Wild Justice

Wild Justice by Wilbur Smith

There were only fifteen joining passengers for the British Airways flight at Victoria Airport on the island of Malic in the oceanic republic of the Seychelles.

Two couples formed a tight group as they waited their turn for departure formalities. They were all young, all deeply tanned and they seemed still carefree and relaxed by their holiday in that island paradise. However, one of them made her three companions seem insignificant by the sheer splendour of her physical presence.

She was a tall girl, with long limbs and her head set on a proud, shapely neck. Her thick, sun-gilded blonde hair was twisted into a braid and coiled high on top of her head, and the sun had touched her with gold and brought out the bloom of youth and health upon her skin.

As she moved with the undulating grace of one of the big predatory cats, bare feet thrust into open sandals, so the big pointed breasts joggled tautly under the thin cotton of her tee-shirt and the tight round buttocks strained the faded denim of her hacked-off shorts.

Across the front of her tee-shirt was blazoned the legend “I AM A LOVE NUT” and below it was drawn the suggestive outline of a coco-de-mer.

She smiled brilliantly at the dark-skinned Seychellois immigration officer as she slid the green United States passport with its golden eagle across the desk to him, but when she turned to her male companion she spoke in quick fluent German. She retrieved her passport and led the others through into the security area.

Again she smiled at the two members of the Seychelles

Police Force who were in charge of the weapons search, and she swung the net carry bag off her shoulder.

“You want to check these?” she asked, and they all laughed. The bag contained two huge coco-de-mer; the grotesque fruit, each twice the size of a human head, were the most popular souvenirs of the Islands.

Each of her three companions carried similar trophies in net bags, and the police officer ignored such familiar objects and instead ran his metal detector in a perfunctory manner over the canvas flight bags which made up the rest of their hand luggage. It buzzed harshly on one bag and the boy who carried it shamefacedly produced a small Nikkormat camera. More laughter and then the police officer waved the group through into the final Departure Lounge.

It was already crowded with transit passengers who had boarded at Mauritius, and beyond the lounge windows the huge Boeing 747 jumbo squatted on the tarmac, lit harshly by floodlights as the refuelling tenders fussed about her.

There were no free seats in the lounge and the group of four formed a standing circle under one of the big revolving punk ah fans, for the night was close and humid and the mass of humanity in the closed room sullied the air with tobacco smoke and the smell of hot bodies.

The blonde girl led the gay chatter and sudden bursts of laughter, standing inches above her two male companions and a full head above the other girl, so that they were a focus of attention for the hundreds of other passengers.

Their manner had changed subtly since they entered the lounge; there was a sense of relief as though a serious obstacle had been negotiated, and an almost feverish excitement in the timbre of their laughter. They were never still, shifting restlessly from foot to foot, hands fiddling with hair or clothing.

Although they were clearly a closed group, quarantined by an almost conspiratorial air of camaraderie, one of the transit passengers left his wife sitting and stood up from his seat across the lounge.

“Say, do you speak English?” he asked, as he approached the group.

He was a heavy man in his middle fifties with a thick thatch of steel-grey hair, dark horn-rimmed spectacles, and the easy confident manner of success and wealth.

Reluctantly the group opened for him, and it was the tall blonde girl who answered, as if by right.

“Sure, I’m American also.”

“No kidding?” The man chuckled. “Well, what do you know.” And he was studying her with open admiration. “I just wanted to know what those things are.” He pointed to the net bag of nuts that lay at her feet.

“They are coco-de-mer,” the blonde answered.

“Oh yeah, I’ve heard of them.”

“They call them “love nuts”,” the girl went on, stooping to open the heavy bag at her feet. “And you can see why.” She displayed one of the fruit for him.

The double globes were joined in an exact replica of a pair of human buttocks.

“Back end.” She smiled, and her teeth were so white they appeared as translucent as fine bone china.

“Front end.” She turned the nut, and offered for his inspection the perfect mons vener is complete with a feminine gash and a tuft of coarse curls, and now it was clear she was flirting and teasing; she altered her stance, thrusting her hips forward slightly, and the man glanced down involuntarily at her own plump mons beneath the tight blue denim, its deep triangle bisected by the fold of material which had tucked up into the cleft.

He flushed slightly and his lips parted with a small involuntary intake of breath.

