He glances at his GPS unit. Nine minutes, forty-nine seconds. He sits hard, reaches into the wing’s open hatch and grabs another cylinder, opens it and slides out a white, rectangular device. What looks like a school ruler is attached horizontally to the top. A smaller ruler is attached vertically at one end. Fastened at various points over the cylinder are six lipstick-sized cylinders. A canister with a nozzle at one end is fastened to the left side. Tam places the device on the ground. It stands on four wire legs that end in suction-cap feet.
Tam reaches into the wing again, grabs a padded envelope and a smaller box. He unzips the envelope and draws out a MacBook Air. He flips open the laptop and it wakes from sleep. He pulls a Logitech joystick from the box, plugs it into the MacBook’s USB port and squeezes its trigger.
Both rulers on the device spin to life with a shriek. They’re actually rotor blades that turn five hundred times per minute. The little chopper rises a metre off the ground and hovers in place, its fuselage glowing white from a light source within. With the shrill buzz of the rotor blades it resembles a gigantic albino wasp, ready to strike.
Tam moves the joystick. The chopper flies towards the air vent, then lurches past. ‘Come on!’ Tam’s trembling hand is vibrating the joystick too much, making it difficult to control. He clenches his hand to tame the shaking then moves the joystick again. The chopper hovers to a position above the air vent. He releases the joystick’s trigger a fraction and the chopper drops into the shaft. He watches it descend. It took him six months to develop but he has less than eight minutes to use it.
Tam’s eyes move to the MacBook’s screen. It’s divided into six separate windows. Each lipstick-sized cylinder attached to the chopper’s exterior is a video camera that transmits live images of its surroundings, the glowing fuselage emitting enough light to illuminate a metre around it. He squeezes the joystick’s trigger and the chopper hovers in place, just above the bottom of the shaft. There’s a thin, rectangular air vent in front of it.
The Japanese-Irishman wipes his forehead with his free hand and drags off a sheet of sweat. His face is blanched white and his body shivers. He grips the joystick hard to stop his hand shaking, then eases it forward. The chopper flies into the vent, has five centimetres clearance on each side.
He glances at his GPS unit. The numbers are fuzzy. He blinks, focuses. Seven minutes, thirty-six seconds. He’s behind schedule. He turns back to the MacBook. To the chopper’s left is another lattice grate. Tam pivots the chopper towards it then presses a button on top of the joystick.
White foam shoots from the canister on the side of the chopper’s fuselage. It looks like shaving cream, except you should never put it on your face. The foam hits the grate and expands fast, doubles then quadruples its size. Tam works the joystick, backs the chopper away from the grate as fast as it will go.
He hears the muted explosion through the shaft beside him. The six windows on the MacBook’s screen flash white then show a mist of fine particles. The air clears and he edges the chopper back towards the grate, except the grate is no longer there. Used for detonating unexploded mines, the nitromethane foam has done its work. Tam had reconfigured its composition so it would combust after being exposed to oxygen for ten seconds. He grips the joystick hard and eases the chopper through the jagged opening. He glances at his GPS unit. Four minutes, fifty-two seconds. He hasn’t got long.
Dirk feathers his delta wing, knocks off some speed, looks at his GPS unit. The arrow is green and the clock reads four minutes and forty-nine seconds.
He glances at Henri, 200 metres to the left. He can’t help but feel a deep loyalty towards his commander. Henri had been the one who turned Dirk’s life around, beginning on that morning two decades ago when he recognised an ‘intriguing potential’ in the German.
There had been a time when Dirk was recognised every hour of every day, stopped in the street for a photo, an autograph or a proposition, or all three at once. Then it ceased. Abruptly. After he cut down the oak.
He hasn’t thought about that tree for the longest time. It stood in the centre of the driveway in front of his newly acquired castle, a castle bought with earnings from an outrageously successful piece of Europop ear candy called ‘Tango in Berlin’.
Dirk told everyone he wanted to cut down the tree because it blocked his view of the Düsseldorf countryside from the master bedroom. In truth, even with the curtains drawn, the tree’s gnarled branches made unsettling shadows on the ceiling above his bed at night that gave him nightmares.
Dirk decided that the best solution was to cut down the tree. That it was a 470-year-old oak, over 30 metres in height and 100 tonnes in weight, did not deter him. So, late one night, Dirk took to it with an axe. The oak, far from being the healthy, towering megalith it appeared to be, was, in fact, rotted to the core with water mould. After just seventeen spirited swipes the tree keeled over, crashed to the ground and flattened Dirk’s new Bentley. It was no great disaster. It was insured and if the insurance company didn’t pay up he could afford another.
Next morning the salvage team he employed to remove the tree uncovered two naked bodies in the car’s wreckage. It was clear that the couple had died in flagrante. The bodies belonged to Olga, Dirk’s supermodel girlfriend, and Raffi, Dirk’s best friend and band mate. While Dirk sang and was the face of Big Arena, their pop duo, Raffi was the brains of the outfit, the one who wrote and produced the music. He wasn’t sure what was worse, the fact that his best friend and his girlfriend had an affair or that he was accused of their murder.
The court case lasted four months. Dirk was cleared but quickly became Germany’s OJ Simpson, proved innocent yet considered guilty, and ostracised because of it. He was also broke, forced to liquidate his assets to pay for his defence and settle the civil cases bought by Raffi’s and Olga’s families. He couldn’t even record music any more as no one wanted to work with the guy who cut down the oak.
So Dirk changed his name and disappeared. He worked his way around the globe, primarily on freighters, though he wasn’t choosy and would do whatever was on offer as long as he was paid. Whenever he was recognised he would start a fight, his aim being to alter his face so there was no visual connection to the pixie-featured, flaxen-haired lead singer of Big Arena. After six years of drifting and fighting this bargain-basement plastic surgery had worked beautifully. He now resembled Billy Ray rather than Miley Cyrus and was rarely recognised. He was also living hand-to-mouth on the streets of Paris.
That was when he came to the attention of one Henri Leon. Early one morning twenty years ago the Frenchman identified an ‘intriguing potential’ in the man who cleaned his windscreen at a set of traffic lights not far from the Arc de Triomphe and Dirk’s life was changed forever.
Everyone in the crew had a similar story of Henri’s positive intervention in their lives, that’s why they were so dedicated to him, and willing to go above and beyond for the man.
Dirk glances at his GPS unit once again. Four minutes, twenty seconds. Not long now.
The cement room is lit by a dull yellow safety light positioned above the only door, a solid-steel item locked from the opposite side. Beyond the door lies a five-kilometre passageway with a locked and guarded entry point. The now destroyed air vent was the sole means of ventilation for the room, the only way to let heat out while making sure none of those alligators or vipers found their way in.