Air Force One is Down

by John Denis

  The bus cut inland on the main road from Zadar on the coast as far as Masienica, then turned off on a minor route for Knin, and started the steep climb into the Dinaric Alps. The captives, frustrated in their blindness, could not see the countryside getting wilder and more rugged in the bright moonlight. The road wound up into the mountains, then gave way to a rougher track until they reached a stretch of level ground where the surface improved.

  Flanked by a low, thick stone wall, the route hugged the side of a hill, which gradually fell away and flattened into a crater, a sculpted bowl in the ribs of the mountain. And in that hollow lay the castle of Windischgraetz.

  It was an extraordinary sight by day, the road twisting and turning until the final lap, and suddenly the castle was there, grafted on to the mountainside like a lump of coal in a snowman’s face. The narrow track widened to form a quadrangle and car-park, and facing Smith’s visitors was a drawbridge over a leafy chasm. This led to a corridor and entrance hall, shut off from the world outside by a huge, arched doorway and carved double doors. The drawbridge and entrance portal occupied much of the width of that end-facing wall, for Castle Windischgraetz was long but slim of girth, bent round to fit the contours of the cliff.

  The lofty walls supported peaked slate roofs, also built on to the rock face. The wooded cliff towered above the castle and, most impressive of all, outlined it against the gaping maw of a cave reaching into the heart of the mountain, its mouth curving like a black halo over the tallest point of the building. The roof slates rose in pyramid turrets, and under them sat rows of darkened windows in the rough-weathered stone of the walls.

  The castle of Windischgraetz stood fifteen hundred feet above sea-level, the eyrie of an eagle, impregnable, almost unapproachable, since the days of Charlemagne.

  Smith’s hostages were marshalled across the drawbridge and into an interior courtyard where twin cannon guarded another stone entranceway. There Smith ordered the blindfolds and bonds removed, and the captives taken to the trophy room. Sheikh Zeidan was carried up the stairs by two burly crewmen, and his wheelchair slung in after him.

  Smith stood outside with the big iron key in his hand. ‘Go to the radio room,’ he instructed Fayeed, ‘and wait for a contact from Dunkels. He should be on his way by now. I’ll entertain our guests for a while, but let me know as soon as you hear word of his movements.’

  Achmed hurried away and Smith turned the key noiselessly in the lock. Two guards came up behind him, sub machine-guns once more at the port.

  Hemmingsway remarked sourly that he hoped Smith had come to state his terms. Assuredly, Smith said, he had. Fairman asked how long Smith planned to hold them, and Smith assumed they would be freed once the ransom for their release was in his hands.

  ‘Ah,’ Hamady breathed, ‘so it is a ransom.’

  ‘Naturally,’ Smith said. ‘Did you think I had you kidnapped merely for the pleasure of sharing your company?’

  ‘We were wondering, perhaps,’ Zeidan observed heavily, ‘whether it might not have something to do with our status as OPEC emissaries. That your motives could be, shall I say, more overtly political than merely mercenary.’

  Smith, who was enjoying himself, took the insult without flinching. ‘Your exalted positions, Sheikh, bear only commercial value for me,’ he sneered. ‘In some ways I detest what you stand for, your stranglehold over our Western oil supplies, your greed and primitive cruelty to your peoples … but I am neither politician nor moralist, Your Excellency. I regard you as medieval robber barons, ripe for plucking. That you should be relieved of some of your enormous wealth is, I

  suggest, long overdue. I regret the presence of a blameless American among you, and I regard the crew members of the President’s toy as no more than passing nuisances. I have other plans for Miss Carver. From you gentlemen,’ indicating the seated Arabs, ‘I require nothing but money – in kind.’

  ‘What kind of money in what kind of kind?’ Hemmingsway demanded.

  Smith studied him in surprise. ‘Perhaps you do wish to speak for them – haggle for them, Mr Hemmingsway. So be it. The ransom is fifty million dollars.’

  Hemmingsway swallowed with difficulty and licked his dry lips. ‘And in what form?’

  ‘In cut diamonds,’ Smith replied firmly. ‘They are so pretty – and so eminently negotiable, don’t you think?’

