Air Force One is Down

by John Denis

  ‘He does?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Feisal, ‘I have dealt with explosives before.’

  Philpott sniffed the air again. ‘Still smells like goulash to me,’ he said.

  ‘Whatever it is,’ McCafferty replied, ‘we’ve found the place.’

  With Cooligan, they had driven to the approximate area of the hostage caves indicated by Sabrina’s directions, and spent a fruitless twenty minutes exploring the locale with shaded torches, until Philpott caught the odour of home-cooking.

  ‘You stay here, Chief,’ Mac directed. ‘Bert – over to the other side of that concrete outcrop there; it’s obviously the front door. I’ll get above them and flash you: once for all clear, twice for guards. Don’t reply.’

  They were scarcely in position when all doubt was removed. The entrance cavern was flooded with light, the two sentries came to attention, and out walked Mister Smith into what McCafferty could now see was a car-park for the minibus, a collection of jeeps, and Dunkels’ Kamov helicopter.

  Smith halted before the bus, then turned and beckoned towards the mouth of the cave. Jagger came to join him.

  From above and below, Joe McCafferty and Malcolm Philpott got their first in-the-flesh sighting of the ringer, and each man experienced a thrill of dread as they realised how appallingly difficult it would have been for AF One crew members – or anyone else who had known McCafferty – to tell the ringer from the real thing.

  Smith’s voice wafted down to Philpott. ‘As soon as the diamonds are in my hands,’ he told Jagger, ‘I’ll signal you. Then you can clear out and leave the hostages. I’ll make sure Philpott knows where they are.’

  ‘Do you have your insurance with you?’ Jagger asked.

  Smith held up his hand and revealed a small flat box fitted with a switch and an inset timing device. ‘I have it. Any trouble with the ransom and I’ll use it. I’ll warn you first, though, so that you get our people out of the way.’

  ‘Will the signal be strong enough to detonate the bomb from somewhere out at sea?’ Jagger queried.

  Smith grinned and replied, ‘Plenty strong enough. I made it myself.’

  While they were talking, Philpott had been inching through the rocks under the cave’s mouth, and was now hauling himself up to the car-park. He crouched behind the minibus as Smith bade the ringer farewell and boarded the bus. Smith was talking earnestly to the driver and so missed seeing the next thing Jagger did. But Philpott saw it.

  The ringer pulled from his pocket a small flat box identical to Smith’s, glanced at it, and stowed it away again.

  The engine of the minibus stuttered into life, and when the vehicle negotiated the steep declivity to the road, Malcolm Philpott was clinging for dear life to the rear luggage rack …

  One of the guerillas commanding the entrance to the caves relieved himself noisily against the rock wall, called out something undistinguishable to his friend, and disappeared inside. The other guard pulled the gate shut after Smith’s bus had left, and locked it. He was strolling back to his post when McCafferty dropped from an overhanging boulder and flattened him. The guerilla squealed as the breath left his body, and Mac chopped him crisply behind the right ear. The American whistled, and Cooligan ran to join him. Together they trussed and gagged the guard. Cooligan pulled the body into the car-park and lodged it under a lorry.

  ‘Now for Sabrina,’ Mac whispered, for the second time that night; Miss Carver, he thought, was getting to be a problem.

  ‘Yeah, I wonder what she’s up to?’ Cooligan echoed.

  Seduction, that was what she was up to. She sauntered over to the Yugoslav sentry who unslung the machine-pistol from his arm and presented it to her barrel first so that she could see the rifling. His finger was on the trigger, and he said something to her in Serbo-Croat which, from the tone he used, Sabrina judged to be most unpleasant.

  ‘That’s not friendly,’ she murmured, ‘I was only trying to get acquainted. It’s pretty boring here, you know.’

  His eyes showed he had not understood a word she was saying so she continued, in the same conversational tone, ‘Up you go then, Feisal. This guy’s so intent on keeping me under close surveillance that I think we could smuggle in a troupe of performing elephants and he wouldn’t notice.’

  Feisal slipped from behind his grandfather’s wheelchair and used the other Arabs as a screen to get out of the sentry’s line of vision. At the wall, Fairman hoisted the boy up the first few feet and enabled him to get a toe-hold.

