Sam 7, p.8
SAM 7, page 8
‘We have a pretty wide selection, sir, starting with champagne.’
She looked disappointed when he ordered an orange juice.
Now the DC-10 was passing over the Pontoise radio beacon north of Paris, joining the Amber Two West airway for Abbeville and the French coast. On the flight deck Bill Curtis was handling the controls in the left-hand seat while Joe Walther worked the radios. Both were in their shirtsleeves. Behind them the systems engineer regulated banks of dials and switches. On the Paris to London route you scarcely reach the cruising altitude before you start to think about the descent. By the time the autopilot had taken the aircraft up to 27,000 feet, the distance measuring equipment was showing that they had only twenty-one miles to run before they would be overhead Abbeville. At 480 knots that would take less than three minutes. Curtis glanced down at the French countryside, the scattered clouds casting shadows which he saw as dark patches on the sunlit woods and fields below.
In front of them through the windows above the crowded instrument panels the streamlined nose sloped away sharply. No other part of the aircraft’s body could they see. Were it not for the stewardess coming through the partition door and unobtrusively placing cups of coffee beside them, they might have been perched by themselves in space.
‘Everything okay back there?’ asked Curtis.
‘There’s one woman at the rear has a baby crying. That’s our total of problems right now. Except meeting all the drink orders.’
‘There’s never enough time on this sector, honey, never was, never will be. Well, I guess I’ll give them the spiel.’
Curtis flipped the intercom switch that would put his voice through to the cabin.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Curtis speaking. We are now cruising at 27,000 feet with a groundspeed of 550 miles per hour. Very shortly we shall be passing above the small French town of Abbeville, then crossing the coast near Le Treport. Le Touquet will be over to the right side of the aircraft and Dieppe away to the left. We expect to arrive at London Heathrow on schedule at 4.25 p.m. local time. The weather there is fine and sunny with a temperature of twenty degrees Centigrade, that’s sixty-nine degrees Fahrenheit. Thank you.’
He had hardly switched off before the voice of the French air traffic controller came over, his English heavily accented, addressing them by their flight number.
‘Atlantic two six zero call London now please on one one seven decimal five. Good day.’
Joe Walther reached out to the communications console, adjusted two knobs to the frequency 117.5 and spoke quietly into the microphone of his headset. The time was 15.53 but he gave only the minutes past the hour, not the hour itself.
‘Good afternoon London this is Atlantic two six zero at Abbeville five three, estimating London two four.’
Immediately, clear and calm, the reply of the controller in the huge room at the West London Air Traffic Centre out at West Drayton came back.
‘Good afternoon Atlantic two six zero. Thank you. Your routing is via Cliff and Biggin to London Airport. Landing runway two eight right. Maintain two seven zero. Steer three two zero.’
These directions told Curtis to maintain his height and follow the heading of the airway across the Channel. On his circular screen at West Drayton the controller watched the yellow dot which was the DC-10’s radar reflection move slowly across the outline of the French coast. From other directions many dots were converging on southern England. His job was to direct them towards their destinations with an orderly, safe, separation of height and distance. When the DC-10 was fifty miles or less from London and below 1,000 feet on its descent, he would hand it over to the Heathrow Approach. Now he wanted to be absolutely sure that this dot over the Channel was the Atlantic Airlines DC-10.
‘Atlantic two six zero,’ he ordered in the curious international English of aviation, ‘squawk indent.’
On the flight deck Walther leaned forward and pressed the button that activated the transponder which a second later would cause the four figure identification code for this flight – 6612 – to flash up on the controller’s radar screen below the yellow dot. In another couple of seconds the Control Centre’s computer decoded the signal and 6612 was replaced on the circular screen by the flight number, AL 260, in tiny figures of yellow light that faithfully followed the radar ‘blip’ of the aircraft. The DC-10 was positively identified.