  Mackie-Belton prevailed upon a high-ranking and discreet Bahraini police officer to provide McCafferty with clothing suitable for what the American would only describe as ‘a somewhat colder climate’. Swann phoned with the message that a jet was already en route for the Gulf island to pick him up and take him to Rome. ‘With a few extras,’ Basil explained. ‘Passport, documentation; armaments for you and Miss Carver and the agent, Cooligan; field glasses, communicators – that sort of thing. Everything’ll be stowed in a haversack on board the plane. All you have to do is walk off with it at Leonardo da Vinci, Rome. The jet’ll be in Bahrain well before dawn. Good luck, Mac.’

  ‘Thanks, Basil,’ McCafferty replied, and before Swann could hang up slipped in a request for money. ‘Cleaned out, you see,’ he explained.

  Rarely for him, Swann chuckled. ‘Why not try the consul?’ he suggested, and broke the connection.

  ‘This,’ said Mackie-Belton later, returning from another ego-bruising session with the Arabian lady and brandishing five hundred dollars, ‘is getting to be a nasty habit.’

  At 0300, the consul ruefully said goodbye to the Arabian lady, and at 0330 McCafferty received a call from the Bahraini police captain telling him that Siegfried Dunkels had left the island.

  ‘Going where?’ Mac asked hopefully.

  He could almost hear the policeman smirk. ‘First stop Athens – then Zagreb.’

  Just at that time, Philpott was unavailable to give instructions, having received a summons to a distinctly acid meeting with the UN’s dour and heavy-humoured Secretary General, so Mac was airborne when the order came from UNACO to divert his aircraft to Yugoslavia and lie in wait for the German …

  When Smith next visited the hostages, he brought armed guards with him again, and three more guerillas hauling tripods and a large electric battery. ‘I thought you needed a little more illumination,’ he said cheerfully, ‘and even if you don’t, I do.’

  The men rigged up the equipment, and poured photo-floodlight into the room. Fayeed sidled in behind them with a Polaroid camera, and Smith posed the hostages, OPEC men in front, crew members behind, against a totally neutral section of wall, removing trophies, pictures, furniture … anything which could lead to an identification of the locale.

  After checking that no member of the group was making an unauthorised signal with fingers or eyes, Smith nodded to Achmed, who clicked away and produced several reasonable prints. Smith approved four pictures, and instructed Achmed to send them immediately by courier to Trieste and Dubrovnik. ‘They must catch the first editions of the morning newspapers,’ he emphasised, ‘– together with details of the ransom demands. And don’t forget – one to the Associated Press agency as well. I want this to hit the States, too. It is, after all, their aeroplane.’

  Fairman muttered something at this sally, and Smith inclined his ear with a sympathetic smile. ‘If I caught what you said correctly, Colonel,’ he said pleasantly, ‘you were offering your opinion that Air Force One could be located by satellite sensing-devices. Am I right?’ Fairman nodded grudgingly.

  ‘I thought so,’ Smith continued, ‘and I’m sorry to disappoint you. The engines were covered in dry ice as soon as the tarpaulins were laid. They cooled off within a few moments. The aircraft cannot, I regret to say, be detected. Now –’ addressing all of them ‘– you will doubtless be relieved to hear that I have no intention of compelling you to spend the night in these uncomfortable surroundings.

  ‘Achmed will show you to the quarters which have been prepared for you. I am afraid some of you will be doubling up; I can only hope that the partners allocated to you are acceptable. Achmed?’<
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  Once more the hostages were led out, and the only trouble Achmed encountered was when he tried to separate Sabrina and Feisal. He had wanted her for himself; the fate of the boy did not concern him.

  ‘I must stay with him,’ Sabrina appealed to Smith. ‘He’s ill. You surely can’t want anything to happen to him. He isn’t even on the ransom list.’

  Zeidan reinforced her plea by pointing out that if Feisal suffered another attack, Sabrina alone could administer his medication. To Achmed’s evident annoyance, Smith agreed, and Sabrina and Feisal were led up another flight of steps to a room which looked as if it had been hastily adapted for accommodation, containing as it did nothing but two beds, a table and a wash-basin, with an adjoining toilet. Its most conspicuous feature, however, was the long slit running the full length of the external wall, protected from the worst effects of the weather by an overhanging eave, jutting out like a peaked cap.