“The male tree has a stamen as thick and as long as your arm.” She widened her eyes to the size and colour of blue pansies, and across the lounge the man’s wife stood up and came towards them, warned by some feminine instinct. She was much younger than her husband and very heavy and awkward with child.

“The Seychellois will tell you that in the full moon the male pulls up its roots and walks around to mate with the females–”

“As long and as thick as your arm-” smiled the pretty little darkhaired girl beside her, ” wow!” She was also teasing now, and both girls dropped their gaze deliberately down the front of the man’s body. He squirmed slightly, and the two young men who flanked him grinned at his discomfort.

His wife reached him and tugged at his arm. There was a red angry rash of prickly heat on her throat and little beads of perspiration across her upper lip, like transparent blisters.

“Harry, I’m not feeling well, “she whined softly.

“I’ve got to go now,” he mumbled with relief, his poise and confidence shaken, and he took his wife’s arm and led her away.

“Did you recognize him?” asked the darkhaired girl in German, still smiling, her voice pitched very low.

“Harold McKevitt,” the blonde replied softly in the same language.

“Neurosurgeon from Forth Worth. He read the closing paper to the convention on Saturday morning.” She explained. “Big fish very big fish,” and like a cat she ran the pink tip of her tongue across her lips.

Of the four hundred and one passengers in the final Departure Lounge that Monday evening three hundred and sixty were surgeons, or their wives. The surgeons, including some of the most eminent in the world of medicine, had come from Europe and England and the United States, from Japan and South America and Asia, for the convention that had ended twenty-four hours previously on the island of Mauritius, five hundred miles to the south of Malic island. This was one of the first flights out since then and it had been fully booked ever since the convention had been convoked.

“British Airways announces the departure of Flight BA 070 for Nairobi and London; will transit passengers please board now through the main gate. “The announcement was in the soft singsong of the Creole accent, and there was a massed movement towards the exit.

“Victtoria Control this is Speedbird Zero Seven Zero request push back and start clearance.”

“Zero Seven Zero you are cleared to start and taxi to holding point for runway Zero One.”

“Please copy amendment to our flight plan for Nairobi.

Number of Pax aboard should be 401. We have a full house.”

“Roger, Speedbird, your flight plan is amended.” The gigantic aircraft was still in its nose-high climb configuration and the seat belt and no-smoking lights burned brightly down the length of the firstclass cabin. The blonde girl and her companion sat side by side in the roomy seats and directly behind the forward bulkhead that partitioned off the command area and the firstclass galley. The seats that the young couple occupied had been reserved many months previously.

The blonde nodded to her companion and he leaned forward to screen her from the passengers across the aisle while she slipped one of the coco-de-mer from its net bag and held it in her lap.

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, darkhaired, 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. How

4 ever, 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 time 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 oldfashioned 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 peaks 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.

“Officers of the Action Commando will wear red shirts for immediate identification and they will be armed.” As she spoke her three companions in the front of the firstclass cabin were stripping out the false bottoms from their canvas flight bags. The space was only two inches deep by fourteen by eight, but it was sufficient for the brokendown twelve bore pistols, and ten rounds of buckshot cartridges. The barrels of the pistols were fourteen inches long, the bores were Smooth and made of armoured plastic.

This material would not have withstood the passage of a solid bullet through rifling or any of the newer explosive propellants but it had been designed for use with the lower velocity and pressures of multiple shot and cordite. The breech piece was of plastic as were the double pistol grips, and these clipped swiftly into position. The only metal in the entire weapon was the case-steel firing pin and spring, no bigger than one of the metal studs in the canvas flight bag, so they would not have activated the metal detectors of the security check at

Malik airport. The ten cartridges contained in each bag had plastic cases and bases; again only the percussion caps were of aluminium foil,

which would not disturb an electrical field. The cartridges were packed in looped cartridge belts which buckled around the waist.

The weapons were short, black and ugly; they required reloading like a conventional shotgun, the spent shells were not self-ejecting and the recoil was so vicious that it would break the wrists of the user who did not bear down heavily on the pistol grips. However, at ranges up to thirty feet the destructive power was awesome, at twelve feet it would disembowel a man and at six feet it would blow his head off cleanly yet it did not have the penetrating power to hole the pressure hull of an intercontinental airliner.

It was the perfect weapon for the job in hand, and within a few seconds three of them had been assembled and loaded and the two men had slipped on the bright scarlet shirts that identified them over their tee-shirts and moved to their positions, one in the back of the firstclass cabin and one in the back of the tourist cabin, they stood with their grotesque weapons ostentatiously displayed.

