Onward and Upward

by Tony Wilson



  Cover

  ~~~~

  Onward and Upward

  By

  Tony Wilson

  Copyright 2012 Tony Wilson

  Licence Notes

  The moral right of Tony Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  Discover other titles in this trilogy by Tony Wilson

  Road to Recovery (1st Novel)

  Above and Beyond (3rd Novel)

  ISBN: 978-1-62050-095-8

  Cover designed by Tony Wilson

  ~~~~

  Table of Contents

  (Click on any chapter heading to return to the Table of Contents)

  Cover

  Title Page

  Licence Notes

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  About the Author

  ~~~~

  Chapter 1

  How long does true love last? Well in my case it now seems to be for about six months. Following the tragic death of my lovely wife Sheila in a horrendous accident just over six years ago I became indecently rich, spent nine months in various hospitals and then almost two years getting my life back together, but as I was now the ninth richest person on the planet it wasn’t quite as simple as that. I inherited a dilapidated airfield (El Campo) just outside San Miguel del Mar on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, engaged multitudes of staff, from ex-SAS to protect me, to my best friend Paul, who fortunately was an architect, to turn el Campo into a place worthy of kings. As well as having assassination and kidnap attempts against me I was also learning to fly, and life was starting to get quite hectic for me so I decided to go on a Caribbean cruise, where I heard about the Lady S, my new yacht ‘to be’. She was not your run of the mill four berth ‘Tupperware’ yacht, but a Destroyer, almost complete with guns (but she still has a sting-er (or two) in her tail), and finally, almost a year after being first introduced to her, I was able to take her on a quick trip – around Africa. On the way, first we encountered pirates (and that is when I first came to the attention of the world’s press) and then, on the final leg, just after we had scooted (it’s a nautical term – honest) into Gibraltar, just ahead of the ‘storm of storms’, I got talked into taking a couple of Royal Navy Sea King helicopters back out into the raging mid-Atlantic to rescue the crew of a stricken Tanker, accompanied by a television news crew. That was when I met Sandra, their anchor ‘person’, and after a ‘very’ public introduction we became inseparable, and for the first five glorious months it seemed that we never dined at the same table twice, we were definitely the ‘in couple’. From one President in the White House to the other one in the Kremlin, from Father Christmas in Lapland to a group of very friendly kangaroos in the outback (but that’s another story), we were definitely the most ‘sort after’, ‘must have’ guests on the planet, any excuse, no matter how feeble seemed to inspire an invitation. I have a Dutch deckhand on the Lady S so that warranted a state banquet in Holland, and my Filipino 2nd Chef got us the best seats in the house for a firework display that must have increased the Country’s gross national debt by at least 50%, but fortunately things eventually started to slow down; at that pace I wouldn’t have lasted out the year. We had all the tee-shirts and videos that we could carry, and photographs by the thousand, taken with us next to just about every other person on the planet, but finally I started to sense that Sandra might just be starting to miss her former life. It was little things - like she never started to go very far without her passport – even to the loo, and every spare minute that we had ‘we just had to keep up to date with the News’, then it happened; the UK Parliament decided to cock-up yet another expenses exposé - big time. She went apoplectic; of course she had no intentions of leaving me - BUT if she was over there she could definitely have done a better job of ‘that’ interview than Adam, and she would definitely have worn a better outfit than Kay (meow), so finally we sat down to have a ‘little chat’, and ‘little’ it was, it lasted two minutes and ten seconds, and then she was on the last stage out of Dodge (in the guise of my ‘big boys toy’ Grumman G450). Of course we would stay in constant touch, which we did, every hour on the hour, until the G450’s wheels connected with dear old Blighty, and then it was two days, then a week, and then it was time for another ‘little chat’.

  ‘We would of course remain the best of friends (and possibly with benefits)’, after all Alice (my Daughter) and Algernon (her Son) were making plans for their wedding so we would meet up there (subject of course to the political situation) ‘and Mr Prime Minister when are you going to resign over this expenses debacle’.

