by A. D. Winch
Agent Angel patted Agent Hoover on the back like an owner petting their dog. Agent Hoover thanked him for all his support. He had no memory of what had just happened; it had simply disappeared. Unfortunately so had the truck, it was nowhere to be seen on any of the screens. From the satellite images, Stadium street was empty and apart from some wisps of smoke near the school the truck had been lost.
It remained missing for six hours.
Just before nightfall in Romania, Agent Hoover relocated the truck on the screens in front of him. It was on the other side of Sfantu Gheorghe crossing a damaged bridge above a river. The truck spewed out grey smoke as it approached a junction overlooked by a massive statue of a soldier and turned onto the road which led out of town. It passed disused factories and headed for the E60 motorway.
Above the mountains in the distance the sun had started to set, and the light was beginning to fade. The truck continued on; the tarpaulin was still secure, and the secret cargo lay hidden below it. By the time, the truck reached the motorway the sun was down and night had begun.
The motorway was quiet and dark. It ran parallel to a railway line and as a train roared past light streamed out from the carriage windows bathing it in yellow. Then it was gone, and night engulfed the motorway once more. There were no street lights lining the side of it only fields and a few scattered trees. So, when three black Yukons, with their headlights off, drove down a dirt track and pulled onto the motorway they were unseen.
Behind one of the steering wheels was the man known as Mihai Ionescu. It was a cool night, but his windows were closed and the air conditioning was blasting. He checked in his rear-view mirror, to make sure that the other two black SUVs were following. Reassured that they were there, he concentrated on driving and tried to ignore the noise. The road had been badly laid and every few metres the tyres thudded as they drove over gaps in the tarmac. It was like the countdown on a time bomb, and it put Mihai on edge
Approximately two kilometres ahead of them, and chugging along at around one hundred kilometres an hour, was the truck. Mihai put his foot to the floor, and his Yukon accelerated to speeds far greater than the truck could ever achieve. The gap between the Yukons and the truck narrowed quickly, and when they were only a few hundred metres from it, Mihai took his foot off the accelerator. As he slowed down to the truck’s speed, he checked his rear-view mirror again; the other two Yukons were still there. Due to the darkness, and the absence of other traffic on the motorway, Mihai was convinced they had remained unseen. The truck had not changed its speed, and the driver had not noticed the three SUVs lurking behind. Ahead of the truck was a disused bridge. This was the point Mihai had just been briefed on. This was the point to act.
Pushing his foot hard on the accelerator pedal Mihai overtook the truck and pulled in front of it. He kept a short, safe distance away and made sure his speed was the same. Looking in the wing mirror, he could see the second Yukon pull level with the truck on the outside lane. He moved his eyes to the rear view mirror and could just see the third Yukon bringing up the tail.
The repetitious thud, thud, thud of the tyres on the tarmac was interrupted by a hiss in Mihai’s ear.
“Time to make the pirates walk the plank, we are coming in,” said a distorted female voice which Mihai had not heard before.
On cue, Mihai and the other two SUVs turned their headlights and fog lights on. Mihai lifted his foot from the accelerator and slowed down. The other two Yukons dropped their speed as well. Boxed in, and with nowhere to go, the truck had no choice but to do the same.
“Where are you?” Mihai asked the night. “Where are you?”
He looked feverishly out of the front windscreen, his side window and then the passenger window. Nothing. Nothing but darkness. Suddenly he heard it - the sound of blades chopping the air. Checking his rear-view mirror, he saw the outline of a Black Hawk helicopter as it rose up from behind the last Yukon. Caught in the headlights it looked like an enormous dragonfly hovering above the ground.
The Black Hawk flew forward, and the pilot positioned it directly above the moving truck. From fifty metres above the road six ropes, attached to winches, were thrown from the helicopter. They silently fell through the sky and landed in coils on the truck’s cargo area. Six people, clothed from head to foot in black, abseiled down. They stood steadily upon the back of the moving vehicle. Each of them knelt down and unfastened the object from its bindings. A lightweight cradle was rapidly lowered down, and the six abseilers positioned it safely under the object. They raised their hands and gave thumbs up signs to the sky. The six of them were hurriedly winched back up into the belly of the helicopter.
