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“Sir, there is something else.”

Jason’s eyes watched him steadily. “Go on.”

Bagni took long seconds, wrestling mentally with what he had to say. “Sir, I request to be grounded.”

Jason’s eyes held Bagni fast. “Do you have a good reason?”

“Yes, sir. I am afraid of landings. I always have been. One day I will kill myself and my back-seater. It’s only a matter of time.”

“I see.”

Jason got slowly up from behind his desk and went over to a window. A pair of Tornadoes were
hurtling down the runway. He waited until their roar had faded before speaking.

He turned to face Bagni. “I studied your file very carefully, before selecting you. No reference anywhere to bad landings. You are either very good at hiding such an apparent handicap from your assessing officers, or you’re just one of those pilots who
believe
they’re afraid of landings. It’s a fantasy fear, Bagni. And now you’ve added it to this foolish guilt about Palmer’s death.”

“I have lived with this for a long time, sir.”

Jason said: “Look, Nico, you’re one of the finest pilots on the squadron. In fact, you’re one of the top three. I have no intention of losing you. If I thought you were below the standards I expect, you would not find it necessary to ask. I would ground you myself. Tell you what. Show me just how afraid you are. We’re going to work the circuit. I’ll be in the back seat. As your aircraft is not a trainer, there are no dual controls. I shall be completely in your hands.”

Bagni’s eyes widened in shock. “Sir! But …”

“No more buts, Captain. Be ready for take-off in an hour.”

Jason made Bagni carry out ten consecutive takeoffs and landings. Each was perfection. Bagni put the aircraft down with barely a jolt.

“You didn’t need ten of those,” Jason said after the last one. “The first convinced me. How do you feel?”

Bagni was chastened. “You trusted me. I was not afraid.”

“You never really were. Any more than you were responsible for young Palmer’s death.”

In the back seat, Jason shut his eyes briefly in silent thanks. His shock tactics had worked. Perhaps Palmer’s death had.

He mentally uncrossed his fingers. If things had gone wrong, Bagni would have splattered them both across the runway. But Bagni had got everything right. He might have been able to get away with faking the first landing, but not the following nine. There had been no hesitation in his execution of them. Every one had been precise, with the indefinable touch of an artist. Bagni knew his job.

Jason left the aircraft with relief. He would not have liked losing such a pilot, but if Bagni had even fumbled any one of the ten landings, Jason would have grounded him.

Away to the east, at the base on the Kola Peninsula, Kukarev lay on the bed in his room, staring at the ceiling, a tightening knot in his stomach. An hour before, he had returned from a low-level sortie over the Barents Sea. The knot in his stomach was due to the fact that he now knew the date of his final departure. He had been given the date of the end of his detachment. He gazed at the ceiling and thought of the enormity of what he was about to undertake, and what had driven him to it.

It was Sergei Stolybin who had made it possible. They had once been flight cadets together, but Stolybin had washed out and had gone on to join the KGB. Once, on a survival course deep within the Arctic wilderness, Kukarev had risked his life to save Stolybin from freezing to death. Stolybin had never forgotten, and they had remained firm friends throughout the passing years.

At first Kukarev had kept to himself his hatred of the men who had brought his father to disgrace and death, and his mother to a weary grave soon after. But he had never married, to avoid both emotional vulnerability and possible official blackmail afterwards. And once he had mentioned to Stolybin a hypothetical scenario of a pilot wanting to go West.

His friend had avoided committing himself, and a full year had passed after that, with Kukarev wondering whether friendship could withstand the KGB ethos. On every posting, he had expected arrest. But nothing had occurred and he had continued to rise in his career.

Then one day, in Kabul of all places, Stolybin had met up with him and in a bar that night had mentioned to him casually that if a hypothetical pilot wanted to make the hypothetical trip West, there might be a hypothetical way. They had gone on from there. And now the trip was no longer hypothetical.

Kukarev continued to stare at the ceiling. He hoped Sergei Stolybin had not compromised his own
safety by helping him. They had kept their meetings to a minimum, but that did not mean Stolybin was himself not under possible surveillance.

