Point of Impact

by Point of Impact (retail) (epub)

  He shrugged. ‘All right, I suppose. I think it was probably best for us to split, but had things been a little different I’m sure we could have been very happy. Does that sound perverse?’

  She shook her head and glanced towards the stairs. ‘Even in the best relationship there are times when you find yourself thinking what if? But…’

  She met Drew’s eyes for an instant and then continued. ‘Sometimes you have to go through the pain of a break-up, just to learn to avoid some of the mistakes in the next relationship that you made in your last. Of course, it’s not much consolation to your ex to know she’s helped you make your next relationship more permanent.’

  ‘But that won’t happen with you and Nick?’

  ‘No, I don’t think it will. We’re very happy now, but there were times when it wouldn’t have taken too much of a push for one of us to have been heading out of the door.’

  She gave an embarrassed smile. ‘How is it that you always get me to talk so much about myself without ever giving anything about yourself away in return?’

  ‘Natural talent and years of dedicated training.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I don’t know the answers to the questions I get asked.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Or perhaps you’re just afraid of the answers?’

  ‘No comment,’ he said, reaching across the table for the wine bottle.

  ‘So what’s next?’

  ‘Another glass of Chardonnay. In the longer term, I’m going to concentrate on my flying for a while, put my career first.’

  ‘That’s a refreshing change,’ she said dryly. ‘That should really sort things out.’

  Drew stuck his tongue out at her and filled their glasses again.

  ‘Really, Drew. You can’t keep on buttoning up your emotions. I know you think flying is the biggest thing in your life at the moment, but please don’t let the Air Force get in the way of your personal life. In the long run that’s what’s important.’

  He started to protest but she cut him off. ‘I remember when Nick was first posted to a Tempest squadron up at Leuchars. The senior pilot there wasn’t that much different from you. He had a lovely wife but he seemed to care more about his career than he did about her. She certainly thought so, because in the end she left him. I still see him now and he’s a sad spectacle. I doubt if he’d admit it openly, but I’m sure deep down he knows he’s ruined his life. You know who I’m talking about, don’t you?’

  Drew shook his head.

  ‘You should do, you know him better than I do.’

  Drew stared blankly at her.

  ‘Bert Russell.’

  ‘Oh come on, Sally, you’re not seriously comparing me with that stuffed shirt?’

  ‘You didn’t know him then, Drew. Ten years ago he wasn’t the sad character he is now.’

  She held up her hand as he started to protest again. ‘You’ve got a lot going for you. For God’s sake don’t wind up like Russell in ten years’ time, living for the Air Force and going home to an empty flat every night.’

  Sally watched him for a moment, then said, ‘Right,’s enough of a lecture from me. What about this helicopter pilot?’

  Drew shrugged. ‘What about her? I only met her today. There’s a queue of at least five hundred people all trying desperately to get into her pants and I’m probably number 499. Not that I’m interested.’

  ‘Of course you’re not.’ Nick laughed as he came down the stairs. ‘You’ve got far more important things to do. The kids want Uncle Drew to come and read them a story.’

  Drew got to his feet with a show of reluctance, but, when Sally tiptoed upstairs ten minutes later to rescue him, he led the chorus of ‘Just five more minutes’ himself.

  She shook her head firmly. ‘Don’t argue – dinner’s on the table.’

  Over dinner Sally was distracted.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Nick finally asked.

  She looked up quickly and smiled an apology. ‘Sorry, I was miles away.’ She hesitated, then said abruptly, ‘What the hell’s been going on with the jets recently?’

  There was an awkward silence, then Nick put a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s pretty straightforward: not enough men, not enough spares, and everyone trying to do more and more with less and less. We’re knackered and so’s the hardware.’

  ‘And now we’ve got the delights of Bosnia to look forward to again,’ Drew said, instantly regretting it as Sally shivered.

  ‘I wish you didn’t have to go.’

  Nick hugged her. ‘We may not even go.’

  ‘You will, you know you will.’

  ‘Look love, even if we do go, it’ll just be another milk run. The only danger will be dying of boredom.’

