden chair and closed his eyes.
Distant guitar playing arrived on the light breeze. Incongruous, in a married quarter patch. But he found it soothing.
He tried to put aside his growing anxiety about Guiding Light. Work needed to stay at work for many reasons at RAF West Porton.
Georgina arrived back, two G&Ts in hand.
“Lovely,” Millie said, taking one. “Oh, and ice. What a treat.” He took a long draw on the cold drink.
“Sarah Brunson insists,” said Georgina. “And I’m all for it.”
“Agreed. How was your day, dear?”
“Well,” she started and Millie immediately knew there was a story coming, “we had some excitement. The young people have arrived.”
“Ah yes, I think I saw some. Who are they?”
“CND,” Georgina replied, emphasising each letter.
“CND? As in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament?”
“The same. Lots of them. All in a field, camping.”
“Huh.” Millie turned to look in the direction of the airfield, but a row of tall conifers that ran the length of the back gardens blocked their view. Probably planted in a futile attempt to keep the sound of jet engines at bay.
“Is that the guitar music I can hear?”
“I think so. Come on, let’s look.”
They pushed their way through the firs. Millie closed his eyes and hoped not to get slapped in the face by a branch released ahead of him by Georgina.
As they emerged, Millie looked across to the airfield. The security fence around the western end of the runway was about three quarters of a mile away. Just this side of the barbed wire, a group of tents and a wigwam had sprung up. The wigwam drew the eye with its central position and a prominent fallen cross symbol on one side.
“Well, well. I’ve seen pictures of those Aldermaston marches, but never actually seen a peace protest,” said Millie.
“Amazing, isn’t it?”
“Looks harmless enough, I suppose.”
Georgina laughed. “Kilton will have kittens, won’t he?”
“Probably, but what’s new? Must have been where he was this afternoon, locked in with the station commander.”
“So what is it you lot do inside there that’s got CND snapping at your heels?” Georgina said and nudged her husband.
“Lord knows. I can’t think of anything.” Both of them knew it was an area he couldn’t go into.
Guiding Light wasn’t a nuclear weapon, but it was its delivery system.
“They couldn’t possibly know…” he mumbled, then shuddered at the thought.
“Know what?” Georgina asked.
“Oh, nothing. They can’t know what goes on inside. The place is like Fort Knox.”
They had dinner indoors and as the light faded, they took their drinks back out through the firs to spy on their new neighbours some more.
The sun was setting and the clouds to the west were a deep red, casting a warm glow over the camp and the airfield beyond.
“It looks like a scene from a western,” said Millie.
Georgina slipped her arm through her husband’s. “Does that make you my cowboy?”
Later that evening, Millie lay awake with the windows wide open, allowing the cooler air in and the hot stuffiness out.
The guitar started up, this time with the sound of singing. It was a woman’s voice, a sweet sound.
He turned over and hoped to drift off to sleep, but the thought of the project meeting in the morning occupied him. He closed his eyes and did his best to push Mark Kilton out of his mind.
The clock on the wall in Ewan Stafford’s office read 2AM.
Outside, he heard a bicycle bell and a couple of men laughing. Did Cambridge students ever go to bed?
The mainframe had taken nine hours to ingest all the tapes and run what the technicians called an analysis on the data.
The print-out phase was ongoing.
Earlier in the day, Stafford himself had set the parameters of what they were looking for. It was a task he couldn’t leave to anyone else.
He hid aw
ay in his office for two hours, surrounded by the Avro Vulcan pilots’ notes and technical specifications. Later he returned and told them what he was looking for: sudden changes in number ranges. He handed them a sheet containing the actual parameters.
“What are they?” one of the men had asked.
“Don’t you worry about that, sonny.”
It didn’t take a genius to work out they represented changes in height.
Changes that were impossible for a Vulcan to have actually flown.
Changes imagined by a computer that fed an autopilot.
Once the processing was over, he sent all but the youngest technician home.
The computer room was fifty feet away, but Stafford could still hear the monotonous drone of the dot matrix printer drifting through the deserted building.
He smoked through a packet of Woodbines as he waited, contemplating the unthinkable.
