London Stormbird

by Martin J Cobb

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The chase is on

  The command truck buzzed with feverish activity and the sounds of a multitude of different conversations being held simultaneously on a multitude of different phones and radios. In the past hour they had mobilised the governments, police and military of not only Austria but also The Czech Republic, Slovakia and even Hungary to be ready to apprehend the Sukhoi, and its crew and passengers when and wherever it landed and to place the bomb in secure containment. Military and civil radar operators all along its route were watching it progress towards the stated destination and feeding back their findings to the command truck. At Kraków a huge contingent of Polish military were in full readiness to receive the aircraft and the airport had been discreetly shut to other arriving aircraft and all departures temporarily postponed. They stationed two ground-to-air missile launcher trucks either end of the runway ready to prevent the aircraft aborting its landing and trying to take off again. So far the Austrians had not persuaded the Russian Administration, or the Sukhoi aircraft company themselves, to furnish details of the ownership of the aircraft and who could be held responsible for for its current legalities. Its transponder was transmitting the code 7600 indicating radio communication failure and all attempts to reach the aircraft by radio had met with silence. When questioned, the ground personnel at Wels could not remember seeing a country registration code or ‘tail number’ as it was sometimes called or any other markings on the plane which was unusual. It was all too obvious that whoever had organised this aircraft, or was flying it, had never intended to advertise their identity.

  “Kraków Approach reports that it has acquired target aircraft which appears to be on course for a straight in approach. They have two F16 fighters in the air tailing the aircraft and an American Apache helicopter from Lask is in the air as well.” The room quietened down at this announcement from one of the operators. The captain moved to stand behind the operator watching the inexorable progress of the blip on his screen as it slowly converged on the marker for Kraków Airport.

  “Still on course and on correct angle of descent and speed for landing, still no communications from the aircraft.” The operator now held the attention of the whole room which had become almost silent.

  “Tower has aircraft in sight on approach, undercarriage and flaps down, looking completely normal for a landing. Helicopter has reported its carrying a private Russian ICAO registration code.”

  The captain lent over the operator’s chair and quietly spoke. “Ask him to confirm that last report about the ICAO code and also ask for exactly what the letters are. Ask him to describe the aircraft as best he can as well but do it quickly.”

  The operator spoke rapidly into his headset, listened to the immediate answer and relayed it back to the captain.

  “They can’t read the whole registration, they’re too far away but it starts ‘RA’. The plane is definitely an Antonov An-72 cargo. It’s easy to identify with its two turbofan engines mounted on the top of the wing.”

  The captain shouted, “it’s not the correct aircraft! A Sukhoi Su-80 took the bomb and now we’re chasing a totally different aircraft. Where is the Sukhoi?”

  Absolute pandemonium broke out. The operator watching the aircraft’s progress waited until the blip of the aircraft was superimposed on the symbol for the airport runway and then announced, “The aircraft has landed and appears to be following taxiing instructions quite normally to a secure area.”

  This time nobody was listening.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  A Trashed Truck

  After a leisurely breakfast, Tom and Claire checked out of the gasthaus, loaded the car and drove slowly South through the town and out into open country following the lake to their right. Little more than 30 minutes later they took the right turn towards Stelvio and the location they’d identified from the gun camera footage. Through pretty mountain villages they drove for several miles along the single carriageway road. Numerous signs signified the area’s status as a National Park and traditionally built hotels, guest houses and restaurants abounded. They followed the road with the boiling river to their right, past signs advertising white water rafting and a host of other adrenaline-rush activities that could be undertaken on a fast-moving, freezing torrent of water running over rocks and following a winding path through the mountains.

  “Not for me thank you!” Tom said and shuddered in response to Claire pointing out one particular business offering canoing through the rapids.

