The Kobra Manifesto

by Adam Hall

  We listened to the radio exchange between the tower and the pilot of the USAF interceptor aircraft as it lowered into its approach path and touched down on the main runway with the roar of its jets slamming back in echoes from the line of hangars.

  So Ferris wouldn’t be here. The base commander had reserved his right to receive emergency traffic but I didn’t think Zade would allow it: the effort he was making to keep control of himself was increasing his tension, paradoxically, and I didn’t think it would take a lot to drive him over the edge. I was now certain that this was his first experience of running a hostage operation and he was having to do it in the presence of massive armament that could blow his entire cell to shreds if he made a mistake.

  The Secretary of Defense came in again. ‘We have the exchange material.’

  Zade leaned away from the panelling, his face loosening slightly as he looked through the windscreen to the group below the tower. Perhaps he’d been preparing himself for difficulties, for a series of deliberate delaying actions that might take away his initiative and force him on to the defensive. I don’t think he’d believed he would be so successful.

  Sassine and Ramirez had come into the staff area to listen.

  Burdick was speaking again.

  No problem is now envisaged. You have Paul Wexford on board with you, and he has my permission to fetch the material and deliver it to you personally.

  Sassine had heard the message and came on to the flight deck.

  ‘Let me go and get it,’ he said. His eyes were shining.

  Zade knocked him down and I noticed how fast Sassine went for his gun: it was in his hand as he crashed to the floor. He wouldn’t have used it against Zade: it was just his instinctive reaction to attack. I noted ‘this point because when the time came to do something it’d be dangerous to underestimate anyone.

  ‘Get the flight steps,’ Zade said over the radio.

  He was looking calmer: the tension had been mounting in him over the last hours and Sassine’s behaviour had been getting on his nerves.

  We heard the motorized trolley nearing the aircraft on the port side, bringing the steps.

  ‘Get the girl up here,’ Zade said.

  Ventura moved past me.

  ‘Wexford.’ Drops of sweat fell from Zade’s chin and his breathing sounded painful. ‘You’re alive because you offered to be the go-between. You’d better do everything right.’

  On his way to the main door he stopped, listening to the faint whimpering noise from the toilet. The tap was running into the basin and I suppose Sassine had lost some teeth and was to some extent shocked back to normal cerebration. Zade moved again and swung the door open and pushed me on to the steps and for an instant I remember hoping that none of the FBI men out there was working himself up into a state of target-attraction: from the movements on the tarmac I estimated there were twenty or thirty marksmen with the main doorway of the Boeing in their sights.

  ‘Hold her upright,’ I ‘heard Zade say behind me.

  At the bottom of the steps I looked up and saw Pat Burdick in the doorway, supported by Dr. Costa. She had a hand to her eyes because of the bright light but Zade pulled it away so that she could be recognized. Behind her was Ventura and the snout of the submachine-gun was pressed into her back.

  I walked across the tarmac.

  The main group of security people was a hundred yards from Boeing and as I neared it a big man with a two-way radio slung at toe shoulder came forward to meet me.

  ‘Wexford?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Dwight Sorenson, heading the FBI team.’

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  Ferris was here and I was going to ask him how he’d managed it but it wasn’t important: they must have flown him from Manaus into the nearest airfield from the base and used a helicopter, since they couldn’t rely on Zade’s allowing an emergency landing.

  The man talking to Ferris was grey-faced with sleepless eyes.

  ‘I’m James Burdick,’ he said.

  ‘Wexford, sir.’

  ‘How is she?’

  He was looking beyond me to the aircraft.

  ‘Dr. Costa would like her in a hospital as soon as it can be arranged. She’s fully conscious and not under drugs.’

  He looked down, then at Ferris.

  What’s the situation in there?’ Ferris asked me.

  Sorenson stood close, listening.

  ‘I can only give you my opinion,’ I said in a moment. ‘I’d say they’re prepared to kill their hostage out of hand, if we could show them we had the initiative.’ I looked at Sorenson. ‘If you kill them, you’ll kill her. There are six of them in there so they can take turns to sleep.’

  A voice sounded on Sorenson’s radio and he listened for a second and then shut it down. ‘You mean that so long as we feel obliged to supply food and water they’re ready to hold out for just as long as they want?’

  ‘For days, yes. Or weeks. Of course there’s a breakoff point’

  I didn’t look at Burdick.

  He was watching me.

  That doctor hasn’t indicated my daughter is in any immediate danger?’

  ‘No. But if she’s to remain in there much longer we’d have to set up what would amount to field medical facilities and in my opinion they wouldn’t allow that.’

  ‘There’s no way,’ the FBI man asked heavily, ‘you can go back hi there and drive those people out under our guns? I have fifty marksmen deployed.’

  The Defense Secretary turned away slightly and I had the feeling they’d discussed this idea and couldn’t agree on it.

  There’d be no point,’ I said. They’d bring the girl with them and even if you picked off the six of them simultaneously without touching her, one of them at least would live long enough to shoot her at close range.’

