London Stormbird

by Martin J Cobb

  “Let’s get to it before I change my mind.”

  The lieutenant led him away to get suited and kitted out leaving Heinrich to look at the services diagram in the command truck.

  “Can you please show me where the machinery room is on this diagram and also where the corridor is with the Me262 in?” Heinrich asked the Lieutenant who pointed to an area adjacent to the edge of the complex on the current complex map and then matched this to the old services diagram.

  “If we locate the aircraft, we can see in the video on the diagram, and orientate it correctly, it would appear to be pointing towards the area with the collapsed tunnels. I think it’s safe to assume that the tunnel with the notches in the wall is such a tight fit for the aircraft it must continue in more or less a straight line as there isn’t any room to turn a corner. The inference must be that the hangar door exit on the side of the hillside is at the end of that line, does that tally with your calculations?”

  The officer studied the drawings for a moment and then stood back and nodded, “Correct, that coincides with where the team are currently digging outside trying to expose the doors.”

  The phone rang in the command truck and the lieutenant turned to Heinrich “He’s ready at the drill site, let’s go.”

  When they found Tom he was encased in what looked like a spacesuit and jammed into the bosun’s chair contraption hovering over the top of the pipe suspended by ropes. He was receiving a last minute briefing from the captain.

  “Remember, once the chair reaches the bottom turn on the Radionuclide Identifier and stay in the chair until you get some readings. We have a remote monitor for it up here and will study the results. Only leave the chair when you get the OK from us and then we’ll send down the floodlights and stands. After you set them up slowly make your way over to the doors leading into the tunnel. Pause every few steps and wait for us to tell you to continue after we’ve rechecked the figures. Remember that there could still be booby traps in there so before you move carefully inspect where you’re putting your feet.”

  The captain put on a lightweight headset and quietly said, “Radio check.” Tom put his thumbs up and replied in the affirmative as the captain made a circling motion with his hand and almost immediately the winch motor started and the chair, with Tom on it, sank slowly out of sight down the pipe.

  Turning to Heinrich the captain motioned him towards a table that they had set up near the pipe that had a bank of computer monitors being studied intensely by a group of soldiers. They pointed Heinrich towards one which displayed a camera feed from Tom’s suit, the captain also pointed towards the monitor that would display the radiation readings once Tom was down. To Heinrich’s surprise a group of soldiers then turned up with what looked like a mobile toilet which they plumbed in to a water supply from a trailing hose and a tanker truck.

  “Wash down,” the captain explained succinctly. “If he becomes contaminated, we wash him down in that and take all the waste away for proper disposal.”

  “He’s down!” came the cry from one soldier staring at the monitors.

  They all turned and shifted their gazes rapidly between the video feed and the radiation monitor which thankfully showed no apparent distress from being down in the machinery room. You could have heard a pin drop in the silence that had descended. Three minutes later the captain spoke very quietly into his headset “OK, nothing showing, you can leave the chair, we’ll send down the lights, remember what I said about checking where your feet are going.”

  There was an audible sigh of relief from Tom, now amplified so all could hear.

  “I’m moving now, it’s difficult, there are piles of rubbish in here with loads of rusty bits of metal sticking out everywhere. I have to be careful not to snag the suit. OK, clear.”

  They winched the bosuns chair back up the pipe and just over 4 minutes later Tom unhitched the lighting units from the ropes and stood them up pointing away from the pipe at 90 degrees to each other. Someone above turned them on and it bathed the remains of the machinery room in light. There were now five men staring unblinkingly at the video feed monitor. The high definition camera attached to Tom’s helmet spun round as he moved to face the wall with the exit doors in. There was a subdued gasp all around the room as they all saw the bright rusty red stain across much of the wall and tatters of what looked like pieces of bloody rag, but almost certainly wasn’t, hanging from various pieces of protruding metalwork. There was a slight choking sound from Tom who had paused as instructed.

  “I’m moving on, nobody say anything,” came from the speaker relaying Tom’s words. Silence descended and nobody tried to arrest his progress out of that appalling room. The radiation monitor remained firmly rooted to the base line with nothing undue being detected. Tom fumbled his way over the heaps of destruction, carefully picking his way to avoid getting snagged and checking his footfalls for any booby traps. Reaching the door he paused again, as per his briefing, waiting for clearance to continue. He couldn’t resist peering around the door and pointing his torch down the corridor and there, in the gloom, he could just make out the unmistakable sight of the rear of a Messerschmitt Me262 some 100 metres away, so near yet so far. “All OK.” Came over his radio from above. He immediately stepped through the broken door and stood in the tunnel somewhat amazed that the machinery room damage didn’t appear to have extended outside that room, the tunnel was relatively free of rubbish or debris. He powered up the light on his helmet and moved on towards the looming shape of the aircraft. After several paces he paused awaiting clearance yet again to continue, the closer he got the more distinct became the outline of the aircraft. He could now see the rough joins where the fuselage skins had been poorly riveted in their hurry to complete its construction. He could see the deflated tyres and he could see that the empty engine pods were still awaiting installation of the engines themselves. Pausing again as instructed before he approached the aircraft he waited a painful two minutes before receiving the all clear to continue. There were wheeled steps against the side of the closed cockpit. Tom gingerly climbed the steps, very wary of it being booby trapped or just plain rotten. Reaching the top, he grabbed the canopy handles and pushed it away so that it swung away to starboard away from him. He was presented with a pristine, albeit very dusty, fully appointed cockpit with a sheaf of papers left on the seat. It looked eerily almost ready for flight. Climbing back down the steps he spoke into the helmet microphone, “Heinrich, if you’re there, you have a stunning original Stormbird, it’s beautiful! We do need to find some engines though.”

