Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  just before nightfall, the dark-haired girl, Karen, had lost her temper with an elderly passenger who had been slow to respond to her command to return to his seat after using the toilet. She had worked herself up into an hysterical shrieking rage, and repeatedly struck the old man in the face with the short barrel of her shot pistol, laying his cheek open to the bone. Only Ingrid had been able to calm her,

  leading her away to the curtained tourist galley where she pampered and hugged her.

  "It will be all right, Liebchen." She stroked her hair. "Only a little longer now. You have been so strong. In a few more hours we will all take the pills. Not long now." And within minutes Karen had controlled the violent trembling of her hands, and although she was pale, she was able to take her position at the rear of the tourist cabin again.

  Only Ingrid's strength seemed without limits. During the night she passed slowly down the aisles, pausing to talk quietly with a sleepless passenger, comforting them with the promise of imminent release.

  "Tomorrow morning we will have an answer to our demands, and all the women and children will be free. it's going to be all right, you just wait and see." A little after midnight the little roly-poly doctor sought her out in the cockpit.

  "The navigator is very ill," he told her. "Unless we get him to a hospital immediately we will lose him." Ingrid went back and knelt beside the flight engineer.

  His skin was dry and burning hot and his breathing rasped and sawed.

  "It's renal failure," said the doctor, hovering over them.

  "Breakdown of the kidneys from delayed shock. We cannot treat him here. He must be taken to hospital." Ingrid took the semi-conscious flight engineer's uninjured hand. "I'm sorry, but that's impossible."

  She went on holding his hand for another minute.

  "Don't you feel anything?" the doctor demanded of her bitterly.

  "I feel pity for, him as I do for all mankind," she answered quietly. "But he is only one. Out there are millions." The towering flat-topped mountain was lit by floodlights. It was high holiday season and the fairest cape in all the world was showing her beauty to the tens of thousands of tourists and holiday makers.

  On the penthouse deck of the tall building, named for a political mediocrity as are so many buildings and public works in South Africa, the cabinet and its special advisers had been in session for most of the night.

  At the head of the long table brooded the heavily built figure of the Prime Minister, bulldog-headed, powerful and unmovable as one of the granite kopjes of the African veld.

  He dominated the large panelled room, although he had hardly spoken, except to encourage the others with a nod or a few gruff words.

  At the far end of the long table sat the two ambassadors, shoulder to shoulder, to emphasize their solidarity. At short intervals the telephones in front of them would ring, and they would listen to the latest reports from their embassies or instructions from the heads of their governments.

  On the Prime Minister's right hand sat the handsome moustached

  Minister of Foreign Affairs, a man with enormous charisma and a reputation for moderation and common sense but now he was grim and hard faced.

  "Your own governments have both pioneered the policy of non-negotiation, of total resistance to the demands of terrorists why now do you insist that we take the soft line?"

  "We do not insist, minister, we have merely pointed out the enormous public interest that this affair is generating in both the United

  Kingdom and in my own country." Kelly Constable was a Slim, handsome man, intelligent and persuasive, a democratic appointee of the new

  American administration. "It is in your government's interest even more than ours to see this through to a satisfactory conclusion. We merely suggest that some accommodation to the demands might bring that about."

  "The Atlas Commander on the spot has assessed the chances of a successful counter-strike as low as fifty-fifty.

  My government considers that risk unacceptable." Sir William Davies was a career diplomat approaching retirement age, a grey, severe man with gold-rimmed spectacles, his voice high pitched and querulous.

  "My men think we can do better than that ourselves, said the Minister of Defence, also bespectacled, but he spoke in the thick blunt accent of the Afrikaaner.

  "Atlas is probably the best equipped and most highly trained anti-terrorist group in the world, Kelly Constable said, and the Prime Minister interrupted harshly.

  "At this stage, gentlemen, let us confine ourselves to finding a peaceful solution."."

  "I agree, Prime Minister. "Sir William nodded briskly.

  "However, I think I should point out that most of the demands made by the terrorists are directly in line with the representations made by the government of the United States-"

  "Sir, are you expressing sympathy with these demands?" the Prime Minister asked heavily, but without visible emotion.

  "I am merely pointing out that the demands will find sympathy in my country, and that my government will find it easier to exercise its veto on the extreme motion of the General Assembly on Monday if some concessions are made in other directions."

  "Is that a threat, sir?" the Prime Minister asked, a small humourless smile hardly softening the question.

  "No, Prime Minister, it's common sense. If that U.N. motion was carried and implemented, it would mean the economic ruin of this country. It would be plunged into anarchy and political chaos, a ripe fruit for luther Soviet encroachment. My government does not desire that however, nor does it wish to endanger the lives of four hundred of its citizens." Kelly Constable smiled. "We have to find a way out of our mutual predicament, I'm afraid."

  "My Minister of Defence has suggested a way out."

  "Prime Minister, if your military attack the aircraft without the prior agreement of both the British and American heads of state, then the veto will be withheld in the Security Council and regretfully we will allow the majority proposal to prevail."

  "Even if the attack is successful?"

