Land of Promise (12 page)

Although they were primarily used for hauling airfreight, TAT owned one full set of quick-install passenger seats. Most of these seats were usually stored onboard The Cannibal. Together, these seats could accommodate up to 120 passengers. Normally, however, the three transports each had a minimum of nine passenger seats installed for occasional passengers. Aside from the lack of luggage bins, the full 120-seat arrangement was similar to that found on typical commercial airliners, albeit without carpeting or passenger windows.

TAT’s planes had unmarked tails and just a few small fuselage markings with “TAT” and the profile of a goose in flight. Their hangar bore the same logo, and beneath this was painted the words:

Tulloch’s Wild Geese at Your Service

Any Cargo - Any Time - Any Place

Chapter 10: Eagle of the Alps

“When the regiment of Halberdiers

Is proudly marching by,

The eagle of the mountain screams

From out his stormy sky;

Who speaketh to the precipice,

And to the chasm sheer;

Who hovers o’er the thrones of kings,

And bids the caitiffs fear.

King of the peak and glacier,

King of the cold, white scalps --

He lifts his head, at that close tread,

The eagle of the Alps.”
-- Victor Hugo,
The Swiss Mercenaries

Solus Christus, The Ilemi Republic -- December, Three Years After Declaration of the Caliphate

Rick and Meital concentrated on acquiring low observable (LO) aircraft for Ilemis, since they realized that the door might soon shut for “dual use” aircraft if export controls were tightened. They caught a ride with a TAT flight to Rome, where one of the IL-76s was scheduled to pick up a mixed load on behalf of several Ilemi companies that included: a New Holland mini-excavator with two spare buckets, two B-P Battioni e Pagani S.p.A. off-road forklifts, three Komatsu excavator buckets, two spare Komatsu excavator spare tracks, a replacement Caterpillar D6 bulldozer blade and assorted spare Cat and Komatsu hydraulic components, eight small 220 VAC generators with diesel engines, six Lombardo mountain bikes, two trailer-mounted halogen floodlight stands with generators for road crews, assorted office furniture, 40 fire extinguishers, 3 Christini AWD Dual Sport motorcycles with cargo racks, 12 Zanussi refrigerators, 4 Indesit brand dishwashers, 28 window-mount air conditioners, and a Carpigiani ice cream maker.

Reading through the full cargo pickup summary list aloud, Meital suffixed, “No fledgling nation would be complete without an ice cream maker.”

Rick laughed and said, “Not at
our
latitude, that’s for certain.”

Transiting the Rome airport, Rick and Meital took an afternoon flight to Zurich, Switzerland. Meital had previous experience traveling in Switzerland, so she bought them one-day First Class SBB travel passes from an automatic vending machine. They took the tram to the Zurich main train station (
Hauptbahnhof
or HBH) and waited for a train to Lucerne. There were hourly SBB trains to Lucerne, so the wait was short. During that lull, Meital traded 4,000 NEuros for the equivalent in Swiss Francs, as Switzerland was Europe’s last holdout with a currency that was independent of the NEuro. They had just a five-minute wait on the
gleis
(platform) before the sleek train to Lucerne pulled up.

The Lucerne airport was linked via the city’s tram network. With typical Swiss efficiency, they were whisked from the Lucerne’s Bahnhof on Zentralstrasse through the city to a stop just steps from the Alexander Hotel Seeburg, which overlooked the lake. As they unpacked, Rick took a few minutes to check his e-mail inbox. There was an e-mail from Harry Heston with some last-minute advice on contract negotiations and adding stealth RAM coating material to the Itemized List in the End User/End Use Certificate. This was a document issued by a national government that guarantees that the end user and end use of a piece of military equipment is with a qualified military or police organization. Rick quickly added the necessary wording, plugged in his portable printer, and printed out the revised Certificate. He signed it and had Meital countersign it; in addition to being a diplomat, her other title was Deputy Secretary for Military Procurement.