  I realised of course that the last bit had not been directed at me when a very flustered PM tried to tell me all about his latest revamp of the new ‘Inner City transport policy’, then I heard a very unladylike ‘oh sh*t’ and the microphone, nee mobile phone went dead.

  Was I mortified over the loss of Sandra? Of course I was, well until I had poured three very hefty Bacardi and Diet Cokes down my throat, by the way do you know that there are no calories in alcoholic drinks if you mix them with a diet mixer, the same as there are no calories in chips (French fries for our Colonial Cousins) if they are taken from someone else’s plate, and there are definitely no calories in a bar of chocolate if you can eat it all in one go without closing your eyes - but I digress, as Caroline (my Director without portfolio, and the wife of my Security Director - David) poured me my fourth almost neat diet coke I started to see her point of view. After the tragic loss of Sheila I had started to enter a black hole, emotions wise, and needed something drastic to snap me out of it, and one of the many words that you can use to describe Sandra was drastic, along with devastating, and delightful, (but definitely not dainty) so, according to Caroline, she was the right woman for me, at the right time, to ‘snap me out of it’. Apparently now that I had ‘tested the water’ I was over the worst, and after shaking off a hangover that I was deservedly going to have in the morning ‘the world was going to be my oyster’, and thinking of all the subtle (and not so subtle) hints that I’d had over the past couple of years I fell asleep thinking ‘so many women – so little time’, but Caroline was wrong, which is almost unheard of - I didn’t have a hangover the next morning, in fact I awoke not thinking of hangovers, Sheila, Sandra or any other women, I awoke thinking of Hunters. I was remembering a conversation that I’d had with one of my peers a couple of months earlier, when we were looking over his airfield, when we were visiting on the other side of the pond.

  --- Those few months earlier---

  We had just done the obligatory tour of the White House that every visitor to Washington just had to do (except that our guide was the present incumbent), and all the other touristy bits and pieces in the area, and were starting to be in need of some serious R&R, so we willingly accepted an invitation to have a few days ‘down time’ with a new best buddy. My new BFF was a bit like me, a bit of cash to spare, liked flying, lived on an airfield, so he decided that what I needed was some serious
time with ‘boys toys’. Sandra was suitably distracted, and we disappeared off into a multitude of aircraft hangars. He started me off with really vintage aircraft, all string and canvas, not only looking at them - but flying them as well. Nope, they didn’t tickle my fancy, so we tried out some 2nd World War era aircraft, large and small; better, but still not quite there. Then it was an astronomical leap in technology, and I found myself strapped into a modern two seat fighter. I had once owned a house smaller than its engines, and we flitted around the skies with our backsides on fire, (in afterburners for the non-aeronautical) but still he could see that I wasn’t quite there, so after we came to a standstill outside yet another of his hangars he told me that ‘I would just love his Sabre’.

  No he hadn’t taken up fencing; it was apparently a very shiny North American F86 Sabre, which on entering the hangar I totally ignored. Beside it was the most beautiful aircraft that I had ever clapped eyes on, and my ‘gooses’ started ‘bumping’ big time. I reverently approached this work of art, that must surely have been forged in Gods own workshop, and ran my fingertips tenderly along the leading edge of one of its sleek wings. I slowly made my way towards the cockpit and gently, so as not to disturb this sleeping beauty, climbed the ladder to peer into its fifties style interior, and it looked just about my size. My new best friend, who had been busy talking to himself for the past few minutes, saw the look on my face and told me to ‘try it on for size’, so I did - and it fitted absolutely perfectly. Eventually he cajoled me out of the cockpit and we slowly walked around to the rear of the aircraft, which was where I spotted something that was not quite right, ROYAL NAVY was blazoned down its side, and below its rear fuselage was a deck hook. I was almost 100% positive that the Fleet Air Arm had never operated Hawker Hunters from its aircraft carriers. Apparently I was right and wrong, they, the FAA had operated the beautiful Hunter in two forms, as the single seat GA11 ground attack fighter, and the two seat T8. Both variants had been uses solely by second line squadrons, never embarking on board an aircraft carrier, but they did sterling work in the background. Pilots honed their skills in dog fighting and ground attack in this versatile little aircraft, before they went on to the heavier and more complex Scimitars and Sea Vixens, and the two seaters were used for conversion training. Several of the T8’s were even modified to train up Buccaneer and Harrier Pilots and Observers on various pieces of new technology before they were let loose on the real thing.

