‘Look down to the right!’
I heard the excitement in Jane’s voice and caught a glimpse of a glistening black back arching below us. As the whale vented, a burst of spray shot upwards, making a rainbow in the sky. Then the tail flukes towered out of the water, thrashed once and the monster disappeared from sight.
‘Shit,’ Jane said. ‘That was bigger than the Herc, which by the way is now fifteen miles, ten degrees right, of your nose.’
I corrected course, straining my eyes ahead until I caught sight of a black speck in the sky. I throttled back as the speck swelled rapidly in size, the black bulk of the Hercules dwarfing the Tempest.
A drogue trailed behind it and Shark’s jet was already connected, its nose embedded in the basket like a hummingbird’s beak in a flower. As he dropped away, I eased forward towards the drogue, coaxing the needle of the Tempest’s probe into the basket. I heard it lock home and fuel began to pulse down the hose into the jet.
‘First time, every time,’ Jane said. ‘You’d make one hell of a darts player if you could hold your drink better.’
After we’d finished refuelling, I pulled up alongside the Herc to exchange some banter with the crew. ‘Everything okay in there? Can we get you something?’
The captain grinned and held up a mug of tea. ‘I’ve got all I need, thanks. It’s like a five-star hotel in here. Shame they don’t treat you jet jockeys better.’ He waved us away.
Chapter Eight
We were making a leisurely circuit of West Falkland to burn up the fuel before landing when the radio crackled into life. ‘Fortress to Falcon Two. Radar’s showing some Argentine helicopter activity on the edge of the Exclusion Zone. It’s probably connected to that air-sea search, but take a look will you?’
Although the helicopters were well outside our radar range, Fortress fed us the information over the data link. As the contacts appeared on the screen, I pushed the throttles forward and pointed the nose of the jet into the west. We climbed to three thousand feet to clear Byron Heights, then dropped back to low-level over the sea, racing across the endless procession of steep, rolling waves driven on the wind from the ice cap far to the south.
I set the radalt to fifty feet. If we flew any lower, a warning would sound and the image in the head-up display would begin to flash.
‘Painting them now,’ Jane said. ‘Two contacts eleven o’clock, twenty miles, slow-moving, must be helis.’
Glancing back, I could see the top of her helmet as she leaned over her radar screens.
‘Any other hostiles?’
‘I’ve got nothing, but Fortress is seeing another contact, two o’clock at thirty miles.’ She paused. ‘No sweat, it’s too slow for a fast jet. Must be another heli or a light aircraft.’
I eased back on the stick, raising the jet a couple of hundred feet above the grey, leaden surface of the sea.
‘Twenty miles… fifteen miles, come left a fraction. Locking them up. Ten miles, on your nose… Got them yet?’
I peered through the green haze of the head-up display, into the grey murk ahead. Sea and sky seemed to merge into each other. ‘Nothing yet, nothing yet. Now. Got them visual.’ Two helicopters hovered over the sea ahead of us, cables trailing below them in the water.
‘Fortress, Falcon Two visual with two helicopters.’
‘Any ID on them yet?’
‘Standby. Yes. Two SA-332 Super Pumas, trailing cables.’
‘What are they up to?’ Jane said.
‘I don’t know. The only helicopter stuff I’ve ever done was in the work-up to Bosnia.’ I peered through the canopy at the outlines of the two choppers. The black holes of the twin engine intakes on top of the canopy looked like eye sockets. They were carrying missiles, but it was impossible to see what type they were.
‘They’re no threat to us,’ I said, ‘but the pattern they’re flying is like no air-sea rescue I’ve ever seen.’
‘I’ll check the Intelligence Guide.’ There was a pause as she flipped through the pages. ‘Here we are. “SA-332 Super Pumas. In use with all three services and capable of offensive operations.” That’s it. Doesn’t help us much, does it?’
‘Not a lot. I’m not sure about this at all. Something’s not right.’
We circled them as I called them up on the distress frequency. ‘Argentine helicopters, this is British aircraft Falcon Two. You are infringing the Falkland Islands Exclusion Zone and territorial waters. We are carrying live weapons. Acknowledge or you will be intercepted.’
