He shook his head irritably. ‘Those thugs up at the airstrip think everything is going fine. They’ve got no reason to think otherwise, except that the Haslam woman and the man, Steve, are missing.’
‘And nobody’s answering the phone over here.’
‘True,’ he said. ‘But my guess is that they’re too busy with the money to worry overmuch about that.’
‘So?’
‘I’ve got ninety-two passengers and eight crew members on that Boeing to consider. I can’t move in unless I have the strength and the ability to prevent a take-off. If they call my bluff, what the hell happens to the hostages?’
I stared at him. ‘So you’re prepared to let Jill Salton die? Just like that?’
He swung around and snapped at the man on the field radio. ‘Get me Benning Airport.’ He turned his head and his face was set in stern lines. ‘What would you do in my place, Kemp? You don’t have to make the decisions. I do.’
There wasn’t much I could say to that. Hanna said, ‘Take it easy, Kemp. I’m doing the best I can.’
‘I know you are,’ I said heavily. ‘I know you are.’
The radio operator held up the handset. ‘Benning, Superintendent.’
Hanna grabbed it. ‘Any news of the Americans? Good. When?’ He checked his watch. ‘They know what to do? That’s right. As much as possible.’
He tossed the telephone at the operator and whirled around. ‘Captain, we’re moving. Now. Get your men in the boats but be quiet about it. We need to get ashore in silence.’ He jabbed a finger towards Dr Baines, who had just come in with Leotta close behind. ‘Get your patient ready for moving, doctor. I’ll let you have two men.’
Baines went away quickly and Hanna cocked an eye at me. ‘Are you coming?’
‘Try and stop me.’
‘Great!’ said Leotta. ‘It’s a party.’
TWELVE
I
No amount of arguing, cajoling or ordering was going to make Leotta change her mind. She was coming too. The doctor didn’t need her as a nurse any more and, as she pointed out rather bitterly, she had as much at stake in this bloody charade as anyone – and more than most. On top of which, I could certainly vouch for her usefulness in a tight spot, even with one hand out of action.
Three boats had slipped into the lagoon and were moored where they could not be seen from the mainland. Rapidly they filled up and I estimated there were about twenty men to a boat, a strange mixture of soldiers and police, sixty in all. Baines was left behind with his patient and John, who had been keen to stay by his employer’s side. Hanna said, ‘I’ll send a boat back for you. We’ll be making contact with the main gate in about fifteen minutes, then you can have a free run to the hospital. There’ll be an ambulance standing by for you.’
He jumped on board the boat and said to the captain, ‘Is the public address system aboard?’
‘Yes, Superintendent.’
‘Then let’s go.’
As we moved off he said to me, ‘Well, you’re off the hook, Kemp. I doubt if Conyers will worry about you now.’
I frowned. ‘I don’t see it.’
‘This situation is made for him,’ said Hanna. ‘It takes the heat off. There’ll be something else to fill the headlines instead of politics, and it clears up the mystery of Salton’s death very neatly from his point of view. You’ll be built up as the man of the hour, the hero of El Cerco.’
‘Some hero,’ I said. ‘What about you? Do you still have Barstow in the jug?’
‘Yes.’ There was grim humour in his voice as he said, ‘Maybe I’ll be next Commissioner. Maybe I’ll be fired. Who knows?’
The boat slid up to the quay and a crew member jumped ashore with a mooring line. There was no point now worrying about whether we could be seen from the airstrip: there was nothing we could do about it anyway. And even if we lost the element of surprise, sheer numbers would be on our side. Mrs Haslam’s gang could not outgun this military operation.
The men debarked and the soldiers deployed, moving at a dogtrot, their weapons held ready. Hanna stood on the quay and said disparagingly, ‘I command an army and I daren’t use it. Sergeant, the walkie-talkie.’
The radio operator trotted by, heading for the road that led to the airstrip. He looked hump-backed under the load of the field radio. A group of men followed him carrying big trumpet-shaped loudspeakers. Behind us at the estate office, I caught a glimpse of three soldiers manhandling someone out through the doorway. He appeared to have his hands tied behind his back and he was gagged.
