The Final Flight

by James Blatch

  “Of course.”

  “What we need,” Millie continued, “is to ensure we get as much data onto the tapes as possible.” Rob looked confused. “I want to maximise our flight times. And bring some good old TFU independence to the project. Test crews putting Guiding Light through its paces without fear or favour.”

  “Right,” said Rob slowly, “that’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, Rob. I’m not sure the project is being examined completely without fear or favour, but we’re the men with our hands on the equipment. And we should not be afraid of doing what’s necessary.”

  Rob furrowed his brow. “I don’t know about this, Millie. It sounds like you’re trying to work outside of the parameters of the project.”

  “If that’s what it takes to do our job properly, should we not adapt?”

  Rob put his glass down and shook his head. “Adaptation’s one thing, but it sounds to me like you’re thinking of something completely different. Working behind the boss’s back? I’m sorry, I really think it’s best to leave it be. I certainly can’t be a part of it. What would Kilton do if he found out? Seriously, Millie. He can be vindictive!”

  “Which is why we need to put him aside, Rob, and work without fear or favour. If that’s what we need to do to save lives. And I believe it is.”

  “You should stop saying ‘we’, Millie. This is your idea, not mine. Look, I know you’re getting cynical in your old age, but I still believe in the system. And that’s how it should be. It will fall apart if we go off on our own tangents. Really, you should take it from me. Whatever you’re thinking of, it’s a terrible idea.” Rob sat up and leaned toward Millie. “Why mess everything up over a whim? You’re months away from your cottage by the sea. Seriously, Millie, what are you thinking?”

  “I’m not thinking about me, Rob. It’s not me losing anything that worries me. It’s the crews. Other men like us, who follow us. Our duty is to them.”

  Rob stood up, drained his whisky and ginger. “Thank you for the drink, Millie.” He started to walk toward the side gate.

  “Rob, please sit down.”

  “I think not. I’m actually scared you might tell me something I’ll regret. Sorry Millie, it’s a no-go. Time to let it go. Leave the politics to Kilton. It’s for the best.”

  “Whose best, Rob?”

  His friend stood for a moment, looking unsure of himself, before disappearing down the side of the house.

  Millie stewed in his own thoughts for five minutes. Georgina appeared from the house with a whisky bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

  “You look like a tramp on a night out,” Millie observed.

  She laughed. “Thanks. Rob gone?”

  “Yes.”

  She sat down next to him.

  “Everything alright between you two?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “If it’s work stuff, I know you can’t talk about it, but… Maybe Rob’s changing. He’s not the green-around-the-gills pilot you took under your wing anymore.” She leant in toward him. “Is it time to let him fly the nest?”

  “Can I have some more whisky?”

  She passed the bottle over.

  He poured an inch more scotch. “You might be right, dear, but it’s bloody inconvenient timing.”

  “Why?”

  “I really wanted his help, but he’s not playing ball.”

  “There are other pilots at TFU. I’m sure someone will help you?”

  Millie sipped the whisky, again enjoying the dulling of the senses that came with alcohol. “Not for this particular task. I need a close friend.”

  Georgina narrowed her eyes. “Mr Millington, you’re not getting yourself into trouble, are you?”

  “Absolutely I am.” He laughed.

  She shook her head. “I’m serious, Millie. We have weeks left. Don’t do anything stupid. Especially don’t cheese off Mark Kilton. You know what that man’s like.”

  “I have to do this.”

  “Jesus, Millie, it sounds ominous.”

  He smiled and patted her thigh. “Absolutely nothing to worry about. Really. It’s just boring old work stuff.”

  Later that evening, Millie sat at the bureau in the lounge and doodled some figures. He wanted to calculate how many height readings he’d end up with after recording one hundred reels.

  From his memory, he understood the tapes recorded three moments in time every second, so just one twenty-minute tape would produce more than three thousand five hundred lines of records. More than a quarter of a million lines over one hundred tapes.

  He stared at the result. It would take forever to look through them all. Even if he could get the numbers off the tapes.

  Georgina appeared over his shoulder.

  “I assume that’s not our savings?”

  Millie laughed. “Sorry, no. Work. Just lots of numbers.”

  “Oh, count me out. I don’t do maths. Your son inherited that talent from you.” She slumped down on the sofa and opened a copy of Woman magazine. Millie studied the front cover: a model with a brown bob of hair which, according to the headline, was a ‘go anywhere hairstyle’.

  Georgina’s eyes appeared over the magazine. “Maybe Charlie could help with his bombe?”

  “Bomb? Whatever are you talking about?”

  She laughed. “Don’t you remember at Christmas? We found it hilarious that he was going on about the bombe they used for calculations?”

  “Oh, yes. A bombe. With an e. He told us it came from a wartime deciphering operation, didn’t he?”

  “God knows. Something like that.”

  A bombe. Millie turned the unusual word over in his mind. He imagined a large mechanical machine with rotating dials, tearing through calculations faster than a human could read them.

  “I can’t talk to Charlie about this.”

  He looked back at the figure. This felt like an insurmountable problem. What was the point of gathering data he couldn’t read?