  Burdick was moving away from the group and Ferris gave me a signal and I followed both of them across the tarmac until we were out of earshot. The briefcase under the Defense Secretary’s arm was a security model with four straps and a centre lock and provision for a wrist chain. This was the form I’d assumed the exchange material would take and that was why I’d talked to Kuznetski, Burdick stopped, ‘Are you willing to go back into the airplane, Mr. Wexford?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He held out the briefcase.

  ‘This is the material they asked for.’

  It was difficult to tell him.

  They’ve got a man there with a degree in atomic physics.’

  His tired eyes went dead.

  ‘Kuznetski?’ Ferris asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  None of us spoke for a while.

  From here I could see some of the marksmen ranged along the roof of the main building. Others were deployed in unmarked cars at regular intervals, their dark barrels poking towards the Boeing: these would fire last of all and only then if the situation became fluid and mobile. A dozen Air Force vehicles stood near the end of the main hangar and a group of uniformed officers were talking together, some of them with field glasses raised to watch the aircraft.

  A Sheriff’s Department helicopter stood just beyond the emergency bay with a pilot leaning against its door and an Air Force man talking to him, and I could see two DPS vehicles over by the tower, their lights still rotating.

  There was very little noise. The sun was fitful behind high cloud patches and the ground wind sometimes whipped the lanyard of the flag against its pole, over the main building, making a ringing sound because the pole was metal.

  Mentally I wasn’t too occupied. I’d done all the thinking there was to be done and the situation hadn’t changed because the Defense Secretary was carrying the material I’d expected him to be carrying: Zade had come here for nuclear arms and they were in this briefcase in the form of blueprints and equations. It was known that the PLO had the technical capability of producing medium-yield weapons and all they needed were the designs and that was what Zade had asked for and wasn’t going to get: because Burd
ick couldn’t let him have them.

  They should have known that All Burdick had been able to do was to bring his daughter back on the soil of her homeland and close to him, and then hope for a miracle.

  I didn’t have one for him.

  Nobody had.

  ‘I was in signals,’ Ferris told me, ‘with London.’ They’d taken their bloody time, I thought, finding out about Kuznetski. Not that it mattered; a man like Zade would know his operation depended on the expert evaluation of the material for exchange, and if he hadn’t brought Kuznetski he’d have brought someone else.

  ‘So what does London say?’

  Ferris looked at his feet ‘It’s over to you.’

  I was listening carefully. The final directive Ferris had given me from Manaus was to go out for the Kobra cell: the life of Patricia Burdick was an incidental factor. So the mission had ended here. Kobra had to be eliminated and that could now be done, as soon as someone gave the signal. It didn’t have to be me. It would have, finally and perhaps after days of bitter and useless negotiation, to be James Burdick. He would be given the exclusive right, presumably, of condemning his daughter to death.

  I glanced at him. For the moment he seemed to have forgotten us: he was just looking at the ground, his tired eyes narrowed, the wind moving a lock of his greying hair. I didn’t think he had any constructive thoughts in his mind: he’d lived with this thing for days on end, and nights on end, and he must have considered every possible solution, and drawn blank.

  I looked away from him to Ferris.

  ‘London says I’ve got discretion?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Total?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I turned back to Burdick.

  This man Kuznetski,’ I said, ‘is probably quite good. How good are those designs?’

  His head had ‘come up and he hadn’t immediately understood what was being said to him: he’d caught it about halfway.

  ‘Oh.’ He looked at the briefcase. ‘Not good enough for an expert to read.’ He raised his head to watch the Boeing. ‘These people are terrorists, and terrorists aren’t normally very intelligent. So I thought maybe they’d just-‘ he gave a slight shrug - ‘accept this stuff without looking at it too hard. There wasn’t anything else I could do, was there?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘But we have to try. Don’t we?.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He was looking at me steadily now. ‘I’d like it right on the line, Mr. Wexford. You’ve been in there with them and you know them better than we do. And you don’t think there’s a chance, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  He looked away.

  The silence came in again.

  A few ideas had occurred to me during the flight from Belem and I’d had enough time to treble-check them for feasibility and none of them had stood up, not one. The only thing left was a technical last-ditch action, with the odds so steep that I’d got it out of my mind.

  But I thought about it now because there wasn’t any choice.

  ‘Ferris,’ I said quietly, ‘I want to talk.’

  He looked up at me quickly.

  ‘Mr. Secretary,’ he said, ‘will you excuse us for a moment?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I walked with Ferris across the tarmac, halfway to the emergency bay. Burdick wouldn’t like the proposal and I was going to leave Ferris to persuade him to give me a completely free hand.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘if I’m going back in there I’ll need something a bit more useful than that ersatz stuff in the briefcase. I want something I can argue with - something they can understand.’

  He was looking towards the Boeing.

  ‘What do you need?’ he asked me, ‘I need to break their nerve,’

  Chapter 17

  ZERO-ZERO

  I went aboard the Boeing at 14:55.

  Zade was unarmed, waiting at the top of the flight steps.

  Ventura and Ramirez were on each side of him with a submachine-gun trained on me as I came up.

  Zade took the briefcase from me and went into the aircraft.

  The other two lowered their weapons and I followed Zade aboard, telescoping the antenna of the walkie-talkie.