I repeated the warning twice before there was an acknowledgement in a thick Spanish accent. ‘Roger, Falcon Two. This is Argentine helicopter, Bravo 2–2. We are searching for survivors of a sinking. We apologise for the infringement of Malvinas waters, but we shall be moving no further east and where there is hope of finding men alive, we must search.’
‘Roger, Bravo 2–2. We are aware of your lost ship.’
‘What now?’ Jane said.
‘Call it in.’
She contacted Fortress on the voice data link and updated them. The system was so secure that we did not even need to use codes. There were a few moments’ silence before the reply came in, the controller’s voice slightly distorted by the encryption. ‘Falcon Two, remain in the area and monitor.’
‘Let’s go and see what the other contact’s up to. We’ll come back to these two in a minute. By then base might have decided what to do about them.’
As we flew on over the sea towards the site of the other radar trace, something kept nagging at my mind, something I had heard or read, or been told in a lecture. I gave it up for the moment, concentrating on the search for the other contact.
We flew north, parallel with the coast of Argentina for a few more minutes, and found the other aircraft. It was prop-driven and had the markings of the Argentine navy. Its short, fat body and broad tail marked it as a Grumman Tracker. ‘Maritime patrol or antisubmarine warfare,’ Jane said, reading from the Intelligence Guide on her lap.
It was just inside Argentine territorial limits and heading further north-west towards the coast as we approached.
‘Whatever he was up to, we can’t chase him there.’ I scanned the instruments. ‘Anyway, fuel’s getting low, we’d better find out what Fortress wants us to do.’
‘Okay,’ Jane said. ‘It looks like the others have either found what they were looking for or given up anyway.’
As their radar traces began to move back towards the mainland, Fortress came up on the voice link. ‘Falcon Two, we see contacts leaving the area. You’re clear RTB.’
‘That solves our problem then. Give us a course for home, Jane.’ I pulled the Tempest back into a turn towards the south-west, easing back a little more on the throttles to conserve fuel. We flew at three hundred feet, over the long South Atlantic swell, which looked even more grey and greasy under the heavy overcast.
‘Shit!’ she said. ‘I don’t think there’s too much left of that ship they were looking for.’
I cranked my head around. Away to our right, in the area where we had seen the helicopters, the sea seemed strangely flattened, as if a giant hand was pressing down on it. I saw the beginnings of a thick, viscous oil slick, stretching towards the horizon.
‘I can’t think how we missed it on the way out, we can’t have been more than a couple of miles from this position.’ I pulled the Tempest into a long sweeping right-hand turn over the area.
Nearer to the centre of the slick, the surface was stubbled with debris. Anonymous shapes smothered in oil bobbed slowly in the flattened sea.
I shook my head wearily as I looked down, then thumbed the radio to give details of the position of the wreckage to base. ‘Come back on an easterly course,’ Jane said. ‘We’re too close to the edge of the Exclusion Zone here.’
We turned back towards the Falklands in silence. I thought of the fate of those sailors. Even those not sucked down into the vortex of their sinking ship would perish within minutes in the icy waters.
&nbs
p; As I set the Tempest climbing for base, the nagging thought about the helicopters returned. We flew on in silence. I was still lost in thought as we began descending towards the Falklands coastline and Jane began calling the descent checks. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I was miles away. I’m still not—’
‘Look out! Birds!’
A speck in the sky directly ahead of us swelled in a fraction of a second into a flock of seabirds.
Almost without thinking, I had whipped the stick back and hard right, and yanked on the throttles. I caught a glimpse of wings flailing in the pressure wave ahead of the jet and instinctively I ducked. Then there was a crash like a bomb going off, a blizzard of white feathers and a red mist sprayed over the canopy. A bird’s severed foot was hurled against the canopy for a microsecond, then torn away by the slipstream, leaving a bloody smear across the Perspex. There was a scream of grinding metal from the right engine. The warning sirens began to howl and the panel lit up like Bonfire Night.