It was no secret in the company that the Board had risked the house on this new technology. The computer itself was cripplingly expensive.
It was also no secret that he was the one who had persuaded his fellow directors to part with Blackton’s hard-earned cash.
He promised to resurrect the company’s fortunes with a ground-breaking system. Years ahead of the British competition still relying on drawing boards and old men who designed World War Two bombers.
On his desk, under the packet of Woodbines, was the first contract for the American government. The numbers were big. Big enough to call Guiding Light an instant success and secure Blackton’s future for years to come.
He knew from his days flying Hurricanes, you rarely got to a kill without taking a few risks. And he’d risked the house on Guiding Light.
He moved the cigarettes and opened the contract, staring at the final figure for the initial seven hundred and fifty units. With more promised, DF Blackton’s deals would positively affect the UK’s balance of payments. An incredible thing.
This was that moment, when you rolled out of your high-risk manoeuvre to find the Luftwaffe Me.109 in front and just below. Time to squeeze the trigger.
The printer noise stopped.
Stafford listened as the paper was collated.
By the time he got to the dimly lit computer room, the young technician was bent over a huge stack of perforated, green-lined sheets.
He had a desk lamp just above the pile, and scanned the columns, making the occasional mark with a pencil.
“Found anything?” Stafford asked as he stood in the doorway.
“Two, but I’ve only just started.”
“Damn it,” Stafford said and pushed the man out of the way.
His eyes needed to adjust to the harsh light from the angle-poise light reflecting off the paper. He blinked, and eventually saw the marks the technician had made.
Lines that met his parameters included a small star at one end.
A small star that said a lot.
Stafford ran his finger along the first starred line.
1,261, 1,261, 1,262, 1,278, 1,277, 1,298, 1,301, 1,265, 1,252, 1,998, 2,010, 2,618, 2,911, 2,871, 2,850, 2,799, 2,811, 1,261, 1,277, 1,279.
He circled 1,252 and 1,998. A jump of seven hundred and forty-six feet.
Unless the aircraft had flown over an unlikely hole in the ground, the equipment had suffered an aberration.
He counted the number of height readings that appeared wrong. Eight. He stood up and winced at a spike of lower back pain.
“The laser records, what is it, forty-seven readings a second? So, this was just a fraction of a second?”
The technician shook his head.
“No. The laser records twenty-seven readings a second, and the computer makes forty-seven decisions a second. But…” He tapped the sheets. “These are samples. The tapes only capture three height readings a second, and we limit the system to how much it can record.”
Stafford looked back at the numbers.
“So, it was wrong for three seconds?”
“More like two and a half.”
“And you’ve found two so far?
“Yes, sir.”
“Carry on. It’s essential we find them all. I’ll need to know exact details. Leave the results on my desk. I’ll be in very early, so be smart about it.”
He walked to the door. “And have the day off tomorrow.”
3
Thursday 9th June
A Handley-Page Victor emerged from the dark recesses of the TFU hangar, towed into the bright morning light. The TFU pan was filling up.
Men in green coveralls hurried about the aircraft, some with chocks in their hands carried by the rope that held them together, others on small tractors.
Millie watched them for a while from a bench, his incident report in hand.
He was in early to prepare, sensing a battle was coming.
Millie lifted himself from the wooden bench and headed inside, taking a seat in the empty meeting room. He re-read his notes one more time.
He went to the admin cabinets and pulled out a folder of memorandums from last year about the formation of TFU. Standing alone in the room, he read Mark Kilton’s missives about the purpose and function of the newly established Royal Air Force Test Flying Unit.
It would be an aircrew led unit, Kilton stated. Industry to be kept at arm’s length. Unlike their neighbours at Boscombe Down who rubbed shoulders with company pilots every day, TFU would be RAF only.
A place where they could assess aircraft and systems unencumbered by the usual politics that surrounded government contracts.
And yet Kilton was the most political animal he’d come across in his thirty-seven years in the RAF.
But the principles were helpful, so he tucked a copy of the paper in his folder and went back to the meeting room.