  I saw Patricia Burdick at the rear of the main passenger compartment with Dr. Costa, and went along the aisle to talk to them.

  At this point I had the urge to turn back and get out of the Boeing and stay out, stay alive. But then I would have to live with myself afterwards.

  ‘Your father sends his love,’ I said to the girl. ‘He wants you to know you’ll be home again soon now.’

  She stared up at me without saying anything for a moment, as if she were repeating what I’d said to herself a few times to find out if it were true, whether she could trust me.

  ‘How’s he taking this?’ she asked.

  ‘Very calmly. He knows you’ll soon be home.’

  Quietly she murmured, ‘Sure,’ and closed her eyes.

  I wondered how much she’d be able to do for herself, if she had the chance; her skin was waxen and wet with perspiration. Dr. Costa looked at me with his mournful eyes but said nothing; I thought that inside he was praying, and to the most powerful of his gods.

  I moved across the aisle and pulled down the table for the end seat and opened the zip of the walkie-talkie case and took out the bomb and put it on the table.

  ‘Zade,’ I called.

  I set the dial to 5.

  The chronometer began ticking.

  Zade looked along the aisle. He’d given the briefcase to Kuznetski, and Kuznetski had taken out the batch of varicoloured papers and was going through them.

  I leaned against the seat squab with my arms folded, ‘In five minutes this plane’s going up.’

  They were all looking at me now.

  Zade came slowly down the aisle. He still wore his dark glasses and I couldn’t see what he was thinking but that didn’t matter because there was nothing he could do about this.

  He saw the bomb.

  ‘Carlos,’ he said over his shoulder.

  Ramirez followed him along the aisle. He was down in the dossier as an explosives expert. I had known that, and would use the advantage.

  Zade stood over the seat, looking down.

  He’d been patient, so far, They’d taken almost an hour and a half to get this thing for me and I’d talked to Zade with a two-way radio, saying we didn’t trust him, we wanted him to bring his hostage to a neutral zone for the exchange, accepted practice, so forth. I’d made it sound genuine, and the FBI had taken over and used all the correct phrases; I thought they’d sold it to him, once, then he’d got worried and said if I wasn’t back in the aircraft with the material they were going to start with one of her fingers.

  Ramirez stood beside him, looking down; then he instinctively edged away a fraction -and I noted this, Zade moved ‘his hand and I said:

  ‘Don’t!’

  I put a lot of expression into it and he drew back. I didn’t have to work up any spurious alarm: I just let it show, so that he’d get the message. Nothing would happen if he picked the tiling up but he might go and drop it and it was omnidirectionally percussion-triggered and that would be that.

  Zade watched my face. I could feel the blood receding and the first of the sweat coming to the surface and presumably he saw this and stood away slightly, not moving his hands anymore.

  ‘Ramirez,’ I said, and began speaking Spanish. ‘You understand explosives. This device-‘

  ‘Speak in Polish!’ Zade cut in.

  ‘He’ll tell you what I said,’ I told him. ‘I want him to know the precise situation and his Polish isn’t very good.’ I switched back to Spanish. ‘This device is produced exclusively for the Central Intelligence Agency and is made to very exacting specifications. It has an electronic blasting cap and booster and the main charge is composed of ammonium nitrate closely confined to increase the detonation wave, which will reach 14,000 f.p.s. The secondary stage is provided by
the plastic case, which is chemically sensitized Composition C-4 with a detonating temperature of 290° Centigrade,’

  I was watching his face.

  Zade spoke to him sharply: ‘What did he -‘

  ‘One more thing,’ I told Ramirez. The device has a protective circuit, and I’d be glad if you would warn Zade on this point. It has a clock arming-delay, two pressure-release micro-switches - here, and here - a mercury tilt switch and a vibrator activator. Please tell your friends that we don’t want any undue movement inside the aircraft. Now report to Zade.’

  I moved across the aisle and sat on the arm of the end seat. The sweat was a problem now, making my scalp itch and reminding me that I was frightened. It’s often a chain reaction unless you can control it: you know when you’re frightened but you want to feel you’re at least not showing it and can keep on top of the situation. The reason why the sweat was an actual problem was that I had to keep it off my hands.

  Ramirez was speaking slowly to Zade, using an English phrase when he could think of one. His eyes were very serious and I believed I’d convinced him. Most of it was the truth, in any case: there was no mercury tilt switch or vibrator but if anyone picked that thing up and dropped it the Boeing would blow.

  It would have been nice to tell the girl not to worry, that we still had a chance. But she wouldn’t believe me because I’d said she was going home soon and now she could see there was a confrontation: and if she believed me the relief would show in her face and they might notice it.

  It was very quiet in here now.

  The ticking was discreet and fairly rapid and we could hear it when nobody was talking. Ramirez had stopped, and Zade was standing perfectly still, looking at the bomb. He didn’t seem afraid of it, but he wasn’t the unbalanced type of revolutionary who would take a chance for the sake of blood and glory. If he had been that kind of man I couldn’t have brought this thing in here.

  The others were farther along the aisle, their faces turned this way. I noted Kuznetski particularly. It was Kuznetski I was relying on.