London Stormbird

by Martin J Cobb

  “Pause!” Heinrich almost shouted at the operator. The camera stopped with the cage full-frame and the operator twiddled knobs on his console. The stationary picture on the screen got brighter and with better contrast until they could see a shape emerge from the gloom within the cage. Tom peered even closer to the screen.

  “I can see a shiny dome facing us with something sticking out of the top. It looks like it’s on wheels. How far away do you think it is and what sort of size do you think it is?”

  Heinrich leaned forward with his head alongside Tom’s and placed his finger on the screen and traced a shape.

  “If you look closely just to the right of the dome, you can just make out the outline of what we think is a wing. If you correlate this with what we believe is the approximate distance from the camera, we have estimated that this could be an aircraft with a wingspan of around 14-15 metres.”

  Tom stood upright and looked at Heinrich in amazement.

  “You know what we’re looking at if you’re correct don’t you?” He asked and then, without waiting for a response, continued,

  “In 1945 only an Arado 234 had that kind of wingspan and also had a nosewheel rather than a tailwheel. There’s only one left in the World, I saw it a couple of years ago in the US.”

  “That’s what we believe. The engineers are preparing to send a robot in to take further radioactive readings and to film everything in greater detail. Let’s watch.”

  Claire sat down at the table behind the console.

  “What is the situation with the radioactivity, what do the engineers think?”

  The captain turned away from the monitor and answered Claire,

  “They believe that there was, or is, some contamination within this area which must have been hermetically sealed originally. When the boy accidentally detonated the explosives, the vibrations must have damaged the structure and caused the crack which broke the seal. The pressure inside must have been slightly higher than ambient outside and thus a flow of contaminated air was expelled through the crack. Readings now have stabilised at a much lower level, certainly safe enough in the main tunnels to plan the removal of the two aircraft. The engineers want to check inside now to see if they can establish the source of the original contamination and also find the entrance to this area.”

  The captain had seen Tom’s obvious pleasure at the news that it looked like his Messerschmitt would not be impounded for a protracted radiation clean-up or even permanently incarcerated if the Government had sealed everything up again.

  “We have to wait until they have completed their investigations and given us permission before we can enter the tunnels again. I’m afraid you’ll just have to be patient.”

  Tom, Claire and Heinrich left the command truck and walked over to the exposed hangar entrance which was now barricaded to prevent access. A team were preparing the small tracked camera robot whilst behind the sheeted off area in the tunnel by his Messerschmitt Tom could hear a jackhammer working on the wall to enlarge the hole.

  “I hope they’re being careful with that hammer, couldn’t we just pull the plane forward a bit to get it out of their way?”

  “I’m sorry Tom but they don’t want anything moved until they’ve established exactly what’s behind that wall.”

  One of the hazmat-suited engineers walked over and collected the robot and its remote control and returned to the tunnel. The hammering stopped and there was a shout from within the tunnel. One of the engineers turned on the monitor housed in the lid of the robot's transit case and, when the picture cleared, they could clearly see the huge hangar space and it’s sad contents. The robot weaved across the floor trying to avoid the human remains and piles of equipment that would be difficult to negotiate. The camera panned left and right alternately looking at the walls and the piles of debris. In the top corner of the screen was a constantly changing number, currently in green and showing 25. Tom asked the inevitable question and they told him that it was linked to the Geiger counter on the robot and worked on the familiar traffic light theme. All the time it was green everything was fine, yellow and they’d worry, red and they had a real problem.

  Despite all his best efforts, Tom just couldn’t take his eyes off the counter even when the engineer alongside let out a triumphal yell and pointed to an area on the screen.

  “That looks like the main service door into the area from the main factory.” Heinrich translated for Tom and Claire.

  There was a rapid exchange in German with lots more pointing at the screen and Heinrich turned to Tom again,

  “We think that this side of that door is now completely buried. It would appear to be in the area of the factory where the Germans blew up the tunnels and buried whatever they wanted to hide under the hillside. There’s no way to get to it now.

  “Can’t we just enlarge the hole in the tunnel where the Messerschmitt is and access it that way?”

  “It’s possible but the engineers say that the tunnel wall there is unsafe. They apparently experienced some movement when they opened it up just a little for the robot. They will not go further until someone has done a full survey which could take months.”

  As they had been talking the robot had moved off from near the door and was traversing the hangar slowly trying to avoid obstacles. The cage arrangement grew in size as it got closer and Tom could now clearly make out the shape of an Arado 234 jet bomber sitting within the cage on its tricycle undercarriage and with the four inlets on the underwing jet engine pods covered by what looked like plates with handles on.

  “That’s astonishing,” Tom said to nobody in particular and then turned to Heinrich, “You’ll definitely be the golden boy at the museum now. Not only a Messerschmitt Me262 but now you’ve just doubled the World’s population of Arado 234’s. That is unless you want to donate it to me that is.”

  Heinrich looked across, grinning, “I think you will have to be content with the Me262 for yourself. This is going into the museum, it will undoubtedly be our star exhibit, assuming we can get it out.”