  She pushed his arm away angrily. ‘That’s bullshit and you know it, Nick. Don’t patronise me. People were shot at last time and people were shot down. Don’t tell me lies, not even little white lies.’

  Embarrassed, Drew sat staring at the stem of his wineglass as he twisted it in his hand.

  ‘What’s the matter, Sally? This isn’t like you,’ Nick said gently.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s the crashes.’

  He put his hand back on her shoulder. ‘I’ve been flying jets for twelve years and I’ve still got all my bits.’

  She nodded, still looking as if she was on the brink of tears. ‘I know. Maybe it’s because you’ve been flying so long. Maybe it’s Jeff Faraday. I just can’t get the thought out of my mind of his wife and kids opening the door to see some squadron leader or wing commander standing on the doorstep. Before he even spoke you’d know. Your world would be falling apart and all you’d have would be this stranger sitting in front of you, mouthing platitudes about the ultimate sacrifice.’

  She looked across the table at Drew, urgently holding his gaze. ‘If anything ever happens to him, Drew, I want you to come and tell me. I don’t want to find out from some starched uniform.’

  ‘Nothing will happen to Nick—’ Drew began.

  ‘But if it does?’

  ‘Er, Sally,’ he said, trying to lighten the mood, ‘if something happens to Nick, it’ll happen to me too. We’re flying in the same jet.’

  ‘Promise me anyway.’

  Drew looked vainly to Nick for help, then nodded. ‘All right, I promise.’

  Uncomfortable, he drank the rest of his wine, then glanced at his watch. ‘Time I was off home. Thanks for dinner.’

  He got up and walked round the table, giving Sally a squeeze and kissing her forehead. ‘And stop worrying. Neither of us are going to be dumb enough to put ourselves in danger for the sake of those barmy bastards in Bosnia.’

  She smiled gratefully up at him. ‘I know, but thanks anyway.’

  ‘Stay the night if you want,’ Nick said. ‘You’ll be back to pick me up in a few hours and you practically live here anyway.’

  Drew grinned. ‘Thanks, but your kids are already starting to call me Daddy as it is. Besides, I need to go home at least once a day, just to annoy the neighbours.’

  * * *

  For once, Drew was out of bed in good time in the morning. He showered, shaved and was back outside Nick’s house before he’d finished his breakfast.

  ‘You’re keen,’ he said, slumping into the passenger seat, still clutching his last piece of toast. ‘And what’s that smell? Aftershave?’

  ‘It may be.’

  ‘Well,’ Nick said, smiling to himself. ‘It’ll certainly help clear my head. I’m coming down with flu. You’d better take another nav up with you today. The only thing I’m going to fly is a desk.’

  ‘Is Sally okay this morning?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Nick said shortly. ‘She’s worried, but it’s just a bad case of Air Force Wife Syndrome.’

  Drew nodded. ‘There’s no known cure.’

  When they got to the base, Nick disappeared into the crew room, clutching a packet of Beechams powders. Drew went to the seven o’clock briefing fo
r the training sortie, stopping to read a notice on the wall in the corridor. Michelle brushed past him, then checked and wrinkled her nose. ‘Calvin Klein?’

  Drew shook his head. ‘Sweat and avgas.’

  She laughed. ‘Have it your own way.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Seven o’clock – mustn’t be late for my own briefing.’

  Drew followed her into the briefing room and dropped into a spare seat next to his navigator for the day, Mike ‘Smiler’ Hartley, a tall, gangling West Country man. His nickname was ironic; Drew could not remember ever seeing him smile, let alone laugh.

  Michelle stepped up to the podium. ‘Morning. Met brief: the weather is fine at the moment, patchy cloud, wind westerly, fifteen knots, gusting to twenty-five, but wind speeds are forecast to increase, strengthening later in the day. Rain and a cloud ceiling down to eight hundred feet are also forecast. We should have time to get the sortie in, but if the weather turns ugly we’ll knock it on the head immediately and come home.

  ‘For this sortie we’re going to go one on one; we’re hiding, you’re hunting. We’ll be simulating the resupply of front-line troops. The Warcop range in the Eden Valley is the front line, Penrith is our home base. Our mission is to get from Penrith to Warcop – your mission is to stop us.