  The quantity of roadside buildings noticeably lessened as the road climbed and twisted back and forth around the terrain. The snow-capped mountains soared around them and the road had now degenerated into a series of tight hairpins in its attempt to climb the impossible slopes. Traffic was sparse although they’d come across a couple parked up on the road completely blocking one side of the carriageway. They both sat nonchalantly in the rear of their estate car with the tailgate up drinking coffee and presumably admiring the scenery, oblivious to the rest of the World and the obstruction they were creating.

  “Must be British!” Tom stated.

  Claire was watching the progress of the cursor on the car satnav’s map as it moved along the line depicting the roadway and cross referring this to the map with the pencil cross spread out on her lap.

  “It’s here somewhere,” she peered out of the window at the distant terrain ahead, “look, there’s the square-topped mountain and there’s the gap to the right, stop here.”

  Tom had to continue to the next pull-off area about 300 metres down the road where he parked the car. They both got out and stared at the vista before them in silent awe. The road they were on clung to the lower slopes of a mountain heavily covered in snow further up. This slope continued further down into a winding valley some 300 feet below them littered with rocks large and small which had obviously rolled down from the higher slopes. All around them the Alps soared upwards towards the pristine blue sky.

  Claire retrieved her tablet from the car and opened the gun camera video file they had saved which was paused at the relevant film frame.

  “We’re here so now what?” She quizzed Tom who was peering over the road’s parapet at the valley below.

  “From the film we know the road was not wide enough for the staff car to drive around the shot-up burning truck so they would have had to move it out of the way. There’s only one way it could have been moved, and that’s down there.” Tom angled his head towards the valley floor to emphasise his point.

  “Well there’s absolutely no way down there without either climbing gear or a helicopter.” Claire went back to the car and foraged in her bag returning clutching a small pair of binoculars which she then used to scan the bottom of the valley.

  “You can’t even see the absolute bottom from here as there’s a trench which I guess has been cut by the melting snow run-off. You’d need to be directly overhead to see down to the absolute bottom of the trench.”

  Tom turned away from the parapet and removed a large backpack from the boot of the car which he placed on the ground behind and commenced unpacking.

  “There’s more than one way to skin a cat!”

  He removed the quadcopter from its custom housing and attached the propellers, plugged a battery pack in, removed the lens cover and gimbal lock and placed it on the ground. He clipped his phone onto the bracket on the top of a radio remote control transmitter and turned it on. Tom turned on the drone itself and waited whilst the LEDs finished their frantic red flashing and turned amber. He then picked up the drone and turned a full circle clockwise and then anti-clockwise whilst Claire looked on amused.

  “You have to calibrate the compass and let it work out where it is.” Tom answered the unasked question. A deadpan voice from his phone suddenly declared: “The home point has been set, clear for take off.” And with that the LEDs started slowly flashing green.

  Tom pushed one of the joysticks on the controller forward and the propellers all sta
rted. The drone rose about 6 feet into the air and stopped relatively motionless in the air as Tom released the joysticks. He checked that the controls all functioned as they should and then the drone rose up and shot off over the parapet towards the centre of the valley. Claire moved round to Tom’s side so that she could see the phone screen, which was now showing the live video feed being transmitted from the drone’s high-resolution camera.

  “I’ve never tried this before,” Tom said, “it’s a little strange trying to operate the drone way below me rather than above. Usually, flying it higher, you get some idea of perspective but at this distance and so far below I really can’t tell how far I am above the ground, I’ll have to take it quite slowly.”

  He manoeuvred the drone down the slope until it was directly above the trench at the bottom. He had pointed the drone’s camera almost straight down and he then ran it along the trench to a point maybe 400 metres to the right of their position up the valley and adjusted the height to get the optimum view of the valley floor. “I’m going to turn on the video recorder and then run the drone slowly down the valley adjusting height downwards to match the valley’s descent as I go. If I take it about the same distance from us to the left, we’ll have covered about a half mile give or take. We can then move a half mile up and down the valley and repeat the exercise at the end of which we should have video footage covering more than a mile of valley floor. If there’s anything there we should be able to see it if you’re sure about the location.”

