Fatal Error (21 page)

I tapped Guy on the shoulder and pointed.

‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘You often get cloud over mountains. We’ll be all right down here.’

We were approaching the shoulder of a hill that plunged down to the sound. We passed it and turned northwards. Right in front of us was a wall of black. The aeroplane shuddered a little, as if in nervous anticipation.

Another one.

Mountains rose above us on either side. It was impossible to fly around this as Guy had promised.

‘What now?’

‘We go under it,’ said Guy. ‘There might be a bit of turbulence, but we’re nearly there.’

‘Shouldn’t we turn back?’

‘No, we’ll be fine. It’s just forming. It’s not even producing any rain yet.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure,’ Guy said, irritation flaring in his voice. ‘Hold on back there, this might be a little bumpy.’

Guy descended to about four hundred feet, at which point it was possible to see underneath the cloud to the shoreline behind.

We approached the grey wall at a hundred and thirty knots. I was nervous. In front of us was what was increasingly looking to my inexperienced eye like a huge beast of a cumulonimbus, below was water, on either side mountains. Only behind us was safety. But glancing at Guy’s determined face, I could see there was no chance of us going that way.

He was an experienced pilot. I would have to trust him.

The air became bumpy, with jolts and lurches that prompted a cry of ‘Whoa’ from Mel. A bit uncomfortable, but easy to put up with, if that was all we were going to suffer.

Perhaps we would be OK.

We weren’t.

Suddenly the aircraft was slammed downwards as if a giant hand had slapped the roof. The water shot up towards us. Guy cursed, put on full throttle and tried to climb. The water was dark and choppy and only a few feet below us. Despite Guy’s efforts we weren’t going up. Another downdraught like that and we’d get very wet. Worse than that, the force would shatter the aeroplane against the surface of the water. But it didn’t happen. One moment the engine was straining to gain a few feet in altitude, and the next that great hand reached down and dragged us upwards. The water disappeared far below and after a few seconds we were enveloped in the cloud. Everything became very dark.

‘Jesus Christ!’ swore Guy as he wrestled with the controls. I didn’t know what he was trying to do. There was nothing he could do, the forces all around us totally overwhelmed any instructions Guy was giving to the airframe. I looked at the altimeter. We were being pulled up past one thousand and two thousand feet. Debris was flying all over the cabin:
the map, a kneeboard, a flight guide. I felt a whack in the back of my head, and Ingrid’s bag flew upwards and hit the ceiling. I was totally disoriented as my insides were pulled and pushed in every direction. Outside, a sheet of water fell on us, flooding over the windshield. It didn’t matter. There was nothing to see but black cloud out there.

Mel started to scream. I turned. She was terrified.

‘Tell her to shut up,’ muttered Guy beside me. He was pale and sweating, straining hard at the controls.

‘Mel!’ I shouted. ‘Mel!’

It was no use. I couldn’t get the poor girl to stop screaming, but I could turn off the intercom to the rear seats. That helped.

There was a sudden flash of brilliant white light and then an explosion. It was as if we were actually inside a thunderclap. I looked out to check the wings. Unbelievably they were still attached to the plane.

‘What about the mountains?’ I shouted. There were mountains on either side of us. We couldn’t see anything. We could easily charge into the side of one at any moment.

‘I know,’ said Guy. ‘But look at the altimeter. We’re nearly at three thousand feet. We should clear most of them.’

I looked, and as I did so the altimeter started spinning the other way. We were going down. Two thousand. One thousand. There were plenty of hills that height within a couple of miles of our track. I peered through the rain into the darkness. They could be right in front of us, there was no way of telling.

Then the blackness ripped apart and we were out. Below us was water. Straight ahead was the brown flank of a mountain. The water split, one arm going to the left, one to the right. Guy had only seconds to decide. He took the right.

‘Thank God,’ I said.

‘Where’s the map?’ screamed Guy.

It was wedged on the coaming above the instrument panel. I handed it to him. He glanced around him and down at the map. We were entering a glen a couple of miles wide. Ahead of us and a little above was what looked like a saddle, a narrow pass between two mountains. Behind us was the storm.

‘We’re over Skye now,’ said Guy. ‘The airfield’s just over this saddle.’