  4

  Friday 10th June

  Susie Attenborough sat naked in a tent. Legs crossed, in her unzipped sleeping bag.

  She stretched before fumbling through a pile of clothes to find her wristwatch.

  5.45AM.

  The sun had been up for forty minutes; the thin canvas did little to keep the light out.

  She wound the watch for a new day. Outside in the nearby hedgerow and copse, the dawn chorus was underway. She savoured the gentle birdsong, knowing it would soon be replaced by howling jet engines.

  Susie yawned, climbed over the detritus of her clothes out into the daylight.

  Her bare feet felt cold on the dewy grass. Rabbits hopped around the taxiway on the other side of the high security fence, their lower portions disappearing into a sliver of mist.

  The peace camp was still. Her eyes swept over the other tents, scattered around the central wigwam. Silently she counted them, checking for new arrivals, until she caught site of a man: tall with a beard, bare chested in cut-off shorts. He smiled back at her.

  Susie recognised him from an introduction when she’d first arrived. David?

  As it wasn’t normal behaviour to stand around stark naked in the UK countryside, even at a peace commune, she put one arm over her breasts and the other between her legs and awkwardly backed into the tent.

  She took her time in pulling on her clothes: a short skirt and a white blouse.

  When she re-emerged, David was gone, but a few more campaigners had emerged from their burrows. She exchanged smiles before heads turned at the sound of a deep rumble reverberating from the airfield.

  She checked her watch; barely 6AM.

  She wandered over to the fence and looked toward the three large green hangars at the other end of the runway. A few aircraft were out already and one, with propellers turning, was the source of the noise.

  A movement caught her eye: a Land Rover with a canvas hood over its back, speeding around the peritrack, heading their way. She stoo
d her ground as the vehicle passed her, just a few feet the other side of the wire.

  The driver and passenger glanced in her direction. She noted the green lining on their caps but couldn’t place the uniform.

  Since her arrival, all the talk had been about when they would come for them, armed with an eviction notice.

  So far they’d been left alone.

  She knew that would change once the direct action began.

  Millie arrived at TFU with a plan. A vague, not-thought-through plan. But at least it was a plan.

  The map tables were empty as the pilots and some navs were at the morning weather brief.

  He walked over to the admin office and ensured the Vulcan they were allocated was not needed too soon after they were due to return.

  Rob appeared along with other aircrew as the met brief broke up.

  Millie fixed an amiable look on his face. Rob looked nervous, but he greeted him loudly and asked if he wanted a tea.

  He accepted the offer and his face brightened. They moved to the tea bar together and Millie kept up the conviviality, chatting about the cricket.

  “Sobers was magnificent at Lord’s apparently. One hundred and sixty-three not out.”

  Rob looked a little uncertain, as if he wasn’t sure what was going on. But he joined in.

  “It’ll be hard for us to win the match from here.”

  “Indeed,” said Millie. He paused and put a hand on Rob’s back. “It’s better to be on good terms, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  Speedy Johnson announced himself in the room and Millie took them over to a planning table. He spread out a chart that covered most of Northern England with the dramatic brown relief of the Lake District prominent in the top-left corner.

  He pointed at the middle of the hills. “The Lakes. We need some big dips below us.”

  Speedy peered at where Millie’s finger had landed.

  “Wales has dips, famous for it. And it’s a lot closer.”

  Millie nodded. “It does, but we need to cover as much different terrain as possible. We’ve done Wales a lot recently. Time for a change of scenery.”

  Speedy shrugged. “All good with me. It’ll give Brighty something new to plan.”

  Rob kept quiet.

  The group broke up and Millie found Steve Bright to brief him before moving to the admin office. While the flight lieutenant stood over him, he withdrew eight blank tapes from the secure cabinet, placing the cardboard sleeves into his flight case.

  An hour later, Millie stood on the edge of the TFU apron in his flying coveralls, helmet on, his oxygen mask hanging loosely by his chin.

  He realised he was pacing and made an effort to keep his feet planted, concentrating on the ballet of manoeuvring aircraft in front of him.

  A roar caught his attention and he watched an English Electric Lightning thunder along the runway. Its silver wings glinted in the sunshine as the pilot pulled it into a vertical climb and rolled around three hundred and sixty degrees. He smiled as the aircraft became a small silver dart and disappeared into a layer of cloud.

  A moment later, Steve, Speedy and Rob appeared by his side and they walked toward the white, delta-winged Vulcan. Speedy climbed in while Rob set off around the aircraft, peering into the undercarriage recesses and checking various nooks and crannies.

  Millie followed Steve Bright into the rear bay and settled in.

  After agreeing that Bright would carry out the post hatch checks, he strapped himself in and set about organising the tapes.

  He removed one from its sleeve and pre-loaded it, glancing across at the navigator as he did so. It wasn’t so unusual, but ordinarily he loaded the reels only when needed during the flight.

  Steve Bright was busy with his own preparation; a longer trip to a less visited part of the country for the young navigator.

  Rob’s head appeared in the hatchway.

  “Ready to go?”

  “Yep!” the navigator replied.

