The Drone
Page 12
‘That’s what I asked Tom Brasher to find out.’ He nodded at the phone. ‘He just finished running that question through every database he can find, here, the UK, Interpol and a few others.’
Ruth refrained from throwing her chair at him. He had news and wanted to draw it out, that much was obvious. ‘So?’
‘Seven weeks ago a shipment of six quad-copters from EuroVol in France, bound for L.A., went missing while in transit through the FedEx Express Global cargo hub at Memphis International Airport.’
‘An inside job?’
‘Had to be. So far there’s no trace of the shipment or a despatcher who worked in that section of the hub on the day it went missing.’
‘What kind of machines are we talking about?’
He looked at his notebook. ‘They’re described as a batch of EVO Moskitos complete with video screens and cameras. Serious stuff by the sounds of it, used for aid relief in remote areas, according to Brasher.’
‘So they’d have quite a range?’
‘I guess. He’s getting confirmation of what was included in the shipment so we know what we’re dealing with. My guess is that if these were intended for LA, they were for the film industry. A few companies are already using drones for location surveys and test footage, so they’d be top of the range.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Yes. The despatcher’s name was Borz Dortyev, described as a legal immigrant originally from Chechnya. Brasher’s running a background search for more details. Dortyev had been with the company for six months before he skipped. Prior to that his employment record has him once living in Queens, New York.’
Ruth felt a glow in her stomach. Even without confirmation it was beginning to look as if there had been a plan all along. Dortyev would have been well-placed to keep an eye out for any shipments coming through the Memphis hub and sideline them out of there if they looked useful. But was he connected to the men surrounding James Chadwick, and if so, how closely?
‘Brasher might do well to check whether Dortyev has any contacts in France.’ When Vaslik looked puzzled, she explained, ‘Air France’s main cargo hub is called G1XL, at Paris-Charles de Gaulle. French shipments aimed for the US would begin there. It would be a good place to start.’
‘You’re right. I’ll pass it on. But how the heck do you know about that?’
‘I had to track a missing person through the airport a couple of months back and got an in-depth tour of the place from one of their security geeks.’ She smiled to herself. The official, whose name was André, had been most effusive and even got a little too touchy-feely in one of the transit sheds until she’d pointed out not unkindly that he might have stood a better chance if his name had been spelled Andrée. ‘It’s a pretty impressive operation but like all airports, it has its weak points.’
‘I’ll do it now.’ He turned and sent off a quick text message to Brasher. The FBI man had told them that it was the best way to contact him as he was on the move so much attending to a backlog of cases. But this was one he didn’t want to let go of.
When Vaslik finished he looked back at Ruth, who was once again scanning the map they’d found among Chadwick’s effects at StoneSeal. ‘No ideas with that?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s just a map with a few scribbles but nothing leaps out at me. He could have been planning a hiking holiday for all I know.’
‘Right. Suddenly James Chadwick, corporate and UAV nerd is a mad trail hiker? I don’t see it.’
‘Me neither.’ She stood up and took the map over to him. It was about time for some fresh eyes on the damned thing. ‘See what you can find,’ she told him. ‘It’s there, I can feel it – it’s just a matter of nailing it.’
Vaslik spread the map out and got to his feet. Ruth knew he’d taken a look at it before, but with focussing on other aspects of the case, such as the Newark/New Jersey locations and liaising with Brasher, he’d pretty much left this one to her.
She left him to it and went in search of some tea. Reiks directed her to a pharmacy nearby, where she found tea bags, which she took back and served up to Reiks and Vaslik before re-joining in the study of the map.
‘Have you noticed,’ Vaslik said after a few minutes, ‘that the circles are located in the three states, of Nebraska, Oklahoma and Kansas?’
Ruth nodded. ‘I saw that. The same three states he was Googling for airfields. But I have no idea why. There are no place names in the circles; in fact they look as if they’re in the middle of nowhere.’ She tapped the edge of the map. ‘He also wrote some stuff down, most of it in pencil and too faded to read. But there’s one word here which I can read.’ She pointed at a single word on the border of the map. It had been underlined once, and unlike some of the other scribbles, was in ink. ‘He also made Google searches for the same place.’
Freedom.
They stood and stared at it for a few moments, then Vaslik said dramatically, ‘I think, Miss Gonzales, that we’re going to need a bigger map.’
23
The hinges on the door had been fitted all wrong, Tommy-Lee could see that. He’d done enough construction work in his time to know you didn’t use butt hinges on the outside of the frame and door, like they’d been done here, but recessed them for a neater finish and safety. He’d figured there was something off the first time he’d looked at them, but he hadn’t given it much of a thought until now.
Now things were different. After what the prisoner had told him he needed to get outside and breathe some fresh air, then take a look-see at that hangar Bill and Donny spent so much time in. Sitting here on his butt was starting to freak him out.
