Judas Country

by Gavin Lyall

  ‘Real security is not trusting your security. Too much has happened at this airport. Is it safe to fly like that?’

  ‘No, but I want to open it again and check one of the inverters for sparking when I’ve got main circuits on.’ I hoped he hadn’t studied electronics in night school.

  But he bought it. ‘That is all for your radio and radars and things?’

  ‘Two comm sets, two ADF’s, VOR/ILS, radar, marker – this aeroplane’s under-equipped. When I first flew jet fighters, at night, we had just one ten-channel comm set and a transponder thing that never worked. The big changes in aviation haven’t been jumbos and supersonics.’

  He nodded. ‘So – what do you do now?’

  ‘Pre-flight check.’

  ‘Please …’ So I went back to the door and started again. Normally, a pre-flight isn’t something you have to be too sincere about, particularly if you’re the one who last flew the aeroplane. Just check the wheels for punctures or cuts, the wingtips and tail in case some hit-and-run pilot taxied into them, take off the pitot head cover and waggle the controls. But you can also do it by the book, and this time I did.

  I was conscientiously poking a pipe-cleaner into the static air entry holes by the tail when it began to drizzle again. Tamir hunched his shoulders. ‘I think we leave you now. Happy landings.’

  ‘You’ve been watching too much TV.’

  ‘Where else can one learn how to be a detective?’ He shook my hand, Sergeant Sharon didn’t, and they hustled away towards the terminal. Now I had to work.

  I whipped off the electronics panel again. Up on the bulkhead that separates the compartment from the cockpit is one nonelectronic thing: the brake fluid reservoir. Why Beech put it there I don’t know, but today I was glad they had. It doesn’t look much: just a fat metal-polish can with a screw top and a plastic tube leading into the bottom.

  I unclipped the can from the bulkhead, took off the top, and poured out the equivalent of two ounces of tobacco into an empty tin. The human race must have invented nastier liquids than hydraulic fluid, though Greek wine is the only one that springs to mind, and even that doesn’t smother your hands in sticky rose-coloured muck that smells like a robot’s brothel. But I don’t suppose it does as much harm to a VOR/ILS box when you pour it carefully into the joints, either.

  That would look too selective, so I sprinkled the last drops around obvious but non-dangerous places where it would show if anybody came looking.

  Then I jammed the cap back on against the screw thread, to show how it had slopped out, and clipped the can back in place. Panel back on and all screws twisted home. Then wash my hands in petrol from the fuel tank drain and I was on board only a minute behind my schedule.

  Chapter 27

  ‘Ben Gurion ground control, Queen Air Whiskey Zulu. Request start-up, please.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, stand by.’ They always say that while they sort through the bits of paper to find if they’ve got one about you. But I’d started up already anyhow; I don’t like working the radio off the batteries.

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, clear to start up. Set QNH 981 millibars.’

  That put the pressure as far down as I’d seen it in the Mediterranean. The low had tracked closer than predicted. I ran through the rest of the cockpit check, including radar, marker receiver, ADF’s and VOR/ILS on. The ILS needles shivered and swung to one side, but the ‘off’ flags went out; it was still in business. I set the ADF’s on the local beacon and Tel Aviv, but without much faith,

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, taxi clearance.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, clear to taxi to holding point runway 30.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu.’ I started moving, checked the brakes, rolled on. Nothing else on the field seemed to be moving. The armed guards sheltered, shaking wet feet, under Boeing wings and watched me pass with expressionless eyes.

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, are you ready to copy your clearance?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu cleared to Nicosia on Blue 17 Bravo flight level 80.’

  That didn’t need copying. ‘Blue 17 flight level 80. Whiskey Zulu, thank you.’

  ‘Change to Ben Gurion Tower, frequency 118.3.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, 118.3.’

  I switched both sets over. ‘Queen Air Whiskey Zulu listening out.’

  I stopped at the holding point and did a careful run-up on both engines, checking for mag drops. Nothing much.

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, ready for takeoff.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, Met advises line of electrical storms approximately fifteen kilometres west, inbound flights report severe turbulence.’ The clipped voice was as carefully unemotional as a laundry list.

