Pandemic (2 page)

The previous evening a signal classified Secret, and marked for Richter’s eyes only, had been handed to him as he’d emerged from the dining room, and had explained exactly why
Simpson had changed his mind.

‘Tigers, Alpha Sierra. Snap one eight zero. Two bogeys bearing one nine zero at sixty, heading north. Low.’ The voice of the observer in the Airborne Surveillance and Area Control
Sea King Mark 7 was slightly distorted by his throat microphone, but perfectly understandable. The ASaC helicopter was positioned at about five thousand feet in a holding pattern some thirty miles
ahead of the
Invincible
group.

‘Roger, Alpha Sierra. One eight zero.’

Richter followed Tiger One round in a tight starboard turn, rolled out heading south and began to descend, pushing the throttle forward as he adjusted the aircraft’s heading.

‘Tigers established on south. In the drop passing twenty-eight for fifteen.’

‘Roger, Tigers. Bogeys one eight five at forty-two. Low. Below five.’

Fifty miles to the north-west of Richter’s Sea Harrier, the
Invincible
group was heading south-east at a steady twelve knots through the Adriatic Sea, about seventy miles off the
Italian Puglian coast, and approaching the end of a two-day ship-controlled exercise after an exhausting port visit to Trieste. Accompanying the
Invincible
were two Royal Fleet Auxiliary
supply ships, one of them a tanker to cater for the carrier’s insatiable thirst for aviation fuel, and two frigates.

HMS
Invincible
, like her sister ships
Illustrious
and
Ark Royal
, is officially known as a Through-Deck Cruiser – a ‘CVS’. This somewhat bizarre appellation
was forced on the Royal Navy by the political climate in the days when these vessels were constructed, after the word ‘carrier’ became unacceptable for a variety of reasons.

When the previous
Ark Royal
– the last ‘proper’ carrier belonging to the Royal Navy – had sailed into the scrapyard, the government of the day had decided, without
apparently consulting anybody who might actually know what they were talking about, that in the future the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm would only require helicopters. Protection against an
enemy unsporting enough to use aircraft to attack a ship would become the sole responsibility of the Royal Air Force.

In theory, and back in the English Channel, this might have worked, but any credible blue-water navy has to carry organic fighter aircraft, and within a short time their lordships at the
Admiralty had realized that the
Invincible
-class ships were almost ideally suited to the carriage of Harriers. The result was the Sea Harrier FRS1, which first flew in 1978. Following
successful trials, Sea Harrier squadrons were formed and became the principal offensive weapon of the CVS.

The first practical test of the aircraft came in 1982, when Argentine forces invaded the Falkland Islands. A couple of dozen Sea Harriers flying from two small carriers – the
Invincible
and the ageing
Hermes
– were pitched against an air force that was vastly superior both technologically and numerically. The Argentinians fielded supersonic Super
Etendards, Daggers and Mirage IIIs, and the small and agile Skyhawk light bombers. Theoretically, the Harriers didn’t stand a chance: they should have been overwhelmed by sheer weight of
numbers. But they weren’t. In a short and bitter campaign, the Sea Harriers shot down twenty Argentine jet aircraft, and several other types, for no air combat losses whatsoever. The
reliability and survivability of the type – not to mention its capability – were proved at a stroke.

In the Falklands, the Navy had used the AIM-9L Sidewinder air-to-air missile, but the current variant is the AIM-9M. The newer weapon offers one vitally important advantage – it can lock
on to a target from any direction, not just from behind like the 9L, allowing head-on engagements. However, as every fighter pilot knows, the best possible place to engage an enemy is from behind,
where you can see him but he can’t see you, so air combat tactics have changed little with the introduction of this new weapon.

In its original form, the FRS1 Sea Harrier had usually carried four Sidewinder missiles on under-wing pylons, and a pair of Aden cannon beneath the fuselage. The FA2, the ‘Fighter
Attack’ variant, which entered service in the mid 1990s, added the highly capable AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, which, when matched with the excellent Ferranti Blue Vixen
coherent pulse-Doppler radar, offered multiple target acquisition, long engage range and a fire-and-forget capability.

The only problem with the AMRAAM is that it’s larger and heavier than the ’winder, and to enable the aircraft to carry more than two of them, the Aden cannon pods were removed,
allowing a maximum armament of four AMRAAMs. But the Sidewinder is still an option, and a mix of two AMRAAMs and four ’winders is considered by many Harrier pilots to be the optimum
air-combat load.

