The Veteran

by Frederick Forsyth

  ‘Sorry, Jim. Walkaround.’

  The young man who had been staring at the delights of a vanishing Bangkok through the crew-bus windows nodded, opened the door at the end of the entry tunnel and slipped out into the sticky night. It was a chore they all disliked but it had to be done and it usually fell to the junior among them. If the jumbo jet were encased in a square box from nosetip to tail fin and wingtip to wingtip, that box would cover more than an acre. The walkaround man has to do exactly that; walk round the entire aircraft checking to see that all that ought to be there is there, and nothing else. A panel might be half-detached, a pool of liquid might indicate a leak, unspotted by the ground crew. To put not too fine a point on it, there are ground crews and ground crews; airlines prefer to have one of their own do the final walkaround check.

  Sometimes the weather outside is way below freezing; or bathed in a tropical monsoon. Tough luck. In this case the eager beaver with three rings arrived back twenty minutes later damp with sweat and bearing several midge bites but otherwise fully functional.

  Captain Fallon entered his domain by climbing the stairs from the entry level to the upper cabin, then walking forward through the flight-deck door. Within minutes the two captains and the remaining First Officer had their jackets off, hung behind the door of the rest room, and were in their seats. Fallon of course took the left-hand one and installed his senior First Officer to his right. The relief skipper kept out of the way by retiring to the bunk room to study the stock market.

  When he began his career and graduated from the Belfast milk run to the long-hauls, Fallon was still in the days when he would have had a navigator and a flight engineer. Long gone. His engineer was now a bank of technology above his head and facing him from wall to wall; enough dials, clocks, levers and buttons to do whatever an engineer could do, and more. His navigator was confined to three Inertial Reference Systems, ‘black boxes’ which between them could accomplish all a navigator’s duties and faster.

  While the First Officer ran through the first of the five separate lists of checks, the Before Start checks, Fallon glanced at the load sheet which he would have to sign when all the luggage was confirmed aboard and the passenger list tallied with Mr Palfrey’s head-count. Every captain’s nightmare is not so much the passenger on board with no luggage – that can follow on later; it is the luggage on board but a passenger who has decided to do a runner. The whole baggage hold has to be emptied until the rogue suitcases are found and expelled. They could contain anything.

  The entire aircraft was still powered by its Auxiliary Power Unit, the APU, in truth a fifth jet engine of which few passengers knew anything. The APU on this giant aircraft is enough to power a small fighter by itself; its power enables everything on the aircraft to function independently of any source from outside – lights, air, engine-start, the lot.

  In the World Traveller departure lounge Mr and Mrs Higgins and their daughter Julie were already tired and the child becoming fractious. They had left their two-star hotel four hours earlier and, in the manner of modern travel, it had been slog all the way. Luggage on board the coach, ensure that nothing has been left behind, queue and wait, sit in a tiny seat, traffic jams, worry about being late, more jams, decant from the coach at the airport, try to find luggage, child and trolley at the same time, line up in the milling crowd for check-in, queue and wait, security X-ray machines, body-search because the belt-buckle triggered the alarm, the child yelling at being separated from her dolly as it went through the X-ray, pick out some goodies in Duty Free, queue and wait . . . and finally the hard plastic seats on the last stop before boarding.

  Julie, clutching her dolly, made locally and a present from Phuket, was bored with the waiting and began to wander. A few yards away a man called to her.

  ‘Hi, kid, nice doll.’

  She stopped and stared at him. He was not like her father at all. He had cowboy boots with Cuban heels, soiled and ragged jeans, a denim shirt and ethnic beads. By his side was a small haversack. His hair was matted and probably unwashed and a straggly beard dangled from his chin.

  Had Julie Higgins but known it, which at the age of eight she did not, the Far East is rife with Western backpackers and the man who had just addressed her was such a one. The Far East is like a magnet to thousands of them, partly because life there can be relaxed and cheap and also because in many cases there is easy access to the drugs they favour.

  ‘She’s new,’ said Julie. ‘I call her Pooky.’

  ‘Great name. Why?’ drawled the hippie.

  ‘Because Daddy bought her in Poo-Ket.’