  With the midday temperatures and coastal effect, the front was winding up tight. Well, if it was rough upstairs it would be bad below stairs; that’s what I’d wanted, wasn’t it?

  ‘Thank you, Tower. But haven’t you heard of heroes?’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu cleared for takeoff on runway 30, wind now reported 270, 25 knots gusting to 40. Climb initially to 3,000 feet, maintaining runway heading until outer marker, then resume normal navigation.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, rolling.’

  But not for long. The airspeed needle flickered almost before I’d got the throttles open. I stayed on the ground well past 90 knots – a sudden drop in the wind could slam me back with a crunched under-carriage – and when I lifted off we went up like a nervous lift. Half the wet-shiny black runway still stretched ahead when I was wheels up and throttled back into the climb.

  The Tower came back: ‘Whiskey Zulu, airborne at oh-seven. Change to Ben Gurion Approach, 120.5. Shalom.’

  ‘120.5. Not up here.’

  As I reached to switch channels again, something moved on the main panel. When I looked back, the ILS dial was dead. With its dying volts, it had managed to put up both OFF flags, and I hope I go as thoughtfully.

  The first cloud came at 2,500 feet. Just thin wet stratus without any extra turbulence – in fact things were smoothing out as I got clear of the rippling effect of the ground. After another half minute the grey turned to a gentle golden glow, the rain drained off the windscreen – and I was in a new world.

  A hard bright sun blazed over my left shoulder and glared back off the fluffy white cloud below – the top side of that dank stratus I’d just cleared. The total was as bright as a ski-slope; I blinked and squinted before I got my sunglasses on. But ahead …

  It reached higher than I could see with the cockpit roof in the way, and far out of sight to either side. A bulging, boiling wall of cloud, blinding white in the sun but so dense it threw black shadows on itself below the bulges. As I watched, one of the black patches flashed green-blue with internal light.

  For a pilot, this is the wall of the eternal city. Its ramparts higher than Everest and older than Jerusalem, yet so transient that it can build itself and fade inside a day. And you can spend that day in the bar – but there’ll come another. A day when there’s just you and the wall and a reason to get through.

  But not me, not today. All I had to do was get blood on my sword. I’d still have settled for a nice calm sea fog, if Israel went in for that sort of thing.

  I had a couple of minutes left; the aeroplane hung steady as a picture on a wall as I switched off the loudspeaker and plugged in the earphones, ready for things to get noisy, and turned up the radar brightness. It was still playing up, not reaching beyond ten miles, but that showed enough: a ragged but solid bar of shimmering light, from about five miles onwards. Rain. Rain thick enough to throw a reflection like a hillside. I turned the contour switch.

  The screen blinked and the line hollowed out to an irregular row of dark holes, almost linked. The thunderstorm cells, churning private cauldrons of up-and-down draughts. The strong points of the wall. I weaved the nose to give it a better view south and north, but no obvious weak points.

  Did I really want one? Half of me did; even twenty years of built-up flying instinct wanted the safest way. Problem: how to get into tr
ouble safely.

  I could try one thing. ‘Ben Gurion Approach, Whiskey Zulu. Request clearance to descend on track and try to get below this stuff.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, stand by.’ I tightened my straps, pushed up the carburettor heat levers.

  ‘Whiskey Zulu – negative on descent. Continue climb to flight level 80.’ What I’d hoped for – what half of me had hoped for. The Israelis don’t like aeroplanes down low off their coast; they want them up where radar gets a proper view.

  The light glowed on the marker receiver: I was just about on the coast.

  ‘Ben Gurion Approach, Whiskey Zulu on outer marker. Turning to intercept Blue 17.’

  I hauled around to the right, steering 340 in the hope that it would give me a track of due north. By rights, the VOR should be giving an exact track, but I’d bypassed those rights.

  Approach came back at me: ‘Whiskey Zulu, change to Tel Aviv Control, frequency 124.3.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, roger.’ I made the change. Now, briefly, I was flying parallel to the bubbling white wall, but it was moving on me as I headed north and it came east.