They had an appointment the next day with Pilatus Aircraft in Stans, Switzerland, on the south side of Lake Lucerne. Their first meeting with Pilatus was not scheduled until 2 p.m., so they spent the next morning sightseeing in Lucerne. The replica
Kapellbrücke
covered bridge was a bit disappointing to Meital, since much of the original bridge had been destroyed by an insane arsonist back in the 1990s. To her discerning eye, most of the triangular paintings hanging inside the overhead supports of the bridge were only barely passable replicas. So she spent most of her time at the bridge studying and photographing the few remaining original paintings that pre-dated the tragic fire.

A GNC bus ride took them to Löwenplatz to see the Lion Memorial, which impressed both of them. The
Löwendenkmal
was a huge statue of a dying lion carved into a sandstone cliff to memorialize the 700 Swiss mercenaries who died fighting in the French Revolution. After a hurried lunch at the Burgertube restaurant in Lucerne’s
altstat
, they took a cab to Stans.

The Pilatus factory (Pilatus Flugzeugwerke), located at the northwest corner of the Stans airport, was a modest cobbled-together collection of buildings that spanned more than century of architectural styles. By pre-arrangement the Akinses first toured the Pilatus Moth assembly line, escorted by a young engineer fresh out of college. She was not able to answer some of their technical questions, so she deferred to the Moth Line Senior Technician, Peter Neidhart. He was congenial, spoke excellent English, and his pious vocabulary that included phrases like “Lord willing” and “by God’s grace” immediately pegged him as a Second Reformer. His expertise was needed, so the technician stayed with them for the remainder of their assembly line tour.

Neidhart was in his early 50s and, although he had a wiry physique, he walked with a slight limp. He was surprised to hear Meital asked him a couple of questions about the Moth in letter-perfect German, and even more surprised when she used the
Schweizerdeutsch
word
Hügel
in place of the
Hochdeutsch
word
Bühl
when asking about hilltop landing fields.

The Moth was a fascinating aircraft. Built in both piloted and UAV versions, it was constructed primarily of carbon fiber composites, making the plane both sturdy and light. Its takeoff and landing features bettered even those of the legendary Pilatus Porter. Unlike the Porter, which had fixed landing gear and used a conventional turboprop engine mounted in an elongated nose, the Moth had landing gear that retracted into angular bulges in the fuselage and a stubby nose. A pair of ducted fan jet engines deeply set in protrusions in the plane’s high wing powered it. The plane could cruise at as little as 50 miles per hour for maximum endurance and short landings, yet it could also fly at 580 mph at full throttle as high as 35,000 feet. It had a service ceiling of 38,500 feet and was equipped with brown rubber de-icing boots on the leading edges of its wings. As a 21
^st
century design, the Moth had not only composite construction but also advanced avionics with Built-In Test Equipment (BITE).

Aside from the plane’s large windows in the piloted examples, the plane had stealth written all over it. Their guide explained that as long as the pilot wore a helmet that was RAM coated, the windows were not a substantial drawback to the plane’s LO characteristics. She explained, “The Moth has a radar cross section about the same as a goose or a swan. But if the pilot were to wear a standard flight helmet, the plane’s RCS might look more like
several
swans on radar.”

In 1962 the Soviet mathematician Pyotr Ufimtsev published
Method of Edge Waves in the Physical Theory of Diffraction,
which revealed that radar cross section was a function of the edge configuration of an object rather than its size. A decade later, the beginning of America’s first declassified stealth fighter project, then coined Hopeless Diamond, came to fruition. “Hopeless” was unfortunately an accurate descriptor, chosen because of the plane’s poor aerodynamics. This was soon followed by the Have Blue project, which morphed into Senior Trend and the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter, but that wouldn’t be known to the public until 1988.

Part of what made the Moth stealthy was the fact that its jet turbine blades were not visible from in front of the plane. This, the young engineer explained, prevented tell-tale radar or lidar reflections. Another feature was that the exhaust from the jet engines was automatically vectored downward on takeoffs and landings, providing additional lift and hence an incredibly low stall speed. She also mentioned that this feature could be selectively disabled when landing on longer unimproved airstrips to reduce the risk of the engines ingesting any debris.

The crenulated wings of the Moth gave it a distinctive profile compared to conventional aircraft. The “Moth” name was inspired by its moth-like bulbous fuselage and the curved profile of the trailing edges of its triangular wings. Unlike the Porter, which had inherent aerodynamic stability, the Moth was intentionally unstable due to its stealthy wing, fuselage, and tail profiles. This meant that it could only be flown with the aid of digital “fly by wire” flight controls linked to sensors and microprocessors that made constant corrections. Neidhart was able to answer all their questions except one about types of available radar absorptive coatings. To Rick’s query, Neidhart answered, “I cannot say.”

