Flying Finish

by Dick Francis

  Four thousand feet. I levelled out and flew on, looking down through the moonlit blackness, searching for the sea. Tiredness was insidious and crept up like a tide, I thought, until it drowned you. I shouldn’t have taken that codeine, it was probably making me sleepy … though I’d had some at other times after racing injuries, and never noticed it. But that was on the ground, with nothing to do but recover.

  There. There was the sea. A charcoal change from black, the moonlight just reflecting enough to make it certain. I flew out a little way, banked the plane to the right and began to follow the shore. Compass heading, east-south-east. This seemed extraordinary, but it certainly had to be the north-east coast of France somewhere, and I wasn’t going to lose myself again. There were lighthouses, flashing their signals. No charts to interpret them. The biggest port along that coast, I thought, was Le Havre. I couldn’t miss that. There would be a lot of lights even at five in the morning. If I turned roughly north from there I couldn’t help but reach England. Roughly was just the trouble. The map in my head couldn’t be trusted. Roughly north could find me barging straight into the London Control Zone, which would be even worse than Paris.

  It wouldn’t be light until six at the earliest. Sunrise had been about a quarter to seven, the day before.

  The lights of Le Havre were ahead and then below me before I’d decided a thing. Too slow, I thought numbly, I was already too slow. I’d never get down.

  The coast swung northwards, and I followed. Five twenty a.m. The fuel gauges looked reasonable with dawn not far ahead. But I’d got to decide where I was going. I’d got to.

  If I simply went on for a bit I’d reach Calais. It still wouldn’t be light. Somewhere over in Kent were Lympne, Lydd and Manston airports. Somewhere. My mind felt paralysed.

  I went on and on along the French coast like an automaton until at last I knew I’d gone too far. I hadn’t watched the compass heading closely enough and it had crept round from north to nearly east. That light I’d passed a while back, I thought vaguely, the light flashing at five second intervals, that must have been Gris Nez. I’d gone past Calais. I was nearly round to Belgium. I’d simply got to decide …

  The sky was definitely lighter. With surprise I realised that for several minutes the coastline had been easier to see, the water beneath lightening to a flat dark grey. Soon I could look for an airport: but not in Belgium. The explanations would be too complicated. Back to Kent, perhaps …

  In a way, the solution when it came was simple. I would go to the place I knew best. To Fenland. In daylight I could find my way unerringly there from any direction, which meant no anxious circling around, and familiarity would cancel out a good deal of the tiredness. The flying club used grass runways which were nothing like long enough for a D.C.4, but its buildings had once been part of an old Air Force base, and the concrete runways the bombers had used were still there. Grass grew through the cracks in them and they weren’t maintained, but they were marked at the ends with a white cross over a white bar, air traffic signal for a safe enough landing in an emergency.

  My mental fog lifted. I banked left and set off North Seawards, and only after five decisive minutes remembered the fuel.

  The burns were hurting again and my spirits fell to zero. Would I never get it right? I was an amateur, I thought despairingly. Still an amateur. The jockey business all over again. I had never achieved anything worthwhile and I certainly hadn’t built the solid life I wanted. Simon had been quite right, I couldn’t have gone on carting racehorses all my life; and now that Yardman Transport no longer existed I wouldn’t look for the same job again.

  It was a measure of my exhausted state that having once decided to go to Fenland I hadn’t the will to plunge back into uncertainty. The fuel margin was far too small for it to be prudent to go so far. Prudence in the air was what kept one alive. If I went to Fenland I’d be landing on a thimbleful, and if the engines stopped five miles away it would be too late to wish I hadn’t.

  Streaks of faint red crept into the sky and the sea turned to grey pearl. The sky wasn’t so clear any more: there were layers of hazy cloud on the horizon, shading from dark grey-blue to a wisp of silver. The moment before dawn had always seemed to me as restoring as sleep, but that time when I really needed it, it had no effect. My eyes felt gritty and my limbs trembled under every strain. And the codeine had worn off.

  The coast of East Anglia lay like a great grey blur ahead on my left. I would follow it round, I thought, and go in over the Wash …

  A swift dark shape flashed across in front of the D.C.4 and my heart jumped at least two beats. A fighter, I thought incredulously. It had been a jet fighter. Another came over the top of me ridiculously close and screamed away ahead leaving me bumping horribly in the turbulence he left in his wake. They both turned a long way ahead and roared back towards me, flying level together with their wing tips almost touching. Expert formation pilots: and unfriendly. They closed at something like the speed of sound and swept over the D.C.4 with less than a hundred feet between. To them I must have seemed to be standing still. To me, the trail they left me was very nearly the clincher.

  Yardman couldn’t have found me, I thought desperately. Not after the wavering roundabout route I’d taken. They couldn’t have followed me and wouldn’t have guessed I’d go up the North Sea … it couldn’t be Yardman’s doing. So who?

  I looked out at East Anglia away on my left, and didn’t know whether to laugh or die of fear. Americans. East Anglia was stiff with American air bases. They would have picked me up on their radar, an unidentified plane flying in at dawn and not answering to radio. Superb watchdogs, they would send someone to investigate … and they’d found a plane without registration numbers or markings of any sort. A plane like that couldn’t be up to any good … had to be hostile. One could almost hear them think it.

