The Nemesis Program

Chapter Forty-Four

‘It’s not a license to globetrot,’ Ruth had said. But as Ben drove back along the winding forest and mountain roads towards Jäkkwik, tracing possible routes across the world map inside his head, he was intensely aware of the scale of the journey that now lay before him, Roberta and their new travelling companion.

It was approaching mid-afternoon by the time they finally reached the sleepy little airfield where the Steiner ST-1 was sitting in the pale sunlight looking exactly as they’d left it. There had been no new arrivals. None of the motley collection of aircraft, even those that were in a fit state to fly, had moved an inch.

‘This is your plane?’ Daniel said, staring in amazement at the Steiner turboprop as he got out of the Land Rover.

‘No, we came in that one over there,’ Ben replied tersely, and pointed at the partially stripped Swedish military transport aircraft by the hangars. He was feeling battered and sore all over from his fight with McGrath, and a dark, brooding mood had settled over him on the long road. First to board the plane, he dumped their bags in the aisle, then walked down the narrow fuselage to the bathroom, where he splashed some water on his face to clean away the worst of the blood. Most of it wasn’t his own.

When he came out of the bathroom, he found that Daniel had already ensconced himself in one of the plush faux-leather armchairs, looking like a somewhat tattered and eccentric business-class passenger waiting for a hostess to bring him a glass of chilled Chablis. Ben ignored him and stepped into the cockpit, where Roberta was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat and poring thoughtfully over a computer terminal built into one of the instrument panels.

‘We have quite some road ahead of us,’ she said, looking up as he squeezed into the pilot’s seat next to her. ‘Your sister would kill you if she knew what we were planning to inflict on her little plane.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Any thoughts on our itinerary?’

‘Some,’ he said, nodding. He reached across the controls and tapped a digital readout with his finger. ‘This tells us we still have just over eight hundred and seventy nautical miles’ worth of fuel. That’s about a thousand miles, enough to take us as far south as Berlin or thereabouts. We can be there by this evening, take on fuel and some more supplies, and stay the night before setting off again.’

Roberta nodded and poised her hands over the onboard computer’s keyboard, ready to run an online search. ‘We’re lucky to get any wi-fi reception up here at all,’ she muttered. ‘What should I be looking for?’

‘Small and out of the way places,’ Ben said. ‘We can’t just drop in out of the sky at a large airport. Besides, the bigger places will have Jet A fuel for your 747, but they might not be able to supply the 100LL avgas we need. There are always dozens of small airfields near any city that aren’t too crowded.’

‘Got it,’ Roberta said, and typed in the keywords ‘airfields near Berlin’. She paused a moment as she scanned the results that flashed up an instant later. ‘Okay. Here’s a place that looks like it could work for us. The Flugakademie Freihof, fifty k’s south of Berlin. It’s mainly a flying school, but small charter airlines and private planes use it as an airfield.’

‘That sounds possible,’ Ben agreed. At the tap of a key, the ST-1’s sophisticated flight computer automatically logged the latitude and longitude coordinates, altitude and runway length data, and pre-set the airfield’s radio frequency into the system.

Together the two of them spent the next hour figuring out the best route, while Roberta rapidly covered a notepad with details of distances, fuel range calculations, time zones and mile to nautical miles conversions. Point to point they were looking at an overall distance of more than seven thousand miles, divided up into legs by the number of times they’d have to refuel. From Germany they plotted a route that would carry them sixteen hundred miles south-eastwards to the limit of their fuel capacity to Tbilisi in Georgia, threading a careful path across the troubled zones of the North Caucasus and those autonomous or semi-autonomous Muslim republics such as Dagestan, Ingushetia, North Ossetia-Alania and Karachaevo-Cherkessia, which were kept on a tight intelligence and military leash by Moscow and which Ben was hesitant about overflying.

But it was an unstable and ever-volatile world out there, and there was no route that could take them where they needed to go without touching danger. From Georgia the flight path took them south across the mountainous plains of Iran and onwards to the relative sanctuary of Muscat in Oman, where the authorities would be so used to expensive private aircraft flying in and out that Ben was willing to take his chances with the regulation-heavy Sultanate regime there.

Then it would be the long trek across the ocean to the southern tip of India and another minor airfield Ben and Roberta searched out online, situated a few miles from the city of Bangalore. In Ben’s experience India was generally a pretty relaxed place, riddled with the kind of lazy corruption that tended to come in handy in situations like this; there was enough cash left to cross an official palm or two with silver if it helped them pass through unhindered.

From there, the fifth and final leg of the journey would take them across the Indian Ocean to Medan on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. ‘Assuming we can find a safe place to leave the plane,’ Ben said, ‘we’re going to have to hire a vehicle so our friend back there can guide us the rest of the way to this secret base.’

‘So there we have it,’ Roberta said, looking at the finished itinerary and shaking her head in wonder. ‘Like I said, it’s one hell of a way. Based on a cruise speed of around two hundred eighty-five knots and allowing for rest stops and refuelling, I calculate it’s going to take us around forty-eight hours to get to Medan. I’m worried about you doing all that flying.’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ Ben said. ‘Just worry that this one lead we have is worth trekking halfway around the planet to check out. Because if doesn’t get us anywhere, it’s game over. This is our one shot.’