Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  Sometimes I confuse myself.

  It's often more difficult to be a liberal than it is to be a tyrant. At least the tyrant seldom has doubts." Parker lay back in his chair, a dismissive gesture. "I propose to leave you in peace for an hour or two now. You will want to develop your plans in line with the new developments. But I personally have no doubts now that we are dealing with politically motivated militants, and not merely a gang of old-fashioned kidnappers after a fast buck. Of one or " her thing I am certain: before we see this one through we will be forced to examine our own consciences very closely."

  Make the second right," said Ingrid quietly, and the Boeing swung off the grass onto the taxiway. There seemed to be no damage to her landing gear, but now that she had left her natural element, the aircraft had lost grace and beauty and became lumbering and ungainly.

  The girl had never been on the flight deck of a grounded jumbo before, and the height was impressive. It gave her a feeling of detachment, of being invulnerable.

  "Now left again," she instructed, and the Boeing turned away from the main airport building towards the southern end of the runway. The observation deck of the airport's flat roof was already lined with hundreds of curious spectators, but all activity on the apron was suspended. The waiting machines and tenders were deserted, not a single human figure on the tarmac.

  "Park there." She pointed ahead to an open area four hundred yards from the nearest building, midway between the terminal and the cluster of service hangars and the main fuel depot. "Stop on the intersection." Grimly silent, Cyril Watkins did as he was ordered, and then turned in his seat.

  "I must call an ambulance to get him off." The co-pilot and a stewardess had the flight engineer stretched out on the galley floor, just beyond the door to the flight deck. They were using linen table napkins to bind up the arm and try and staunch the bleeding. The stench of cordite still lingered and mingled with the taint of fresh blood.

  "Nobody leaves this aircraft." The girl shook her head.

  "He knows too much about us already." My God, woman. He needs medical attention."

  "There are three hundred doctors aboard-" she pointed out indifferently. "The best in the world. Two of them may come forward and attend to him." She perched sideways on the flight engineer's blood-splattered desk, and thumbed the internal microphone.

  Cyril Watkins noticed even in his outrage that it needed only a single demonstration and Ingrid was able to work the complicated communications equipment. She was bright and very well trained.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, we have landed at Johannesburg Airport. We will be here for a long time perhaps days, even weeks. All our patience will be tried, so I must warn you that any disobedience will be most severely dealt with.

  Already one attempt at resistance has been made and in consequence a member of the crew has been shot and gravely wounded. He may die of this wound. We do not want a repetition of this incident.

  However, I must again warn you that my officers and I will not hesitate to shoot again, or even to detonate the explosives above your heads if the need arises." She paused and watched a moment as two selected doctors came forward and knelt on each side of the flight engineer. He was shaking like a fever victim with shock, his white shirt splashed and daubed with blood. Her expression showed no remorse, no real concern, and her voice was calm and light as shement on.

  "Two of my officers will now pass down the aisles and they will collect your passports from you. Please have these documents ready."

  Her eyes flicked sideways, as movement caught her eye.

  From beyond the service hangars a line of four armoured cars emerged in line ahead. They were the locally manufactured version of the French Panhard with heavily lugged tall tyres, a raked turret and the disproportionately long barrels of the cannons trained forward.

  The armoured vehicles circled cautiously and parked three hundred yards out, at the four points wing tips, tail and nose around the aircraft, with the long cannon trained upon her.

  The girl watched them disdainfully until one of the doctors pushed himself in front of her. He was a short, chubby little man, balding but brave.

  "This man must be taken to a hospital immediately."

  "That is out of the question."

  "I insist. His life is in danger."

  "All our lives are in danger, doctor." She paused and let that make its effect. "Draw up a list of your requirements. I will see that you get them." They have been down for sixteen hours now and the only contact has been a request for medical supplies and for a power link-up to the electrical mains." Kingston Parker had removed his jacket and loosened the knot of his tie, but was showing no other ill effects of his vigil.

  Peter Stride nodded at the image on the screen. "What have your medics made of the supplies? "he asked.

  "Looks like a gunshot casualty. Whole blood type AB Positive, that's rare but one of the crew is cross-matched AB Positive on his service record. Ten lit res of plasmalyte B, a blood-giving set and syringes, morphine and intravenous penicillin, tetanus toxoid all the equipment needed to treat massive physical trauma."

  "And they are on mains power?" Peter asked.

  "Yes, four hundred people would have suffocated by now without the air-conditioning. The airport authority has laid a cable and plugged it into the external socket. All the aircraft's support system even the galley heating will be gfully functional."

  "So we will be able to throw the switch on them at any time." Peter made a note on the pad in front of him. "But no demands yet? No negotiator called for?"

  "No, nothing. They seem fully aware of the techniques of bargaining in this type of situation unlike our friends, the host country. I am afraid we are having a great deal of trouble with the Wyatt Earp mentality-"

  Parker paused.

