The Nationalist

by Campbell Hart

  The waiting mass of the Police pack emerged slowly from the hanger, as if stepping out after an air raid. They panned out across the tarmac and moved out towards the perimeter. Ian Davidson had been blown back by the blast. He wasn’t moving. A bright light was switched on behind them from the top of the hanger. What had been a cold murky night was brought into sharp focus as the harsh flood lights illuminated the carnage. Ying clasped her hand across her mouth; there wasn’t much left of Al Coulter – his remains were strewn across the grass, barely recognisable. One side of Davidson’s face was red raw, the skin having been fused by the heat of the explosion. Her first thought was that he must be dead. Behind her the airport ambulance appeared. Bending down Ying looked for signs of life and touched Davidson on the shoulder, unsure of the best thing to do. He juddered to her touch, and spat blood out onto the grass. There was a sharp intake of breath and then he was conscious. With his mind unable to comprehend what was happening to his body, his immediate reaction was to scream. The noise didn’t stop until the medic sedated him with morphine.

  Ying phoned Donald to say the operation hadn’t gone to plan.

  Sandy Stirrit was furious. He had captured the airport explosion on camera. His footage showed the looks of horror on the faces of everyone who had watched the suicide attack. He knew he was onto a good thing and had mounted the camera on his shoulder and ran out to the injured policeman. His screams had been testament to the brutality of the incident. At first he thought Al Coulter must have run off, but then he saw the blood stained grass. This was the best footage he’d ever shot. Although the film was jerky and uneven, the raw emotion of the night had been perfectly captured. But as he played it back from the back of his car, downloading the film onto his laptop to edit, there was a knock at the door. It was Rosalind Ying.

  “Are you OK, Rose?”

  “It’s business tonight, Sandy. I’m going to need you to hand over that camera and laptop.”

  Sandy laughed, “You’ve got to be kidding. You can’t interfere with the freedom of the press.”

  “Let me put it another way. Either you hand over the equipment or we arrest you for hindering a terror investigation and we will impound all your gear anyway.”

  “I can’t let this go, Rosalind. I would have thought better of you.”

  “You mean you thought our friendship would mean the law was irrelevant in a matter of national security? Don’t be so naive. What’s it to be?”

  Sandy could see a new coldness in her eyes. Maybe her break-up with John meant he was also out of the loop. But he knew he couldn’t just cave in, “You’re going to have to arrest me because there’s no way I’m going to willingly hand this stuff over.”

  “Have it your way.”

  The car veered off the M80 at Junction 6. Ian Wark had been driving too fast and the car struggled to stay on the road as they wound round the circular off ramp which would take them to their destination. Cumbernauld Airport was a modest affair, consisting of a single office complex and two small hangers. It was mostly used for training, but was also home to several helicopter and light plane charter companies. It was the latter which was of interest tonight. The airport only operated 9-5, and at half past one in the morning it was deserted. The car cruised through the industrial estate which had sprung up around the airport. At the end of Duncan McIntosh Road he parked the car. They needed to work fast.

  “I can see the plane from here,” Annabelle said.

  “There’s CCTV, so this has to be quick. You know what to do.”

  Annabelle nodded, and Ian passed her the Glock, “It’s loaded but don’t waste the bullets. Only use it if you need to buy me some time.”

  Turning off the ignition they both sat momentarily in the dark, the silence helped to put them at ease. Outside the only thing which barred their way was a three foot high metal fence. It had a red sign on it which said ‘No admittance beyond this gate’ but the security was a joke. Ian went first. Looking around he could see there were several cameras trained on key points. His movements would be tracked. Later he thought they would show his final moments on TV. He knew this was all part of his narrative; his grand plan. He left Annabelle behind. She had jumped over the fence and was waiting for company.

  The Cessna 172 Skyhawk had been used for pleasure flights for the last three years. Tourists would take in views of Loch Lomond or travel up the west coast to Skye. That day it had been flown down to the Borders and back – a short and unremarkable trip. Tonight would be different. Ian forced the flimsy lock with his screwdriver and climbed into the plane. He ran his fingers across the white leather interior which still smelt new. He hadn’t flown this model before but the basics were the same for all. He’d flown helicopters in Iraq but had experience of Cessnas in Libya. Taking a deep breath he sat down in front of the controls and started to map out the controls, familiarising himself with the layout. The ignition barrel was to the right of the control column. Light aircraft weren’t really designed to be theft proof, and the relatively basic security meant they were easy to steal. Ramming the screwdriver into the ignition barrel Ian Wark took his hammer from the bag and hit the wooden handle as hard as he could. The barrel bent out of shape and the screwdriver became the key. He opened the throttle by half an inch, pressed the master switch, checked the fuel mixture and looked ahead. Pressing the ignition he smiled when the engine roared into life. The country wasn’t going to know what had hit it.