“MON The slim pretty, darkhaired German girl stayed in her seat a little longer, working swiftly and neatly as she opened the remaining coco-de-mer and transferred their contents into two of the netting bags. These grenades differed only from the one carried by Ingrid in that they had double red lines painted around the middle. This signified that they were electronically fused.

Now Ingrid’s clear young voice resumed over the cabin address system, and the long rows of passengers all fully awake now sat rigid and attentive, their faces reflecting an almost uniform expression of shock and trepidation.

The officer of the action commando who is moving down the cabin at this time is placing high explosive grenades,-” The darkhaired girl started down the aisle, and every fifteen rows she opened one of the overhead lockers and placed a grenade in it, closed the locker and moved on.

The passengers” heads revolved slowly in unison as they watched her with the fascination of total horror. “A single one of those grenades has the explosive power to destroy this aircraft, they were designed to kill by concussion the crew of a battle tank protected by six inches of armour. the officer is placing fourteen of these devices along the length of this aircraft. They can be detonated simultaneously by an electronic transmitter under my control,-” the voice contained a hint of mischief now, a little undercurrent of laughter, and if that happened they’d hear the bang at the North Pole!”

The passengers stirred like the leaves of a tree in a vagrant breeze;

somewhere a woman began to weep. It was a strangled passionless sound and nobody even looked in her direction.

“But don’t worry yourselves. “That isn’t going to happen.

Because everybody is going to do exactly as they are told, and when it’s all over you are going to be proud of your part in this operation. We are all partners in a noble and glorious mission, we are all warriors for freedom and for the dignity of man. Today we take a mighty step forward into the new world a world purged and cleansed of injustice and tyranny and dedicated to the welfare of all its peoples.”

The woman was still weeping, and now a child joined her on a higher,

more strident note.

The darkhaired girl returned to her seat and now she retrieved the camera that had activated the metal detector at Malic airport. She slung it around her neck and crouched again to assemble the two remaining shot pistols; carrying them and the cartridge belts, she hurried forward to the flight deck where the big blonde kissed her delightedly and unashamedly on the lips.

“Karen, Liebling, you were wonderful. “And then she took the camera from her and slung it around her own neck.

“This-” she explained to the captain ” is not what it appears to be. It is the remote radio detonator for the grenades in the fuselage.” He nodded without replying, and with obvious relief Ingrid disarmed the grenade that she had carried for so long by replacing the safety pin. She handed it to the other girl.

“How much longer to -the coast?” she asked as she strapped and buckled the cartridge belt around her waist.

“Thirty-two minutes,” said the flight engineer promptly, and

Ingrid opened the breech of the pistol, checked the load and then snapped it closed again.

“You and Henri can stand down now,” she told Karen.

“Try and sleep.” The operation might last many days still, and exhaustion would be the most dangerous enemy they would have to contend with. It was for this reason alone that they had employed such a large force. From now on, except in an emergency, two of them would be on duty and two would be resting.

“You have done a very professional job,” said the pilot, Cyril

Watkins,” so far.”

“Thank you.” Ingrid laughed, and over the back of his seat placed a comradely hand on his shoulder. “We have practised very hard for this day.” Peter Stride dipped his lights three times as he raced down the long narrow alley that led to the gates of the compound without slowing the Rover, and the sentry swung the gate open just in time for him to roar through.

There were no floodlights, no bustling activity just the two aircraft standing together in the echoing cavern of the hangar.

The Lockheed Hercules seemed to fill the entire building, that had been built to accommodate the smaller bombers of World War II. The tall vertical fin of its epinage reached to within a few feet of the roof girders.

Beside it the Hawker Siddeley HS 125 executive jet seemed dainty and ineffectual. The differing origins of the machines emphasized that this unit was a cooperative venture between two nations.

This was underscored once more when Colin Noble hurried forward to meet Peter as he cut the Rover’s engine and lights.

“A grand night for it, Peter. “There was no mistaking the drawl of mid-Western America, although Colin looked more like a successful used-car salesman than a colonel in the U.S. Marines. In the beginning

Peter had believed that this strict apportioning of material and manpower on equal national lines might weaken the effectiveness of

Atlas. He no longer had those doubts.

