Exclusion Zone

by Exclusion Zone (retail) (epub)

  * * *

  We filed out of the briefing room in silence. I glanced at the faces around me. We all preferred an instant reaction, getting airborne in minutes without time for reflection, rather than a premeditated sortie that left time for nerves to jangle and the consequences of failure to be explored.

  Noel strode ahead of us down the corridor trying, not altogether successfully, to mask his anxiety and exude the natural confidence of a commander. Jimmy’s expression remained unaltered, the corners of his mouth pulled down. Rees looked as if he would throw up at any moment, but I knew that once he was airborne he would be the calmest of us all. Shark was still jabbering away, but his face was even more pale than usual and his eyes had a haunted look.

  ‘Do you think Shark’s going to be okay?’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen him act like this before.’

  Jane glanced across at him. ‘He’s speeding,’ she said. ‘Look at his pupils.’

  She began rummaging through her pockets, a troubled expression on her face.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes. No. I can’t find my pendant. The chain must have broken.’

  ‘I’ll look in the showers, maybe it fell off in there.’

  I pushed open the door and looked around. Our crumpled towels still lay on the bench, like an unmade bed after a night’s lovemaking. There was no sign of the pendant anywhere.

  ‘Do you remember having it when we got back from the E & E run?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I don’t know. It could be anywhere, in that minefield or inside that whale.’ She shuddered at the memory.

  ‘It’ll turn up, Jane. You might just have left it in your room at the Death Star.’

  She gave a doubtful nod. ‘Maybe.’ She paused, checking my expression. ‘It’s not because it’s Geoff s. It’s like a talisman to him and his whole family. They think nothing can go wrong as long as it’s safe. It’s stupid, I know, but I half-believe it myself.’

  I shrugged. ‘We’ve all got a superstition. Mine’s wearing odd socks.’ I hitched up the legs of my flying suit to prove it. ‘When I was based at Marham, I knew a guy who wouldn’t fly a sortie unless he’d stroked the Ops Room cat on his way out. It went missing one day and he refused to fly. They had to threaten him with a court martial to get him airborne.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing. He took off, flew a routine sortie and landed safely. He never even looked at the cat again after that.’

  She gave me a doubtful look. ‘Is that true or are you just trying to cheer me up?’

  ‘It’s true.’ I glanced over my shoulder, then kissed her forehead. ‘Come on.’

  * * *

  The changing room had a chaotic look. In place of the usual neatly folded and stacked kit and equipment, piles of unwashed flying suits and immersion suits still lay where they had been thrown after the previous missions.

  The corporal presiding over the room caught my eye. ‘Bit of a mess, I’m afraid, sir. We’ve had other, more pressing problems to deal with.’ As he turned round to reach for something on the shelf behind him, I saw that his left arm was roughly bandaged. ‘What happened?’

  He looked round. ‘This? I took a bullet. I’m okay, though. It hurts like hell but it could have been worse. We’re the lucky ones, aren’t we?’

  He nodded towards the shelves where flying helmets were still stacked, each one stencilled with a name. More than half of them would never be used again. As I glanced back at him, he held my gaze. ‘Make the fuckers pay, sir.’

  I nodded.

  As I turned away, the doctor came in carrying a plastic bag full of small, white capsules. He seemed almost furtive. ‘Anyone want any of these?’

  Nobody spoke and most of us shook our heads, but I saw Shark catch his eye. The doctor walked over to him. He looked at his eyes, hesitated a second, then handed him two more capsules.

  ‘Much more of that and Shark won’t need a jet to get airborne,’ I muttered.

  Jane put a hand on my arm. ‘Go easy on him, Sean. We’ve all got to get through this the best way we can. If it helps him do his job, then it’s fine by me.’

  I chose the least worn-looking immersion suit I could find on the rack, then walked over to the benches and began struggling into my gear. I resolved the usual dilemma of discomfort in the cockpit versus survival in the sea, in the usual way. I put on two pairs of thermal underwear and a woollen survival suit, then hauled on the immersion suit, helped by liberal doses of French chalk. It clouded the air around me and some settled on my face, giving my reflection in the mirror the pallor of a ghost.

