One and a half seconds had elapsed from the moment Mike had pulled the handle until the parachute opened. Drew drifted down, sick to the pit of his stomach. The sequence of events kept racing through his mind.
The ground was coming up fast. He inflated his life jacket to protect his neck on impact and released the forty-pound survival pack.
He hit the ground with a bone-jarring thump and was dragged along by his chute, parallel to the road leading to the village, travelling faster than a passing car. It screeched to a halt, the driver staring in amazement at the sight of the stricken pilot and the fireball lighting up the sky ahead.
Drew hammered desperately at the harness release. He could feel the heat from the flames reaching out to him, but forced himself to still his mounting panic. He turned and pressed the catch and the parachute blew away in the wind. He lay winded for a moment, then hauled himself painfully to his feet, staggering back, away from the searing heat of the flames. He checked himself gingerly. He had a few bruises, but no broken bones.
Mike was lying motionless a couple of hundred yards away. Drew ran over to him. He was screaming in pain, his leg broken. A piece of bone was protruding from the side of his G-suit, stark white against the torn, bloody flesh.
‘Just standby, mate, it won’t be long.’ Drew affected a nonchalance he did not feel as he eyed the wound. Arterial blood was spurting out onto the grass. He felt a wave of panic rising in him, but forced himself to be calm, breathing slowly and deeply as he glanced up at the sky. The weather front was coming in fast over the hills. The outline of the peak of Cross Fell was already lost, shrouded in cloud. As Drew watched, the lower hills also disappeared from view and spots of rain began to fall.
The locator beacon in Drew’s life jacket was already going off as he knelt down beside Mike and began to examine his leg. Drew whipped a dressing out of the emergency kit in his flying suit and pressed it hard onto the wound. He improvised a tourniquet from his flying scarf, twisting it steadily tighter until the blood flow slowed to a trickle. Mike yelled with pain as the bones grated against each other.
‘You bloody maniacs!’
Drew looked up. A figure was racing towards them across the field from the village school, shouting as he ran. Behind him, the children stood lining the playground wall, their eyes like saucers.
‘We’ve been warning you about this for years,’ the man gasped, panting from exertion and crimson with rage. ‘Every day you cowboys come over here using our school as some sort of target. Who the hell do you think you are? It was only luck that you didn’t hit the school and kill every child in it. I’ve been watching you playing chicken for the last five minutes. I’m going to have your hide for this.’
Concentrating on Mike’s maimed leg, Drew was in no mood for a debate on low-flying. ‘Do you really think we’re stupid enough to play chicken with our own lives, never mind yours? You haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about. Can’t you see that this guy needs a doctor? If you’re not here to help just stay out of my way, you’re only placing yourself in danger.’
‘What about the danger to those kids?’ the teacher began, but then blanched and fell silent as he caught sight of the bloody mess that had been Mike’s leg.
Drew ignored him. Hearing the Puma approaching, he turned away and began to call it on the emergency speech channel in his locator beacon.
‘Listen,’ Mike gasped, teeth clenched in pain. ‘If he hadn’t risked his own life to steer the plane away from the school, it really would have been a disaster. I was trying to get him to eject, but he wouldn’t do it until he was sure it was going to miss the village. He didn’t endanger those kids: he saved their lives.’
‘But they wouldn’t have been in danger if you hadn’t…’ The rest of his sentence was drowned in the thunder of the Puma’s rotors.
Michelle was broadcasting the emergency call as she closed on the site. ‘Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. Tempest down, ten miles north-west of Appleby.’ Drew threw radio procedure out of the window and instead of his call sign, he just said, ‘Michelle, this is Drew. Can you hear me?’
‘Thank God you’re all right. We thought you were dead. What’s the situation down there?’
Drew tore his eyes away from the blood still seeping from Mike’s leg. ‘Trouble with the natives, but we’re doing all right. Mike’s in a bad way. He’s got a broken leg and he’s bleeding badly. I’m trying to staunch it, but he needs medical help soonest.’
‘We’ve called out Search and Rescue,’ Michelle said. ‘They should be with you inside half an hour.’