On the roof of the tower block in Southwark the two terrorists and the Libyan pilot squatted behind a parapet designed to hide water tanks and lift machinery from the eyes of the public below. There had been no problem gaining entrance. With the missile disguised as a large bundle of drawings, the first two had said they were going to the design office and excited no comment. The pilot had come separately. Well dressed, he had simply nodded to the doorman and walked to the lift as though he worked here. In a large briefcase he carried both the Dynair transceiver and a powerful pair of binoculars. Even with its battery attached the radio was less than seventeen inches long.
Now the pilot had the radio’s thin black aerial extended and was listening through a pair of headphones plugged into the set. In front of him were spread out two maps. An ordinary map of London and the Home Counties, with big rings inked around Biggin Hill in Kent, Ockham in Surrey, and their own location on this tower a quarter mile south of the Thames. The other map was the Radio Navigation Chart, showing the airways and reporting points. Mohammed had assembled the missile and was checking it, while Kamal covered the rooftop doorway to the building, a small 9mm Makarov pistol in his hand. They had agreed to carry a minimum of arms and rely on surprise if they were discovered.
The view from the roof was superb. A strong wind had blown away the smoke and dust that often lies over London and the morning’s puffs of cloud had developed into majestic galleons of cumulus, sailing in rows across the sky. The visibility beneath them must, the Libyan pilot reckoned, have been at least twenty miles. Orientating the map in relation to their position, he had no difficulty identifying the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben to the west, the Surrey hills to the south and, nearer, the high ground round Crystal Palace with its TV pylon. A mile to the north-east lay the famous shape of Tower Bridge, while beyond the widening River Thames wound away through mile upon mile of dockland. Overhead, comfortably beneath the clouds, came a procession of aircraft, all turning slowly over south London and the docks to line up at what seemed to be one-minute intervals for the airport, fourteen miles distant. It was obviously a busy time.
Silently the Libyan pilot thanked Allah for the weather. In low cloud this operation would have been impossible and he would have been forced to go out later to the airport itself. Although there could be no error in identifying the airliner at take-off, and shooting it down as it climbed would ensure its destruction, he was convinced that such a task would be suicidal. The two men he was with were killers, and crazy killers at that. If he failed here their only reason for letting him live would be to make a second attempt. He prayed that nothing would go wrong. Already it was 15.55, five minutes to four, and although he could hear a succession of airliners calling London, he had not picked up Atlantic Airlines. He feared he might have somehow selected the wrong channel, even though he knew that all aircraft inbound from the south-east now called on a single frequency.
Mohammed was crouched beside him, listening and not comprehending. He was tense and agitated.
‘Have you heard it yet?’ he demanded in a whisper. ‘When is it coming?1
‘The take-off may have been delayed. A thousand things may happen.’
Then to his immense relief he picked up a brief transmission. ‘Atlantic two six zero.’
That must be the acknowledgement of a message from the London controller which he had somehow missed. The pilot swore. Evidently he had also missed the airliner’s first call. Perhaps the buildings between him and London Airport were screening the air traffic controller’s transmissions, preventing his hearing them. If so he would have to rely on the airliner’s reading back of instructions. He forced himself to smile at Mohammed and say in a cheerful undertone, ‘Contact.’
Above the Channel Bill Curtis was starting his descent. A moment before London had authorized them to come down to Flight Level eight zero – 8,000 feet – by the time they reached Biggin Hill. That meant there would be no circling in the stack. The inertial navigation system and its associated computer, housed beneath the flight deck floor, could guide the ship the whole way down to the runway threshold. But Curtis enjoyed flying. He cut the autopilot out, adjusted the throttles manually, then took hold of the thick, curving branches of the control column and pushed the nose forward into a shallow dive, bringing the DC-10 down at 4,500 feet per minute. Far below he could see tiny flecks of white that were waves on the grey sea. Joe Walther spoke on the intercom to the passengers.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are now starting our descent to London Heathrow where we expect to land at four twenty-four local time. In about two minutes we shall be passing over the English coast close to Hastings, which will be on the left side of the aircraft. The weather is fine and clear at London. Thank you.’
