A Sentimental Traitor (2 page)

‘Eng Fail. Eng One Fail,’
the screen reported.

The captain reached forward to switch off the distracting howl of the master alarm. ‘I have control. Read ECAM,’ he instructed the first officer, his voice formal, unflustered. ECAM
was a brilliant device, designed not only to tell them what the trouble was but how to fix it. In an equally formal tone the first officer began calling out the instructions from the screen when,
without warning, the instructions changed.

‘HYD Green Reservoir Low Level.’

Bugger. One of the three hydraulic systems had gone down. Thank God the designers of this wonderful beast had built in three such systems – Green, Yellow and Blue – so they still had
two left. Failsafe. Hell, this bird could fly on just one, no great problem, it had happened to most experienced pilots one time or another. But it was time to let others know of their little
difficulty.

‘Speedbird 235, Speedbird 235,’ the captain spoke into his radio. ‘Mayday Mayday. Mayday. Engine failure.’

The voice of an air traffic controller responded immediately. ‘Acknowledged, Speedbird 235. Let me know your intentions.’

Intentions? They would carry on, of course. No drama. The Green hydraulics were the primary system and controlled things like the steering of the nose wheel, the landing gear, the main braking
system, lots of other things, too, but there were plenty of backups. The landing gear could be dropped manually, there was emergency braking available on Yellow. And ECAM was giving them the safety
procedure, something they’d practised a hundred times on the simulators. Isolate the engine, pull back to idle, master switch off, activate the fire system that cut off the supply of fuel and
air to the engine in case of a leak. Losing an engine and one set of hydraulics wasn’t much of a problem, but you didn’t want this sort of thing spreading. The Airbus flew on, her path
straight and true.

They were still concentrating on the ECAM instructions when Abi appeared at the flight-deck door. They buzzed her through. She was frowning, twisting the antlers nervously in her hands.

‘Guys, stop screwing around. Please?’

‘We have an engine down, Abi.’

‘I know that! Bits of it are falling off the back of the airplane. The kids don’t know whether to scream or take photos. What should I tell them?’

The captain slipped into his formal briefing, reporting the engine and hydraulic failure to her, stating his intention to continue on to Heathrow, giving his estimate of timing. They were barely
seventy miles from touchdown; they’d be on the ground in little more than a quarter of an hour. ‘It’ll be a normal landing, I think, Abi, but because of the hydraulics our
steering’s stuffed, so we won’t be able to get off the runway. There’ll be a lot of vehicles to greet us and plenty of flashing blue lights. Totally normal for this sort of thing.
No evacuation, no slides, we’ll just stop on the runway instead of taxiing to the gate. Understood?’

Abi repeated his instructions back to him in confirmation. ‘Tell me you’ve done this sort of thing before, Karl?’ she added when she had finished the routine.

‘Don’t worry, Abi, several times. You OK with this?’

‘It’ll give me something to talk about in the nail bar. Men drivers.’

‘Tell the other girls I’ll be buying drinks when we get down.’

‘To celebrate the fact you can land a plane with only a few bits falling off?’

‘Christmas. I was thinking Christmas. This is my last trip.’

‘Make sure it’s not ours, too,’ she replied, defiant. Dear Abi, she could give as good as she got. ‘And for Heaven’s sake, tidy up this cabin,’ she added,
bending to pick up the fallen Santa hat. She tried to hang it back on its hook, but the hook was broken, flapping from its fixture. Perhaps the bang had been more severe than they’d thought.
She folded it neatly and put it in her pocket.

‘Time for me to talk to the passengers,’ the captain said. ‘Tell them they’re in luck, going to get an early landing.’ He paused. ‘And if you see anything
more going on back there’ – he meant falling off – ‘let me know. Secure the cabin, Abi, prepare for immediate landing. See you on the ground.’

‘Good luck, you guys.’ She placed a hand on the captain’s shoulder. He squeezed it tenderly, and for a fraction longer than was necessary. Then she disappeared back into the
plane.

‘How many times you really done this before?’ the first officer asked, trying to sound nonchalant as the flight-deck door closed behind her.

‘Hundreds of times,’ his colleague replied. ‘In the simulator.’

‘And they told me
I
was a jerk.’

‘No point in putting the wind up her. You know how emotional these hosties get, but this is nothing we can’t handle.’

