Exit wound

He typed in further instructions and the screen changed. This time a digital map of the entire Gulf region appeared. Moving across it were hundreds of letters, numbers and what I’d always known as ‘tracks’ – dotted lines that charted an aircraft’s speed and heading.

I checked the time in the corner of the screen against my watch. Everything was happening live. ‘How do you get into data like this?’

He looked at me and smiled because he knew something Mr Manley didn’t. ‘IKIA is my country’s pride and joy. The government bills it as a modern airport comparable with the best in the world – Singapore, Dubai, Denver… It’s not, of course, but one of the things they upgraded at the time they built the airport was an air-traffic reporting centre for the Tehran region and, unlike the airport itself, it’s pretty good.’

‘You hack into the air-traffic-control computer?’

Ali was now in full-on geek mode. ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that. A commercial aircraft, as I’m sure you know, Jim, will transmit a constant stream of data to centres like these – where it is, where it’s heading, lots of different information. The data is transmitted essentially in the form of an email. The emails are encoded into radio signals, and if you have a good scanner, you can intercept and receive those signals.’

His smile turned into a big grin. ‘A member of our group has a scanner linked to his laptop and some decoding software that allows him to see the position and heading of any aircraft in the region. What you are looking at is the result. We post it on a secure site to which a handful of us have access. In any other country, this wouldn’t be illegal – in fact, the scanner and the software are standard equipment for spotters in most parts of the world. But this, my friend, is Iran. We have to exercise some care…’

He hit some more keys and the screen changed. I checked the digital clock. This time, we were looking at a representation of the air-traffic picture as seen by a controller at the Tehran reporting centre a little after five o’clock local time – pretty much the moment at which the Falcon climbed away towards the mountains.

Ali peered at the screen. ‘Now, let’s see…’ He used the tip of a biro to point at a dot that was slowly tracking away from Tehran.

I got into geek mode too. ‘That’s our bird?’

He nodded.

‘What can you tell me about it?’

He hit the keys again and a small panel appeared next to the slowly tracking dot. ‘This tells me almost everything I need to know. Type of aircraft: Dassault Falcon 7X. Fuel status: full. Destination: Quetta, Pakistan…’

‘Does it give a passenger manifest?’

‘It flew out empty. There were no passengers.’

I looked at him to check he wasn’t taking the piss. ‘You’re sure no one was on board?’

He was busy on the keyboard. ‘Sure, the catering company only delivered meals for the pilots.’ He pointed at the screen. ‘See? It says so right there. Two different menus in case one man gets food poisoning. Just two sets of meals, Jim. It’s going to Quetta empty. Maybe to pick someone up or something. Who knows?’

‘Are you able to track back?’

He gave another of his little smiles. ‘You mean, review the historical air-traffic picture? Sure. How far do you want to go?’

‘I’d like to know the aircraft’s status when it first flew into IKIA.’

‘Two days ago, correct?’

I nodded.

Ali started to type. A few seconds later, the screen changed. He leant forward, said something under his breath, and rekeyed the data.

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know. You don’t often see this…’

‘See what?’

‘The aircraft did not file a flight plan. Do you know where it flew in from?’

‘The UAE.’

He flicked open a notepad and leafed through. When he found the page he needed he ran his finger down a set of letters and numbers next to the margin.

‘What are those?’

‘Registration numbers.’ He flicked to another page and typed in some more data. He leant forward. ‘Ah, OK…’

‘What?’

‘I made the mistake of thinking that this is a commercially owned aircraft. It isn’t.’

‘No, it’s an RF registration. It’s almost a military aircraft.’

He pointed to the dots and tracks criss-crossing the Persian Gulf, before picking one of them out with the tip of his biro and following it – a track heading north out of Dubai.

‘The software “sees” all commercial air traffic along with all the details of a particular flight. Take this one, for example. From the data on the screen I know that it’s an Emirates flight out of Dubai, that its registration number is A6-ZDA, that it’s en route to London and that it’s at fifteen thousand feet and climbing.’ He then pointed to some untagged dots within Iranian airspace. ‘You see these? These are all uncorrelated tracks. The system registers their presence – it has to know where they are for it to operate safely – but the tracks themselves carry little if any data. Some do not even carry call-signs.’

‘And those are military flights?’