35
“You’ll never shoot it down,”
said Brigadier General Claude Chabert, commander of the Swiss Air Force’s 3rd Fighter Wing. “Turboprops are hard enough. They only fly at two hundred kilometers per hour, but this little number has a jet in its tail. Forget it.”
“Can’t you fire a missile?” groused Alphons Marti, bullying his way closer to the center of the table so he could better survey the blueprints of the drone, or “unmanned aerial vehicle,” according to Chabert. “What about a Stinger? Like you say, it’s a jet. It has to have a heat signature.”
Chabert, Marti, and von Daniken were standing alongside a table in von Daniken’s office on Nussbaumstrasse. It was nearly five o’clock in the afternoon. Chabert, a trained electrical engineer and F/A-18 Hornet pilot with six thousand hours of flight time, had been rushed from his base in Payerne to provide an instant education in the destruction of unmanned aerial vehicles. Lean and blond with a shepherd’s wizened blue eyes, and still dressed in his flight suit, he was the picture of an accomplished aviator.
“A heat signature isn’t enough,” said Chabert patiently. “You must keep in mind that it is a small jet. The wingspan measures four meters. The fuselage runs barely two and a half by fifty centimeters. That’s not much of a target when it’s moving at five hundred kilometers an hour. Conventional radar arrays used by air traffic control are purposefully tuned down to avoid picking up small objects like birds and geese. And this one is stealthy. It has very few straight edges. The exhaust ducts are mounted by the tail fins. If I had to wager, I’d say that silver coating on the body was RAM.”
“What’s RAM?” asked Marti, as if it were something dredged up solely to annoy him.
“Radar absorbent material. The metallic color serves to make it more difficult to see with the human eye.” Chabert finished examining the plans, turning to face von Daniken. “I’m sorry, Marcus, but civilian radar would never see it. You’re out of luck.”
Von Daniken sat down in a chair and ran a hand over his scalp. The last hour had given him a devil’s education in the development and usage of drones as military weapons. In the 1990s, the Israeli Air Force had pioneered the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to overfly their northern border with Lebanon. Back then, a drone was no more than a radio-controlled toy with a camera strapped to its underside that took snapshots of the enemy. The latest models boasted wingspans of fifteen meters, carried Hellfire air-to-ground missiles under their wings, and were piloted via satellite by operators in secure bunkers thousands of miles away.
“Have any idea about the target?” asked Chabert.
“An aircraft,” said von Daniken. “Most probably here in Switzerland.”
“Any word as to where? Zurich, Geneva, Basel-Mulhouse?”
“None.” Von Daniken cleared his throat. The wear and tear of the last few days was taking its toll. Dogged circles ringed his eyes, and even seated, his posture was slumped. “Tell me, General, what kind of runway does this thing need to take off?”
“Two hundred meters of open road,” said Chabert. “A drone this size can be out of its transport packaging and up in the air in five minutes.”
Von Daniken recalled his meeting at Robotica AG, Lammers’s company, and the prideful description of sensor fusion technology that melded input from a variety of sources. For all he knew, the pilot—or “operator”—could be all the way in Brazil, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. “Any chance of jamming the signal?”
“You’re better off locating the ground station. The drone works on a three-legged principle. The ground station, the satellite, and the drone itself, with signals constantly passing back and forth between them.”
“How big is the ground station?”
“It depends. But if the pilot is flying it out of line of sight—that is, if he’s relying on the drone’s onboard cameras—he’ll require video monitors, radar, a stable power source, and uninterrupted satellite reception.”
“Could it be mobile?” von Daniken asked. “Something, say, he could stick in the back of a van?”
“Definitely not,” declared Chabert. “The operator will have to be in some kind of fixed installation. Otherwise, he won’t have enough power to boost the signal a long distance. You said they intend on taking down a plane. This UAV doesn’t have the size to carry air-to-air missiles. Is it your belief that whoever is behind this intends on flying the drone into another aircraft? If that’s the case, they’ll want to be in visual range of the target. It’s a damned tricky business to fly these things by camera and radar.”
“I can’t say with any certainty,” responded von Daniken. “But it’s probable that plastic explosives will be used.”
“Well,” said Chabert, brightening. “Then at least we know what the nacelle is for. I’d assumed it was for more avionics.”
“What nacelle are you talking about?”
Using a ballpoint pen, Chabert tapped at a teardrop-shaped canister that appeared to hang from the nose of the drone. “The maximum weight allowance is thirty kilos.”
Von Daniken groaned inwardly. Some twenty kilos of Semtex was missing from Blitz’s garage.
“Is that enough to bring down a plane?” asked Marti.
