by Wilbur Smith
Through its natural division the nut had been carefully sawn into two sections to allow removal of the milk and the white flesh, then the two sections had been glued together again just as neatly. The joint was only apparent after close inspection.
The girl inserted a small metal instrument into the joint and twisted it sharply, and with a soft click the two sections fell apart like an Easter egg.
In the nests formed by the double husk of the shells, padded with strips of plastic foam, were two smooth, grey, egg-like objects each the size of a baseball.
They were grenades of East German manufacture, with the Warsaw Pact command designation. The outer layer of each grenade was of armoured plastic, of the type used in land mines to prevent discovery by electronic metal detectors. The yellow stripe around each grenade indicated that it was not a fragmentation type, but was designed for high impact concussion.
The blonde girl took a grenade in her left hand, unlatched her lap belt and slipped quietly from her seat.
The other passengers paid her only passing interest as she ducked through the curtains into the galley area. However, the purser and the two stewardesses, still strapped into their fold-down seats, looked up sharply as she entered the service area.
I'm sorry, madam, but I must ask you to return to your seat until the captain extinguishes the seat-belt lights." The blonde girl held up her left hand and showed him the shiny grey egg.
This is a special grenade, designed for killing the occupants of a battle tank," she said quietly. "It could blow the fuselage of this aircraft open like a paper bag or kill by concussion any human being within fifty yards." She watched their faces, saw the fear bloom like an evil flower.
"It is fused to explode three seconds after it leaves my hand."
She paused again, and her eyes glittered with excitement and her breath was quick and shallow.
"You." she selected the purser, take me to the flight deck; you others stay where you are. Do nothing, say nothing." When she ducked into the tiny cockpit, hardly large enough to contain the members of the flight crew and its massed banks of instruments and electronic equipment, all three men turned to look back at her in mild surprise and she lifted her hand and showed them what she carried.
They understood instantly.
"I am taking command of this aircraft," she said, and then, to the flight engineer, "Switch off all communications equipment." The engineer glanced quickly at his captain, and when he nodded curtly, began obediently to shut down his radios the very high frequency sets, then the high frequency. the ultra high frequency And the satellite relay," the girl commanded. He glanced up at her, surprised by her knowledge.
"And don't touch the bug." He blinked at that. No body, but nobody outside the company should have known about the special relay which, when activated by the button beside his right knee, would instantly alert Heathrow Control to an emergency and allow them to monitor any conversation on the flight deck. He lifted his hand away.
"Remove the fuse to the bug circuit." She indicated the correct box above his head, and he glanced at the captain again, but her voice stung like the tail of a scorpion: "Do what I tell you." Carefully he removed the fuse and she relaxed slightly.
"Read your departure clearance," she instructed.
"We are cleared to radar departure on track for Nairobi and an unrestricted climb to cruise altitude of thirty-nine thousand feet."
"When is your next "operations normal" due?" Operations normal was the routine report to Nairobi to assure them that the flight was proceeding as planned.
"In eleven minutes and thirty-five seconds. "The engineer was a young, dark-haired, rather handsome man with a deep forehead, pale skin and the quick, efficient manner instilled by his training.
The girl turned to the captain of the Boeing and their gazes locked as they measured each other. The captain's hair was more grey than black and cropped close to his big rounded skull. He was bull-necked, and had the beefy, ruddy face of a farmer or of a butcher but his eyes were steady and his manner calm and unshakeable. He was a man to watch, the girl recognized instantly.
"I want you to believe that I am committed entirely to this operation," she said, "and that I would welcome the opportunity to sacrifice my life to my cause." Her dark blue eyes held his without fear, and she read the first growth of respect in him. That was good,
all part of her careful calculations.
"I believe that," said the Pilot, and nodded once.
"Your duty is to the four hundred and seventeen lives aboard this aircraft," she went on. He did not have to reply.
They will be safe, just as long as you follow my commands implicitly. That I promise you."