  Sabrina moved closer to the guerilla until the gunpoint lodged in the valley between her breasts. She licked her lips and purred, ‘Is that the best you can do?’

  The guard flushed and backed away, but his eyes still held hers as, fleet and silent, Feisal gained height. The Yugoslav waved at her impatiently with the gun to keep her distance, and Sabrina pulled a face at him and wiggled over to the rim of the ledge. She stooped down – and the sentry’s gun followed her. She looked back over her shoulder at him, grinned, and picked up a handful of pebbles.

  She stood at the very edge of the rock face and peered down into the dark pit. Attractively oscillating her rear end, she tossed the stones, one at a time, into the void …

  From his windy perch, Philpott saw the indicator-light of the minibus wink left, and as the bus pulled off the road and slowed to a halt, he dropped off and rolled behind a handy bush. He peered into the darkness, heard the crash of waves, and smelt the sea. Smith instructed the driver to take the bus back to Castle Windischgraetz, and in a moment he was alone with the noises of the night and the waters and the soughing breeze … and Malcolm Philpott.

  Philpott cautiously raised his head and saw a lone cyclist pass Smith, respond warmly to a greeting in the local dialect, and continue on his way. Smith crossed the road and stood for a moment framed against the skyline in the bright light of the moon. Then he disappeared from view. Philpott rose stiffly to his feet and gave chase. From the opposite side he heard the sound of Smith scrambling down an incline. Philpott waited until he reached the bottom, then followed him.

  A standing lantern came on, and Philpott shrank into the shade of a stunted tree. He saw Smith haul from a hiding-place under a rock an Avon dinghy with an outboard motor at its stern. Smith carefully emptied the boat of sand and fragments of brushwood, then unscrewed the lid of the petrol tank and topped up the fuel-supply from a small can of gasoline. He pushed back the sleeve of his brand new anorak and glanced at the illuminated face of his watch. The deadline for the placing of the ransom had passed by a good half-hour, but Mister Smith was in no unseemly hurry. He smiled a satisfied smile, and looked calmly out to sea.

  Ten minutes went by, and Philpott fidgeted uneasily, fighting the cramp that was stealing into his muscles. He held a gun in his left hand and clasped the tree with his right arm, but he was fast tiring of the crouching position he’d been forced to adopt.

  Then Smith moved. He stooped and picked up from the sand a rope-line which Philpott hadn’t spotted. He tugged on the line, and a row of bubbles erupted on the surface of the water and followed a straight course out from the shore.

  Philpott half straightened and leaned forward to get a better view. The crumbling shale beneath his feet gave way, and with a manic shriek he pitched down the bank to fall practically at Smith’s feet.

  The gun flew from his grasp, and Philpott scuttled crabwise to retrieve it until Smith planted a boot firmly on his outstretched hand.

  Sabrina dropped the last pebble into the abyss and turned her head to wink at the Yugoslav, who couldn’t take his eyes off her. That was the moment of secondary sexual communication which Feisal chose to shatter by losing his hand-grip on a sharp splinter of rock. He gave an involuntary cry and slithered down the rock face until he was suspended ten feet over the guard’s head.

  As the guard looked sharply up at the boy, Sabrina dived at the man’s legs and tackled him. He lurched backwards and fell to the ground, but his finger still curled about the catch of the machine-
pistol, and when Sabrina dived after him and grabbed the barrel, the sentry pressed down on the trigger.

  A spray of bullets spattered against the wall and bounced around the cave like demented fireflies. Sheikh Dorani howled as a stray shot clipped his shoulder-bone, and Sabrina strove mightily to bend the pistol back against the guard’s hand.

  With the fingers of her other hand she clawed at the man’s face and drew blood, but he closed his eyes to avert the worst of the damage. He brought his knee up into her crutch, and she gasped and heaved. The Air Force One crewmen stood by helpless, not daring to intervene while the Yugoslav held on to the gun. Finally, with a massive effort, the guard drove his elbow into her face and pulled himself to his feet, with Sabrina still clinging to the pistol.

  The guerilla punched her savagely again and tore the gun from her grasp, then bellowed in pain and surprise as Feisal landed heavily on his back.

