Drew reached forward to switch off his lights, hoping the MP would assume that he was just conserving his battery. The man glanced up but made no move to come out of the gatehouse.
Drew decided to wait until he began speaking into the phone before making his break. He gripped the wheel tightly with his right hand, his left holding the handbrake off the catch.
As he waited, he visualised the escape run: floor the accelerator and, as soon as the back wheels were clear of the fenceline, spin the steering wheel left, hit the brakes, crash-change into first gear even while the car was still travelling backwards and roar off up the road fishtailing under the acceleration.
He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rising as he imagined the guard drawing a bead on him with his rifle. He swallowed nervously as he watched the man fumble with the RAF directory and then start to run his fingers down a list of numbers. Finally he began dialling, mouthing each number in turn as he did so.
There was a long pause.
Drew was about to release the handbrake when he saw a glow in the darkness behind him. A car was travelling along the main road. Cursing, he forced himself to wait for it to pass, not willing to risk a collision that could leave him a sitting target.
The car took an eternity to reach the gap in the pines. As it did, it swung off the road, the lights still on main beam, dazzling Drew as he stared into the mirror. Before he could react, the car was pulling up behind him, trapping him against the barrier. The driver tooted his horn, but the MP merely glanced up and waved an acknowledgement with the telephone handset.
‘It’s the guard at RAF Buckwell here.’ The MP’s voice carried on the still night air. ‘I’ve got an officer who says he’s Wing Commander Russell at the gate, but the picture on his ID is just about unrecognisable.’
Drew started to sweat harder as the man said something into the phone that Drew did not catch, then looked up and stared intently at him. He put the phone down and came out of the guardhouse, walking to the front of the car. He wrote down the registration number.
The MP went back inside and picked up the phone again. As Drew listened to him reciting the number down the phone, he resigned himself to the worst.
He heard the guard say, ‘Of course, immediately,’ and watched as he came out of the gatehouse again, assault rifle still held at the ready.
‘Sir?’ Drew pretended to look up. ‘Will you step out of the car, please sir?’
The guard moved back, keeping his distance as Drew opened the door. He looked blankly at the MP. ‘What now?’
The man gestured towards the guardhouse. ‘The phone, sir, an officer at Finnington wants to speak to you.’
Leaden-footed, Drew walked into the guardhouse and picked up the phone. Even though he knew any attempt at deception was now futile, he could not stop himself from making a feeble attempt to disguise his voice as he said, ‘Hello.’
The answer was a peal of laughter. ‘That’s twice I’ve rescued you now.’
The guard was momentarily out of earshot, round the far side of Drew’s car. ‘God, Michelle, you nearly gave me a heart attack. What are you doing there?’
‘I thought I’d just mind the store for you. It won’t do any good if anything serious happens, but I can answer the phone… and save you from a court martial when a guard gets suspicious.’
Drew lowered his voice as the MP reached the front of the car. ‘What did you tell him?’
Michelle laughed again. ‘I said the duty officer was in the bog, but I’d vouch for the Wing Commander. I told him you were always being stopped, because the photo on your ID is an old one and the handlebar moustache makes you look like Biggles after a bad night in Borneo. I said the saddest thing of all was that you won’t get a new one because you actually think the picture makes you look good.’
‘Why did the MP come peering at my number plate?’
‘I gave him your car registration number as a double check. Now hurry up and get back here.’
‘Why, losing your nerve?’ he said, recovering slightly.
‘No, I want that nightcap when you get back.’
The guard glanced up at him and chuckled as Drew walked back to his car. ‘Quite a sense of humour that Flight Lieutenant Power, hasn’t she?’
‘Oh yes,’ Drew said, ‘quite a sense of humour.’
He put the car in gear to drive through the gates. The guard paused with his hand on the barrier and called out, ‘Sir, just one more thing.’ Drew shot him a nervous look. ‘I don’t care what anybody else says, the picture makes you look very distinguished…’
Drew noticed the guard’s lip tremble as he stifled a laugh.
‘But please get a new photograph taken. Your own mother wouldn’t recognise you from this one.’
