Kingfisher

by Gerald Seymour

  The Guard commander finished the scribbled note, reached for the desk telephone and dialled the militia headquarters. Operations room patched the call through to the telephone in the back of the car that was bringing the militia colonel towards the airport. The situation was relayed, the number of the nearest direct line to the Guard commander was passed on, the call was terminated.

  The communications of the Russian internal security services had long been a source of justifiable pride, much admired by their opposite number in the West; the colonel was able to reach within seconds a senior official of the Ministry of the Interior in Central Moscow. He was connected directly to the Minister, one of the four most important personages in the Soviet Union, and the one who at that moment had the power and the full authority to make decisions on the future flying of Aeroflot 927. The colonel's role in the immediate course of the incident was completed. During the subsequent two minutes radio and telephone conversations were activated from the seat of government to the airforce base that lies close to the small town of Chernigov, due north of Kiev. The order for the moment was short, and very clear. The Ilyushin 11-18V

  should be forced to land within Russian territory.

  In a flight of four the Mig 23s lifted off. Two pairs, matching and racing each other down the runway till they had achieved take-off speed, then airborne in an explosion of aviation fuel fumes, and with sheets of flame spewing from the rear engine vents. These were not the low-level ground-support aircraft with the North European theatre camouflage motif but the silver-fuselaged altitude interceptors that were held far to the rear of the Cold War front.

  Closing into diamond formation as they climbed, capable of eighteen hundred miles an hour in flight, code-named by NATO planners as 'Foxbat', they made an unmercifully equal match for the lumbering, hesitant airliner which those same planners had titled 'Coot'. Four sharks thrusting their way

  into the upper atmosphere where they would poise themselves, biding their time till ground control gave them the precious radar bearings that they would need to lock themselves on their quarry. At the controls were young men little older than David or Isaac, but the elite of the society that they served, on whom money and expertise and time had been lavished that their effectiveness would be guaranteed. The sun burnished a reflection off the cropped, sharpened delta wings as they banked to take up the level flight that meant they had achieved the necessary altitude, in excess of forty- five thousand feet, that when they came for the airliner they would be diving. Cannon belt loaded in the wings, and slung below the snap-down missiles. Lethal and vicious, with no morality of their own, without an opinion on their orders, and now responding to instructions, feeding the information into their transistorized computer workings. Beginning the search for a creature that by comparison was unworthy of their strength, a lamed and limping prey.

  David was still in the cockpit.

  Isaac shooed the stewardesses back towards the main passenger cabin, gesturing them towards vacant seats with his submachine-gun, telling them to sit and to fasten their belts. Time now to see who they had on board, to evaluate the passengers. Stunned they seemed, most of them; all staring at him till he caught the individual pairs of eyes that then looked away as if terrified by what they saw.

  He shouted the length of the cabin, that those at the back, seventy-five feet from him, might hear and understand and have no doubt as to his intent. 'All your hands on your heads. If you do as you are instructed no harm will come to you, but you must obey our orders, and without hesitation. All hands on your heads.' He felt a curious thrill at the depth of his voice as it echoed back at him, drowning the monotonous roar of the engine. Some reacting immediately, some so confused that they had to have the instruction repeated by those who sat beside them. Old hands that were weather-beaten and vein-ribbed and on which there were heavy gold rings, hands that were used to manual work and which showed callouses and worn skin as they were lifted. Hands that were manicured and had no bruises, hands that were young and pink and undeveloped. The small hands of the children reach-ing up to the well-washed hair of their heads. That was how he was first aware of the school party. He hadn't seen them before, not so as to register, hidden away behind their seats till their hands came up, with the popping eyes and the wide- opened mouths.

  He was surprised in a way that there wasn't more hostility on the faces - but not once he'd thought about it - it was not him they were frightened of, not little Isaac, not a student with a hole in his shoe, and underpants changed once a week, and the shirt with the collar button off. It was the gun in his hands that brought the submission and the respect for his orders. Not for yourself -

  kick your balls halfway to Khabarovsk if you gave them the chance. The gun, that was his protection.