He checked his watch. Nearly three in the afternoon. Jesus, where the hell had time gone? He had to get moving. He checked both ways for signs of movement and listened for the noise of an engine. Nothing. Quiet as a graveyard, only emptier. He took out his hunting knife and set to work. Lucky for him Paul hadn’t thought to get him to empty his pockets. Also lucky was the fact that the construction crew had used big cross-thread screws but hadn’t tightened them up all the way. They’d been in too much of a hurry, he figured, and had nobody checking their work.
It was the work of a few minutes to unscrew the hinges on the frame itself, and he eased the door clear just enough to squeeze through, leaving it propped with the lock still engaged. That way, if the three men came back early, he’d have time to replace a few of the screws and pretend everything was fine and dandy.
He glanced back at the prisoner. ‘Don’t you go anywhere, you hear? I won’t be long.’ Then he was through the gap and the outer door and in the open, breathing cool air and breathing in the aroma of wide open spaces. Man, that was so good. He was never going to spend so much time indoors ever again once he got out of here. It would be open air all the way.
He set off across the grass, eyes firmly fixed on the hangar. Now he was out here and not seeing just a slice of the picture, it looked huge. True it was pretty much a wreck, like it was a prop in a disaster movie, but still impressive. He made sure to keep a check on the approach road and didn’t tread anywhere where he’d be likely to leave tracks. Wouldn’t do to leave footprints and let anyone in on his secret excursion.
The closer he got to the hangar the bigger it looked. A lot bigger. It was like it suddenly expanded once he was in its shadow, dominating and aggressive in spite of its sorry state of disrepair. Then he was standing by the front corner, the wooden walls looming high overhead, silent save for the sound of the breeze hissing through the battered woodwork. All down one side was a line of windows, many of the panes broken, some slipped but hanging in there, all of them coated with years of wind-blown dust and so weather-beaten and scratched you could hardly see through them. This place must have been built for cargo planes, he figured, or maybe bombers. The sliding doors looked like they hadn’t been used in years, with the metal tracks and runners wheels all gummed up with dirt and grit. He took one last look around to check nobody was coming, then stepped inside.
A few small birds scattered out of the roof as he stepped forward, the sound of the wings echoing like ghosts. He shivered and continued walking, watching where he put his feet. There were holes in the floor where the ground beneath had subsided, and he skirted these with care. Other times he took the precaution of avoiding clumps of thick weeds in case they harboured snakes. Last thing he wanted was a bite from a pissed-off rattler or a cottonmouth; he’d be dead before the day was out.
He stopped and looked around. Most of the solid segments of walls were peppered with small holes where the fabric was beginning to come apart with age and neglect. Over to one side were some boards on the floor, which looked like they might cover an inspection pit. Overhead was a large pulley and chain affair, rusted to hell, and alongside the boards was a pair of huge steel H-beams which looked like they would have once been an inspection hoist.
Away on the other side of the hangar was a low structure along the wall which he guessed had once been an office. He decided to check that first. If the two goons had spent any time here, he was guessing it wouldn’t have been in the main hangar space, where the air was drawn in through the vast open doors and pushed out through a smaller door at the rear of the building. Whatever else they were, he didn’t have them down as stupid enough to stand around in the open where they could be seen by anybody passing by on the road.
He sniffed the air as he crossed the floor, picking up a gamey, mouldy aroma. It reminded him of rotting fruit in the garbage dump outside a supermarket. Probably food the men had thrown aside or maybe a kill brought in from outside by predators. But there was something else, too, much more alien to a place that hadn’t had any use for at least thirty years.
Burned metal and plastic. It got stronger the closer he got to the office, hanging in the air like a screen as he passed through the door.
A trestle table stood in the middle of the room. On it was a moulded crate about two feet square, the kind he’d seen a film crew using one time. A smaller one stood alongside. The outside of each crate was ribbed and had carry-handles at each end with twin clasps on the front and a lock in the center. He counted ten more crates on the floor, five large, five smaller, with a pile of flattened cardboard boxes – the same ones, he guessed, that had made the journey down here with him – spread over the floor. He approached the table with care, checking he wasn’t going to step in anything that would leave tracks.
He knuckled the side of the bigger crate. It sounded hollow and shifted on the table. He lifted the lid. It was empty save for some foam packing, moulded to take something fairly big and more or less rounded in shape. Whatever had been in this crate he figured must have been fragile or valuable or both. There were markings on the side and lid, but he couldn’t figure out what they meant. The smaller crate was the same; empty save for moulded foam and bearing the same series of numbers and letters.
He went over to the other crates and hefted the nearest one to test the weight. It was heavier and didn’t have that hollow empty feel of the one on the table, although the lock and clasps had been popped. The shipping numbers he noted, were consecutive.
He stepped over to the cardboard boxes. More labels and numbers, with the thick cardboard creased where plastic ties had cut into it. A bundle of these ties were now lying a few feet away. He’d worked in a transport warehouse for a while and knew these were freight packs. You didn’t have to know what any of the markings stood for, only that they had to match a cargo manifest or delivery note. He nudged one of the boxes to one side and saw a familiar logo: FedEx Express. Next to it was a bar code and a number, and a roughened area where a label had been ripped away.