  ‘I know it. Great beaches. You just vacationed there?’

  ‘Yes. I swam with Daddy and we saw fishes.’

  At this point Mrs Higgins jabbed her husband in the foot with one toe and nodded towards their daughter.

  ‘Julie, come here darling,’ Mr Higgins called out in a tone his daughter understood. It was one of disapproval. She trotted back towards them. Higgins glared at the hippie. It was a kind he loathed: footloose, dirty and almost certainly a user of drugs, the last person he wanted his daughter talking to. The hippie got the message. He shrugged, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, saw the No Smoking sign above his head and wandered off towards the smoking area before lighting up. Mrs Higgins sniffed. The public address system called for boarding to start, beginning with rows thirty-four to fifty-seven.

  Mr Higgins consulted his boarding pass. Row thirty-four, seats D, E and F. Summoning his family around him, he checked they had all their carry-on pieces, and joined the final queue.

  The 11.45 p.m. take-off time would not be met, but that was merely the published timetable, broadly speaking a work of fiction. What interested Captain Fallon was that he had a take-off slot from Bangkok Tower for five after midnight and he wanted to make it. In the modern world of civil aviation getting a take-off and landing slot was what counted. Miss your slot in Western Europe or North America and you could hang about for an hour waiting for another.

  Not that a twenty-minute delay would matter. He knew he could make it up. Because of strong headwinds over Pakistan and the southern parts of Afghanistan his flight plan predicted a flight of 13 hours and 20 minutes. With London on GMT there was a seven-hour difference in time zones. He would be touching down in London about twenty past six on a bitter January morning with the outside temperature close to zero, a long call from Bangkok where the midnight thermometer was showing 26 degrees centigrade and humidity in the high nineties.

  There was a knock on the cabin door; the CSD entered with the passenger manifest. He and his staff had done their head-count.

  ‘Four hundred and five, skipper.’

  It checked. Fallon signed off the load sheet and gave it to Palfrey, who went back down to hand it through the last remaining open door to the BA ground staff. Outside the mammoth flying machine the last of the courtiers were finishing their tasks of subservience. Baggage hold was closed, hoses disconnected, vehicles backed off to a respectful distance. The giant was going to start those four huge Rolls-Royce engines and roll.

  In the First Class cabin Mr Seymour had allowed himself to be relieved of his beautiful silk jacket which was hung in the forward wardrobe. He kept, but loosened, the silk tie. A glass of champagne bubbled at his elbow and the CSD had endowed him with a fresh Financial Times and a Daily Telegraph. A snob to his boot heels, Mr Palfrey loved what he called ‘the quality’. With even Hollywood stars resembling bag ladies, it was such a relief to look after the quality.

  On the flight deck Fallon supervised the Cleared for Start checks. Glancing out and down he could see the tractor and, at its controls, that anonymous but vital minion sometimes referred to as Tractor Joe. Without him Speedbird One Zero was going nowhere because it was pointing straight at the terminal and could not turn round unaided.

  From Bangkok Ground Control Fallon received his start-engines clearance. Simultaneously Tractor Joe’s tiny but immensely powerful vehicle began to ease the 747–400 backward
s and the four Rolls-Royce 524s came to life. Fallon needed no power from the ground for this; his APU would handle it all.

  On Fallon’s command, his co-pilot reached up to the overhead panel, pulled the start switch for number four engine, whilst with his other hand he operated the same number fuel-control switch. He repeated these actions three more times as he ripple-started the engines four three two and then one. Meanwhile the automatic fuel control brought the engines slowly up to ‘idle’.

  Tractor Joe was moving Speedbird One Zero round through ninety degrees so that her nose would be pointing to the taxi track while the wash of her jets would not blow away anything behind her. When he had done, he called up the flight deck on the headset he wore, the flex of which was still plugged in near to the aircraft’s nose-wheel. He asked for parking brake.

  He was right so to do; this Thai wanted to become an old man one day. To disconnect himself he had to descend from his tractor, walk to the nose of the jumbo and pull his flex from the socket. A Tractor Joe who disappears under the front wheel of a jumbo while doing this comes out like hamburger steak. Fallon put on the parking brake and gave the word. Thirty feet below him the Thai disconnected himself, stood back and held up the flag he had taken from the flex socket, as per procedure. Fallon gave him a grateful wave and the tractor drove off. Ground Control gave permission to roll and passed them over to Tower Control.