‘I don’t know if we can wait that long. He’s losing a lot of blood.’
Michelle glanced around. The helicopter was being buffeted by the turbulence from the hillsides. Her co-pilot, Sandy, read her thoughts and warned, ‘Go easy, Michelle. Wind speed’s increasing, we don’t want to get trapped in here.’
Her crewman, Paul, chimed in as well. ‘We’re low on fuel, Michelle – we’ve only fifteen minutes spare and the weather’s worsening. Leave it to the Search and Rescue.’
Drew gnawed on his lip as he waited for her reply, staring at Mike’s deathly white face.
‘Sod it,’ she said abruptly. ‘We can’t just leave them there. Okay, Drew, we’re coming in for you ourselves.’
‘The fuel, Michelle…’ her crewman said, but she silenced his protests.
‘Paul, we’ll make it.’
Relief flooded through Drew for a moment, but his apprehension grew again as he looked up and saw the wall of storm clouds advancing rapidly towards them.
Blown sideways by the wind and stung by flurries of driving rain, reducing visibility to a few hundred yards, Michelle battled to land the helicopter. The instant she touched down, Paul jumped out and sprinted over with a stretcher. They tried to move Mike gently onto it, but, as they lifted him off the ground, he screamed with pain and then lapsed into unconsciousness.
Inside two minutes, they were airborne again. Drew strapped himself into the tiny space that remained between the stretcher and the hard metal wall of the cab.
Michelle flicked over to the emergency channel. ‘Hello, London Centre, departing crash site. Two survivors on board, one critical injury. Can you call Newcastle General and tell them that we’re bringing them in? I know Carlisle’s closer, but there’s too much weather that way. We’re fuel critical as it is, without having to fight a head wind.’
She contacted Air Traffic Control demanding priority over all other traffic and they roared north-east, across the spine of the Pennines and down over the sprawling western suburbs of Newcastle. Paul and Drew tended Mike’s wounds as well as they could, muttering reassurances to him, though he gave no sign of hearing them. The pool of blood spread slowly wider around his shattered leg as they listened grim-faced and silent to the increasingly anxious fuel warnings.
As the hospital appeared ahead, they let out a yelp of relief. Michelle brought the Puma in to land on the helipad on the hospital roof and shut down the engines.
Even before the rotors had stopped moving, an emergency team lifted Mike out, connected a drip and wheeled him hurriedly away. The Perspex doors clattered shut behind them and Drew could hear the doctor shouting urgent instructions to his team.
‘Thanks, I’ll walk down.’ Drew tried to turn down the offer of a horizontal ride on another hospital trolley.
‘Just get on and lie down, sir, we give the orders here,’ the orderly said.
Drew shot him a look, but did as he was told. As the orderly got ready to wheel him away, Drew glanced up at Michelle. ‘Thanks, we owe you big time.’
‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘Unless you’ve got a few gallons of fuel handy. There’s no way in the world this thing is taking off again without some.’
‘I’m right out of avgas,’ he said, ‘but I’ll definitely buy you a drink. All of you,’ he added lamely, suddenly remembering Sandy and Paul.
He gazed back towards her until the plastic doors banged shut, hiding her Iro
m view.
Chapter Six
Drew woke the next morning to see a nurse beaming down at him. ‘Well, Mr Miller, it seems you’re a hero.’
She showed him a copy of The Sun. Splashed across the front page was the headline: JET HERO RISKS LIFE TO SAVE SCHOOL.
She began quoting from the story, pacing up and down at the foot of his bed. ‘Listen to this: “Eyewitnesses who saw the plane crash only yards from the village primary school reached the scene within seconds of the injured crew landing. Navigator Mike Hartley fought back the pain of a badly broken leg, as he told me: ‘If it wasn’t for the heroism of my pilot, Drew Miller, the jet would have crashed into the school.”’
‘What crap,’ Drew snorted, but the nurse kept reading.