Carefully the Black Hawk rose. The object lifted off the truck and swung like a pendulum in the sky while the tarpaulin flickered in the breeze. When it was higher than the truck’s cab, the helicopter banked sharply to the left and disappeared into the night. The retrieval of the ‘treasure’ had taken less than a minute.
In the truck’s cab, the man in the red cap could do nothing but watch helplessly through a small rear window and punch his chair repeatedly.
The other two Yukons overtook the truck and Mihai. They sped off along the motorway and were soon nowhere to be seen. Mihai checked his rear view mirror and saw the man in the red cap lean out of the cab window and throw something at his Yukon. It made a small clunk as it hit the rear door and caused Mihai to laugh at the man’s anger.
“You’re not playing with rookies,” he muttered to himself and smirked as the man attempted to throw something else at his car.
Ignoring the man’s tantrum, Mihai accelerated away and touched his earpiece, “The treasure is now in our possession.”
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Chapter 7 – Turbulence
As they began their descent, Ursula reflected on the journey. Flying as a passenger was not as exciting as she had hoped. Admittedly the events from earlier had somewhat soured and sweetened, the experience. However, even without these, Ursula had come to the conclusion that flying was not all it was cracked up to be.
The man at check-in had been polite but suspicious. After Andrea had given him Ursula’s temporary passport, he had looked closely at her and rubbed his hairless chin repeatedly. The photo was unclear, and he did not fully trust the leather clad woman in the ‘The Sisters of Mercy’ T-shirt.
When he finally made up his mind that he would allow them to travel, he checked them all into row twelve and dismissed them with a gruff, “Have a good flight.”
The business lounge had been very fancy but, apart from free packaged food and drink, it was still only a dressed-up waiting room and Ursula found it quite boring. Men and women in dark suits sat around reading documents, writing reports or instructing someone else on their mobile phones. When they weren’t doing anything they looked down their noses at Ursula, in her dirty vest top.
Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport was large but was jam-packed with people bustling to-and-fro trying to get from one place to another. They were all being herded like mooing cattle, with worried expressions on their faces and passports in their hands.
Until Ursula boarded the plane and found her place, she had seen nothing but the backs of the people in front of her and the newspapers they were carrying. When she finally sat down she was able to have a look around. The plane’s interior was light cream with blue seats which looked like leather, but were not. Gradually these seats filled until there were no more spaces left on the plane. In fact, the only place where Ursula had seen similar amounts of people bunched together was on the Champs-Elysées.
The thought of the Champs-Elysées brought back memories of being chased by the police and Ursula’s heart quickened. She took deep breaths to calm herself and tried to focus on the fact that she was escaping them.
Being a passenger on an aeroplane was, Ursula decided, dull and monotonous. She was stuck in a long, metal tube without any freedom, which she found very hard to deal with. Normally she loved being ab
ove the ground. She could jump, spring, do somersaults and gaze at the world below. But in the aeroplane she was strapped down in her seat unable to move anywhere and surrounded by chattering people who looked down on her. At least they were all quiet now, she thought to herself.
The plane was silent. If it hadn’t been for the engines, one could have heard a pin drop. Nobody spoke, nobody whispered, and nobody even moved. Every single person was trying to make themselves look invisible while the three stewardesses patrolled the aisle like prison guards. Ursula felt it was probably her fault. She hadn’t meant to cause such a fuss but... enough was enough and she had been forced to act. She wished her grandparents were with her but consoled herself with the thought that at least she had made one friend in the commotion. In an attempt to distract herself further, she looked out of the plate-sized window.