‘Right-hand engine failure, shutting it down.’ I was shouting through the intercom to make myself heard above the death rattle of the failing engine. My hand flew to the controls, shutting off the fuel to the stricken engine. The Tempest lurched drunkenly from side to side and I had to fight to hold it straight and level.
I darted a hand to the remaining throttle to kill some of our speed, but even that momentary easing of the pressure on the stick was enough to set the jet yawing further to the right. The nose dipped and slid downwards and sideways in the beginnings of a spin. Cockpit lights and flickering captions began to blur and revolve before my eyes. The white-capped waves on the ocean swam into sudden alarming focus, as they accelerated towards me.
‘There’s something wrong with the controls, Jane.’ The sour taste of fear filled my mouth. ‘I’m not sure I can hold it. Prepare to eject.’
‘Mayday. Mayday. Mayday. Falcon Two, bird strike. Bullseye two-four-zero, at fifty-two. Standby.’
As the sky rolled back above and the sea below, I dragged the stick back and to the left, sweat pouring down my face as the muscles in my forearms trembled with the effort. As I forced it back, inch by inch, the jet’s breakneck fall began to slow.
‘Stand by, Jane; getting it back under control.’ I prayed that I had enough altitude left to recover the jet. The altimeter stopped, then began to crawl upwards. The radalt warning was flashing; we had bottomed out at less than fifty feet above the sea.
The front and right side of the canopy was covered in a mess of blood and entrails from the birds. I could now see almost nothing through the haze of blood, spread ever wider by the force of the slipstream. I glanced to my right, towards the damaged engine, and froze in horror. A crack snaked up the Perspex canopy. I yanked the throttle back again, losing even more of our speed. The crack now extended from the top to the bottom of the canopy. ‘Get all your visors down. The canopy might blow at any moment.’
There was a flash of fear in Jane’s voice. ‘Should we eject?’
I looked down at the cold, grey ocean below us. ‘No. Not yet.’ The lower edge of the crack was vibrating in the slipstream and I could feel the knife-edge draught of wind across my face, but the canopy was still holding, for the moment at least.
There was a fresh clamour from the sirens and another blaze of lights from the panel. ‘Sean! Right-hand engine fire.’
I craned my head around and peered through the haze of blood on the canopy and saw a black stream of smoke snaking back from the engine. As I watched, the smoke thickened, billowing out in dense clouds. Then there was a flash and a bright corona of fire burst from the engine intakes and licked the edge of the wing, dancing in the slipstream.
Her voice betraying no trace of the fear she must have been fighting, Jane began rapping out the boldface drill from the flight emergency card. There was no room for creative interpretation. The cards laid down the correct procedure to be followed in any conceivable emergency. No deviations were permitted. In major emergencies the aircraft could go out of control within a few seconds. The boldface drills – printed in large bold type on the cards – were the only sure means of saving the aircraft.
My fingers stabbed the buttons and switches in the same staccato rhythm.
‘High-pressure cock.’
‘Is already shut.’
‘Low-pressure cock.’
‘Is already shut.’
‘Fire button.’
I pressed the button, flooding the engine with inert gas, but there was a heart-stopping pause before the fierce white fire faded to yellow, then red, and then died altogether.
‘Check outside again.’ I peered out at the airframe. A hole had been torn in the wing and I could see the mangled body of a bird embedded in a tangled mess of wires and control rods.
The buckled and smoke-blackened metal of the wing still twitched and flexed alarmingly as the airflow dragged across its roughened surface, and the jet handled like a flying brick. I was having to apply strong positive pressure to the stick just to keep the nose up and stop the jet turning to starboard, as the air drag on the damaged wing forced it inexorably that way. Each fresh patch of turbulence sent it juddering back dangerously close to the brink of instability, but I was managing to hold it under some sort of control.
I shook my head from side to side, clearing the sweat from my eyes. ‘Damage report?’
Jane had the information at her fingertips, but she had allowed me to focus on the most pressing emergency, keeping silent to avoid distracting me as I fought the jet and regained control. Now she rattled through a report with barely a wasted word.
