The pilot of the Sukhoi had the throttles of his aircraft almost against their stops to keep their airspeed high enough to match the slowing An-72 which was still rapidly gaining on them from behind and at the same altitude.
“The radar is showing the decoy approaching, now 2 miles behind and closing. When he gets to within a half mile give him a countdown and switch our transponder off. Warn our passengers in the back as well as I shall take this aircraft down very quickly, they must be firmly strapped in.”
The co-pilot confirmed the instructions and stared at the radar screen shortly after starting the countdown. On the word ‘zero’ the pilot shut the throttles and pushed the control column down hard and to the right whilst also pushing the left rudder pedal. The plane entered a rapid side-slip downwards which the pilot skilfully reversed several times by switching the bank and rudder directions. Wallowing horribly the aircraft lurched from side to side as it descended even making the co-pilot feel a little queasy. The small passenger compartment behind the cockpit would probably need serious cleaning after this he thought wryly. As the airspeed approached the red line on the dial, he gently eased off on the control column and slowly advanced the throttles bringing the aircraft into level trim heading roughly East and below the level of the tops of the mountains to their right and left and around 500 metres from the valley floor below.
“Keep watching the GPS, I need to keep below the mountain tops but don’t want to hit anything!”
The Sukhoi followed the valleys keeping out of radar detection by flying low until the mountain peaks diminished as they approached the Ukrainian border. Once across the border the pilot climbed the aircraft back up and switched the transponder back on and contacted Lviv air traffic control for landing instructions. The calm voice of the controller immediately responded with permission for a straight-in approach and landing clearance. The pilot made slight adjustments to his controls and visibly relaxed, his job almost done, congratulating himself on his cleverness and piloting skills.
On the ground the controller with the calm voice was now anything but calm. All around him the airport was in a frenzy of preparation for the arrival of the Sukhoi. The military, police and even a contingent of radiation containment specialists were taking their positions at various points around the runway and apron. Vehicles with machine guns and missiles had taken up positions just inside open hangar doors to avoid being seen from the air. Suddenly scores of radios all buzzed with a similar message, “The aircraft is on final approach, stay under cover until it has reached the runway turnoff point.”
Men hid inside buildings, in the airport buses and even some under the mobile stairs dotted around the apron. The Sukhoi’s wheels screeched as they touched down and they could hear the sound of reversed engines. The aircraft slowed and the ground controller directed the pilot towards the last turnoff as if nothing was amiss.
As the Sukhoi turned gently left onto the taxiway two trucks sped up the runway behind it side by side effectively blocking any attempt to take off again. Another truck plus a mobile machine gun vehicle pulled across the aircraft’s path causing the pilot to stamp on the brakes. Now several more vehicles had appeared surrounding the aircraft and the first truck had disgorged a platoon of soldiers holding rifles pointing menacingly at the Sukhoi’s cockpit.
The pilot’s automatic reaction was to throttle up his right engine and turn the aircraft hard left onto the grass to regain the runway. A slightly over-eager gunner in one of the mobile machine gun vehicles stitched a row of bullets across the tarmac and into the port undercarriage of the aircraft. The tyres shredded, and the aircraft lurched left with the left wing dipping down. Continuing the turn but now pivoting on the undercarriage leg which attempted to drill itself into the tarmac. The wing dropped further down almost to the ground and the cargo door suddenly popped open and a stream of machine gun fire erupted from the fuselage. The platoon of soldiers dived left and right to avoid the bullets, firing wildly at the aircraft as they went. One soldier, slightly slower to react than his mates, stumbled and fell face-down on the ground where he remained, stationary. More machine gun fire spat from several different positions as the starboard engine continued trying to rotate the aircraft, the propeller howling at high revs. A row of holes were suddenly stitched into the side of the cockpit just below the windows and, at the same moment, the starboard engine exploded flattening those standing nearest it. The propeller shed a blade which flew across the apron miraculously missing the troops and embedded itself in the side of a brick store. The whole engine, still rotating, and the remains of the propeller disintegrated from the imbalanced rotational forces. A huge fireball rose into the air and without benefit of a functioning flight crew, who were presumably incapacitated by the bullets through the fuselage, the engine fire system hadn’t operated. They could now see flames flicking around the inner section of the wing and the tail boom and through the recess where the flaps were housed when retracted.
“Everybody move back, call up the fire service but keep them at a distance until we’ve secured the aircraft.” An officer shouted. As the various vehicles and infantry retreated to a slightly safer distance, more gunfire erupted from the rear cargo door. Two separate heavy machine guns opened up from trucks and the rear of the aircraft was suddenly peppered with large holes. The shooting stopped. As the assembled people watched in amazement, the aircraft’s port boom fell into two pieces and the whole tail section slowly sagged downwards, accelerating as it did so until hitting the ground.
