He bent down to pull on his G-pants, securing the clips and zips, then straightened up and put on the thick, heavy life-support jacket. He glanced at Nick, raising an eyebrow. ‘Ready?’
Nick nodded. They picked up their helmets. Some of the ground crew were already working on the jets, the rest, wearing the headsets they plugged into the aircraft to talk to the pilot, followed the aircrew out.
Drew checked the jet over externally and signed to assume responsibility for the aircraft while Nick clambered up the ladder, climbed into his seat and began programming the inertial navigation kit and feeding the routeing of the mission into the computer.
Drew joined him in the cockpit, the familiar electronic whine growing louder as he climbed the ladder. He checked the ejector seat and then lowered himself into his tiny, rock-hard seat. It was a straight trade between comfort and safety – no cushion, no shattered vertebrae if they had to eject.
He began strapping himself in, helped by one of the ground crew who had followed him up the ladder. He fastened his leg restraints, bending double despite the bulky flying gear, then pulled his thigh and shoulder straps tight and locked them into the quick-release buckle in his lap.
Next came the connections to his life-support equipment: the rubber tube feeding him oxygen, the cables with radio communications, the air hose to inflate his G-pants and stop him from blacking out under the G-force as the jet turned, climbed and dived, and the survival pack that might keep him alive if he had to eject. Finally he attached his arm restraints. Like the ones on his legs, they would ensure that he did not leave any limbs behind during an ejection. By the time he had finished, he was streaming with sweat.
While the ground crew connected the generator, Drew and Nick began the near-endless sequence of preflight checks. Initial checks complete, the power unit fired up with a throaty roar and Drew flicked the switch to start the right engine. There was a high-pitched whine, a rumble like thunder as the engine caught and started, and then a deafening, teeth-rattling blast. He repeated the procedure on the left engine, watching the temperature gauges on the turbines soaring from twelve degrees to over four hundred in a matter of seconds.
‘Closing canopy.’ Drew lowered his visor and punched a button.
A siren wailed. The failsafe plastic explosive used to blow the canopy apart if it failed to jettison during an ejection had been known to explode as it was lowered into place, sending jagged chunks of Perspex flying like shrapnel. The ground crew disappeared under the wings or clustered behind the generator, re-emerging as the siren faded after the canopy had snapped shut.
The engine noise inside the cockpit dropped to a bearable level, but a rising tide of sound washed over the airfield. The hum of electronics was counterpointed by the bass rumble of the generators and the throaty roar of Tempest engines as more jets blasted into life. There was a low rumble as a formation from 21’s sister squadron, 26, flashed down the runway and soared into the air.
The pilots checked in with him one by one. Down the line, Drew could see the heat shimmering above their engines. He led them out in formation along the taxiway.
As they moved out, there was a sharp crack on the side of the canopy. Drew and Nick ducked instinctively then glared out of the cockpit. A nine-hole golf course had been laid out on the land surrounding the runways and the ninth crossed the taxiway. The golfer on the ninth tee raised a hand in apology. Drew responded with a less conciliatory gesture.
The players on the green stopped and clapped their hands to their ears as the Tempests thundered along the taxiway ten feet away.
Drew and Nick completed their final set of preflight checks as they rolled to a halt on the far side of the airfield, awaiting clearance from Air Traffic Control to take up position. They had gone through the same sequence of challenges and responses two or three thousand times during their Air Force careers and could have recited them in their sleep, but nothing was left to chance. The checks were still made by reading them from a card, rather than from memory, for even one missed could mean disaster.
‘Abort brief,’ Drew said. ‘Light easterly, dry runway. For a major loss of thrust or major emergency while the wheels are still on the runway, I will abort, engaging thrust reverse, braking and using the hook if necessary. If there are any problems from Rotate, I’ll select combat power, climb straight ahead and deal with it at height. If I can’t maintain the climb, I’ll call “Jettison” and you shed the under-wing tanks. If that doesn’t sort it, I’ll call “Eject” and see you in hospital.’
‘By the time you’ve called “Eject”, I’ll already be in hospital.’
