over the Humber estuary. Of equal interest was another trace heading towards the coast in exactly the opposite direction. He had run a check on its assigned squawk transponder code, and it appeared to be an authorised aircraft flying out of the Royal International Air Tattoo at Fairford. It was north of its permitted flyzone, but what concerned him more was that it was on a near-collision course with the incoming jet.
He had been off-duty when his colleague had cocked up over the MiG-35s, but everyone at RAF Boulmer had been dragged over the coals afterwards. So he didn’t hesitate to call up Air Command at High Wycombe and recommend that two Typhoons be scrambled from RAF Coningsby to intercept, identify and report. Their reaction made him break out into a cold sweat. There were no incoming or outgoing military jets showing up on Air Command’s Recognised Air Picture for the region.
The crowd at Fairford was loving the Raptor display, particularly in the main hospitality marquee, where the Georgian delegation was now drunk on the spectacle as well as their wine. Each manoeuvre was accompanied by a thumping soundtrack: ‘Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting’, by Nickelback, for the high-speed pass; ‘Come Back Around’, by Feeder, for the J-turn.
‘Major Brandon will now utilise the awesome vector thrust of the twin engines to literally rip the aircraft through the vertical and back to a level flight,’ the commentator continued. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the power loop.’
The mood was no less ebullient in the static display behind the Georgians. A child in a pram wearing big red headphones arched his back and clapped with joy as the plane made another fly-by in a weapons-bay pass. An American crew in their flying suits was perched on the wings of a Lancer B1 Bomber that had flown in overnight from Texas. They were enjoying the sunshine, heads rocking to the music as they admired their compatriot’s performance.
‘Supercruise speed?’ one of them asked.
‘1.7,’ another replied, shielding his eyes from the sun as he tracked the plane into the distance. ‘He’s yanking and banking the hell out of it today.’
The commentator came over the loudspeaker system again as the Raptor turned sharply at the western end of the runway.
‘The pilot will be experiencing something approaching 9G as this fine fifth-generation fighter sweeps through a flat 360,’ he said. ‘On his return to the display line, Major Brandon will perform a slow high-alpha pass at 120 knots, then hit the afterburner and accelerate into a near-vertical climb to 10,000 feet in a manoeuvre we proudly call the “muscle climb”. After that he will be rejoined by the SU-25 Frogfoot, which should be heading back towards the airfield from the east any time now — providing it hasn’t run out of gas.’
Fielding rang through to Armstrong as he watched the Raptor climb vertically into the sky at the end of the runway. He remembered seeing the Vulcan do something similar in the 1970s.
‘Can you hear me? It’s Marcus. Any news?’ Armstrong was sitting at the COBRA table in the underground crisis-management centre, monitoring developments.
‘Air Command has just given the order to scramble two Typhoons from Coningsby,’ she said. ‘There’s been a similar systems error with the Recognised Air Picture. They’re not taking any chances this time. It seems a rogue Russian jet is heading your way fast.’
‘It’s Dhar,’ Fielding said quietly.
‘A ground sighting in the Midlands suggests it’s a two-seater.’
‘Dhar and Daniel Marchant.’
‘I hope to God you know what you’re doing, Marcus. The Typhoons have orders to shoot it down.’
The Aerospace Battle Manager at RAF Boulmer was relieved that the two Typhoons had been scrambled, but he was still dealing with the most stressful day of his professional life. The Russian jet was now deep inside British airspace, flying fast and low towards southern England, but what had happened to the outgoing Georgian aircraft? It seemed to have vanished moments after it had passed the Russian one, just off the coast. What was more, the incoming Russian jet was broadcasting exactly the same transponder squawk code as the one that had disappeared off his screens.
He put an emergency call through to the coastguard, informing them that a plane had gone down ten miles off the coast of Grimsby, and then he rang Air Command again.
Major Brandon glanced down at the crowds as he flew over them in a dedication pass. After banking, he looked across the airfield towards the east. Frogfoot One had enjoyed its farewell tour of the British countryside and would shortly be rejoining the air show for the finale, a dogfight that would leave no one in any doubt about the superiority of the Raptor. He didn’t really know why the Georgian pilot was bothering to show up again for a humiliating few minutes. It was just a shame that he was only carrying dummy weapons today. Two clicks over the r/t alerted him to someone else on frequency, and he saw a familiar shape closing from the east at his altitude.
‘Welcome back, Frogfoot One. You’ve missed quite a party. Give me thirty more seconds before I’m on your six o’clock. I’m about to pull that Pugachev cobra we were talking about. One final treat to keep your generals sweet.’
Dhar heard the American, but chose to remain silent, just giving two more taps on the PTT switch to signal his assent. He was confident that everyone — the crowds, air-traffic control and the American pilot — would assume that his aircraft was the same one that had left the air show twenty minutes earlier. After all, SU-25s weren’t a common sight over the Cotswolds. To look at, it was identical — except that the weapons slung beneath its wings were not dummies. A few moments ago, he had held a brief conversation with the control tower at RAF Fairford. The exchange had passed without suspicion, their warm welcome back confirming that the switch of squawk codes had been successful. Dhar had never met the brave Georgian pilot who had been recruited by the SVR. All he knew was that he had orders to ditch his plane and eject after passing him over the North Sea.
‘Frogfoot One, do you copy me?’ The American said. ‘I’m proceeding east to west along the display line, with all due respect to Viktor Pugachev. Watch and learn, Frogfoot.’
Dhar could see the Raptor in the far distance now, rearing its nose as it seemed to almost stall, exposing its underbelly. He flicked the weapons select switch on the stick, just as he had done countless times on the simulator with Sergei. Only this time it was for real. The Vympel under his left wing was a heat-seeking air-to-air missile that travelled at two and a half times the speed of sound. It was packed with a 7.25-kilogram warhead and had a maximum range of twenty-nine kilometres. Dhar was less than two kilometres away now, and closing. Minimum engagement range was three hundred metres. He looked across at the American aircraft, using his helmet- mounted sighting system to designate the target. And then he fired.
Marchant thought they had been hit when the missile scorched away from under the plane’s left wing. Then he realised what was going on.
‘Jesus, Salim, what are you doing?’
‘Exploring the common ground.’
100
At first, the crowd assumed that the missile streaking across the sky was all part of the spectacular show, and a cheer went up. Major Brandon was less ecstatic. His heart missed a beat when an alarm in his cockpit warned that an incoming missile had locked on to the infra-red heat of his F-22’s exhaust. His first thought was that the aircraft’s flat vector nozzles were meant to disguise the heat. His second thought, honed in hours of training, was to deploy his Chemring flares, but he wasn’t carrying any because their use had been banned by the air show’s organisers. The last thought he ever had was that he was a sitting duck, nose stuck in the air and travelling at a hundred knots.