“More than enough,” said Chabert. “The bomb that brought down Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie fit inside a cassette recorder. It needed less than a half kilo of C-4 to tear a hole two meters by four out of the side of a Boeing 747. At ten thousand meters altitude, the plane didn’t stand a chance. Imagine a drone traveling at five hundred kilometers an hour delivering a charge fifty times as big.”
Marti backed away from the table, his complexion the color of curdled milk.
“But that’s only half your problem,” said Brigadier General Claude Chabert.
Von Daniken narrowed his eyes. “How’s that?”
“With a charge of that size, the drone itself is, in effect, a missile. It wouldn’t necessarily have to wait for a plane to become airborne to kill everyone aboard. It could just as easily destroy the target on the ground. The detonation would ignite the fuel in the wing tanks. The fireball and the shrapnel it would provoke would initiate a chain reaction. Any plane parked within twenty meters would cook off like overheated ammunition.”
Grimacing, Chabert ran a hand across the back of his neck. “Gentlemen, you may very well lose the entire airport.”
Chabert had left
five minutes earlier. Von Daniken sat on the edge of the conference table, arms crossed over his chest, as Alphons Marti paced the floor. Only the two of them were left in the room.
“We need to alert the proper authorities,” said von Daniken. “I think the call should come from your office.”
The list was long and ran to the Federal Office of Civil Aviation, the Federal Security Service, the police departments of Zurich, Bern, Basel, and Lugano, as well as their brother agencies in France, Germany, and Italy, over whose airspace the drone could intrude. It would be up to them to contact the airlines.
“I agree, but I think it’s too early in the game. I mean, exactly what kind of attack are we talking about?”
“I thought we just went over that.”
“Yes, yes, but what about the specifics? Do we have a date, a time, or even a place? Everything we know so far is based on the ravings of a terrorist who gave up the information under what I can only imagine as the utmost duress.”
Marti’s tone was reasonable, a patient parent upbraiding a rowdy child. Von Daniken matched it note perfect. “Gassan may have been under duress, but what he said has proven accurate. He wasn’t lying when he said he delivered fifty kilos of Semtex to Gottfried Blitz, a.k.a. Mahmoud Quitab. We also have a photo showing that Blitz either is, or was, an Iranian military officer. I feel comfortable assuming that Lammers built a drone and delivered it to Blitz. I’d say that, coupled with Gassan’s confession that Blitz’s target was a plane in Switzerland, is more than enough for us to go to the authorities.”
“Granted, but both Lammers and Blitz are dead. Would it be unreasonable to assume that the other members of their group—oh, what do you call it—their cell, might also be dead? If you ask me, I’d say someone’s doing our work for us.”
Von Daniken thought of the flecks of white paint found on the corner of Blitz’s garage, the twenty kilos of missing plastic explosives, the tire tracks that matched those of the Volkswagen van reported to have been used to transport the explosives. “There are more of them out there. The operation’s bigger than two men.”
“Maybe there are, Marcus. I won’t dispute that something’s going on. But you’re not giving me much ammunition. Tell the civil aviation chieftains, and then what? Do you expect them to cancel their flights? Are they going to reroute all planes headed our way to Munich and Stuttgart and Milan and ship everyone here by rail and bus? What if we had a threat against a tunnel? Should we shut down the San Bernardino and the Gotthard? Of course not.”
Von Daniken stared hard at Marti. “We’ll need the close support of the local police,” he said after a moment, pretending that he hadn’t heard a word that Marti had said. “We’ll go house to house in a radius of ten kilometers from the airport. Then we’ll—”
“Didn’t you hear the general?” Marti interrupted in the same maddeningly reasonable tone. “The drone could be launched from anywhere. It could take out a plane in France or Germany, or…or, in Africa, for all we know. Please, Marcus.”
Von Daniken dug a fingernail into his palm. This wasn’t happening, he told himself. Marti was not making light of the threat. “As I was saying, we’ll begin with a house-to-house search. I promise you it will be conducted quietly. We’ll start in Zurich and Geneva.”
“And how many policemen do you expect this will involve?”
“Several hundred.”
“Ah? Several hundred quiet policemen who’ll walk on their tiptoes and not breathe a word of why they had to leave their wives and children in the dead of night to go knocking door-to-door with instructions to look for an armed missile.”
“Not to look for a missile. To speak with residents and inquire if they’ve noticed any suspicious activity. We’ll run the operation under the guise of a search for a missing child.”
“‘Quiet policemen.’ ‘A friendly inquiry.’ By tomorrow morning half the country will know what we’re up to, and by tomorrow evening, I’ll be on the evening news explaining to the other half that we believe that there’s a terrorist cell operating within our borders with the intention of shooting down a passenger airliner, and that there isn’t a damned thing we can do to stop them.”