‘Tell me, Karl, you and Abi ever had a thing going?’ the first officer asked nonchalantly, his eyes still fixed on ECAM. ‘I always thought . . .’

Silence. The captain concentrated on his controls.

‘Hell, I would,’ the first officer added.

The captain sighed. ‘Just concentrate on your job and give me the readings, jerk.’

In front of them, the lights of the Thames estuary were burning bright and already the pilots could see the dark snake of the river that would lead them home.

Then ECAM started pinging again. For a single heartbeat the first officer thought it was a repeat of the earlier information, but it wasn’t going to be that easy.

‘Shit, we’ve lost Yellow,’ he spat.

The second hydraulic system was losing pressure. That was the moment when they both knew they were in trouble – not desperate trouble, but deepening. It meant they had no brakes, no flaps,
the landing would be very fast and there was an excellent chance they’d run right out of tarmac. The emergency services wouldn’t be there as spectators any longer.

‘You know, Karl, I’m hoping this is a sim.’

‘I’ll rip the balls off someone if it is.’

‘On the other hand . . .’

‘Nothing we haven’t done before. On the sim.’

‘Yeah, I almost got down in one piece last time I tried it.’

The banter was heavy, but they knew they now faced a serious task – and some tough decisions.

‘So where are we going to put her down?’ the first officer asked.

‘You tell me. Is Stansted an option?’

If they diverted north, it would mean they’d avoid flying over central London.

‘I don’t think so,’ the first officer replied, flicking rapidly through the plates of his airfield handbook. ‘Runway Zero Four there is only three thousand and fifty-nine
metres,’ he read out loud. ‘We’ll need more than that.’

‘So Heathrow it is.’

‘Heathrow Two Seven Right is three thousand nine hundred metres. That should do it.’

‘It will bloody well have to.’

The Airbus was now becoming difficult to control, the pilot’s sidestick refusing to cooperate. Every time it was shifted or turned, the plane decided to do something else, its own thing.
It was like trying to command a wayward cat. They flew on through the night, but with much less certainty.

The two men weren’t frightened, they had their training to fall back on. Anyway, there was too much for them to do, no time for thought or fear. There was air traffic control to inform,
Abi to brief once more – this would be an emergency landing, the passengers would have to be set in the brace position, not an easy task with so many kids on board. But they could still make
it on one engine and one hydraulic system.

They were flying over the mouth of the estuary. Ten thousand feet, two hundred and twenty knots, two hundred and fifty miles an hour. Only ten minutes to landing. Ahead of them they could see
the lights of the Dome and Kings Cross station, and beyond that the towers of the Parliament building and the stacks of Battersea Power Station. Everything was set out before them, dressed in its
finery, London getting ready to celebrate Christmas.

Abi answered the summons to the cockpit. She listened quietly and very intently as the captain gave her the fresh briefing, repeating it back to him to show she had understood.

‘Soon home, love,’ the captain concluded, trying to reassure her.

But it wasn’t destined to be that simple.

The missile hadn’t exploded, yet the damage it inflicted had been catastrophic. The missile had hit the front part of the engine, sending shards of searing-hot metal into the hydraulic bay
that lay just behind the wing. The missile itself had broken up and part of that, too, had bounced off the engine and been hurled into the bay, where it had made a direct hit on the first hydraulic
reservoir. These were about the size of industrial pressure cookers, and Green had been destroyed immediately. Meanwhile the turbine discs in the rear of the crippled engine – that part of
the engine where the energy was concentrated – had begun to spin out of control, speeding up until they shattered and flew apart. It was a fragment of one of these discs that had punctured
the second reservoir. Green was dead, Yellow was dying.

The Blue System had survived intact, at first, but even though the hoses feeding it were made of stainless steel, in the intense slipstream that was ripping through the damaged fuselage, one of
these had been bent and forced up against a fragment of missile casing that had lodged in the bay. As the plane flew on, the hose was pounded ceaselessly, remorselessly, against the razor-sharp
shard of metal, until it, too, failed.

They were down to five thousand feet. Not much more than six minutes to Heathrow. They knew they weren’t going to make it.

No discussion, no time for that, and nothing in the manual for this, it was all instinct, an instantaneous throw of the dice.

‘I’m going for the river,’ the captain said.

‘Better that than another Lockerbie.’

‘I agree. Particularly when we’re doing the flying.’

