Kano and Kisho looked at each other wondering who ‘she’ was. Finally they asked “Who’s ‘she’?”
Tom and Lela ignored them, scouring the view of Monaco harbour below them.
“Who is ‘she’?” repeated Kisho.
“Tylanni,” replied an agitated Lela.
“What do you mean Tylanni?” asked an exasperated Kisho, it was like pulling teeth. “Will somebody just tell me what the hell is going on?”
“You know I got this plane for my birthday, well Lela and my mum got a pretty spectacular present too. They’d always wanted a boat and this year they got one as a joint birthday present, it’s supposed to be here in its berth.”
“Maybe we just missed it?”
“Trust me, if it were there we would have seen it,” said Lela.
Rachel and Lela’s birthday present had been a massive surprise in more ways than one. Their birthdays were within a week of each other and coincided with the start of the summer holidays. The family had boarded the plane as normal for their holiday to Penaraja. However, a minor fault developed in the plane which resulted in an unscheduled stop in Nice. Of course, nothing was really unscheduled. On arrival at Nice, a helicopter whisked them down to Monaco to spend the night in the Presidential suite of the Hotel de Paris. After dinner on their exclusive balcony, a spectacular firework display lit up the sky, at the end of which a particular ship, anchored in the port, was lit up in a blaze of floodlights. Two pairs of binoculars were produced and given to Rachel and Lela. Sitting in the Monaco port was the most magnificent yacht. It was not the largest boat but was certainly one of the sleekest and Donald assured them was the fastest. Rachel and Lela both began to cry as they read the name on the bow of the ship, ‘Tylanni’, named in memory of Lela’s late mother. They immediately went down to the port and spent the following week cruising around the Med before returning to Alba One and resuming their trip to Penaraja.
“You would definitely have seen her from up here,” said Tom. “She’s over 350 feet long. In fact if you look below us now, that’s the Carinthia VII which is 320 feet long. Tylanni looks similar only sleeker and 50 feet longer.”
“That’s enormous,” said Kano.
“Well she’s certainly not invisible, where the hell is she?” exclaimed Tom. “Lela are you sure she wasn’t going anywhere?”
“Positive. In fact, your dad mentioned she needed some work to be done and would not be able to leave port for a month.”
“Very strange, very, very strange,” mumbled Tom to himself.
“Unless you want to land here, I suggest we get back on course soon or we we’ll have to land to refuel,” said Kisho.
Tom looked at Lela.
“What do you want to do?”
“There’s not a lot we can do, I’ll send your dad a message and see what he says. I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation.” Lela tried to be positive.
“Yep, I’m sure there is too. Let’s go Kisho.”
Kisho pushed the throttles to full power and the small jet rocketed back towards its fifty thousand feet cruising altitude and 650mph. They would land in just over 9 hours.
Donald responded quickly to Lela’s text and explained that he forgot to mention that the works on Tylanni were being completed in Marseille, not Monaco. Tom and Lela stared at each other, they knew it was another lie. Tom used the on-board internet facilities to visit a number of websites to check out his father’s claim. Like train spotting and plane spotting, mega yacht spotting had its fanatics who logged the movements of all yachts, in particular famous ones. At present, Tylanni was the hottest boat on the yacht-spotter circuit. Everybody wanted to know about her. Her exact performance and specifications were a closely guarded secret but everybody knew she was extremely fast, they just didn’t know how fast. From the internet, Tom discovered that Tylanni had left port three days earlier and had disappeared. Spotters were discussing predicted destinations but one thing was for sure, she was not in Marseille and in fact, was last seen heading in the opposite direction. Tom and Lela decided to keep a close eye on the websites to find out exactly what was going on.
“The coastline you can see to your left is Equatorial Guinea. We’ll be landing in 30 minutes,” announced the captain over the intercom.
Donald turned to Rachel and Saki but both were sound asleep. He looked out at the darkened sky which, with little light pollution, looked stunning. Donald turned to wake Rachel as a shooting star streaked across the sky. But something wasn’t right. He looked again. It wasn’t a shooting star at all…
Chapter 11
Smith’s helicopter took two hours to reach its destination. The Committee’s secret army was based in the centre of Equatorial Guinea’s mainland. Equatorial Guinea was a strange country with its capital located on a small island off the coast of Cameroon. Smith himself couldn’t quite understand why they didn’t just move to the mainland but then, having spent the previous few days with the Guinean President, he didn’t really understand why they did anything the way they did.
The base was only accessible by air, ensuring complete secrecy. The nearest road was 50 miles away and the nearest town over 70 miles away.
“Good evening Sir,” said the Deputy Commander as Smith stepped out of the helicopter.
“Good evening. Are we ready?”
“Yes Sir.”
“Good, let’s get things moving!” he ordered.
As he gave the order, five men ran to the hangar on their left, unlocked the doors and disappeared. Two minutes later, a long and strange looking machine emerged. It looked liked an elongated stealth fighter with wheels. It was articulated and moved surprisingly fast for its size, zipping across the compound and coming to a swift stop at Smith’s side. Smith could not get used to the machine’s ugly and awkward demeanour, it was the only one in existence. It was completely invisible to radar, heat seeking missiles and just about any other missile. Its external skin was built from a non-metallic composite which could withstand a direct hit from a tank and, most amazingly, could change its colour like a chameleon. Its shape meant that from a distance of anything over 50 metres, the vehicle literally disappeared into the background. Protruding from the rear stood its main purpose for being, its missile launch system, containing the experimental Stealth Strike Missile. This missile was designed to be undetectable in flight and more importantly would leave no trace of its existence on hitting its target. It was the ultimate fire and deny weapon.
The missile system began to rise as the weapon readied itself to fire. Once in position, Smith checked his watch and looked across to his firing team, it was nearly time. At any moment they would be notified that the target was ready.
“Are we ready gentlemen?” he asked.
“Yes Sir, we’re locked on the target and ready to fire.”
“Excellent.”
His phone buzzed, he answered the call, said nothing and hung up.
“Fire,” he said calmly.
The missile slowly lifted from the tube and smoothly made its way into the night sky in almost complete silence. A long tube covered the exhaust area meaning that only those directly under it could see the flames firing its climb into the sky. It slowly made its way to 5,000 feet at which point its main system ignited producing a flash of light as the missile accelerated to over Mach 5. It was the first time Smith had witnessed a launch of this missile and he was impressed. Not only was it barely visible, it was inaudible and the delay in acceleration meant that the characteristic boom of a missile launch simply didn’t happen.
The missile continued on a trajectory which would take it into the inner atmosphere where its warhead would bend for a fraction of a second allowing the propulsion portion of the weapon to power it into a downward track.