Air Traffic Control radioed clearance to take off and they eased their way onto the right-hand half of the runway. DJ and Ali drew up alongside, with only six feet between their wingtips.
Drew glanced across to the cockpit of DJ’s jet and signalled to wind up the engines. Holding the jet hard on the brakes, Drew pushed the throttles forward and the engine note changed to a rising howl as he wound up the power.
The usual army of plane spotters waited in the specially built compound just outside the perimeter wire. They raised their binoculars and long lenses, shouting excitedly, their voices swept away by the storm of engine noise.
Tongues of flame flew thirty feet behind the engines as they juddered under the strain, held immobile by the brakes even though they were generating power enough to light a small town. The ground trembled and buildings shook, windows rattled and babies sleeping a mile away were jolted awake.
With a final scan of the dials and captions, Drew glanced across to DJ, gave a curt nod and released the brakes, pushing the throttles smoothly forward to maximum re-heat for a moment and then easing them back to eighty per cent. The Tempests leapt forward together like greyhounds from the traps, rocketing along the tarmac, wingtip to wingtip.
Drew and Nick kept up a constant dialogue, Nick chanting a mantra of ascending speeds, punctuated at the three key points on the brief, earthbound phase of their journey:
‘One hundred knots. Cable’ – the last chance to take the arrester cable.
‘One hundred and thirty knots. EMBS’ – the last chance to bring the plane to a brake-burning halt on the runway.
‘One hundred and sixty knots. Rotate’ – take-off speed.
‘Engines good, captions clear, rotating.’ Drew pulled back on the stick. There was a clunk as the wheels lifted and the Tempest was airborne, still with DJ in perfect alignment alongside.
‘Gear travelling… and the flaps.’
‘Two hundred and fifty knots,’ Nick said.
‘Out of re-heat.’ Drew eased the throttles back, though they kept accelerating up to three hundred and fifty knots, standard climb speed for departure.
DJ stayed with him as they tore upwards through the cloud layers. Drew caught a brief glimpse of his face, framed in the cockpit. He was frowning with concentration, his eyes never wavering from Drew’s wingtip. Even at four hundred miles an hour, less than a metre separated them.
Nick kept up a running commentary as the cloud grew more dense. ‘DJ’s working for his money today. I can’t see his cockpit now, but I can still see the wing. He’s still hanging in there. Whoa, he’s gone now.’ His voice remained level even though an invisible twenty-ton steel projectile was now flying blind somewhere out in the cloud. The discipline of the air was deeply ingrained. Drew held rigidly to his original course, knowing that, as soon as DJ lost sight of his wingtip, he would instantly swing away out of danger, then follow a parallel track until they came out through the top of the cloud.
A smile spread across Drew’s face. He had been flying Tempests for four years; over a thousand take-offs, yet each one gave him the same buzz as the first – that awesome surge of power pinning him back in his seat, the airfield blurring, then disappearing, as the wheels lifted, the steep-angled climb through the overcast that covered the airfield on two hundred and fifty days out of the three hundred and sixty-five and the glorious, exalting moment as th
e jet punched through the top of the cloud into the sunlight. Flying higher than eagles, higher than Everest; if that feeling did not make your blood pound in your veins, then you might as well be dead.
They levelled off at twenty thousand feet. Drew dispatched the other six crews, bound directly for Aalborg.
‘Save me a blonde Dane,’ DJ called.
The response was immediate. ‘How about a Great Dane?’
‘The nearest he’ll get to a blonde will be a golden retriever.’
The departing crews signed off, their aircraft rapidly disappearing into the haze to the east.
‘Right,’ Drew said. ‘Can we get some work done? Okay Nitro Two. We’ll split fifty miles apart and then go for it. This is your last sortie before we start letting you play the games for real, so let’s make it quality work. Base height is ten thousand feet – bong the base and you’re dead. Don’t get carried away if you think you’ve got a chance of a kill. Keep checking fuel and checking your height. Be safe; better to bug out and run away to fight another day than press on in and get killed.’