  ‘But what about the deck hook?’ I asked, ‘isn’t that a bit of wasted hardware?’

  Apparently not, as operational fixed wing naval aircraft of old came fitted with deck hooks, Royal Naval Air Stations (airfields) had arrester wires at the end of their runways to stop any aircraft that suffered from a brake failure on touch down, from trundling off the end, as opposed to the Royal Air Force’s system of nets. ‘Catching the wire’ caused no damage to the aircraft so it was easier to fit the GA11’s and T8’s with hooks, rather than equip all their runways with nets ‘just in case’ of a brake failure. History lesson over I died and went to heaven, well almost, I went for a trip in his T7 (the RAF version), and although it was only a two seater, it still got my juices flowing.

  Later on that evening, as I was looking out over the airfield, re-living those memories, second by glorious second, Sandra came over and cuddled up beside me, and seductively asked me what I was thinking about. Instead of doing what any red blooded Englishman would have done and lied, ‘thinking of page 27 of the Kama Sutra my darling’, or ‘just remembering that vision of loveliness as you stepped out of the shower’, I told her the truth, about that lonely little Hawker Hunter sat in its darkened hangar. I think that was the beginning of the end. She flounced off, but before I could chase after her to grovel her forgiveness, mien host, and two former US Presidents collared me, the subject ‘what was I going to spend my money on?’ They of course had ‘hidden agendas’, but I naively explained that I was spending it quite well ‘thank you very much’ on El Campo, Lady S, various properties around the globe, and my efforts at reducing my carbon footprint.

  ‘Yes’ they agreed, but apparently I was only spending it on ‘living expenses’ plus a ‘small’ guilt trip, I wasn’t really doing ‘anything’ with it. That got me, I thought I was doing it spectacularly well, but apparently no, I was not, I wasn’t sponsoring museums, or football teams, or sporting events, or ….., but they of course had a couple of ideas for me - or rather my wallet. I looked over at the opulent dining table and thought, ‘no such thing as a free lunch, even over here’ then chuckled to myself, changed the subject (back to the Hunter) and after boring them for an acceptable period of time, I went off to make it up with Sandra.

  ---back to reality---

  That next morning, as I lay in bed with a surprisingly clear head, my thoughts were back with that lonely little Hunter, and they just wouldn’t go away. In desperation I clambered out of bed and stood under a cold shower for a good ten minutes, dried myself in my new-fangled towel-less drying machine (weird - not like the real thing) but found that I was still thinking of that beautiful little aircraft. In desperation I strode out onto my own personal patio (that fortunately wasn’t overlooked by anyone as I was starker’s) and watched a gaggle of birds swooping around in front of me – don’t they just look like Hawker Hunters? Usually, when I find myself in a situation like this, I eventually accept that my sub-conscious is trying to tell me something, so I made myself a hot ‘Leche de Almendra’ (Almond milk drink), which I had gotten a liking for when the hospital had started weaning me onto more conventional foods, sat down in front of my little black box, and Googled ‘Hawker Hunter’, just on the off chance that there might be something of interest to browse through. In seconds I was close to TMI (too much information), there were pages upon pages of it, and the most prevalent statement re-occurring was ‘the most beautiful jet aircraft ever to leave the ground’; perhaps I wasn’t alone in my thoughts. As I surfed the net, I was amazed at the information I could glean on this beautiful little fighter, its pedigree, development, and more importantly, just how many of them were still, or close to being airworthy, and then I made the fatal mistake - I Wikipedia’ed. Page one, photo two, sixteen black Hunters in a perfect diamond formation. I quickly copied the photo, pasted it into Photoshop, played around with it for a while, and then printed off an A4 photo of sixteen British Racing Green Hunters, which was the colour that I had finally settled on for the Lady S.