  Heinrich could not prevent the enormous grin that spread across his face. “Thanks Tom, the counter is still in the green, nothing showing. You need to return now as your suit has a very limited air supply. Before you do though can you please move round the whole aircraft so we can video it from all angles?”

  Tom ducked under the fuselage to the starboard side and walked over to the wall, turning frequently so his helmet camera would pick everything up. He then moved round to the nose and pointed towards the tail. “Even the guns are installed in the nose and they shut the arming access panels, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s actually armed.”

  Heinrich was staring intently at the monitor “Can you just turn round again and face away from the aircraft just for a second and point your torch that way as well?”

  Tom did as requested and was astonished to find himself looking at the tail of another Me262 less than twenty metres away, this time with engines in the pods. As he turned around again his torch beam ran over the walls of the tunnel where he could plainly make out a pair of wheeled trolleys parked hard against the wall, each with a cradle holding two Jumo 004 jet engines.

  “I think I’ve found your engines Heinrich, I bag the second Me262.”

  “You need to return now, don’t forget to watch your footsteps, the chair is already down.”

  Tom made his way back through the hell of the machinery room and into the bosuns chair and the winch immediately br
ought him back to the surface where they poured him out of his suit and left him standing, shivering in his boxers and a T-shirt. After one soldier retrieved his clothes, Heinrich and Tom strolled over to the command truck for a debrief where the captain was waiting for them with fresh coffee.

  “Good job Herr Stroud. I have spoken to the colonel who has agreed that we can continue with this project and has called off the government team who were coming to take over. Our first job though must be to confirm that there are no other booby traps and then we must send down a team to recover what’s left of the poor child who fell into the machinery room. We can then do some clearance of the debris and get more lighting down there. I understand from our technicians that the air down there, whilst not actually toxic, is almost unbreathable and may well contain asbestos or other harmful materials. We are sending samples off for analysis, we should have the results tomorrow or the next day. In the meantime everybody will have to wear closed circuit breathing equipment which I’m afraid will restrict what we can do towards getting those planes out of there.”

  Heinrich turned to Tom “Not much more we can do here for the moment I guess. How about I take you back to the hotel so you can have a clean up and then maybe we can have a beer and look over the video footage from your suit?”

  Leaving the command truck they caught sight of a large digger rumbling across the car park towards the closed visitor centre being tailed by two enormous trucks and several smaller vehicles, presumably carrying the operators and engineers. Their part of the operation was not being delayed by the subterranean situation.

  “How long do you think they’ll take to expose the hangar doors?” Tom asked as they strolled towards Heinrich’s car.

  “They’ve positively pinpointed where the doors are which is apparently some 15 metres behind that mountain of soil at the bottom and at least 15 metres wide and 4 metres high. They don’t know what sort of doors they are though, could be sliding or double-hinged or even a single door hinged at the top. Once they uncover the doors, they cannot attempt to open them until we’ve got the all-clear from the bomb disposal people and everybody is happy that they can allow the air inside to escape.”

  They pulled up outside the hotel a few minutes later and Tom left Heinrich in the lounge to go to his room for a shower and change. As he passed through the entrance, the receptionist called his name and presented him with a small plastic ruggedised case and a padded postal sleeve which had arrived by courier for him. On his way upstairs in the lift Tom opened the sleeve which contained a single printed sheet of instructions for the use of the Alpha Radiation Detection System and a second sheet of instructions for the additional transmitter and the tiny helmet camera which linked everything back to London in real time. Having decided that it all looked quite straightforward, Tom rapidly showered and changed and, picking up his laptop, went back downstairs to the lounge to join Heinrich who was deep in conversation on his phone.

  “Who was that?” he asked as he sat down opposite Heinrich and selected the full glass of Weiss beer.

  “The bomb disposal team have cleared the machinery room and corridor as far as the first aircraft but cannot go any further at present as the lighting is too poor. The clean-up team are currently doing their thing in the machinery room and should finish by the end of the day. They have taken air samples which have gone to a laboratory in Linz for testing. They have promised an interim report by tomorrow morning so we should know by breakfast whether we can proceed. The engineers have partially exposed the hangar doors which would appear to be multi-panelled concertina type sliding on buried tracks and meeting in the centre. They appear to be intact but potentially very compromised as the framework looks extremely rusty.” With that Heinrich passed his phone across to Tom to show him the picture the engineers had sent. “They don’t dare to risk any further digging until the air report comes in as they believe the doors could collapse once the retaining soil is removed.”