‘You’re probably right, Sergeant. I’ll do that.’
Shoulders shaking, the guard waved Drew on towards the mock-classical frontage of the AIB building and retired to his gatehouse.
Tom stood waiting just inside the huge double doors.
‘What the hell was going on with the guard? I had about five sets of kittens while I was waiting.’
‘You had kittens? It was me the gun was pointing at.’
Tom led Drew through the echoing corridors of the darkened building, punching in security codes on two doors marked RESTRICTED ACCESS.
In a sprawling open-plan office, he accessed the computer and called up a file on screen. Drew’s eyes flickered over the heading: ‘Secret, authorised personnel only’, as he began to read.
The file was a listing of dates of Tempest incidents with minimal detail. He scribbled frantically in a notebook, recording each incident as Tom scrolled steadily down the screen. When Drew had finished, he scanned back over his notes, staggered. In the last two years alone, there had been nine Tempest crashes and nine other serious incidents involving temporary loss of control.
They gazed at each other.
‘Didn’t you know how many there were?’ Drew asked.
Tom shook his head. ‘I had no idea there were this many. None of us did, as far as I know.’
‘There are no names or squadrons listed on this. How am I going to find the guys who survived those crashes?’
Tom shrugged. ‘There’s nothing on computer, so, unless you’re going to try stopping aircrew at random and asking them, I don’t hold out much hope for you.’
Drew thought for a minute as Tom still stared at the screen. ‘Are there any other files I can see?’ Tom shook his head. ‘What about the individual reports?’
‘I told you, the investigations have been handled directly by Power’s own office.’
‘But there must be something on computer?’
Tom shrugged helplessly. ‘If there was, I wouldn’t know where to find it.’
Drew stared at him, unblinking. ‘You must know something else.’
‘All I know – and it’s nothing more than a rumour really – is that there’s a project code-named Operation Brushfire.’ Tom hesitated. ‘There’s supposed to be a Tempest set up on a test bed at Barnwold. It’s in a secure hangar in the skunk works site, so no one can get anywhere near it. Apparently they’re doing everything short of dropping bombs on it, to try and replicate the problem.’
‘And what have they found?’
Tom shrugged. ‘As far as I know, nothing.’
‘So call up Brushfire on the computer and see what comes up.’
Tom stared at him, incredulous. ‘Jesus, Drew! You don’t want much do you? Why don’t you just drive down there and ask to see it?’
‘Please, Tom. Just do me this one last favour and I’m out of here and out of your hair.’
Shaking his head, Tom turned back to the keyboard. A few seconds later there was an electronic tone and a message flashed up on screen: ‘Authorisation Code?’
Tom frowned.
‘Do you have the code?’ Drew asked.
‘I’m not sure. It depends at what level of secrecy it’s been classified. I’m only cleared up to a c
ertain level.’
‘Try it,’ Drew said impatiently.
‘Come on, Drew, be reasonable. Haven’t I stuck my neck out far enough already?’
Drew gave him a baleful look. ‘Listen Tom, just to get here tonight, I’ve already deserted my post and impersonated an officer, using a stolen ID card. I make that three potential court martials. All I’m asking you to do is access a file.’
Tom still hesitated.
‘Something is very wrong here, Tom,’ Drew went on more gently. ‘You can see that as well as I can. There is a fault on the Tempest – the aircraft that we both fly – that is killing people, friends of you and me.’ He paused to allow Tom to weigh his words. ‘I know you, Tom. I’ve watched your face when you’ve seen the bodies at crash sites. You go to an awful lot of them but you’ve never become so hardened that you’ve forgotten your humanity. You’re not going to sit by and let more people die needlessly if you can do something to help stop it.’
Tom gave Drew a long, hard stare, then punched in a code.
There was a second, louder electronic tone and another message flashed on screen: ‘Access Denied.’
‘Shit, shit, shit.’ Tom put his face in his hands.
‘What is it?’ Drew asked.
‘Any unauthorised attempt to access a secret file is logged by the computer and the details sent to security.’
