The Kobra Manifesto

Chapter Seventeen: ZERO-ZERO

I went aboard the Boeing at 14:55.

Zade was unarmed, waiting at the top of the flight steps.

Ventura and Ramirez were on each side of him with a submachine-gun trained on me as I came up.

Zade took the briefcase from me and went into the aircraft.

The other two lowered their weapons and I followed Zade aboard, telescoping the antenna of the walkie-talkie.

I saw Patricia Burdick at the rear of the main passenger compartment with Dr Costa, and went along the aisle to talk to them.

At this point I had the urge to turn back and get out of the Boeing and stay out, stay alive. But then I would have to live with myself afterwards.

'Your father sends his love,' I said to the girl. 'He wants you to know you'll be home again soon now.'

She stared up at me without saying anything for a moment, as if she were repeating what I'd said to herself a few times to find out if it were true, whether she could trust me.

'How's he taking this?' she asked.

'Very calmly. He knows you'll soon be home.'

Quietly she murmured, 'Sure,' and closed her eyes.

I wondered how much she'd be able to do for herself, if she had the chance; her skin was waxen and wet with perspiration. Dr Costa looked at me with his mournful eyes but said nothing; I thought that inside he was praying, and to the most powerful of his gods.

I moved across the aisle and pulled down the table for the end seat and opened the zip of the walkie-talkie case and took out the bomb and put it on the table.

'Zade,' I called.

I set the dial to 5.

The chronometer began ticking.

Zade looked along the aisle. He'd given the briefcase to Kuznetski, and Kuznetski had taken out the batch of varicoloured papers and was going through them.

I leaned against the seat squab with my arms folded, 'In five minutes this plane's going up.'

They were all looking at me now.

Zade came slowly down the aisle. He still wore his dark glasses and I couldn't see what he was thinking but that didn't matter because there was nothing he could do about this.

He saw the bomb.

'Carlos,' he said over his shoulder.

Ramirez followed him along the aisle. He was down in the dossier as an explosives expert. I had known that, and would use the advantage.

Zade stood over the seat, looking down.

He'd been patient, so far, They'd taken almost an hour and a half to get this thing for me and I'd talked to Zade with a two-way radio, saying we didn't trust him, we wanted him to bring his hostage to a neutral zone for the exchange, accepted practice, so forth. I'd made it sound genuine, and the FBI had taken over and used all the correct phrases; I thought they'd sold it to him, once, then he'd got worried and said if I wasn't back in the aircraft with the material they were going to start with one of her fingers.

Ramirez stood beside him, looking down; then he instinctively edged away a fraction and I noted this, Zade moved his hand and I said:

'Don't!'

I put a lot of expression into it and he drew back. I didn't have to work up any spurious alarm: I just let it show, so that he'd get the message. Nothing would happen if he picked the tiling up but he might go and drop it and it was omnidirectionally percussion-triggered and that would be that.

Zade watched my face. I could feel the blood receding and the first of the sweat coming to the surface and presumably he saw this and stood away slightly, not moving his hands any more.

'Ramirez,' I said, and began speaking Spanish. 'You understand explosives. This device-'

'Speak in Polish!' Zade cut in.

'He'll tell you what I said,' I told him. 'I want him to know the precise situation and his Polish isn't very good.' I switched back to Spanish. 'This device is produced exclusively for the Central Intelligence Agency and is made to very exacting specifications. It has an electronic blasting cap and booster and the main charge is composed of ammonium nitrate closely confined to increase the detonation wave, which will reach 14,000 f.p.s. The secondary stage is provided by the plastic case, which is chemically sensitized Composition C-4 with a detonating temperature of 290 °Centigrade.'

I was watching his face.

Zade spoke to him sharply: 'What did he — '

'One more thing,' I told Ramirez. The device has a protective circuit, and I'd be glad if you would warn Zade on this point. It has a clock arming-delay, two pressure-release micro-switches — here, and here — a mercury tilt switch and a vibrator activator. Please tell your friends that we don't want any undue movement inside the aircraft. Now report to Zade.'

I moved across the aisle and sat on the arm of the end seat. The sweat was a problem now, making my scalp itch and reminding me that I was frightened. It's often a chain reaction unless you can control it: you know when you're frightened but you want to feel you're at least not showing it and can keep on top of the situation. The reason why the sweat was an actual problem was that I had to keep it off my hands.

Ramirez was speaking slowly to Zade, using an English phrase when he could think of one. His eyes were very serious and I believed I'd convinced him. Most of it was the truth, in any case: there was no mercury tilt switch or vibrator but if anyone picked that thing up and dropped it the Boeing would blow.

It would have been nice to tell the girl not to worry, that we still had a chance. But she wouldn't believe me because I'd said she was going home soon and now she could see there was a confrontation: and if she believed me the relief would show in her face and they might notice it.