Hanna was saying, ‘… That’s it, Inspector. When you hear the bangs, move in and occupy the further perimeter of the airfield. On no account attempt to rush them. Your job is just to pen them in.’
He snapped a switch, handed the walkie-talkie back to his sergeant, and checked his watch. ‘About three minutes,’ he said. ‘Let’s go up to the road.’
We walked fast, the three of us in a line, and Leotta said, ‘What’s happening in three minutes?’
‘An air operation,’ he said enigmatically. ‘I’ve managed to find an air force, too.’
We stopped halfway up the hill, where a light machine-gun had been set up. The loudspeakers were now on stands and a technician was plugging them into an amplifier. The radio operator was fiddling with knobs and speaking in a low voice. The army captain said, ‘All ready, Superintendent.’
‘I hope this works,’ said Hanna. ‘I wish to God I had those riot trucks.’
All was quiet. A brightness in the air on top of the hill indicated that there were lights on the airfield, but no sound came from there. There was a warm breeze but not strong enough even to make the grass rustle. From one side came the clink of metal on stone and a muttered imprecation. The captain said in a low voice, ‘Quiet, there!’
The radio man suddenly said, ‘I’m on net, captain.’ He held up the microphone.
And then the sky seemed to split open. There was a deafening bang followed by a banshee howl as a meteor vanished over the top of the hill. I stared at the place it had been with incredulity, my ears still ringing. It had been a fighter aircraft moving at the best part of a thousand miles an hour at sea level.
There was another bang and a light streaked across the sky as though drawn by a pen, so that it was not a moving light at all but, due to the persistence of vision, a white line. The world was all noise.
The third bang left me shattered. The nearest loudspeaker slowly began to topple over but someone caught it before it hit the ground.
Seconds went by. Nothing more happened. The captain switched on his torch and I saw that Hanna was speaking, but he sounded very distant and the words didn’t make sense. Somewhere far away a man was letting loose with a rebel yell.
I rubbed my ears, which seemed to be full of cotton wool, then held my nose and swallowed hard, and my hearing snapped back to normal. There was a babble of voices coming from a speaker on the field radio, and again there was the rebel yell. I glanced at Leotta and saw that she had been just as shaken by the fighters as I had.
Hanna grabbed the microphone from the radio operator. ‘Hey, you up there! US Navy!’
An American voice cut through the babble. ‘Shut up, you guys! Someone’s talking to me.’ The confusion died and his voice came over strong and clear. ‘Who is that?’
‘Superintendent Hanna, Campanillan Police.’
‘Hi, Superintendent. Commander Auerbacher at your service. Was that what you wanted?’
‘That was just fine,’ said Hanna.
‘Do you want us to make another pass?’
‘If you would. But make it slowly this time. You’ve woken them up, now we want them to see you as well as hear you.’
‘Can do. One minute.’
Hanna lowered the microphone and I said, ‘That’s some air force. Where did you get them?’
‘They’re Phantoms from the US Navy base at Guantanamo. The Americans agreed to co-operate when they learned that half the passengers on that B
oeing were American citizens.’
This time the fighters came in line astern and close together, all lights on, and flying at about five hundred miles an hour. They stooped in a shallow dive and I’ll swear they couldn’t have been more than thirty feet from the ground when they went over the airstrip. The night was filled with their noise.
Hanna said, ‘Is that public address amplifier switched on?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the captain.
The radio coughed. ‘What now, Superintendent?’
‘I’d like you to circle around for a while,’ said Hanna. ‘Just so you can be heard.’
‘You want us to orbit that airfield?’
‘That’s right.’
‘We can do that,’ said Auerbacher. ‘But not for long. We had to travel real fast to get down here in time and that uses fuel. We can stay up for maybe twenty minutes, but then we’ll have to put down at Benning.’
‘Damn!’ said Hanna softly. He raised his voice. ‘Can you detach a plane to land, refuel, and then come back?’