‘Hydraulics functioning at the moment, but pressure’s down and there’s a leak of fluid. Not serious yet, but it’s dropping quite steadily. I’m monitoring it. Captions showing for the flaps, the undercarriage and the thrust buckets. We could be in for a very bumpy landing.’
‘If we get that far.’ I checked the fuel levels. ‘We’re short on fuel now, close to critical.’
As we began to coast in, I tried the flaps. There was no metallic rumble in response to the control. I glanced out to either side of the jet. The flaps had stayed locked in position. I tried twice more without success, then hit the radio button. ‘Mayday. Falcon Two fuel critical, hydraulic leak, no flaps and possible gear failure.’
The urbane voice of the air-traffic controller cut through the static. ‘Roger, Falcon Two. It never rains but it pours.’ I could hear the siren starting to sound in the background as he hit the red crash button. ‘Emergency crews on standby. SAR scrambled. Report status of your gear when you’ve evaluated it.’ His quiet, controlled voice was a calm centre to the storm.
Through the blood-smeared canopy, I made out the dim outline of the coast of West Falkland ahead of us. I shot another glance at the fuel gauge. It told a predictable story, reinforced as the amber warning light began to flash. ‘Fuel critical. Give me a course.’
Jane’s reply was instantaneous. ‘Steer zero-two-zero into King George Bay. Follow the north shore of Christmas Harbour, that’ll keep us clear of Chartres Settlement and there should be less turbulence, the cliffs are much lower than anywhere else on that coast. Once we’re clear of the mountains we’re flying over water all the way, apart from the isthmus around Goose Green. After that, we’re over Choiseul Sound until we turn in on finals.’
I saw the sun glinting on the radome on Byron Heights as we swung into the vast sweep of King George Bay. Our course bisected the two clawlike arms of land encircling the bay, but as we passed over Gid’s Island, Jane called a turn to the east along the deserted northern shore of Christmas Harbour.
After the birdstrike, the clouds of seabirds rising from the dunes fringing the shore gave me momentary pause. They stayed well away from us, but as we reached the head of the inlet, we hit turbulence over the cliffs. My knuckles whitened on the stick as the damaged wing bucked and twisted, and the vibrations in the airframe redoubled. I could hear my teeth rattling and clamped my jaw tight shut as I again fought to hold the
aircraft level. My muscles ached from the effort and sweat drenched my flying suit.
As we cleared the summits of the Hornby Mountains, the last high ground between us and the base, I eased the nose of the jet down a fraction, seeking what shelter I could find from the wind. The vibration lessened as we descended and I was able to relax my grip on the stick a fraction.
Any relief I felt was purely temporary. The next minute another warning sounded. ‘Hydraulics are looking bad, Sean. The pressure’s dropping much quicker now. I don’t know if we’ll make it.’
There was nothing useful I could say in reply. Without hydraulic fluid I’d lose control of the aircraft in a few seconds. The only option then would be to grab the ejection handle and get out.
‘Just in case, prepare to eject.’ I went through the prescribed steps before a premeditated ejection, tightening the leg restraints, lap and shoulder straps, locking the seat belts, and lowering both visors on my helmet.
Still descending, we crossed the broad expanse of Falkland Sound and passed over Brenton Lock, the entrance so narrow that there was barely any clear water visible between the kelp banks advancing from either shore. We flew low over the isthmus below Goose Green, stampeding a few grazing sheep. As we crossed the shoreline, I pressed the button to lower the landing gear.
‘The moment of truth. Gear coming down.’
This time there was an answering rumble. I felt the straps bite into my chest as the jet decelerated under the drag on the landing gear. Two green lights and one red showed on the warning panel. ‘Front and left gear down and locked. Right gear showing red.’
‘Recycle the gear once.’
I tried again with the same result.
‘Use the emergency undercarriage lowering system,’ Jane said, still reading from the emergency card.
I felt my heart begin to thump a little harder as I reached for the black-and-yellow striped handle that flooded the system with nitrogen gas. Once it was used the gear could not be retracted again. It would be locked solid. I jerked the handle. The red light flickered and went out.
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