It was very quiet in here now.

The ticking was discreet and fairly rapid and we could hear it when nobody was talking. Ramirez had stopped, and Zade was standing perfectly still, looking at the bomb. He didn't seem afraid of it, but he wasn't the unbalanced type of revolutionary who would take a chance for the sake of blood and glory. If he had been that kind of man I couldn't have brought this thing in here.

The others were farther along the aisle, their faces turned this way. I noted Kuznetski particularly. It was Kuznetski I was relying on.

'Shoot him,' Shadia said suddenly.

I saw her face and I knew I was right about her: she was superstitious. She was frightened of ghosts and I owed her a death and she wanted it 'We don't need him now, Satynovich.'

His dark head half-turned towards her.

'Be quiet,' he said, and it sounded worse than if he'd screamed it out. I saw her face freeze.

He looked at me.

'What is the object?' he asked me.

'I want the girl out of here.'

'She can go, as soon as we have checked the materials,'

'I don't trust you,' I said.

'I can do nothing about that.'

'But I can.'

He was holding himself very still.

I hadn't known him long but I'd seen the way he tended to use more and more control over himself until he went over the edge. His attack on Sassine was an example: he'd been much calmer just afterwards.

He was now having to increase the control over himself again and I hoped I could get the girl out of here before he broke. The bomb was predictable: Zade was not.

Sassine was also a risk: his head was full of hashish.

And I must watch Shadia.

'As soon as we've checked the material,' Zade said, 'we've no more use for the girl.'

'That's not true. You'll need her as a hostage until you've recalled the aircrew and landed in Mexico or Cuba. Then you might release her, but we don't trust you and we don't want her in Mexico or Cuba: we want her in a hospital as soon as possible. Please note that we have three minutes and thirty seconds left.'

He looked down at once at the dial of the chronometer.

I suppose this was what had taken them such a time: I'd asked them to rig the thing so that the dial was visible.

It had a light rapid tick, the sound of an aviation clock of a few decades ago, with sufficient mass to provide precision. We listened to it in the silence and I watched Kuznetski, farther along the aisle.

'Don't you want to live?' Zade asked me.

'Very much. But I'm prepared to die.'

'So are we.'

'Of course.'

He drew a slow breath and I noted this.

'Then there's no point,' he said.

'Yes, there is. It's a question of nerves.'

'How so?'

'I think yours will break, before mine.'

He smiled. He had quite a pleasant smile.

But the tic had begun jerking his mouth again. I'd seen it before.

'Satyn,' said Ramirez, 'I think you should — '

'Be quiet, Carlos.'

Ramirez knew his explosives and he had the imagination to be afraid of this thing on the table. He wasn't a man to brave it out, as Zade would try to do. 'Three minutes,' I said.

My hands were moving very slowly against my clothes, wiping the sweat off the palms. But it kept coming again. I had to keep them dry, or as dry as I could.

Zade turned away and went along the aisle. Ramirez with him.

'Go on checking the papers,' he told Kuznetski.

'Satynovich, I-'

'Check them.'

'Yes.'

Ventura was leaning against me bulkhead, the sub-machine-gun in the crook of his arm. He felt happier like that, and perhaps pictured himself in the revolutionary pose, as so many of them did.

Sassine began talking and Zade put a hand on his arm and he stopped at once. I saw him light another reefer and put it between his swollen lips.

Shadia was perched sideways on the arm of a seat, watching me as she'd been doing for minutes. The only difference now was that she was holding an automatic, the same model as Sassine's. I didn't know how stable she was. That was the major disadvantage I had to contend with: the situation was increasing the tension to the point where even a normal temperament would become prone to irrationality.

The papers scuffed as Kuznetski studied them.

I couldn't tell what was in Zade's mind. He wasn't just missing the point, I knew that. Whether the papers were false or genuine, we all had to get out of this aircraft within the next two and a half minutes because this thing had a protective circuit and no one could switch it off. If they'd put a manual cut-off switch on it, Ramirez would have seen it.

'Do it carefully,' Zade told Kuznetski and came back along the aisle for a few paces, swinging his bead up to look at me.

'You want to know the time?' I asked him.

'I want to know the terms.'

I'd thought he was never going to ask.

'There aren't any terms.'

He stood perfectly still, his black glass eyes watching me.

I said: 'Didn't you know that?'

Kuznetski looked up from the papers.

'There must be terms,' Zade said.

'Oh, basically, I suppose. It's your lives for the life of the hostage. Or your death for hers.'

He said nothing.

I would say that from this distance he could hear the ticking.