Over by the window was a pile of heavy fabric on wires, and he couldn’t figure out their function until he spotted hooks in the wooden wall either side of the windows.
Curtains to block out the light.
He turned back to the unlocked crate on the floor. He hesitated only a moment, then lifted the lid. It gave a suck of air and he emitted a further fresh tang of plastic. He laid it back with care and studied the inside of the box.
A layer of thick, dark foam covered the contents and he lifted it gently, picking carefully at the edges of the foam until it came clear. Whatever was inside was coloured a white, in a plain plastic bag, and fitted snugly into its foam nest. It was a casing of some kind, sort of crab-shaped and slightly oval with four protruding arms and a cylinder about an inch wide attached to one side and sticking out of the top. He fed his fingers down the side of the casing, easing the object out of the foam bedding and lifting it clear. Then he placed it on the table.
For a moment he couldn’t make out what the hell he was looking at. It could have been a fancy piece of household electrical equipment, maybe a dehumidifier or one of those automatic vacuum cleaner robots he’d seen once. Only he knew it wasn’t. This was something special; it had to be with all the special packing and moulded foam and locks and stuff. And the sheen on the casing looked expensive and high-tech, like… carbon-fiber? Maybe that was it – like they used in race car bodies.
He bent close and peered through the plastic bag. There was some writing down one side; a name in fancy colored letters. EuroVol~2. And the four arms were contoured and stubby, each with some kind of socket-and- nut assembly on the end facing up, with gaps where he could see a glint of copper wiring. And each of the wings had louvered air vents down each side.
He turned the object on its side. The bag was taped shut but he could make out two U-shaped objects inside with locating pins. On the underside of the main body were four holes with locking clips. It didn’t take much to figure out what these were: they were legs, only like the landing skids you see on mountain-rescue helicopters.
So, James had been telling the truth. Now he remembered seeing really neat stuff like this on the Discovery Channel. What had James called it? A quad-something? Quad-copter, that was it.
He put the object back in the box, careful to place it just as he’d taken it out, and lifted the lid of the smaller crate alongside. He removed the foam and this time saw what looked like a game console. It was white, with a stubby aerial, two small joysticks, and lights and buttons he couldn’t even guess at, and fitted with a small screen on a mount. He lifted the console out and found another layer of foam covering a neat array of plastic propellers, a pack of batteries, strips of electrical wiring, small wrenches and some other stuff he couldn’t guess at, and a small aluminium-cased camera on a stalk.
Not a game console; this had to be the control unit. A control for the drone. A drone they could make fly and do whatever it was they wanted.
A faint buzz interrupted his train of thought and made him snap to. Wind? No, too regular. There shouldn’t be any—
They were back early. Shit, it was time to boogie. He closed the cases and replaced them just the way he’d found them. No, wait: the bigger one on the table had shifted slightly, leaving a faint mark in the thin layer of dust. He nudged it back into place and checked the others, blowing dust around to cover any bare patches. They looked right but he couldn’t tell for sure.
Fuck it. He’d have to trust to luck. It was time to bug out and get back to his box, pretend like he’d been doi
ng nothing all day but sleeping and pouring water into the prisoner.
He skidded out of the hangar and took a moment to check the source of the noise. The association of ideas with the drones inside made him look up. Nothing in the air that he could see, so it could only be coming from the east or west at ground level, somewhere along the road. Definitely a vehicle engine, he decided, and turned his head a little. And coming from the east. It was some way off yet but he had that feeling in his bones: it had to be them. He monkey-ran, bending at the waist and touching a hand to the ground whenever he stumbled. After a dozen paces he felt pains building in his legs and stomach as the unexpected exertions pulled at little-used muscles. Avoiding clumps of grass and dodging areas of soft sandy soil where he’d leave a mark, he fetched up at the workshop door, gasping for breath and hearing a roaring sound inside his head.
He checked the road one last time. No sign yet, but the sound was definitely closer. He slid back inside, pulling the outer door shut, then slipped through the inner door and pushed it into place, making sure the lock was still engaged. He threw a quick glance at the prisoner, but he was facing the wall, breathing heavily and didn’t seem to have noticed Tommy-Lee’s return. He grabbed his knife and started replacing the screws. Most of them were in place when suddenly the van was pulling to a stop right outside, the brakes squeaking and the tyres hissing on the grass.
His fingers were trembling with the effort and he dropped a screw. Swore softly and fumbled around on the wooden floor. Saw the glint of silver where it had slipped down a crack between the floorboards. Shit. Paul would be bound to see that. He dug it out with the point of the knife, bringing up a sliver of wood in his haste. He covered the scar it left behind with yesterday’s shirt and pushed the screw into place, turning the blade of the knife and catching his finger as it skidded free. A line of blood welled up and he felt the cut stinging as it filled with his sweat. He wrapped it in his handkerchief and jammed his hand in his pocket, and had just enough time to get over alongside the prisoner and grab a bottle of water before footsteps approached and he heard Paul issuing instructions outside.