  Isaac moved warily down the aisle, Rebecca walking backwards behind him, covering the passengers who could have turned to face his retreating back. About sixty of them in all, he reckoned, not an exact count, but good enough for his needs. All of them waiting on him, waiting for the explanation that would clarify the gunshot, and the lurches in the direction of the plane, and the sight of the young man with the curly hair and the shabby clothes, and who carried the submachine-gun at his hip, whose thumb was on 'safety', whose forefinger was abreast the trigger guard. He walked the full length of the plane, reaching with his free hand sometimes to steady himself as the aircraft pitched and fell away. His arm then close to heads that shrivelled away from him. He checked the lavatories, both empty, bar the one strewn with the wrapping paper that had parcelled the firearms. A good precaution, necessary to make certain no hero of the Soviet Union was hiding there looking for a Red Star to be pinned posthumously on his coffin. Clean at the back of the plane. Everyone in their seats and where they should be, neat and tidy and packaged. He called Rebecca forward, so that she could stand in the stewardesses' province, away from the passengers and close to the rear exit door. He pulled the soft drinks trolley across the aisle where the rear row of seats ended and the galley area began. This gave a free space in which Rebecca could stand, and a degree of protection if he left her there. It made a barricade for her to shelter behind, the bottles rattling and chinking together in protest as he moved the obstacle into position.

  "You're going to be at this end, Rebecca, and for much of the flight. I'll be at the front with David, him in the cockpit, and me mostly watching the passengers. If they turn round to stare at you order them back, to look at the front. Don't talk to them; don't start speaking to them-nothing at least till we are over the West.'

  'What's at the front... David was shouting?'

  'Nothing now. The shot that he fired to get the door opened, it's killed the pilot. The co-pilot is flying now.'

  'Oh, my God, oh, God ..

  'He didn't mean to, it was an accident.' Her head was down on her chest. Exhausted, all in, beaten. And David half out of his mind and screaming up there in the front. On your own, Isaac, and where to turn to for the reinforcements? 'Take a grip, Rebecca,' he snarled at her. 'Remember why we are here, what we came for, and if another of the pigs gets in the way, tries anything, attempts what the pilot did, then you shoot him. You understand?' Saw his failure, and the unreasoned rejection of what he said. And then more gently, and with the smile. 'It's not long from now, just a few hours, two or three, and then we land. Then its the petrol, the refuel and on to Israel.' He took her left hand, closed it in his own, small and buried and cold and without response, trying to impart his own strength, trying to hide his own fear, then walked down the length of the aisle again towards the cockpit. Forty-eight paces, that was the length of their castle, battened down and with the hatches fastened, wondering again how David was. He turned to face the passengers.

  'Ladies and gentlemen, you have nothing to be afraid of from us. We are taking this plane to the West. We will be there soon, and then you will be rid of us, free to return wherever you may wish. I must tell you that my friends and myself have no life left inside the Soviet Union-
we have nothing to return to except a death sentence. I must tell you that because you have to know that we will die in this plane rather than return to Kiev. If there is any resistance, any attempt to disarm us, we will shoot and that will endanger the safety of the aircraft - and of you, of all of you. Later in the flight we will tell you more. For now you must remain seated, your hands on your heads, and you must not talk. That is all.' Another speech, Isaac, another audience. Seemed so inadequate, so divorced from the wood hut, and the faint light of evening when they met there, and the plans to conquer the system that they hated. But then there were so many things that had not been prepared; free-wheeling really, with the engine disengaged, but the hill was steep and there was no braking now.

  No murmur greeted his words, not of appreciation, not of condemnation; the passengers just soaked them up, as they stayed in their seats, hands on their heads. Nothing to please him, nothing to anger him. Nothing.