  I realised that I had been browsing for more than three hours when my stomach started to grumble, so clutching the photo I decided to catch an informal lunch in the greenhouse – the staff canteen, cafeteria, or restaurant, depending on their pay grade (same food, same seats, different title, that was all). I could of course eat in my bed-sit, I once called it that within Pauls hearing and he’d had a purple fit on the spot. ‘With all his time (and my money) that he had spent on my rooms they were my ‘suite’, ‘quarters’, even ‘my sleeping area’, they were DEFINITELY NOT A BED-SIT – END OF STORY’. I could also eat in my private dining room, my family dining room, or my larger formal dining room. I could eat at the ‘nineteenth hole’ club house, on my very own golf course, and even eat at the bar in the middle of my swimming pool, and I had innumerable number of patios and BBQ areas to choose from, but my favouritest (one of Alice’s favouritest words) place to masticate was in the greenhouse. If I felt a bit lazy, or wasn’t in a chatty frame of mind I would go up to the mezzanine dining area, along with my senior staff, to be waited on and ‘people watch’, but normally I would just ‘queue jump’ at the cafeteria, pick out a starter, and then take it to a table that was already occupied; I just loved chatting informally to my staff. Apparently it was a bit nerve-racking for the new comers but I learned all about their jobs around El Campo, their families and their aspirations, and I think it also kept me in touch with reality. So far no one had abused the situation and bent my ear, but I daresay it was bound to happen one day.

  I was just about to step i
nto the glass bubble that served as my personal lift when I felt a breeze around my nether regions; oops I was still starker’s, so another quick shower (with real fluffy towels this time), put on some clothes, and a phone call later I walked quickly through my lift, and out onto the walkway around the atrium. After watching Caroline and Cindy lazily swimming up to the mushroom fountain and settling themselves down for a mummy/daughter cuddle (ahhh!) I walked around the glass walkway to the ‘senior staff quarters’. At this moment there was only one full time resident in one of the suites, it was Marcel, my Chef. He had never taken me up on my offer of living ‘off camp’, in either a rather nice villa, or a luxury apartment, as befitted his station; he just didn’t want to be too far away from his beloved new kitchen. The end of the corridor led out onto the mezzanine dining area, where I hoped to find two people in particular, and my timing was perfect, which was not surprising as I had just accessed Teddy’s diary (he is my flying instructor) on my ‘all seeing’ black box, and I knew that he was always punctual, especially where his wife was concerned; ‘he was definitely late at his peril, for lunch with Beryl’, and Inma was just taking their orders as I arrived.

  ‘Hi Boss, care to join us’, Teddy chirped.

  ‘It is ‘Mr Michaels’ to you Edward, and yes would you please care to join us Mr Michaels’.

  I hadn’t realised that they were coming apart, but I sat down anyway, feigning surprise at finding them there. Inma took my order; I was feeling adventurous so I went for a Spanish tuna salad starter, followed by an egg, bacon & chips combo. Marcel would of course hit the roof again, after all he, the finest Chef in Spain (he’s very self-disparaging), who had the finest staff in Europe, creating gastronomic delicacies in the finest kitchen in the World, just to solely cater for the finest Patron (Boss in French) in the galaxy, and all he ever seemed to want was egg and chips, and the moron (French for moron) didn’t even have the courtesy to call them French fries.

  As we slowly sipped our wine and/or zero alcohol beer and waited for our starters to arrive I casually mentioned to Beryl that I had heard on the grapevine that she had been moaning to all and sundry about the crap organisation in my household, and that she thought she could do a better job herself, with one hand tied behind her back. The actual statement had been that she thought that the floral arrangements on the tables were very nice, but she felt that she could have done just a teensy bit better.