  “I’m sure we’re more or less in the right place, let’s get on it.”

  Tom rotated the drone, turned on the recording and slowly accelerated the drone down the valley adjusting every few seconds to follow the undulating line of the trench. They both stared hard at the phone’s display but saw nothing but rocks and grey coloured earth. The drone passed their position and continued on for another 3 or 4 minutes down the valley with Tom lowering the drone’s height every few seconds to maintain its height above the ground. The transmitter sounded a bleeping alarm and Tom turned off the recording.

  “Battery’s almost out, time to bring it home.”

  Tom bought the drone back and expertly caught it one-handed once it was stationary hovering about 5 feet off the ground directly in front of him. He switched everything off and placed the drone and transmitter on the back seat of the car and they drove up the snaking road for another half mile where he found another lay-by to park in and repeated the whole exercise.

  This time they spotted something definitely man-made amongst the grey rocks about a 100 metres up from their position. Tom halted the drone and circled around the anomaly as low as he dared whilst they both stared intently at the screen. It was undoubtedly a rusting pile of very mangled metal. The alarm sounded again on the transmitter denoting a low battery state and Tom immediately bought the drone back for a change. Refreshed, he sent it back to the pile of metal on the valley floor. Another circle around and he halted the drone with the camera pointing at a piece of originally dark blue-painted metal with the remains of a chromed badge with the letters ‘DATS’ clearly marked on it in black. Tom laughed. Sorry to disappoint but that’s a post-war Datsun that must have met a sticky end, probably an insurance fraud.”

  Tom returned the drone to its previous route down the valley until the battery warning started again. He retrieved the drone, and they moved the car a mile down the valley and repeated the procedure. The drone ran the entire length with them both staring hard at the phone on the transmitter with absolutely nothing unnatural or man-made appearing on the small screen. Despondently Tom bought the drone back and once again deftly caught it in mid-air. He removed the small memory card containing the video files, unscrewed the propellers and packed the whole kit away back into its backpack.

  The drive back to the gasthaus they’d left that morning was conducted in almost total silence as they both considered their lack of success and the viability of continuing the search.

  Having checked back in and dropped their bags in the bedroom, they had ensconced themselves into their favourite location in the bar and Tom had fired up his laptop to view the drone’s video files. Claire collected their drinks from the bar along with a plate of savoury snacks and settled herself down alongside Tom just as his phone rang.

  “Tom, it’s me,” the rather strained voice of Heinrich emanated from the tiny loudspeaker, “just thought you ought to know that the bomb is still missing, we were duped.”

  “What do you mean?” Tom replied.

  “Whoever stole the bomb and flew it out had obviously set up a dummy aircraft to land in Kraków and the real aircraft has gone missing somewhere, we believe, over the Tatra mountains. The military here are of the opinion it must have flown down valleys in the mountain range going East to avoid radar detection. They believe its range may just have been sufficient for it to make Lviv in Ukraine. The powers that be are furiously negotiating with the Ukrainian Government to be allowed to send troops in and trying to counter all the bluster Russia are making about ‘NATO aggression and provocative Western action’.”

  “Well things are not going too well here either, although not on the same scale. All we’ve found is a wrecked postwar car and not a sign of the truck.”

  “Maybe the prisoners managed to tow the damaged truck with the gold in to Switzerland, or somewhere more secure for storage.”

  Tom considered Heinrich’s suggestion which he had to admit neither he nor Claire had considered and which didn’t improve his feeling that this whole project was slipping away from him. He said his goodbyes, closed the connection and took a deep swallow of the weissbier Claire had presented him with. Opening the first video file Claire moved a little closer, and they both stared hard at the screen as the scenery slowly passed. The view occasionally shifted left and right as the drone had negotiated bends in the trench but, after almost 10 minutes at the end of the file they both agreed that nothing hid in that part of the valley, apart from the remains of the Datsun which they now could see had almost buried itself in the soft earth at the bottom of the trench.