  ‘Tel Aviv Control, Queen Air Whiskey Zulu.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, go ahead.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu passing 6,000 feet …’ I reset one altimeter to the standard atmosphere figure of 1013 millibars; my indicated altitude wound up by almost a thousand feet …

  ‘… airborne at 12.07, estimating Blue 17 at 12.28 …’ I spelled out the whole meaningless formula. A glance at the ADF needles, which should have been pointing somewhere behind. Instead, they overlapped, both quivering like bird dogs and sniffing east, at electric power sources a thousand times stronger than man-made beacons.

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, call at flight level 80.’

  I wasn’t quite going to get there before I had to turn into the wall. Close up, the scale of the thing is always unbelievable. The tiny crafted details you see at twenty miles become vast crude brush-strokes – live ones. Lumps the size of cathedrals bubbled and rolled like breaking waves. It’s the hungry surge of a thunderhead that the paintings can never get.

  7,000 and I must be about on the line of Blue 17. I turned left, switched up the cockpit lighting full – and just remembered to take off my sunglasses. I had my head down and was settled into the rhythm of instrument flying before the cockpit went dark around me.

  110 knots, nose above horizon, going through 7,400 feet, climbing about 900 feet a minute, heading 325, start again: 108 knots, push the nose down a fraction, just over 7,400, climb rate dropping, heading steady, start again … a constant sweep of the eyes over the panel, tiny corrections passed to the hands, almost bypassing the brain. Never concentrate on one thing. You have five items to watch; stare at one sheep and the other four are scattered to hell. Speed, horizon, height, climb, heading. Again …

  The wings rocked stiffly and the neat pattern warped; pat it back into place. A faint rattle of rain nibbling through the drone of the engines, but skip the wipers: I don’t want to see out anyway.

  The windscreen blazed with light, half-dazzling me despite the cockpit lighting and my deliberately bowed head. When I caught up with my reading again, the nose was down, airspeed going up, climb almost nil, heading five degrees off. Less smoothly, I dragged the pattern together.

  It began, now. The whole aeroplane lifted and stayed lifting. The climb needle paused as if it was surprised, then shot past 2,000 feet/min. I let us go, just tried to keep the wings level and nose not too high. You don’t fight thunderstorms, you just roll with the punch.

  The sky fell out from under, jerking me up against the harness; the needle whipped down to a 2,000 feet/min descent. The heading wavered between 320 and 330 degrees.

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, what is your altitude?’

  ‘You tell me.’ Whatever the altimeter said was a lie; it just couldn’t keep pace. Now it was rushing down through 7,500.

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, maintain climb to flight level 80.’ The voice was clear and clean; thunderstorms don’t meddle with the highest frequencies.

  We hit bottom with a thump, but stayed there for the moment. I shuffled us back into a gentle climb on a heading of 320; already the wind was rougher than I’d expected, so I was probably being blown right off track. Almost ahead, the radar showed a bright line between two storm cells. If I could slide through there …

  The wings rocked and I tried not to fight the heavy ailerons. The nose jolted around in a circle, swaying five degrees either side of my heading. But at least we weren’t in a lift-shaft. I snatched a look at my watch and I’d been airborne ten minutes.

  Say the front was moving at 25 knots, then it had crept four miles closer to Ben Gurion. And I’d started with it ten miles away, so … another five minutes. I’d hold out for that.

  The radar went out.

  Just dead. I reached and twiddled but it stayed blank. Maybe the last jolting had finally parted a loose connection. Hell.

  But now, at last, I was about on 8,000.1 let the nose sag and the speed come up – but I wasn’t trying for my planned 170 knots. You hit this sort of turbulence as slow as you dare. I set 30 inches boost and 2,500 revs.

  Tel Aviv, Whiskey Zulu at flight level 80. My weather radar has gone unserviceable. Over.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, do you want clearance to return?’

  ‘Negative. I’ll keep trying. It should – Jesus Christ!’

  The aeroplane was on its side. Just like that.

  ‘Wrong frequency, Whiskey Zulu. We’re all Jews down here.’

  I twisted the yoke and pushed the nose down. For seconds, she hung there shuddering, lightning exploded on the windscreen, and at last we fell off in a swerving plunge.