  "Even if the attack is successful. We insist that military decisions are made by Atlas only," Constable told him solemnly; and then, more cheerfully, "Let us examine the minimum concessions that your government would be prepared to make. The longer we can keep open the lines of communication with the terrorists, the better our chances of a peaceful solution. Can we offer to fulfill even one small item on the list of demands?" "Ingrid supervised the serving of breakfast personally.

  Each passenger was allowed one slice of bread and one biscuit with a cup of heavily sweetened coffee. Hunger had lowered the general resistance of the passengers, they were apathetic and listless once they had gobbled their meagre meal.

  Ingrid went amongst them again, passing out cigarettes from the duty-free store. Talking gently to the children, stopping to sympathize with a mother smiling and calm.

  Already the passengers were calling her "the nice one".

  When Ingrid reached the firstclass galley she called her companions to her one at a time, and they each ate a full breakfast of eggs and buttered toast and kippers. She wanted them as strong and alert as the arduous ordeal would allow.

  She could not begin to use the stimulants until midday.

  The use of drugs could only be continued for seventy-two hours with the desired effects. After that the subject would become unpredictable in his actions and decisions. Ratification of the sanctions vote by the Security Council of the United Nations would take place at noon New York time on the following Monday that was seven p.m. local time on Monday night.

  Ingrid had to keep all her officers alert and active until then, she dared not use the stimulants too early and risk physical disintegration before the decisive hour, and yet she realized that lack of sleep and tension were corroding even her physical reserves; she was jumpy and nervous, and when she examined her face in the mirror of the stinking firstclass toilets, she saw how inflamed her eyes were, and for the first time noticed the tiny lines of ageing a
t the corners of her mouth and eyes. This angered her unreasonably. She hated the thought of growing old, and she could smell her own unwashed body even in the overpowering stench from the lavatory.

  The German, Kurt, was slumped in the pilot's seat, his pistol in his lap, snoring softly, his red shirt unbuttoned to the waist and his muscular hairy chest rising and falling with each breath. He was unshaven and the lank, black hair fell over his eyes. She could smell his sweat, and somehow that excited her, and she studied him carefully.

  There was an air of cruelty and brutality about him, the machismo of the revolutionary, which always attracted her strongly, had perhaps been the original reason for her radical leanings so many years ago.

  Suddenly she wanted him very badly.

  However, when she woke him with a hand down the front of his thin linen slacks, he was bleary-eyed and foul breathed, not even her skilful kneading could arouse him, and in a minute she turned away with an exclamation of disgust.

  As a displacement activity, she picked up the microphone, switched on the loudspeakers of the passenger cabins. She knew she was acting irrationally, but she began to speak.

  "Now listen to me, everybody, I have something very important to tell you." Suddenly she was angry with them.

  They were of the class that had devised and instituted the manifestly unjust and sick society against which she was in total rebellion. They were the fat, complacent bourgeoisie.

  They were like her father and she hated them as she hated her father. As she began to speak she realized that they would not even understand the language she was using, the language of the new political order, and her anger and frustration against them and their society mounted. She did not realize she was raving, until suddenly she heard as from afar the shriek of outrage in her own voice, like the death wail of a mortally wounded animal and she stopped abruptly.

  She felt giddy and light-headed, so she had to clutch at the desk top for support and her heart banged wildly against her ribs. She was panting as though she had run a long way, and it took nearly a full minute for her to bring herself under control.

  When she spoke again, her tone was still ragged and breathless.

  "It is now nine o'clock," she said. "If we do not hear from the tyrant within three hours I shall be forced to begin executing hostages. Three hours-" She repeated ominously, only three hours." Now she prowled the aircraft like a big cat paces along the bars of its cage as feeding time approaches.

  "Two hours," she told them, and the passengers shrank away from her as she passed.

  "One hour." There was a bright sadistic splinter of anticipation in her voice. "We will choose the first hostages now.

  "But you promised," pleaded the fat little doctor as Ingrid pulled his wife out of her seat and the Frenchman hustled her forward towards the flight deck.

  Ingrid ignored him, and turned to Karen. "Get children, a boy and a girl-" she instructed, " oh yes, and the pregnant one. Let them see her big belly. They won't be able to resist that." Karen herded the hostages into the forward galley and forced them at pistol point to sit in a row upon the fold down air-crew seats.

  The door to the flight deck was open and Ingrid's voice carried clearly to the galley, as she explained to the Frenchman Henri, speaking in English.

  "It is of the utmost importance that we do not allow a deadline to pass without retaliating strongly. If we miss one deadline, then our credibility is destroyed. It will only be necessary once, we must show the steel at least once. They must learn that every one of our deadlines are irrevocable, not negotiable-" The girl began to cry. She was thirteen years old, able to understand the danger. The plump doctor's wife put her arm around her shoulders and hugged her gently.

  "Speedbird 070-'-the radio squawked suddenly, we have a message for Ingrid."

  "Go ahead, Tower, this is Ingrid." She had jumped up to take the microphone, pushing the door to the flight deck closed.