Just after 8AM the door swung open and in swept Kilton, Rob May, Speedy Johnson, a corporal note-taker and Ewan Stafford.
The Blackton MD’s appearance was a surprise, but not unprecedented. Stafford took his seat, looking tired.
Rob sat next to Millie and looked as if he was about to say something, but Kilton began the meeting still on his feet, rattling at speed through the agenda.
“The equipment’s now installed on one Canberra, one Vulcan and soon to be fitted to a second Vulcan when Blackton can get a new set to Woodford.”
“It’s already there,” said Stafford. “We’ve sent a team up to carry out the installation.”
“Excellent. We’re through the high level, medium-level and now into the low-level phases of the trial. More than half the required hours are logged.” He consulted his notes. “The evaluation is progressing satisfactorily. We must decide how to tackle the remaining hours for the project but I think we can all agree, these are the final stages. The icing on the cake.”
“I’m sorry, boss, can we talk about Tuesday?” said Millie.
Kilton didn’t look up from his notes, but paused long enough for Millie to continue.
“Unfortunately, we experienced a serious failure that almost resulted in the loss of an aircraft and crew.” He looked directly at Stafford; surprisingly the civilian was expressionless.
He already knows.
Millie pressed on. “I’ve completed an initial report. It describes how the system tried to descend a Vulcan into the ground at two hundred and sixty knots. It was only the intervention of Mr May here that saved us.” He paused. “And I’m afraid the only option open to us now is to suspend the trial pending a full investigation.”
Kilton sighed. “Millie, while I appreciate your diligence in this matter, the fact remains, this is anecdotal.”
Millie shifted in his chair. “It’s true that I wasn’t able to capture the data from the incident, but that doesn’t deflect from the fact that it happened and was witnessed.”
“And yet, without evidence, we are left with the possibility that it could have been anything that caused the temporary loss of height. One option I’ve been told of is that a pilot may have inadvertently put press
ure on the control column while changing position in his seat.”
Millie laughed at the ludicrous suggestion, before realising that the rest of the room was quiet.
“You’re not serious, Mark?” he asked.
“Unless you have some evidence to the contrary, I must consider testimony from one of my pilots the likely explanation.”
Millie sat back in his chair. “I’m sorry, Mark, but that’s just not credible. Brian Hill said nothing to me whatsoever and he’s no longer here to provide any such testimony—”
“Who said anything about Hill? The pilot who touched the control column is sitting next to you.”
Millie took a moment to register what Kilton had said. He slowly turned his head to see Rob staring down at the table.
“Rob?”
“It’s possible,” Rob said quietly.
Kilton continued, in a chipper voice.
“Speedy, you’re an experienced V-Bomber pilot, is it possible in the Vulcan to move the stick without meaning to?”
“Under normal flight operations I’d say it’s unlikely, but in this scenario, with the pilot covering the controls, while they move independently, I would say it’s an increased risk, certainly. An unintended consequence of this level of automation.”
Millie kept his eyes on Rob. “Either you knocked the stick, or you did not knock the stick.”
“That’s enough, Millie,” said Kilton. “The point is, we don’t know for sure what happened and no-one is going to ground a critically important system without firm evidence.”
Millie looked up at the men around the table. No-one else spoke.
“What if it wasn’t? And what if we have a serious, potentially fatal problem?” He didn’t wait for Kilton to reply before adding, “In which case, we need to look at all the flying data we have with a matter of urgency. As you note, boss, we’ve gathered many hours and the tapes are in the cabinet…” He stopped, suddenly remembering the empty shelves.
Kilton gave a dismissive wave. “The tapes have already been analysed by the mainframe computer in Cambridge. It took place overnight. Mr Stafford, would you care to illuminate us?”
Stafford cleared his throat. “Certainly, Mark. We asked the computer to search for any anomalies in the height data. Such things as sudden changes in the numbers, which if translated into aircraft movement would result in an aircraft loss. Specifically, we were looking for periods of erroneous data, enough to affect flying for a sustained time. We found no such occurrences, I’m pleased to report. So I have to concur with the meeting that whatever you experienced, it wasn’t as a result of Guiding Light.”
