‘I can’t outrun it,’ Richter said simply, ‘so I’m going to have to out-fly it. Make sure you’re belted in, both of you, and get that rifle secured, Colin. I don’t want that case flying around the cabin and braining someone. Your bag too, Raya. This is going to be bouncy.’
‘Oh, God,’ Dekker said, and jammed the rifle case under the seat.
Richter reached out and pulled the throttle back gently, reducing power and watching the airspeed dropping.
‘You’re slowing down,’ Dekker said nervously.
‘I know. Trust me, there’s no point in trying to go quickly, because that jet’s got a top speed about four times faster than we can manage. He can probably do about five hundred knots, and I already know this aircraft is flat out at around a hundred and twenty. But we do have one advantage: we can fly slower than him.’
‘And that helps how, exactly?’
‘His stall speed will be at least one hundred knots, almost as fast as we’re going now, which means he has to keep travelling faster than that, or his aircraft will fall out of the sky. We can go as slowly as fifty knots and still keep flying.’
‘But he can keep circling around us.’
‘I know. But he can’t stay behind us, and that’s the point.’
As Richter spoke, the Aermacchi flew past them again, this time on the left side of the Piper, the pilot gesticulating for them to head back the way they’d come.
‘He looks pissed off,’ Dekker remarked.
‘He’s going to be a lot more pissed off in a minute. Now, let’s see how good a pilot he is. Hold on.’
Richter pulled smoothly back on the control yoke, and simultaneously applied full right rudder. The Piper’s nose rose high in the air, then the aircraft’s right wing dropped with sickening suddenness. Instantly, the Piper started to fall, plummeting straight down towards the ground, the whole aircraft rotating clockwise, clearly completely out of control.
‘I hold visual contact with the target aircraft,’ the U2 pilot reported. ‘It’s still in Italian airspace, but getting close to the border. Wait. There’s also a military aircraft in the same area, behind the target. Waiting for identification now. Confirmed. The military bogie is an Italian Air Force Aermacchi MB-339.’
‘What’s your assessment?’ Westwood asked. He was sitting in the luxurious cabin of the Lear 60 as the pilot taxied towards Fiumicino’s active take-off runway, talking to the U2 jockey on a discrete Company UHF frequency. ‘Is the Italian aircraft acting as an escort, or is it hostile?’
‘Difficult to say. Standby… something’s just happened. It’s definitely not an escort. The target aircraft has just started a spin, so it’s possible the Aermacchi engaged it with a gun. Definitely not a missile, beause my systems would have detected missile launch.’
‘Oh, shit,’ Westwood muttered, a feeling of impotent disappointment flooding through him as he visualized the unarmed civilian aircraft crashing onto some unforgiving Alpine slope. ‘Pinpoint the crash site,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the emergency services moving.’
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Dekker muttered, ‘you’ve bloody lost it.’
Richter calmly shook his head, keeping the controls in the same positions and alternating his attention between the instruments in front of him and the swirling landscape visible through the windscreen. ‘We’re in a spin. We’re losing height very quickly.’
‘I can fucking see that. More to the point, can you get us out of it?’
Richter nodded, looked again at the altimeter and then at the compass, its needle swinging wildly. He waited until the aircraft had almost completed another revolution, then removed his right foot from the rudder pedal. Almost immediately the Piper stopped spinning, but continued its uncontrolled plunge towards the floor of the valley.
‘Where’s that jet?’ Richter asked.
‘What?’ Dekker couldn’t tear his eyes away from the terrifying view through the windscreen.
‘Where. Is. That. Jet?’ Richter asked again, enunciating each word very clearly.
‘It’s a long way above us,’ Raya said. ‘It seems to be flying in a circle.’
‘Good.’
As Dekker watched with horrified eyes, Richter pushed the control yoke fully forward.
‘But that’s the wrong way?’ Dekker said. ‘You need to pull back.’
‘It’s counter-intuitive, I know,’ Richter said, his tone almost conversational. ‘I’d stopped the spin, but the aircraft was still stalled, which means the wings weren’t generating any lift. We were in free fall, if you like.’
‘I kind of fucking guessed that.’
‘So what you have to do is un-stall the wings, and you do that by pushing the control column forwards. Then,’ Richter added, his words mirroring his actions, ‘you increase power and ease back slowly, and that brings the aircraft back under control.’
Steadily, and without any drama, the nose of the Piper rose until the aircraft was flying level again, now only a couple of hundred feet above the high-altitude valley floor that stretched between the peaks of Pointe de Charbonnel and L’Albaron, and still heading west.
‘Where’s that Aermacchi? The jet? Where is it?’
‘It looks as if it’s still circling,’ Raya said, ‘but it’s still quite a long way above us.’
‘Good. We’ll stay down here in the weeds. I tried to make it look as if the aircraft was completely out of control, so hopefully he’s waiting to see the ball of fire that would mark our impact site.’
‘He wasn’t the only one expecting that to happen,’ Dekker muttered.
Richter grinned at him. ‘Have a little faith in me, Colin.’
‘Now it looks as if it’s descending,’ Raya said sharply.
‘Bound to happen.’ Richter pushed the throttle as far forward as possible. ‘Now let’s try a bit of psychological warfare.’
He grabbed the aeronautical chart he’d been looking at previously, then selected the civilian Guard frequency, 121.5 megahertz, and pressed the transmit button. ‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is French civilian aircraft Foxtrot Lima Yankee Charlie Papa. My position is near Bramans, about ten kilometres from the Italian border, and I’m under attack from an unidentified Italian Aermacchi fighter aircraft. Somebody, anybody, please help.’
Richter released the button and glanced at Dekker. ‘That might give the Eyetie flying that Aermacchi pause for thought, simply because we are in France now. Shooting us down on the Italian side of the border is one thing. Following us into France and doing the same thing is a whole different ball game.’
‘And that broadcast might be picked up by other aircraft or air-traffic control units near here as well?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. We’re surrounded by mountains here, so most probably not, in fact. Really, that was for the Aermacchi pilot’s ears only. Where is he now, Raya?’
‘He’s climbing again, and he’s started turning back the way we came, towards the east.’
‘Forget the emergency services,’ the U2 pilot corrected Westwood. ‘I said it was in a spin, not crashing. The pilot’s just recovered, and the target aircraft has now crossed the border. The Aermacchi’s still in the area, but I don’t think there’s anything he can do now that the civilian aircraft’s in France. And… wait.’
There was silence on the frequency for a few seconds, then the U2 pilot transmitted again.
‘OK, the guy flying the target is English, and he’s cute. He just made a Mayday broadcast on twelve-fifteen — that’s the civil emergency frequency — to say he’s flying a French aircraft and he’s being attacked by an Italian military jet.’