"Very well."
"Here is our new destination." She handed him a small white typewritten card. "I want a new course with forecast winds, and a time of arrival. Your turn onto the new heading to commence immediately after your next "operations normal" report in-" She glanced back at the engineer for the time.
"Nine minutes fifty-eight seconds, "he said promptly.
" and I want your turn to the new heading to be very gentle,
very balanced. We don't want any of the passengers to spill their champagne do we?" In the few minutes that she had been on the flight deck she had already established a bizarre rapport with the captain; it was a blend of reluctant respect and overt hostility and of sexual awareness. She had dressed deliberately to reveal her body, and in her excitement her nipples had hardened and darkened, pushing out through the thin cotton shirt with its suggestive legend, and the musky woman's smell of her body again intensified by her excitement filled the confined cockpit.
Nobody spoke again for many minutes, then the flight engineer broke the silence.
Thirty seconds to "operations normal"."
"All right, switch on the
FIF and make the report."
"Nairobi Approach this is Speedbird Zero
Seven Zero."
"Go ahead Speedbird Zero Seven Zero."
"Operations normal, "said the engineer into his headset.
"Roger, Zero Seven Zero. Report again in forty minutes."
"Zero
Seven Zero." The blonde girl sighed with relief. "All right, shut down the set." Then to the captain, "Disengage the flight director and make the turn to the new heading by hand; let's see how gentle you can be.".
The turn was a beautiful exhibition of flying, two minutes to make a change of 76" of heading, the needles of the turn and-balance indicator never deviating a hair's breadth, and when it was completed,
the girl smiled for the first time.
It was a gorgeous sunny flash of very white teeth.
"Good," she said, smiling directly into the captain's face.
"What is your name?"
"Cyril," he replied after a moment's hesitation.
"You can call me Ingrid,"she invited.
There was no set routine to the days in this new command of Peter Stride's, except the obligatory . . lkhour on the range with pistol and automatic weapons. No member of Thor Command not even the technicians were spared daily range practice.
The rest of Peter's day had been filled with unrelenting activity, beginning with a briefing on the new electronic communications equipment that had just been installed in qK1, V his command aircraft. This had taken half the morning, and he had been only just in time to join his striker force in the main cabin of the Hercules transport for the day's exercise.
Peter jumped with the first stick of ten men. They jumped from five hundred feet, the parachutes seeming to snap open only seconds before they hit the ground. However, the crosswind had been strong enough to spread them out a little even from that height. The first landing had not been tight enough for Peter. They had taken two minutes fifty-eight seconds from jump to penetration of the deserted administration block standing forlornly in one of the military zones of Salisbury Plain.
"If they had been holding hostages in here, we'd have arrived just in t
ime to start mopping up the blood," Peter told his men grimly. "We'll do it again!
This time they had cut one minute fifty seconds off their time, falling in a tightly steered pattern about the building beating the time of Colin Noble's No 2 striker team by ten seconds.
To celebrate Peter had scorned the military transports and they had run the five miles to the airstrip, each man in full combat kit and carrying the enormous bundle of his used parachute silk.
The Hercules was waiting to fly them back to base, but it was after dark before they landed and taxied into Thor Command's security compound at the end of the main runway.
For Peter the temptation to leave the debriefing to Colin Noble had been strong indeed. His driver would have picked up Melissa-Jane at East Croydon Station and she would already be waiting alone in the new cottage, only half a mile from the base gates.
He had not seen her for six weeks, not since he had taken command of Thor, for in all that time he had not allowed himself a single day's respite. He felt a tickle of guilt now, that he should be allowing himself this indulgence, and so he lingered a few minutes after the briefing to transfer command to Colin Noble.
"Where are you going for the weekend?"Colin demanded.
"She's taking me to a pop concert tomorrow night The Living
Dead, no less, Peter chuckled. "Seems I haven't lived until I hear the
Dead."
"Give M.J. my love, and a kiss Colin told him.