  “Look!” Claire suddenly exclaimed, “look at the counter.”

  Tom and Heinrich peered around Claire’s head at the monitor where the graphic on the radiation counter had turned yellow and the number had risen to beyond 200 and was rapidly climbing as the robot advanced on the metal cage and the aircraft. The operator then turned the robot so that it maintained its distance from the cage but tracked around it. The radiation monitor remained fairly stable and Tom, Claire and Heinrich watched fascinated as the robot continued round the port wing of the aircraft towards its tail.

  “Stop!” shouted Tom so that the operator could hear. The robot stopped obediently.

  “Look at the underneath of the fuselage, there’s something protruding from it and it looks as though somebody has removed the bomb doors.”

  They all stared at the monitor attempting to absorb and to understand the significance of what Tom had just said.

  “Look just left of the nose on the cage corner upright, it looks like some sort of control unit.” Claire said pointing to where she meant on the screen. Heinrich stared at the screen and then announced,

  “I have seen a similar one of those in our old museum building which was originally a factory making heavy machinery in the 1930s. It’s a lift control, I think that whole cage is a lift.”

  There was a brief silence before Tom stated the obvious.

  “If it’s a lift it has to go up, what is directly above here?”

  “I’d need to check the drawings but I’m pretty certain there’s nothing apart from a very large hill.” Heinrich replied.

  “The Germans built a runway along the top of that hill for the Messerschmitts, is there any chance they could have been planning to fly the Arado from the same runway as well using the lift to get the aircraft up there?”

  Heinrich went off back to the command truck to look at the drawings. Tom turned to Claire,

  “How do you fancy a romantic walk in the woods, we ca
n watch the sunset from the top of the hill?”

  Without further discussion they both walked off hand in hand around the recent excavations and cordoned off area, past the now partially dismantled visitor centre and onto the gentle lower slopes of the hillside heading for the top.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Hills are Alive

  A gentle walk in the woods it certainly wasn’t! Tom and Claire struggled through a dense mass of brambles, ferns and saplings as they made their way through the lower slopes until they reached the open vent hole that the boy had fallen through, now enclosed with a temporary high wire fence adorned with lurid skull and crossbones signs entreating everybody to keep out.

  Tom paused and removed a factory tour visitor's guide pamphlet from his hip pocket and spread it out on the ground.

  “Look, here’s the map of the factory and we know roughly where the ventilation shaft exited in relation to the factory floor.”

  Tom then drew a pencil cross in the blank area on the plan adjoining the factory as printed.

  “If I now draw in the tunnels and the Messerschmitt and then the hangar and it’s door to the outside here, we can then also draw in the location of the hidden hangar and the lift.”

  Tom continued with the pencil marking up the various points with the known hangar door location. By the time he’d finished drawing a square to resemble the lift on the plan his jottings had spread to the very edge of the plan.

  “We’re somewhere here, at the ventilation shaft opening.”

  Tom marked the opening slightly to the West of the exit in the machinery room to allow for the slope of the shaft.

  “So if we take a bearing to the lift from the shaft and a rough distance we should be able to locate where the lift must exit on the hill, assuming they meant it to come all the way to the top.”

  With that Tom stood up and looked at Claire for approval, obviously very pleased with his deductions.

  “Seems reasonable and all very logical but surely it would be simpler to just climb to the top of the hill and trace the route of the old runway back to its start. The plane would logically have had to come up in the lift near where the runway starts and must be on or near the very top of the hill.”

  Tom looked slightly less smug,

  “Makes sense, hopefully the two will correlate.”

  They both headed up the hill, Claire heading for the obvious highest point and Tom pacing out distances but both heading in essentially the same direction. At the top they found themselves less than 20 metres apart and both searched the ground for some clue to the lift exit location. Whilst the tree cover was much sparser on the hill top, the ground was carpeted in a dense cover of ferns, bracken and grasses.

  “We need to do this more scientifically,” Claire called across, “how about we walk a grid pattern? I’ll walk towards your position, you go a few metres to the right and come this way running parallel to me. If we keep doing parallel runs, we’ll be certain of covering the entire area.”

  Having established a pattern they set about their search pattern. On the second leg Claire stopped and called across.

  “I’ve got something. I can see a straight line with what looks like a concrete edge just under the soil.”

  “Mark the position with something we can find again and keep searching.”

  Claire took off her bush hat and perched it on the top of a particularly large nearby fern and continued.

  “Here, I’ve got an obvious join line here as well,” Tom called taking of his rucksack and placing it on the ground.

  “Which way does your line go?” Claire called gesturing with her outstretched arms a line roughly East - West.

  Tom did the same with his arms but pointing North - South. “Let’s follow each to where they join.”

  When they met at what they presumed was a corner Tom kicked at the dirt and exposed what was obviously a concrete slab. Further scuffing with his feet and he found the corner.

  “Stay here a sec, I’m going to find something to mark the spot.”