  The vent was panelled in glass now, but Sabrina guessed that it had once been a lookout position, a sentry-room, affording as it must a panorama of the entire area, assuming they were up as high as the definite chill in the room suggested. There was no lighting in their cell, so they undressed, and Sabrina had just snuggled down into her bed when they heard the sound of a motor-cycle starting up in the courtyard below.

  Pulling the bedspread off to wrap around her nakedness, Sabrina hurried to the slit window, and was joined by Feisal. A loud ‘clunk’ came from somewhere to their left, and Feisal whispered, ‘Must be a drawbridge.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ Sabrina said, shivering as the cold nipped at her body. The motor-cyclist roared away, and from their perch they were able to follow his lights for what seemed miles down the twisting road.

  ‘That was a Honda,’ Sabrina said smugly. She knew motor-bikes almost as well as she knew cars, and was adept at driving both.

  Feisal nodded in agreement. ‘Hondamatic 400,’ he confirmed. Sabrina stared at him. ‘How could you tell that?’ she asked.

  This time Feisal snickered. ‘He went for at least two hundred yards without changing gear. On a Hondamatic 400 you don’t have to change up until you hit 55 mph.’

  Sabrina’s eyes widened. ‘I didn’t know that,’ she ventured.

  ‘I am not at all surprised,’ Feisal remarked.

  ‘There would be no reason for a woman to possess such knowledge.’

  Sabrina tried to hide her grin. ‘Listen, you smart-alick, know-all kid—’ she began, but Feisal cut her off.

  ‘That’s what everyone says,’ he assured her airily. ‘And incidentally, your somewhat inadequate garment has slipped. May I be permitted to congratulate you on your magnificent breasts?’

  He jumped back into bed and was fast asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow.

  McCafferty’s executive jet streamed through the night sky and deposited him at Zagreb well before the sun was high in the east. He passed easily enough through customs with his back-pack, which had been covered by UNACO’s diplomatic immunity on a hastily forged laissez-passer that Mac had found, on Swann’s instructions, among the aircraft’s store of useful documents. The Yugoslav guards examined the form and cast suspicious eyes at the pack, but waved him on.

  He used his newly acquired credit cards to hire a car, a small but powerful Polski Fiat with a formidable top speed on the speedometer. He didn’t have long to wait. Dunkels’ flight arrived on time and Mac, huddled down in the rear seat of his car, saw the German enact the same performance at the Avis desk. Just as Dunkels was completing the formalities, however, he was hailed from the roadside.

  He turned, and both he and McCafferty saw a black Mercedes – with Swiss plates – moored at the kerb, Dr Stein’s talkative chauffeur grinning at Dunkels’ evident surprise. The German jumped into the front seat and the Mercedes pulled away – with the Fiat following at a discreet distance. McCafferty gritted his teeth as he stamped on the car’s accelerator. He had a score to settle with Dunkels. And with Smith. He sensed that their chase marked the start of the last lap.

  ELEVEN

  Dunkels headed south from Zagreb on the M12a, which was signposted for Busevec, Lekenik and Zazina. The road was fairly deserted, and Mac had to keep the little Fiat well back to escape detection. After about nineteen miles, Dunkels’ car swung to the right for Gora, and then turned left into a small private airfield. It was hardly more than a large stretch of grass, permitting a clear run of barely fifteen hundred feet in any direction. Standing near the group of rusty, corrugated iron sheds which passed for hangars was a Russian-built Kamov helicopter.

  The helicopter’s contra-rotating blades were already revolving for take-off, and the Mercedes drove straight up to it. Moments later McCafferty caught sight of Dunkels running crouched beneath the rotors to get on board. The door had not even closed when the engine revolutions started to rise, and a low, loud pulsating roar of sound heralded the Kamov’s departure.

  Mac cursed under his breath. He should have foreseen something of the kind, or waited for backup. Now he was powerless to keep on the German’s tail. He parked the Fiat on a grass verge behind a rubbish-filled metal skip as the Mercedes shot out of the airfield and skidded into a turn. Mac pulled up the hood of his anorak to hide his face but the chauffeur passed him without even a first look.

