The Final Flight by James Blatch (books to read in your 30s .TXT) 📗

had dinner indoors and as the light faded, they took their drinks back out through the firs to spy on their new neighbours some more.

The sun was setting and the clouds to the west were a deep red, casting a warm glow over the camp and the airfield beyond.

“It looks like a scene from a western,” said Millie.

Georgina slipped her arm through her husband’s. “Does that make you my cowboy?”

Later that evening, Millie lay awake with the windows wide open, allowing the cooler air in and the hot stuffiness out.

The guitar started up, this time with the sound of singing. It was a woman’s voice, a sweet sound.

He turned over and hoped to drift off to sleep, but the thought of the project meeting in the morning occupied him. He closed his eyes and did his best to push Mark Kilton out of his mind.

The clock on the wall in Ewan Stafford’s office read 2AM.

Outside, he heard a bicycle bell and a couple of men laughing. Did Cambridge students ever go to bed?

The mainframe had taken nine hours to ingest all the tapes and run what the technicians called an analysis on the data.

The print-out phase was ongoing.

Earlier in the day, Stafford himself had set the parameters of what they were looking for. It was a task he couldn’t leave to anyone else.

He hid away in his office for two hours, surrounded by the Avro Vulcan pilots’ notes and technical specifications. Later he returned and told them what he was looking for: sudden changes in number ranges. He handed them a sheet containing the actual parameters.

“What are they?” one of the men had asked.

“Don’t you worry about that, sonny.”

It didn’t take a genius to work out they represented changes in height.

Changes that were impossible for a Vulcan to have actually flown.

Changes imagined by a computer that fed an autopilot.

Once the processing was over, he sent all but the youngest technician home.

The computer room was fifty feet away, but Stafford could still hear the monotonous drone of the dot matrix printer drifting through the deserted building.

He smoked through a packet of Woodbines as he waited, contemplating the unthinkable.

It was no secret in the company that the Board had risked the house on this new technology. The computer itself was cripplingly expensive.

It was also no secret that he was the one who had persuaded his fellow directors to part with Blackton’s hard-earned cash.

He promised to resurrect the company’s fortunes with a ground-breaking system. Years ahead of the British competition still relying on drawing boards and old men who designed World War Two bombers.

On his desk, under the packet of Woodbines, was the first contract for the American government. The numbers were big. Big enough to call Guiding Light an instant success and secure Blackton’s future for years to come.

He knew from his days flying Hurricanes, you rarely got to a kill without taking a few risks. And he’d risked the house on Guiding Light.

He moved the cigarettes and opened the contract, staring at the final figure for the initial seven hundred and fifty units. With more promised, DF Blackton’s deals would positively affect the UK’s balance of payments. An incredible thing.

This was that moment, when you rolled out of your high-risk manoeuvre to find the Luftwaffe Me.109 in front and just below. Time to squeeze the trigger.

The printer noise stopped.

Stafford listened as the paper was collated.

By the time he got to the dimly lit computer room, the young technician was bent over a huge stack of perforated, green-lined sheets.

He had a desk lamp just above the pile, and scanned the columns, making the occasional mark with a pencil.

“Found anything?” Stafford asked as he stood in the doorway.

“Two, but I’ve only just started.”

“Damn it,” Stafford said and pushed the man out of the way.

His eyes needed to adjust to the harsh light from the angle-poise light reflecting off the paper. He blinked, and eventually saw the marks the technician had made.

Lines that met his parameters included a small star at one end.

A small star that said a lot.

Stafford ran his finger along the first starred line.

1,261, 1,261, 1,262, 1,278, 1,277, 1,298, 1,301, 1,265, 1,252, 1,998, 2,010, 2,618, 2,911, 2,871, 2,850, 2,799, 2,811, 1,261, 1,277, 1,279.

He circled 1,252 and 1,998. A jump of seven hundred and forty-six feet.

Unless the aircraft had flown over an unlikely hole in the ground, the equipment had suffered an aberration.

He counted the number of height readings that appeared wrong. Eight. He stood up and winced at a spike of lower back pain.

“The laser records, what is it, forty-seven readings a second? So, this was just a fraction of a second?”

The technician shook his head.

“No. The laser records twenty-seven readings a second, and the computer makes forty-seven decisions a second. But…” He tapped the sheets. “These are samples. The tapes only capture three height readings a second, and we limit the system to how much it can record.”

Stafford looked back at the numbers.

“So, it was wrong for three seconds?”

“More like two and a half.”

“And you’ve found two so far?

“Yes, sir.”

“Carry on. It’s essential we find them all. I’ll need to know exact details. Leave the results on my desk. I’ll be in very early, so be smart about it.”

He walked to the door. “And have the day off tomorrow.”

3

Thursday 9th June

A Handley-Page Victor emerged from the dark recesses of the TFU hangar, towed into the bright morning light. The TFU pan was filling up.

Men in green coveralls hurried about the aircraft, some with chocks in their hands carried by the rope that held them together, others on small tractors.

Millie watched them for a while from a bench, his incident report in hand.

He was in early to prepare, sensing a battle was coming.

Millie lifted himself from the wooden bench and headed inside, taking a seat in the empty meeting room. He re-read his notes one more time.

He went to the admin cabinets and pulled out a folder of memorandums from last year about the formation of TFU. Standing