The Final Flight

by James Blatch

She leant back and folded her arms, those green eyes constantly assessing him.

  “Tell me. I can cope with complicated.”

  “Are you with CND?”

  She reached to her handbag, unclipped the strap and pulled out a sheet of paper, placing it on the table between them. Rob looked down as she turned it around to face him. He didn’t recognise the handwriting, but the pattern of numbers and equations was familiar.

  “These are Millie’s notes?”

  “Millie?”

  “Milford. Christopher Milford. Everyone called him Millie.”

  She nodded. “I copied them out.”

  “Where is the original?”

  “Safe. Look, Robert—”

  “Rob. And everyone calls me Rob.”

  She gave a little laugh. “Rob and Millie. You boys. Just like boarding school.”

  “I didn’t go to boarding school.”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  He stared at her. She laughed again. “You can call me Susie.”

  “Is that your real name?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “What sort of person makes up names?” She tapped the sheet again. “What does it mean?”

  Rob studied the notes.

  262 ll/d

  TFR 100

  5 dys

  250/y

  = 25,000

  0.014% = 3.5

  2.5 Cr/ = 8.75

  “You don’t know, do you?” she asked, sounding disappointed.

  He put a hand on the piece of paper. “I might work something out, but I’ll need to keep it.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know, Rob. You’re a bit of a loose cannon. Pitching up at a peace camp, shouting off to anyone and everyone. I don’t know if I can trust you.”

  “You can’t trust me? I have no idea who you are.” He spoke louder than he’d meant to; a few heads turned at the bar.

  Susie looked around and turned back to him, laughing. “You’re so funny.” She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips before slouching back in her seat and taking a sip of her drink.

  His heart pounded. She was young and beautiful. He hadn’t kissed another woman since meeting Mary.

  She sat up again.

  “You see, Rob, I can’t even trust you to keep your voice down. Let’s try to look like a normal, run-of-the-mill couple, so no-one remembers us.”

  “Sorry.”

  “What’s your next move?” she asked, again with that same smile, as if enquiring about his plans for Saturday night.

  “I need the box back, please. That’s why I’m here.”

  “And what will you do with it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, that sounds like a solid plan.”

  He shrugged.

  “OK. So how about I tell you what I know? Your friend Millie found something, didn’t he? Something that worried him. Something that needed reporting, but not through the usual channels. Am I getting warm?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is that why he’s dead, Rob?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “He’s dead because I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “The crash was your fault?”

  He took a breath. “I don’t know. No, probably not. But I could have prevented it. I think.”

  “And you feel guilty?”

  “I’m sorry, who did you say you were again?”

  “Another drink, Flight Lieutenant?”

  He looked down and saw he’d finished his first pint. Susie headed off to the bar.

  As Rob watched her chatting with the landlady, he tried to reconcile this smart, confident woman with a peace girl living in a tent.

  She arrived back at the table.

  He opened his mouth to speak.

  “So what did he find?” she asked before he got the first word out.

  “I can’t possibly discuss that with you.”

  “I understand.” She nodded. “OK, let’s try this. I am not, as you might have guessed, a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. I was in fact under cover, keeping an eye on the subversive types from within. So. Now you know my secret and you could easily compromise me, isn’t it fair we share some information? After all, I’m not going to hand the box back unless I’m sure the security of the country is not at risk from you.”

  “From me?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t really know what you were doing with it, Mr May. All I know is, you’re desperate to get it back.”

  He looked around the pub again. The farmers had sat down. The man with the golden retriever was still at the bar, and two other couples sat at nearby tables.

  “You work for the police?” he asked.

  “Sort of. A little higher up the chain. I’m the sort of person who could have helped your friend, if events hadn’t intervened.”

  “You would have helped him?”

  “He asked for my help. In fact we were due to meet on Saturday morning. He trusted me, Rob. So I think you can.”

  “You were due to meet Millie?”

  She nodded. “Yes. In St Mary and St Mellor church. I was ready to listen to whatever it was he had to say. But he died, hours before. And I’m finding it hard to see that as a coincidence.”

  Rob put a hand to his forehead and rested one elbow on the table. He gave a long, deep sigh.

  “I just don’t know. I don’t know anymore.”

  “What don’t you know?”

  He shook his head. “The crash. It wasn’t deliberate. But…”

  “But?”

  Rob sat upright and stared at her.

  “I think I’ve been played.”

  He picked up the cryptic notes. “I can’t decipher these notes exactly, but it’s clear that Millie believed the system was flawed. I’m guessing that’s what the numbers are about. The thing is…” He stared at Millie’s handwriting. “The thing is, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  Rob shook his head. “No. The crash proved his point and in one way it achieved his aim. It’s put paid to the project. At the worst possible price.”

  “So, Guiding Light is dead?”

  “Yes. The Chairman of the Board of Inquiry has as good as told me they know the cause and it can only be the laser.”

  “Laser?”

  “Forget I said that, please.”