  ‘For those of you who haven’t done any helicopter affiliation before, we can give you a couple of handy hints. We only do about one hundred knots, so catching us won’t be a problem for you, but don’t waste your time trying to get into our six o’clocks, because helicopters don’t have them. We can turn on a sixpence – whatever that is – so, by the time you’re in there, it’ll be twelve o’clock instead. Doesn’t time fly when you’re enjoying yourselves?’ There was a rumble of appreciative laughter.

  ‘The other thing we can do that you can’t is to stop dead, so, if you haven’t got your wits about you, you’ll have overshot us before you can blink. The difference in velocity means you’ll only get one crack at us on each pass and, by the time you’ve completed your turn to come back in, you’ll be six or seven miles away and we’ll be hiding down in the weeds.’

  She paused and smiled at them. ‘And that’s all we’re going to tell you. You can work the rest out for yourselves. See you up there.’

  Drew took off. Mike Hartley was not as confident as Nick, and Drew had to prompt him a couple of times to load information into the fighter’s kit. ‘Keep it updated, Mike, don’t forget the basics. I need to know where the best diversions are going to be. And keep an eye out for the weather ahead. Help me make any weather decisions.’

  They took up position, sitting on CAP, waiting for the call, high above the pock-marked landscape of the army artillery ranges in the Eden Valley. The radio crackled into life. It was Michelle’s voice. ‘We’re at Penrith, running south now.’

  ‘Okay,’ Drew acknowledged. ‘Right, Mike, we know where they’re coming from and we know where they’ve got to go. Let’s find them.’

  The G-force pinned Drew into his seat as he swung the jet into a hard turn to the north-west, using the afterburners briefly to gun the speed up to five hundred knots. He looked contentedly around him.

  The clouds scudding across the sky beneath them were painting deep pools of shadow on the landscape. In the valley floor the river meandered through a patchwork of vivid green meadows, the water flashing silver as a stray beam of sunlight struck its surface.

  Further from the river, the fields changed in colour as they climbed the fellsides, dulling slowly through every shade of green until they merged finally into the barren browns and bleached greys of the sea of moorland stretching away far to the north.

  ‘What a great day to go flying.’ Drew sent the jet soaring and swooping as he revelled in the freedom of the skies.

  Mike was enjoying it rather less in the back, trying to concentrate on the radar despite his head bumping around as Drew toyed with the stick. ‘Just look at this, Mike,’ Drew said. ‘It beats the hell out of being stuck in an office.’

  ‘I might as well be, for all I’m seeing of it,’ came the voice from the back. ‘And you don’t get airsick in an office.’

  Looking in the rear-view mirrors, Drew could see Mike face down in the green screen, working the radar for all he was worth.

  ‘Get your head out of the cockpit for a bit. It won’t be much consolation that you plotted the perfect intercept if we collide with a stray jet that neither of us has seen coming. If you look out more it’ll cure your airsickness too.’

  Mike took a cursory glance around, then went back to his screen.

  ‘Anything on the radar yet?’ Drew asked.

  ‘Nothing yet… nothing yet… got them. Contact south of Penrith heading one-four-zero, doing about one hundred knots.’

  ‘Okay, good work.’

  ‘The weather’s not looking too clever, though,’ Mike said, looking up again. ‘The cloud’s building and the wind speed’s picking up.’

  Drew looked out towards the west, seeing the first outriders of the coming storm, thick pillars of grey-black cloud boiling up over the horizon. ‘I think we’ve got time for this before we cut and run. Don’t lock them up on the radar – we don’t want to alert them. We’ll come in from high, spiral down into their six o’clock and see if they’re looking out.’

  As they closed with the target, Mike kept calling directions, his confidence growing as they began the intercept. ‘Target left forty degrees, fifteen miles… ten miles. Come left ten degrees. Yeah, that’s it… Six miles.’

  ‘Okay, tally ho,’ Drew called a few seconds later. ‘I’ve got him on the nose, about three miles. I’ll just take it up a little bit higher.’