For exercises, the Royal Navy had decided that AMRAAMs made things just too easy, so most aircraft employed on CAP sorties still used Sidewinders only. The weapon has a maximum engage range of
only five miles, and to obtain a kill against another Sea Harrier, with identical performance and armament, is a true test of flying skill and combat ability.

‘Bogeys one seven five at thirty. Still low. Vector one nine zero.’

‘One nine zero, Tiger One.’

The two fighters were heading directly towards the two inbound aircraft – another pair of 800 Squadron Sea Harriers playing at being bad guys – with a combined closing speed of well
over one thousand miles an hour. The Sea King observer, known somewhat unflatteringly as a ‘bagman’ after the shape of the inflatable fabric dome covering the Sea King’s modified
Searchwater radar that dangled from the side of the aircraft like a large grey pustule, was vectoring the CAP aircraft to a location above and behind the two targets.

‘Tigers, fence out.’

Richter clicked his transmit button once to acknowledge, and immediately began preparing his aircraft for combat. On a pylon beneath the starboard wing of his Sea Harrier was slung a dummy
Sidewinder missile pod. Externally almost indistinguishable from a genuine ’winder, the pod contains an infra-red seeker head identical to that in the live missile, but lacks the rocket motor
and explosive warhead.

Richter enabled coolant flow through the infra-red head, which would allow it to detect the heat signature of the target aircraft. He switched on the Guardian radar warning receiver, which would
tell him if the attacking aircraft had obtained a missile lock on him, then pre-set the Blue Vixen radar to Air Combat mode. The agreed EMCON – emission control – tactics for the sortie
required both Tigers to remain radar silent until almost within missile acquisition range of their targets.

The two last preparations were probably the most important. When engaged in high-energy manoeuvring, the airflow through the huge inlets of the Rolls-Royce Pegasus engine can get badly
disrupted, and in some cases the compressor may stall or surge and effectively stop. The Harrier glides like the proverbial brick – pretty much straight down – so Richter selected the
‘combat switch’ to engage the short-duration high-power setting.

Finally, he checked his anti-g suit. In hard turns pilots’ bodies are subjected to very high stresses, and if their anti-g suits don’t function properly they can black out, with
predictably unfortunate – and sometimes fatal – results.

‘Bogeys one seven five at fifteen. Low. Standby hard port turn.’

‘Roger.’

‘Tigers, turn now, now, now. Roll-out heading zero one zero.’

Richter grunted with the increasing g-force as he hauled the Sea Harrier around in a tight left-hand diving turn. He felt the bladder in the waist section of his ‘speed jeans’
– the anti-g trousers – inflate rapidly as the g-force increased. It felt like a slow but powerful kick in the stomach, but prevented the blood in his head and torso from plummeting
down to his feet and causing a blackout or g-loc.

‘Tigers steady on zero one zero, passing twelve for five in the drop.’

‘Roger, Tigers. Bogeys zero one five at eight.’

‘Tigers, radiate.’

Richter reached down, switched on the Blue Vixen and scanned the display in front of him. ‘Tiger Two. Judy, Judy,’ he called immediately, the code word signifying that he had
acquired the two targets on radar.

‘Roger that. Leader’s taking west, Tiger Two take east.’

Richter’s target – the easterly of the two contacts – was still over six miles in front of him, just outside the Sidewinder’s kill envelope. The missile’s infra-red
seeker head is slaved to the radar antenna: in other words, wherever the radar looks, that’s where the missile looks. Already he could hear the faint growl in his headset that told him the
’winder had detected the target Harrier, but he was still too far out of range to engage it.

Richter watched the contacts on radar. As he expected, as soon as the pilots of the ‘attacking’ Sea Harriers detected the Blue Vixen radar transmissions on their Guardian sets, they
split, breaking left and right and climbing. In air combat, height and speed are vital: an aircraft caught at low level is denied freedom of movement and is often an easy target.

‘Bogeys splitting. Independent pursuit.’

Richter pulled the Harrier hard round to starboard in a 5g turn. His opponent was passing his level in a steep climb – the Sea Harrier FA2 climbs at fifty thousand feet a minute –
and turning rapidly, just under six miles in front of him. The advantage Richter had was that he was still behind his assigned target, which was where he intended to stay until he could engage it
with the Sidewinder.

