Drew held up his hands. ‘I’m convinced. Have you heard about any similar incidents?’
‘Not really. There are always rumours, aren’t there, but nothing definite.’ He paused. ‘It’s not much to show for the journey from Finnington I’m afraid.’
‘It’s something,’ Drew said. ‘Thanks.’
* * *
He was just south of Manchester when he came to an abrupt decision. Instead of heading east – the direct route back towards Finnington – he took the M6 north, through the rusting cotton-belt towns of Lancashire and out into the cleaner air of the Cumbrian fells.
Night had already fallen when he turned off at a rundown, grey Victorian railway town, straddling the main line at the foot of the granite mass of Shap Fell. He stopped to study his map briefly and then drove on another dozen miles before turning off again onto a B road that climbed the shoulder of another fell. Scattered farms threw tiny pinpricks of light into the blackness of the night.
For eight miles he passed nothing but peat bog and wild moorland, the only sign of human occupation a few stretches of crumbling stone wall and a handful of ruined sheepfolds. Then the ground began to drop away and he found himself looking down into a narrow, steep-sided dale.
He halted to check his map once more, then drove on, swinging off the main road over an ancient, arched packhorse bridge and climbing steep twisting lanes. He almost missed the turn. He braked hard as he caught a glimpse of a familiar lichen-encrusted wooden sign. Two minutes later he was pulling to a halt in the yard of Crowgarth Farm.
A faint glow of yellow light came from the farmhouse. As Drew got out of the car, two dogs chained in the yard went into paroxysms of barking. He stepped around them, carefully gauging the length of the chains, and banged on the door. There was a long silence, save for the barking of the dogs. Then he heard footsteps and a woman’s voice bellow. ‘Jess, Floss, be quiet! Who is it?’
The barking dropped a few decibels, but Drew still had to shout to make himself heard. ‘My name’s Drew Miller. I’m one of the RAF men who was here after the aircraft crashed.’
There was the sound of several bolts being drawn and then the door opened a crack. ‘What do you want?’
‘Is your husband in Mrs, er…’
‘Alderson. No he’s not.’
‘When will he be back?’
‘When he’s had a bellyful of ale, I wouldn’t wonder. He’s playing dominoes at the Farmer’s Arms.’
‘Where’s that?’ Drew asked.
She clicked her tongue at the stupidity of offcomers. ‘It’s the only pub between here and Gunnerside.’
Before Drew could thank her, she had banged the door and begun slamming the bolts back into place. The dogs redoubled their barking as Drew ran for the car and drove off back down the hill.
He found the pub easily enough, a whitewashed, low stone building, set back from the edge of the road in the heart of the village. He pushed open the door and walked in. A row of flat-capped farmers in dun-coloured clothes were shoulder to shoulder at the bar. They swivelled to look at him as he came in, then swung back.
The hubbub of conversation faded and died as Drew walked towards them, feeling as welcome as a gunslinger entering the last chance saloon. The wall of farmers’ rumps showed no sign of parting. He caught a glimpse of the barmaid over one of their shoulders and ordered, then turned to scan the bar for his quarry.
He couldn’t see him at first and turned back as his drink was served. ‘Has Mr Alderson been in?’
A slow ripple of laughter spread away from him, washing along the bar and out to the tables clustered around the walls.
The barmaid gave him a pitying look. ‘This is Swaledale. Two-thirds of the people in here are called Alderson.’
‘Sorry, Mr Alderson from Crowgarth Farm.’
She pointed to a corner table. ‘He’s sitting there with his back to you.’
Drew pushed through the crowd. Alderson glanced up briefly, furrowed his brow, then nodded to himself with satisfaction. ‘You’re that RAF feller aren’t you? Never forget a face,’ he added to his approving circle of friends.
‘I wondered if I could have a quick word with you,’ Drew said.
‘Not now, lad, not now,’ Alderson said, gesturing to his dominoes. ‘When we’ve finished. Now then, whose drop is it?’