They were circling above Prague, waiting. As they had arrived late they had missed their landing window and were waiting for ‘the tower,' as the Captain called it, to allow their descent. At least it gave Ursula a chance to continue gazing through the scratched perspex, at the Czech city below.
From high up in the sky, Prague looked picturesque, like an old model village. A river cut the city in two and flowed under ancient, old and new bridges. Green copper roofs were dotted amongst terracotta ones, and there were spires and towers everywhere. The biggest of them didn’t seem to belong - it looked more like a space rocket than a tower. Ursula thought she would climb it at some point. Surrounding the old centre, like a gigantic grey wall, were ugly apartment blocks. They reminded her of home, and she sighed sadly as she thought of her grandparents.
“Are those les banlieues of Prague?” she asked Andrea, who was sat rigidly beside her.
“No,” replied Andrea flatly in a business-like tone, “they are called panelaks. They are apartment blocks similar to those in les banlieues.”
Andrea could never forget this flight from Paris, and ran through the events again in case she received any unwanted calls from the press. The two children, Eric and Ursula, as well as the adults on the plane, had surprised her so much that she would have to review all her studies on psychology.
From the moment, Ursula and Eric had met in the Range Rover there were problems. There had been no welcome from Eric; the only introduction had come from Ursula, who really made an effort.
Eric had been unhappy that Ursula had been sitting in his seat. Andrea had been unaware that Eric ‘had a seat’, but Ursula moved. He had then been upset that his seat belt was dirty. He took great pains to clean it with tissues, and then wiped away imaginary stains from his beige jeans and invisible smears from his light summer jacket.
During the journey, Eric had ignored Ursula and spoken only to Andrea. He had not uttered a word to Ursula but had referred to her on three separate occasions.
On the busy motorway, on the way to the airport, they drove past an open sewage works. The putrid smells from the open vats had seeped into the car before Andrea could close the windows. Eric leant forward as far as his seat belt would allow him and pretended to whisper, but his voice was loud.
“Andrea, that smell really is intolerable, please could you instruct the PPP as to how a bath works and inform her that we expect a higher state of cleanliness in the future.”
Ursula heard every word but stayed silent.
When they pulled off the motorway, a small hill-sized rubbish tip could be seen high above a row of bushes. At its entrance was a long forgotten caravan. The plastic door hung from its hinges; windows had been bashed in, and the roof had peeled away from the walls like a tin of beans. Eric pointed towards it.
“Andrea, please ask the PPP if this is where she comes on holiday?”
Ursula looked the other way.
As Andrea parked the Range Rover into the Meyer’s private car park space, Eric tapped her on the shoulder.
“You had better explain to the PPP that flight is statistically the safest way to travel. I wouldn’t bother explaining the physics of it to her if I were you as I am sure she’ll be lost after the word thrust.”
These comments continued at check-in, in the business lounge and into the aeroplane. Andrea was surprised at how unrelenting Eric had been with his remarks. However, she had been even more surprised at Ursula’s lack of response. That was until they were above Germany.
The other passengers on the plane were chirpy. Tourists were chatting happily to their neighbours; lovers were kissing, business people were working on their laptops and the stewardesses had just begun to serve food. Andrea was sat between the children with Eric by the aisle and Ursula in the window seat.
A tall, blonde stewardess placed a pre-packaged lunch on Eric’s and Andrea’s fold-down tables. As she leant across them to give Ursula her lunch, Eric nudged her. It wasn’t a big nudge, but enough for the stewardess to drop the package. The food landed upside down on Ursula’s table and spilt out of the pack like a splat of vomit. Carrots, sliced potato, stringy meat and a pepper sauce covered the table in a sloppy mess. Eric apologized innocently to the stewardess and Ursula did not move. Accepting Eric’s apology, the stewardess took a green cloth from the trolley. She leant across Eric and Andrea again, to clear up the mess, but Eric took her arm.
“Don’t worry, it is still a better meal than mummy and daddy...,” He stopped and for a moment looked genuinely apologetic for what he had said. “I meant to say. It is still a better meal than her grandparents have ever served her.”