  The man and the boy crashed to the rock floor together, and once more the machine-pistol stuttered and coughed. But it was Feisal who rose with his hands and shirt-front drenched in blood. The Yugoslav lay on his back, his face, throat and chest shot away, one sightless eye staring at the crystal mouldings on the roof of the cavern.

  Sabrina threw her arms round the sobbing child and kissed his cheeks. Then she surrendered him to Dr Hamady and ordered Fairman to get to his knees. She clambered on his back and gritted her teeth and she began to scale the rock face, for the bomb had still to be neutralised …

  Jagger and Dunkels heard the burst of firing while they were supervising the clear-up operation in the main cavern. Most of the guerillas had already left, deploying to their secret mountain bases. Jagger swore and grabbed a sub machine-gun, ordered Dunkels to guard the approach to the bridge, and ran to investigate.

  Cooligan and McCafferty were lying low in the entrance cave planning their next move when the sound of the shooting reached them. Cooligan immediately drew the wrong conclusion. ‘He’s done it, the bastard,’ Bert choked, and started for the tunnel leading to the bridge. McCafferty grabbed his arm and pulled him back, explaining that the ringer was unlikely to launch a shooting massacre when all he had to do was explode the bomb.

  The two agents used rock-cover to get them to the tunnel, and it was sheer bad luck that Dunkels turned to look behind him just at the instant when a shaft of light glinted on the stock of McCafferty’s gun …

  Sabrina looked long and hard at the bomb. The detonator was wedged firmly into a crevice in the rock, and the wires, sunk into the viscous mass of pink plastique, might be delicately poised to resist dismantling. She dared not risk setting the explosives off accidentally, so she tried to saw through the trailing yellow cable against a sharp edge of rock. Her head was bent to the task when Jagger’s gun tickled the soft hairs behind her left ear and his voice said ‘Drop the wire.’

  She froze, and the cable slipped out of her hand. The ringer plucked the machine-pistol from her belt and motioned her inside.

  Then Jagger himself froze as another fusillade of bullets crashed into the wall at his side. He spun round to see Siegfried Dunkels stagger out of the tunnel on to the bridge, clutching his torn stomach. Slowly, almost balletically, Dunkels folded and draped across the suspension-cable. He tried to right himself, but his head fell forward as he died, and his body toppled into the chasm.

  McCafferty hurdled the corpse of the guard, brought down in the same burst as that which killed Dunkels, and at last came face to face with his other half – himself! – across twenty feet of rickety bridge.

  Mac raised his machine-pistol and caught his trigger-finger just in time when he saw, in the dim lighting of the second cave, that the ringer was using Sabrina Carver as a shield.

  ‘Back, McCafferty,’ Jagger shouted, ‘or she gets it. You too, Cooligan.’

  Mac waved Bert away and retreated himself, still keeping the ringer in his line of vision. Somehow, Jagger knew that the odds were stacked against him, and played his last lunatic card. Fear of the Russians, of Karilian, of what they could do to him if he failed to carry out their orders, governed his life to the last. He groped in his pocket and brought out the detonator.

  ‘Three minutes,’ he breathed, and pressed the time switch. ‘Three minutes and you’re all dead.’

  He shoved Sabrina ahead of him to re-cross the bridge, and saw McCafferty and Cooligan withdraw further into the tunnel. When she and Jagger reached the other side, Sabrina rounded on Cody savagely and yelled, ‘You can’t, you mustn’t, kill those people. They’ve done nothing to harm you. What kind of animal are you, Mister No-Name?’

  The ringer exploded and lashed at her face. She took the blow on the chin and crumpled to the ground, striking her head on a rock. ‘The name is Cody Jagger – do you hear?’ he screamed at her senseless body. ‘Do you hear, McCafferty? I’m Cody Jagger, and I’m going to kill you and everyone else here!’

  Mac’s answer was a burst of pistol fire which sent Jagger reeling back unhurt into the darkness of the bridge. He snarled an obscenity when he saw that the detonator had fallen from his hand and was lying a yard from Sabrina’s head. The timer showed two minutes before the bomb would explode.

  Jagger began to crawl towards the detonator, but McCafferty had him in clear view now. ‘You’re covered, Jagger,’ he shouted, ‘drop the gun.’

  Cody rose and loosed off another salvo until the firing-mechanism jangled on the empty chamber.

