The Final Flight

by James Blatch

  “Forget it, Kilton. I know what Guiding Light does. What I need to know is, does it work?”

  Kilton glared at him. “It works.”

  “Outstanding.”

  RAF Air Vice Marshal Richard Mannington stood up and opened the curtains. Kilton winced as daylight flooded in.

  “Sunshine,” said Mannington, “to illuminate a moment of British engineering triumph.”

  Kilton turned to the general. “Guiding Light is working and it will change everything.”

  A broad grin spread across Leivers’s face. “Damn straight it will, Kilton.” The general leaned forward and banged the table. “Gentlemen, I have to tell you, we’ve carried out some theoretical simulations using the information you’ve provided about Guiding Light, and the results have been phenomenal. Phenomenal.”

  He took a deep breath, lowered his voice.

  “What I’m about to tell you will never leave this room. Understood?”

  The general’s eyes darted between Kilton, Mannington and the two other men sitting at the table. They each gave a nod of acknowledgement.

  “Terrain-following radar, the new technology we’re both rushing to fit to our new jets, is dead.”

  “Dead?” Mannington asked.

  “Dead, Dickie. The Russkies can detect it.”

  Kilton tried not to show his shock.

  “But we’re planning to fit TFR to everything,” Mannington said. “The laser… Guiding Light. It’s supposed to be a backup.”

  Leivers continued. “It just got promoted. Instead of helping our boys get in and out of the badlands, TFR will do the opposite. Every Russkie SAM from Berlin to Vladivostok will lock on and blow them out of the sky. They may as well be flying with floodlights and a big arrow that says SHOOT HERE. Damn shame.”

  Kilton inhaled. “Do the Russians know we know this?”

  Leivers smiled at him. “No, Kilton. They do not. And neither do they know about Guiding Light. Your silent laser solves a very big headache at just the right time. This goes all the way up the line. And I mean all the way. This is not about winning World War Three. It’s about preventing it. Once we have an unassailable advantage over the Reds, it’s game over for them.” He leaned back and spoke a little more slowly. “And that’s why I’ve got POTUS’s attention on this one.”

  Mannington turned a pencil over in his hands. “What’s Potus?”

  “POTUS is the President of the United States, Dickie.”

  Minister of State David Buttler cleared his throat. “General. The United Kingdom is not putting Guiding Light on a shelf for sale to all comers.”

  Leivers balked. “All comers? I thought we had a special relationship, Mr Buttler.”

  “Of course we have a special relationship, General. But we must remember that Guiding Light is a system that gives us all an advantage only so long as the enemy remains oblivious to its existence. At least until it’s fitted to the fleets.”

  “You don’t trust the US to keep a secret?”

  “Britain trusts America implicitly. It’s just that the chances of the secret getting out are simply higher the more people know about it. How many aircraft are you considering it for?”

  The general shrugged. “Two thousand to start with.”

  Ewan Stafford appeared nonchalant, but Kilton knew him of old and knew damn well the short, tubby managing director was doing cartwheels inside.

  “And what else?”

  “Excuse me?” said Leivers, tilting his head to one side.

  Buttler spoke with patient clarity. “The order for Guiding Light would be substantial, and I’m sure our colleague here from DF Blackton is doing his best not to burst into song. But we’d like to know that our most secret military breakthroughs can be shared both ways.”

  The general shrugged again. “Well, that’s a little beyond my powers, Minister.”

  “But not beyond the powers of POTUS, I assume?”

  “Well, no—”

  “And you have POTUS’s attention on this?”

  The general thought for a moment. “Yes, sir. I do. And I dare say there will be some good deals for both of us in the pipeline. But this is something to discuss when we’re ready to talk turkey. So far, we haven’t seen this thing working.”

  Kilton felt the eyes swing back to him.

  Stafford spoke up. “Perhaps Mark could give us all an update on the trial work his team have been carrying out for a while now. A very long while.”