  "I'm sorry, Wyatt Earp was one of our frontier marshals-"

  "I saw the movie, and read the book, Peter answered tartly.

  "Well, the South Africans are itching to storm the aircraft, and both our ambassador and yours are hard pressed to restrain them. They are all set to kick the doors of the saloon open and rush in with six-guns blazing. They must also have seen the movie." Peter felt the crawl of horror down his spine. "That would be a certain disaster," he said quickly. "These people are running a tight operation."

  "You don't have to convince me," Parker agreed. "What is your flying time to Jan Smuts now?"

  "We crossed the Zambesi River seven minutes ago." Peter glanced sideways through the perspex bubble window, but the ground was obscured by haze and cumulus cloud. "We have another two hours ten minutes to fly but my support section is three hours forty behind us."

  "All right, Peter. I will get back onto them. The South African Government convened a full cabinet meeting, and both our ambassadors are sitting in as observers and advisers. I think I am going to be obliged to tell them about the existence of Atlas." He paused a moment.

  "Here at last we are seeing Atlas justified, Peter. A single unit, cutting across all national considerations, able -to act swiftly and independently. I think you should know that I have already obtained the agreement of the President and of your Prime Minister to condition Delta at my discretion." Condition Delta was the kill decision.

  but again I emphasize that I will implement Delta only as a last possible resort. I want to hear and consider the demands first, and in that respect we are open to negotiation fully open-" Parker went on speaking, and Peter Stride shifted slightly, dropping his chin into the cup of his hand to hide his irritation. They were into an area of dispute now and once again Peter had to voice disagreement.

  "Every time you let a militant walk away from a strike you immediately create the conditions for further strikes, to free the captive."

  "I have the clearance for condition Delta," Parker reiterated with a trace of acid in his tone now, "but I am making it clear that it will be used only with the greatest discretion.

  We are not an assassination unit, General Stride." Parker n
odded to an assistant off-screen. "I am going through to the South Africans now to explain Atlas." The image receded into darkness.

  Peter Stride leapt up abruptly and tried to pace the narrow aisle between the seats, but there was insufficient headroom for his tall frame and he flung himself angrily into the seat again.

  Kingston Parker stood up from his communications desk in the outer office of his suite in the west wing of the Pentagon. The two communications technicians scurried out of his way and his personal secretary opened the door to his inner office.

  He moved with peculiar grace for such a large man, and there was no excess weight on his frame, his big heavy bones lean of flesh. His clothes were of fine cloth, well cut the best that Fifth Avenue could offer but they were worn almost to the point of shoddiness, the button-down collar slightly frayed, the Italian shoes scuffed at the toes as though material trappings counted not at all with him.

  Nevertheless he wore them with a certain unconscious panache, and he looked ten years younger than his fifty.

  only a few silver strands in the thick bushy mane of hair.

  The inner office was Spartan in its furnishings, all of it U.S. Government issue, utilitarian and impersonal, only the books that filled every shelf and the grand piano were his own. The piano was a

  Bechstein grand and much too large for the room. Parker ran his right hand lightly across the keyboard as he passed it but he went on to the desk.

  He dropped into the swivel chair and shuffled through the dozen intelligence folders on his desk. Each of them contained the latest computer print-outs that he had requested. There were personal histories, appraisals, and character studies of all the personalities that had so far become involved in the taking of Speedbird 070.

  Both the ambassadors their pink files signified the best security ratings, and were marked "Heads of Departments only'. Four other files in lower echelon green were devoted to the South African Government personalities with decision-making capabilities in an emergency. The thickest file was that of the South African Prime Minister and once again Parker noted wryly that the man had been imprisoned by the pro-British government of General Jan Smuts during World War II as a militant opponent of his country's involvement in that war. He wondered just how much sympathy he would have for other militants now.

  There were files for the South African Ministers of Defence and of justice, and still slimmer green files for the Commissioner of Police and for the Assistant Commissioner who had been given the responsibility of handling the emergency. Of them all only the Prime Minister emerged as a distinct personality a powerful bulldog figure, not a man easily influenced or dissuaded, and instinctively Kingston Parker recognized that ultimate authority rested here.

  There was one other pink file at the bottom of the considerable stack, so well handled that the cardboard cover was splitting at the hinge. The original print-out in this file had been requisitioned two years previously, with quarterly up-dates since that time.

  "STRIDE PETER CHARLES" it was headed and reclassified "Head of Atlas only'.

  A Kingston Parker could probably have recited its contents by heart but he untied the ribbons now, and opened it in his lap.

  Puffing deliberately at his pipe he began to turn slowly through the loose pages.

  There were the bare bones of the subject's life. Born 1939, one of twin war-time babies of a military family, his father killed in action three years later when the armoured brigade of guards he commanded was overrun by one of Erwin Rommel's devastating drives across the deserts of North Africa. The elder twin brother had inherited the baronetcy and Peter followed the well-travelled family course, Harrow and Sandhurst, where he must have disconcerted the family by his academic brilliance and his reluctance to participate in team sports preferring the loner activities of golf and tennis and long-distance running.