Colin wore the nondescript blue overalls and cloth cap, both embroidered with the legend “THOR COMMUNICATIONS” which deliberately made him look more of a technician than a soldier.

Colin was Peter’s second in command. They had known each other only the six weeks since Peter had assumed command of Thor but after a short period of mutual wariness the two men had formed one of those fast bonds of liking and mutual respect.

Colin was of medium height, but none the less a big man. First glance might have given the impression that he was fat, for his body had a certain toad-like spread to it.

There was no fat upon his frame, however, it was all muscle and bone. He had boxed heavyweight for Princeton and the marines, and his nose above the wide laughing mouth had been broken just below the bridge, it was lumped and twisted slightly.

Colin cultivated the boisterous bluff manner of a career athlete,

but his eyes were the colour of burned toffee and were brightly intelligent and all-seeing. He was tough and leery as an old alley cat. It was not easy to earn the respect of Peter Stride. Colin had done so in under six weeks.

He stood now between the two aircraft, while his men went about their Alpha preparation with quick understated efficiency.

Both aircraft were painted in commercial airline style, blue and white and gold, with a stylized portrait of the Thunder God on the tail fin and the “THOR COMMUNICATIONS” title down the fuselage. They could land at any airport in the world without causing undue comment.

“What is the buzz, Colin?” Peter Stride demanded as he slammed the

Rover’s door and hurried to meet the American. It had taken him some time and conscious effort to adapt his language and mode of address to fit in with his new second-in-command. He had learned very early not to expect that, merely because he was the youngest major general in the

British army, Colonel Colin Noble was going to call him “Sir” every time he spoke.

“Missing aircraft.” It could have been a train, an embassy, even an ocean liner, Peter realized. “British Airways. For Chrissake let’s get out of the cold.” The wind was flapping the legs of Colin’s overalls and tugging at his sleeves.

“Where?”

“Indian Ocean.”

“Are we set for Bravo?” Peter asked as they climbed into his command plane.

“All set.” The interior of the Hawker had been restyled to make it a compact headquarters and communications centre.

There was comfortable seating for four officers directly behind the flight deck. Then the two electronic engineers and their equipment occupied a separate rear compartment, beyond which were the small toilet and galley in the extreme rear.

One of the technicians looked through the communicating door as

Peter stooped into the cabin. “Good evening, General Stride we have a direct link with Atlas established.”

“Put him on the screen,” he ordered as he sank into the padded leather of his chair behind the small working desk.

There was a single fourteen-inch main television screen in the panel directly facing Peter, and above it four smaller six-inch screens for conference communication. The main screen came alive, and the image of the big noble leonine head firmed.

“Good afternoon, Peter.” The smile was warm, charismatic,

compelling.

“Good evening, sir.” And Dr. Kingston Parker tilted his head slightly to acknowledge the reference to the time difference between

Washington and England.

“Right at this moment we are in the dark completely. All we have is that BA 070 with four hundred and one passengers and sixteen crew on a flight from Malic to Nairobi has not reported for thirty-two minutes.”

Parker was Chairman of the Intelligence Oversight Board, among other duties, and he reported directly to the President of the United States in that capacity. He was the President’s personal and trusted friend.

They had been in the same class at Annapolis, both of them had graduated in the top twenty but, unlike the President, Parker had gone directly into government.

Parker was an artist, a talented musician, the author of four scholarly works of philosophy and politics, and a grand master of chess. A man of overwhelming presence, of vast humanity and towering intelligence. Yet also he was a secret man, avoiding the glaring scrutiny of the media, hiding his ambitions, if ambitions he had although the presidency of the United States would not be an impossible dream to such a man only taking up with rare skill and strength any burden that was thrust upon him.

Peter Stride had met him personally on half a dozen occasions since being seconded to Thor. He had spent a weekend with Parker at his New York home, and his respect for the man had become boundless.

Peter realized that he was the perfect head for such a complex concept as Atlas: it needed the philosopher’s tempering influence over trained soldiers, it needed the tact and charisma of the diplomat to deal directly with the heads of two governments, and it needed that steely intellect to make the ultimate decision that could involve hundreds of innocent lives and incur fearsome political consequences.

Now swiftly and incisively he told Peter what little they knew of

Flight 070 and what search and rescue routine was already in force,

before going on, “Without being alarmist, this does seem to be the perfect target. The flight carries most of the world’s leading surgeons, and the convention was public knowledge eighteen months ago.