Kukarev had brought up the subject on one occasion.

“Surveillance is something I know rather a lot about, Pyotr Ivanovich,” Stolybin had said. “And flying is your game. Let’s each concentrate on his part. Don’t worry about me. Worry about how you’re going to evade anyone they may send after you to turn you back, or to shoot you down. I’ll handle the surveillance.”

In Aberdeen, Morven’s first knowledge of the crash was through the news media that night. Because the names of the victims had not yet been released, she was hit by a sudden blind panic and wondered about the safety of the two men most important to her.

Her hand hovered over the phone, and she felt anguish over whom to call first. She decided on Axel and felt blessed relief when he came on the line. Inevitably she was shocked to hear it was Palmer and Ferris who had died. Ferris she’d met only briefly, but Palmer she’d felt she knew well from their time together at the Ball. He’d seemed such a good, gentle person.

She called a second time, and got her brother.

“Poor Richard,” she said. “What happened? I asked Axel …”

“Called him, did you?”

“I called you first,” she lied, feeling guilty, “but you weren’t around … so I asked for Axel.” Hohendorf would not betray her, she knew.

Seemingly mollified, Selby said: “There’s an inquiry on … you know … usual stuff. To determine cause, to apportion blame if any, to take remedial action, and so on. We’ve got some educated guesses, of course, but I can’t tell you about that.”

“Will you be all right?”

“I’m fine. We’re all cut up, naturally; but nothing stops.”

“I know. Have you heard from Kim?”

“Yes. She called just now. That’ll be why you couldn’t get me.”

“What about Richard’s girl? The one he couldn’t take to the Ball …”

“Very sad case there. As you know, she’s the boss’s sec. She didn’t want to, but he’s made her take some leave. I gather she’s got family to go to … Morven? Are you there?”

“Yes, Mark,” Morven replied. “Still here. I was just thinking of how things can change so quickly …”

“Best not to dwell upon it.”

“Of all people, I should know that.”

“Yes,” he said.

The question of Selby’s mortality had never arisen in Morven’s mind. Having a brother as a jet fighter pilot had been good for her image at school, and his possible death had simply never occurred to
her. Now, it was different. An item on TV had come painfully close to home.

“I’ve got to go now,” Selby was saying. “Look kid, don’t worry.”

“I won’t.”

They both knew it wasn’t true.

“Mark …”

“Yes?”

“Tell Axel to be careful, will you?”

Silence.

“Mark …?”

A sigh. “I’ll tell him.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“‘bye.”

“‘bye, Mo.”

Three days later, sixty miles from land, Hohendorf and Selby were returning from a paired high-level patrol and were practising an ultra-low approach to base, as had been directed for the sortie. Height over the sea was thirty feet. They flew a 500-meter lateral separation pattern and were due for a pull-up to 5000 feet within one minute. At 450 knots, that would leave them with a remaining six minutes transit time.

Just before the pull up, a huge flock of birds rose from the sea and slammed into Hohendorf’s aircraft. The force was so great that the Tornado appeared to stop in mid-air and only Hohendorf’s swift
reactions in pushing the throttles hard against the stops into full combat afterburner and an instinctive pull up prevented the aircraft from plunging into the sea.

Inevitably, November One aircraft had hit birds before, but damage had been minimal. The engines had been deliberately designed for high-speed low-level transits, and to facilitate bird ingestion they did not have fixed inlet vanes. The birds would go straight through, be turned into mincemeat, cause some damage, but not sufficient to stop the affected engine from running. No aircraft had been seriously affected and, as far as Hohendorf knew, no type of Tornado had been lost under such conditions.

But there could always be the exception that proved the rule.

In this case the birds were large gulls—Hohendorf could see the smeared head of one on his windscreen—and a great number of them had been drawn into the engines. Even more had spread themselves over the windscreen and canopy, their entrails forming a red-streaked cloak, causing the sun’s rays to send a baleful glow into the cockpits and streaming astern in a crimson mist. Mercifully, the canopy had remained intact.