  He pulled back on the stick and saw the helicopter far below him, skimming over the green fields outside Appleby.

  ‘Coming below the left wing now,’ Drew said. ‘Are you tally with him, Mike?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got him.’

  ‘Here we go.’

  Drew gripped the stick harder, as if trying to merge with the machine, then began the spiral dive, pulling a hard, four-G turn. His G-suit inflated, pressing in on his stomach and compressing his thighs as the Tempest dropped towards the helicopter like a hawk diving on its prey. The height unravelled on the altimeter almost as fast as Mike could count it off, his voice growing steadily less distinct as the G-force dragged his mask to one side of his mouth.

  ‘Thirty thousand… twenty-five thousand… twenty thousand… fifteen thousand… ten thousand…’ Mike grunted aloud with the effort of forcing his head around to keep the helicopter in sight. Under the G-force, his two kilogram helmet now weighed four times as much.

  Michelle had seen them coming. Drew saw the helicopter come around hard left as Michelle gunned it, flying fast and low, chasing for cover in a steep side valley.

  ‘Okay,’ Drew said, ‘coming around, three miles, good position. Coming hard left.’ He nudged the stick rapidly from side to side, trying to stay in a firing position on the helicopter as Michelle zigzagged.

  Drew was sweating heavily and could hear Mike grunting and groaning, his head thrashing about as the jet bucked and swerved.

  ‘Stick top armed. Tracking…’ Drew cursed as the helicopter slid in and out of the cross hairs on his head-up display, his aim thrown off by the yawing of the jet and the turbulence of the humid air rising from the valley floor.

  The Puma slid through the gunsight again, then was trapped in the cross hairs as Drew anticipated Michelle’s next turn. ‘Tracking, tracking… Guns! Guns! Guns!’ He squeezed the trigger as Mike whooped his triumph, and then yanked back on the stick to send the Tempest soaring skywards again.

  The calm was suddenly shattered as the alarms and warning lights went crazy. The streamlined electronic jet turned into a twenty-ton deadweight and started an uncontrolled dive.

  Mike was screaming in the back, ‘What the hell’s going on?’ his previous confidence disappearing as fast as the vapour trailing from the wingtips. As the jet plummeted downwards at fifteen tho
usand feet per minute, the tiny green squares beneath them grew into meadows and the dark specks became houses.

  Drew’s voice was reassuringly cool and measured, though his heart was pounding and his mouth was dry with fear. ‘There’s no feel in the stick – it’s barely responding to any inputs. Stand by, we’re going to have to come out.’

  As Drew fought ineffectually with the controls, a fellside village loomed ahead of them.

  Mike shouted, ‘Come on. What are we waiting for?’

  ‘Hold on, I’ve got to get it away from this village.’

  Drew kept wrestling with the stick. It felt like he was stirring cement with a teaspoon, but he won a grudging and agonisingly slow turn from the jet.

  ‘Hurry up, Drew. For Christ’s sake, hurry up.’

  ‘Just a few more seconds…’

  ‘No. Bang out, now!’ Mike screamed. He could see nothing through the canopy but a wall of trees. He reached down in front of him and yanked the yellow and black handle for all he was worth.

  Drew felt the restraining straps tighten, dragging his legs and arms inwards. He heard the explosions as the guns fired to set the seats rising, then the canopy blew off with a crack and, as the slipstream began to howl and tear at him, the ejector rockets fired. He felt himself seized by the scruff of the neck and hurled high into the air like a fistful of rags. He was tumbling over and over, close to blacking out as the seat blasted upwards at thirty G.

  There was a massive explosion and a ball of flame flashed through the trees as the Tempest ploughed into the ground, barely two hundred yards from the edge of the village. He tumbled head over heels again and again and again, then there was a crack like a pistol shot as the stabilising parachute fired.

  The tumbling slowed and stopped. The seat dropped away and, as it fell to earth, the main parachute opened with another crack. He was jerked upwards like a body on a gibbet. Then there was silence, broken only by the strengthening wind howling through his parachute rigging.