James Barrington - Pandemic

Eastern Mediterranean: June 1972

‘So what the fuck did you do?’ Jonas snapped, loosening his seat belt and looking across the dimly lit cabin at the tall thin man in the leather seat opposite. The Lear had reached top of climb at thirty-five thousand feet out of Cairo, and was heading west into the gathering dusk.

This atypical expletive – Jonas was the senior man and almost always calm and controlled – shocked Wilson. ‘I just did what the three of you refused to do,’ he said, looking back at the hostile expressions of the other men. ‘I had to – my conscience wouldn’t let me ignore it. You know exactly what we were doing back there.’

‘No,’ Jonas said heavily, ‘we don’t know anything. You’re just guessing, and you could be guessing wrong.’

Wilson laughed shortly. ‘You’ve seen the file,’ he said, ‘and you’ve seen the research. How can you ignore it?’

‘Quite easily,’ Jonas replied, and turned to glance out of the window at the navigation lights of their escorting F-4E Phantom jet, a dimly seen shape a quarter of a mile out to starboard and slightly behind the civilian aircraft. Then he turned back to face Wilson. ‘Look, why didn’t you just do what you’ve been paid – and very well paid – to do?’

Wilson shook his head, rimless spectacles glinting in the cabin lights. ‘I couldn’t.’

‘So you reported it?’ Jonas asked, and Wilson nodded. ‘Who to?’

For the first time, Wilson looked uncomfortable. ‘I knew there was no point in going through the usual channels. That would just make sure whatever I said got buried in a file somewhere.’

Jonas and the other two men stared at him. ‘I’ll ask you again,’ Jonas said, his tone now low and threatening. ‘Who did you tell?’

‘The President,’ Wilson blurted out. ‘I wrote to the President, and copied it to the Director of Central Intelligence.’

For a moment, Jonas just stared across the cabin at his subordinate. His voice, when he spoke, was quiet and laden with infinite sadness. ‘You fool,’ he said. ‘You stupid, meddling, ignorant fool. You’ve probably killed us all.’

‘Lima Charlie, this is Tango Three.’ The Phantom pilot sounded calm and controlled on the discrete frequency the two aircraft were sharing. ‘I have unidentified traffic on radar, sixty miles to port, two contacts, high speed and heading towards. Suggest a precautionary starboard turn onto three zero zero while we check it out.’

‘Roger, Tango Three,’ the Learjet captain replied, as he disengaged the autopilot and eased the control column to the right.

‘I wonder who they are?’ the co-pilot asked.

‘I don’t know, but we’re not that far from Libya, so it might be Gaddafi starting to flex his muscles. Probably nothing to worry about.’

The Learjet steadied on its new heading, a track that would take it over to the west of Crete and towards the Ionian Sea.

‘Lima Charlie, Tango Three.’ There was now a clear note of urgency in the Phantom pilot’s voice. ‘We’re being illuminated by fire-control radar. Recommend you head north. Dash speed. We’re—’ The transmission broke in a sudden burst of static.

‘Oh, shit,’ the Learjet captain muttered, pushing the throttles fully forward and moving the control column further to the right.

Wilson had leaned forward, reaching for the case at his feet, then fell back in his seat as the Learjet banked rapidly to the right, the engine noise suddenly increasing.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ Jonas demanded.

Above the cockpit door, the ‘Fasten Seat Belts’ sign suddenly illuminated, and the cabin speaker crackled into life.

‘Buckle up, back there. We’ve got company, and this may get rough.’

‘Tango Three, this is Lima Charlie. Respond.’ Silence. ‘Tango Three, Lima Charlie.’

‘Leave it,’ the captain said. ‘He’s got his hands full, if he’s still flying. Kill the lights.’ The co-pilot obediently extinguished the Learjet’s navigation and anti-collision lights. ‘A waste of time if these bastards have got radar-guided weapons.’

‘Who the hell are they?’ the co-pilot asked again. ‘We’re not at war with anybody, as far as I know.’

‘Who cares? Let’s just get the hell away from here. Make a broadcast on twelve fifteen. Give our position and tell anybody who’s listening that we’re under attack by two unidentified fighter aircraft.’

The co-pilot switched to the civil aircraft emergency VHF frequency – 121.5 megahertz – and started speaking into his microphone. Almost immediately he stopped.

‘What is it?’ the pilot asked.

‘It’s just been jammed. There’s a tuning tone or something being broadcast. I can’t break through it.’

‘Try a different frequency. Try Guard, then Athens, or Cairo or Malta.’

The co-pilot tried four, then six frequencies, UHF and VHF, but the result was the same each time. He shook his head. ‘They’re all blocked,’ he said. ‘One of those fighters must have an ECM pod fitted.’

The captain’s face was noticeably white in the dim cockpit lighting. ‘That’s real bad news,’ he said. ‘That means they don’t want us to tell anybody what’s happening up here.’

‘Can we out-run them?’ the co-pilot asked.

The Learjet 23 was a very rapid aircraft, with a top speed of almost five hundred miles an hour and a service ceiling of over forty thousand feet. Its performance made it as fast, or faster, than many civilian airliners, but not as quick as most fighter interceptors.

‘No idea. We’re at maximum velocity now. There’s nothing else we can—’

His voice was interrupted by a muffled crump from the port side of the aircraft. Warning lights flared red across the instrument panel, needles on gauges span wildly, and the aircraft lurched to the left.

‘We’re hit!’ the captain shouted. ‘Missile in the port engine. Hit the extinguishers.’

The co-pilot pressed the buttons as the captain wrestled with the control column. With the port engine destroyed, the aircraft immediately became asymmetric as the thrust of the remaining turbojet tried to turn the aircraft to the left. The extinguishers fired their foam into the wreckage of the engine, quenching the flames. Hydraulic fluid and aviation fuel bubbled out of ruptured pipes, to be instantly carried away by the slipstream.

‘We’re losing height! Cabin’s depressurizing!’

The altimeter needles unwound in a blur as the Learjet tumbled out of the sky.

The missile that had impacted with the port engine had also blown a two-foot hole at the back of the cabin on the left-hand side. Oxygen masks dropped down in front of the startled passengers from the overhead baggage lockers.

Three of them immediately pulled the masks over their faces. When Wilson didn’t follow their example, Jonas turned to shout out to him – but his voice died in his throat. A foot-long shard of aluminium was sticking out of the back of the man’s seat, while another six inches protruded from Wilson’s throat, thick red blood pouring over it.

In the cockpit, the two pilots pulled oxygen masks over their faces as they struggled to regain some semblance of control.

‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,’ the co-pilot shouted automatically into his microphone, before again hearing the tone in his earphones and realizing nobody would be able to hear his transmission.

At fifteen thousand feet, the captain managed to get the aircraft straight, and more or less level. ‘Closest land?’ he demanded.

The co-pilot already had the navigation chart unfolded. Using his out-spread fingers as a crude measuring tool, he calculated distances. ‘Crete,’ he said. ‘Come right. Steer zero two zero. Distance about fifty miles to the southern coast, around eighty to the airport at Irakleío.’