Drew leant against the wall and waited for over an hour as Alderson and his cronies played one interminable game of dominoes after another. A few other farmers stared at Drew with curiosity from time to time, but no one engaged him in conversation, and his own attempts to speak to them were answered with monosyllables or grunts.
Finally Alderson stood up and stretched. ‘Come to learn a bit more about yows?’ He winked at his mates. ‘That’s sheep to you townies.’
‘I came to ask you a bit more about the crash.’
‘Not that again,’ one of Alderson’s cronies said, grimacing. ‘He’s about bored the arse off me already with that.’
‘What do you want to know then?’ Alderson asked, looking meaningfully in the direction of the bar. Drew took the hint. ‘Pint?’ he asked.
‘Whisky,’ Alderson said, smiling to himself. ‘Large one. Famous Grouse,’ he added. ‘I drink no other.’
Drew was beginning to remember why he had disliked Alderson on first acquaintance, but smiled politely and bought him his drink.
‘Right,’ Alderson said. ‘Ask away.’
Drew looked around at the sea of expectant ruddy faces, all tuned in to his conversation. ‘Did you see an explosion or any smoke or flames before the crash?’
Alderson took an appreciative sip of his whisky, then put his head back and tipped the rest down in one. ‘No. I didn’t see any of that, just the plane flying along and then hitting the hillside.’
‘Did it seem to be under control right up to the point of impact?’
The farmer gave Drew the look of a teacher faced with a particularly backward child. ‘How would I know? I’m a farmer, not a bloody flyer. All I can tell you is it looked to me like one of those other sort of low-flyers we have on the moors here.’
He waited, watching Drew from under his bushy eyebrows.
‘You mean a plane?’
‘No, a bird. A game bird.’
‘A grouse?’
‘Thanks very much. I’ll have a large one,’ Alderson said, presenting his glass. There was a roar of laughter from the farmers.
Drew passed Alderson’s glass back across the bar.
‘Have you never seen a grouse in flight?’ Alderson asked, having sent the second whisky the way of the first. ‘Low-flyers we call them. That plane were just like a grouse on the twelfth of August. One minute it were skimming over the moor, following the slope of the ground, the next it just fell out of the sky, like a grouse that’d been shot. Not as good to eat though.’ He chuckled.
‘But it did definitely fall to the ground, rather than flying too close to it?’
‘That’s what I just said in’t it? It just dropped out of the sky…’
He reached over to the bar and picked up a half-eaten pork pie. Holding it out at arm’s length, he let it drop. It splattered on the flagstone floor.
‘Just like that,’ he said, kicking the mangled pie under a table.
‘Would you be willing to sign a statement to that effect?’
‘I might,’ Alderson said, looking once more at his empty glass.
‘A Commission of Inquiry would be cheaper than this,’ Drew said, but he passed the glass back over the bar.
‘So you’ll sign a statement?’ he persisted, as Alderson smacked his lips over his third large Scotch in five minutes.
‘I will if you like,’ Alderson said, ‘but I’ve already signed one for those investigators of yours. I told them the same thing as I’m telling you: it fell out of the sky like a sack of spuds. They asked me the same questions and I gave them the same answers, though I didn’t even get a drink out of them.’
He winked at Drew and
turned back to his mates. Drew could hear them laughing and slapping him on the back as he pushed his way out of the pub, into the cold wind keening down the valley from the moors.
He was scarcely aware of the road as he drove away down the dale, turning over and over in his mind what Alderson had just told him. If the jet really did fall out of the sky in the way the farmer had described, how could Power and the AIB be so confident that it was pilot error? If it wasn’t, what was going wrong with the aircraft? Drew now knew of four loss-of-control incidents involving the Tempest, two fatal, two near fatal. How many more were there?
Chapter Eight
Drew did not get home until well after midnight, but he was at the base by seven the next morning. He went straight to the crew room and told Nick what he had learned at Valley and in the Farmer’s Arms.
Nick waited until he had finished and then said quietly, ‘Don’t quote me on this – I’m already under suspicion of being a card-carrying communist just because I’m your mate – but there were also quite a few rumours about a Tempest from 71 Squadron that crashed in Alaska last year.’