  Having handed the phone back to Heinrich they both stood as Freida walked into the lounge, causing more than a couple of heads to turn and watch her progress. The years had been not just kind but had positively transformed her from the admittedly beautiful but slightly gawky girl Tom remembered into the absolutely stunning, poised figure that she had now matured into. It stunned Tom into an untypical silence as Freida placed both her hands on Tom’s shoulders and kissed him briefly on each cheek.

  “It’s so lovely to see you again Tom, you look great.”

  Tom recovered his voice, took Freida’s hand from his shoulder in his hand and squeezed it gently before letting go. “What a stunning entrance, I’m not sure I can now ever forgive Heinrich for snatching you away from me. It’s absolutely great to see you again after all this time, you look happy and it’s pretty obvious Heinrich is too.”

  “It would never have worked for us Tom, you know that, but are you happy, do you have somebody special?”

  “I have somebody now, been without for a while, but I do have a couple of great kids as a result of past stuff which is all good.”

  Heinrich had been looking on with a peculiar and somewhat trepiditious expression but suddenly announced, “Time for dinner I think” and with that all three exited the lounge and retired to the dining room.

  All three of them enjoyed a positively lovely relaxed evening, much to the male components’ surprise. It ended with a warm but final peck on the cheek from Freida for Tom. Heinrich and Freida walked off to their car hand in hand leaving Tom watching and considering that fate had lent an immaculate hand.

  An hour later Tom lay on his bed, still fully dressed having just returned to his room, reflecting on the evening. He picked up his phone in a slightly inebriated state and sent a simple text to Claire 'Missing you' which completely summed up how he was feeling. Not receiving an immediate reply he turned his phone off and went to sleep, still fully dressed but with a contented smile on his face.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Vassili Urosov

  Vassili Urosov sat at his vast desk staring at the LCD screen on the opposite wall facing him. A brief smile crossed his lips, a rare occurrence these days since he his recent ignominious defeat at the hands of that English `govnjúk’. His failure to recover the Templar documents had not only cost him a small fortune financially but his inability to deliver on his promises to the Russian President had not gone down well at all. He now found himself on the receiving end of a string of trumped-up legal charges pertaining to his acquisition of various State energy companies during the early 1990s. The State had seized many of his Russian assets including his beautiful house just outside Moscow forcing him to retreat to his ‘country’ dacha near Odessa on the Black Sea from where he had been frantically liquidating or securing his assets before they also disappeared and the FSB men came to arrest him or worse. He had known for some time that his outspoken criticism of the President was likely to necessitate a rapid exit from Russia to one of the many properties he maintained around the World. He had taken the precaution of ensuring that he held most of his more lucrative energy contracts with companies registered and based in the West and thus relatively safe from potential Russian State interference. It was from one of these companies that a certain senior Austrian Government minister responsible for that countries energy purchasing regularly enlarged his personal asset portfolio thanks to Vassili’s generosity. Because of this generosity Vassili’s companies enjoyed favoured status when the time came to award major export contracts. As an aside to this Vassili also enjoyed another benefit to this arrangement. He regularly received information not directly related to oil, gas or electricity. For instance he had just learnt that not only had an underground factory just been uncovered for the first time since the end of World War 2 but that a certain Englishman of his recent acquaintance was heading up the investigation into its contents which, so far, had included just a couple of vintage aeroplanes. What was of particular interest in all this was that Vassili also knew that there was some speculation that
this factory could contain the residue of Adolf Hitler’s Wunderwaffe or Miracle Weapon which almost certainly was nuclear. If indeed there was fissionable material still stored down there he, Vassili, wanted to get his hands on it.

  Since the collapse of the Soviet Union Vassili had operated a financially rewarding business in great secrecy acquiring and smuggling fissionable material out of Russia to his customers in Asia, primarily in order to `grease’ the wheels of various energy deals. The Soviet collapse had left huge stockpiles of material dotted around the country now neither properly guarded nor of great interest to the rulers of the new Russia who occupied their time lining their own and their family’s pockets. They didn't have time to worry too much about their country’s nuclear deterrent. Vassili had created a demand for this material which he’d been happy to supply when obtaining had proved relatively simple. The problem now was that the remaining available stocks of discarded weapons-grade material had been either totally exhausted or carefully gathered up and were now enjoying very secure storage courtesy of the enlightened State. It had become almost impossible to gain anything of late with which to satisfy commitments he’d previously made. These commitments were also necessary to maintain the contracts he enjoyed which kept his business empire afloat. He had recently had a small success liberating material from Iraq after the last Gulf War but this had been fraught with great risk and what this operation had produced was low grade and a fraction of what he would need to satisfy contracts. He didn’t like to disappoint his customers, not just for the financial impact, but because the sort of customers he had nurtured for this product had little patience for failure and would generally be considered quite unstable. They also all employed some particularly nasty individuals to work for them in different countries who would think nothing of conducting very messy and public executions to make a point for their respective Glorious Leaders.