“Get the fire trucks here and those radiation people, I think we’re now secure.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Passo Stelvio
“This is where we stopped this morning, the wreckage is just down there.” Claire pointed at a position just East of them at the bottom of the ravine. Tom rapidly assembled the drone, reset the compass and flew it straight down to where Claire had pointed. Reaching the bottom he had to run it back and forth twice to find the rusty wreckage, almost impossible to see on the small phone screen. Having found it he then started the video recording and moved the drone very slowly and carefully all around the wreckage filming it from every position, and as close to the wreck as he dared. The wind had strengthened noticeably and the drone’s autopilot was struggling to maintain its position in the strong gusts. Finally satisfied that he had filmed every conceivable angle and facet of the wreck he brought the drone back, caught it mid-air, removed the small memory card and packed it away into the boot of the car.
“OK, let’s see what we’ve got.” Tom got behind the wheel of the car to get out of the cold wind and pulled his laptop out of its carry case, opened the lid and powered it up. Once the desktop appeared he inserted the memory card into a slot in its side to download the video file when his phone rang.
“We’ve got it!” Heinrich blurted out without preamble. “The plane landed in Lviv and there was a shootout. The crew were all killed, but the bomb was retrieved and is now under guard and on its way to Germany. Unfortunately a Ukrainian soldier was killed in the action and they destroyed the plane which has not particularly pleased the Russians.”
“That’s a relief. Do they know the identities of the thieves or was behind the theft?”
“They were all Russians. Two were known to the authorities, apparently, as being employed by one of their oligarchs, a man called Urosov.”
“We know Urosov and had a feeling he might have something to do with it. I think we’re almost done here as well. We’ve just filmed another pile of rusting metal in the canyon which I’m sure will turn out to be some old fencing or something similar but I’m just about to check the video to make sure.”
“Give me a call when you’re finished and let me know when you’re expecting to get back here, assuming you are coming back of course.”
“I still have to sort out onward transport for my Me-262 and I guess you could do with some help with the Arado. I really want to have a good look at it before it’s completely taken apa
rt, and I’d like to get back into that hangar again for a proper snoop.”
“You’re right, we could do with the help. Talk to you later, bye.” And with that Heinrich closed the connection. Claire had lifted the laptop from Tom’s lap whilst he was talking to Heinrich and was now closely studying the video file the drone had just taken.
“What do you make of that?” She said passing the laptop over to Tom for him to look at the paused video.
Tom advanced the video a frame at a time, paused it several times and took snapshots and then loaded these into the photo retouching software. He didn’t respond to Claire’s question for almost 3 minutes until he’d studied each of the pictures, zooming into specific details on a couple. He then looked up from the screen and turned to meet Claire’s questioning gaze.
“That pile of mangled, rusty steel is, my love, the remains of a pre-war Austro-Fiat AFN truck!. You can actually see the AFN badge on the differential case on the back axle just sticking out of the mud. What we’re looking at is the rear of the truck which appears to have piled into the canyon bottom, presumably at speed. The front end was either crushed in the initial impact or buried itself in the mud. What chance do you think there is of more than one pre-war Austro-Fiat AFN truck coming off this road in precisely the same place as the one we’re looking for?”
“So, it’s the gold truck then?” Claire said excitedly.
Tom dialled a number on his phone. “Me again!” he said when Heinrich answered.
“That was quick!”
“I think we’ve found the truck they transported the gold in. It’s half-buried at the bottom of a ravine off the Stelvio Pass road. We will need assistance to investigate further, it needs to be dug out and it’s inaccessible without climbing gear or a helicopter.”
“Wait a minute.” Tom could hear Heinrich talking to somebody else in German, a few seconds passed.
“OK, what is your exact location? The captain has a contingent of troops returning from that affair in Ukraine who are refuelling in Linz any time now. He will divert them to your position to see if they can help.”
Tom gave their co-ordinates as reported by the car’s satnav and placed the phone on the car’s dashboard. Turning to Claire he relayed the conversation as he zoomed the map on the satnav. “There’s a hotel 2 or 3 miles up the road, let’s go and see if we can get a coffee whilst we wait for the cavalry, they will not get here for at least an hour.”
Claire closed down the laptop and stowed it away while Tom pulled the car out onto the road heading West.
Tom carried the coffees over to the table Claire had secured near the window in the Hotel's lounge Passo Stelvio where she had set up the laptop again and was looking at the still images Tom had extracted from their latest drone video. As he set the tray down his phone rang.
“Hi Tom, I’ve just heard that the helicopter has refuelled and is coming here first to drop off troops. Another couple of specialists with a Komatsu Micro Digger they were using here are also coming out to you, should make the job a lot easier.”
“How long have we got?” Tom asked, coffee cup in hand.
“Going to be at least an hour but they must go straight to the site. Can you climb down to meet them as I doubt whether they can land the helicopter anywhere except at the bottom of the ravine?”
“I’m sure I can get down but getting back up might be an issue! Maybe the helicopter could drop me off somewhere along the road after we’ve finished to meet Claire who can take the car.”
Tom put the phone back in his pocket and looked across at Claire preparing to pass on the latest news from Heinrich but paused when he saw her brows furrowed in concentration.
“What’s up?”