  A brisk little face she had. Pale and smooth-skinned, with a pittance of make-up, a severe bobbed cut to her hair and eyes that flitted over her instruments and that were sharp and a deep honey brown. When Anna Tashova smiled the lines at her mouth were clearly drawn, not a smile of pleasure nor of satisfaction but a smile of triumph. David saw it, saw the way she half - turned, and broke his concentration on the hazed horizon to the front, turned instead to follow her glance to the starboard cockpit window. They were flying very close, the Migs. The nearest were some fifty feet from the Ilyushin's wing, had crept their way forward with a stealth that had deceived him, and beyond the nearest of the fighters lay another, so close that the two seemed to nestle together. They were near enough for David to see the pilots, to identify the numbers of their machines painted on the slender nose, to witness the menace of the rockets hung beneath their wings.

  The pilot officer pushed the microphone mouthpiece away from her hps. 'They are on the other side as well. They have come to take us home.'

  David could see the gestures of the nearest pilot on the port side, the motions of his gloved hand, that they should swing again, retrace their path towards Kiev.

  'They will have orders,' Anna Tashova said. 'They will bring us down if we do not comply.

  What do you want? A plane full of dead passengers? Does that serve your cause?'

  The lead port side plane, the one whose pilot had made the arm movement, inched its way forward. Strange really, and the effect upon David was hypnotic, compulsive, the way it could move so delicately, a beast of such power yet held to a fingertip control that permitted it to nudge, foot by foot,

  into the airspace almost immediately in front of the Ilyushin.

  'He will slow now, force me to lose thrust and altitude if I am to avoid him. It is an accepted procedure.' Jet interceptor and airliner, the gap closing between them. An inevitable course they were following, collision course, mid-air, fragmentation, break-up. Fascinating for him to watch, crawling towards the impact. A distant shriek, then Isaac beating at his shoulder.

  'David, what are we doing? What are you telling the pilot? The Migs have come.'

  A deeper, more general noise from behind, that took him a moment to understand and then was clear as the hysteria of the passengers. Predictable, and he knew the course he would take.

  'You fly on,' flat and without emotion, speaking to the pilot officer, ignoring Isaac.

  Then you have collision, is that what you want?' Strain in her voice - the first time. Turning hesitantly from the cockpit window and the great shape that masked her view to the pallid, closed features of the young man at her back, with the gun loose in his hands.

  There will be no collision. Fly on. Remember your responsibilities, and they are to your passengers.' He turned to Isaac. 'They are trying to force us down, and we will not respond. I believe they will not risk more, and soon we shall see.' They were so close now both men could see the huge chasm of the interceptor's rear exhaust, blackened and flame- charred. And the distance narrowing the whole time, second by second, foot by foot, and the pilot officer's hands beginning to waver above her controls. 'Do not touch them. Touch them and I shoot.'

  If they have orders to bring us down that will be sufficient. They have rockets, you can see for yourself. They can bring us down if

  '

  'Who is listening on our radio? Who can hear us?' The lustre back in his voice; he, too, rejoicing in the power he had accumulated, as Isaac had done moments before, drinking deep in the new sensation of being at the centre of events.

  She paused. 'Half the world can listen to you when you talk from an airplane cockpit.' The moment of triumph lost, dissipated by her assessment of the man with the gun, and of his fanaticism, his determination. At the briefings in Moscow, the anti-hijack briefings, they had spoken of the two types, those seeking a ride out, those yearning for a wider audience. The second grouping they had said was the one to be feared. 'At this speed we collide; ten seconds more, that is all. I must reduce speed. I have to '

  'It will be they who increase speed. I want to use the radio. I want to speak.' Radio silence so far, he had noted that much, not even talking to the navigator. No conversation with the airliner from the jets - serve to make it all public, wouldn't it? Confirmed what she's said, that half the world could hear him now, half the world listening, and wondering why a plane was off route, out of the air lanes. One hundred and fifty feet in front and fractionally above was the tail of the lead Mig, and the escorts closer to the wings, crowding them, boxing them in, and at three hundred and thirty miles an hour as they flew four clear miles above the Russian plains.