  “As you’re aware, Mr Stafford, the Royal Air Force Test Flying Unit will be the sole and final arbiter of Guiding Light’s operational effectiveness. We have a detailed trial timetable and it is being executed even as we speak. The two working Guiding Light systems have been fitted to a Vulcan and a Canberra. The Vulcan is airborne at this moment with a TFU crew.” He glanced at his RAF issue pilot’s watch. “We’ve flown one hundred and ninety-four hours as of this morning.”

  “And no problems?” said Leivers.

  “No. We’re still a few weeks from sign-off. We did agree three hundred hours of intensive airborne time. You want to fit this to two thousand jets and we want to equip more or less our entire Bomber Command fleet. I think it’s in all our interests that it’s working as advertised.”

  “Fine,” said Stafford. “But I need not remind the room that the longer we wait, the more chance there is of a leak.”

  Kilton ignored him and turned to General Leivers. “You’re sitting in the United Kingdom’s most secure RAF station. As long as the project remains under wraps here, there is no scenario where it’s rendered ineffective. The Soviets will have no clue what it is or how to defend against it. And when it’s operational, and it will become operational soon, NATO jets will for the first time be able to operate deep into Russian territory without giving off any radar energy whatsoever. At low-level we will be invisible.”

  Leivers clapped his hands together and beamed. “That’s what we’re doing this for. Kilton, you deliver this system and it’s not just Mr Stafford’s accountant you’re gonna make happy. We are gonna be friends for a long time.”

  “Excellent, Mark,” said Buttler. “Very good work from TFU. This won’t be forgotten.”

  General Leivers’ hand appeared at Kilton’s shoulder. The man from Baton Rouge leaned in close and whispered loud enough for all to hear. “I’ve dedicated my life to defeating communism, boy. It’s a nasty, lethal plague and you, my friend, have its final demise in your hands. Don’t let me down.”

  Kilton nodded. “General Leivers, you have my word.”

  The meeting broke up. Kilton reminded the room that they allowed no papers relating to Guiding Light to leave West Porton. The men obliged by pooling their briefing notes into a single pile for him to deliver to TFU’s secure cabinets.

  Leivers looked suitably impressed with the emphasis on security. “You really do run a secret operation here, don’t you, Kilton?”

  The air vice marshal cut in before Kilton could answer. “You’d be forgiven for thinking there’s no station here at all. At Group we call West Porton RAF Hidden.”

  “Then I’d suggest we’re doing our job properly,” said Kilton.

  Leivers disappeared out of the room.

  Mannington turned to Kilton. “What’s that American expression you used once, Mark? Need to know. I suppose you think your superiors don’t need to know anything.”

  Kilton continued to shuffle the papers into a brown folder.

  “We do need to know something, Mark,” Mannington continued. “There is still a chain of command. Just keep that in mind, please.”

  He walked out of the room; Ewan Stafford followed close behind, offering a tip of his hat before he placed it on his head.

  The minister paused for a moment, allowing the others to move out of earshot.

  “That was impressive, Mark.”

  “I thought the same of you, sir. Quite the card player.”

  The minister smiled and clicked his briefcase shut.

  “You realis
e this project cannot fail. After the mess of TSR-2, we need this victory. Having to cancel a high profile fighter-bomber project was embarrassing to say the least. Guiding Light needs to be a success. As I said, it won’t go unrewarded. The PM’s always on the lookout for reliable men in the upper echelons of the military. You deliver Guiding Light, we authorise Blackton’s sale to the Americans. That’s an extremely welcome injection of cash just when we need it. A winning scenario for all of us.”

  Kilton looked out of the window where Mannington was helping Leivers into his staff car. Buttler followed his gaze.

  “And we’ll make sure the Americans know who it was who delivered this project. But Mark, if we have another debacle, particularly a leak from TFU, then it’s going to be very hard to justify the existence of this unit you’ve created. You’re already ruffling feathers with the RAF brass as it is.”