‘Sorry, no can do,’ said Auerbacher. ‘They don’t have our sort of juice at Benning.’ He paused. ‘Maybe I can stretch it to a half-hour, but that’s the limit.’
‘Thanks, Commander,’ said Hanna, and handed the microphone back to the radio operator.
I said, ‘If I was up there I’d have been scared witless.’
‘That was the intention,’ said Hanna dryly. ‘But by now they’ll have started to think.’ He took another microphone and tapped it. The taps were hugely magnified in the loudspeaker horns. He took a deep breath and raised the microphone to his lips. ‘This is Superintendent Hanna,’ the horns boomed. Echoes sounded from the hill. ‘You up there – Haslam, Philips – I want to talk to you.’
We listened to the echoes dying away but there was nothing else. ‘You can’t escape,’ he said. ‘The airfield is surrounded. The fighters have orders to shoot down any plane taking off from your airfield.’
Still nothing happened. Leotta said quietly, ‘Is that true? About the fighters?’
‘God, no!’ he said. ‘There’d be hell’s own row if American fighters started to knock civilian planes out of the sky.’ He nodded up towards the hill. ‘But will they realise that?’
Possibly not, I thought. That sudden assault from the sky would have been enough to jar loose anyone’s thought processes. My own brains seemed pretty loose in my head right then.
‘Haslam, Philips, I want to hear from you,’ the speakers blared. ‘I’ll give you sixty seconds.’
Hanna drew back his cuff and looked at his watch. Everyone was still and I strained my ears, listening to the darkness above. The technician operating the public address system shuffled his feet and the noise he made on the gravel drew him a curt and whispered reprimand.
‘Thirty seconds,’ said Hanna flatly.
There would be confusion up there, I thought. Everything had been going well, apart from the inexplicable absence of Bette Haslam and Steve, and they would have been working flat out to move the loot from the Boeing to the Lear. The sudden shattering appearance of those fighters and then the big voice in the night would be enough to make the bottom drop out of everything. I wondered if Hanna knew what he was doing. Those men would now be under intolerable stress and, if they were anything like Bette Haslam, they’d have been half off their hinges to begin with. Men under stress can act strangely and I began to worry for the passengers again.
‘Fifteen seconds,’ said Hanna.
‘Maybe they’re not going to talk,’ I said.
‘Hush!’ Hanna raised his hand.
A thin cry came from above. ‘You, down there.’
‘Yes?’ the loudspeaker slammed out.
‘You want to talk, you send a man up halfway.’
‘Two men,’ said Hanna.
There was a pause. ‘Okay, two men. But no more.’
‘We’re coming now.’ Hanna handed the microphone to the technician. ‘This is it. Come on, Captain.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I know Haslam and Philips. I’ve spoken to them before. I know something about them, at least. What does the captain know? Or you, come to that?’
Hanna gave me a slanting look. ‘You drive yourself too hard, Mr Kemp.’ He shrugged. ‘All right. Captain, if we’re not back in five minutes, you are in command here.’
He strode off up the road and after three quick strides I caught up with him. A moment later, Leotta was at my elbow. When he noticed her, Hanna stopped abruptly.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he demanded.
‘I’m going to see this through one way or another,’ she said. ‘I’ve already looked into the eyes of one of David’s killers. Now I want to see the rest of the filthy bunch.’
I tried to mediate. ‘You heard what they said – only two people, no more.’
‘No,’ she said, and her eyes flashed defiantly. ‘Only two men, they said. They never mentioned women.’
Hanna grunted and marched off up the hill again. One look at Leotta convinced me there was no point debating any further. We had to jog after Hanna to catch up.
‘What are you going to say?’ I asked him.
‘Not much,’ he said. ‘But it will be to the point. What I really want to do is listen. I want to find out what frame of mind these people are in.’
There were jet noises in the sky. I said, ‘They might think they hold some trumps. The passengers.’
‘They’ll have to be talked out of that.’ A light flashed fifty yards up the road. ‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Let me do the talking.’
As we crunched up the road, two men came down to meet us. Hanna raised his light and I saw Philips and the man with the black beard. Philips shone a light on us and it settled on Leotta. ‘Hey! What the hell is a woman doing here?’