  Rob climbed the next few steps into the cockpit and Bright checked the hatch was closed and latched.

  They brought the Vulcan to life. The pilots weren’t on the intercom yet, but he could hear them proceeding through the various checklists.

  Ticking sounds and various mechanical whirrings preceded the familiar spooling up of the engines.

  A few minutes later, they bounced along the runway before the aircraft pitched up and Millie and Bright were pressed forward against their straps.

  Millie moved a hand forward and flipped the master switch on the Guiding Light panel.

  It was unusual to power the system up so early. He knew the smaller repeater panels in the cockpit would also come to life; he could only hope neither Speedy or Rob would pay any attention to them at this stage in the flight.

  He started the tape running.

  After twenty minutes, an orange indicator blinked out and it was time to switch to a fresh tape.

  Millie opened the metal flap over the reels; his hand was trembling.

  He removed the full take-up reel, then switched the empty reel onto the take-up spindle. He reached down and retrieved a new blank reel from his flight bag.

  In his peripheral vision, it seemed like Steve Bright was looking at him.

  He glanced across, but in fact Bright was staring at his chart with his finger poised on the next waypoint.

  Millie quickly dropped the new tape onto the spindle, closed the flap and restarted the data recorder.

  He sat back, relieved.

  The change took ten seconds; it had felt like ten minutes.

  He put a white sticky label on the reel and marked it, simply BLANK ‘A’.

  A nonsense label that meant something only to him.

  He retrieved a brand new pocket-sized notepad and opened it, noting down the date, time and location for the recording. He paused for a moment; even this note could be used against him at some point. After hesitating, he completed the entry anyway. There was no way around it.

  He looked at his watch and checked the navigation plan. He had time for two reels more before they reached the entry gate.

  Sitting back, he let the static whine from the intercom wash over him. It was warm inside from the time the aircraft had sat on the ground. He closed his eyes.

  “You still with us, Millie?” called Steve Bright.

  Millie woke.

  “Falling asleep in a nuclear bomber? And we’re only going to Keswick, chap. Not Vladivostok.”

  Millie looked at his stopwatch. Eighteen and a half minutes gone. Time to change reels again.

  As he removed the second tape, Steve Bright turned to him again.

  “We’re not there yet, Millie.”

  He felt a spike of adrenaline in his stomach.

  He looked up and smiled. “I know, just making sure we’re ready.”

  Bright gave him a thumbs up.

  Had Rob heard the exchange on the intercom?

  Fourteen minutes later, they began their descent, and Millie swapped out the second reel, taking advantage as Steve Bright’s attention switched to the nav-radar.

  He quickly marked up his second tape and loaded the first of the official reels for today’s run.

  The Vulcan settled at one thousand feet straight and level. Millie glanced at his copy of the route. They should be about twenty miles north of Bassenthwaite Lake. He felt a jolt as Guiding Light engaged. The ride became bumpy as the computer, with none of the finesse of a human, mirrored the contours of the ground beneath them.

  “Tape running, Millie?” Rob called over the intercom.

  “Roger,” Millie confirmed.

  The ride became more undulating as they continued deeper into the valleys and hills of the Lake District. In the dark confines of the rear crew area, Millie started to feel nauseous.

  After nineteen minutes of being heaved around, he was able to occupy himself briefly, changing another reel. As they passed the thirty-minute mark and began to climb out, he changed once more.r />
  He had two official tapes to enter into the system, and he was onto his third unofficial tape.

  On the transit home, he recorded one more reel, labelling the four sleeves BLANK ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’.

  Ten minutes out, as they descended into the West Porton circuit, he powered down the Guiding Light panel, loosened his straps and tried to stretch in the limited space.

  Susie watched the white jet sweep directly overhead, her eyes following its wide arc around the airfield. The plane’s landing gear unfolded as it travelled south before banking again, lining up to land.

  It arrived over the fence and she watched it descend toward the runway, where it seemed to loiter in the air for a while before finally settling on its wheels with a screech and a puff of smoke.

  David and his bushy beard appeared next to her.

  “They take off heading that way and land coming back,” he said.

  “Wind. It must have changed during the day.”

  “Ah, I see. And that’s a Victor, I think.”

  “Avro Vulcan,” she corrected him.

  He raised his eyebrows. “No, I think the Vulcan looks different, has a high tail at the back.”

  “The Victor is the one with the high tail, David. The white aircraft that’s just landed is an Avro Vulcan. It’s distinguished by its delta-shaped wing. Unique in bombers, I believe.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure, David. It’s a bloody Vulcan.” She smiled at him.

  “Hmm.”

  She laughed. “Sorry. Don’t mean to sound bossy. I grew up with three brothers and a father in the Navy. I can identify most cars, ships and planes. I could probably name you the England team for the World Cup as well.”

  “A tomboy? Fair enough.”

  They headed back toward the tents.

  “So, David, what are we doing here? I mean, I know we’re a protest camp, but what are we actually going to do?”

  He reached into the back pocket of his shorts, produced a small packet of tobacco and began rolling a cigarette.

  “Keen, aren’t you?”