Aggressor (4 page)

Standing there gave him a clear view through the gap in the window. And what he saw made him catch his breath.

He had only ever seen pictures of the Seventy-Six before. It was a big aircraft, shorter than a Boeing 747, but about the same diameter, giving it a disproportionately tubby appearance, especially from the rear. It was sometimes confused with the Lockheed C-141, another large airlifter and troop transport, but this was no C-141.

The Ilyushin 11-76, the Soviet jet transport known to NATO as ‘Candid', was inching into a giant hangar on the opposite side of the airfield, the sound of its four engines carrying on the wind. Because of the buildings that surrounded the crew room, it was only possible to obtain a view of the hangar through this one window. Had he been anywhere else, he would have missed it.

He zipped up his flight-suit and moved to the window, adjusting the frame so it was fully open. He never noticed the spots of rain on his face.

The Candid was painted in the colours of Aeroflot, the Soviet state airline. But as the aircraft's engines and systems were shut down, twin guns slid into their stowed position beneath its massive T-tail.

The giant doors began their slow journey across the front of the hangar.

Girling remembered his camera just as the doors had reached the half-way mark. He could see people buzzing around the Candid and stairs being pushed across to the door just aft of the cockpit. One individual in particular caught his attention. A wiry man walking back and forth in front of the aircraft with a restless energy, a walkie-talkie alternating between his ear and his mouth. From the nondescript appearance of the man's fatigues it was impossible to tell whether he was Russian or British. He tore at the velcro lining of his flight-suit, set the auto-focusing Pentax to full zoom and started shooting.

He managed to get off half a dozen pictures before the doors slammed shut, the boom as they met rumbling across the airfield. Girling shoved the camera back in his suit and retraced his footsteps to the crew room.

As he went downstairs, he could hear Rantz giving someone a hard time on the telephone. When he reached the room at the end of the corridor Rantz had established that there was a flight out that afternoon. He reserved two seats and hung up.

‘That's fixed,' he said. ‘We're on a flight to Northolt. I'll make sure someone forwards your kit from Marham tomorrow.'

‘Perfect.'

Rantz glanced at the wound on Girling's hand.

‘What the fuck's that?'

Girling was sheepish. ‘For a moment, back there, you had me worried.'

He thought Rantz was going to laugh, but he didn't.

‘You and me both,' he said.

CHAPTER 3

The lift doors opened and Girling stepped into the newsroom.

‘Ah, Tom.' Kelso glanced at his watch. ‘Good of you to join us. Still in one piece, I trust.'

Girling threw the briefcase on his desk. He nodded to Kelso, who seemed to have avoided any trace of a sun-tan from his holiday, then sat down and turned on his PC. He looked over his computer screen at the clock and saw Kieran Mallon wince. It was close to eleven thirty.

Kelso wouldn't want to hear about the rigours of his journey from Machrihanish, how he'd been unable to fall into bed until four that morning. The trip south had been made in an ancient propeller-driven Devon. The rickety plane's turbulent passage through the night cumulus had sent at least one naval officer scuttling for the heads.

From Northolt, Girling headed straight home. It was a long and expensive taxi journey to his flat.

Kelso wasn't interested in long journeys and late nights. He cared only about the magazine hitting the news-stands every week with the best damned stories his editorial budget would buy. As he was liable to remind the staff, it didn't matter how good the story was if the subs didn't get the words. The week was drawing to a close and there were pages to fill.

‘Meeting in five minutes,' Kelso said, looking over the top of his glasses. ‘You're just in time to tell us what pearls you scooped from the mouths of our death-defying RAF friends.'

Kelso swivelled on his heels and strode back to his office.

Girling went over to the coffee pot. He looked at the four-day-old stains at the bottom of his mug, thought about washing it out, then poured the coffee anyway.

Mallon turned his chair. ‘How was World War Three?'

‘Don't talk to me about it,' Girling said. He took a sip. ‘Your coffee doesn't get any better.'

Mallon smiled. He was ten years younger than Girling, more or less straight out of Queen's University, Belfast, apart from one stint on a local paper. ‘You should try washing the cup now and again.'

Girling managed a smile. His whole body ached from lack of sleep. He had never even heard the alarm clock.

‘So, who won?' Mallon pressed. ‘Us or them?'

‘The truth is, they're worried there's no one left to fight. The Warsaw Pact's gone, the Iraqis are all in. Who's left?'

‘Don't you believe it,' Mallon said. ‘For as long as there have been people on God's Earth war's been top of the hit parade.' He grinned. ‘And we're just the boys to write about it.'

‘Hell of a way to earn a living.'

‘Better than working,' Mallon said. ‘Talking of which, what did you pick up?'

In his mind's eye Girling saw the Ilyushin trundling into the hangar.

‘Not much. Just some stuff on low flying; a few facts and figures.'

