Frederick Forsyth: The Shepherd

Keeping formation with him, I knew he was slowing down, for I too was easing back the throttle, dropping and slowing. In a fraction of a second I flashed a glance at the two instruments I needed: the altimeter was reading zero, so was the fuel gauge, and neither was even flickering. The airspeed indicator, which I had also seen, read 120 knots and this damn coffin was going to fall out of the sky at 95.

Without warning the shepherd pointed a single forefinger at me, then forward through the windscreen. It meant ‘There you are, fly on and land’. I stared forward through the now streaming windscreen. Nothing. Then, yes, something. A blur to the left, another to the tight, then two, one each side. Ringed with haze, there were lights either side of me, in pairs, flashing past. I forced my eyes to see what lay between them. Nothing, blackness. Then a streak of paint, running under my feet. The centre line. Frantically I closed down the power and held her steady, praying for the Vampire to settle.

The lights were rising now, almost at eye level, and still she would not settle. Bang. We touched, we touched the deck. Bang-bang. Another touch, she was drifting again, inches above the wet black runway. Bam-barn-barn-babam-rumble. She was down. The main wheels had stuck and held.

The Vampire was rolling, at over ninety miles an hour, through a sea of grey fog. I touched the brakes and the nose slammed down on to the deck also. Slow pressure now, no skidding, hold her straight against the skid, more pressure on those brakes or we’ll run off the end. The lights moving past more leisurely now, slowing, slower, slower.

The Vampire stopped. I found both my hands clenched round the control column, squeezing the brake lever inwards. I forget now how many seconds I held them there before I would believe we were stopped. Finally I did believe it, put on the parking brake and released the main brake. Then I went to turn off the engine, for there was no use trying to taxi in this fog; they would have to tow the fighter back with a Land-Rover. There was no need to turn off the engine; it had finally run out of fuel as the Vampire careered down the runway. I shut off the remaining systems, fuel, hydraulics, electrics and pressurization, and slowly began to unstrap myself from the seat and parachute dinghy pack. As I did so a movement caught my eye. To my left, through the fog, no more than fifty feet away, low on the ground with wheels up, the Mosquito roared past me. I caught the flash of the pilot’s hand in the side window, then he was gone, up into the fog before he could see my answering wave of acknowledgment. But I’d already decided to call up R.A.F Gloucester and thank him personally from the officers mess.

With the systems off, the cockpit was misting up fast, so I released the canopy and pushed it upwards and backwards by hand until it locked. Only then, as I stood up, did I realize how cold it was. Against my heated body, dressed in light nylon flying suit, it was freezing. I expected the control-tower truck to be alongside in seconds, for with an emergency landing, even on Christmas Eve, the fire truck, ambulance and half a dozen other vehicles were always standing by. Nothing happened. At least, not for ten minutes.

By the time the two headlights came groping out of the mist I felt frozen. The lights stopped twenty feet from the motionless Vampire, dwarfed by the fighter’s bulk. A voice called:

“Hallo there.”

I stepped out of the cockpit, jumped from the wing to the ground and ran towards the lights. They turned out to be the headlamps of a battered old Jowett Javelin. Not an Air Force identification mark in sight. At the wheel of the car was a puffed, beery face and a handlebar mustache. At least he wore an R.A.F officer’s cap. He stared at me as I loomed out of the fog.

“That yours?” He nodded towards the dim share of the Vampire.

“Yes,” I said, “I just landed it.”

“Straordinary,” he said, “quite straordinary. You’d better jump in. I’ll run you back to the mess.” I was grateful for the warmth of the car, even more so to be alive.

Moving in bottom gear he began to ease the old car back round the taxi-track, evidently towards the control tower and beyond them the mess buildings. As we moved away from the Vampire I saw that I had stopped twenty feet short of a plowed field at the very end of the runway.

“You were damned lucky,” he said, or rather shouted, for the engine was roaring in first gear and he seemed to be having trouble with the foot controls. Judging by the smell of whisky on his breath, that was not surprising.

“Damned lucky,” I agreed. “I ran out of fuel just as I was landing. My radio and all the electrical systems failed nearly fifty minutes ago over the North Sea.”

He spent several minutes digesting the information carefully.

“Straordinary,” he said at length. “No compass?”

“No compass. Flying in the approximate direction by the moon. As far as the coast, or where I judged it to be. After that…”

“No radio?”

“No radio,” I said. “A dead box on all channels.”

“Then how did you find this place?” he asked.

I was losing patience. The man was evidently one of those passed-over flight lieutenants, not terribly bright and probably not a flyer, despite the handlebar mustache. A ground wallah. And drunk with it. Shouldn’t be on duty at all on an operational station at that hour of the night.

“I was guided in,” I explained patiently. The emergency procedures, having worked so well, now began to seem run-o’-the-mill, such is the recuperation of youth. “I flew short, left-hand triangles, as per instructions, and they sent up a shepherd aircraft to guide me down. No problem.”

He shrugged, as if to say if you insist. Finally he said:

“Damn lucky, all the same. I’m surprised the other chap managed to find the place.”

“No problem there,” I explained patiently. “It was one of the weather aircraft from R.A.F Gloucester. Obviously he had radio. So we came in here in formation, on a GCA. Then when I saw the lights at the threshold of the runway, I landed myself.”

The man was obviously dense, as well as drunk.

“Straordinary,” he said, sucking a stray drop of moisture off his handlebar. “We don’t have GCA. We don’t have any navigational equipment at all, not even a beacon”.

Now it was my turn to let the information sink in. “This isn’t R.A.F Merriam Saint George?” I asked in a small voice. He shook his head. “Marham? Chicksands? Lakenheath?”

“No,” he said, “this is R.A.F Minton.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” I said at last.

“I’m not surprised. We’re not an operational station. Haven’t been for years. Minton’s a storage depot. Excuse me.”

He stopped the car and got out. I saw we were standing a few feet from the dim shape of a control tower, adjoining a long row of Nissen huts, evidently once flight rooms, navigational and briefing huts.

Above the narrow door at the base of the tower through which the officer had disappeared hung a single naked bulb. By its light I could make out broken windows, padlocked doors, an air of abandonment and neglect. The man returned and climbed shakily back behind the wheel.

“Just turning the runway lights off,” he said, and belched.

My mind was whirling. This was mad, crazy, illogical. Yet there had to be a perfectly reasonable explanation.

“Why did you switch them on?” I asked.