The captain had to make a choice; he might still be left with some fragment of control before the last of the hydraulic fluid pissed away in the night air. Better the river than a crowded city
centre, the scars on the landscape that had been left on Lockerbie. So, close the remaining thrust lever, shut down the final engine, trim the aircraft, try to glide her down. Damn it, that pilot
had done it a couple of years back, the one who’d ditched in the Hudson, got everyone off alive when his engines had failed. But he’d still had hydraulics.

‘Shall I get Abi?’ Bryan asked.

‘Don’t see the point. No need to terrify the kids.’

‘Just us, then.’

‘Yes, just the two of us.’

Ahead of them, the Thames wound its way between the flare path of the riverbanks, twisting so sharply at points that on the ground it often deceived the eye, but from the cockpit they could see
it all, laid out in spectacular and terrifying detail. They would have to get down before the bridges came into play. Hit one of those and . . . But the stretch leading up to Tower Bridge seemed
about right. The captain lined her up, one last touch on the sidestick, and then all control was gone. They were gliding, their path set, for better or much worse. In the cockpit, without the
engines, it seemed unnaturally quiet, except for a persistent banging that was coming from somewhere behind. He pushed home the ditching button that sealed off the cabin, gave them a chance of
floating.

‘Should I go through the emergency ditching procedures?’ the first officer asked, holding the manual open, struggling to read in the dim emergency lighting.

‘I seem to remember it talks about making sure the galleys are turned off, useful stuff like that.’

Slowly, the first officer’s shoulders sagged, like an abandoned tent. He closed the book and put it aside.

‘London, this is Speedbird Mayday. I’ve lost all hydraulics and I’m trying to get into the river by Tower Bridge.’

Only the slightest hesitation before: ‘Er, Speedbird Mayday. Say again?’

‘Repeat, ditching near Tower Bridge. No hydraulics. We have one-one-five – repeat one-one-five – souls on board. That includes a whole playschool of kids.’

‘Speedbird Mayday, your message acknowledged. Emergency services will be informed.’ The controller’s voice had begun strong and matter of fact, but suddenly it ran out of
breath. He had to clear his throat before he added: ‘Good luck.’

The captain found nothing to say in reply. He leaned down, cancelled the radio. The cockpit fell silent.

In the passenger compartment there was a surprising lack of panic. They’d been told they were only a few minutes from the airport and the change in the noise of the remaining engine
wasn’t unusual as a plane prepared to land. Abi had done her job well. Yet she was too good to fool herself. Now she was strapped in her own seat, by the forward bulkhead beside another
member of the cabin crew. She bowed her head in silent prayer and was struggling not to show her fear when through her tear-blurred eyes she saw a small girl appear in front of her. It was
Cartagena. She was holding a glass-eyed teddy bear with a drooping, much-sucked ear.

‘We told them we’re all going to be OK, didn’t we, Edward?’ she lisped, interrogating the bear. She gazed up at Abi, her grey eyes filled with earnest. ‘My daddy
told me he would never let anything happen to me.’

‘And who is your daddy, darling?’ Abi stammered, struggling desperately to hold back the tears.

‘He’s the ambassador.’

‘Would you and Edward Bear like to come and sit here on my lap?’ Abi asked. It defied every regulation, but there was no time to get the child back in her own seat. Anyway, there was
no point.

Gratefully, Cartagena climbed into her arms as the other hostie looked on in horror, understanding all too well what this must mean.

‘You want to tell me about Edward Bear?’ Abi asked. ‘Does he have brothers and sisters?’

So Cartagena began to spell out Edward’s complicated family history while Abi, her arms wrapped protectively around the little girl, her face buried in the child’s hair, thanked God
for the distraction.

Back in the cockpit, the two pilots stared ahead of them at the dark water that was now fast approaching. They were almost down to the height of the buildings scattered around Canary Wharf. The
captain did a little mental arithmetic. They’d hit at around two hundred and twenty knots, and not quite level, around two degrees. Not a lot, but enough to spear the nose into the water and
flip the plane on its back. That’s if they didn’t hit anything first. He’d once talked about these things with an old-timer, a retired test pilot who’d told him how it
worked. You never drown, it seems. The plane hits the water and stops, but you don’t. Your head is fired forward and snaps your neck; either that or it shakes your brain to jelly.