The Final Flight

by James Blatch

  “Why then, does she only want us to disarm and not Russia?” Rob asked.

  “I suppose she also wants the Russians to get rid of their weapons, but she doesn’t have any influence over them, does she?”

  “If she was in Russia,” snapped Rob, “she’d be shot, or sent off to the gulags. They don’t think about that, do they? The peace they enjoy is created by us being strong, not weak. They abuse it and undermine it.”

  “Gosh, it’s like having lunch with Mark Kilton,” said Georgina.

  Millie held up his hands. “Well, we’re all on the same side. Let’s remember that.”

  “I hope we are. West Porton’s now a large station. A lot of people work there. Can we be sure about everyone?” Rob looked up at Millie.

  Millie stared back at him, their eyes unflinching until Rob eventually looked back down at his plate.

  Millie picked up his glass and sipped his wine.

  After lunch, the girls disappeared into the house with the crockery.

  “You OK, Rob?” Millie asked. “You seem a little pent up.”

  Rob lit a cigarette.

  “There’s so much at stake for us, Millie. Don’t you feel that pressure?”

  “The pressure to stop communism in its tracks? No, not really. Of course it’s a terrible tyranny, it really is, where life is not valued and no-one is free. But we, you and I, can only do our bit. We can’t walk around with that sort of weight on our shoulders.”

  “But these people…” He waved his cigarette vaguely in the direction of the singing. “It’s the way they hang their banners on the fence and tell the world they are the ones fighting for peace, when they’re doing quite the opposite. They put us in danger.”

  “Give some allowance, Rob. They’re young, idealistic. Naive, if you like. But the world needs a little naive optimism, doesn’t it?”

  Rob didn’t respond.

  “Come on, where’s the old Rob? My carefree friend. Is he in there somewhere?”

  He got the merest hint of a smile, but nothing more.

  7

  Monday 13th June

  Even at 6.45AM, the new gate security measures made it a slow plod into the station.

  Logic told Millie he had nothing to be concerned about, but he still felt his heart thumping as the guard peered into his car.

  Inside, the TFU planning room was quiet, and he headed straight for the admin office.

  Standing in front of a large board with magnetic strips, he scanned the list of unit aircraft, checking the allocations for the various trial flights.

  He and Rob were due to fly to Warton to inspect the next Guiding Light Vulcan. They were down for an old De Havilland Devon; a 1940s propeller driven workhorse.

  But there was no experimental Guiding Light on the Devon, and he didn’t want to waste a flight opportunity.

  Of the two aircraft fitted with Guiding Light, the Vulcan was a non-starter for such a menial trip. But the Canberra wouldn’t be out of place.

  He scanned the board. The Canberra was allocated to a different crew in the afternoon.

  “Damn.”

  He was about to leave when he spotted one of the unit’s other Canberras listed under ‘spare’, at the bottom of the board.

  He looked around and found the young flight lieutenant who ran the admin office.

  “Morning, Pete.”

  “Good morning, Squadron Leader Milford,” the young man replied, while sorting a pile of papers.

  Millie pointed at the board. “I wanted to check something about the aircraft allocations.”

  “Oh, yes?” Pete put down the papers and looked at the wall.

  “This PR.3 is serviceable?”

  “Should be.”

  Millie nodded, as if he was having a thought for the first time. “I’d prefer if Rob May and I had a Canberra rather than the slow boat to China we’ve been given.” He pointed up to the Devon with Flt Lt May (Warton) written next to it. “Any chance we could swap for the PR.3? In fact, ideally, we’d like that PR.3.” He placed his finger on the Guiding Light Canberra, allocated to a different trial.

  The flight lieutenant scratched his chin for a moment. “So, you want me to swap the spare Canberra for the ADF trial, release their jet for you, and move the Devon to spare?” He said it slowly, as if testing the viability of the suggestion.

  “If it’s not too much trouble?”

  Pete looked at his papers, which Millie now realised were the tasking sheets for the day. No doubt he would have some unwanted new paperwork.

  After a moment, he shrugged and said brightly, “I don’t see why not.”

  “Marvellous. Thank you, Pete. Very kind.”

  Millie left the room, avoiding any further questions.

  He walked to his locker. Having the tapes hidden within was dangerous. He’d openly raised concerns about the project; if the material was discovered, out of place in his possession, Kilton would probably jump to the correct conclusion.

  A fast-track to retirement would the very best he could hope for.

  Millie pulled his car keys out of his pocket and opened the wooden door. He felt inside, checking the reels remained in place.

  “Millie?”

  He slammed the locker shut, spinning around to see a surprised-looking Pete.

  “Sorry to startle you. Just wanted to know how late you can depart.”

  “We need to be in a meeting at Warton for 14.30 local, so sometime after 13.00? Rob will come up with a more precise time.”

  Pete nodded and looked pleased. “OK, good. We need both Canberras this morning, but it should be no problem to get one refuelled for you in time for 13.00.”

  “Thank you, Pete. And make sure it’s Oscar Mike, please.” The whole exercise would be futile if Pete gave him the wrong aircraft.