  They wouldn’t start shooting, not without making sure … not yet. If I just went straight on and could deal with the buffeting, what would they do? I wouldn’t let them force me down … I had only to plod straight on … They swept past on each side and threw the D.C.4 about like a cockleshell.

  I couldn’t do it, I thought, not this on top of everything else. My hands were slipping on the wheel with sweat. If the fighters went on much longer the sturdy old plane would shake to bits. They came past twice more and proved me wrong. They also reduced me to a dripping wreck. But after that they vanished somewhere above me, and when I looked up I saw them still circling overhead like angry bees. They were welcome to accompany me home, I thought weakly, if that was only where they’d stay.

  I could see the lightship off Cromer still flashing its group of four every fifteen seconds. The first real sign of home. Only sixty miles to go. Fifteen minutes to the lightship in the Wash, and the sun rose as I went over it. I turned the plane on to the last leg to Fenland, and up above the escorts came with me.

  The fuel gauges looked horrible. I drove what was left of my mind into doing some vital checks. Pitch fully fine, brakes off, mixture rich, fuel pumps on. There must have been a list somewhere, but heaven knew where. I had no business to be flying the plane at all, I didn’t know its drill … The Air Ministry could take away my licence altogether and I was liable for a prison sentence as well. Except, I thought suddenly with a flicker of amusement, that Patrick was qualified to fly it, and he might be said to be technically in charge. Resident, anyway.

  I throttled back and began to go down. If I managed it, I thought, I would be a professional. The decision was suddenly standing there full-blown like a certainty that had been a long time growing. This time it wasn’t too late. I would take Tom Wells’ job and make him stick to it when he inevitably found out my name. I would fly his car firm executives around and earn the sort of life I wanted, and if it meant giving up racing … I’d do that too.

  The airspeed indicator stood at a hundred and thirty knots on the slow descent, and I could see the airfield ahead. The fighters were there already, circling high. The pl
ace would be crawling with investigators before my wheels stopped rolling. Questions, when I could do with sleep.

  The distant orange wind sock blew out lazily, still from the south west. There wasn’t enough fuel for frills like circuits, the gauges registered empty. I’d have to go straight in, and get down first time … get down. If I could.

  I was close now. The club building developed windows, and there was Tom’s bungalow …

  A wide banking turn to line up with the old concrete runway … It looked so narrow, but the bombers had used it. Six hundred feet. My arms were shaking. I pushed down the lever of the undercarriage and the light went green as it locked. Five hundred … I put on full flap, maximum drag … retrimmed … felt the plane get slower and heavier, soft on the controls … I could stall and fall out of the sky … a shade more power … still some fuel left … the end of the runway ahead with its white cross coming up to meet me, rushing up … two hundred feet … I was doing a hundred and twenty … I’d never landed a plane with a cockpit so high off the ground … allow for that … One hundred … lower … I seemed to be holding the whole plane up … I closed the throttles completely and levelled out as the white cross and the bar slid underneath, and waited an agonised few seconds while the air speed fell down and down until there was too little lift to the wings and the whole mass began to sink …

  The wheels touched and bounced, touched and stayed down, squeaking and screeching on the rough surface. With muscles like jelly, with only tendons, I fought to keep her straight. I couldn’t crash now … I wouldn’t. The big plane rocketted along the bumpy concrete … I’d never handled anything so powerful … I’d misjudged the speed and landed too fast and she’d never stop …

  A touch of brake … agonising to be gentle with them and fatal if I wasn’t … They gripped and tugged and the plane stayed straight … more brake, heavier … it was making an impression … she wouldn’t flip over on to her back, she had a tricycle undercarriage with a nose wheel … I’d have to risk it … I pulled the brakes on hard and the plane shuddered with the strain, but the tyres didn’t burst and I hadn’t dipped and smashed a wing or bent the propellers and there wasn’t going to be a scratch on the blessed old bus … She slowed to taxi-ing speed with a hundred yards to spare before the runway tapered off into barbed wire and gorse bushes. Anything would have been enough. A hundred yards was a whole future.

  Trembling, feeling sick, I wheeled round in a circle and rolled slowly back up the runway to where it ran closest to the airport buildings. There I put the brakes full on and stretched out a hand which no longer seemed part of me, and stopped the engines. The roar died to a whisper, and to nothing. I slowly pulled off the headset and listened to the cracking noises of the hot metal cooling.

  It was done. And so was I. I couldn’t move from my seat. I felt disembodied. Burnt out. Yet in a sort of exhausted peace I found myself believing that as against all probability I had survived the night, so had Gabriella … that away back in Milan she would be breathing safely through her damaged lung. I had to believe it. Nothing else would do.

  Through the window I saw Tom Wells come out of his bungalow, staring first up at the circling fighters and then down at the D.C.4. He shrugged his arms into his old sheepskin jacket and began to run towards me over the grass.

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  First published in Great Britain in October 1966

  Second impression November 1966

  Third impression November 1974

  Fourth impression November 1978

  Fifth impression October 1981

  Sixth impression October 1983

  Seventh impression August 1986

  Eighth impression January 1988

  Copyright © Dick Francis 1966

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  ISBN: 978-0-14-194233-9