  Tom wandered off returning moments later with a couple of fallen tree branches one of which he pushed into the soil just outside the exposed concrete slab. He then used the other branch as a makeshift hoe and, following the line of the concrete edge, travelled South exposing the concrete edge until he came to another corner.

  “How far do you reckon this is from the corner?” he called across to Claire.

  “Looks something like 4 metres,” came Claire’s reply.

  “Well that makes little sense does it? You’d never get the aircraft through a gap that small. Let’s follow your line back to see how long that edge is.”

  Using the branch again Tom dug down about every metre along the supposed line to expose the concrete while Claire remained at the corner. After several minutes he found the expected corner.

  “What do you reckon, 15 metres?” he called to Claire. He shoved the branch vertically into the ground as a marker and walked back to Claire.

  “Let’s try again on the short side and see if it extends further.”

  They found the corner at the end of the 4 metre side again and Tom traced the line back to its other end and rooted around with his foot.

  “There’s another slab butted up to the first.” As he said that he paced out another 4 metres in the same direction and, using the stick, found the corner of this one and evidence of another slab adjoining it.

  “So, I think it’s a fair bet that what we have here is probably a 15 or 16 metre square slab divided into four equal strips. We need a digger up here to expose the whole thing, it’s getting too dark now anyway to do much more let’s head back.”

  Claire retrieved her hat, and they walked back down the hill to relay their findings to Heinrich and the captain.

  Arriving back at the command truck they walked into the middle of a fairly heated argument between the captain, Heinrich and the four men from the Ministry. They all paused as Tom and Claire walked in and shut the door behind them. The captain spoke first.

  “We have some differing views on how best to proceed with the excavation, maybe you could offer your opinion. These gentlemen are arguing that the presence of radioactive material in the second hangar with the lift now transfers responsibility for this whole project to the Ministry. They would like the hangar sealed completely, they would also like the main hangar where the Messerschmitts are, permanently sealed back up. I believe it’s our duty to recover the bodies in the second hangar and investigate whether the radioactive material can be contained easily but if not then would be the time to seal this area up. Heinrich is of a similar opinion but is arguing that we could safely remove the two Messerschmitts now which would have the added advantage of allowing greater access to the area of the breach in the adjoining wall. We would need this access for the engineers to shore up the roof structure prior to opening the hole in the wall sufficiently to allow us to remove the bodies.”

  Tom looked at Heinrich who’s face betrayed his concern. He undoubtedly could see the very real prospect of his star exhibits being snatched away from him.

  “We know that the levels of radiation within the hangar are low everywhere except in the immediate vicinity of the lift and the aircraft. The human remains and all the other stuff spread across the hangar also has very low levels, the robot came very close and registered nothing untoward. On this basis surely it would be perfectly safe to remove the two Messerschmitts, enlarge the wall opening and remove the bodies. Whilst this is being done a properly protected engineer could do a close inspection of the lift and aircraft to identify the source of the radiation and to check for the feasibility of containing and removing it.”

  One man from the Ministry then let loose a torrent of German directed at the captain and Heinrich who responded in kind. Within seconds the decibel level had risen considerably, and it was pretty obvious to Tom that they didn’t like Tom’s suggestion and would insist on sealing everything up.

  “One moment, if you p
lease!” Tom said loudly into the general melee which they totally ignored.

  “Excuse me!” he said even louder which also received no appreciable slackening of the row.

  Tom slammed both fists onto the table and yelled, “Listen!” The argument abated and the group all turned towards him.

  “The hangar probably cannot be properly sealed, anyway. Claire and I found the exit of the lift on the hillside and sealing that would take a great deal of money and effort. If you want to make whatever is in there safe the quickest and simplest solution would be to remove the source of the radiation. You won’t know whether this is possible until you send somebody in to check, and I volunteer.”

  The captain was the first to speak.

  “So exactly what did you find on the hillside?”

  “There is obviously a door or hatch or whatever. It looks to be about 15 metres square, which correlates to our estimate of the size of the lift cage, and has a concrete top. I would guess it’s a layer of concrete on top of a steel frame. I do not understand yet how it would operate, we need to send a digger up there to scrape all the dirt and foliage off to fully expose it.”

  Tom omitted to say that much of this statement was guesswork as they’d only exposed the edges of part of the slab that they assumed was there. He didn’t want to give the Ministry men any opportunity to argue that this couldn’t be the lift shaft.

  After a few minutes of discussion between themselves the spokesman finally turned to the captain and spoke in German far too rapid for Tom to translate. There was a brief exchange and then all four of them turned and exited the command truck.

  “Well?” Tom fired into the silence that had descended in the truck. Heinrich looked at his friend.

  “They’ve reluctantly agreed we can remove the Messerschmitts, shore up the roof and get the bodies out. They want you to go in as soon as the hole is large enough, in a full hazmat suit, and do your inspection. They will then decide whether to continue or not. They have instructed us to check the access on the hillside and evaluate how they could seal it if that becomes a necessity but under no circumstances to attempt to effect an entry or to damage its integrity.”