Girling pulled his pad from the briefcase and started flicking through the pages for the notes he had made during Exercise Stalwart Divider. ‘Oh, and something on Concorde.'

‘What's that got to do with a NATO war game?'

‘It can wait till the news meeting.' Girling returned to the jottings in his notepad.

‘That's all well and good, but I want the Beirut story,' Mallon said.

Girling only half heard. ‘Beirut?'

‘So far, Kelso's gone for all the safe, old hands. Moynahan, Gilpatrick, Stansell... I know I could do a better job than Moynahan, for Christ's sake. He spends most of his time in the Press Club.'

‘What about Beirut?'

Mallon looked at him disbelievingly. ‘Are you serious?'

‘Kieran, I haven't seen a paper or heard the news for three days. News blackouts. World War Three, remember?'

‘Sounds more like World War Two.'

Across the large open-plan office, the rest of the editorial staff were filing into the conference room for the news meeting that doubled as Kelso's end-of-week address. Girling and Mallon picked up their coffees and headed in the same direction.

‘Well?' Girling prompted, as they walked over. ‘Beirut?'

‘Two days ago, a bunch of lunatics, probably PLO or something, hijacked a jumbo at Dubai and flew it on to Beirut. They're holding, among several hundred others, a high-ranking group of American diplomats. Poor bastards were part of the Gulf peace initiative, on their way back to Washington to report on the cease-fire.'

‘What's the latest?'

‘All quiet. Negotiators are still trying to make contact.'

‘And what does Kelso see in it for us?'

Mallon shrugged. ‘He wants to dig up dirt, find out what's really going on behind the scenes. He's relying on us to put one over the competition. He's really got it in for the Sundays at the moment. Ever since he got back from holiday.'

‘Sounds like the big boys are squeezing his nuts.'

After the early summer redundancies, the magazine was under pressure to recapture its flagging circulation. Lord Kyle and the board were leaning heavily on Kelso to produce results, or face the consequences.

Girling closed the door behind them. About twenty of the editorial staff were positioned around the table, with Kelso in his customary place at the head. Girling pulled up two chairs, offering one to Mallon.

Kelso was a heavily built Scot in his early fifties with a gruff face hidden for the most part by a straggling beard. Behind his half-moon tortoiseshell glasses he had eyes that were black and bottomless. Shark's eyes.

‘Right, what have we got?' Kelso asked, turning to the news editor.

Jack Carey reeled off a number of issues that had been put to bed on the magazine's early pages. Most were pretty familiar: the US Primaries, Russia's offer to cut a third of its submarine fleet, again, Pakistan's covert nuclear weapon tests, a serial killer on the loose in Berlin, more Gulf news and the gas pipeline explosion in Syria.

Though not a new magazine,
Dispatches
was very much Kelso's baby. His curriculum vitae was a litany of famous newspaper names. He was an editor of the old school and held to his principles. As the papers themselves had moved from central London and the old Fleet Street had all but died, Kelso had been approached to mastermind the relaunch of
Dispatches
. In his five years as editor he had built up a strong reputation for hard-hitting news. Kelso didn't like the present situation at all, and he didn't care who knew it.

Kelso turned his attention to the page-plan. ‘OK, we've got fifteen pages that still need filling.' He turned to Girling. ‘Tell us about this war game of yours, Tom.'

‘Exercise Stalwart Divider was the biggest test of Britain's air defences since first talk of “peace dividends”. And against the background of the Devon school disaster, it was controversial. In view of the vast cost, and the danger to civilian life, people are asking why we have to stage these things at all now that the Soviet threat has disappeared.'

‘And your facility - your three days at the base - were exclusive to us?' Carey asked.

‘Yes.'

‘It's certainly topical.'

‘And expensive,' Girling said. ‘Half the US Air Force was there.'

‘Official figures?'

‘I picked up a USAF press release at the Tornado base. It seemed to contain all the facts.'

Carey stared at his page-plan for a moment. ‘I'll buy around five hundred well-chosen words on the financial and political cost to the government of military low flying.'

Kelso looked at Girling over the top of his glasses. ‘You flew in one of those jets, so why not give the punters some of your celebrated techno jargon - tell them how it is from the other side.'

Girling thought about Bag, Air Sickness NATO Stock No 8105-99-130-2180. He was glad to have a chance to put across the pilot's viewpoint. But he would leave out any reference to the in-flight emergency. He owed Rantz something for getting them down in one piece.

Carey scratched his chin. ‘Seems to me we should split the story in two. We'll box up your own first-hand impressions of the exercise on the same page as the main angle. A thousand words, tops, all right?'

‘And I want to see it by end lunch-time,' Kelso said. ‘Anything else we should know about?'

‘Picked up a tip they're using Concorde to simulate Blackjack attacks,' Girling said.

Kelso twiddled a biro's end in his ear and admired the results. ‘What in God's name is Blackjack?'