  Then up again. The needle hit the stop at just over 4,000 feet/ min and the altimeter blurred as it spun. My heading – the hell with the heading, what about the speed? It was down to a sick 95 and if we tipped again we’d stall. I rammed the nose down, throttles up.

  The engine noise suddenly vanished in a roar like a waterfall – and it was. The windscreen flooded; water sputtered explosively in at the tight-shut side windows and over my lap.

  The lift-shaft reversed and we fell. I was jerked off my seat, my sunglasses lifted out of my pocket, bounced off my cheek and on to the roof. The wind computer rose out of my open briefcase, hung weirdly in the air, then smashed down again as we bottomed out with a slam that set the whole instrument panel shaking in its mount.

  That did it. ‘Tel Aviv, Whiskey Zulu request return clearance.’ My voice sounded clenched.

  ‘Whiskey Zu … to turn … up omni rad … 7,000 feet …’

  Oh no. ‘Tel Aviv please say again.’ But my own voice was jumping in and out of an echo chamber. The radio was packing up.

  I tried to hold the aeroplane with one hand while I reached to change to the second set. And be damned to a clearance anyway. I was turning around.

  I pushed into a gentle left turn. Into a storm cell or away from one?

  The second VHF set came in clear: ‘… do you read? Over.’

  ‘Tel Aviv: Whiskey Zulu. I have one comm failure. Please say again my clearance.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, are you declaring an emergency?’

  Am I saying I’m beaten, I quit? In public?

  ‘Tel Aviv – any traffic?’

  ‘Negative, Whiskey Zulu.’ So at least no mid-air collision.

  ‘Then just clear me.’

  Formally: ‘Whiskey Zulu cleared to turn left pick up 336 omni radial descend to 7,000 feet.’

  It was time to make my confession complete. ‘Tel Aviv, my VOR and ILS have also gone unserviceable.’

  And then I knew what it was all about. I reached my toes beyond the rudder pedals and touched the brakes. No resistance at all. The first bump of the storm had shaken off my carefully jammed-on reservoir cap; now a whole tide of the foul stuff was sloshing around every box of electronics in the nose.

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, still no emergency?’ He sounded faintly incredulous.


  ‘All right, then. Whiskey Zulu, Pan, Pan, Pan. Now are you happy?’ But I’d still compromised by making it only an ‘urgency’ call. ‘I have located my trouble, anyhow. Brake fluid leaking into the avionics. So I could lose this comm set and my ADF’s at any time. Also no brakes. Request radar assistance.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, stand by.’

  By now I was heading roughly 145 and for the moment the vertical currents weren’t too bad. It was like being dragged downstairs on your bottom, but no worse than that. And I was going out a lot faster than I’d come in; now I’d got a major component of the wind behind me, and my ground speed must have gone up a good eighty knots.

  Tel Aviv came back. ‘Whiskey Zulu, are you getting a useful reading on your ADF?’

  ‘Negative.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, steer 148 degrees, maintain 7,000 feet until overhead Bravo Golf November beacon. Change to Ben Gurion Approach, 120.5.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu.’ They’d bring me over the airport, turn me around so I could let down in the holding pattern on the coastline, then back in a sweeping plunge for the runway.

  ‘Ben Gurion Approach, Whiskey Zulu. What is your latest actual?’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, stand by.’ Was it as bad beneath as I wanted it?

  ‘Whiskey Zulu: wind 280 gusting 50 knots, visibility 300 metres in heavy rain, two octas six hundred feet, eight octas eight hundred feet. Understand you may suffer total electrical failure any time.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Understand you have no brakes. Is your marker receiver okay?’

  ‘Don’t know. Haven’t been over any markers recently.’

  ‘Whiskey Zulu, stand by.’

  I knew what was worrying them. Me, too. The weather on the deck was as bad as I’d hoped for: just possible for an ILS approach but still dicey. I could come below cloud safety on a timed descent from the outer marker, but I’d still be going exactly the wrong way. Then I’d have to do a procedure turn at 500 feet in 300 metres visibility and an erratic strong wind to find the runway again. I was prepared to try.