Hanna said, ‘We have no time for chit-chat. I’m a police officer.’
‘I know who you are,’ said Philips. ‘And your nosey chum there.’
‘There’s one thing you need to know right away,’ said Hanna. ‘If we’re not back down there in five minutes, an army officer takes command. Soldiers like direct action and I can’t guarantee what he’ll do or what he won’t do. Am I making myself clear?’
The man with the black beard said, ‘You mean he’ll make an assault on the airfield?’
‘He might,’ said Hanna. ‘Who are you?’
‘You can call me Frank.’
‘And you?’
‘He’s Philips,’ I said quietly.
‘All right,’ said Hanna. ‘I want you all to come down the hill. If you have any guns, leave them at the airfield.’
‘Are you crazy?’ said Frank. ‘You want us to give up, just like that? You’re nuts! And I’ll tell you something else. If that soldier boy down there tries for the airfield, an awful lot of people are going to get hurt. Maybe dead.’
It was out in the open: the naked threat.
Hanna looked at him steadily. ‘Is that all you have to say?’
‘What the hell else do you want?’
‘What do you have to say, Philips?’
‘Nothing.’ But he shuffled his feet and looked worried. ‘It was you who wanted to talk.’
Frank narrowed his eyes and said suddenly, ‘I think you’re pulling a bluff. I don’t think you have the army down there. I don’t believe you have the field surrounded. You’re not as strong as you say you are.’
‘Don’t be a damned fool,’ said Hanna without heat. He cocked his eye at the sky, which moaned with jet engines. ‘If I can find jet fighters, I can certainly find an army unit. The soldiers are down there. You don’t have a chance.’
‘Yes, we do,’ said Frank. ‘We have a hundred chances.’ He glanced sideways at Philips. ‘That’s about it, isn’t it? I reckon there’s about a hundred.’
‘Near enough,’ said Philips.
‘Are you two elected to speak for the rest?’ asked Hanna.
‘We don’t go much for elections,’ said Frank. ‘You can
say we are.’
Hanna said, ‘I’d like to talk to all of you.’
‘You’re not going to,’ said Frank. ‘We can pass on your message.’
‘All right, then the message is this,’ said Hanna. ‘This is a game you can’t win. But you can lose hard or you can lose easy. It’s up to you.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Time’s wasting. We’d better get back.’
Frank was suddenly holding a gun. ‘Maybe we’d better keep a few more hostages.’
‘For Christ’s sake!’ said Philips. ‘You heard what he said about the soldiers.’
‘I don’t believe him.’
Hanna shrugged. ‘You’ll find out pretty soon.’
‘Okay,’ said Frank. ‘Then you go back.’ He waved the gun towards Leotta and me. ‘But they stay.’
‘All right,’ said Hanna, and turned to face the two of us squarely. There was a steely look in his eye. ‘I’m sorry, but you wanted to come.’ To Frank he said, ‘I’ll lay on a demonstration to prove that the army is here. Keep your eye on the lagoon.’
He said no more but turned on his heel and walked down the road. Frank said, ‘What did he mean by that?’ He prodded me with the gun. ‘I’m talking to you.’
‘I don’t know what he meant. I suggest you do as he says. Watch the lagoon.’
‘Not from here,’ said Philips. ‘Let’s get back. We could be jumped here.’
Frank prodded me with the pistol again and I felt like taking it from him and cramming it down his throat. But to try anything would have been stupid so Leotta and I meekly followed Philips up the road, with Frank guarding us from behind. At the top, where we came in sight of the airstrip, two men were waiting: the young man I had previously seen with Frank, and Haslam. He looked as if he was about to burst a vein in his neck.
He said, ‘What the hell is going on?’
‘I thought I told you to keep on loading,’ said Frank. There was a sharp edge to his voice.
‘The hell with that,’ said Haslam. ‘What’s happening down there?’ He looked at his two new hostages but said nothing.
‘Just a lot of big talk,’ said Frank.
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