anything, but he was in the RAF and flew proper aeroplanes.”
“What’s he doing now then?”
“Teaching angels to fly, I shouldn’t be surprised. He died two years ago.”
“Sorry to hear that,” said the pilot.
Luke looked across at the man.
“Cock this up, sunshine, and I could be introducing you in an hour or so.”
“Don’t make jokes like that. It doesn’t do my confidence any good. We’re in this together, remember.”
“Sorry,” said Luke. “No offence meant.”
“None taken,” said the pilot. “But I’m going to need your help if we’re to get out of this.”
“So what can I do?”
“For a start, keep your hands to yourself. I don’t want you twiddling knobs or turning switches on and off unless I ask you.”
“You’re in charge,” replied Luke.
“Right! Just remember that,” said the student, grandly. “I’m captain of this aircraft, and strictly speaking, I should be sitting in the left hand seat.”
“Let’s not change round now.”
“Of course not. But don’t forget you’re only a passenger, so you must do what I say and nothing else, - if you don’t mind.”
“You’re quite sure about the parachutes, are you?”
“Stop it!” demanded the pilot. “By the way, my name’s Harry. Harry Fowler.”
“Luke Edwards – but let’s shake hands later, if you don’t mind. I’d rather you kept yours on the controls at the moment.”
“Agreed,” said Harry.
“Is there a sick-bag, by the way?”
“No! If you’re ill, use your camera bag. Otherwise, you’ll spend the rest of the day cleaning up.”
“OK – only joking again. And I wouldn’t be joking if I wasn’t confident you were going to get us out of this mess,” lied Luke reassuringly.
“Thank you.”
“Let’s head for home, then, shall we?” suggested Luke.
There was a pause.
“I’m not exactly sure which way that is,” replied Harry.
“Don’t tell me we’re lost as well!”
“Pilots never get lost,” replied Harry. “It’s just that I am temporally unsure of where we are.”
“Is there someone we can talk to?” asked Luke, helpfully. “How does the wireless work on this machine?”
“Don’t know. ‘Radio procedures’ is lesson nine.”
“There are headphones hanging on the back of your seat, plugged into a hole thing on the dashboard. Put them on and see what happens.”
Harry put them on, and listened intently.
“Well?”
“Classic FM,” he said. “The last bloke to fly this tuned it in to Classic FM.”
“So how do you tune in to something else more useful?”
“Don’t know,” replied Harry again, looking at a forest of knobs and dials.
Luke always knew he hated flying. Even the annual trip to Spain with the kids was a nightmare, but at least that had someone on board who served gins and tonic, and there were sick-bags in the seat in front. The plane he was in now didn’t even have a pilot.
“There’s a railway down there,” he pointed out. “Let’s follow that and see where we end up. It goes within a few miles of the airfield.”
“Good idea,” said Harry. “If I fly low enough, we might even read the station name when we get to one, but low flying is lesson eleven.”
“Please,” begged Luke. “Don’t even think about it.”
“It would help if we could talk to someone,” said Harry.
“Tell you what,” said Luke, rummaging in his bag. “I’ll try my mobile phone. It should work from up here.”
“Good idea. Who will you ring?”
“I suppose you haven’t got the airfield’s phone number, by any chance?”
“Not with me.”
“No good ringing the police. We’re not illegally parked and haven’t started a fight or anything.”
Pause for thought.
“I know,” said Luke, “I’ll ring my editor, that’s what I’ll do, and he can ring his friend who owns this aeroplane. Actually, he doesn’t own it, because I seem to have caught the wrong one, but he should be able to contact the airfield for us.”
His editor was over the moon.
“My God, Luke, what a story!! Forget the flood pictures. Tell me again everything that’s happened. And while you’re up there, get some pictures of the pilot chappy, and …”
“Shut up,” shouted Luke. “Forget the story. We need help to get down on the ground in one piece, and you’re our only link, so please get on with it. Ring your friend with the aeroplane, and tell him to get on to the airfield people. And please hurry. We can’t stay up here all day waiting for you.”