In the economy-class cabin Ben Maier stretched his legs and fidgeted. The irritating chain holding the briefcase to his wrist would soon have to be snapped on again. This was his first experience of acting as a diplomatic courier and he was thankful that it was not his career. How could those men stand spending their lives strapped to an airliner seat?
The plane lurched, and nervously he clipped the briefcase’s chain round his wrist.
Curtis could feel the plane shivering gently in his hands as he nosed down among the clouds, catching glimpses of the fields and villages that create the patchwork countryside of southern England. The altimeter was unwinding fast and the clouds made the air bumpy. London called again as the controller monitored the DC-10’s progress.
‘Atlantic two six zero eleven miles on your run to Biggin.’
Walther acknowledged with their call sign. They were passing through ten thousand feet now. Curtis eased back on the control column cutting the rate of descent to bring the speed back to the 250 knots he now wanted.
‘Atlantic two six zero,’ came another order. ‘Leave Biggin on heading two eight zero and call Heathrow on one one niner decimal five.’
Walther repeated back these instructions, wished the West Drayton controller ‘Good day’ and called up on the new frequency.
The high redbrick control tower at Heathrow, rearing up among the passenger terminals, has a conspicuous ‘glasshouse’ on its top. But the radar controllers who bring aircraft down to within sight of the airfield work in a darkened room two floors lower. One deals with the stack of aircraft south of London, another with the north stack. These two collaborate to feed the aircraft to the final director who assembles them into one steady stream, each aircraft four miles apart, although the air turbulence created by wide-bodied aircraft like the Boeing 747 or the DC-10 dictates a space of six miles behind them. The director’s radar screen has a grid faintly imposed on it, marked off at two-mile intervals from the runway centreline to help him judge the distances between the tiny ‘blips’. It looks simple. In fact it depends on the accumulated experience of many years, passed on from controller to controller, and even so the longest a trained man can follow those blobs of light without losing concentration is a couple of hours. No one is more aware of the responsibility they carry than the controllers themselves, who invariably either hold, or have held, pilots’ licences.
When the Arab pilot heard Walther repeat the new frequency he hastily rotated the black knobs on his radio until 119.50 showed on their indicators. He just caught Walther’s next transmission as the DC-10 made its first contact with the Heathrow radar controller.
‘Atlantic two six zero. Biggin at zero nine, steering two eight zero at flight level eight zero.’
But the Arab was unable to pick up Heathrow’s relaxed reply. ‘Good afternoon Atlantic two six zero. Descend to seven zero. Maintain heading two eight zero.’ Nor did he hear the new controller’s demand for a ‘squawk indent’. In any case he was fully occupied plotting a line on the map running at 280 degrees from Biggin and making calculations with his stopwatch. The time was 16.10. The aircraft must be flying along the outer suburbs, heading parallel to the runway around twenty miles further south. In the bare fifteen minutes between now and touchdown it would zigzag over London following a course shaped like a Z. Currently it was tracing the straight bottom line of the letter, going west. Soon, the Arab pilot knew, it must swing round to head north-east, making the slanting upward stroke, until a left turn would bring it ponderously round again towards the runway, as it were along the top line of the Z. The critical question was where that last turn would be carried out. Everything depended on how the controller planned to slot the DC-10 into the stream of planes approaching Heathrow. The pilot strained his ears unavailingly to catch Heathrow’s directions.
‘Where is it?’ Mohammed asked him impatiently. ‘How soon shall we see it?’
‘It is down there,’ said the pilot, pointing south and trying to sound confident, ‘many miles away. Please be silent.’ He pressed the earphones closer to his head with both hands and stared down at the map.
As Atlantic 260 neared Epsom, the plane was ordered to turn right on to a course of seventy degrees along the slanting upright of the Z. It was also told to contact the Heathrow director on 120.4 and to descend to three thousand feet.
Curtis eased the DC-10 into a wide turn and began gently losing height. Beside him Joe Walther again changed the radio frequency to make contact with the final director in the Heathrow control tower: the man who unknowingly either would, or would not, guide the aircraft past the waiting terrorists with their SAM 7 missile.