He put on full power and began to climb. The Cessna 182 has a powerful engine and can usually climb at a thousand feet a minute, but we were achieving much less than that. We’d be lucky if we made it up to the saddle at that rate. We were climbing against a wind blowing down the mountain.

Mel had stopped screaming.

I looked down. We were passing over a small crescent-shaped loch. I grabbed the map and searched for it. I saw where Guy thought we were, just to the south of Broadford on the Isle of Skye. There was no crescent-shaped loch there. My eyes scanned the map, until I found one. There it was! On the mainland. Half way up a long valley that had a three-thousand-foot mountain at its head.

‘Guy, I don’t think we’re over Skye.’

‘Of course we are,’ said Guy.

‘But that loch down there. It’s on the mainland. We should turn back or we’ll hit this mountain.’ I tried to show him the map, but he brushed it away.

‘No way am I going back into that storm,’ said Guy. ‘And the airfield’s just a few miles ahead.’

‘It isn’t. Look at the compass. We’re flying north-east, not north.’

‘The compass is screwed up by the storm. Look. I’m the pilot-in-command. I’m the one with the licence. Will you just shut the fuck up!’

I shut up. Beyond the saddle was cloud. It might be hiding a mountain or it might not. The valley was narrowing. Soon it would be impossible to turn back without hitting the hills on either side. We were making some progress upwards and it looked like our rate of climb would just get us over the saddle. But after that? If I was right and there was a mountain there and not an airfield, we would have nowhere to fly but into it.

I looked down again. Another tiny loch with a clump of trees around it. I checked the map. Sure enough, a couple of miles up the glen from the crescent loch was a blue dot next to a green splodge.

‘Guy, turn around! I’m one hundred per cent sure there’s a mountain ahead.’

‘No! Now will you keep quiet!’

Guy wanted to believe that there was sanctuary over that saddle. He wanted to believe it so badly that he would ignore any evidence to the contrary. The saddle was close now. So were the sides of the valley. We might just be able to turn now, but if we waited ten more seconds …

I did what I had to do. I snatched the control column in front of me and yanked it to the right. Guy tried to regain control by pulling on his column but I was stronger than he was. The aircraft was sharply banked and we were turning. Turning right into a cliff.

‘Leave it, Guy, or we’ll hit it!’ I shouted. If Guy had succeeded in pulling us out of the turn we would fly straight into the mountain. He let go.

I saw rock, trees, bracken, a waterfall. Close, closer. We were only a few yards from the rock. Despite the steepness of the turn, we seemed to be moving round so slowly. Come on. Then the nose pulled away from the cliff and we were facing back the way we came. The throttle was still all the way in and I pointed the aeroplane upwards.

‘What are you doing!’ screamed Guy. ‘Are you crazy? You nearly got us killed!’

I looked back over his shoulder. There was a break in the cloud above the saddle. And through the break was a mountain.

If I hadn’t turned the aircraft round we would have ploughed straight into it. For sure.

Guy gasped. ‘Oh, my God.’ He went pale and his lips began to tremble. ‘Oh, my God.’

We were still climbing. The air was bumpy but I could see clear sky between the storm and the mountains. I pointed the aircraft towards it. I wasn’t sure I had the engine settings completely right, but the aeroplane was moving steadily and powerfully upwards and that was all that mattered.

The Isle of Skye was engulfed in cloud, but I was able to follow the coastline back to Mallaig in clear skies.

‘God,’ said Guy. ‘I’m sorry, Davo. Christ, I can’t believe it.’

I glanced at him. He was pale, in shock. I realized I would have to fly the aeroplane. I only had twelve hours in my logbook, and I had never flown anything as powerful as the Cessna before, but I could steer it and the throttle seemed to work in more or less the same way as the AA-5. I could have called up Scottish Information on the radio, but I wasn’t sure my radio-telephony skills were up to it. Fly to Oban and get Guy to land it was all I intended to do.

I turned the rear intercom on again and heard Mel sobbing. Ingrid was trying to comfort her.

‘Is it over?’ she asked.

‘I think so,’ I said.

But it wasn’t quite. I kept the coast on my left until I reached the white Ardnamurchan lighthouse, and then I followed the Sound of Mull towards where I hoped Oban would be. But what I saw was another towering
thundercloud. There was no way we were going anywhere near one of those again. I remembered we had passed a grass airstrip on the north coast of Mull on our way up and I soon found it, just a couple of miles ahead.