“OK, OK! But don’t hang up – keep the line open and I’ll get back to you. I’ll use the other phone.”
“As a matter of passing interest,” said Luke to Harry, keeping the phone pressed to his ear, “How long can we stay up here?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” came the reply. “Probably about another half an hour, at a guess.”
“We haven’t got long then.”
They were flying parallel to the railway line now, trying to recognise something.
“Are we flying away from London, or towards it?” asked Luke.
“How can you tell?”
“No idea, really.”
“Does it matter?”
“Probably not, in our case.”
They were silent for a bit, watching the passing fields, the odd farmhouse here and there, but failing to discover their exact position in relation to anything else.
“How do you feel about the landing, then,” asked Luke. “When we come to it, that is.”
“As a matter of fact, pretty confident,” Harry almost boasted. “I’ve got plenty of computer flight simulator games at home, so I do quite a bit of flying from behind a desk. This is different, of course – the real thing – but I have actually landed an American F/A 18 jet fighter on an aircraft carrier deck, and didn’t go over the end.”
“That’s great,” said Luke looking around him. “Is there an aircraft carrier within half an hour of here, do you think?”
“Don’t joke,” demanded Harry. “I’m concentrating.”
The editor shouted at Luke, who still had the phone pressed to his ear.
“This story gets better and better,” shouted the man excitedly.
“Never mind the bloody story, help us get home, will you.”
“There’s help on the way, don’t worry.”
“What sort of help. We’re up here and you’re down there.”
“The RAF has scrambled one of its air defence Tornado fighters, and it’s on the way even as we speak.”
“How will that help?”
“They think you’ve hijacked that aircraft, and that your bag you put on board is a bomb, and that you going to dive on to some strategic target or other. They haven’t quite worked out yet what that might be, but they’re guessing that the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Aldermaston is your target. They’ve already started to evacuate the whole area, and have sent up a Tornado to find you before you get there.”
“You mean they’re going to shoot us down or something?”
“Probably.”
“WHAT?” screamed Luke.
“Don’t panic,” said the editor.
“It’s all very well you saying ‘don’t panic.’ You’re down there, and we’re up here, and we’re about to be shot down!”
“Relax! I’m trying to stop them. My God, Luke, this is some story you’ve got. Can you get the pilot’s home address for me, while I’m on?”
“Sod off,” shouted Luke, thinking he would rather survive and be sacked than not survive at all.
“By the way,” said the edito
r, almost as an afterthought, “that man’s instructor is going to ring you sometime, to tell you what to do. I’d better hang up, and so had you.”
They did, and almost immediately Luke’s phone rang. It was the instructor.
“Whatever you do, don’t hand the phone to Harry,” he commanded. “He needs both hands to fly the aircraft, so you will have to pass messages.”
“Roger,” replied Luke, remembering from the films he’d seen that that’s what they said.
“It’s your instructor,” shouted Luke to Harry. “He wants you to fly straight ahead for 30 seconds, then turn right 120o and fly for another 30 seconds, and then do the same again. He reckons the radar should be able to pick you up flying that pattern.”
“Roger,” said Harry, entering in to the spirit of the thing. “At least he’s remembered that I’m better at right-hand turns than left-hand.”
“Are you sure about the sick bags,” said Luke, reaching for his camera case with his free hand.
“Quite sure.”
“What about a toilet then? I suppose there’s no toilet at the back, is there?”
“No.”
“I really do need a loo right now,” said Luke.
“No. There isn’t one.”
Luke held up his hand, as the instructor came on the line again.
“He says they know where we are,” he shouted at Harry. “Not far away at all, as it happens. They are sending up another ‘plane, with your instructor in it, to guide us home.”
“Thank the Lord for that,” replied Harry. “For a minute, I almost began to think that we were lost.”
“You’re to turn left on to a heading of 060 degrees, he says. Can you manage that?”
“I’m not very good at ‘left’, but I’ll try,” Harry replied, tapping the compass. “I think I’m beginning to get the hang of this.”
It wasn’t long before another aircraft pulled up alongside. Harry waved cheerily to his instructor.
“I wish you’d keep your