This was one of the busiest hours of the day, with an average of sixty aircraft landing and thirty-one taking off between 16.00 and 16.59. There were a good thirty yellow blips at various places on the director’s screen being channelled in from both north and south to slot into the approach stream. He decided to send Flight 260 a considerable way north-east before swinging her round again to intersect the approach path out over the London docks. Eventually, when she was established on the instrument landing system – the ILS – he would hand her over to the man in the ‘glasshouse’ two floors above. At that point she would be eight miles out, roughly over Chiswick, and would stay under the tower’s control until touchdown. This mental picture of the DC-10’s progress was already fully formed when the final director heard Joe Walther’s voice for the first time.
‘London Director Atlantic two six zero steering zero seven zero. Five thousand feet descending to three thousand.’
‘Roger two six zero. Continue as cleared.’
In the passenger cabin Ben Maier relaxed a little. At least they were beneath the clouds now.
On the rooftop in Southwark, the tension between the three Arabs was almost visible. As the pilot drew the new course on the map, Mohammed snapped impatiently, ‘Where is the plane? How can I tell which one it is?’
‘It must be coming soon,’ said the pilot anxiously, trying to convince himself that it was. ‘It is heading east over the suburbs.’ He waved at the dull expanse of south London. ‘But it is still in the clouds. Soon it must come lower.’
Mohammed glared back, angry that he could not understand what was happening and fearful of mistakes. The pilot disregarded him. The time was 16.17. At any second another order must be transmitted. Straining his eyes through the binoculars he thought he could distinguish the silhouette of a DC-10 over south London, just below the clouds. But he was not sure.
‘Be ready,’ he warned.
From the flight deck Curtis could see the tall television transmitter mast at Crystal Palace passing beneath. Ahead lay an area of small terraced houses interspersed with high-rise flats and beyond them the river and the docks. The altimeter was reading 3,000 feet.
In fact the DC-10 was four and a half miles south of the gunmen as it flew over Crystal Palace. Next came the crucial order that would bring it round towards Heathrow on the final line of its Z-shaped track. The controller, watching the converging blips on his radar screen, had decided he must take Atlantic 260 up slightly north of the exact direction to the runway, then when it was near Tower Bridge he would alter its course left again. Otherwise he could not establish the necessary four miles separation between it and the British Airways Trident ahead of it.
‘Atlantic two six zero,’ he ordered. ‘Now steer three two zero. Maintain three thousand feet and speed one seventy knots.’
Walther repeated back the instruction and Curtis heaved the DC-10 into a left turn. His speed was down to 170 knots. The slower one flew, the less responsive the giant aircraft became. He selected twenty degrees of flap, one of the first preliminaries to landing, and flashed the stewardesses to make the routine announcements, while he and Walther went methodically but quickly through the flight deck approach checks.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ came the girl’s voice over the cabin loudspeaker, clear and relaxed. ‘We shall shortly be landing at London Heathrow. Will you please fasten your seat belts, extinguish cigarettes and bring your seats to the upright position. Thank you.’
Ben Maier fumbled with the button that made the seat recline, tightened his belt, and uncrossed his legs. He had a fear that if for some reason there was a crash, he would be more easily trapped if his legs were crossed. He sat straight, gazing out at the sunlit dreariness of south London. Other passengers joked. The stewardesses scurried up and down the aisles collecting empty glasses and cups. In the first class the maître d’hôtel in his dark grey tailcoat was unctuously asking each passenger individually if he or she had enjoyed the flight.
As the DC-10 completed its turn over the docks and headed for Tower Bridge, the Arab pilot on the rooftop knew that everything was going to be satisfactory. At least as far as he was concerned. A few hundred yards south of them a Trident was whining past at about 3,000 feet. Curving in four miles behind came a DC-10. There could be no mistaking that high fin with the enormous engine set in it. No other airliner had the same configuration. It looked as though it, too, would pass slightly south of them. But if Mohammed failed to hit it, that was his affair.