  I dragged on my G-pants and combat jacket, then began a mental checklist of my kit, tapping each pocket with superstitious care. I looked around. The others were all changed, except for Shark who was still fumbling with his G-pants, his movements slow and listless. He met my eye for a second and then looked away, gulping and swallowing like a man about to be sick. Finally he stood up.

  I glanced at Jane. Her gaze was rock steady.

  ‘All right?’

  ‘Yes. Let’s do it.’

  The Boss stood by the table next to the door, ready for the outbrief. ‘Okay, guys, the airfield is reasonably secure. We’ve pushed the attackers back some distance from the perimeter and you should be safe to make a normal take-off, but be on the look out and keep your heads down. Do you all know the letter and number of the day? Have you removed all surplus items from your kit and all personal effects, other than your dog tags?’ His voice cracked. ‘Oh, sod this. Look, give it your best shot. Good luck.’

  He stepped out from behind the table and shook our hands in turn as we filed past him. Then Noel pushed open the doors. A pool of light spilled out into the predawn darkness. I could hear the keening of the wind across the airfield and as we came out of the lea of the building, I felt its cutting edge, despite my layers of clothing.

  The door banged behind us and we clambered on to a battered, camouflaged bus. A row of neat round holes had been punched down the near side. On the opposite side, where the rounds had exited, the bodywork had burst outwards in blooms of broken metal. Several of the seats had been shredded and clumps of bloodstained foam rubber still lay on the floor.

  We sat silent as the bus rattled down towards the Tempest shacks, bumping over patches of repaired runway, near-white against the darker grey of the rubber-streaked concrete. The twisted outlines of bombed and burnt buildings loomed out of the darkness around us.

  The doors of the surviving Tempest shacks were open and pools of harsh white light spilled on to the apron. One of the empty shacks had been pressed into use as a temporary morgue. As we passed its open door, I could see black rubber body bags being manhandled on to the bomb racks.

  Only three of the shacks still housed aircraft. As well as the usual Sidewinders and a single Skyflash missile, two squat iron bombs hung from the pylons beneath the wings of each jet.

  Jane noticed my expression. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing. Just someone walking on my grave.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Seeing iron bombs always creeps me out a little. On my first posting, before you and I buddied up, a friend of mine was killed on the bombing range at Finnington. An engineer screwed up. The bombs should have been set to detonate twenty feet above the ground, but with the usual few seconds’ delay so that they didn’t fully arm until clear of the aircraft. The engineer forgot to set a delay. They were fully armed on release and when the second bomb of the stick came off, it proximity fused on the first one a few feet below it. My friend was blown apart; just another training accident.’

  ‘What happened to the engineer?’

  ‘He was court martialled and discharged from the Air Force. I heard he’d committed suicide.’

  She squeezed my arm so hard that, even through the immersion suit, I could feel her fingers digging into my flesh. ‘Come on, Sean, get a grip on it. It’s not going to happen to us.’

  We came
down the steps and stood in an uncertain circle for a moment at the side of the bus. Noel started to say something, then changed his mind, and with a curt nod he turned and walked towards his jet. Rees trailed behind him. Jimmy walked to his jet like a condemned man approaching the scaffold. Shark winked as he followed him, but the bravado did not conceal the trembling of his lip.

  I hesitated for a second before I went into the Tempest shack. The mounds of earth and stone blunted the force of the wind, and the moist, dank smell of peat hung on the breeze, mingling with other, almost indefinable scents, like salt spray and the sour tang of kelp.

  I took a deep breath, then glanced across at Jane. ‘All right?’

  She nodded. ‘Just like I was the last time. Stop worrying about me, Sean. We can’t let what’s happened change the way we work. The best way we can look after each other is to keep one hundred per cent focused on our own jobs.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can.’