  Then the Kamov’s engine noise rose to a howl, and the helicopter passed over his head, its down-draught tearing the leaves from the trees and flattening the grass.

  The American moodily started his own engine and drove up the narrow road just past the field, intending to reverse into its entrance for the trip back to Zagreb. He was looking over his shoulder to get the proper sighting when his eye fell on a small gaggle of light aircraft parked near the sheds. He whistled and said, ‘Hey. Suddenly it’s Christmas.’

  Mac reversed all the way into the airfield and put the Fiat in the space between two of the sheds; then he got out to examine his unexpected presents. There was a twin-engined Cessna, an old Piper Tripacer, an Italian Marchetti, and what appeared to be several versions of the Yugoslav UTVA. He checked that no one else was about, and inspected the three leading Yugoslavian planes. He had never flown one, but he kept up to date with the technical journals, and knew that the UTVA had a low stalling speed, good short-field performance and, unusually, a surprising turn of speed.

  McCafferty rubbed his chin and slipped a stick of chewing-gum into his mouth. ‘I’d say, at a rough guess, forty … forty-five miles an hour faster than the Kamov,’ he mused. Another thought struck him: the UTVA could probably fly at least seven thousand feet higher than the helicopter. A grin split his face and he said, out loud, ‘Now then. Let’s see if someone has been careless enough to leave the keys in one of these babies.’

  He chose the aircraft parked alongside the end of the first hangar, and immediately struck gold: the keys were there. He strolled casually back to the Fiat, still keeping his eyes peeled for signs of life. Mac took his haversack out of the car and locked the door. Then he scuttled back to the UTVA and threw himself into the cockpit, keeping his body below the window line while he carried out the pre-take-off checks.

  Mac tested the master-switch, and the indicator showed he had a full tank of fuel. He checked that the electrical system was functioning, and then moved the stick and rudder pedals to ensure that there were no control locks on. Whispering a ‘good luck’ message to himself, he operated the start-control.

  This was the most crucial stage of the operation, because the engine noise would be a dead giveaway – though with any luck it would be too late by then to stop him. The engine fired at once, and his luck held: he looked out of the window, careless now whether anyone saw him or not.

  Mac had a gun in his hand and was prepared to make an issue of it … but still he had the field to himself. He shrugged, took a chance in opening the throttle wide (which was far from standard practice), and pointed the nose in the direction which seemed to give him the longest take-off run.

  Within a hun
dred yards the tail had responded to the gentle forward pressure on the stick. Mac’s view improved as the nose of the rather old-fashioned aircraft levelled, and fifty yards further on the airspeed indicator was showing forty-five knots. He wound the elevator trim to prepare for flight, and found himself smoothly airborne, and climbing steeply, without any conscious effort.

  When he crossed the perimeter of the little airfield, the altimeter was already showing two hundred feet. He breathed a sigh of relief and turned back over the field to fly south after Dunkels. As he passed the group of rusting sheds, he peered out and again saw no one moving around. ‘Where the hell’s the resident mechanic?’ he thought. ‘There must be one. You can’t leave the entire place unattended with all these planes lying about.’ Then the penny dropped: Smith must have nobbled the mechanic to leave Dunkels a clear field for take-off.

  McCafferty turned his attention back to Dunkels, estimating the Kamov’s course at about 190 degrees. Setting the same course for himself, he climbed four thousand feet to enlarge his view and compensate for the start the German had on him. He figured he could make up the leeway with the superior performance of the UTVA – particularly if he pushed it slightly beyond the recommended limit. He scanned the area below him on both sides, every inch of land and sky, not seeing the beauty of the rolling countryside nor the sunlit, tree-lined slopes … he looked only for the tell-tale signs which would betray the elusive helicopter: the glint of reflected light from the whirring blades; the fly-sized black speck against the bright blue; the dark shadow stealing across a green meadow.

  A road, a river and a railway line passed beneath his gaze. To his left a small town nestled in a fold of the gentle hills. Mac fumbled for a crumpled, dog-eared chart left in the cockpit, and identified the town as Glina. He peered more closely at the chart: next stop, Topusko – to starboard.