Scott Mariani - The Nemesis Program

‘Over seventeen hundred nautical miles all fuelled up, which we were when we left Zurich. Ben, if you don’t mind my saying so, you’re sounding just a little bit weird. Something’s wrong.’

‘I don’t have a lot of time to explain, Ruth, so I’ll make this quick. The wedding’s off. And I need to borrow your plane.’

Forty-three minutes later, Ben and Roberta were walking across the tarmac at Oxford London airport in Kidlington towards a sleek twin-engined light aircraft that sat by a private hangar. The afternoon sun sparkled off the small aircraft’s pearly-white fuselage.

‘Not bad, is she?’ said a familiar voice, and Ben turned to see his sister emerging from the hangar. She was casually dressed and her hair, the same exact shade of blond as his own, was tied back under a baseball cap. Not quite the image of the corporate CEO. She was known for attending high-level conferences in faded jeans and combat boots. Business bosses from New York to Tokyo just had to get used to it.

Ruth patted the plane’s gleaming flank with pride. ‘Prototype design. Under eleven metres from nose to tail, thirteen from wingtip to wingtip, more than twenty per cent more fuel-efficient than anything in her class, with emissions to match and almost totally made of recycled materials.’

‘Still trying to save the world,’ Ben said, embracing her.

‘Beats trying to blow it up,’ she replied, hugging him tightly. In her former radical wild-child days she might have been here to firebomb the aircraft instead of as its corporate owner.

‘I’m sorry you wasted a trip,’ Ben said. ‘But it’s good to see you. You’re looking well, Ruth.’

She took a step away from him, tightly clutching both his hands and eyeing him with concern. ‘Wish I could say the same about you, bro. You look awful. You’ve got to tell me what happened between you and Brooke. Did you two fight?’

‘This is Roberta,’ Ben said, evading the question, and to avoid raising more of them he added, ‘She’s a friend of mine from long ago. Now, listen, I hate to press you, but we really need to get underway.’

Ruth greeted Roberta with a brief, slightly perplexed smile, then turned back to Ben with a jerk of her head that said, ‘Can we have a word in private?’. Leading him a few steps away, she paused under the roar of a departing light passenger jet and then asked Ben straight out: ‘Are you walking out on Brooke for her ? Is that what’s going on? Because if it is, I’m not sure how comfortable I am about getting drawn into it like this. Brooke’s a friend to me.’

‘It’s not what you think,’ Ben said, making an effort to hide the pain he was feeling. ‘Like I told you, she’s just a friend. She’s in a bit of trouble, and she needs my help.’

‘And what about Brooke?’

‘Brooke and I will work things out,’ Ben said evenly, sounding far more confident than he really was. ‘Ruth, are you going to let me use the plane or not?’

Ruth paused for a moment, then sighed and waved an arm at the aircraft. ‘Whatever. She’s all yours. Don’t you have any more luggage than that?’

‘Just what you see,’ he said, hoping she wouldn’t start asking questions about what was in his bag.

Waiting at the hangar entrance was a young guy with unkempt hair, a smattering of a beard and a ring in his ear – the kind of eco-hippy type that Steiner Industries employed these days under Ruth’s direction. ‘That handsome fellow there is Dylan,’ she explained. ‘He’s one of the best pilots we have.’

Ben looked at her. ‘Your pilot’s name is Dylan.’

She shrugged. ‘Sure. And he plays the guitar, too.’

‘He needs a shave.’

‘Believe me, you’re in good hands. He’ll take you wherever you want to go. You’ve got enough gas to take you halfway around Europe and back again.’

‘We’re not going that far,’ Ben said. By his estimate their journey distance was just under 140 nautical miles, a mere hop and a skip for the high-tech turboprop. ‘And you can hang on to Dylan. I won’t be needing him.’

‘Then who’s going to fly the—?’ Ruth blanched. ‘No, no. Please don’t tell me what I think you’re going to say. I like this plane, Ben. Not to mention it’s worth the same as a Lamborghini Reventon.’

‘If I smash it up, you can get your accounts department to invoice me,’ Ben said, stepping towards the plane. ‘I really appreciate this, Ruth.’

‘I must be crazy.’

‘It runs in the family,’ Ben said.

A few moments later, he was seated behind the cockpit controls, running an eye across the panels of dials and read-outs and the extensive array of high-tech computer wizardry as Roberta explored the rear section with its plush eco-friendly non-leather seating for four or five passengers to travel in style. ‘Pretty neat,’ she commented, opening a door and peering at a little bathroom. ‘We’ve got food and drinks on board, too. I’ll admit, I hadn’t expected travelling with you would be this luxurious.’

‘Don’t get too used to it,’ he said.

Outside, Ruth and her companions had retreated to the hangar. A couple of runway attendants in reflective vests and ear-defenders had appeared to shepherd the aircraft as it prepared for take-off. Ben fired up the engines and the twin propellers began to spin with a whine that quickly grew to a roar, muffled inside the well-insulated cabin.

‘I didn’t know you could fly one of these things,’ Roberta said from the rear, strapping herself into a seat by one of the oval porthole windows.

‘Well, I’d be lying if I said I’d ever actually flown one of these before,’ he replied, waiting for the props to get up to speed. This state-of-the-art plane was a different animal by far from the last aircraft he’d piloted – a prehistoric Supermarine Sea Otter loaded with drums of avgas that he’d deliberately crashed onto the deck of a sailing yacht like a flying incendiary bomb, blowing the aircraft, the vessel and its contingent of thugs to kingdom come. He didn’t think Roberta would appreciate those details.

‘You what? ’

‘But the basic principle’s the same for all these kinds of things,’ he said. ‘Trust me, it’s like riding a bicycle.’

‘Maybe I should’ve taken my chances with the bad guys,’ Roberta muttered to herself.

The Steiner ST-1 taxied away under the anxious gaze of its owner, picked up speed and left the runway smartly to climb into the hazy afternoon sky. Content that he wasn’t going to drop them down somewhere in the English countryside or into the Channel, Ben levelled the aircraft at 285 knots and a cruise altitude of 24,000 feet, settled back in the pilot’s seat and set his course for Normandy.

After just twenty-five uneventful minutes in the air, Ben checked his bearings, reduced altitude and caught sight of the northernmost tip of the Lower Normandy coast far below. The aircraft overflew the Pointe de Barfleur and the towering Gatteville lighthouse, just a tiny grey needle sticking up from the rocks surrounded by calm blue sea.

Remaining steady on his course for another few minutes as they passed over Saint-Vaast and then the spreading outskirts of Valognes, the nearest town of any size to the Le Val facility, Ben gradually let the plane drop down lower on the approach to his target, the small disused airfield in the countryside a few kilometres outside Carentan. As the small tongue of concrete surrounded by green fields grew larger and details came into view, he was relieved to see that Jeff Dekker had been right about the place not having changed since the last time he’d seen it.

He checked his instruments, made his final adjustments. Flaps; undercarriage; speed; altitude: everything was in order, or as close to it as need be. The Steiner ST-1 swooped in low over the rickety barbed-wire fence, the disused buildings and the graffiti-covered hangar where local kids loitered to smoke dope, and touched down with a yelp of tyres. Ben instantly eased off the throttle and the plane decelerated on the bumpy strip, rolling to a standstill forty yards short of the sunburned grass beyond. The engine whine died away and the prop came to a halt. Ben pulled off his headset, quickly reset his Omega to French time, then pressed the control to activate the hydraulics for the aircraft’s side hatch.