  ‘You’ve got no choice.’ She turned away from me, ran across the concrete and began climbing up the ladder to the jet.

  I glanced up at the sky. There wasn’t even the faintest red glimmer in the east; even the false dawn was still a good half hour away. The faces of the ground crew were etched with fatigue and the usual barely ordered chaos of the interior of the Tempest shack was even closer to complete disarray. Equipment and weaponry were stacked on every side and pieces of twisted metal cut from damaged jets had simply been dumped outside the shack when replacement panels were bolted on.

  I checked over the aircraft, then signed the form one of the ground crewmen held out to me. ‘Bring it back in one piece,’ he said. ‘We’re getting short of spares.’ He gave a tired smile then turned away to shout to one of his men.

  I climbed the ladder to the cockpit. Jane’s head was already bowed over her radar screen as she inputted data. I began strapping myself in, helped by the ground crewman.

  We completed the first cycle of preflight checks. I scanned the dials and captions again, then spoke to the ground crew over the intercom. ‘Starting APU.’ The auxiliary power unit coughed into life with a roar and a cloud of blue smoke.

  ‘Clear. Starting right engine.’ I pushed the button. There was a whine which swelled into a ground-shaking rumble. The ambient temperature, close to zero a few seconds before, climbed to over four hundred degrees Celsius. I started the left engine and the thunder redoubled, the vibrations of the engines shaking the fuselage in a steady, pulsing rhythm.

  I ran my eyes over the warning panels, frowning as a couple of captions lit up. They were minor faults, but in a routine sortie they would have been enough to send us looking for another jet. On a combat mission, minor problems had to be ignored.

  ‘Closing canopy.’ I lowered my visor and closed my eyes as the warning siren began to howl and the ground crew scattered. The siren wound down as the canopy locked into place, halving the engine noise.

  A moment later, I heard Noel’s voice over the radio. ‘Falcon. Check in.’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Okay, two minutes to roll-out.’

  I glanced at my watch, waiting as the second hand completed its circuit, then eased the throttles forward. It was exactly five fifty-six. As the Tempest’s nose emerged from the shack, I glanced left and right and saw the other two jets in line with us. The sky ahead was now streaked with red.

  ‘Abort brief.’ I’d recited it to Jane, with minor variations, on a thousand flights before. ‘Gusting wind from the right, dry runway. If there’s a major loss of thrust or a warning caption with the wheels on the runway, I’ll abort, engage reverse thrust, and use the hook. If you think I need the hook, call it and call the abort. Any problems after rotate, I’ll select combat power and we’ll deal with it at height. If I can’t maintain the climb and we’re still in trouble, I’ll call eject.’

  Rees had taken up station on the left of the runway with Shark on his right wingtip a couple of metres away. I slotted in behind them. There was a brief interchange with the tower, then they began to wind up the power. Their jets rocked and shuddered, straining against the brakes as tongues of blue-yellow flame flashed from the engines, reaching to within a couple of feet of my wingtips. I felt the jet wash shaking the aircraft, then they released the brakes and rocketed away down the runway. They lifted off, lurching and twisting as the wind struck them.

  I pushed the throttles forward through maximum dry power and into reheat. The fuel burn immediately increased tenfold as the afterburners kicked in with a surge of power that forced down the nose.

  I made a final check of the warning panel, but then hesitated a moment, motionless in the cockpit. I thought of my parents at home in England, and of my brother preparing for the battle that would bring his death. I remembered the look in Rose’s eye as I left her in the Sick Bay, her question still unanswered. And I thought of Jane in the back seat…

  I gritted my teeth and pushed the throttle forward all the way to the stops. The jet sprang forward, unleashed. As the runway blurred and the airspeed shot upwards, Jane and I kept up a constant crosstalk.

  ‘Fifty knots.’

  ‘Engines good, panel clear.’

  ‘One hundred knots. Cable.’

  We were past the wire.

  ‘One hundred and forty knots.’

  The last chance to hit the brakes and stop on the runway.

  ‘One hundred and seventy knots. V-rotate.’