  In Row 34 the Higginses were finally settled in. They had been lucky. Seat G was vacant so they had the whole row of four. John Higgins took D which was on one aisle; his wife had G at the other end of the row and on the other side aisle. Julie was between them, fussing over Pooky to ensure she was comfortable and able to enjoy a restful night.

  Speedbird One Zero was rolling along the taxi way towards take-off point, her huge bulk steered solely by her nose-wheel, operated by the tiller under Fallon’s left hand. Captain Fallon was in permanent contact with Tower Control. As he reached the far end of the main runway he asked for and got immediate take-off permission. That meant he could continue from taxi track to take-off without a pause.

  The Jumbo turned onto the runway, lined its nose up with the centre line and high above the tarmac the captain eased the thrust levers forward then curled his fingers to press the toga (Take Off/Go Around) switches. The power in all four engines rose automatically to pre-set figures.

  The passengers could feel the rumble increase in speed as the jumbo gathered pace. Neither they nor the crew in the cloistered calm of the flight deck could hear the manic scream of the four jets outside the hull, but they could feel the power. Far to one side the lights of the main terminal flashed by. A touch on the controls brought the nose-wheel off the tarmac. The First Class passengers heard the first clunk beneath their feet, but this was simply the oleo leg extending as the weight came off. Ten seconds later the main undercarriage assemblies lifted off and she was airborne.

  As she lifted clear of the ground, on Fallon’s command his co-pilot selected the switch to bring up the entire undercarriage; a series of further clunks, then all the noise and the vibrations stopped. He climbed at 1,300 feet per minute to 1,500 feet, then eased the climb. As the speed increased Fallon called for the wing flaps to be retracted in sequence, from twenty degrees to ten, to five, to one, to zero and she was ‘clean’.

  John Higgins in 34 D finally loosed the rigid grip he had imposed on both his armrests. He was not a good flier and he hated take-off most of all, but he tried not to show his family. Glancing out into the aisle, he observed that the hippie was just four rows in front of them, in 30 C, across the aisle. The long passage stretched ahead of him to the bulkhead separating Economy from Club. Here there was a complete galley and four lavatories. He could see four or five stewardesses already up and about, preparing to serve the belated evening meal. It had been six hours since his last snack in the hotel, and he was hungry. He turned back to help Julie sort out her in-flight entertainment facility and find the cartoon channel.

  Take-off at Bangkok is usually towards the north. Fallon eased the climbing airliner gently to port and looked down. It was a clear night. Behind them was the Gulf of Thailand on which Bangkok lay; ahead, across the width of the country, the Andaman Sea. Between lay Thailand, and the moon glinted off so many flooded rice paddies that the whole country seemed to be made of water. Speedbird One Zero climbed to 31,000 feet and levelled off, setting course for London, passing over Calcutta, Delhi, Kabul, Teheran, eastern Turkey, the Balkans and Germany on one of the several possible routes. He slipped Speedbird One Zero onto autopilot, stretched and right on cue one of the upper-deck stewardesses brought in the coffee.

  In 30 C the hippie glanced at the small card offering the menu for the late-night dinner. His appetite was small; what he really lusted for was a cigarette. Thirteen hours of this, and another watching the carousel at Heathrow for his bigger rucksack, before he could slip outside and light up. And two after that before he could risk a decent joint.

  ‘The beef,’ he said to the smiling stewardess who stood beside him. The accent appeared American but his passport would say he was a Canadian called Donovan.

  In an office in the west of London whose address is a fairly closely guarded secret, a phone rang. The man at the desk glanced at his watch. Five thirty and dark already.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Boss, BA Oh-One-Oh out of Bangkok is airborne.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He put the phone down. William ‘Bill’ Butler did not like to spend much time talking on phones. He did not talk much at all. He was known for it. He was also known as a good man to work for and a bad one to displease. What was not known by any of his subordinates was that he had once had a deeply loved daughter, the pride of his life, the girl who went to university on a scholarship and then died of a heroin overdose. Bill Butler did not like heroin. Even more he hated the men who trafficked in it. Which made him a bad enemy, and a formidable one, given the job he did. His department waged the endless war against hard drugs on behalf of HM Customs and Excise. It was known simply as ‘the Knock’, and Bill Butler made it his life’s work to knock harder than any of them.