  50

  The airport ambulance disappeared from view, taking Davidson back to Glasgow for treatment. The local hospital was nearer but he was going to need specialist care at the plastic surgery and burns unit at the Royal Infirmary. Whatever happened next, Davidson was not going to be part of it. Even though Arbogast hated his colleague, he still wouldn’t have wished this on him. He would have settled for a transfer. Shouldn’t joke John, it’s not right – what’s wrong with you? Looking back at the hanger he could see that Rosalind’s report wasn’t going down well with the top brass. She was holding the mobile phone a few inches from her ear. Donald would be furious. He watched as Sandy Stirrit was led away by the constables, handcuffed, with his equipment impounded. He was glad his friend had fallen foul of the law. After splashing Ian Wark’s name all over the media it might do him some good to consider the bigger picture. Sandy had shouted after him as he was taken away. Tell them John. Tell them this is a mistake. But Arbogast had just looked at his friend and said nothing; he wasn’t in a good mood. The airport had become the latest crime scene in a bewildering investigation. Chris Guthrie voiced the question on everyone’s mind.

  “What’s happening here?”

  “I was just thinking the same thing myself.” It had started to rain; the evidence outside was being washed away.

  “I don’t understand this. There’s a military strand running through the investigation. It would seem that the main players all have some kind of gripe against the UK Government.”

  “Yes, but if these guys are nationalists they’ve got a funny way of drumming up support.”

  “What’s being achieved here?”

  “Fear and death, nothing more.”

  “That’s quite a lot in my book.”

  “It doesn’t change anything though does it?”

  “You tell me. I’m out of ideas.”

  “Wark’s still out there.”

  “The question is where?”

  Air traffic control had been quiet. The flight volumes at Glasgow Airport eased off after 11:00pm, with international flights dropping to a rate of around one an hour. Mike Carmichael was tired. He sipped at his coffee, the fourth of the night, and watched the clock. He stopped in four hours, which seemed an age away. His desk phone rang. He recognised the number which flashed on the display; it was his girlfriend, Jane.

  “Hey, how’s it going tonight?”

  “Slowly.”

  “You fancy passing some time on the phone.”

  Mike enjoyed their games, “I could be persuaded.”
<
br />   “How would you like me to persuade you?”

  Mike smiled, and stared blankly at the large screen on his desk. It showed the flight path of every aircraft over Scotland. At that time there were only two showing, both bound for Edinburgh. What the screen didn’t show was a Cessna 172 which had taken off from Cumbernauld Airport. For all intents and purposes it was invisible to routine tracking; its transponder had been switched off.

  The Cessna was flying low at an altitude of around 900 feet. Ian was careful to fly cross country, and he skirted around Glasgow which was a no fly zone. He was heading back down to the coast. Sitting in the cockpit he had time to think, but was focused solely on reaching his target. Everything he had worked for was now in reach.

  ***

  HMS Vanguard was the oldest of the Royal Navy’s four nuclear submarines. She made headlines in 1994 when she became the first vessel to test Trident missiles and was currently docked at Faslane Naval Base. Petty Officer, James Green, had been working on the submarine for five years. He had expected to be promoted to Chief Petty Officer, but a gross misconduct case meant he had been passed over. A local woman in Helensburgh had lodged a complaint against him, claiming she had been raped. He had no idea whether it was true. After a 12 hour bender in the town’s pubs, he had woken huddled up under a motorbike cover in a seafront car park. Nothing came of the charges, but suspicions lingered. It seemed his career would go no further. The Vanguard’s sister ship, The Vengeance was due to go back out to sea in the morning. The 16 missiles were being transported from Coulport to be installed in the submarine that night. The vessel was due to go back out on patrol for four months, travelling around the world to the Americas, Africa, Australia, and Asia. But James Green had other plans. He wanted the world to know that the sure fire deterrent was not as secure as people believed. His contact at Newsnational said he’d be able to help. Accessing the safe he photographed the secure codes and forwarded the information by text. He was satisfied that his actions would be justified after the dust had settled.

  ***

  Mike Carmichael hung up the phone when he saw the light plane in the distance. He checked the schedule, but the logs didn’t have any flights planned for this airspace. The plane wasn’t registering on the screen which meant the transponder was either faulty or had been turned off. He picked up his radio and tried to make contact.

  “This is Glasgow Control to the unknown light aircraft violating airspace. Identify yourself. Over.”

  There was no reply. Glen tried the same routine on various frequencies but got no reply. He contacted the RAF at Lossiemouth and told them they had a situation.

  51

  Annabelle Strachan stood and watched as the Cessna took off, disappearing into the night sky. She was alone now, tired and cold at the edge of the airstrip. But she still had work to do and knew she had to leave. If the cameras were working the security company should already be on its way. Jumping back across the fence she got back in the car and drove off. To keep her mind focused she put on the radio. It was tuned into Rock FM. She laughed as the tail end of AC/DC’s Highway to Hell faded out into an advert for double glazing.

  At Lossiemouth it had been all clear at Q Shed, home to the RAF’s 6 Squadron Quick Reaction Alert team. The pilots sat, half-in and half-out of their green flight gear; their job was to wait. They were surrounded by phones of different colours – each line alerting them to a new level of threat, connecting the heart of the service to the command chain.

