58 Minutes

by Walter Wager

  The fliers glanced at each other again. They considered the severe penalties they might face for violating specific Coast Guard safe-flying regulations. They thought about the acute immediate danger to themselves. Then they both nodded.

  "Get in the back," Saldana told Malone, "and pray."

  They took their places in the big H-65, and the pilots rushed through their preflight checklist. Malone waited impatiently behind them on a jump seat near the winch operator while Babbitt and Saldana completed their required ritual.

  "You can pray, too, Vince," the aircraft commander said. "Here we go."

  He fed power to the turbines. Everything sounded all right, Saldana decided, but he knew that all four of them could be dead in sixty seconds—or hideously burned for life. Pushing those realities from his mind, Saldana cautiously increased the thrust.

  The jet engines whined loudly. They seemed almost deafening to Frank Malone, who had no headset to keep out the thunderous noise. Now the helicopter began to vibrate. Four . . . five ... six seconds later, it left the ground.

  Saldana was taking no unnecessary chances in his takeoff. He guided the Aerospatiale away from the wall that had broken the rotor blade, and he took the large search-and-rescue machine up slowly. Shielded from the storm's gusts by the buildings that surrounded it, the H-65 was relatively safe for the moment. What troubled Saldana was what might happen when his damaged machine was up higher and out in the open sky.

  The helicopter continued to ascend. Saldana fed it more fuel as it passed the roofs, building power and momentum to resist the might of the blizzard. The two pilots watched the altimeter: one hundred . . . two hundred . . . three hundred feet. Saldana listened carefully for any sound of rotor problems.

  Nothing.

  Four hundred . . . five hundred ... six hundred.

  Then a blast of wind hit the helicopter like a hammer. The H-65 lurched and tilted at a 90-degree angle. Blaming the storm, the missing piece of rotor blade and himself in soft sibilant Spanish, Ernesto Saldana skillfully adjusted the rotor pitch with one hand and guided the machine higher with the other.

  The storm struck again.

  It slammed the Coast Guard craft to the left, and then it pounded the machine with another blast of wind from the opposite direction. The H-65 bucked and jumped, but Ernesto Saldana kept putting it back on course.

  Seven hundred . . . eight hundred . . . nine hundred.

  Suddenly there was less wind. Neither of the pilots had any idea as to why, or whether this patch of meteorological peace would continue. They realized that they had to start the electronic search immediately.

  Babbitt turned on the radio direction finder.

  Within seconds the needle spun and he heard the sound. Saldana adjusted the helicopter's course, flying south toward the source of the signal. Some thirty seconds passed before the two pilots saw the needle move.

  There could be but one explanation.

  Moments later, the hoist operator gestured for Malone to come to his post. When the detective got there, the crewman handed him his headset. Malone put it on immediately.

  "Good news and bad news, Captain," the aircraft commander announced.

  "Have you found their transmitter?" Malone asked urgently.

  "That's the good news. The bad news is that the damn thing seems to be moving."

  Very professional . . . very cunning . . . very Staub.

  The master terrorist's backup jammer was in a vehicle that was slowly cruising along the snowswept city's half-deserted streets. It was probably an ordinary-looking truck, utterly inconspicuous and driven carefully by some disciplined armed fanatic who was complying with every traffic regulation.

  "Can you catch up with it?" Malone asked.

  "I think so," Saldana answered. "Our direction finder's working fine. With a little luck and full power, we can probably be over that thing in about three minutes."

  "Do it," the detective told him.

  In the cockpit, the aircraft commander hesitated. Full power could move the helicopter at 180 miles an hour—under ideal conditions. With a truncated rotor blade, it might also cripple the main propulsion unit. Saldana decided to fly at 140 miles per hour. That would be safer, and the extra half a minute couldn't be that crucial anyway.

  As the H-65 accelerated, Malone thought about Staub's mobile jammer. Power probably came from an efficient portable generator running on diesel oil from an extra tank beside it. The system wouldn't need a ton of fuel. Two hours' worth would be enough to massacre the thousands of people in the trapped airliners.