  Kingston Parker pondered that a moment. They were pointers to the man's character that had disconcerted him as well. Parker had the intellectual's generalized contempt for the military, and he would have preferred a man who conformed more closely to his ideal of the brass-headed soldier.

  Yet when the young Stride had entered his father's regiment, it seemed that the exceptional intelligence had been diverted into conventional channels and the preference for independent thought and action held in check, if not put aside completely until his regiment was sent to Cyprus at the height of the unrest in that country. Within a week of arrival the young Stride had been seconded, with his commanding officer's enthusiastic approval, to central army intelligence. Perhaps the commanding officer had already become aware of the problems involved in harbouring a wonder-boy in the tradition-bound portals of his officers" mess.

  For once the military had made a logical, if not an outright brilliant, choice. Stride in the sixteen years since then had not made a single mistake, apart from the marriage which had ended in divorce within two years. Had he remained with his regiment that might have affected his career but since Cyprus Stride's progress had been as unconventional and meteoric as his brain.

  In a dozen different and difficult assignments since then, he had honed his gifts and developed new talents; rising against the trend of reduced British expenditure on defence, he had reached staff rank before thirty years of age.

  At NATO Headquarters he had made powerful friends and admirers on both sides of the Atlantic, and at the end of his three-year term in Brussels he had been promoted to major-general and been transferred to head British Intelligence in Ireland, bringing his own particular dedication and flair to the job.

  A great deal of the credit for containing the sweep of Irish terrorism through Britain was his, and his in-depth study of the urban guerrilla and the mind of the militant, although classified depart mentally was probably the definitive work on the subject.

  The Atlas concept was first proposed in this study, and so it was that Stride had been on the short list to head the project. It seemed certain the appointment would be made the Americans had been impressed with his study and his friends from NATO had not forgotten him. His appointment was approved in principle. Then at the last moment there had developed sudden and intense opposition to the appointment of a professional soldier to head such a sensitive agency.

  The opposition had come from both Whitehall and Washington simultaneously, and had prevailed.

  Kingston Parker knocked out his pipe, and carried the file across the room and laid it open on the music rack of the piano. He seated himself at the keyboard and, still M studying the printout sheets, began to play.

  The stream of music, the lovely ethereal strains of Liszt, did not interrupt his thoughts but seemed to buoy them brightly upwards.

  Parker had not wanted Stride, had considered from the very first that he was dangerous, sensing in him ambitions and motivations which would be difficult to control. Parker would have preferred his own nominees Tanner, who now commanded the Mercury arm of Atlas, or Colin Noble and had expected that Stride would have declined a command so far below his capability.

  However, Stride had accepted the lesser appointment and headed Thor. Parker suspected that there was unusual motivation in this, and had made every effort to study the man at first hand. On five separate occasions he had ordered Stride to Washington, and focused upon him the full strength of his charisma and personality. He had even invited him to stay with him in his New York home, spending many hours with him in deep far-ranging discussions from which he had developed a prudent respect for the man's mind, but had been able to reach no firm conclusions as to his future in Atlas.

  Parker turned a page of the character appraisal. When he looked for the weakness in an opponent, Parker had long ago learned to start at the groin. With this man there was no evidence of any unnatural sexual leanings. Certainly he was not homosexual, if anything too much the opposite.

  There had been at least a dozen significant liaisons with the opposite sex since his divorce. However, all of these had been discreet and dignified. Although thre
e of the ladies had been married, none of them were the wives of his subordinates in the armed services, nor of brother officers or of men who might be able to adversely affect his career.

  The women he chose all had certain qualities in common they all tended to be tall, intelligent and successful. One was a journalist who had her own syndicated column, another was a former fashion model who now designed and marketed her clothes through her own prestigious outlets in London and on the continent. Then there was an actress who was a leading female member of the Royal Shakespeare Company Parker skimmed the list impatiently, for Parker himself had no sympathy nor patience with a man who succumbed to the dictates of his body.

  Parker had trained himself to be totally celibate, channelling all his sexual energies into pursuits of the mind, while this man Stride, on the other hand, was not above conducting two or three of his liaisons concurrently.

  Parker moved on to the second area of weakness. Stride's inheritance had been decimated by the punitive British death duties yet his private income even after savage aviation was still a little over twenty thousand pounds sterling a year, and when this was added to his salary and privileges as a general officer, it enabled him to live in good style. He could even indulge in the mild extravagance of collecting rare books and, Parker observed acidly, the greater extravagance of collecting rare ladies.

  However, there was no trace of any illicit hoard no Swiss bank accounts, no deposits of gold bullion, no foreign properties, no shares in offshore companies held by nominees and Parker had searched diligently for them, for they would have indicated payments received, perhaps from foreign governments. A man like Stride had much to sell, at prices he could set himself but it seemed he had not done so.