ADAM HALL - The Sinkiang Executive

“Question,” I said. “How many alternative routes did you consider and throw out?”

“I’d say twenty or thirty. The point we finally chose is where the terrain-masking afforded by the mountains is greatest, and the Soviet radar coverage is weakest, according to intelligence reports. Also the ground is virtually flat on both sides of the border and you can cross it at Mach.95, or six hundred knots calibrated ground speed just below military power and sonic boom.”

“And very low.”

“We estimate that with the handling capabilities of the Finback you’ll be going in at one hundred AGL.”

“Christ, how high are the church steeples?”

“There aren’t any on the route we’ve planned for you.”

“You’ve checked on the steeples ?”

He gave a brief grin. “The Base Commander said we had to do a good job and we’re kind of scared of him. We checked on steeples, power grids, radio masts, factory chimneys, the whole bit. At one hundred feet on that precise course you won’t hit anything, and you can have that in writing.”

I said I was impressed and he thanked me.

“Naturally, we couldn’t allow for pilot error. You’ll have quite a job staying on course. There is a navigational control system fitted to the Finback but the guy who flew it into Alaska said it wasn’t very accurate and it was defunct anyway when he landed. It hasn’t been removed and we haven’t installed a good one of our own, because the airplane has to look like what it is: a Soviet MiG-28D, in case they ever get a close look at it.”

I saw Ferris move his head a fraction towards me, and folded my arms in acknowledgement. What Franzheim had just told me was that he didn’t know this was a one-way trip for the plane: ‘in case they ever’, so forth. Ferris just wanted to warn me to leave this subject blacked out.

“You can’t use radio fixes,” Franzheim went on, ‘because as you know you’d have to transmit a signal to get ranging information, and they’d pick it up. Also they’d pick up your radar pulses from the ground. So you’ll be steering with visual fixes, compass and dead reckoning. I’m talking about the leg this side of the Zhmerinka field, where you’ll start climbing and adopt your cover.”

He picked up his coffee and finished it and dropped the cup into the disposal can and pulled another one off the stack and filled it at the dispenser. “I guess all you guys must be caffeine-shy. Omer, do you have those maps?”

Captain Baccari opened a briefcase and dropped three folders on to the table.

“Okay,” Franzheim said, and pulled them open. “These are your three maps, colour-coded for the projected route, alternative legs, break off and escape routes. You’ll see they’re self-explanatory when you study them: we’ve made provisions for you to abort the mission and escape by air at calculated altitudes over the safest possible terrain, avoiding airfields, radar posts, missile sites and so on. You can take a look now, we’re in no hurry.”

They were printed by the USAF Cartographic Department and bore the NATO-designated COSMIC SECRET stamp. They were also marked KEEP FROM UNAUTHORIZED HANDS and DESTROY AT DISCRETION. The detail was elaborate and the contour relief was indicated to within twenty feet above sea level. For the first time I saw the identities of the three points X, Y and Z.

“The first suspect village,” Franzheim said as he leaned over the table, “is right here at Saratov, twelve miles north of the town. The second one is ten miles south-east of Dzhezkazgan at this point. The third is ten miles from the town of Yelingrad, not far from the Sinkiang border.”

“I’ll need special briefing on the camera runs.”

“Right. Major Connors will see to that.”

Franzheim asked for questions and I went over the whole route with him again, using the green-code map and spending most of the time on the low-level run through the Carpathians. The range was a mass of ridges and valleys, with a major road following the Latorica River for forty miles through the mountains.

“I shall be seen from the road, obviously, at a hundred feet.”

“Okay, but we have to define the word 'seen'. At Mach.95 they won’t see more than a streak in the sky and they won’t be able to tell whether it was an airplane or a bat out of hell.”

Major Connors said lazily: “The first time I saw a plane going over my head that fast and that low I just messed my pants.”

Baccari squeezed out a laugh and went to get himself some more coffee. Franzheim said: “Where you won’t be seen, if you follow the road and the river, is on the radar screens east of the range, and that’s what we’re really talking about.”

I told him he’d sold me on that and we folded the maps and put them back into their waterproof pouches. This was at 07:31 and Ferris got up and stretched his legs and asked for flying instructions.

“Let’s go see the airplane,” Connors said.

The two guards were still at each end of the passage and they fell in behind us as we took the stairs. A Military Police sergeant and three men were standing in the main lobby and did a lot of circumspect saluting as we went through the doors into the rain. The wind-gusts were driving it against the buildings.

“What’s my minimum take-off visibility?” I asked the major.

“A lot of things like that,” he said close to my ear, “are going to be up to you. We can give you the standard safety rules, and you can push it from there if you want.”

On the way to the hangars I counted twelve security men dispersed at strategic points, seven of them in uniform. We were halted twice and one of the men came with us as far as the end hangar. There were now two MP sergeants and four dog-handlers outside the doors and we all had to go through the identity check. One of the sergeants telephoned our names through to his unit and waited for the okay before he used the intercom and ordered the door opened. Connors and Baccari hadn’t brought their coats and by this time they were drenched and shivering.

We trooped inside and began leaving puddles all over the floor.

“She’s still there,” Franzheim said, and someone laughed.

Ferris was near me. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m all right. The briefing’s first class.”

“They were hand-picked.”

There were six Luftwaffe military policemen surrounding the plane and Ferris said something to Connors, then took him aside. In a minute Connors turned round and said we could take the covers off; then he and Ferris went back to the door and I heard Connors phoning someone.

We’d got the last cover off when an MP lieutenant came into the hangar and told the six guards to form up outside. Ferris said we could go ahead.

He was watching me carefully for nerves and so far I was all right but there was an awful lot about this job that was beginning to scare me: it was the first time for sixteen missions that I wasn’t going in solo. I’d be on my own for the access phase and strictly speaking we weren’t running yet, but the number of people we’d needed to bring in just to get me off the ground was increasing, and I wasn’t reassured by all the security on show because you can deep-screen a man till you’re black in the face and still make a mistake and that was why Ferris had got those guards out of the way: they’d had to see the MiG in here in order to guard it but they didn’t have to see who was going to fly it and they didn’t have to hear Connors telling him how to do it.

I looked at my watch without meaning to.

It was 07:56 and there were twelve hours to go.

“Let’s get up there,” Connors said, and we used the steps to the cockpit. “I’d like you to stop me if you’ve heard anything before, but a few points might bear repeating. Handling techniques have been dealt with in the simulator and I’m told you came out okay. I don’t know how much you intend to use the mountain-range configuration and maybe you won’t know yourself till you get there, but there’s a couple of places where you could make a one hundred eighty degree turn, somewhere around six g’s at the speed you’ll be doing, Mach.95 or lower. For this airplane the radius of turn would be approximately five thousand feet.”