Hohendorf and Flacht had their visors down, as was the hard rule for low-level flight: whatever came through a shattered canopy could make a nasty mess of a visorless face, and although birds, particularly geese, could sometimes be found at
ridiculous heights, low-level without visors was asking for trouble.

The Tornado staggered up towards 10,000 feet, its engines fighting to regain power over the mangled carcases clogging its vanes.

“Christ,” came a voice in their headphones. An anxious Selby. “You look as if you’re shitting blood, and your canopy’s painted red.” He had moved his own aircraft closer immediately he’d seen the bird-strike. It had all happened so quickly. Nothing had come near his own Tornado. “What’s your status? Have advised November One of birdstrike.”

“Better answer him, Wolfie,” Hohendorf told Flacht. “Check out the systems while I get us to height.”

From the rear cockpit, Flacht had already pressed one of the display tabs to bring a full systems state on-screen. Both the front and rear cockpit central warning panels were showing more lights than either crew member wanted to see, and the multifunction display Flacht had selected seemed to be giving nothing but bad news, much of which had already been confirmed by the warning panel. The list was ominous.

“You don’t want to hear this,” Flacht said.

AICS, the list began, N RPNS. No response.

The air intake control system was shot. Surprise, surprise.

Engine oil, engine reheat, engine fuel control, the list seemed to go on and on as the display went swiftly through its pages of unwelcome information. The engine systems were taking a hammering: oil, fuel control, ignition, starting … That meant no relight facility, should they suffer a double flame-out. The ram air turbine would pop out automatically to generate limited power for the controls, but its effectiveness would depend on many other things not having gone wrong.

Flacht passed the information to McCann, who patched it through to November One.

“Merlin two-four,” Hohendorf began to his companion plane, using the sortie call-sign, “when we get to height, look me over, will you?”

“That’s a roger, two-one.” It was McCann who answered. “How’s your visibility? You guys look covered.”

“Visibility practically nil. If we lose nav systems you may have to guide us in, with GCA help.”

“Will do, Axel,” came Selby’s voice.

Hohendorf switched channels long enough to say to Flacht, drily: “When he thinks I’m going to die, he calls me Axel.”

“But we’re not going to die,” Flacht said. “I’d never forgive you.”

“Don’t worry, Wolfie. I’d never forgive myself.”

“Hey you two!” came McCann’s voice. “Quit whispering. Let us in on the secret.”

Hohendorf reverted to the original channel. “What’s the matter, Elmer Lee? Getting lonely?”

“Thought you’d lost radio,” McCann retorted.

Hohendorf felt his face twitch in a grim smile. Elmer Lee was worried. He knew what was going on in all their minds. After Palmer and Ferris, no one wanted another crew and aircraft loss. He could imagine the state of things back at November One.

At last, they reached 10,000 feet and he levelled off slowly. The engines were still struggling for power, but at least they had taken the aircraft to a safe height. If they both died on him now, he might just be able to glide to base. It would be a one-shot landing, but even if all the fly-by-wire channels went to sleep, the mechanical back-up would still give enough control to get him home. Admittedly the usually smooth, crisply-maneuvering Tornado would try to turn itself into a flying pig, but these things were all relative.

I can do it, he said in his mind.

The engines were coughing, losing the struggle.

Flacht was saying: “We’re still in D809, but November One’s cleared its southern section of all activity for the duration.”

D809 was one of several designated danger areas where intense military flying was conducted.

“Good,” Hohendorf said. “One less problem to
worry about. If we lose CSAS, I’m still going to put her down rather than eject. Do you concur?”

“I hate swimming,” Flacht said, “so I think I prefer to stay in here where it’s nice and warm.”

“As long as it doesn’t get warmer.”

“You guys are ghouls,” came McCann’s voice. “You know that?”

Hohendorf smiled again, and concentrated on nursing the wounded aircraft.

Selby had carried out a careful inspection of the Tornado, moving his own aircraft about it. A bird had impaled itself on one of the missiles and was shearing away bit by bit in the slipstream. Other strips of carcase were smeared about the airframe, but no serious damage appeared to have been done to the outside. The canopy remained covered in blood.