  ‘Rotating.’ I eased the stick back and felt the jet lift clear of the runway. It seemed to hang for a moment, as it always did, then we were blasting upwards into the cloud layer.

  ‘Two hundred and fifty knots.’

  ‘Out of reheat.’ I eased the throttles back a little, but kept accelerating until we punched out of the top of the cloud at eight thousand feet. We levelled off and joined the other two circling aircraft. Shark flew in battle formation, one nautical mile to the right of Rees. I was behind them by the same distance.

  We began a long turn to the south-west, crossing the still dark coastline of East Falkland as the first pale light of dawn began to show in the east. Our chosen course was a gamble.

  An approach from the south-east would give us the best line of attack on the guardship, but it was also the best angle for its defences – eight Aspide surface-to-air missiles and four twin 40 mm Bofors anti-aircraft guns, antique but still very effective.

  We flew on over West Falkland. As we approached the coast, we closed up to within a few metres of each other and I put the throttles to idle for a cruise descent to low-level, conserving precious fuel. As we descended, I took careful note of the height of the cloud tops, the layers of haze and the height at which contrails became visible.

  We dropped steadily lower and the cloud layer reached up for us. Wisps and tendrils of mist touched the wings and licked along the fuselage. We plunged between two towering banks of cumulus, like mountain walls shielding a narrow valley, then a thick dark layer of cloud closed around us, cold and grey. Rain coated the canopy and ran along the Perspex in rivulets, pushed by the slipstream.

  I kept my eyes fixed on the wingtip of Shark’s jet a couple of metres from my own. Whenever it moved or twitched, my hand pushed the stick the same way. The cloud thinned and petered out just below two thousand feet and I dropped back a mile behind the other two jets.

  We flew on clear of the coast, still descending towards the dark waters of the ocean, skimming the scattered islands. Away to the south I could see the lights of a trawler fleet.

  Jane’s voice dragged me back. ‘Okay, contact. Looks like the ship, about one hundred miles.’

  The light was a little stronger now, the east brightening behind us, though ahead lay only darkness. We flew still lower, dropping below one hundred feet, then fifty. The greasy, dark-grey swell of the ocean seemed to reach for me; I could almost feel it slapping against the underside of the jet.

  We flew on, hugging the sea. Jane’s voice offered steady reassurance. ‘Still got
the ship. No hostiles. Screen clear.’

  I glanced down at the display. The only players showing were our own three aircraft and the computer-generated blip designating the hostile guardship.

  The jet carried electronic countermeasures, a jamming pod that in theory at least could defeat the acquisition radars of the destroyer’s missiles, but our best hope was an undetected approach at minimum low-level, rising into radar vision only as we were about to deliver the attack.

  We were still some distance from the target when the radio crackled. ‘Two contacts, fast, high-level, heading two-seven-zero.’

  I looked down and saw the contacts appear on the screen, as data was fed directly to us by Fortress.

  ‘We might be lucky,’ Jane said. ‘They’re heading away from us. It could be two Migs returning to base.’

  A moment later, I heard the radar warner chime for the first time. I felt my pulse beginning to beat faster and my mouth was dry.

  When Jane spoke again I could hear the tremor in her voice. ‘Contacts fifty miles, turning.’

  ‘Have they spotted us?’

  ‘I can’t say yet. They may just be flying a racetrack pattern… Turn complete, now on zero-three-zero, forty-five miles.’

  I heard the clatter of Jane’s keyboard as she inputted the new data, programming the computer with the course and speed, and fixing the offset position in the weapon system. The new heading she gave me was confirmed by Noel a moment later.

  ‘Ship heading fifteen degrees, at twenty knots,’ Jane said. ‘Contacts eighteen miles. Still fast, very high-level. I don’t think they’ve seen us yet.’

  ‘They will.’ The ships, the Migs and the Tempests were on a collision course, three arrows pointing at the same area of grey ocean, though as yet – as far as we could tell – we were the only ones that knew that.