by Wilbur Smith
‘Two.’ Peter found that, as always in these desperate moments, he was functioning very coldly, very efficiently. His shooting had been as reflexively perfect as if he were walking a combat shoot with jump-up cardboard targets.
He had even counted his shots, there were four left in the Walther.
‘And two more of them,’ he thought, but the smoke was still so thick that his visibility was down to under fifteen feet, and the swirling forest of dangling oxygen hose still agitated by the grenade blasts cut down his visibility further.
He jumped over the broken body of his number two, the blood squelching under his rubber soles, and suddenly the chunky black figure of Colin Noble loomed across the cabin. He was in the far aisle, having come in over the starboard wing. In the writhing smoke he looked like some demon from the pit, hideous and menacing in his gas mask. He dropped into the marksman’s crouch, holding the big Browning in a double-handed grip, and the clangour of the gun beat upon the air like one of the great bronze bells of Notre Dame.
He was shooting at another scarlet-shirted figure, half seen through the smoke and the dangling hoses, a man with a round boyish face and drooping sandy moustache. The big Velex bullets tore the hijacker to pieces with the savagery of a predator’s claws. They seemed to pin him like an insect to the central bulkhead, and they smashed chunks of living flesh from his chest and splinters of white bone from his skull.
‘Three,’ thought Peter. ‘One left now – and I must get the camera.’
He had seen the black camera in the hands of the girl he had killed, had seen it fall, and he knew how deadly important it was to secure the detonator before it fell into the hands of the other girl, the blonde one, the dangerous one.
It had been only four seconds since he had penetrated the hull, yet it seemed like a dragging eternity. He could hear the crash of the slap-hammers tearing out the door locks, both fore and aft. Within seconds there would be Thor assault teams pouring into the Boeing through every opening, and he had not yet located the fourth hijacker, the truly dangerous one.
‘Get down! Everybody down!’ chanted the grenade men, and Peter spun lightly, and ran for the flight deck. He was certain the blonde girl would be there at the control centre.
Then, in front of him lay the girl he had shot down, the long, dark hair spread out around her pale, still terrified face. Her hair was already sodden with dark blood, and the black gap in her white teeth made her look like an old woman. She blocked the aisle with a tangle of slim boneless limbs.
The forward hatch crashed open as the lock gave way, but there were still solid curtains of white smoke ahead of him. Peter gathered himself to jump over the girl’s body, and at that instant the other girl, the blonde girl, bounded up from the deck, seeming to appear miraculously from the smoke, like some beautiful but evil apparition.
She dived half across the block of central seating, groping for the camera, and Peter was slightly off balance, blocking himself in the turn to bring his gun hand on to her. He changed hands smoothly, for he was equally accurate with either, but it cost him the tenth part of a second, and the girl had the strap of the camera now and was tugging desperately at it. The camera seemed to be snagged, and Peter swung on her, taking the head shot for she was less than ten paces away, and even in the smoke and confusion he could not miss.
One of the few passengers who had been breathing oxygen from his hanging mask, and was still conscious, ignored the chanted orders ‘Get down! Stay down!’ and suddenly stumbled to his feet, screaming, ‘Don’t shoot! Get me out of here! Don’t shoot!’ in a rising hysterical scream. He was directly between Peter and the red-shirted girl, blocking Peter’s field of fire, and Peter wrenched the gun off him at the moment that he fired. The bullet slammed into the roof, and the passenger barged into Peter, still screaming.
‘Get me out! I want to get out!’
Peter tried desperately to clear his gun hand, for the girl had broken the strap of the camera and was fumbling with the black box. The passenger had an arm around Peter’s gun arm, was shaking him wildly, weeping and screaming.
From across the central block of seats, Colin Noble fired once. He was still in the starboard aisle and the angle was almost impossible, for he had to shoot nine inches past Peter’s shoulder, and through the forest of dangling hose.
His first shot missed, but it was close enough to flinch the girl’s head violently, the golden hair flickered with the passage of shot, and she stumbled backwards, groping with clumsy fingers for the detonator.
Peter chopped the hysterical passenger in the throat with the stiffened fingers of his right hand and hurled him back into his seat, trying desperately to line up for a shot at the girl – knowing he must get the brain and still her fingers instantly.
Colin fired his second shot, one hundredth of a second before Peter, and the big bullet flung the girl aside, jerking – her head out of the track of Peter’s shot.
Peter saw the strike of Colin’s bullet, it hit her high in the right shoulder, almost in the joint of the scapula and the humerus, shattering the bone with such force that her arm was flung upwards in a parody of a communist salute, twisting unnaturally and whipping above her head; once again the camera was flung aside and the girl’s body was thrown violently backwards down the aisle as though she had been hit by a speeding automobile.
Peter picked his shot, waiting for a clean killing hit in the head as the girl tried to drag herself upright – but before he could fire, a mass of black-costumed figures swarmed out of the smoke, and covered the girl, pinning her kicking and screaming on the carpet of the aisle. The Thor team had come in through the forward hatch, just in time to save her life, and Peter clipped the Walther into his holster and stooped to pick up the camera gingerly. Then he pulled off his mask with his other hand.