‘The Soviet Union's new strategic bomber. It flies the same speed as Concorde and, apparently, has an identical radar signature. For the last six months the RAF has been monitoring British Airways charter flights in and out of Russia to see if they can be tracked on our ground-based radar. The RAF has just carried out a whole load of software improvements on our air defence network, and they want to know if it works. They're using the Concorde flights to test out fighter intercept procedure, and nobody knows about it, least of all the Concorde passengers.'

Kelso popped the biro back in his top pocket. ‘Let's give it to young Kieran, see what he makes of it.' He turned to the Irishman.

Only Girling saw Mallon's disappointment.

Girling turned to Carey. ‘There was a Soviet military transport aircraft at a base on the West Coast of Scotland yesterday. A place called Machrihanish.'

‘How do you know?' Carey asked.

‘I was there. Got pictures, too.'

Just then the phone rang by Kelso's elbow. ‘The Soviets are probably starting charter services between Scotland and Murmansk,' he said, picking up the phone. ‘Hello?'

Girling put his notes away. He would follow it up another time.

Kelso barked down the receiver to the graphics department for thirty seconds, then hung up. ‘Jesus, what a fucking mess. Where was I? Oh, yes. News. Just when everyone thought hijacking had gone out of fashion and it was safe to get back on a fucking plane, these jokers pop up from nowhere and do a number on the American ambassador to Saudi and his negotiating team. This time, the American public has gone ape-shit. My guess is Washington's going to send in the Marines, or that antiterrorist outfit of theirs.'

‘Delta Force,' Carey prompted.

Kelso twitched. It didn't do to show him up in company.

‘I mean, talk about balls,' Kelso continued, his gaze fixed on Girling. ‘Did you see how they got on board?'

‘I haven't had a chance,' Girling said.

‘Well, read the cuttings, Tom. It'll take your breath away.'

The shark's eyes swept the assembled company.

‘We need to find out what's happening in Washington,' he said. ‘It's been too quiet for my liking since that 747 touched down in Beirut. We need to steal a march. Show the world we've still got teeth.'

‘What's the word from the States?' Girling asked. They had to have some news.

Kelso looked to Carey.

‘Claudia's done a piece on the knee-jerk reaction over there.' Carey picked up the cue. ‘But it's the usual trawl through her sources in the Administration and Congress. So far she hasn't turned up anything we can stick on page one.' He paused. ‘We've also got Stansell working the story out of Cairo. That should produce some results.'

‘If he can get his nose out of a bloody bottle,' someone whispered, too low for Kelso to catch. Girling turned to see Moynahan smiling sweetly at him.

Girling stiffened. Coming from Moynahan, the two-faced bastard, that was rich. ‘What's Stansell's brief?'

‘Find out the identity of the hijackers, their motives, see if there's any word of state involvement on the streets. Maybe Libya's up to its old tricks. The usual shit.'

Girling's brow furrowed. ‘You mean, these guys haven't said who they are yet?'

Carey shook his head.

‘What about demands?'

Girling felt himself drawn towards the story. He bit his lip. He was done with that kind of thing. He had promised himself, as much for Alia's sake as his own.

Only Kelso caught his reaction. ‘Zilch. As I said, we're dealing with some hard bastards out there. You might find them interesting.' He smiled beguilingly. ‘Why don't you pull the file from the cuttings library, Tom, and take a look. After you've turned round your copy, of course.'

Girling flicked through his notes.

He pounded out the details of his trip with Rantz - up to the point where the bombs destroyed the bridge: the nausea, the concentration, the sweat, and the fear that accompanied a Tornado crewman as he hurtled supersonically towards the target, his wings level with the tops of the trees.

As science and technology correspondent, Girling had written many such pieces. Today, he pounded out the story mechanically, with little enthusiasm for the words.

‘What is it?' Mallon asked.

Girling paused.

‘I was thinking of all the useless knowledge that's stored away between these two ears, with maybe a total of three pages a year on which to dump it. Seems like a hell of a waste. I mean, tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money has been spent training me to fly aircraft and helicopters, drive tanks, fire guns -'

‘Sounds fun to me,' Mallon said.

‘Don't get me wrong, it is. But in the end I just get to file the copy if I'm lucky and then kiss all this knowledge goodbye.'

‘Short of fighting a war, there's not a whole lot you can do with it.'

The picture editor arrived with photographs of a Tornado, similar to the one in which he had flown with Rantz, and the burnt-out shell of the little Devon village school. The one with the rag-doll body of the child in the ruins that had been splashed across the front pages of so many tabloids the day after the disaster.

Girling sighed. ‘Kelso?'

The man nodded.

If orders came from the board to take
Dispatches
downmarket, it looked like being a short journey.

Girling hit the key to save the file, entered it into the network system and dispatched it electronically to the sub-editor's desk, where it would be hacked about before being put into production, finally ending up on an inside news page.