Peter placed high value on his new-found privacy. He had lived most of his adult life in officers" quarters and messes, constantly surrounded by other human beings.
However, this command had given him the opportunity to escape.
The cottage was -only four and a half minutes" drive from the compound but it might have been an island. It had come furnished and at a rental that surprised him pleasantly.
Behind a high hedge of dog rose, off a quiet lane, and set in a sprawling rather unkempt garden, it had become home in a few weeks. He had even been able to unpack his books at last. Books accumulated over twenty years, and stored against such an opportunity. It was a comfort to have them piled around his desk in the small front room or stacked on the tables beside his bed, even though there had been little opportunity to read much of them yet. The new job was a tough one.
Melissa-Jane must have heard the crunch of gravel under the
Rover's tyres, and she would certainly have been waiting for it. She came running out of the front door into the driveway, directly into the beam of the headlights, and Peter had forgotten how lovely she was. He felt his heart squeezed.
When he stepped out of the car she launched herself at him and clung with both arms around his chest. He held her for a long moment,
neither of them able to speak. She was so slim and warm, her body seeming to throb with life and vitality.
At last he lifted her chin and studied her face. The huge violet eyes swam with happy tears, and she sniffed loudly.
Already she had that old-fashioned English porcelain beauty; there would never be the acne and the agony of puberty for Melissa-jane.
Peter kissed her solemnly on the forehead. "You'll catch your death, he scolded fondly.
"Oh, Daddy, you are a real fusspot." She smiled through the tears and on tip-toe she reached up to kiss him full on the mouth.
They ate lasagne and cas sata at an Italian restaurant in Croydon,
and Melissa-Jane did most of the talking. Peter watched and listened,
revelling in her freshness and youth.
It was hard to believe she was not yet fourteen, for physically she was almost fully developed, the breasts under the white turtle-neck sweater no longer merely buds; and she conducted herself like a woman ten years older, only the occasional gleeful giggle betraying her or the lapse as she used some ghastly piece of Roedean slang, - "grotty" was one of these.
Back at the cottage she made them Ovaltine and they drank it beside the fire, planning every minute of the weekend ahead of them and skirting carefully around the pitfalls, the unwritten taboos of their relationship which centred mostly on "Mother'.
When it was time for bed she came and sat in his lap and traced the lines of his face with her fingertip.
"Do you know who you remind me of?"
"Tell me,"he invited.
"Gary Cooper only much younger, of course," she added hurriedly.
"Of course," Peter chuckled. "But where did you ever hear of Gary
Cooper? "They had High Noon as the Sunday movie on telly last week."
She kissed him again and her lips tasted of sugar and Ovaltine, and her hair smelled sweet and clean.
"How old are you, anyway, Daddy?"
"I'm thirty-nine."
"That isn't really so terribly old." She comforted him uncertainly.
"Sometimes it's as old as the dinosaurs-" and at that moment the bleeper beside his empty cup began its strident, irritating electronic tone, and Peter felt the slide of dread in his stomach.
Not now, he thought. Not on this day when I have been so long without her.
The bleeper was the. size of a cigarette pack, the globe of its single eye glared redly, insistent as the audio-signal.
Reluctantly Peter picked it up and, with his daughter still in his lap, he switched in the miniature two-way radio and depressed the send button.
"Thor One,"he said.
The reply was tinny and distorted, the set near the limit of its range.
"General Stride, Atlas has ordered condition Alpha." Another false alarm, Peter thought bitterly. There had been a dozen Alphas in the last month, but why on this night. Alpha was the first stage of alert with the teams embarked and ready for condition Bravo which was the GO.
"Inform Atlas we are seven minutes from Bravo." Four and a half of those would be needed for him to reach the compound, and suddenly the decision to rent the cottage was shown up as dangerous self-indulgence.
In four and a half minutes innocent lives can be lost.
"Darling," he hugged Melissa-Jane swiftly, "I'm sorry."
