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

JR wiped his hands on a rag. “Think nothing of it. Whatever it is you’re doing, I can see it’s important to you. Which makes it important to us.”

Millie followed him back on board and took his seat in the body of the aircraft.

He watched the experienced pilot’s hands glide over the controls. After pausing for the engine to warm, JR advanced the throttles to taxi.

A couple of minutes later, they accelerated down the main runway.

Millie stared down at the countryside through the small window. Largely brown after the heatwave, with occasional tractors and a combine harvester busy at work; an early harvest for the wheat.

The journey took a few minutes. JR taxied down the western perimeter and paused for Millie to leave the aircraft just beyond the TFU hangar; out of sight of the offices, but close enough to walk back inside.

No-one paid him any attention as he arrived in the planning room.

He checked his locker. Not much left. A few pages of schematics, two of the early test tapes. He might need the schematics, but it was too risky to keep the tapes.

Then there was the material still at his house.

He could have a bonfire this weekend. A nervous chat over the fence with Jock MacLeish as Top Secret papers went up in smoke behind him.

He shut the locker and checked his notebook for the day’s tasks.

Reluctantly, he transferred the remaining blank tapes to the safe in the headquarters building.

He watched, dispirited, as a corporal carefully counted and noted the exact number.

As the corporal pushed the heavy safe door shut and double-locked it, the opportunity to record any more secret data disappeared.

Everything now relied on Belkin.

15

Tuesday 21st June

“We’re off to get the second Vulcan,” Rob said to the growing group of men who made up the Guiding Light project. They all stood around a map table in their own secret huddle, away from the crowd. “Red and I will fetch her tomorrow. From the afternoon, the boss wants both birds in the air twice a day. We should be able to knock off the remaining hours in no time, maybe less than a week.”

“What?” said Millie. “No, no. He’s not said anything to me about this.”

Rob looked surprised. “The boss said he briefed you yesterday?”

Millie looked across at Kilton’s office. It must have been part of the half-heard ramblings about the project timetable. Millie hadn’t been paying attention, distracted by the trauma of getting the tapes out of the building.

“A week? How’s that even possible?”

“Well, we have forty-eight tapes left to fill, and with two Vulcans available every day, he thinks we could get through them. He wants to invite Ewan Stafford up next week for the handover. Apparently we’re going to demo it to him and that will be that. A good job all round.”

“Christ,” Millie said, more to himself than anyone else.

They moved into planning mode. Another trip to Wales. A long winding route at one thousand feet from Shrewsbury down to Swansea.

“Plenty of time for recording, Millington,” Speedy said, smiling at him.

Millie stared at him. Unwanted thoughts cascaded into his mind.

Did they know?

An hour before they were due to get airborne, Millie walked over to the squadron HQ building where the door to the station commander’s outer office was open. Two secretaries sat at typewriters, tapping away. He coughed and one of them looked up.

“I need to access some files.” Without replying, the woman picked up a phone and dialled.

“John, you have your first customer.”

Moments later, a corporal arrived and led Millie to the safe. As he opened it, Millie exchanged a nod with Periwinkle, who was behind his desk working.

“Take what you need,” the corporal said.

Millie withdrew six reels from the pile. The corporal made a careful note of each item. Millie checked the dwindling stack of cardboard sleeves. Forty-two left.

Last week he needed to get extra blanks into the aircraft and run the machine as much as possible. Today, it was the opposite.

He needed time.

They brought the Vulcan to life. Millie locked his seat and tested his straps.

The pilots went through the checklists and spoke to air traffic control.

Millie loaded the first tape out of habit. They all contributed to the completion of the project now. Fewer, not more, was the new order of battle.

He waited until they were established at one thousand feet, held on for another minute, then started the recorder.

The run was bumpy.

Around eighteen minutes in, Millie lifted the plastic cover from the two rotating reels.

He studied the tape’s intricate journey through the mechanism. It wound through two rubber rollers which stretched it over two metal heads, which he assumed contained the magnetising process. He pulled a pencil from his coveralls and gently pressed the left side rubber rollers together. Immediately the tape curled up and out of the machine. He stabbed at the stop button, dimly recalling instruction on how to deal with a jam. He began to wind the tape back onto the right-side reel, then stopped the process, leaving the tape loose and hanging out of the recorder.

To his right, Steve Bright looked bored.

Millie unclipped one of the reels and lifted it up, with the magnetic tape trailing back into the recorder.

“Something’s jammed,” he said, and Bright looked across. The navigator leaned closer and squinted.

“Do you know how to un-jam it?”

“I think so. Will take a while, though.”

Millie fiddled with the mechanism for as long as he felt he could get away with it, before eventually appearing to free the tape from the clutches of the machine. He slowly loaded a second reel, just as they turned toward the final waypoint of their low-level run.

As they emerged from the Vulcan, Millie reported the tape jam to Rob, to add to the list of aircraft defects.

“What does this mean?” Rob asked him. “Can we still use it?”

Millie removed his helmet and ran his hand over his sweaty head, enjoying the cool air. “No, I’d rather they