‘“An inquiry is already under way and the black box has been recovered. Miller’s commanding officer at RAF Finnington, Wing Commander Bert Russell, added, ‘I cannot comment on any aspects of the incident except to say that we are proud of the actions of our aircrew in risking their own lives to ensure that the jet crashed away from the village. I would have expected as much from any of my men.”’
‘Russell wouldn’t know what to expect from his men.’
The nurse ignored him. ‘“But furious schoolteacher Andrew Morris, who witnessed the crash, said, “Despite this man’s alleged heroism, it does not alter my basic complaint. We have been warning of the danger of these low-flying jets for years. Will it take the deaths of our children to make the Air Force finally act?”’
The nurse offered him the paper, ‘Do you want it?’
‘Thanks,’ Drew said. ‘It’s a load of bollocks, but my granny will love it.’
When she had gone he lay back in bed, reading and rereading the story, secretly pleased that his name was in lights. He thought back to the crash once more. At least they found the black box, he thought to himself, so they’ll know it wasn’t my fault.
He looked up to see two men in RAF uniform approaching his bed. He recognised both of them and suppressed a smile. Flight Lieutenant John Millns was tall, long-faced and thin; Squadron Leader George Gordon was rotund, balding and even had a small black moustache. They looked like Laurel and Hardy.
‘Good morning, Flight Lieutenant Miller,’ Gordon said. ‘Don’t get too carried away with the newspaper reports.’
Drew stuffed the newspaper into the bedside table, then smiled at Millns. ‘Hello, John, I haven’t seen you for ages. How are you doing?’
‘I’m fine, Drew, but I’m afraid this isn’t a social visit.’
He looked pointedly at his companion. ‘This is Squadron Leader Gordon.’
‘I know. We met at Fairford three years ago,’ Drew said.
Gordon smiled perfunctorily. ‘So we did. So we did.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I have to tell you that we have been appointed as the Accident Investigators, so we are not here to discuss old times: we’re here to talk about what happened yesterday.’
‘It’s pretty obvious what happened,’ Drew said, ‘though I couldn’t identify a cause from the warning panel. There were just one hell of a lot of warning lights, followed immediately by a near total loss of control.’
‘That may be obvious to you, but it’s far from obvious to us,’ Gordon said. ‘We’ve already found the ADR – the media’s beloved black box – and had it deciphered.’
‘Good,’ Drew said, puzzled by Gordon’s attitude. ‘If you’ve got the ADR, you’ll know exactly what happened.’
‘Unfortunately we don’t, because all the signs are that the aircraft was completely serviceable until the point of impact. How do you explain that?’
Drew looked at him in disbelief. ‘What can I say, except that it’s not true? It obviously wasn’t completely serviceable, because it went out of control. I did everything I could to save that aircraft. I’ve been flying the same way for four years. Suddenly an aircraft goes out of control and hits the hillside, but that’s not my problem.’
Gordon stroked his moustache as Drew talked. ‘I think you’ll find that it is going to be your problem. According to the ADR, there was nothing wrong with that aircraft. We have to warn you that you are under investigation. We will need an immediate initial statement from you.’
‘I don’t believe this,’ Drew said. ‘Five minutes ago I was reading a paper telling me I’m a hero and now you’re telling me that I’m a villain.’
‘Not quite. I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation for the accident. Our job is to discover it… and we’ve always found it to be more effective to have accident investigation carried out by RAF personnel rather than the tabloid newspapers.’
He favoured Drew with a brief, thin-lipped smile. ‘Now, as I was saying, we need an initial statement from you, to form the basis of the forty-eight hour signal, which, as I’m sure you know, is the mandatory first step in the investigation. It’s just a straightforward factual statement: “This is what happened to the aircraft,” and so on.’
Drew fought to control his anger. He hated Gordon for his smug, patronising attitude and for apparently having already made up his mind. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I was flying along the Eden Valley—’
‘Just a minute,’ interrupted Gordon, ‘while John gets his tape recorder working. Right, away you go.’ His eyes were cold and unblinking.
‘I was flying along the Eden Valley, heading north-west towards Appleby, at thirty thousand feet and five hundred knots. I went into a spiralling descent and as I made a series of turns to engage the target the aircraft went out of control, heading towards buildings on the edge of a village. I got enough response from the controls to steer away from the buildings and, as I did so, Flight Lieutenant Hartley ejected us from the aircraft.’
