Games Traitors Play

50

Salim Dhar turned the navigation lights on as the canopy closed, and took a deep breath. Then, after running through the cockpit checks he had practised so often on his ancient PC, he leaned forward and flicked the switch to start the right engine. The RPM dial in front of him spooled up to 65 per cent, and the exhaust-gas temperature rose to 300 degrees. He did the same with the left engine, lowered one stage of flap and used his thumb to reset the trim to neutral.

For a moment, he was back in Afghanistan, sitting in the cockpit of the crashed SU-25. He remembered a solitary poppy pushing up through a broken dial. It was the first time in his adult life that he had been happy. The camaraderie at the training camp had made him realise how little friendship he had found until then. The darkest days of his childhood had been at the American school in Delhi, where his father had insisted on sending him. There were a few Indian pupils, sons of New Delhi’s business elite, but he was not like them, nor was he like the diplomats’ children, who made no effort to talk unless it was to taunt him — Allah yel’an abo el amrikaan’ala elli’awez yet’alem henaak (God damn the fathers of those Americans and whoever wants to study there!).

He turned the landing lights on, requested taxi clearance from the control tower, and again flicked the trim switch, setting it for take-off. Then he tested the wheelbrakes as he ran the throttle up to 70 then 80 per cent.

‘Brakes holding, airbrake closed,’ he said to himself as he felt for the switch on the side of the throttle. As jets went, the SU-25 wasn’t a demanding plane to fly. Unlike its more recent successors, it didn’t have a modern avionic suite, but it was a reliable ground-pounder, which was why it had been in Russia’s air force for so long. According to Sergei, his instructor, the SU-25 could operate at very low speeds without ‘flaming out’. Nor did it stall easily. ‘It can take a real beating and still bring you home,’ Sergei had said. But Dhar knew there would be no return flight.

After taxi-ing to the runway threshold and running through his pre-take-off checks, he waited for his clearance from control. At last it came. He took his position on the runway’s centreline, gazing at the white ribbon that stretched away as far as he could see. Engaging the wheelbrakes, he ran the power up to 90 per cent and checked that all the gauges were still in the green. Then he released the brakes and applied full military power, watching the air speed build quickly to 260 kmh.

Something was wrong.

‘Sometimes you need to add a little right rudder as you firewall the throttles,’ Sergei had said, but Dhar remembered too late. His fingers fumbled to deploy the twin drogue chutes, but it was hopeless. There was too little tarmac left. ‘Eject, eject!’ said a voice in his head. But as he overcompensated for the yaw, the plane lurching right, left, right again, the right wingtip hit the ground, breaking off in a shower of sparks and fire. He thought of his mother, closed his eyes and prayed.