  Now his concentration switched to something much more urgent. In another no or 120 seconds, the helicopter would be directly above the enemy's transmitter. From two hundred or three hundred feet up, how could the men in the H-65 identify and stop a truck moving through a blizzard?

  They didn't know its size, color or configuration.

  There might be several other trucks nearby.

  How precise was the damn radio direction finder anyway?

  And if they did pinpoint the terrorists' vehicle, they would need powerful weapons to attack it effectively. The few rounds left in the .38-caliber pistol under Frank Malone's arm would hardly halt a large moving truck—if he hit it. There was also the likelihood that the men in the truck had automatic weapons that they'd turn on the helicopter.

  Malone looked around, but saw no guns mounted.

  He turned to the winch operator.

  "What kind of weapons do you carry?" Malone asked over the noise of the turbines.

  "I don't carry anything," Luther King replied, "and the pilots don't either."

  "I mean the aircraft," Malone said impatiently.

  "We're not a navy fighter-bomber, Mister," the winch operator told him. "We're Coast Guard search and rescue. We don't chase dope boats. We save lives. This is my weapon."

  He patted the hoisting device beside him.

  The detective looked at it, and decided that it would be no match for either a moving truck or a 9-millimeter submachine gun. At that moment, he heard Saldana's voice through the earphones Malone was still wearing.

  "Target has turned toward us. We are closing rapidly. Estimated time of intercept—about ninety seconds."

  "Do you have anything—any kind of gun or bomb or anything—we can use to stop that mobile jammer?"

  Saldana thought for several seconds.

  "I'm afraid not," he finally answered.

  "Sound rising sharply," the copilot announced. "Distance to transmitter about half a mile."

  "Taking her down to two hundred," Saldana said.

  The H-65 lost altitude rapidly.

  "Max sound. Max sound. Target dead ahead," Babbitt reported.

  "Searchlight," the aircraft commander ordered curtly.

  Babbitt flicked the switch, stabbing a powerful beam down through the storm.

  There was a large truck beneath them, about forty feet ahead.

  It was difficult to make out the truck's exact color or type through the falling snow, but one thing was clear: None of the other moving vehicles nearby on this street was big enough to contain the jammer, generator and fuel tank.

  Staub's backup unit had to be in that truck.

  They had found it, but that wasn't enough.

  They had to destroy it.

  "Let's get a better look," Malone said.

  "Descending to one hundred," Saldana responded and eased the altitude control forward.

  In the truck cab, the former Lebanese dental student was suddenly aware of a strange whining-thumping noise. He couldn't quite identify it. With the windows shut tight and the storm pounding outside, the sound that he heard was not clear.

  Peering ahead, he saw nothing unusual in the light traffic. His rearview mirror showed a couple of ordinary civilian cars. It didn't occur to him to look up. He couldn't have done that anyway.

  He decided to ignore the odd noise. He would concentrate on doing his job. He had listened intently as Hugo had told him to, an
d he had turned on the jammer in the truck when he heard the other one fall silent. Now all he had to do was to continue to follow the plan—and be careful.

  He eyed the rearview mirror again. The street behind seemed unusually bright. One of the stupid drivers back there must have turned on his "high beams." Then the man from Beirut looked at the street ahead.

  No police cars. No road blocks. Nothing could stop him now.

  "I think it's green," Babbitt said as he stared down at the truck.

  Beside him, Saldana strained to maintain the rotorcraft's position. The terrorists' vehicle was moving at fourteen or fifteen miles an hour, and at that speed it was difficult to keep the H-65 in place in the surging storm. Then the truck suddenly stopped. So did the rest of the adjacent traffic.

  "Looks like a red light," Saldana said as he halted the helicopter's forward movement.

  Frank Malone recognized the danger immediately. Every instant that H-65 hovered over the motionless truck increased the risk that the terrorists would detect the defenseless rotor-craft and shoot it down.

