Adam Hall - Quiller Solitaire

Okay, now let's have your landing lights on.

I began looking for the switch. There were hundreds.

We are still with you, if you need us.

London, Shatner's voice. Support, I suppose, moral support for the ferret in the field, correction, ferret in the sea.

We need those lights on. There should be a group of switches, maybe on your – okay, you found it, great.

Suddenly the sea was close, floodlit, the waves glittering, the troughs running deep. I used the controls, moving into a turn, bringing the aircraft into line with the swell.

That's great. That's really great. You're looking good. Now start checking your radio-altimeter.

The needle was at 900 feet.

I could feel the weight of the aircraft under the controls, the vibration in the seat as we lowered towards the waves, the bulkheads creaking, the bells sounding all the time from behind me. A strap had broken somewhere, and there were some cylinders loose.

Sweat running on me suddenly, a feeling of heat as the organism reacted chemically to what the mind knew.

How d'you feel?

'Fair to middling. Does this look all right?'

Okay, get the nose up a little, say five degrees, can you do that?

500 feet on the radio-altimeter, 400, 300.

I pulled the control column back a bit, felt the mass of the plane shift, heard the bells, loud now, sounding the alarm, not used to this aircraft, the sea vanishing below the windscreen, tilting back as I corrected, Jesus we were -

Trim her back a little, back a degree.

200 feet, 100.

Huge troughs in the black water, the crests breaking, foaming under the ashen light of the moon, a big sea running -

Nose up, bring the nose up, get it up now, bring -

The whole aircraft slackening, the crests breaking dead ahead through the windscreen, the dark mouth of a trough opening and the screen going white as the foam was flung against it, a shudder through the airframe and then a kind of silence, a hole in the night where nothing happened, then a second shudder and the bells ringing wildly back there as we hit water and the harness made a wall and I leaned into it and the sea broke over the screen and it blanked out and I stayed there with the deceleration forces clamping me against the straps, nothing I could do if I moved, couldn't move, stayed there and waited, the lights of the instrument panels swirling past my eyes and the sound of the jets dying and the sound of the sea taking over, the waves rising under 'the cabin and dropping again and the wind bringing white water off the crests.

Are you okay? Are you okay?

Hit the harness release and got up, got out of the seat, the bells ringing back there, the cylinders moving to the force of the waves now, caught my foot on something, the dead Iranian, tripped and crashed into the rear bulkhead and found the door and slid it open and heard a low screaming from the cabin, gas escaping under pressure, great pressure, we've got to be quick, very quick.

Freezing water, black and silver in the searchlight, the blades above me chopping at the night as the machine lifted and the net cleared the sea and I swung free of its crests and darkness drew down across my eyes, and I was aware only of a void that held me somewhere in it until I came to again and a mile away the black water broke to a blinding flash and a fireball rolled and billowed against the starfields, blotting them out.