‘Whatever you say, Grandad. If I’m too quick for you, just let me know and I’ll ease up. I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your friends.’
‘Talk’s cheap, DJ. Let’s see you live up to it.’
Nick’s voice came over the intercom. ‘Cocky little bastard isn’t he?’
Drew threw his jet around. ‘Let’s see if he can back it up.’
The two aircraft split fifty miles apart, the maximum range of their radars, and then turned inwards, their pilots’ hearts beginning to pound, adrenalin pumping. It was a video game, played for real. They probed each other’s defences, reacting to the radar warner, ducking and diving to break missile locks.
They met head to head at 1500 miles per hour, DJ and Ali flashing down the left hand side of Drew’s aircraft. Nick braced himself against his computers as he cranked his head around over his left shoulder, trying to keep DJ’s jet in sight.
Each crew was battling to get on the other’s tail – the six o’clock – the killing zone. Once an opponent was there, a heat-seeking missile would be homing on your tailpipe before you even had a chance to say your prayers.
‘Looks like they’re evading south,’ Drew said. ‘Hard starboard.’
He jerked the stick to the right and heard Nick’s ‘Unnh’ as his helmet banged against the side of the cockpit.
‘He’s in a hard left turn now,’ Nick warned. ‘Coming nose-on. Let’s go high.’
Drew yanked the jet into a four-G climb, looping over the top. He was grunting with the effort of fighting the jet, his breath rasping. He could taste the sweat dripping steadily down his face, mingling with the rubbery tang of his oxygen mask.
DJ was pushing even harder, screwing his turns tighter and tighter and gradually getting closer to their tail.
‘He’s threatening us, he’s threatening us,’ Nick yelled, his voice distorted by the strain as Drew fought to squeeze a little extra G into his turn. Lubricated by the sweat, his helmet slid on his head. The technicolour landscape blurred as the jet came hard around, and suddenly changed to monochrome.
Instantly he tensed his muscles and grunted aloud, like a weightlifter bench-pressing the maximum. The colour of the landscape returned, flickered and then faded back to grey as the G-force steadily increased. This time Drew nudged the stick back slightly towards the centre and the colour flooded back again. Greying out, as aircrew called it, happened under high-G turns. If you kept pressing the turn, the greyout would become a blackout. The next step was death.
Try as he might, Drew could not shake DJ from his tail. He barrelled over the top, still pressing, as Drew flashed beneath him.
‘He’s pulling hard, he’s pulling hard,’ Nick shouted, straining every sinew as he fought to get his head around and keep DJ in sight. ‘Come on, Drew, get us out of it. Oh God. Look out!’
As Drew glanced up, a dark shadow blotted out the sun. The sweat seemed to freeze on his forehead. DJ’s jet was dropping out of the sky, twenty tons of metal in a free fall towards them. Even as Drew registered the danger, he reacted instinctively, yanking the stick savagely to the left and ramming the throttles all the way forward.
The engines bellowed in protest and he gasped at the G-force plastering him to his seat, but the Tempest responded agonisingly slowly as the black mass hurtled down towards them.
The frenzied action of combat seemed to slow to a crawl. Drew froze, flesh creeping, felt his aircraft disintegrating under the impact, the other jet’s wing slicing through the cockpit like a buzz saw. He heard the shrieking of tortured metal, the bang as the canopy fractured and the scream of the slipstream ripping at him, followed only by blackness and silence.
The black shadow swelled and filled Drew’s vision for an instant, then there was a blinding flash of reflected light as the other Tempest’s wing slashed past him like a cut-throat razor. Drew tensed, half closing his eyes as he waited for the impact. There was nothing. The plummeting jet flashed no more than six inches past Drew’s right wing and was gone.
With a curious detachment he watched DJ jerking about like a puppet in his cockpit, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly as he dropped from sight.
He pulled himself back under control immediately, as the discipline of endlessly repeated emergency drills took over. He centred the stick and pulled back the throttles, then began taking stock of the aircraft. All checks showed nothing amiss.