  Five hours passed. The hundreds of packaged, reheated meals had been served, gobbled down (or left) and the plastic trays removed. The quarter-bottles of cheap wine had been quaffed and removed, or jammed into the pocket ahead of the knees. Aft of the bulkhead the heaving mass of Economy-Class humanity had finally settled down.

  In the electronics bay below the First Class cabin, the two flight-management computers chatted electronically to each other as they absorbed information from the three Inertial Reference Systems, collected data from beacons and satellites, worked out the aircraft’s position and directed the autopilot to make tiny movements of the controls to keep Speedbird One Zero on the preplanned track.

  Far below lay the rugged land between Kabul and Kandahar. Away to the north in the mountains of the Panshir, the fanatical Taleban waged their war against Shah Masood, the last warlord to hold out against them. The passengers in the howling cocoon high above Afghanistan were shuttered against the blackness, the lethal cold, the engine noise, the cruel landscape and the war.

  The window blinds were all down, the lights dimmed to a low glim, the thin blankets distributed. Most were trying to get some sleep. A few watched the in-flight movie; some were tuned in to the concert.

  In seat 34 G Mrs Higgins was fast asleep, blanket up to chin, mouth half open, breathing gently. Seats E and F had been turned into one by the removal of the armrest, and Julie was spread out lengthways, blanket-warm, dolly clutched to chest, also asleep.

  John Higgins could not sleep. He never could on aeroplanes. So, tired though he was, he thought back to their Far East holiday. It was a package, of course. An insurance clerk could not go as far as Thailand any other way, and even then it had involved scrimping and saving. But it had been worth it.

  They had stayed at the Pansea Hotel on Phuket Island, far away from the tawdry goings-on at Pattaya – he h
ad been most careful to check with the agency that all that side of things would come nowhere near his family. And it had been magical, they all agreed on that. They had rented bicycles and pedalled through rubber plantations and Thai villages in the interior of the island. They had stopped to marvel at red-painted, golden-roofed Buddhist temples and seen the saffron-robed monks at their devotions.

  From the hotel he had rented snorkel masks and fins for himself and Julie; Mrs Higgins did not swim, except gently in the pool. With these he and his daughter had swum out to a coral reef offshore, Julie with her water wings, he with a flotation belt. Beneath the water they had seen the scurrying fish: rock beauties and butterflies, four-eyes and sergeant-majors.

  Julie had been so excited she raised her head to shout, in case her father had not seen them. But of course he had, so he gestured she should put her mouthpiece back in, before she took a gulp of water. Too late; he had to help her, spluttering and coughing, back to the beach.

  There had been offers to give him a pupil’s scuba-diving course in the hotel pool, but he had declined. He had read there might be sharks in the water and Mrs Higgins had squealed with horror. They were a family who wanted a nice adventure but not too much.

  In the hotel shop Julie had found a doll in the form of a little Thai girl and he had bought it as a treat. After ten days at the Pansea, right below the stupefyingly expensive Amanpuri, they had completed the vacation with three days in Bangkok. There they had taken guided tours to see the Jade Buddha and the enormous Sleeping Buddha, wrinkled their noses at the stench coming off the Chao Praya River and choked on the traffic fumes. But it had been well worth it, the holiday of a lifetime.

  On the seat-back in front of him was a small screen with a display of constant updates on their flight progress. He watched it idly. The figures were endless: time from Bangkok, distance covered, distance to destination, flight time ditto, outside temperature (a terrifying 76 below zero), speed of headwind.

  Between the figures another image flashed up: a map of this part of the world and a small white aeroplane slowly jerking its way north-west towards Europe and home. He wondered if, like counting sheep, the mesmeric effect of the little plane might help him sleep. Then the jumbo hit a small patch of clear-air turbulence and he was wide awake, gripping the seat-arms.