“Exactly,” said von Daniken. “We do believe that there’s a terrorist cell operating within our borders with precisely that intention.”
He was losing. He could feel the argument slipping from his grasp as if it were sand slipping through his fingers.
Marti shot him a look of damning appraisal. “Do you have any idea of the panic you’ll sow?” he asked. “You may very well shut down the entire air transport grid for central Europe. This isn’t a bomb in someone’s luggage. The economic cost alone…not to mention to our country’s reputation…”
“We’ll need to station Stinger teams on airport roofs and move some antiaircraft batteries around the perimeter of the runways.”
Von Daniken waited for Marti to protest, but the justice minister remained quiet. He sat down and locked his hands behind his head, staring into space. After a moment, he shook his head and von Daniken knew that it was over. He’d lost. Worse, he knew that Marti wasn’t entirely mistaken to preach calm.
“I’m sorry, Marcus,” said Marti. “Before we do any of those things, we need to corroborate this plot. If this Blitz, or Quitab…or whatever his name is…had cohorts, you’ll find them, along with the twenty kilos of missing plastic explosives and the white van. If you want me to shut down our entire country, you must give me concrete evidence of a plot to shoot down an airliner on Swiss soil. I won’t paralyze the country based on a confession extracted by your buddies at the CIA.”
“And Ransom?”
“What about him?” Marti asked offhandedly as he stood and made his way to the door. “He’s a murder suspect. Leave him to the cantonal authorities.”
“I’m waiting to learn if the detective who was injured has come out of a coma. I’m hoping he might be able to shed some light on what Ransom might have wanted with those bags.”
“You needn’t bother. I was told that the detective succumbed to his injuries an hour ago. Now Ransom’s wanted for two murders.”
Von Daniken felt as if he’d been stabbed in the back. “But he’s the key—”
Marti’s eye twitched and a hint of color fired in his cheeks. The anger had been there all along. It had just been kept well hidden. “No, Chief Inspector, the key to this investigation is finding that van and the men who want to shoot down a jet over Swiss soil. Forget about Ransom. That’s an order.”
36
The van trawled the streets
of the sleeping neighborhood. It was no longer white. Days earlier it had been repainted a flat black, its side panels stenciled with the name of a fictitious catering company. The phone number advertised was active and would be answered professionally. The Swiss license plates had likewise been replaced by German ones, beginning with the letters “ST,” for Stuttgart, a large industrial city close to the border.
The Pilot sat behind the wheel. He was careful to keep his speed under the legal limit. At every stop sign, he brought the van to a full halt. He had checked that all of the vehicle’s running lights were in working order. Confronted with a yellow traffic signal, he slowed and was content to wait. Under no circumstance could he risk police attention. Examination of the stainless steel crates in the cargo bay would prove disastrous. If the plan had any weakness, it was this: the necessity to transport the drone on public streets without safeguard.
The van slid through Oerlikon, Glattbrugg, and Opfikon, on the outskirts of Zurich. Soon, it left behind the lanes crowded with apartments and homes, and entered a sparse pine forest. The road climbed steeply through the trees. After a few minutes, the forest fell away and the van crested the foothill, coming upon a broad snow-crusted park. Here the street dead-ended and the Pilot guided the van onto a macadam road that ran the length of the park, approximately one kilometer in length. Black ice layered the asphalt. He could feel the tires losing their grip even at this slow speed. He was not unduly concerned. The location met his demanding specifications. The road—or runway, as he preferred to think of it—was as straight as a ruler. There were no trees nearby to interfere with the takeoff. In a few days, the ice would be gone, anyway. The forecast called for a front of high pressure moving over the area by Friday, bringing sunshine and a sharp increase in temperature.
Continuing to the end of the road, he swung the van into a private drive. The garage door was open and the pavement cleared of snow and ice. Seconds after he pulled into the shelter, the door closed behind him.
He left the garage by a side door and walked outside, eager to stretch his legs after the long drive. As he headed toward the park, a roar built in the air, a shrill, ear-piercing whistle that assaulted his ears. The noise grew louder. He gazed into the night sky as the belly of an airliner passed overhead, no more than a thousand feet above him. The plane was an Airbus A380, the new double-deck jumbo jet designed to carry up to six hundred passengers. The engines whined magnificently as the plane climbed higher into the sky. It was close enough for him to read the insignia on the tail. A purple orchid with the word “Thai” beneath it. The 21:30 flight to Bangkok.
The Pilot watched the plane disappear into the clouds, then turned and looked behind him. Sprawled on the plain below was a city within a city. A multitude of lights illuminating long strips of concrete, steel, and glass passenger terminals, and capacious hangars, surrounded by fields of snow.
Zurich Airport.
The view couldn’t have been better.