His vision was a little blurred. A blood vessel had burst in his right eye, but he had no time to worry about it. He swung his own aircraft into a wide, spiralling descent, keeping DJ’s jet in sight as it hurtled downwards. The once-sleek flying machine was tumbling helplessly, spinning like a sycamore leaf in the wind. He could see the controls flapping as DJ tried to save his aircraft.
‘What’s happening?’ Drew shouted into the radio. ‘DJ, what’s happening?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t control it.’
Drew watched helplessly. Plumes of vapour streamed from the wings as the jet plummeted, nose down, accelerating faster and faster under the remorseless pull of gravity.
He watched the jet shrink as it hurtled away from them, then he began yelling into the radio, ‘Eject. Eject. For Christ’s sake, eject.’
There was no response from DJ, no puff of smoke as the ejectors fired, no orange and white flowers as two parachutes opened. Instead, far below him and seemingly beyond recall, DJ’s jet stopped spinning. There was a heart-stopping pause, then the aircraft bottomed out a few hundred feet above the sea and Drew saw it begin to climb.
His relief was replaced by cold fury. ‘What the hell’s going on, DJ? What happened?’
‘I don’t know. It wasn’t me, it was the aircraft.’ The fear in DJ’s voice was obvious, even through the crackle of the radio.
‘Don’t give me that. Aircraft don’t just fall out of the sky. I warned you about this before we started.’
‘Drew, this isn’t the right time,’ Nick said. ‘He’s probably messed his pants already. He doesn’t need you messing with his head.’
‘He nearly fucking killed us,’ Drew said. ‘I warned him this morning about trying the funny stuff before he’d got the basics sorted out. What does he do? He goes straight up in the air and pulls a stroke like that.’
‘I know,’ Nick said. ‘But give him a chance to explain when we get on the ground. We don’t know what happened.’
‘I could see what happened. He tried to pull too bloody hard round the corner.’
‘Perhaps. But we’ve both had a pretty close call. Let’s get back and sort it out on the ground.’
Drew thumbed the button. ‘Okay DJ. Let’s knock it on the head and get to Aalborg.’
* * *
Shrugging off Nick’s restraining hand, Drew strode straight across to the other jet as DJ and Ali were clambering out at Aalborg.
‘I warned you about this, didn’t I? You can throw away your own life if you want t
o, but you nearly killed us as well. What the hell were you doing? We’ve already briefed the loss-of-control drills. How did you manage to do that?’
‘I don’t know what happened,’ DJ said plaintively. ‘I was just pulling over the top of the circle, trying to get my nose on to you, and I just lost it completely – it fell out of the sky. I thought I was going to have to eject.’
Drew was not even listening. ‘You’re too cocky by half. You think because you’ve been on squadron for six months you know it all, but you know jack shit. You’ve got to keep your aggression under control and learn the basics of flying before you start trying to be a smart-arse.’
‘But I didn’t do anything,’ DJ said. ‘I was doing it how you taught me to do it last week.’
Drew ignored his protests. ‘I should put you on review for a stunt like that.’
‘But I really don’t think I did anything wrong.’
‘Then you haven’t learned anything from it. You’ll just go up and keep cocking it up until you kill yourself, Ali and anyone else unlucky enough to be within range.’
Drew rubbed his eyes with his hands. When he spoke again his voice was even. ‘Look, DJ, I’m not going to write you up for it. If we report it now, the aircraft could be grounded. That would screw up the detachment and maybe put your flying at risk as well.’ He paused. DJ’s face was sullen. ‘It’s your choice.’
‘All right.’ DJ turned away.
The greeting party from the hosting squadron trooped forward uncertainly. Drew and Nick met them with broad smiles and handshakes. RAF traditions were observed: while the engineers rushed around, clambering over the jets, refuelling, waving dipsticks and screwdrivers and wiping canopies, the aircrew set about getting pissed, standing in a circle amongst the aircraft.
After a brief speech of welcome, the Danes offered them a dish of pickled herrings and glasses of Gammel Dansk.
Point of Impact Page 5