I turned to Guy. He was hunched up, staring out of the window.

‘Can you land it now, Guy?’ I asked.

‘You do it,’ Guy said.

‘But I’ve never landed this aeroplane before. And I don’t know how to land on grass. You have to do it.’

‘OK,’ said Guy weakly. He took the controls and began to fiddle with the throttle and the propeller settings. Then he pushed them away. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can’t do it. You do it.’

‘Guy!’

He didn’t answer and just looked away.

So I pointed the aeroplane towards the tiny grass strip. It was right by the sea with a bloody great hill in the direction I was supposed to land from. I had done a few landings, some of them without even bouncing, but each time on a familiar tarmac runway with an instructor next to me for when I cocked it up, which at that stage was quite often.

This time, if I cocked it up there might not be another chance.

I pulled out the throttle and let down two stages of flap. The aircraft began to slow and lose height. I flew towards the hill and at the last minute turned to face the runway. In the Cessna the perspective was totally different from what I was used to and everything was happening very quickly. I was too high and too fast. Desperately I pulled the throttle all the way out, pushed the nose down and lowered the last stage of flap. Still too high, still too fast. The runway seemed to rush up at us, and before I had time to raise the nose, we had hit the ground hard. The aircraft reared back into the air in an enormous bounce. I hung on, and two bounces later
we were on firm ground, speeding towards a hedge at the far end of the runway. I braked as hard as I could and waited. We shot past the runway threshold into long grass. That slowed us down more effectively than my braking and we came to rest a couple of yards from the hedge.

I killed the engine and the four of us sat there in the silence, unable to believe that we were actually on the ground.

21

August 1999, Clerkenwell, London

‘So, how are we doing, Guy?’

‘We’re live, we’re on the web and we’re getting forty thousand hits a week.’ Guy grinned at his father, brimming with the excitement of the previous few days.

It was ninetyminutes.com’s first formal board meeting, although of the four directors only Patrick Hoyle was wearing a suit, a huge baggy thing that flapped around his enormous body. Our new chairman was dressed all in black, the same as his son. He was in a great mood: he clearly liked the internet lifestyle.

Tony had invested two million pounds of capital for eighty per cent of Ninetyminutes, leaving the rest of us to split the remaining twenty per cent amongst us, with Guy rightly receiving the lion’s share. It was a bad deal for us, but we had had no choice. Mel had helped us in the negotiations, behaving totally professionally towards Tony throughout. But it made little difference. Tony had us by the balls and he squeezed. The worst thing was, he seemed to enjoy it. All in all a very different experience from my own father’s investment.

‘No problems at all?’ he asked.

‘Oh, there were problems. But we fixed them. The site hasn’t fallen over once since we launched ten days ago. Which is more than I can say for some of the staff. We pushed them pretty hard.’

‘So, if I type
www.ninetyminutes.com
into my computer, what happens?’

‘I didn’t know you could type, Dad.’

‘Of course I can bloody type!’ But Tony allowed himself a quick smile, caught up in Guy’s enthusiasm.

‘Sorry. Try it,’ said Guy, pushing his own laptop towards his father. Tony laboriously pecked out the letters and the by-now familiar Ninetyminutes logo floated to the surface. Guy guided Tony around the site, while Hoyle watched over their shoulders.

‘You know, this is really good,’ Tony said.

‘I know,’ said Guy. ‘And it’s going to get better.’

‘Has anyone out there noticed us?’ he asked, still clicking away at the laptop.

‘There’s been some excellent press coverage.’ Guy handed round a sheaf of articles for everyone to look at. ‘And we’ve had some outstanding reviews of our site on-line. We expect more of those over the next few weeks.’

Tony scanned the reviews. ‘ “The best soccer site on the web by miles.” That’s not bad for your first week.’

‘There’s still a lot to do,’ Guy said. ‘We’re talking to one of the offshore bookmakers for on-line betting. That should be a money-spinner. And we’re recruiting. New writers, a couple of programmers to help Owen and Sanjay, and some admin people. We’ve also had interest from our advertising agency about selling space on the site. Remember, that’s something we wanted to hold off doing until we could show people what we’ve got.’