  "Take her up! Take her up!" Malone called out urgently.

  As the helicopter began to rise, Malone spoke again.

  "Kill the light!"

  Babbitt complied at once. The Coast Guard craft ascended for another twenty-five seconds before Saldana halted the climb.

  "We're at four-fifty," he said. "That's high enough?"

  "I hope so," the detective answered. "Down again when they start to move."

  Then the copilot asked the question.

  "To do what?"

  At that moment, the winch operator pointed at a metal box bolted to the inside of the fuselage a few feet away. Malone read the two small words stenciled on the lid, and felt a surge of hope.

  "It's not exactly a weapon," King said.

  "Don't apologize," Malone replied. "How many in there?"

  "Four or five."

  "It'll have to do," the detective said. Then he explained his plan to the three airmen.

  "My God!" Babbitt gasped. "If you do that, a whole bunch of people might get killed."

  "A lot more will die for sure if I don't," Malone answered. "Our only chance is complete surprise. Use the light as little as possible until we're alongside."

  The headlights below were moving. Traffic was flowing again. Saldana started to guide the H-65 down in a smooth descent.

  "We're gonna have a major damn accident," Babbitt warned.

  "At least," Saldana agreed coolly. "Give me ten seconds of searchlight, Vince. . . . There she is. Okay, kill it."

  Half a dozen feet behind the pilots, Malone opened the metal box. He removed the fat-mouthed flare pistol, took out one of the rockets and put it in the stubby signaling gun.

  "Ready back there?" Saldana asked.

  Malone pointed at the wide door beside the winch operator, and King opened it. The two men shivered in the rush of icy air.

  "Ready," Malone answered.

  "Good. When they stop again at the next red light, we'll whip right in."

  The detective looked at his wristwatch.

  "Do it now" he said.

  Some twenty seconds later, the man in the truck noticed that the whining-thumping noise was back. It was much louder than before, and seemed to come from somewhere directly behind him. A glance at the rearview mirror showed nothing unusual. It was very different when he looked ahead.

  Facing the mind-boggling threat of an imminent head-on collision with a helicopter, bug-eyed drivers of vehicles coming toward the truck from the opposite direction twisted their steering wheels in panic. Some made sharp turns to escape up a side street. More frantic, others drove up onto the sidewalk. One slammed his compact Toyota into the side of a parked delivery van, breaking most of the bones in his body.

  None of this automotive anarchy made any sense to the terrorist in the truck, who couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. The noise grew deafening, and a moment later he couldn't see anything.

  Babbitt had turned on the H-65's searchlight, carefully spearing its powerful beam into the truck's cab. Momentarily blinded, the driver instinctively raised his left hand to shield his eyes as his right hand spun the wheel to get away from the dazzling pain.

  He had to find out what was happening. Squinting between cupped fingers, he looked over his shoulder and saw something huge and blurry for a few seconds. Then he couldn't face the bright brutal thing anymore. He turned his head away from the glare, blinking as he faced forward again.

  As he did, he realized that he was being stalked by a helicopter. Suddenly he felt better. He knew how to fight helicopters. The Israelis and other imperialists used them a lot, so tactics to defeat such aircraft were part of basic training at the camp where he had met Hugo. He would not let Hugo down, the determined driver resolved.

  Hugo had taught him that helicopters were vulnerable from behind. If he could get in back of this one, he could wreck its tail rotor with gunfire and it would spin out of control. The compact Beretta M-12 submachine gun on the seat beside him should do the job, he thought as he rolled the window down five inches.

  Then he stepped on the brake—hard.

  The trick worked.

  The helicopter pilot was caught by surprise. The rotor-craft began to sweep past the truck. Now out of the blinding beam, the driver saw someone framed in an open side door. The terrorist took his foot off the brake, lowered the window another five inches and picked up the machine gun.

  Malone fired the flare pistol. The signal rocket flashed through the open window, spewing acrid, colored smoke and sparks as it dug into the dashboard. Coughing in the choking fumes that billowed around him, the terrorist frantically tried to pull the missile loose.