‘That’s it. That’s all of them,’ he shouted. ‘We got them all. Cease fire. It’s all over.’ Then into the microphone of the transceiver, ‘Touch down! Touch down!’ The code for total success. Three of his men were holding the girl down, and despite the massive spurting wound in her shoulder, she fought like a leopard in a trap. –
‘Get the emergency chutes down,’ Peter ordered, and from each exit the long plastic slides inflated and drooped to the tarmac – already his men were leading the conscious passengers to the exits and helping them into the slide.
From the terminal building a dozen ambulances with sirens howling, gunned out across the tarmac. The back-up members of Thor were running out under the glare of floodlights, cheering thinly. ‘Touch down! Touch down!’
Like prehistoric monsters the mechanical stairways lumbered down from the northern apron, to give access to the body of the Boeing.
Peter stepped up to the girl, still holding the camera in his hands, and he stood looking down at her. The icy coldness of battle still gripped him, his mind felt needle sharp and his vision clear, every sense enhanced.
The girl stopped struggling, and looked back at him. The image of a trapped leopard was perfect. Peter had never seen eyes so fierce and merciless, as she glared at him. Then she drew her head back like a cobra about to strike, and spat at him. White frothy spittle splattered down the front of Peter’s legs.
Colin Noble was beside Peter now, pulling off his gas mask.
‘I’m sorry, Peter. I was going for the heart.’
‘You’ll never hold me,’ shrieked the girl suddenly. ‘I’ll be free before Thanksgiving!’
And Peter knew she was right. The punishment that a befuddled world society meted out to these people was usually only a few months’ imprisonment, and that often suspended. He remembered the feel of the dying child in his arms, the warm trickle of her blood running over his belly and legs.
‘My people will come for me,’ the girl spat again, this time into the face of one of the men who held her down. ‘You will never hold me. My people will force you to free me.’
Again she was right, her capture was a direct invitation for further atrocity, th
e wheel of vengeance and retribution was set in motion. For the life of this trapped and vicious predator, hundreds more would suffer, and dozens more world die.
The reaction was setting in now, the battle rage abating, and Peter felt the nausea cloying his bowels. It had been in vain, he thought; he had thrown away a lifetime’s strivings and endeavour to win only a temporary victory. He had checked the forces of evil, not beaten them – and they would regroup and attack again, stronger and more cunning than ever, and this woman would lead them again.
‘We are the revolution.’ The girl lifted her uninjured arm in the clenched fist salute. ‘We are the power. Nothing, nobody can stop us.’
When this woman had fired a load of buckshot through the swollen body of the pregnant woman it had distorted her shape completely. The image was recaptured entire and whole in Peter’s memory, the way she had burst open like the pod of a ripe fruit.
The blonde woman shook the clenched fist into Peter’s face
‘This is only the beginning – the new era has begun.’
There was a taunt and a sneering threat in her voice, uttered in complete confidence – and Peter knew it was not misplaced. There was a new force unleashed in the world, something more deadly than he had believed possible, and Peter had no illusions as to the role that blind fortune had played in his small triumph. He had no illusion either that the beast was more than barely wounded; next time it would be more powerful, more cunning, having learned from this inconsequential failure – and with the reaction from battle came a powerful wave of dread and despair that seemed to overwhelm his soul. It had all been in vain.
‘You can never win,’ taunted the woman, splattered with her own blood, but undaunted and unrepentant, seeming to read his very thoughts.
‘And we can never lose,’ she shrieked.
‘Gentlemen.’ The South African Prime Minister spoke with painful deliberation. ‘My cabinet and I are firmly of the opinion that to accede to the terrorists’ demands is to take a seat on the back of the tiger, from which we will never be able to dismount.’ He stopped, hung his great granite-hewn head for a moment and then looked up at the two ambassadors. ‘However, such is the duty we owe to humanity and the dignity of human life, and such is the pressure which two great nations can bring to bear upon one much smaller, that we have decided unanimously to agree in full to all the conditions necessary for the release of the women and children—’
A telephone on the table top in front of the American Ambassador began to shrill irritatingly, and the Prime Minister paused, frowned slightly.
‘However, we place complete faith in the undertaking given by your governments—’ He stopped again for the telephone insisted. ‘– You had better answer that, sir—’ he told Kelly Constable.
‘Excuse me, Prime Minister.’ The American lifted the receiver, and as he listened an expression of utter disbelief slowly changed his features. ‘Hold the line,’ he said into the receiver, and then, covering the mouthpiece with his hand, he looked up. ‘Prime Minister – it is a very great pleasure to inform you that three minutes ago the Thor assault team broke into Flight 070 and killed three of the terrorists – they wounded and captured a fourth terrorist, but there were no casualties among the passengers. They got them all out, every last one of them. Safe and sound.’
The big man at the head of the table sagged with relief in his seat, and as the storm of jubilation and self-congratulation broke about him, he started to smile. It was a smile that transformed his forbidding features, the smile of an essentially fatherly and kindly man. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said, still smiling. ‘Thank you very much’
‘You are guilty of blatant dereliction of your duty, General Stride,’ Kingston Parker accused grimly ‘My concern was entirely with the lives of hostages and the force of moral law.’ Peter answered him quietly; it was less than fifteen minutes since he had penetrated the hull of the Boeing in a blaze of fire and fury. His hands were still shaking slightly and the nausea still lay heavily on his guts.