  Teddy choked on his beer, and Beryl went an awful shade of white (I must stop starting conversations like this, someday someone might take me seriously) then I went on to explain, I had a vacancy for a Senior Manager in charge of table decorations; and all things horticultural, did she want the job? She could have a staff, designer greenhouses (the type that grew food, not served it) and a ‘large’ small holding to enable her to grow fresh food and flowers for the house. Why on earth was I bothering about potatoes and pansies when I had Hawker Hunters to think about? - I needed Teddy full time. Recently he had hinted, in our little chats as we careened around the skies in various aeroplanes that Beryl was starting to comment on how quiet the villa was without him, which was a subtle way of saying that she was getting bored, and that she was missing the kitchen garden at their cottage in the Cotswolds. In other words ‘spend more time with me or we are back off to England, and so no more flying in the sunshine, for you, sunshine’, so he had cut down on his flying hours, minusculey, and tried to involve her more in El Campo life, i.e. lunch in my greenhouse, but his plan didn’t seem to be working very well, hence my dastardly plan that I had hastily concocted half an hour ago over a conference call with Maria (P.A.) and Eddy (ex-Clerk of Works), who was now firmly ensconced in his new position as Estate Manager. If I could just get Beryl on board then Teddy would be a pushover, and by the end of our starters Teddy was on his third zero alcohol beer and Beryl was asking where ‘her’ greenhouses would be situated, and if she could employ their neighbours José and Luisa.

  ‘VICTORY’ I thought, and then she twigged, ‘what’s the catch?’

  ‘I want Teddy to become my full time Director of Aviation.’

  ‘Oh you can have him’ she said ‘I was only getting a little bored, now that I have something to do, you can do what you like with him - when can I start?’

  ‘Can you wait until we have had dessert?’ I asked.

  Teddy was just starting his second alcohol laden Guinness and third ‘mind blowing’ dessert when it finally sank in. ‘You only have two corporate jets and half a dozen light aircraft’ he reminded me, ‘that hardly warrants a full time Director of Aviation’.

  ‘You are forgetting about my squadron of fighters’ I politely reminded him.

  ‘WHAT BLOODY SQUADRON OF FIGHTERS’ he spluttered, had I finally gone around the bend.

  ‘These’ I said, and turned over the photograph.

  ‘SH*T’ he said.

  ‘Language Edward - not in front of Andrew’.

  At last, someone else that will be calling me by my Christian name.

  Among his many postings in the Royal Air Force, Group Captain Edward (Teddy) Heslop had had a stint with the famous Red Arrows Aerobatic Display team. He started as an ordinary team member then proceeding quickly on to flight commander and singleton (solo display specialist), and then finally going on to lead the team for two seasons, before a promotion meant that he had to leave them temporarily. Three years later he was back with them as the Team Manager, so if anybody was going to get me an aerobatic display team it was Group Captain ‘Teddy’ Heslop (retired).

  Think about it, it’s really very easy, I say ‘get me a display team please Teddy’, and he says ‘OK, here it is’ - I think not, so we went into his new office, in my vast emporium I had a couple or three offices going free, and we didn’t see the light of day for about two weeks. Where the Hawker Hunter is concerned you really are spoilt for choice, so it was decisions, decisions, decisions, and what we finally settled on was that, subject to availability, the basic team would be made up of sixteen aircraft, twelve of them mark F6 single seater fighters (or GA11/ export equivalents) and four two seater T7’s or T8’s, with, if we could get them, one of each as spares.