  The call from Glasgow came into the Control and Reporting Centre at 11:05pm. The controller, Mike Carmichael, explained that a Cessna 172 Seahawk was flying at low altitude towards the coast. Its transponder was off and the pilot was not responding to radio communication. Identification officer, Sergeant, Brian Galloway, knew the drill. The terror threat was critical and they were on full alert for potential attacks. His tracking screen confirmed there was no transponder signal but the plane was being picked up by radar. On its current course the plane would be passing near Faslane Naval Base in a matter of minutes.

  Brian Galloway contacted RAF Air Command at High Wycombe and the order was given by the black box Telebrief machine to act.

  SCRAMBLE SCRAMBLE SCRAMBLE

  The red phone rang in the Q Shed and the flight gear was pulled on and zipped up. The alarm was sounded. Flight Lieutenant, Greg Cross, punched the button which opened the hanger shed. The two pilots ran out, locking the door to protect the classified equipment inside. As the automatic shed doors opened up they could see the engineers making final checks to the Typhoon fighter jets, which were maintained in a constant state of readiness. Since the end of World War Two no fighter had fired on an unidentified aircraft over British soil, but each time the alarm sounded the pilots knew this time might be the first. Climbing the metal ladders which had been hastily put in place to allow for the short climb into the cockpits, the pilots slid into position and clicked their harnesses into place. In less than four minutes the fighter jets were airborne and heading for intercept.

  At Prestwick the helicopter blades whirled slowly back into life, as the engine grew louder, the knot of tension began to grow in Arbogast’s guts. He didn’t mind flying but he had never been comfortable with the idea of being supported by thing strips of metal spinning in the air. He knew the science. He knew that the principle was the same for planes. When the rotors turn, air flowed more quickly across the tops of the blades than it did below, which made flight possible. But he still didn’t like it, and gripped the sides of the seat tightly as the great weight pulled away from the earth and made a path back into the night sky.

  They had received a call from Pitt Street. Donald had been informed by the First Minister that the RAF was responding to a low flying aircraft which seemed to be heading for Faslane. It fitted with the plan which Coulter had told them.

  “He went to a different airport. He knew we’d be here, he just didn’t tell Coulter,” Arbogast had said to Ying.

  “We don’t know that, but we can’t take any chances. If there is even a remote possibility he’s heading for the naval base, then the plane will be dealt with, one way or another.”

  “Then where are we going?”

  “We need to be seen to be on top of this.”

  It was going to take them about quarter of an hour to reach the base and as the rotors kept spinning Arbogast wondered if they might finally be close to bringing this manhunt to an end.

  Ian Wark was cruising at around 90knots, close to 100mph. The decision to fly low meant he was experiencing more turbulence than expected. He had calculated it would take about 15 minutes to reach his target. His contact on the base had given him the co-ordinates he needed. Plotting the course he was confident he’d make the final run. Wark had flown past Glasgow Airport which looked deserted. The runways were still illuminated by the pin pricks of the runway lights, but he knew he still had some way to go. Wark focused on the gloom outside, the central propeller droning at a constant rate. Ian thought about the years of planning, the success of the operation so far, the message he’d sent to the outside world about the country they lived in. He was already winning the war; his war. And tonight the world would know the meaning of the term deterrent. They might think they were safe, not questioning the way their country acted overseas; but it wasn’t right to kill innocent people in the name of peace, to brush past sins under the carpet as if they didn’t matter. It wasn’t right and tonight everyone would be able to see why. Tonight he was going to cast new light on the UK’s hubristic empire mentality. Tonight was the night when Scotland would unite under a common cause.

  In the distance he could see the waters of the Firth of Clyde shimmer under the moonlight, the gateway for the naval base and home to Britain’s nuclear fleet.

  Designed with a 30 year lifespan, the UK Government pressed Trident II into active service in 1994. Four Vanguard class nuclear submarines were based at Faslane on Clydeside; all were equipped to carry 16 atomic missiles, and each missile carr
ied three warheads with a range of 7,500 miles. With at least one of the vessels on active patrol at any given time, this effectively meant that no target was out of reach.

  In 1945, when the first atomic bomb ‘Little Boy’ was dropped on Hiroshima, as many as 45,000 died people on the first day, with a total of 166,000 following in the aftermath. In 2014 the technology’s power dwarfed that of its predecessor. A single Trident II missile has the destructive capacity of eight Hiroshima bombs, and 16 were currently being loaded onto HMS Vengeance.

  When the alarm came through of a potential attack, the loading operation stopped. The moment the klaxon sounded across Faslane, the naval base snapped into emergency lock down. With major centres of population within the potential blast zone, nothing was being left to chance. Three missiles were already in place on board the Vengeance and one more was in transit. The remaining weapons were stopped in convoy and turned back to their secure housing at Coulport, several miles away. Back on the dock, crews scrambled to make the vessel safe, with teams running on automatic, as well drilled emergency procedures sprung into effect. In the distance the roar of fighter jets masked the progress of a single light aircraft.

  ***