'Satynovich,' Ramirez said, 'I'm not going to-'

Zade swung on him and ripped out a series of words in Polish I couldn't follow: his voice was hoarse, as it had been on the flight deck, earlier. Probably Ramirez didn't understand either: his Polish was worse than mine. But when Zade turned back to me I saw his face was white.

'Two minutes,' I told him.

I heard a murmur from somewhere behind me, in Portuguese.

Dr Costa was praying.

Just in case Zade was missing anything I thought I should spell it out for him. We didn't want any mistakes. 'There are fifty marksmen out there, and when you leave the aircraft you'll walk into a firing squad. Or you can elect to live, and let the girl go free.'

He was silent for what seemed a long time. It was probably for only a few seconds, but seconds were a long time, now.

'Have they guaranteed it?'

'Yes.'

I wished now that I could tell what he was thinking.

Perhaps it was too simple for him: he was looking for something complex. But the only terms were those that governed every hostage-and-demand situation: life for life. He could have accepted them earlier, when the FBI had asked him to surrender. But at that time he saw the Boeing as his refuge: here he would make his stand. He could have held out for weeks, against all argument. Now he could hold out for less than two minutes because that was my argument: the bomb.

It was something he could understand.

Before this point was reached, he could have stayed hi his refuge, refusing all terms that were offered. But now he had no refuge and it could change his thinking radically. I thought the chances of his opting to go out in a Gotterdammerung of martyrdom were rather high but it was one of the risks that had to be taken.

I'd told James Burdick what I'd had to: that I didn't think there was a lot of hope.

'Satynovich,' Kuznetski said. 'The material is genuine.'

I couldn't think what be was trying to do: he must know the papers were no use to them, genuine or false. Possibly he was working on Zade's mind, as I was, but in a different way.

'You're lying,' Zade said.

I saw Kuznetski get up from the seat and stand with his forehead against the panelling, his eyes closed.

'Sixty seconds,' I said.

I watched the thin blued-steel needle pass across the top marker for the last time and begin its final circuit. I had asked the CIA technician what the margin of error was in the firing delay and he'd told me the action was electronic and zero-zero precise.

There was sweat on the palms of my hands again and I wiped them by folding my arms and sliding the palms against the sleeves, because Zade was watching me. They were all watching me.

Then I heard Sassine begin talking rapidly and when Zade stopped him I turned and looked across the aisle at Dr Costa and spoke to him and turned back to watch the dial of the chronometer.

'Forty-five seconds.'

I said it clearly because there wasn't a lot of time left and they were leaving it late. That was because of Zade, I believed: his personality was able to subdue them, especially Shadia and Ramirez.

I turned my head and looked along the perspective of the aircraft. At this point configuration would have to be noted:' I had to see the group at the other end of the aisle as if they were figures cut out of the background, like one of those pictures where people are identified by numbers inside blank outlines.

Zade was standing in the aisle to the left side and he was nearer than anyone else and so his figure was larger. Shadia was on the other side, perched on the arm of a seat with the gun resting on her thigh and her unnaturally pale eyes watching me. Ventura was behind them at a distance of several feet, his configuration carrying the extension of the sub-machine-gun. I couldn't see Sassine: perhaps Zade had hit him again and he was sulking somewhere. Ramirez was almost directly behind Shadia and her configuration made a part of his, because she was sitting and he was standing. Kuznetski was still leaning his forehead against the panelling, behind Ventura.

The configuration I needed, unless something unexpected happened, was the space between them, outlined by their figures and by the panels and ceiling above their heads. It would make things much more difficult for me if anyone moved.

Tick-tick-tick-tick.

The soft quick sound reminded me.

'Thirty seconds,' I said.

Then one of them moved.

Kuznetski.

Zade hadn't seen him yet because he was standing with his back to him. I don't think he'd heard him either, or he would have swung round to see what was happening. Now he heard him, and swung round.

'Kuznetski!'

Zade didn't carry a gun but Shadia was there and Ventura and Ramirez were there and one of them swung his machine-gun round in the low aim but that was probably by instinct because those two were the hit-men and would ready their weapons at any sign of crisis.

'Kuznetski!'

It was a jungle sound, the cry of an animal.

But Kuznetski had gone. The configuration had changed and he'd left a space to one side. No one had closed the main door when I'd come aboard and he had gone through there, as Sassine must have done not long ago.

It was Kuznetski I'd been relying on to break first, but with Sassine I'd got two for the price of one. I suppose Zade shouldn't have hit him like that.

Tick-tick-tick.

I looked down at the needle.

'Sixteen seconds.'

It felt very close now in the compartment: the air seemed to press against the face. I wiped my palms dry again. When I looked up from the chronometer I saw Zade had half-turned towards me again. I could see by the movement of his chest that he was taking deep breaths: something he'd learned, perhaps, as a means of controlling the nerves. His voice still had a tremor to it but he spoke slowly, and clearly enough to make sure I heard him.

