The Tornado swept over the shoreline. They seemed to be heading for the runway at a phenomenal speed. Behind the airfield a twelve-hundred-foot plateau rose menacingly out of the evening mist. With one unreliable engine there was no chance of the Tornado clearing the rising slopes and going round again for another attempt.
‘Brace yourself,’ Rantz said, his voice strangely detached.
The Tornado cleared the last row of approach lights and banged down hard on to the runway. Girling heard Rantz bring off the power. The Tornado was still doing about a hundred and thirty knots.
The crash trucks were already moving by the time the Tornado rumbled past their position at the run-way’s half-way mark. Rantz was standing on the brakes, while Girling could do nothing except watch the far perimeter fence grow through the Tornado’s front canopy frame.
It was only when he noticed a fire truck pull alongside the aircraft that he knew they had made it. The Tornado juddered to a halt, the vibration from the carbon brakes rising up through the airframe.
Orders from Rantz burst into his headset. For a moment, Girling could only think of their deliverance. He had forgotten they were on fire.
‘Get the safe-arm pin back into the seat. Quick, come on.’
Girling snapped out of his torpor, found the pin on the canopy frame and pulled it from its stowing position. He pushed it down under the seat, desperate to find the hole, his fingers desensitized by the thick-ness of the gloves. Until he replaced the damned pin his seat was still live, ready to catapult him into space. At last he managed to click it home.
Rantz was already getting out of his seat when the canopy sprang open and hands pulled at Girling’s body. He looked up, dazed, at a crash attendant, his face masked by asbestos and foil headgear. One turn of the harness in his lap and he too was out of the cockpit, trailing the umbilical that had plugged him into the aircraft.
From a safe distance, Girling looked back at the Tornado, the rear half of its fuselage covered in fire-fighting foam from the surrounding trucks. It no longer looked the pride of the RAF’s strike force.
Rantz shook himself. ‘Come on, let’s go and get some tea.’
Girling limped after the pilot, his leg muscles protesting at every step.
‘Well, you got your story,’ Rantz said, dropping back for him.
Girling noticed the strain around the pilot’s eyes. ‘I came to do a story on low flying. My editor doesn’t like melodrama — not the sort I write, anyway. We leave that to the tabloids.’ He paused. ‘In any case, I reckon I owe you something for getting us down in one piece.’
‘You’re not going to write about this?’ Rantz looked from Girling to the Tornado. A bitter, squally wind was blowing across the airfield, whipping the foam off the aircraft and scattering it like tumbleweed across the concrete.
‘It’s not what the magazine’s about. Pity, really. Maybe I’ll call The Sun…’
Rantz laughed. ‘Very funny, Girling.’
A detachment of six heavily armed men rounded the corner of a building and headed straight for them.
‘Here comes trouble,’ Rantz muttered.
‘Our reception committee?’
‘Looks like it.’
With the troops still a hundred yards away, Rantz lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘Don’t tell them you’re a journalist, OK? Unless they specifically ask you for ID.’
Girling looked at him.
‘Otherwise, we’ll be here all bloody week. Just leave all the talking to me. They’ll assume you’re my navigator.’
The troops were upon them. Army, Girling noticed, not RAF Regiment as he had expected.
The sergeant saw Rantz’s rank and snapped into a salute. ‘Orders to escort you to the crew room, sir.’
‘Thank you, sergeant. Why the firing squad?’ He smiled.
‘Regulations, sir.’
Rantz raised an eyebrow.
‘Exercise rules,’ the sergeant added. ‘We’re on heightened alert.’
They turned towards a group of buildings a little way beyond the concrete apron.
‘Good to see our defences working as well on the ground as they do in the air,’ Rantz said cheerily.
The sergeant said nothing, not quite sure whether Rantz was pulling his leg.
They reached the crew room. Rantz removed his helmet and asked how they might arrange travel back to their own base.
The sergeant pointed to the phone, explaining that it connected to facilities on the other side of the airfield where they could process his request. Machrihanish was only a stand-by RAF base, he said, apologetically. The amenities were a little spartan. As he retreated out of the crew room, the sergeant suggested it would not be a good idea to wander outside. Machrihanish was assigned to NATO and the American contingent tended to lock up first and ask questions later. Rantz nodded his thanks. They would wait there until someone came to get them.
‘So far so good,’ Rantz said, when they were alone. He consulted an index by the phone. ‘Now let’s see if we can get out of here.’
He dialled a number, jammed the handset to his ear, and stared beyond the peeling window frame across the wind-swept airfield. Thick clouds from the North Atlantic had begun to bring rain with them. Another degree or two colder and it would snow.
‘Bloody awful place.’ Rantz drummed his finger on the windowsill waiting for the connection.
Girling realized it was likely to take some time. Good opportunity to take a leak.
Rantz turned from the window. ‘Don’t go wandering off.’
Girling grunted.
The pitch dark of the corridor made the howl of the wind all the more noticeable. Somewhere upstairs a door slammed. Girling found a wall switch and peered through the dim light cast by the low-watt bulb for signs of a bathroom. The notices on the three doors announced that they were offices.
He took the stairs and found himself in a control tower converted into a pilots’ recreation room. There was a ping-pong table in the middle, a coffee machine by the wall, and even the odd magazine scattered around the chairs.
The loos were off an adjoining passageway. Someone had left one of the frosted-glass windows ajar, causing the cubicle doors to batter against their frames in the wind. Girling shivered and moved towards the urinals. The cumbersome flight gear — g-pants, in particular — made even the most innocuous pee something of a ritual.
Standing there gave him a clear view through the gap in the window. And what he saw made him catch his breath.
He had only ever seen pictures of the Seventy-Six before. It was a big aircraft, shorter than a Boeing 747, but about the same diameter, giving it a disproportionately tubby appearance, especially from the rear. It was sometimes confused with the Lockheed C-141, another large airlifter and troop transport, but this was no C-141.
The Ilyushin 11–76, the Soviet jet transport known to NATO as ‘Candid’, was inching into a giant hangar on the opposite side of the airfield, the sound of its four engines carrying on the wind. Because of the buildings that surrounded the crew room, it was only possible to obtain a view of the hangar through this one window. Had he been anywhere else, he would have missed it.
He zipped up his flight-suit and moved to the window, adjusting the frame so it was fully open. He never noticed the spots of rain on his face.
The Candid was painted in the colours of Aeroflot, the Soviet state airline. But as the aircraft’s engines and systems were shut down, twin guns slid into their stowed position beneath its massive T-tail.
The giant doors began their slow journey across the front of the hangar.
Girling remembered his camera just as the doors had reached the half-way mark. He could see people buzzing around the Candid and stairs being pushed across to the door just aft of the cockpit. One individual in particular caught his attention. A wiry man walking back and forth in front of the aircraft with a restless energy, a walkie-talkie alternating between his ear and his mouth. From the nondescript appearance of the man’s fatigues it was impossible to tell whether he was Russian or British. He tore at the velcro lining of his flight-suit, set the auto-focusing Pentax to full zoom and started shooting.