‘You deliberately disobeyed my specific orders.’ Parker was an enraged lion, the mane of thick shot-silver hair seemed to bristle, and he glowered from the screen; the vast power of his personality seemed to fill the command cabin of the Hawker. ‘I have always had grave reservations as to your suitability for the high command with which you have been entrusted. I have already expressed those reservations in writing to your superiors, and they have been fully justified.’
‘I understand by all this that I have been removed from command of Thor,’ Peter cut in brusquely, his anger seething to the surface, and Parker checked slightly.
Peter knew that even Kingston Parker could not immediately fire the hero of such a successful counter-strike. It would take time, a matter of days, perhaps, but Peter’s fate was sealed. There could be no doubt of that, and Parker went on to confirm this.
‘You will continue to exercise command under my direct surveillance. You will make no decision without referring directly back to me, no decision whatsoever. Do you understand that, General Stride?’
Peter did not bother to reply; he felt a wildly reckless mood starting to buoy his sagging spirits, a sense of freedom and choice of action such as he had never known before. For the first time in his career he had deliberately disobeyed a superior officer, and luck or not, the outcome had been a brilliant success.
‘Your first duty now will be to withdraw all Thor units, and swiftly and in as good an order as possible. The militant you have taken will be returned to London for questioning and trial—’
‘Her crimes were committed here. She should be tried here for murder – I have already had demands from the local—’
‘Arrangements are being made with the South African authorities.’ Parker’s anger had not abated but he had it better under control. ‘She will return to Britain aboard your command aircraft, with the Thor doctor in attendance.’
Peter remembered what had happened to the terrorist Leila Khaled, dragged from the El Al airliner where she was being held by Israeli security agents. As a guest of the British police, she had spent six short days in captivity, and then been released in a blaze of publicity and glory, heroine of the communications media, Joan of Arc of terror – released to plan and execute the death and destruction of hundreds more innocents, to lead the attack on the foundations of civilization, to shake the columns that held aloe the rule of law and society.
‘I want this woman in London within twenty-four hours. She is to be strictly guarded at all times against retaliation. We cannot afford another bloodbath – like the one you led on 070.’
Peter Stride walked very erect, very tall into the echoing, marble-columned domestic departures hall of the airport, and his men called to him as he came.
‘Well done, sir.’
‘Great stuff, General.’
‘Way to go—’
They were tending the released passengers, re-assembling their scattered gear, dismantling the security and communications equipment and packing it away – within the hour they would be ready to pull out – but now they left their tasks to crowd about him, competing to shake his hand.
The passengers realized that this must be the architect of their salvation and they cheered him as he passed slowly through the hall, and now he was smiling, acknowledging their pitiful gratitude, stopping to talk with an old lady, and submitting to her tearful embrace.
‘God bless you, my boy. God bless you.’ And her body trembled against him. Gently Peter set her aside and went on, and though he smiled it was with his lips only, for there was steel in his heart.
There were Thor guards on the main administrative offices on the mezzanine floor armed with submachine guns, but they stood aside for him and Peter went through.
Colin Noble was still in his black skin-tight assault suit with the big .45 on his hip, and a cheroot clamped between his teeth.
‘Take a look at this lot,’ he called to Peter. The desk was covered with explosives and weapons. �
�Most of it’s iron-curtain stuff – but God alone knows where they got these.’ He indicated the double-barrelled shot pistols. ‘If they had these custom built, it would have cost them plenty.’
‘They have got plenty,’ Peter answered drily. ‘The ransom for the OPEC ministers was one hundred and fifty million dollars, for the Braun brothers twenty-five million, for Baron Altmann another twenty million – that’s the defence budget for a nation.’ He picked up one of the shot pistols and opened the breech. It had been unloaded.
‘Is this the one she used to gun down the hostages?’
Colin shrugged ‘Probably, it’s been fired through both barrels.’ Colin was right, there were black specks of burned powder down the short smooth bores.
Peter loaded it with buckshot cartridges from the pile on the desk, and walked on down the long office with the covered typewriters on the deserted desks and the airline travel posters decorating the wall.
Along one wall the three bodies of the hijackers were laid out in a neat row, each encapsulated in its separate translucent plastic envelope.
Two Thor men were assembling the contents of their pockets – personal jewellery, meagre personal effects – and they were packing them into labelled plastic bags.
The body of Peter’s Number Two was against the far wall, also in his plastic body-bag, and Peter stooped over him. Through the plastic he could make out the features of the dead man’s face. The eyes were wide and the jaw hung open slackly. Death is always so undignified, Peter thought, and straightened up.
Still carrying the shot pistol, Peter went on into the inner office, and Colin Noble followed him.
They had the girl on another stretcher, a plasma drip suspended above her, and the Thor doctor and his two orderlies were working over her quietly, but the young doctor looked up irritably as Peter pushed open the door, then his expression changed as he recognized Peter.