  “There will be no leak from here, but I don’t like information going up the line to Group.” He nodded toward the receding staff car outside. “I start to lose control of who knows what, and that’s when it can get leaky.”

  “I understand. So, how can I help?”

  Kilton looked at him. “Allow me to report direct to you, direct to the Air Ministry and cut out Group and the RAF Main Building.”

  “You realise what you’re asking? The men with gold braid on their shoulders won’t be happy.”

  Kilton thought for a moment and shrugged.

  Buttler smiled. “I can talk to the PM. I think he’ll see the benefit of such an arrangement. Between you and me, he believes most of the RAF now hate him for ending TSR-2.”

  “They do,” Kilton answered quickly. “But then they’re mostly old romantics who think we’re stuck in the 1940s. Some of us exist in the real world.”

  “They’re a powerful bunch, those old romantics as you call them. Your head’s above the parapet now Mark.” The minister walked to the door. “You’ll find your life was a lot less complex in 1940, shooting down the Luftwaffe and staying alive for another day. I’ll talk to the PM. I think we can probably agree you report direct to the Ministry for now. Keeping in tight in the name of secrecy. It would be a tragedy for all if this project failed before that deal was signed.”

  The minister’s heels made a clicking noise on the hard floor as he disappeared, leaving Kilton alone with a brown envelope filled with papers and stamped TOP SECRET.

  Millie reached forward and flipped a switch marked DATA PANEL ELEC. The orange numbers presented by the Guiding Light system went dark as the electrical supply was cut off.

  He tucked his flight case back under the navigator station and secured it with a bungee cord. Inside were the four reels of magnetic tape he had filled with height data, recording the flight at low-level. He thought four would be enough to cover the run, but he missed the last couple of minutes, which included the moment when the system went haywire.

  But it wouldn’t matter, since there were four men on board, and they could describe what happened accurately between them.

  The aircraft’s wings rolled and he felt the g-force increase, pressing him into his seat. But it was gentle; Rob was guiding the delta-winged jet smoothly onto finals for RAF West Porton. It was a flying style that matched his nature.

  A moment later, with a squeal of rubber beneath them, they were down.

  Once the aircraft came to a stop at the end of a brief taxi, Steve Bright was quickly out of his seat and opening the hatch. Millie stayed put, but watched as the nav extended the yellow ladder.

  It was a warm June day. Millie removed his helmet and oxygen mask, and ran a gloved hand through what was left of his sweaty grey hair, now matted to his head.

  Eventually, Brian Hill pulled aside the curtain, looking haggard. He nodded at Millie but said nothing as he descended the steps.

  Rob was behind him. Millie winced at the sight of his reddened face with pronounced stress lines, squashed into the helmet.

  He looked like a man in his forties, rather than a fresh faced twenty-nine-year-old.

  “You OK?”

  Rob looked serious. He nodded and continued down the ladder. Millie picked up his case and followed him out, feeling for the metal rungs below him. Everything seemed to take more time these days.

  He felt Rob’s hand on his back, giving him some help as he concentrated on jumping backwards the last couple of feet below the bottom rung. He landed and wobbled in his cumbersome flying boots, grateful for the support of his friend.

  “They didn’t make this thing with fifty-four-year-olds in mind,” he said, relieved to see Rob smile back at him.

  As they turned and walked toward the TFU hangar and offices, Millie instinctively rested a hand on Rob’s shoulder.

  “You did well. You saved us and the jet.”

  “I don’t know if I did do well, Millie. I was slow to react. You had to shout at me.” Rob paused and glanced back at the Vulcan: pristine white, hunched on its landing gear. “I nearly lost it.”

  “We’ve been told not to interfere unless absolutely necessary and we’ve logged, what, nearly two hundred hours? All your experience was working against you. But you got there.”

  Rob kept glancing back at the aircraft. “It can be overwhelming if I stop to think about it. The jets are large, new, colossally expensive. Three crew members I’m responsible for.”