  “That was actually the lowest part of the valley and the footage taken on the last drone flight.” Tom said rather unnecessarily as he loaded up the next file. A continuation of the same scenery rolled across the screen as the drone once again followed the trench down the gentle slope to where the previous video footage had started. Tom picked up his glass to take another swallow of his beer and Claire suddenly snapped “Stop!” Tom put his beer down, stopped the playback and reversed the video for a few seconds passing, as he did so, a dirty brownish red metal structure poking out of the trench’s bottom and partially covered in small rocks and stones. Tom played back the video again frame by frame and they could clearly see what looked like an old bed frame jutting out of the grey earth and rocks. Further juggling of the video revealed nothing further and Claire dismissively commented that it looked like an old broken railing or something. From the size of the metal bars and the way they had been assembled to each other something didn’t seem quite right to Tom. He paused the playback at a couple of points where the frames displayed were the sharpest and best defined and took a snapshot. Opening up his photo-retouching program he loaded the snapshots and enhanced the pictures as best he could. By changing contrast and doing something called ‘edge enhancement’ the unmistakable shape of a wheel with tyre, 80% buried in the mud, appeared on the screen close to the metal bars.

  “That is a vehicle.” Tom stated unequivocally and sat back in his chair.

  Claire peered at the picture on the screen, rolling her head left and right to improve her perception.

  “You could be right. We have to go back with the drone and check it out. Stop drinking that beer, you’ve got to drive as I’ve already finished my G & T.”

  Tom reluctantly put his half-empty glass down, took a handful of the savoury snacks and proclaimed he would put the drone batteries on charge whilst they had lunch. After he departed Claire packed up the laptop and
ordered Gluaschssuppe for them both from the bar menu without the slightest idea what it was but thought it sounded interesting.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Decoy

  Captain Pavlo Arturovich Novikov was feeling decidedly uneasy. During his years operating as a ‘tramp freighter’, around Europe, he had accepted some peculiar jobs in his time. One minute carrying fruit from Italy to Poland, the next a spare part for an oligarch’s super-yacht from Sweden to Monaco. He had even smuggled people out of North Africa and into France although he wouldn’t admit it. When that Russian had chartered him and his An-72 for a single trip from Győr-Pér in Hungary to Kraków it had seemed perfectly straightforward. That is until they had told him that he had to follow a predetermined set route and there were very explicit timings he had to comply with to collect the 2nd half of the enormous charter fee they had promised him. Odder still was the fact that it wasn't a requirement for him to take any freight or passengers with him. When they’d also told him that he would receive a radio message mid-journey to switch his transponder to a setting denoting communication failure he was naturally curious as to the reason why. The abrupt response he received to the question had certainly concerned him but what real harm could it do though, he thought. He wouldn’t be carrying contraband and his flight plan would be filed correctly and whatever reason the Russian had he couldn’t see how it could cause him too much trouble. What he hadn’t banked on was the torrent of very threatening radio calls being made to him with demands to land immediately. When the Polish fighter aircraft suddenly appeared on his wingtip, he understood the reason for the exorbitant charter fee.

  The radio call had come in exactly when and where they had said it would. He watched in astonishment as the smaller, twin propeller aircraft in his windscreen grew larger and larger as he rapidly caught it up. Over the radio, tuned to a seldom used channel, he had received a count of 3 and at zero had switched the transponder to 7600 as instructed, turned off his radios and accelerated back to cruising speed and height. He’d watched the smaller aircraft in front peel off to the right and descend rapidly away side-slipping as it went. Continuing on Northwards he had turned his radios back on to see if there was any radio traffic concerning him but all was quiet. He was now on final approach to Kraków, albeit without proper radio clearance from the tower by radio, and could see the runway in front lined with vehicles of all types including a rather ominous looking missile launcher which he couldn’t remember being there the last time he’d landed here.