Kilton looked out of the window where Mannington was helping Leivers into his staff car. Buttler followed his gaze.
“And we’ll make sure the Americans know who it was who delivered this project. But Mark, if we have another debacle, particularly a leak from TFU, then it’s going to be very hard to justify the existence of this unit you’ve created. You’re already ruffling feathers with the RAF brass as it is.”
“There will be no leak from here, but I don’t like information going up the line to Group.” He nodded toward the receding staff car outside. “I start to lose control of who knows what, and that’s when it can get leaky.”
“I understand. So, how can I help?”
Kilton looked at him. “Allow me to report direct to you, direct to the Air Ministry and cut out Group and the RAF Main Building.”
“You realise what you’re asking? The men with gold braid on their shoulders won’t be happy.”
Kilton thought for a moment and shrugged.
Buttler smiled. “I can talk to the PM. I think he’ll see the benefit of such an arrangement. Between you and me, he believes most of the RAF now hate him for ending TSR-2.”
“They do,” Kilton answered quickly. “But then they’re mostly old romantics who think we’re stuck in the 1940s. Some of us exist in the real world.”
“They’re a powerful bunch, those old romantics as you call them. Your head’s above the parapet now Mark.” The minister walked to the door. “You’ll find your life was a lot less complex in 1940, shooting down the Luftwaffe and staying alive for another day. I’ll talk to the PM. I think we can probably agree you report direct to the Ministry for now. Keeping in tight in the name of secrecy. It would be a tragedy for all if this project failed before that deal was signed.”
The minister’s heels made a clicking noise on the hard floor as he disappeared, leaving Kilton alone with a brown envelope filled with papers and stamped TOP SECRET.
MILLIE REACHED FORWARD and flipped a switch marked DATA PANEL ELEC. The orange numbers presented by the Guiding Light system went dark as the electrical supply was cut off.
He tucked his flight case back under the navigator station and secured it with a bungee cord. Inside were the four reels of magnetic tape he had filled with height data, recording the flight at low-level. He thought four would be enough to cover the run, but he missed the last couple of minutes, which included the moment when the system went haywire.
But it wouldn’t matter, since there were four men on board, and they could describe what happened accurately between them.
The aircraft’s wings rolled and he felt the g-force increase, pressing him into his seat. But it was gentle; Rob was guiding the delta-winged jet smoothly onto finals for RAF West Porton. It was a flying style that matched his nature.
A moment later, with a squeal of rubber beneath them, they were down.
Once the aircraft came to a stop at the end of a brief taxi, Steve Bright was quickly out of his seat and opening the hatch. Millie stayed put, but watched as the nav extended the yellow ladder.
It was a warm June day. Millie removed his helmet and oxygen mask, and ran a gloved hand through what was left of his sweaty grey hair, now matted to his head.
Eventually, Brian Hill pulled aside the curtain, looking haggard. He nodded at Millie but said nothing as he descended the steps.
Rob was behind him. Millie winced at the sight of his reddened face with pronounced stress lines, squashed into the helmet.
He looked like a man in his forties, rather than a fresh faced twenty-nine-year-old.
“You OK?”
Rob looked serious. He nodded and continued down the ladder. Millie picked up his case and followed him out, feeling for the metal rungs below him. Everything seemed to take more time these days.
He felt Rob’s hand on his back, giving him some help as he concentrated on jumping backwards the last couple of feet below the bottom rung. He landed and wobbled in his cumbersome flying boots, grateful for the support of his friend.
“They didn’t make this thing with fifty-four-year-olds in mind,” he said, relieved to see Rob smile back at him.
As they turned and walked toward the TFU hangar and offices, Millie instinctively rested a hand on Rob’s shoulder.
“You did well. You saved us and the jet.”
“I don’t know if I did do well, Millie. I was slow to react. You had to shout at me.” Rob paused and glanced back at the Vulcan: pristine white, hunched on its landing gear. “I nearly lost it.”
“We’ve been told not to interfere unless absolutely necessary and we’ve logged, what, nearly two hundred hours? All your experience was working against you. But you got there.”
Rob kept glancing back at the aircraft. “It can be overwhelming if I stop to think about it. The jets are large, new, colossally expensive. Three crew members I’m responsible for.”
“It’s a lot for a youngster, isn’t it?” Millie smiled at him. “Look. You did well today. You acted in time, and frankly that’s all that matters. Think it through. If you feel you could have done better, work out why and learn. But it’s always going to feel messy when things go wrong, Rob. And boy did they go wrong.”
“It did go wrong, didn’t it? What happened?”
“The laser saw straight through the ground, or at least the computer misinterpreted the feed. Either way, it commanded the autopilot to descend as if we were nine hundred feet not three hundred.”
“Can we ever trust it again?”
Millie scoffed. “Not until what happened today is completely and utterly understood and the problem solved.”
They carried on into TFU, where they drank tea and didn’t discuss the incident with anyone. That was the TFU way. Mark Kilton had made it clear that you only discussed projects with those who needed to know.
But Millie could tell by their colleagues’ glances that they knew something was up.
It was such an odd way of operating. In any normal squadron they would be sharing their tale, getting it off their chest, drawing comfort from the looks of horror and empathy from their friends.
But not at Mark Kilton’s Test Flying Unit.
After handing in their flying equipment and coveralls, Millie ushered the crew into a side office to debrief.
Once the door was shut, Brian Hill led the questions, all aimed at Millie as the project leader and the man most familiar with the inner workings of Guiding Light.
Millie looked at his hastily scrawled notes.
“I happened to be rotating the selector, checking our general position. When I switched it back to number one position, it showed nine hundred odd feet below us.”
“Nine hundred? Christ, Millie, we were still at three hundred,” Hill said. “So that’s why Guiding Light dived us toward the ground. It couldn’t see it.”
Millie shook his head in bewilderment. “I suppose it was doing what we asked it to do. Fly us at three hundred feet. It was just trying to get us back down.”
“It chose a perfect time to go blind,” said Brian Hill. “A state of the art, one hundred thousand-pound system descending a four engine Vulcan jet bomber with four people on board into the Welsh rock? Someone, somewhere better get the sack.”
Millie took out the chart and with Steve Bright’s help, they did their best to draw the aircraft’s track along the valley, marking the spot with an X where it had all gone wrong.