  “Sure. But what I don’t get here, Rob, is how your place operates. Millie was a senior officer, right? If he had concerns, why were you still flying?”

  Rob bowed his head. “I suspect that’s what Millie was going to talk to you about. There was no hard evidence. Just one moment when it may have gone wrong. So his objection was overruled.”

  “Your boss overruled the concerns of his pilots?”

  “Millie was an air electronics officer.”

  Rob studied the bubbles in his pint.

  “Oh, I see,” said Susie. “It was just Millie. So you didn’t believe him, either?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I mean… I sided with the boss because it felt like the right thing to do at the time.”

  Susie leant back, not taking her eyes off him. For once she said nothing.

  “It was confusing. Kilton, he’s the boss, he convinced me the system was working normally. I agreed for the sake of the project. I gave him an alternative explanation.” He met Susie’s eyes. “I did think it was the right thing, doing what experienced test pilots would do. They’ve seen everything and don’t get fazed by the odd moment in the air.

  “Plus, he’s my boss. He gave me all this spiel about Millie being old and about to retire. He said that I was the future and when things happen quickly in jets, it needs fast acting decision makers like me. What else could I do?”

  Again, Susie stayed quiet.

  “Is Kilton in trouble now it turns out Milford was right?” she asked eventually.

  Rob shook his head. “I doubt it. That’s not the
way it works. I don’t even know if there’s an official record of the first incident. But he’s lost the project he was so devoted to. So I guess that’s punishment enough.”

  She finished her drink and scooped up the piece of paper, clipping it back into her handbag.

  “Right, well. That’s that, then. It sounds like the crash did the job Milford wanted, only he paid a heavy price.”

  She placed a hand on his. “Look, I doubt an intervention from you would have made any difference. If I know the military and men like Kilton, they don’t have their minds changed easily and they get their own way.”

  “I didn’t even try.”

  “Well, it’s done now.”

  She stood up.

  Rob stayed at his seat, her casually spoken words tearing into him.

  “What about the box?” she asked.

  Slowly, he got to his feet.

  “Actually, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. I can’t imagine strolling into West Porton and handing it back. They’d want to know exactly why I had it. Plus, I think Kilton would use it to destroy Millie’s reputation and try to get the project back.”

  “Want me to dispose of it?”

  “Can you burn the documents? I think it’s the only guaranteed way to ensure they don’t fall into the wrong hands.”

  “I’m not sure Mrs Holleroid allows bonfires at the Prickwillow B&B, but I’m sure I can organise something. Leave it with me.”

  Rob paid the bill at the bar and they walked out together and stood near a VW Beetle in the gravel car park.

  “It was nice meeting you, Mr May.”

  “And you. Goodbye, Susie.”

  She looked back at the inn, then gave him a goodbye kiss.

  “Just for show, you understand?”

  He watched her climb into the car before wandering off to his own.

  She drove off quickly. He started the engine, suddenly feeling numb.

  Her question had wounded him.

  Oh, I see. It was just Millie. So you didn’t believe him, either?

  He found it hard to drive.

  After a mile, he pulled into a lay-by, and cried.

  25

  Friday 1st July

  The HQ building was quiet. Rob walked down the lime green corridor and peered into the offices.

  The second to last door on the left was open. Group Captain Gordon McClair sat with his back to him.

  “Ahem.”

  McClair whipped around.

  “Flight Lieutenant May.”

  Rob saluted.

  “Have a seat.”

  As Rob sat down, he spotted his handwritten accident report on the desk, with notes in blue ink added at various points.

  “Thank you for your observations, May. Very thorough and very useful. And thank you for your honesty about the moments leading to the crash. You’re in a rather unique position as the only survivor and I appreciate your candour. It will serve you well through this process.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So, let us start at the beginning.”

  For half an hour, Rob walked the chairman of the BOI through the Guiding Light project planning and execution. He explained the procedure of entering a low-level gate and how they handed over control to the system. For the moment of the crash, Rob slowed his explanation down, choosing his words carefully.

  He explained how he had unfolded the chart, to ensure he could select a safe area for a climb back to one thousand feet.

  “You were planning to ensure it would be a safe manoeuvre?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And what were you looking for exactly? I mean, where would be an unsuitable place to ascend?”

  “Well, you wouldn’t want to interrupt the autopilot if it was manoeuvring hard, which it often is at low-level. So somewhere flat below, ideally where you’re not climbing, descending or banking.”

  McClair made a few notes. “I see. And is that the same for disengaging the system?”

  Rob thought for a moment. “Yes. We select level flight usually before switching back to manual control.”

  “What would be the result if you disengaged during a descent, for instance?”

  “It’s not necessarily a terrible thing, but the aircraft would continue to descend unless you manually intervened. Which of course you would. You’d only disengage with your hands on the stick and throttle, ready.”

  “Thank you, Flight Lieutenant. And just so I’m completely clear, squadron leader Johnson was the nominal handling pilot for this leg?”