'I am not a man to threaten. You can see that now.'

This was what I thought he might do in the last few seconds. I suppose in a way it was admirable: if I had to choose any of these men as a comrade in some dangerous enterprise, it would be Satynovich Zade.

Tick-tick.

I looked down quickly.

The sliver of blue steel was moving in rapid jerks, each one as precise as the last, and as precise as those to come.

'Nine seconds.'

I looked up again, along the aisle, No one had moved.

'Let the girl go,' I said.

Zade kept his head turned towards me and spoke over his shoulder.

'If the girl moves, Shoot her. If this man moves, shoot him. But the doctor can go. Tell him, Carlos.'

Ramirez spoke in Portuguese and I heard his voice was shaking.

Dr Costa answered him, saying he would stay with his patient.

Then I saw Ramirez turn and walk out through the door of the aircraft.

Zade didn't move his head.

'Who was that?' he asked.

'Carlos,' Ventura told him.

There was no sound of firing. Sorenson had told me that if any of these people came out of the Boeing they would be arrested, providing they carried no weapons.

'What would you expect,' Zade said, 'from the son of a Seville prostitute?'

No one answered.

No one moved.

So it wasn't going to work.

Again it was a question of predictability: the chemical chain reaction that would take place inside the time-bomb a few seconds from now was predictable; the chain reaction within the Kobra cell was not. I'd been relying on breaking their nerve and I'd been relying on Kuznetski to provide the initiative and Sassine had done it for him but only two of them had followed him out. The reaction had stopped there, as if the powder in an explosive compound had been badly mixed.

Shadia watched me still, her sun-bronzed hand on the gun. She was smiling with her mouth but the pale eyes were glass-bright and expressionless.

Ventura had come to stand behind one of the seats, and his arm rested along its back. He stood perfectly upright and perfectly still, and his eyes were slightly defensive, as people sometimes look when they're having their photograph taken in a studio: there was something Victorian about him, and something still of the men's haberdashery assistant.

He and Shadia had a certain likeness: they were thin and quietly-moving people with shut faces and eyes that saw everything and Showed nothing. Zade seemed a man of action, a man of iron, with reasons for his actions and some brand of dim political philosophy to push him along; but in the other two I sensed an unnaturalness, the kind- of sadomasochistic force that had once sent millions of their fellow humans into the gas chambers. And somewhere in it was also the death wish and that was why they had stayed.

Sweat on my palms. I wiped it off.

Tick.

I looked down.

There was no need to tell them.

A stray thought sparked across my mind: they should have let the girl go. It was all I'd asked.

Final thought-flash: roses for Moira.

I could hear the click of the four-second alarm sounding but I'd already begun moving and I picked the thing up and aimed for the centre of the space outlined by the solid configurations at the other end of the aisle. The sweat on the pads of my fingers had caused the plastic case to slip a little but I'd allowed for that and it left my hand with an up-swing designed to drop it seven or eight feet behind where Zade was standing because if I could get it to burst at that exact spot a considerable degree of blast would vent through the main doorway and reduce the enormous air pressure inside the fuselage.

Final impressions aural and visual: Zade shouting something and Shadia's gun coming up with the flame burst spreading at the muzzle.

Then I was down on the floor with my head buried in my crossed arms and my legs drawn clear of the aisle. I was thinking about Dr Costa: I'd told him what to do when he saw me pick the thing up and he'd understood. He and the girl were three rows aft of where I was lying and would experience minimally less blast, but it was relative and it would have been pointless to try working out the chances for any of us.

Popping noise: Shadia's gun again.

Then the Boeing shuddered to the shock of the blast and my hearing was blocked off as the detonation wave drove through the length of the fuselage and brought debris with it to smash against the panels of the aft bulkhead.

Someone screaming.

Everything red for an instant and the air burning the throat: a sensation of being somewhere else, spinning in the vortex of some vast cataclysm, with the reason struggling to survive and the forebrain desperate to analyse data. Then memory making its demands: the memory of intentions to be carried out if there were a chance left for us.

Thick smoke billowing and I rolled over and got up and smashed into one of the seats and went down and got up again and lurched to the place where Costa and the girl had been sheltering. But they were in the aisle ahead of me and the rear emergency door swung inwards as he wrenched at the lever and then the girl fell down and I got hold of her and dragged her on to her feet and pushed her through the opening and dropped after her.

The rescue people had positioned something for us, some kind of chute — I'd asked them to wheel up some flight steps but I suppose the height was wrong for the tail end. I hit the ground and saw Costa with the girl, helping her along in a limping jog-trot, then the main tanks blew and we all began running as hard as we could through the fire-foam that was spreading towards us.

Sirens wailing, like the cry of the dead.