  The detonator’s timing device clicked round to one minute.

  Jagger threw the useless gun away and jerked out the machine-pistol he had taken from Sabrina. He never got to press the trigger: McCafferty shot him twice through the hand, and the gun clattered on to the bridge.

  Mac advanced, and his eyes flickered to the ticking remote-control box, then back to Jagger’s face … his own face, warped with hatred, licking the blood from his hand.

  ‘You son of a bitch, McCafferty, I should have killed you back in Bahrain, but the Russians wanted you alive.’

  ‘The Russians?’ Mac cried. ‘You work for—’

  Sabrina chose that second to moan and stir, and McCafferty’s eyes left Jagger’s long enough to search for her face. Cody heaved himself at the American and kicked out at his groin.

  The electronic timer showed thirty-two, thirty-one, thirty seconds.

  Mac took the kick on his thigh and rocked back as Jagger caught the gun in his wounded hand and crashed the other into Mac’s face. But Jagger couldn’t retain his hold on the pistol. Blood was pumping from his hand, and his fingers fell away. He tried to defend himself one-handed. Then McCafferty got a lock on him and splintered his cheek-bone with the butt of the gun.

  Cody’s head came up, his lips slid away from his teeth, and his eyes glazed over. Mac used the gun butt on him again, and Jagger keeled over against the rail. It broke under his weight, and his dying shriek lasted until his body hit the pointed rocks of the river-bed.

  Sabrina screamed when Mac turned to her. Her mind strove to cope with the man standing before her. Who was he? Who had won the fight? She clasped her hands to her pounding head, then reached for the machine-pistol, and McCafferty cried, ‘It’s me, you silly bitch.’

  She let the gun go, and in the hiatus that followed they heard the remorseless ticking of the timer. They both dived for it, and she was nearer.

  When she switched off the detonator, and disconnected the battery wires, the clock face showed two seconds to blast-off.

  ‘You’re not quite the last man in the world I expected to see, Philpott,’ Smith remarked urbanely, ‘but I honestly didn’t imagine you’d suddenly drop in out of the blue in that vulgar manner.’

  Smith removed his boot from Philpott’s hand, and kicked the gun into the sea. ‘Get up,’ he commanded. Philpott tried, but fell back grimacing with pain.

  ‘I think I’ve hurt my foot,’ he apologised.

  ‘Serves you right,’ said Smith. ‘You must have had a pretty rough journey, too. I suppose you rode on top of the bus.’r />
  ‘Something like that,’ Philpott admitted.

  Smith’s eyes gleamed and he smiled broadly. ‘Then you’re alone. How convenient – for me. If you can make yourself comfortable on the sand, I would advise you to do so. You will not have long to wait, and I can promise you that what you see will be of consuming interest to you.’

  Philpott moaned and lay back, clasping his hands behind his head. ‘What were you doing,’ he asked, ‘when I inflicted myself upon you so rudely?’

  Smith put a finger to his lips. ‘Patience,’ he said, ‘and all will be revealed.’ He took from his anorak pocket a small flat metal box.

  Philpott recoiled in horror. ‘Don’t, Smith,’ he pleaded, ‘for God’s sake don’t do it. Those people are innocent. You’ll get your ransom. They don’t deserve to die.’

  Smith smiled and juggled dexterously with the little box. ‘As I thought,’ he mused, ‘you know far more than is good for you. But on this occasion, Philpott, you’re wrong. This box –’ pointing to the one in his hand ‘– is not the detonator for the explosives at the cave.’

  He pulled another, seemingly identical, box from the same pocket. ‘This one is.’

  Philpott regarded him in amazement. ‘Two detonators for the same job? Or rather – three?’

  ‘Three?’ Smith repeated. ‘What are you talking about?’

  It was Philpott’s turn to smirk. ‘Now there’s something you don’t know about, Mister Smith.

  Your pet doppelgänger has one just like that,’ he said, indicating the bomb timer.

  Smith looked apprehensive, and impressed. ‘How clever of you to find that out, Mr Philpott,’ he murmured. ‘So our Colonel McCafferty – whose name, incidentally, used to be Cody Jagger – has designs on the hostages too, has he?’ He remained in silent thought for perhaps a minute, then turned his blank grey eyes on the UNACO chief.