  "The negotiator for the British and American governments has proposals for your consideration. Are you ready to copy?"

  "Negative."

  Ingrid's voice was flat and emphatic. "I say again negative. Tell the negotiator I will talk only face to face and tell him we are only forty minutes to the noon deadline. He had better get out here fast," she warned. She hooked the microphone and turned to Henri.

  "All right. We will take the pills now it has truly begun at last." It was another cloudless day, brilliant sunlight that was flung back in piercing darts of light from the bare metal parts of the aircraft. The heat came up through the soles of his shoes and burned down upon Peter's bare neck.

  The forward hatch opened, as it had before, when Peter Stride was half-way across the tarmac.

  This time there were no hostages on display, the hatchway was a dark empty square. Suppressing the urge to hurry, Peter carried himself with dignity, head up, jaw clenched firmly.

  He was yards from the aircraft when the girl stepped into the opening. She stood with indolent grace, her weight all on one leg, the other cocked slightly, long, bare, brown legs. She carried the big shot pistol on one hip, and the cartridge belt emphasized the narrow waist.

  She watched Peter come on, with a half-smile on her lips.

  Suddenly a medallion of light appeared on her chest, a dazzling speck like a brilliant insect and she glanced down at it contemptuously.

  "This is provocation," she called. Clearly she knew that the bright speck was the beam thrown by the laser sight of one of the marksmen covering her from the airport building.

  A few ounces more of pressure on the trigger would send a .222 bullet crashing precisely into that spot, tearing her heart and lungs to bloody shreds.

  Peter felt a flare of anger at the sniper who had activated his laser sight without the order, but his anger was tempered by reluctant admiration for the girl's courage. She could sneer at that mark of certain death upon her breast.

  Peter made a cut out sign with his right hand, and almost immediately the speck of light disappeared as the gunner switched off his laser sight.

  "That's better," the girl said, and she smiled, running her gaze appraisingly down Peter's body.

  "You've a good shape, baby," she said, and Peter's anger flared again under her scrutiny.

  "Nice flat belly-" she said, good legs, and you didn't get those muscles sitting at a desk and pushing a pen." She pursed her lips thoughtfully. "You know I think you're a cop or a soldier. That's what I think, baby. I think you're a goddamned pig." Her voice had a new harsh quality, and the skin seemed drier and drawn older than it had been before.

  He was close enough now to see the peculiar diamantine glitter in her eyes, and he recognized the tension that seemed to rack her body, the abrupt restless gestures. She was onto drugs now. He was certain of it. He was dealing with a political fanatic, with a long history of violence and death, whose remaining humane traits would be now entirely suppressed by the high of stimulant drugs. He knew she was more dangerous now than a wounded wild animal, a cornered leopard, a maneating shark with the taste of blood exciting it to the killing frenzy.

  He did not reply, but held her gaze steadily, keeping his hands in view, coming to a halt below the open hatchway.

  He waited quietly for her to begin, and the itch of the drug in her blood would not allow her to stand still; she fidgeted with the weapon in her hands, touched the camera still hanging from around her neck. Cyril Watkins had tried to tell him something about that camera and suddenly Peter realized what it was. The trigger for the fuses? he pondered, as he waited. Almost certainly, he decided, that was why it was with her every moment. She saw the direction of his eyes, and dropped her hand guiltily, confirming his conclusion.

  "Are the prisoners ready to leave?" she demanded. "Is the gold packed? Is the statement ready for transmission?"

  "The South African Government has ac cesse to urgent representations by the governments of Great Britain and the United States of America."

  "Good. "She nodded.

/>   "As an act of common humanity the South Africans have agreed to release all the persons on your list of detainees and banned persons-"

  "Yes."

  "They will be flown to any country of their choice."

  "And the gold?"

  "The South African Government refuses categorically to finance or to arm an unconstitutional foreign-based opposition. They refuse to provide funds for the persons freed under this agreement."

  "The television transmission?"

  "The South African Government considers the statement to be untrue in substance and in fact and to be extremely prejudicial to the maintenance of law and order in this country. It refuses to allow transmission of the statement."

  "They have accepted only one of our demands? " The girl's voice took on an even more strident tone, and her shoulders jerked in an uncontrolled spasm.

  "The release of political detainees and banned persons is subject to one further condition-" Peter cut in swiftly.

  "And what is that-" The girl demanded, two livid burning spots of colour had appeared in her cheeks.

  "In return for the release of political prisoners, they demand the release of all hostages, not only the women and children, all persons aboard the aircraft and they will guarantee safe passage for you and all members of your party to leave the country with the released detainees." The girl flung back her head, the thick golden mane flying wildly about her head as she screeched with laughter.

  The laughter was a wild, almost maniacal sound, and though it went on and on, there was no echo of mirth in her eyes.

  They were fierce as eagles" eyes, as she laughed. The laughter was cut off abruptly, and her voice was suddenly flat and level.

  "So they think they can make demands, do they? They think they can draw the teeth from the U.N. proposals, do they? They think that without hostages to account for, the fascist governments of Britain and