‘Thank you, that will do for now.’ Gordon snapped his notebook shut and turned to leave.
‘Look,’ Drew said, ‘I just can’t understand what the problem is. I didn’t lose control, the jet did.’
Gordon paused and looked back at him. ‘Perhaps, perhaps… Good morning.’
Millns smiled sheepishly at Drew and followed his superior out of the room.
As soon as they had gone, the nurse came in again, holding the Daily Mirror. ‘You’re in this one as well.’
‘Bloody marvellous,’ Drew said. ‘I’m such a sodding great hero that I’m about to lose my job.’
He slumped back down in the bed, playing the events leading up to the accident over and over in his mind.
His reverie was interrupted by the consultant sweeping through on his morning rounds. ‘Good morning. Any problems?’
‘None that you can help me with.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ said the consultant, face already buried in Drew’s notes. ‘Well, we’ve had a look at the X-rays and you seem to be fine – no fractures, no cracks, no crushed vertebrae. You’re an old hand at this, aren’t you, so you’ll know that we would normally like to keep you immobile for a few days, just in case of any problems we might have missed. Your commander wants you back in a hurry, however, so you’ll be on your way home in the morning, but at the first warning sign of any discomfort or any back pain – beyond the bruising of course – get in touch with your medical officer immediately.’
‘What about my mate?’
‘Mr Hartley? He’s making good progress, but he obviously won’t be leaving with you tomorrow and he won’t be going flying again for several months… if indeed he ever does. He’s a very lucky man; he lost a lot of blood. A few more minutes and it might have been too late.’
‘Can I see him?’
‘Not today, I’m afraid. He’s still in a lot of pain and we’re keeping him sedated.’
* * *
Drew spent a miserable day and a sleepless night. He eventually fell asleep just before dawn and woke with a start a couple of hours later to see Michelle sitting beside the bed.
‘This is a much better dream than the one I’ve just been having,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘What are you doing here?’
�
��Your boss wanted Nick to come and pick you up, but he had to go to the dentist, so I volunteered.’
‘Do I look as rough as I feel?’
‘I’ve seen worse, but you might have to put a bag over your head if we see any of my friends as we’re driving home.’
‘Listen, Michelle, I just want to tell you that you did a hell of a job to get the helicopter down in that weather. You probably saved Mike’s life.’
Michelle held up a hand. ‘I don’t know about his life, but we probably saved his leg. But don’t go on about it, you’ll only embarrass both of us. You might get the chance to return the favour one day.’
‘I doubt it. Have you tried landing a Tempest in a field?’
She laughed. ‘My, you are feeling better aren’t you? Okay, I’m going to find a cup of coffee while you get dressed.’
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather stay and watch?’
‘No, it might be a disappointment for us both. Five minutes.’ She gave him another of her dazzling smiles and left the room.
Drew scrambled out of bed and started dragging a comb through his hair.
‘Hmm, not too disappointing after all.’ Michelle’s face was framed for a moment in the mirror on the wall. He heard her laughter as she walked away down the corridor.
* * *
Driving down the A1, Drew found himself gazing out at the speeding traffic as the crash kept preying on his mind. Then he remembered the way Michelle brought in the Puma. ‘So how did you learn to fly like that?’
She looked at him quizzically. ‘Why, haven’t you heard the crew-room version?’
‘Don’t be touchy, I’m only asking.’
‘Sorry. All right, as you’ve probably heard, my father is an air vice-marshal, in charge of the RAF logistics system and the Accident Investigation Bureau. I had the same kind of childhood as most servicemen’s kids.’
She glimpsed Drew’s private smile from the corner of her eye. ‘I know, I know. The rather privileged upbringing of a senior officer’s kid. But it wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be. We moved much more frequently than the standard three years. I hated always being the new girl in school, always the outsider. I didn’t really form any lasting friendships until I joined the Air Force myself.’
Point of Impact Page 9