  Headphones pushed down into his hair, microphone across his mouth, he instructed her to activate it, all the time the barrel of the gun close to her side and his finger by the trigger.

  'This plane is now under the command of a Jewish Resistance Commando. We have taken the Aeroflot Flight 927, Kiev to Tashkent, and we go to the West. Our final destination is Israel. The pilot of the aircraft is dead, and his colleague, Pilot Officer Anna Tashova, is flying. I hold a submachine-gun to her body. We have an escort of Mig 23 fighters who are trying to make us land.

  We have told Miss Tashova that if she follows their instructions then we shoot her. We are prepared to die, and if we shoot her then the plane will surely crash. There are many passengers on board. We call this flight the 'Kingfisher'- that is our name for it. There will be no more broadcasts from the aircraft until we are beyond the borders of the Soviet Union and her Socialist allies.' Short and staccato sentences, but the whole spoken slowly, mindful of radio operators bowing over their sets in many countries, ensuring the message was clear - understood.

  The Mig immediately ahead abruptly surged clear of their path, climbing beyond David's vision, and the wing-tip escort banked away.

  They are not finished,' Anna Tashova said, 'they manoeuvre to shoot at us.'

  The screaming in the cabin behind David and Isaac had not lasted for many seconds, stifled by the very helplessness the passengers felt. What was the point of pleading when there was no one to answer? The girl was far back, at the rear of the plane, and no one dared turn to see her. The man, the short one, the one who had addressed them, hovered half in and half out of the cockpit.

  The other man had long gone from view and busying himself with the direction of the aircraft.

  Those at the windows had the best view of the gleaming Migs, and saw from the gestures of the pilots that this was a time of crisis.

  Luigi Franconi had won the courage to ignore the instruction that his hands should be on his head. They covered his eyes as he crouched low in the seat, shutting out the fantasy nightmare of the killing machines that cruised so calmly, and that displayed with such ostentation their rockets. He knew what they were for, and saw also the determination in the young man's face, the one who covered them with the gun, always watching with the gun, always ready, as if some ludicrous intervention were possible. A test of wills, that was what was involved, and though the young man might at some time subm
it this was not the hour; the mere presence of the fighters was insufficient. That was the reasoning of the Italian, was why he buried his head from it, and thought of his wife and his children and the flat on Via Aurelia. At home, he reflected, the government did not fill the cells of the Regina Caeli with the terrorists they held at Fiumicino; they shipped them out by military aircraft, unmindful of whether there was a decent lapse of time between arrest and release, but concerning themselves with the safety of the Alitalia fleet, and the avoidance of reprisals; the Western world called them cowards for it. Franconi could only surmise as he peeped between the clenched fingers across his scalp that the Russian approach would be different, and that his life was as irrelevant as the safety of a wooden chess figure - a humble pawn - to the generals and senior politicians who would make their decisions in deep-set operations rooms and bright office suites.

  Edward R. Jones Jr and Felicity Ann understood their future less dramatically. She too had removed her hands from her thinly waved hair and they operated the couple's Agfamatic 3000, the camera that they took on all their travels and which aided him in his notes for the lecture tours of the Mid-west that followed the summer journeys. His own hands still embedded in his winter-white hair, he called the stop changes to his wife as she alternated between interiors and film of the fighters through the porthole. A fortune to be made, and what an auction! Associated Press against United Press International for the world exclusive rights. His optimism about the immediate outcome was not based on any specialized knowledge of Russian thinking, rather on a lack of it. American and conditioned to reading that the pilots of his own country had orders to fall in with hi-jackers' demands, he could not conceive that the interceptors had any r61e other than one of bluff.