Drew shrugged his shoulders. ‘Just play the innocent. Tell them you were curious what Brushfire was and didn’t realise you weren’t cleared to see it. They’re not going to shoot you for it, are they? You didn’t get access, so you didn’t find anything out.’
‘And it’s that simple is it?’ Tom said with heavy sarcasm. ‘Look, Drew, just go now, will you? I’m in enough shit as it is for one night.’
‘All right,’ Drew said quietly, ‘and Tom? Thanks.’
Tom just grunted in reply. As he was about to lead the way back out of the office, Drew’s bleeper sounded. Tom waved him to a phone.
As soon as Drew heard Michelle’s voice, he knew he was in trouble. ‘Drew, I’m out of my depth I’m afraid. There’s been an intruder alert. I tried to pacify the guard here and told him you’d gone staggering off to the bog with a bad case of diarrhoea, but when he couldn’t find you straightaway he insisted on calling out Russell. I’m going to do a runner before he gets here. Sorry, I’ve done what I could.’
Drew hung up and turned to Tom. ‘You’ll be glad to know we’re both in the shit.’
Tom showed him to the door. Drew shook his hand, then ran to his car. The MP was still grinning at him from the gatehouse as he raised the barrier.
Drew flogged the car up the motorway at over a hundred, but it still took him ninety minutes to get back to Finnington. A nervous, flustered-looking young airman stopped him at the barrier. ‘Your ID, sir, please.’
Drew reached into his pocket and handed over the card. The airman fumbled with it and it slipped from his fingers and went under the car. ‘Sorry sir,’ he said. ‘It’s been a bit of a nerve-racking evening.’
‘What happened?’ Drew asked, getting out to help.
‘We had an intruder alert. I’ve spent two hours thinking some IRA man was going to sneak up behind me and blow my head off, and in the middle of all the panic Wing Commander Russell arrived with no ID, demanding to be let in.’
Drew froze and then dropped to his knees alongside the airman and began searching feverishly under the car.
‘Got it,’ the airman said, triumphantly brandishing the card. Drew snatched it back from him.
‘Sorry,’ he said, his heart pounding. ‘Just remembered, that’s my squash club membership card.’ He took his own ID out of his wallet and handed it over, slipping Russell’s card back into his pocket. ‘What happened about the Wing Commander?’ he asked as his pulse rate returned to normal.
‘I had to keep him waiting at the barrier for twenty minutes, until another officer arrived to vouch for him. The Wing Commander got very heated about it,’ the airman said unhappily, ‘but I’m new at Finnington and I didn’t know him, so I couldn’t just wave him through, could I, sir?’
‘You did exactly the right thing,’ Drew assured him, smiling.
He drove in to the operational area but sneaked into the deserted Ops room and used the photocopier for five minutes before heading for Russell’s office. He found the Wing Commander pacing the floor, incandescent with rage.
‘Where the hell have you been, Miller?’
‘I’m really sorry, sir. I slipped out for ten minutes to meet someone but then I couldn’t start my car and it took the AA an hour to get to me.’
Russell held his hand up for silence. ‘I’m not interested in your excuses. This isn’t a prep school where you can skip lessons if you feel like it and get away with an hour in detention. This base is a vital part of the defence system of this country. You were left in charge of it overnight as duty officer and you abandoned your post on a whim. It’s tantamount to desertion. I put my trust in you and this is how you repay me. Any further trouble and you’ll be on a one-way ticket out of the Air Force altogether.’
Drew waited until Russell simmered down. ‘Thank you, sir. It won’t happen again.’
‘You’re damn right it won’t. Now, can I take it that you’ll be able to manage the rest of your stint without popping out again on some errand or other?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Russell turned on his heel and headed for the door, but Drew called him back. ‘Sir, before you go there’s something I think you ought to know.’ He produced his notebook from his pocket and began reading the list of crashes and near misses.
Russell stood silently through the recital, then held out his hand for the notebook. ‘Let me see that.’ Drew hesitated for a moment, then shrugged and handed it over.
Russell glanced impatiently through it but then, visibly shocked, he read the entries again more carefully.