“I decided to look at the video you took higher up the valley this morning, the one we didn’t bother to check. There’s something here that just doesn’t look right.” And she spun the laptop around so that the screen was facing Tom. Where Claire had paused the video Tom could see the camera was pointing down the valley following the trench at the bottom as he expected.
“What exactly am I meant to be looking at, it all looks the same to me, I can’t see anything in the trench.”
Claire moved around the table and pointed a finger onto an area of the screen to the left of the trench. “Look at the distribution of all the loose rocks in the trench and around the bottom of the valley, doesn’t it look a bit odd to you?”
Tom brushed Claire’s finger away and peered at the screen in the area she’d indicated which showed the valley floor and it’s trench plus a load of loose stones and rocks.
“It all looks pretty much the same to me I’m afraid.”
Claire pointed to an area of some 50 metres in length along the valley floor and ran the video back and forth. “Why, if that’s all natural, does this area have a much larger quantity of loose stuff? The whole valley floor has a pretty even quantity of rocks which have fallen down the slope from the mountains above over time. This small area though has probably 2 or 3 times the amount with the quantity greatest towards the centre.”
Tom juggled the footage back and forth to check the density of fallen rocks and then looked at the area Claire had pointed out which was indeed piled high with loose rocks near the centre.
“You’ve got a point. It suggests that something dramatic must have happened above to loosen all this lot. You never know it could have been the gunfire from the fighter strafing the truck that started a mini avalanche. It could also have been a storm thousands of years ago dislodging a fault. It’s just down the road from here, let’s fly the drone down there and have a closer look.”
They drank their coffees and returned to the car which Tom then drove down to a rest area somewhere close to where he estimated the piles of rocks to be situated. Once again he assembled the drone, did the strange compass dance and flew it out over the road and down the slope towards the ravine bottom.
“Which way do you reckon it is?”
“I reckon if you start over there,” Claire said pointing at a spot about 100 metres West of their position, “and just go slowly down the slope we should be able to see it.”
Tom did as he was told and the drone slowly followed the ravine bottom, past their location and maybe another 50 metres when they could both see the increasing density of the rockfalls. “There!” They both said in almost perfect unison. Tom started the recording and flew around the area in different directions and at different heights until he was satisfied they had video'd everything possible. He then took the drone vertically up above the centre of the area with the camera pointing at the side of the slope all the way to the road and then upwards beyond by another hundred feet or so to see if he could spot anything that might have caused a massive rockfall. He brought the drone back, deftly catching it in mid-air as before and shut it down. As he packed it back into its rucksack again, they both heard the distant rumbling chatter of a large helicopter.
“We’d better get moving, that sounds like the cavalry.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Bonanza!
As Tom parked the car up again in the lay-by close to the truck wreckage the Black Hawk helicopter appeared over the brow of the hill adjacent to them and less than 50 metres away. With a thunderous din reverberating off the mountains it slowly descended into the ravine and crept forwards, the pilot obviously looking for a suitably level area to land. Safely on the ground some 30 metres up the valley away from the wreck the large cargo door opened and disgorged four uniformed soldiers who then manhandled a small tracked mechanical digger which they rolled out of the helicopter on a small ramp.
Tom handed the car keys to Claire, kissing her on the cheek as he did so and made sure his phone was zipped into his jacket pocket.
I’ll call you and let you know what we find and where they will drop me off afterwards, see you later.” And with that he hurdled the low parapet alongside the road and scrambled down the slope towards the bottom of the ravine. An avalanche of small stones disturbe
d by his progress followed Tom as he half fell, half slid, all the way down to rather unceremoniously arrive at the bottom on his backside in a cloud of grey dust. He picked himself up, checked his pockets, dusted himself off and walked over to join the soldiers who were now standing in a small group alongside the twisted half-buried wreck of the AFN truck.
After handshakes all round Tom gave a precis of the story of the truck as they knew it and explained exactly what he wanted done. He avoided the mention of gold specifically although he told them that the truck was potentially carrying a cargo of interest. From their recent experiences they all jumped to the immediate conclusion that they were searching for radioactive material. Tom was flummoxed when one soldier returned to the helicopter and reappeared with a radiation monitor emanating a slow, audible clicking sound. He then had to explain that what they sought was probably metallic, heavy and not radioactive and would have been in the flatbed of the truck.
One soldier fired up the tiny digger and tore soil and rocks away from around the partly exposed wheel of the truck. The others used shovels to move the dug soil away from the wreck and into piles some distance away. Tom watched the entire wheel appear, still attached to the axle. The digger moved around to the other side and only minutes later had exposed the corresponding wheel and a quantity of the truck’s chassis side rail. Progress was swift and within 40 minutes they had exposed a pile of wreckage sufficiently to confirm its identity as an AFN truck. They had also confirmed that both chassis rails appeared to be reasonably straight and parallel to each other and the truck’s prop shaft was still connected to the now partially exposed gearbox. The assumption therefore was that the engine and gearbox were still attached to each other and the truck must have piled in when the ground was quite wet and soft as it had penetrated a long way. The sergeant was the first to point out the charred remains of tool handles still attached to the remains of a hammer and a pitchfork.
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