decided to wait. He had to line up again and she would get him eventually. Now she understood what she had to do; just wait until he was lining up, trying to keep his aircraft straight and level. He dodged and pulled left and then right. Finally, he lined them up. Kate fired a longer burst, but it was soon over. The long burst turned out to be a very short burst. The ammunition was spent. The fighter was still in the air.
‘That’s it! We’ve no more ammunition,’ Kate yelled to her mother, who was tending to Dad as he lay on the floor. She turned to see the remaining fighter moving closer in. Hector was still weaving about, but it was a big plane. Without the fire from the rear and side guns to keep the last fighter at bay there was nothing to stop it getting close and finishing them all in a hail of bullets.
‘The parachutes, the parachutes!’ yelled Mum.
Kate grabbed a parachute, pushed it into the hole at the very end of the plane and let it fall as she held onto the harness and pulled the rip cord. It billowed it out and was ripped from her hands, becoming a sudden frightening wall the pursuing fighter had to avoid. Kate rushed to get the next parachute. She pushed it into the hole again, held on to the harness and waited for the fighter to line them up once more. Just as the fighter swung into a direct line with them Kate pulled the rip cord and the parachute expanded, before being ripped from her hands once more. Again, it billowed out into a sudden flapping wall the fighter had to turn hard to miss.
It was a brilliant bit of innovative thinking; superb adaption; magnificent make do. Yet, Kate knew that it would work only as long as there was a ready supply of parachutes. Time was running out. Their last hope was fading. If only Hector could push the plane into a suicidal dive and yet pull out just in time to land safely then all would be well. Yet, the plane’s wings simply would not manage. They could not out-dive a fighter. The wings could not pull the plane out of a vertical dive when they had so many holes in them.
Kate felt a hot wave of panic. She had to do something different, but she also had to keep pushing the parachutes out of the hole at the end of the plane. What she needed was a smart bomb like the ones in the computer games, but they did not exist; they were fantasy. As Kate pushed the last parachute into the ragged hole at the end of the plane she felt a sense of hopelessness. They were not going to make it. The fighter pilot was too clever; he knew what he was doing; he knew they had run out of ammunition; he was waiting for the right moment to fire a final volley of bullets into their stricken plane and send them all spinning to their deaths.
As the last parachute exploded out into a fragile but, for the fighter pilot, huge advancing wall, Kate huddled down, clutching the side of the aircraft. The plane pulled up; it rose and slowed. Then it rolled to starboard and then pitched down, leaving Kate feeling as though her stomach was trying to get out through her throat. Kate knew Hector was trying everything. He knew things were desperate. He would have guessed that the ammunition had run out, if only because of the absence of a reassuring rattle of return fire whenever the fighter’s shots ricocheted through the plane.
Then it happened; the final rattle of gunfire that would destroy the plane, and destroy them all. The plane lurched upwards and slowed. There was a huge crunch as the plane began to disintegrate. The rear of the aircraft where Kate clung huddled partly exploded, and then buckled and groaned. Yet, to Kate’s surprise she was not spinning down. She could not hear the crunch and splinter of the plane as it continued to fall apart. There were no bullets spraying in, just the sound of the engines and the wind. Even stranger, Hector was yelling in triumph.
‘What happened?’ yelled Kate.
‘I think Hector managed to reverse the plane into the fighter,’ Mum yelled back.
‘You can’t reverse a plane,’ shouted Kate.
Yet that was exactly what Hector had managed to do. He was trying to avoid the fighter, but by pulling up sharply he had slowed the large plane. The fighter had simply run into the back of them.
‘I think the fighter crashed into the rear of our plane,’ yelled Kate.
‘Yes,’ shouted Mum, ‘radical braking. Your father has managed to get several cars to run into the back of our car at roundabouts. It’s probably genetic.’
‘Is Dad OK?’ Kate asked. It seemed strange, but when death seemed imminent, even her father laid in her mother’s arms was something she could ignore. Now she was worried.
‘He has muttered a few things. I think he’s just hit his head.’
‘Kate dear,’ shouted Mum after a pause, ‘things don’t look too good. When I said parachutes I was rather hoping we would parachute to safety. It never occurred to me that you’d use them as a weapon. Are there any left?’
Kate just shook her head. Their problems were definitely not over. One engine was on fire and the other was leaving a dark trail of smoke across the sky. Added to this, Kate had just noticed that there were other planes around them. She raced forward to the cockpit. The best place for her now was at Hector’s side.
Hector, rather annoyingly, was in a very good mood.
‘It’s a Typhoon,’ he explained.
‘What?’ questioned Kate.
‘It’s a Royal Air Force plane,’ said Hector, pointing to the plane on the starboard side. ‘Fly by wire, carbon fibre.’
Hector’s wild unfettered enthusiasm and simple joy at being near a Royal Air Force vacuum cleaner, that by some accident of design could fly, left Kate feeling exasperated.
‘And that one,’ said Hector, pointing to their port side, ‘is another type of jet fighter, but it’s not British. I think it’s american. It might be a Raptor. They’ve got vectored thrust. That means the power is directed.’
‘Hector,’ shouted Kate, ‘why is this good?’
‘I think they’re here to protect us,’ explained Hector. He went on to demonstrate his enthusiasm by waving wildly to both of the pilots. As far as Kate could see they were waving back.
‘You don’t think they’re a bit late,’ said Kate, ‘in case you hadn’t noticed the last plane that was trying to shoot us out of the sky was rammed by the highly dangerous pilot I’m sitting next to. It wasn’t shot down by those two, and the other one that was trying to kill us might come back.’
‘No,’ said Hector, still wildly cheerful, ‘that old fighter would never dare attack with these two jets near us.’
This was undoubtedly true. Unfortunately, there was very little either of the planes could do to help them stay in the air. They were losing height; the fire in the starboard engine was getting worse and spreading down the wing. When Kate looked at the starboard wing she could see that quite a bit of it was missing.
The good news was that all of the port wing was still there, even if there were quite a few holes ripped in it. The even better news was that Kate could see that the two jet fighters were leading them to an airfield. It had bright lights and what looked like a lot of fire engines judging by the blue and red flashing lights.
‘Oh no,’ thought Kate, ‘Hector loves fire engines, he’ll probably die of happiness before he lands the plane.’
As they neared the airfield Kate could see the roads surrounding them were crammed with cars and people. They had all stopped to watch their stricken, flaming aircraft attempt its desperate landing.