  Back in the main planning room, Millie sat down at one of the side desks. The room was filling up fast. Loud complaints about the gate security filled the air.

  The pilots and navs disappeared off to the met brief.

  Millie pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. He placed it on his desk and stared at the ten lines of numbers he’d taken down from Belkin.

  He had the secure cabinet unlocked, and retrieved the Guiding Light manuals. A normal enough exercise for the project leader.

  The manual contained schematics of the equipment itself, detailed descriptions of the inner workings.

  It was one of the most valuable documents in the world.

  But after ten minutes of leafing through, he was no closer to explaining what the first two fields were.

  Before handing the file back, Millie had a thought. He wondered if he would need the basic schematics to submit as part of his evidence? The file was rarely looked at now. They used it in the early days, but it was likely he was the first to pull it out in months.

  There was a danger it would get moved to a secure archive soon.

  He removed four key pages.

  With the room still quiet, he handed the file back before slipping the folded schematics alongside the reels in his locker.

  Back at the desk, he stared at the two fields, hoping for some moment of inspiration.

  0000127344 15105550114922

  0000127681 15105550114810

  0000128001 15105600014834

  Again, he noticed how the first column of numbers appeared to go up sequentially, and evenly, with each line, but the second number went both up and down.

  The first column might be the time, but not in a form he recognised.

  The room filled up again; the met brief had obviously concluded.

  An idea struck Millie, as he recalled a TV documentary he’d seen recently on the Apollo project. Casting around the room, he saw Red Brunson, friend of the astronauts, standing at the tea bar.

  As he stood up, Rob appeared next to him.

  “Morning. Thank you for lunch, and sorry if I was a little overbearing. Mary told me off when we got home.”

  Millie smiled. “No apology nec
essary. Living under the shadow of the bomb does that to man.” Rob laughed. “Anyway, how’s the weather?”

  “Ah, well you can look out of the window, or I can tell you what the met man just said. I doubt the two are related. But we should be fine. Anything I need to prepare for this afternoon?”

  “I don’t think so. You just need to ensure the Guiding Light panels are identical at your end in the cockpit and I’ll do the same down below. The boss wants crews to swap between the jets easily. And I think it’s all being done in a bit of a rush, so the drawings might not be reliable.”

  “OK, fine. I’m up with Red in the Victor this morning. Simple radio trial. Should be done by eleven.”

  “Sounds like fun.” Rob loitered for a moment, looking down at the sheet of paper on Millie’s desk.

  “Picked up some young ladies’ telephone numbers?”

  Millie’s hand covered the handwritten lines of data.

  “Oh, no. It’s nothing.”

  “Ha. It’s OK, Millie, I didn’t really think you’d pulled.” He moved off.

  Millie slipped the sheet back in his pocket and went for a cup of tea.

  The American stood over a planning desk. Millie poured himself a cup from the urn and joined him.

  “Red, quick question. You once said something about the computer on the Apollo project?”

  “Yeah, pretty neat. The guys at Edwards told me it runs the show. They do everything from the ground, more or less. The pilots—sorry, astronauts—they’re only there to flick the odd switch. Strange.”

  “And I recall you said something about the clock.”

  “The mission clock, yeah. What about it?”

  “Is it important to know the time?”

  “It’s not the time, it’s the mission clock. A different thing. It’s absolutely vital. Same as the Gemini and Mercury projects before Apollo, the computer does everything according to the clock. That famous countdown to launch? That’s not just for the television. That’s the mission clock, counting down. Then it starts counting up. T-minus something before launch and T-plus something after. Mission elapsed time.”

  “I see, so it’s not the actual time? Zulu, Greenwich Mean Time, for instance?”

  Red put his hand on Millie’s shoulder. “I know you Brits think you’re the centre of the world, but it ain’t Zulu. It’s just seconds, man. Seconds, minutes, hours, days.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Sure is, skip.”

  Back at his desk, Millie quietly opened up the sheet.

  He did some maths on the first field, subtracting the second line from the first.

  0000127681 - 0000127344

  The difference was three hundred and thirty-seven. He furrowed his brow. Far too many seconds.

  According to the file, the laser fed the computer three reports of height data every second.

  He looked back at the numbers:

  0000127344

  0000127681

  0000128001

  “Bingo,” he whispered.

  The fourth digit along must be whole seconds, followed by hundredths. So the first height came at 127.344 seconds, the next at 127.681, and the third at 128.001. Gaps of roughly one third of a second.

  He could see it clearly now.

  On the pad where he had written the numbers, he added column headers for the first set:

  s s s s s s h h h

  0 0 0 1 2 7 3 4 4

  He thought back to the flight where these readings were created. Why did it all start at 127.344 seconds?

  Millie had switched on Guiding Light as they rolled down the runway, but hadn’t started the tape until they were established on their route. He’d checked it was working, first by dialling through the eleven data feeds, then switching the tape recorder to RUN.

  127.344 seconds. Two minutes of fiddling. That was about right.