Drew nodded. ‘The word on the grapevine at the time was that the guy had simply flown into the ground while trying to evade an F16.’
‘Maybe, but my mate Spud, who was on 71 Squadron at the time, said it didn’t add up.’
‘Did he see it himself?’
‘No, but he was out there with them and spoke to the pilot of the F16. They’d already broken off and were about to climb back to height when the Tempest flipped, hit the deck and exploded.’
‘So they weren’t even in combat when it happened?’
‘Not according to the guy driving the F16.’
‘Can we talk to Spud?’
‘Difficult – he went on an exchange tour to America last month.’
Drew stood in silence for a moment.
‘I was just thinking,’ Nick said, glancing round the deserted crew room. ‘If we were to have a snag with the jet at the north end of our operating area on the sortie this afternoon, the nearest diversion would be Leuchars. By an amazing coincidence that happens to be where 71 are based.’
‘Nick, I’m surprised at you,’ Drew said. ‘What could possibly go wrong with a Tempest?’
‘But purely hypothetically, just supposing it did,’ Nick said, ‘what do you suppose that snag might be?’
‘I suppose, purely hypothetically, it could be fumes in the cockpit. We’d have to get straight down on the tarmac. We wouldn’t want to be overcome by fumes, would we?’
‘We certainly wouldn’t, Drew.’
‘Are you sure about this? There’ll be some serious shit hitting the fan if we’re rumbled.’
‘With your recent track record who could possibly suspect us of anything so underhand?’
* * *
Ninety minutes later, as they were flying off the coast near Berwick, Drew began sniffing loudly.
‘I can smell burning oil, Nick.’
‘Me too,’ Nick said.
Drew turned the jet to the north and flicked the radio switch. ‘Pan. Pan. Pan. Tiger 2–1. Fumes in cockpit. Request immediate diversion to Leuchars.’ Descending towards Leuchars, Drew could see the massive road and rail bridges spanning the Forth and Edinburgh Castle jutting proudly above the city skyline to the south.
A pair of golfers on the links at St Andrews shaded their eyes and craned their necks to watch as the Tempest swept in over the sea. The sandy beaches slipped away under the left wing as Drew banked the jet for the final approach.
‘You should see it during the Open,’ Nick said. ‘You can’t get into Leuchars for all the jets lined up on the side of the runway. Every air marshal, vice-marshal and group captain who can swing it is there, strictly on Air Force business of course.’
The Tempest skimmed over the waves and Drew put it down onto the start of the runway, just thirty yards from the sea. The nose-wheel bounced and steadied and the puff of blue smoke from the tyres blew away in the slipstream. The plane juddered under reverse thrust as it slowed to taxiing speed.
A retinue of fire engines and ambulances had been scrambled to meet them. As they pulled to a halt, the engineers swarmed all over the aircraft, while the medical staff concentrated on them.
After twenty minutes of having their temperature and blood pressure taken, Nick led the way to 71 Squadron, showing Drew around Leuchars like a proud old boy on speech day.
They found half a dozen bored aircrew in the crew room. To Drew’s delight, Nick did not recognise a single one. Drew knew a couple of them from training courses and nodded a greeting.
‘Drew, what brings you here?’
‘Oh just the usual, Bob, an emergency.’
‘Serious?’
‘No, not really, just fumes in the cockpit.’
‘Had a curry last night?’
Drew grinned. ‘I can see why they put you on Quick Reaction Alert.’
‘Well that’s more than I can,’ the 71 pilot said miserably, gesturing to the bulky flying kit he was wearing. ‘It’s been like this for the past four weeks. The only time I take this off is to crap and sleep. I wouldn’t mind if there was some point to it all, but unless I’m missing a trick, I have the feeling that the threat from the East isn’t quite what it once was.’
‘But don’t relax your vigilance for an instant,’ Drew cautioned. ‘Down at Finnington we’re privy to some pretty high-grade intelligence reports and I happen to know for a fact that the Faroe Islands are assembling an invasion force even as we speak. And if your jets are in the same state as ours, that’s probably about all you’re equipped to repel.’