  “Yes. We still called it that, even though Guiding Light was actually handling the aircraft, it was your job to monitor and be ready to intervene.”

  “But as you note here, Johnson was looking over to you at the time of the ground strike?”

  Rob took his time. The memory was foggy and further blurred by the horror.

  “I think he was looking at the chart, maybe to brief himself ahead of the climb out. But I’m not really sure why. I was about to brief him and give him a landmark.”

  For the next twenty minutes, McClair pushed him on the final thirty seconds. Rob stuck to a flat monotone, treating the questions as an academic exercise, trying his best to distance his emotions.

  But McClair’s questions made it hard.

  “You communicated with Milford and Bright as they tried to escape? You saw them?”

  “Yes, sir. We usually left the divider to the cockpit open, so I could turn back and see them.”

  “Describe that to me, please.”

  Rob looked down at the pen marks and scratches on the table. How many men had been through this before? How many bomber pilots in the war headed back down the aircraft to bail out, passing dead and mortally injured colleagues?

  “Bright was out of his seat. He had his hands on the side of the compartment. Remember, we were upside down but still rolling. He hadn’t made any progress toward the hatch. He was pushed further away from it, as I looked. It was like a nightmare where you’re running through treacle trying to escape from someone.”

  “And Squadron Leader Milford?”

  Rob shook his head. “He looked paralysed. He just stared at me.” His voice finally broke.

  McClair put his pen down. “Take your time, Flight Lieutenant. I know this must be hard.”

  Rob took a few deep breaths.

  “He was injured, a cut across his forehead. I think he was dazed. Even if the hatch was opened, Steve Bright would have had to manhandle him out.”

  McClair made notes.

  “I have just one more area I need to ask about. The timing of Squadron Leader Johnson’s ejection. Did you discuss it at all?”

  Rob shook his head. “No. We barely said anything. It took me by surprise.”

  “So he acted unilaterally?”

  Rob nodded.

  “Thank you, May. You’ve been most helpful. Do you have questions for me?”

  “When will the report be ready?”

  McClair shrugged. “We’ve only just begun the examination of the main wreckage, and I’ve an eye witness to speak to in Wales. After that we’ll put everything together, but it won’t be for some time, I’m afraid. You know how it is.” He shuffled his papers into a single pile. “But I don’t expect our conclusions to change.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s anything else it could be.”

  McClair furrowed his brow. “Has Wing Commander Kilton already spoken to you?”

  “No. It’s just… It must have been Guiding Light.”

  McClair leant back in his chair. “We wouldn’t normally discuss our early conclusions publicly, not that any of this will become public for some decades, of course, but Wing Commander Kilton is keen that I share our initial findings with you. I think he’s worried about your sense of guilt, being the only survivor.

  “What I’m about to tell you is preliminary, but as I say, I will be very surprised if the conclusions change. Because of the sensitive nature of the project, we were required to retrieve the Guid
ing Light panels and equipment from the wreckage first. All of that has been thoroughly examined by technical experts at Farnborough with assistance from Blackton technicians. We are now certain of one fact. Guiding Light was not operational at the moment of ground strike.”

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Well, I’m not sure how familiar you are with the panel in the rear bay, but you might know there is a master switch. It was in the off position. So you see, you had a chart in front of you, not unreasonably planning ahead. Speedy took his eyes off the terrain, and at that moment, Guiding Light was disengaged. As you know, there’s no audible alarm and so neither of you noticed. But the aircraft was already at three hundred feet and descending, gently, so you suffered a glancing blow off the ground, enough to severely damage the elevons on the port side and fill the engines with dirt.”

  Rob’s mouth hung open.

  “Wing Commander Kilton suggested the conclusion might surprise you, but I was hoping it would reassure you. You could not have predicted it, and you were certainly acting appropriately, carrying out in-flight planning. It’s just a shame of course that Speedy Johnson chose that moment to become distracted from his task.”

  Rob shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m having difficulty with this. You say the master switch in the rear panel was off?”

  “It was most definitely in the off position. There are several possible explanations and they’ll be listed in the final report.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, Squadron Leader Milford may have become disorientated. He was, after all, quite old to be flying about at low-level in the back of a Vulcan.” Rob shook his head, but McClair pressed on. “He may have inadvertently knocked it with something like the sleeve of a magnetic tape. Or, and I hesitate to suggest this is likely, but we have to consider the possibility that Milford did it deliberately.”

  Rob stared, stunned to silence.

  “As I say,” McClair continued, “I’m not a fan of that last possibility, but as I understand it, Milford had taken against the project and there’s a school of thought that he may have benefitted from a repeat of an earlier incident in which he believed Guiding Light had briefly suffered an aberration. The theory goes that he aimed to momentarily disengage, long enough for you two to notice and claim back control of the Vulcan. Unfortunately, neither of you was looking out at that very moment. But as I say, it’s far-fetched in my opinion and it may not even make it into the final report.”