  “It’s a lot for a youngster, isn’t it?” Millie smiled at him. “Look. You did well today. You acted in time, and frankly that’s all that matters. Think it through. If you feel you could have done better, work out why and learn. But it’s always going to feel messy when things go wrong, Rob. And boy did they go wrong.”

  “It did go wrong, didn’t it? What happened?”

  “The laser saw straight through the ground, or at least the computer misinterpreted the feed. Either way, it commanded the autopilot to descend as if we were nine hundred feet not three hundred.”

  “Can we ever trust it again?”

  Millie scoffed. “Not until what happened today is completely and utterly understood and the problem solved.”

  They carried on into TFU, where they drank tea and didn’t discuss the incident with anyone. That was the TFU way. Mark Kilton had made it clear that you only discussed projects with those who needed to know.

  But Millie could tell by their colleagues’ glances that they knew something was up.

  It was such an odd way of operating. In any normal squadron they would be sharing their tale, getting it off their chest, drawing comfort from the looks of horror and empathy from their friends.

  But not at Mark Kilton’s Test Flying Unit.

  After handing in their flying equipment and coveralls, Millie ushered the crew into a side office to debrief.

  Once the door was shut, Brian Hill led the questions, all aimed at Millie as the project leader and the man most familiar with the inner workings of Guiding Light.

  Millie looked at his hastily scrawled notes.

  “I happened to be rotating the selector, checking our general position. When I switched it back to number one position, it showed nine hundred odd feet below us.”

  “Nine hundred? Christ, Millie, we were still at three hundred,” Hill said. “So that’s why Guiding Light dived us toward the ground. It couldn’t see it.”

  Millie shook his head in bewilderment. “I suppose it was doing what we asked it to do. Fly us at three hundred feet. It was just trying to get us back down.”

  “It chose a perfect time to go blind,” said Brian Hill. “A state of the art, one hundred thousand-pound system descending a four engine Vulcan jet bomber with four people on board into the Welsh rock? Someone, somewhere better get the sack.”

  Millie took out the chart and with Steve Bright’s help, they did their best to draw the aircraft’s track along the valley, marking the spot with an X where it had all gone wrong.

  “And you definitely didn’t have a tape running?” Rob asked Millie.

  “No. I brought four tapes based on the low
-level run time and I’d just finished the last one.”

  “Damn shame,” Hill said. “The tapes record everything, don’t they?”

  “Erm, I think so,” said Millie. “I’ve never seen what they do or don’t record. They all go off to Cambridge for a mainframe computer to read. But it doesn’t matter, does it? If we’d been in a standard fit Vulcan and the autopilot had misbehaved, we’d report it just like this.” He motioned to the chart and notes on the table. “Just everyone write it down now while it’s fresh and I’ll speak with Kilton.”

  Hill laughed. “Good luck with that, old boy.”

  “He won’t have a choice, Brian. We have to shut it down.”

  “I agree, chap. But all the same, good luck.”

  Millie folded up the chart and gathered the notes.

  Hill stood up to his full six feet four inches and put his arms around Rob and Steve Bright.

  “You know what I need?”

  Rob tilted his head. “Does it have something to do with the mess bar?”

  “Exactly. Beer. I need beer and I need drinking companions. I’ve had enough of this malarkey for one day.” He led the two younger men out of the room.

  “I’ll secure the paperwork,” Millie said to the empty room.

  There was a short queue at the NAAFI shop as Millie picked up a packet of John Player No. 6. Five minutes later, he pushed open the door to the mess bar to discover the usual crowd of men, back in uniform but looking a little dishevelled from the day’s airborne activities.

  Beers in hand, cigarettes in mouth; tales of flying and smoke filled the air.

  Brian Hill, Steve Bright and another TFU pilot, Jock MacLeish, stood by one of the pillars in the middle of the room. Millie went to the bar first, where the white-coated steward was already pouring an Islay single malt scotch.

  “I’ve been here too long,” he said as he took the tumbler.

  When he arrived at the pillar, Hill was speaking, and he caught the tail-end.