Finally he looked up. ‘This is clearly classified information. Where did you get it?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, sir, but you have to agree that it rather supports my point of view.’
‘I will raise this through the proper channels,’ Russell said, regaining his equilibrium, ‘but there’s nothing concrete here. Coincidence isn’t evidence.’
‘But you must warn the Tempest squadrons.’
‘Must?’ Russell said. ‘On whose say-so, pray? A flight lieutenant with an axe to grind? Tempest RSIs and RS3s have probably flown well over twenty thousand operational sorties and many hundreds of thousands of flying hours in the past four years. Yet you want me to try and get them grounded because you don’t believe there’s such a thing as pilot error?’
Russell turned to go.
‘Sir?’
‘Yes?’ Russell said, exhaling heavily.
Drew held out his hand. ‘If that’ll be all, I’d like my notebook.’
Russell shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘But it’s just a list of dates and coincidences, sir.’
‘No, Drew. This is classified material, however insubstantial, and I’m retaining it. And that, Flight Lieutenant, is my final word on the subject.’
Drew waited until he heard the sound of Russell’s footsteps recede down the corridor, then opened the door and walked to the changing rooms. He dropped Russell’s ID on the floor and kicked it under a bench for the cleaners to find in the morning.
* * *
A few hours later, Drew nosed his way into the early-morning traffic. He took a circuitous route home, past the Conservative Party offices. A large billboard stood to one side of the building. Beneath the headline NORMAN FEATHER MP – A LOCAL MAN SERVING LOCAL PEOPLE, a grey-haired, patrician figure stared out into the bright future that awaited him and his constituents.
Drew pulled in for a moment, scribbled down the telephone number printed at the bottom of the poster and then drove back to the flat. As soon as he had shut the door, he dialled the number.
He reac
hed the MP’s secretary, only to be politely but firmly brushed off. ‘If it’s a constituency matter, Mr Feather holds surgeries on Saturday mornings between ten and twelve.’
‘It’s not a constituency matter,’ Drew interrupted. ‘It’s a matter of national security.’
‘I see. And who might you be, sir?’
‘I’m… I’m a serving officer in the Royal Air Force. It’s vitally important that I contact him.’
‘I’m afraid he’s here in London until Friday evening.’
‘Then I’m happy to see him there. Is there not a five-minute hole somewhere in his schedule?’
‘I’ll have to check with him,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Give me your number and I’ll call you back.’
Drew had wandered into the kitchen to make some coffee when the phone rang. ‘Norman Feather’s secretary here, Mr Miller. He could see you at the House of Commons for a few minutes at six tomorrow evening.’
‘Thank you. I’ll be there.’
Before he collapsed into bed he also phoned Michelle. A drowsy voice answered him. ‘Hi, this is your wake-up call,’ Drew said. ‘Vital mission briefing, my flat, eight o’clock tonight.’
‘I’d better bring the crew along.’
‘No, that won’t be necessary,’ Drew said. ‘It’s confidential, strictly on a need-to-know basis.’
‘All right, I’ll come alone. Anything I need bring with me?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Drew said. ‘I’ve already got all the essential equipment.’ He didn’t wait for an answer.
The alarm sounded at three p.m. Drew spent the next few hours shopping, cooking, dusting, hoovering and polishing. He cleaned the bedroom, changed the sheets and was just applying the finishing touches to the dinner table when the doorbell rang. Surprised, he looked at his watch.
‘Fifteen minutes early. God, you’re keen,’ he said as he opened the door, then faltered when he saw Russell standing there. ‘Oh, it’s you sir.’
‘Evening, Drew, may I come in?’ Russell answered his own question by stepping past Drew into the flat.
‘I’ve got someone coming round shortly, sir,’ Drew said.
‘This won’t take a moment. I’ve taken up the issues you raised through the relevant channels. As I suspected, you’ve rather got the wrong end of the stick. I’m not at liberty to tell you what action is being taken, but you can rest assured that it is being dealt with. They’re very concerned about the security aspects, however.’
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