To her right Andrea felt Ursula flinch. To her left she watched Eric relax, let go of the stewardess and continue eating. Andrea knew instantly that Eric had hacked into her computer again as there were no other records on Ursula’s family. Before Andrea could decide what to do, events moved so quickly that she barely had time to log them.
While the last scraps of slop were being cleared away from Ursula’s table she undid her seat belt silently. The stewardess moved away, and Ursula pounced up onto the top of her chair like a cat.
“I say,” blurted out the man behind, spraying food all over himself.
Ursula bounced away from him to the chair behind Eric. She landed with a foot on each of the arm rests and her bottom in the face of a prim and proper lady who froze.
“Mon dieu!” cried another man, and he was joined by a chorus of fellow passengers who were vocal in their astonishment.
Ursula grabbed Eric’s hair, yanked his head back with one hand and swiped the stewardess’ dirty cloth with the other. Before the stewardess realized, the cloth had gone, and it had been smeared all over Eric’s face. Carrot dangled from his eyelashes; potato mashed against his teeth; the meat was rammed up his nose and his skin took on a peppery glow.
Hopping down from the chair Ursula apologized to the woman behind, who was still frozen, and looked down the plane towards the tail. A sea of shocked faces stared back at her. They did not look welcoming, so she spun around, slipped past the trolley, ducked under the stewardess’ legs and walked towards the front of the plane. A secure looking door opened, and another stewardess came out. Assuming it was a toilet, Ursula dived in and shut the door behind her. It wasn’t a toilet. It was the cockpit.
Just after the door closed the plane hit an air pocket, and then another, and then another. It rose and fell like a rickety roller coaster.
Somebody near the front of the plane shouted, “Terrorist!”
Somebody else screamed, “We’re being hijacked!”
Then there was uproar. Nobody seemed to notice that the plane was now flying normally again.
Andrea looked around herself; she found this whole situation baffling. Meanwhile, Eric cleared food from his face and ignored the commotion around him. After all, this whole situation was hardly his fault, he thought to himself.
On the flight deck, a kind-eyed Captain, with smiling wrinkles and a bushy, salt and pepper moustache, turned to face his unexpected guest. Ursula stood transfixed, like a rabbit caught in car headlights.
“Hello,” he greeted
in a deep, kind voice, “I am Captain Hudson. May I ask if you have ever been on a flight deck before?”
“No,” Ursula replied, “I thought it was the toilet.”
Captain Hudson and his first officer laughed.
“Do you need the toilet?” he asked warmly.
“No.”
Captain Hudson grinned like Ursula’s Granddad and said slowly with a glint in his eye, “Then this is a very curious situation we find ourselves in.”
Unable to stop herself Ursula told the Captain everything that had happened to her during the day, from leaving her grandparents to arriving on the flight deck. Captain Hudson listened sympathetically, his ears pricking up when he heard the name ‘Meyer.’
“Curious,” he said, lost in thought. “After all these years.”
Ursula did not understand his reaction but was prevented from asking about it by the first officer, an orange-haired lady who spoke urgently, “Captain we have a problem.”
She held out a slender finger and pointed at a monitor showing the inside of the plane and the panicking passengers. Ursula glimpsed at it before returning to gaze at the Captain.
“Oh dear,” said Captain Hudson calmly and, without rushing, picked up the microphone. “This is your Captain speaking,” he said slowly in French and looked at the monitor.
People were still screaming and jumping up and down in their chairs like monkeys in a zoo. No one heard his announcement even when he increased the volume.
“Oh dear,” he repeated.
Unbuckling his seat belt, he stood up. Ursula remained transfixed and admired his uniform. It was a deep blue, with brass buttons and yellow stripes on the shoulders. Underneath the jacket he wore a crisp, white shirt and an Air France tie.
One day, she hoped, I will be able to wear something like this.