  Early on in our deliberations we contacted ‘Hawker Hunter Repair Ltd’ (HHR) who sent a couple of their design team hot foot over to assist us, and quickly we all agreed that the basic F6 airframe and the Rolls Royce Avon engine were outstanding, so no major changes there, but the radios, instruments, and various 1950’s era electrics were definitely passing their sell by dates, so would inevitably be letting me down on a fairly regular basis. This led to our (my) first major decision: - inside the cockpit the flight, engine, flap, and undercarriage controls would all remain original (the bits down the sides), but the instrument panel (the bit in front) would be turned into glass. All the cluttered fifties style dials and switches would be removed (and safely stored for refitting if a future operator was a purist) and a modern day so called ‘glass cockpit’ would be retrofitted in its place. My pilots would have the best visual displays, the most up-to-date navigational instruments and the latest communications equipment, and it would also ‘standardise’ all the cockpits, ensuring that every aircraft was identical. Any pilot would be able to fly any aircraft without wondering where the ‘watzit’ switch was. Purists may scream blue murder but I had an obligation to provide the best possible working environment for my pilots. One of the few down sides to the Hunter as a fighter had been its limited range, so an absolute must for all my aircraft were ‘Mod.228 wet wings’ with its distinctive leading edge ‘dog-tooth’, as all my aircraft must be able to carry a full internal fuel load, plus four drop tanks when transiting, for example from El Campo to the UK. I didn’t want them having to stop at every motorway services for a quick top-up.

  HHR Ltd readily agreed to strip all the aircraft that I could obtain down to their component parts, have them refurbished, fit the all-moving tailplane that had been fitted to the later aircraft (if it wasn’t already fitted), install the new in
strument panels (and get it certified), have each aircraft resprayed inside and out and presented back to me in a guaranteed better than brand new condition, for a better than brand new price. HHR Ltd had just started making skilled fitters redundant due to the recession, now they could reverse the trend and perhaps see it out with my order, and I was definitely about to start spending some serious money, well at least Kermitt would be happy.

  Where do you find sixteen assorted Hawker Hunter Mark 6, 7 and 8’s, certainly not at your local second hand aircraft shop, well that was not quite true. In between major policy decisions I had a specialist team set up to start scouring the world for suitable aircraft, and within days they picked up three that were up for sale, and the world’s financial crisis was yet again working in my favour. Luxury toys were now becoming an unnecessary drain on capital expenditure, or some such boring thing, so along came a few more, and then there were the gifted amateurs who had sunk all their savings into a couple of surplus aircraft and set up small display teams on a shoestring, hoping for big bucks from the display circuit. Wrong, even the big display organisers were feeling the pinch so were cutting back, and even the one off ‘birthday treat’ trips had all but dried up, so after making a couple of these teams ‘offers that they couldn’t refuse’ I looked out of my bedroom window on day ten of the ‘hunt for Hunters’ at four single and two two-seat garishly painted aircraft parked in my front garden, the bit that was pretended it was an airfield, but then the flood turned to a trickle, and finally it looked as though we would fall short of our target, until a bright young thing on the hunting team came up with a brilliant idea. They (the hunting team) had all, almost overnight, become experts on the Hawker Hunter and all its variants, but not all the available aircraft that they had scrutinized had met with my strict criteria, but they still knew where they were, and Air museums around the world had an amount of almost flyable and non-flying (but still in reasonably good condition) F6’s, but were reluctant to let them go, unless it was for silly money, so how about some wheeling and dealing, so an air museum in Australia accepted an airworthy ‘low mileage F4’ as a straight swop for its static display ‘passed its sell by date’ F6, and so it went on, and in just over three weeks I had my aircraft, including the two spares, on paper anyway. Now all I needed to do was get them to Dorset - enter the Lawyers.

  That was the easy part out of the way, but early on I realised that obtaining the aircraft was only going to be the first of many steps. To operate the aircraft efficiently I would need a ready supply of spares, handling and specialist support equipment, maintenance crews, and pilots, then three seemingly insurmountable problems reared their ugly heads, drop tanks, starter cartridges and brake pads. With sixteen aircraft needing four drop tanks each, that meant that I needed a staggering sixty-four individual drop tanks at least, and we had less than half that number coming with the aircraft. Brake pads for the Hunter were as scarce as rocking horse doo doo (according to Teddy), but starter cartridges suddenly became less of a problem when one of the designers remembered that there was a modification that could be carried out on the Avon engine that enabled an electric starter to be fitted. As I was having a modern heavy duty battery fitted in all my aircraft, it would take the strain off everyday routine starts, and we could save the doo doo cartridges for air show mass start-ups, but that was tomorrow’s problem; there were six Hunters parked in my garden, and it was party time.