But the other Harrier pilot was having none of it. Realizing that a CAP aircraft was on his tail, he jinked to the left and started a tight diving turn that could bring him up behind and below
Richter’s aircraft.

Richter saw the manoeuvre, stopped his turn, reversed direction and hauled the Harrier into an even tighter turn to port, following his target, then rolled inverted and powered downwards towards
the sea eight thousand feet below. At four thousand feet he forced the Harrier back into a climb. Despite the anti-g suit, Richter felt the blackness of g-loc creeping up on him as he pulled over
6g. The g-force diminished rapidly as the Harrier climbed. Adrenalin pumping, Richter scanned the Blue Vixen scope.

Intellectually, he knew that it was all a game, a kind of maritime
Top Gun
, that the other pilot was from 800 Squadron and that they’d enjoyed a drink together in the Wardroom the
previous evening, but in the cockpit it felt different. It felt real, and he reacted exactly as if the other aircraft had been a Russian MiG or a Libyan Sukhoi. The ‘enemy’ Harrier had
rolled out heading east, four miles in front of Richter and three thousand feet above.

‘Got you, you bastard,’ Richter muttered as he closed with the bogey. The growl in his earphones increased markedly. He checked the head-up display, looking at the voltmeter to
confirm the Sidewinder really had locked on to the other Sea Harrier’s exhaust and not the other obvious heat source – the sun – and waited for the diamond symbol to appear in the
display.

The target aircraft started a tight right-hand turn, but by then it didn’t matter. A final check that the bogey was within the missile’s minimum and maximum engage ranges, and
release. ‘Tiger Two, Fox Two,’ Richter called. A Sidewinder kill.

‘Tiger Two, good kill. Tigers, terminate, terminate,’ the Sea King bagman called. ‘Pigeons for Mother three five zero at sixty-two. Listen out for Snakes this
frequency.’

‘Alpha Sierra, roger. Break, break. Tiger Two, Leader. Roll out north at thirty.’

Richter clicked his transmit button to acknowledge, then steadied the Harrier on north, continued the climb and levelled at thirty thousand feet. He scanned his radar, checking for both Tiger
One and the other two Harriers. As soon as he identified the Senior Pilot’s aircraft, he took up station in battle formation again.

‘Tiger Two, Snake One.’

‘Tiger Two.’

‘Beginner’s luck, I’d call it, Spook.’

Richter grinned behind his oxygen mask. ‘You know my motto, Randy,’ he replied. ‘Any time, anywhere.’

‘Yeah, right.’

Richter glanced out to starboard, where Snake One had just appeared at his level. The other pilot waggled his Harrier’s wings in salute, then moved slightly ahead. Beyond Snake One,
Richter could see Snake Two taking up station.

Richter checked the fuel state and his aircraft position on the NAVHARS inertial navigation system. The time was just about right, and he was in pretty much the right place. He made a final
visual check that he was in clear air, pulled back on the control column – the classic ‘convert excess speed to height’ manoeuvre when presented with any kind of an emergency
– and simultaneously throttled back so that the other three Harriers shot ahead of him. Then he took a deep breath and transmitted.

‘Pan, pan, pan. This is Tiger Two with a rough-running engine. Request diversion to the nearest shore station.’

Between Gavdopoúla and Gávdos, Eastern Mediterranean

Spiros Aristides had spent his entire working life as a professional diver, primarily in the Aegean, and in retirement he still enjoyed – albeit outside the law
– what had once been his livelihood. Scuba diving in Crete is technically illegal, unless the diver holds a permit from the Department of Antiquities, but Spiros had never been particularly
concerned about the legality or otherwise of what he was doing. He always carried his diving gear in a couple of sacks, just in case there were any prying eyes trying to monitor his activities, but
in the eight years he’d been living on Crete he’d never so much as caught a glimpse of a policeman in the village where he resided, let alone a man from the ministry.

Most weekdays he left his small house in Kandíra on the south-west coast, packed his equipment into his eighteen-foot workboat and headed off into the Mediterranean. Not much to look at,
with faded blue and red paintwork and a bunch of old car tyres acting as fenders, the
Nicos
was nevertheless a well-equipped diving tender, fitted with a Gardner diesel engine, radar set,
echo-sounder and even a Global Positioning System unit.