  The skin on his hand blistered as he clawed at the sizzling flare, but he couldn't stop. He realized that he must get the thing out of the truck before its fumes overcame him. He knew he had only fifteen or twenty seconds before he lost control.

  His estimate was incorrect.

  He didn't have any time at all.

  Malone fired his second rocket. This one plunged into the driver's left shoulder, ripping muscles and charring flesh as it stabbed three inches into him. He screamed. It was a howl of both hurt and horror. Through the chemical fumes of the colored smoke, he could smell his body burning.

  He was a courageous and stubborn man, but he had a low threshold for pain. He was still trying to rip the missile out when he slumped forward over the steering wheel, unconscious. His foot slid from the gas pedal, but the big van kept rolling forward on momentum. As it slowly lost speed, the uncontrolled vehicle began to drift to the left.

  Inexorably.

  Right across traffic from the opposite direction.

  In the endangered vehicles, the men and women behind the steering wheels shouted, prayed and swore as they tried to avoid a fatal collision. Moving at them like a four-ton battering ram, the truck cut diagonally between the bucking zigzagging cars and swept through a red light. It missed a bus by inches.

  Then it crashed into a massive self-propelled crane. Parked in the street beside a half-finished apartment house, the large piece of heavy construction machinery stopped the runaway vehicle like a stone wall.

  The impact caved in the whole front of the truck, ruptured the fuel line and burst open the door beside the unconscious driver.

  He fell out of the truck.

  The sputtering flare embedded in the dashboard didn't. Tiny flames were flickering as the padding and plastic ignited, adding another foul smell to that of the colored smoke still pouring from the rocket.

  Some one hundred twenty feet overhead, the helicopter circled slowly with its bright searchlight beam never leaving the terrorists' truck.

  "Let's get in closer," the detective said.

  "That might not be a good idea," Saldana warned.

  "Why?"

  Suddenly the flames in the cab leaped higher. The fuel tank exploded a moment later, leaving the broken vehicle a blazing hulk. The f
ire shot high in the air, and so did a twisting pillar of acrid black fumes.

  "That's why," the helicopter commander told Malone. "Now let's check our radio. I'll tune you in."

  The pilots and Malone listened intently.

  There was no interference of any kind on any of the six civilian or military aviation frequencies that Ernesto Saldana tested.

  "All clear," Saldana said.

  For how long?

  Calculating, obsessive Willi Staub could have a third jammer—or something else.

  Even if the airwaves were open for the moment, there were very few moments left. Malone realized that he had to return to Kennedy at once. That was where the final battle of this war would be fought—probably within the next twenty minutes. The H-65 could get him there in less than five, Malone estimated.

  "Can you take me to JFK? Right away?" he asked urgently.

  The helicopter commander thought of the danger of flying into the airport in a heavy snowstorm, with all those big jets circling blindly and no radar or air traffic control to keep them from smashing into the Coast Guard rotorcraft. Then he thought of the people in the airliners.

  "No sweat," he lied and guided the H-65 higher.

  He leveled off at six hundred feet. Since the airliners were probably circling well up above one thousand, an altitude of six hundred would be relatively safe. Well, it ought to be.

  Standing beside the winch a few yards away, Frank Ma-lone was busy with his own calculations. The seven prisoners whom the terrorists had demanded would reach JFK at any minute. So would Staub and his team, if they weren't there already. No, the shrewd wary man code-named Venom had probably been there for some time, spying on his enemy's strength and positions. Collecting up-to-the-minute intelligence about his foes was part of Staub's pattern and a reason that he was still alive.

  But his information was incomplete, Malone calculated as he looked out at the snow. Staub didn't know that Malone had learned Number One's identity, or that the detective had figured out what was behind the entire operation. Six prisoners on Staub's list belonged to revolutionary groups that generally used basic conventional weapons.

  The seventh was different. That had been the clue.