Rick laughed and asked, “Cannot say, or will not say?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but that information is a Pilatus proprietary secret.”

Rick nodded and said in his rudimentary German, “
Ich versteht
.” He did not further press the topic.

They lingered at the end of the assembly line admiring a freshly completed Moth, which was already painted with the livery of Australian Army Aviation in a contrasting RAM coating. They chit-chatted about the Alexander Hotel Seeburg, and Rick and Meital had a lot of questions about servicing Moths in austere environments, as well as the variant of the plane that had oversized tires for landing on rough airstrips. Their tour guide looked twice at her wristwatch, and the Akinses took the hint. Rick shook hands with Neidhart and handed him one of his gold-stiffened Mylar calling cards, with a subtle wink. His cards read:

Rick Akins

Roving Ambassador

The Ilemi Republic

e-mail: [email protected]

Their next meeting was in a paneled executive conference room. Since they were in the market for just a few
used
Moths and a selection of spare parts, they were surprised to be greeted by the company President. After exchanging business cards and handshakes in the ritualized 21
^st
century German fashion, with Rick doing his best to mimic Meital’s gestures, the President said, “I have been closely following the news on the birth of your new nation, and I’m thrilled that you are considering the Moth for your utility transport needs as well as search and rescue needs.”

The conversation that followed about the capabilities, pricing, and availability of used Moths very carefully sidestepped any mention of military use for the planes. The company President promised to put Rick in touch with several brokers in Europe and in East Africa that had access to used Moths, and that the latest avionics, rebuild parts, and coatings were available directly from his factory, “…all on short notice, and through discreet channels.”

Their conversation ended with a humorous exchange about the fact that there were no plans to have a government aircraft registry in the Ilemi Republic, nor any requirement for pilot licensing. Meital explained that private flying clubs would handle all aircraft registration, training, qualification tests, and check flights, and that they saw no need for formal licensure. She concluded, “Ultimately, however, each individual is responsible for his or her own actions and for any damage they might do. We don’t believe in licenses. Because, by definition, all licenses are nothing more than formalized permission, for a fee, to conduct an activity that would otherwise be illegal. But for us, there are very few actions that
are
illegal, and all of those are clearly spelled out in the Bible.” The Pilatus president politely chided, “That borders, I would say, on anarchy.”

To that, Rick replied, “Sir, we have a saying in our country: ‘There’s no government like
no
government.’” That got everyone in the room laughing.

After handing the signed End User/End Use Certificate and Letter of Credit to the company President, they said their goodbyes. Rick and Meital called for another cab back to Lucerne, and they had dinner in the restaurant at their lakeside hotel, which specialized in fish recipes. The restaurant’s windows looked out on the
Vierwaldstättersee
. In the distance across the lake, they could see the outline of Mount Pilatus. Their dinner was pleasant. Meital and Rick both had trout dishes, and they had a great view of Lake Lucerne, as twilight fell.

Just after they were served
gianduja
(a chocolate-hazelnut tart) for dessert, a hotel clerk approached Rick and handed him an envelope addressed to “Herr Ambassador Akins und Ambassador Frau Ambassador Akins.” Rick opened it and found a hand-written note from Peter Neidhart. It read:

Later, in their hotel room, Rick read the letter aloud to Meital and suffixed, “I don’t know what all those letters stand for, but a web search will tell me, ricky-tick. I think we just scored ourselves another subject matter expert.”

The following morning they did some shopping before their next train journey. Meital bought several books at an antiquarian bookstore and some jewelry for her mother and sister. Rick also bought Meital a diamond pendant. At another shop, Rick couldn’t resist buying an analog wristwatch for himself. It was a 1990s-vintage IWC Schaffhausen hairspring chronometer with a recently refurbished tritium vial dial. He also bought a dozen pocketknives -- mostly Wenger Swiss Army knives. Meital made sure that Rick bought one with a wine bottle corkscrew as an intended gift for her father.