  It all made sense.

  One field down, one to go.

  They got airborne in the Canberra at 13.40, for a meeting at 14.30 local in Lancashire. Flight time was a miserly forty minutes, but enough for two tapes of Guiding Light height data.

  Rob flew using visual flight rules, avoiding the various air traffic zones.

  As they climbed out of West Porton, Millie, strapped into the ejection seat usually occupied by a navigator, set the data recorder running. He’d quietly armed the laser and powered up the computer as Rob went through his checks.

  They had chosen the Canberra as the first recipient of the Guiding Light because of the space, once the recon camera and equipment were removed. But it was a test-bed and nothing more. The system operated in isolation, with no autopilot, and no indication to the pilot that the system was installed, let alone actually running. An advantage for Millie on this occasion.

  He had already decided he couldn’t risk changing reels mid-flight. It was something Rob was likely to notice.

  As the flight progressed and the reel came to its end, he considered it again, but then the Canberra’s nose dipped and they began a descent into Warton. Too late.

  As the jet engines wound down on the ground, Millie removed the full reel and slipped it into a loose pocket. Once out of the jet, he saw Rob removing his coveralls, in preparation for the meeting, and had to follow suit.

  As he folded his coveralls, he paused. An unintended consequence of a land-away in a Guiding Light aircraft was the security implication. They would leave the equipment alone in the Canberra, including a full reel of data that could easily be accessed.

  If something went wrong, there would be an enquiry to end all enquiries. Why was the Canberra used for such a journey? Who allowed the equipment change?

  His name would be the answer to all the questions.

  More than that, he was genuinely risking the secrecy of the project.

  Rob appeared next to him.

  He shut the Canberra up and cursed the lack of key and lock.

  As they walked across the apron toward the factory offices, he realised it was a gaping hole that no-one had much thought about. It was all very well searching cars on the way in and out of West Porton, but nothing stopped them flying out with all manner of sensitive material. In fact, it was part of their routine.

  No-one checked, no-one asked, no-one searched.

  Inside the factory, they were given a quick tour of the Lightning production line. At the back of the cavernous hall, a section had been screened off by enormous black hanging material. Poking out of one end was the distinctive tail of an Avro Vulcan.

  Millie pointed. “Are you already fitting it?”

  The man nodded.

  The Vulcan was literally shrouded in secrecy.

  A man in a suit and tie showed them to a makeshift security barrier. Millie and Rob signed in, and moments later, they were inside the aircraft inspecting the installation work.

  It didn’t take long to confirm the panels would be identical to those they were already familiar with, and they headed back to the management offices and signed a few forms to say the work was proceeding as agreed.

  They decided on a delivery date, and, twenty-five minutes later, walked out onto the apron.

  The Canberra sat alone, and unregarded.

  “I do enjoy a little day trip with our own private jet,” said Rob.

  Millie laughed. “We should take days out more often. Perhaps not Manchester, though.”

  “I’m sure we could find a reason to go to Cyprus.” Rob disappeared around the Canberra to kick the tyres.

  Millie dressed for the journey back, reassured by the weight of the reel in his coveralls pocket. Before he donned his life jacket, he slipped in the next blank tape.

  Rob’s hands moved across the Canberra’s controls. He soon had them rolling down the long runway, then gently banking right as they climbed out.

  He continued to fly them west to the Irish Sea, before turning south, heading for Wales.

  It was a cloudless afternoon and Rob was clearly enjoying himself.

  Millie’s thought
s turned to the pressing issue of how to remove the growing number of tapes from highly secure West Porton.

  There was no point in continuing to gather the height readings on a growing collection of tapes if he couldn’t get them out of a locker inside the base.

  Could he hide them in his car? Under the mats in the footwells? Inside the spare tyre?

  Even then, how would he move them from his locker to the car park without risking everything?

  He sighed and rested his head on the top of the ejection seat.

  The roar of air across the airframe washed over him, and he closed his eyes.

  Back in TFU, most of the men were in the mess or on their way home.

  Millie was mildly embarrassed that Rob had to wake him up in the jet. He moved straight to his locker and added two more reels to his pile.

  Rob breezed past, coveralls in hand with his helmet, oxygen mask and life jacket ready for a quick deposit.

  Millie gathered his own things and walked toward the door.

  “Milford. A word if you please.”

  Millie walked into Kilton’s office and closed the door behind him.

  “I’m adding Jock MacLeish and Red Brunson to the Guiding Light crew,” said Kilton. “We need to speed this up.”

  “Why? We’re working well together and it’s a small team. You said yourself you didn’t want to involve anyone else.”

  Kilton snorted. “I’m not asking for your opinion, Millie. Just make sure they’re trained up as quickly as possible.”

  Millie stood, trying to think of a better objection.

  “Goodbye, Millie.” Kilton dismissed him with a wave of his hand, as if he was a schoolboy in the headmaster’s office.

  8

  Tuesday 14th June

  A flash of red streaked across the junction ahead. Millie recognised Rob’s Austin Healey, with the top down. He was also heading in early.