"That's all right." She was stiff and resentful.
"There will be another time soon, I promise."
"You always promise," she whispered, but she saw he was no longer listening. He dislodged her and stood up, the heavy jawline clenched and thick dark brows almost meeting above the narrow, straight, aristocratic nose.
"Lock the door when I'm gone, darling. I'll send the driver for you if it's Bravo. He will drive you back to Cambridge and I will let your mother know to expect YOU." He stepped out into the night, still shrugging into his duffle coat, and she listened to the whirl of the starter, the rush of tyres over gravel and the dwindling note of the engine.
The controller in Nairobi tower allowed the British Airways flight from Seychelles to run fifteen seconds past its reporting time. Then he called once, twice and a third time without reply. He switched frequencies to the channels reserved for information, approach, tower and, finally, emergency, on one at least of which 070 should have been maintaining listening watch. There was still no reply.
Speedbird 070 was forty-five seconds past "operations normal"
before he removed the yellow slip from his approach rack and placed it in the emergency "lost contact" slot, and immediately search and rescue procedures were in force.
Speedbird 070 was two minutes and thirteen seconds past "operations normal" when the telex pull sheet landed on the British Airways desk at Heathrow Control, and sixteen seconds later Atlas had been informed and had placed Thor Command on condition Alpha.
The moon was three days short of full, its upper rim only slightly indented by the earth's shadow. However, at this altitude it seemed almost as big as the sun itself and its golden light was certainly more beautiful.
In the tropical summer night great silver cloud ranges towered into the sky, and mushroomed into majestic thunder heads, and the moonlight dressed them in splendour.
The aircraft fled swiftly between the p
eaks of cloud, like a monstrous black bat on back-swept wings, it bored into the west.
Under the port-side wing a sudden dark chasm opened in the clouds like the mouth of hell itself, and deep in its maw there was the faint twinkle of far light, like a dying star.
"That will be Madagascar," said the captain, his voice over-loud in the quiet cockpit. "We are on track." And behind his shoulder the girl stirred and carefully transferred the grenade into her other hand before she spoke for the first time in half an hour.
"Some of our passengers might still be awake and notice that." She glanced at her wristwatch. "It's time to wake up the others and let them know the good news." She turned back to the flight engineer.
"Please switch on all the cabin lights and the seat-belt lights and let me have the microphone." Cyril Watkins, the captain, was reminded once again that this was a carefully planned operation. The girl was timing her announcement to the passengers when their resistance would be at its lowest possible ebb; at two o'clock in the morning. after having been awoken from the disturbed rest of intercontinental flight their immediate reaction was likely to be glum resignation.
"Cabin and seat-belt lights are on," the engineer told her, and handed her the microphone.
"Good mornin', ladies and gentlemen." Her voice was warm, clear and bright. "I regret having to waken you at such an inconvenient hour. However, I have a very important announcement to make and I want all of you to pay the most careful attention." She paused, and in the cavernous and crowded cabins there was a general stir and heads began to lift, hair tousled and eyes unfocused and blinking away the cobwebs of sleep. "You will notice that the seat-belt lights are on. Will you all check that the persons beside you are fully awake and that their seat belts are fastened. Cabin staff please make certain that this is done." She paused again;
the belts would inhibit any sudden movement, any spontaneous action at the first shock. Ingrid noted the passage of sixty seconds on the sweep hand of her wristwatch before going on.
"First let me introduce myself. My name is Ingrid. I am a senior officer of the Action Commando for Human Rights,-" Captain Watkins curled his lip cynically at the pompous self-righteous title, but kept silent, staring ahead into the starry, moonlit depths of space. and this aircraft is under my command. Under no circumstances whatsoever will any of you leave your seats without the express permission of one of my officers. if this order is disobeyed, it will lead directly to the destruction of this aircraft and all aboard by high explosive." She repeated the announcement immediately in fluent German, and then in less proficient but clearly intelligible French before reverting to English once again.