The pilot nodded. ‘Glad to know we’re not alone. You should know by now, the top priority for spares are the Tempests that are really vital to the UK’s air defences: the ones we’ve sold to assorted Middle East sheikdoms.’
‘And to think Nick calls me cynical,’ Drew said, laughing.
‘It’s true though, isn’t it?’
Drew nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s true all right.’ He hesitated, unsure of how to broach the subject. ‘Look, speaking of crap equipment, a couple of us on 21 have both had a problem with a Tempest recently, a sudden and total loss of control. The other guys managed to recover theirs, but I had to bang out of mine.’
There were no cynical comments this time from the 71 Squadron aircrew. ‘We haven’t heard anything official.’
‘I know, nothing shows up on the ADR either. They’re trying to blame pilot error.’
The pilot studied Drew’s face carefully. ‘Are you sure that’s not what it was?’
‘I’m sure. I wondered if there were any similarities with the Tempest crash in Alaska last year. What was the story on that?’
‘BA would be the one to tell you that.’ The pilot got to his feet and shouted down the corridor. A few minutes later, a tall, dark-haired man sauntered in, wearing a ripped U2 T-shirt.
‘Drew, this is BA,’ the pilot said. ‘It stands for Bad Attitude, by the way, not British Airways. He was flying the same sortie.’
‘Drew Miller, good to meet you,’ Drew said extending his hand.
BA gave Drew an appraising look. ‘BA Stokes, what can I tell you?’
‘What happened to the guy in Alaska last year?’
‘His name was Mike Hanson. He died,’ BA said shortly. ‘Why do you want to know? Idle curiosity or something more?’
‘Something more. I had to bang out of a Tempest over the Eden Valley recently, a mysterious fault that hasn’t shown up on the ADR. I admit I’m clutching at straws, but I hoped you might be able to tell me something about the Alaska incident that would shed a little light on mine.’
BA shrugged. ‘We were on a sortie protecting a package of RSIs, being tapped by two F16s from the Air National Guard. Mike was countering an attack from one of them. It had just begun to pull away from him when he suddenly inverted and flew into the ground.’
‘But according to the accident report it was pilot error,’ Nick said.
BA looked contemptuous. ‘Pilot error my arse. That’s what they called it, but that’s not what it looked like to me. I told them as much, but as usual they’re not interested in what a lowly flight lieutenant has to say, especially if it contradicts the words of wisdom handed down from the ivory towers.’
* * *
Drew and Nick walked back to their aircraft, pretending not to notice the suspicious glances from the chief engineer, a dour lowland Scot. ‘We’ve spent hours running these engines and I’m buggered if I can find anything wrong with them. Are you sure you didnae dream the whole thing?’
Drew gave him a smile as he signed the Form 700 to reassume control of the Tempest. ‘That’s fast jets for you. The only thing to do is go back up and wait for it to happen again.’
He bounded up the ladder into the cockpit.
* * *
‘The fumes-in-cockpit ploy worked pretty well,’ Drew said as soon as they were safely airborne. ‘We’ll have to use it again sometime.’
‘Drew, don’t forget the voice-tape,’ Nick said.
‘Why worry? They’re not allowed to pull it unless we crash. And if we do, we’ll probably be past caring.’
‘All right,’ Nick said. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you. So what do we do now? It seems to me we’ve got a lot of puzzling coincidences, a few suspicions and a bit of hearsay, but nothing that couldn’t be brushed off as paranoia by Power and his boys at the AIB.’
‘Yeah, you’re right. But the number of suspicious Tempest incidents is now up to five; I think it’s high time I found out exactly how many more there’ve been.’
‘How are you going to do that?’
‘I’m going to lean on a friend.’
‘Not me, I hope.’
Drew smiled. ‘No, not you. Surprising though it may seem, I do have others.’
* * *
He made a phone call as soon as they had landed back at Finnington. ‘Tom? That drink we talked about in Swaledale. How about it?’
‘You’ve left it a bit late, mate. I’m going home for the weekend and then I’m off on attachment to NATO in Brussels next week.’
Point of Impact Page 12