Doctors have the necessary image to appeal to public sentiment and their nationalities are nicely mixed American, British, French,

Scandinavian, German, Italian, three of those countries have notoriously soft records with militant activity. It’s a British aircraft, and the final destination would probably have been chosen to further complicate the issue and inhibit any counteraction.” Parker paused, and a small crease of worry appeared for a moment in the broad smooth forehead.

“I have put Mercury on condition Alpha as well if this M is a strike the final destination could just as easily be eastwards of the aircraft’s last reported position.” Atlas’s offensive arm comprised three identical units.

Thor would be used only in Europe or Africa. Mercury was based on the American Naval base in Indonesia and covered Asia and Australasia,

while Diana was in Washin ton itself and ready for counteraction in either of the American continents.

“I have Tanner of Mercury on the other relay now. I will be back to you in a few seconds, Peter.”

“Very well, sir.” The screen went blank, and in the chair beside him Colin Noble lit one of his expensive

Dutch cheroots and crossed his ankles on the desk in front of him.

“Seems the great god Thor came down to earth for a little poon tang When he’d finished pleasuring one of the vestal virgins he thought he’d let her know the honour she’d been given. “I’m Thor,” he told her. ““Tho she agreed, “but it wath loth of fun.”” Peter shook his head sorrowfully. “That’s funny?” he asked.

“Helps to while away the time.” Colin glanced at his wristwatch.

“If this is another false alarm, it’s going to make it thirteen straight.” He yawned. There was nothing to do.

It had all been done before. Everything was in the ultimate state of readiness. In the huge Hercules transport, every item of a comprehensive arsenal of equipment was ready for instant use. The thirty highly trained soldiers were embarked. The flight crews of both aircraft were at their stations, the communications technicians had set up their links with satellites and through them to the available fligence computers in Washington and London. It remained only to wait the greater part of a soldier’s life was spent waiting, but

Peter had never become hardened to it. It helped now to have the companionship of Colin Noble.

In a life spent in the company of many men it was difficult to form close relationships. Here in the smaller closed ranks of Thor in shared endeavour they had achieved that and become friends, and their conversation was relaxed and desultory, moving casually from subject to subject, but without relaxing the undercurrent of alertness that gripped both men.

At one stage Kingston Parker came on the screen again to tell them that search and rescue aircraft had found no indications at the last reported position of 070, and that a photographic run by the “Big Bird”

reconnaissance satellite had been made over the same area, but that film would not be ready for appraisal for another fourteen hours.

Speedbird 070 was now one hour six minutes past “operations normal” and suddenly Peter remembered Melissa-Jane. He asked communications for a telephone line and dialled the cottage. There was no reply, so the driver would have collected her already. He hung up and rang Cynthia in Cambridge.

“Damn it, Peter. This really is most inconsiderate of you.”

Freshly aroused from sleep, her voice was petulant, immediately awakening only Antipathies. “Melissa has been looking forward to this-“

“Yes, I know, and so have U and George and I had arranged-“

George, her new husband, was a Political History don; despite himself

Peter quite liked the man. He had been very good to Melissa-Jane.

“The exigencies of the service.” Peter cut in lightly and her voice took on a bitter edge.

“How often I had to listen to that I hoped never to hear it again.” They were on the same futile old treadmill and he had to stop it.

“Look, Cynthia. Melissa is on her way” In front of him the big television screen lit and Kingston Parker’s eyes were dark with regret,

as though he mourned for all mankind.

“I have to go,” Peter told the woman whom once he had loved, and broke the connection, leaning forward attentively towards the image on the screen.

“The South African radar de fences have painted an unidentified target approaching their airspace,” Kingston Parker told him. “Its speed and position correspond with those of 070. They have scrambled a Mirage flight to intercept but in the meantime I’m assuming that it’s a militant strike and we’ll go immediately to condition Bravo, if you please, Peter.”

“We are on our way, sir.” And beside him Colin Noble took his feet off the desk and thumped them together onto the floor. The cheroot was still clamped between his teeth.

The target was live and the pilot of the leading Mirage F. 1

interceptor had his flight computer in “attack” mode and all his weaponry missiles and cannon were armed. The computer gave him a time to intercept of thirty-three seconds, and the target’s heading was constant at 210” magnetic and its ground speed at 483 knots.

Ahead of him the dawn was rising in wildly theatrical display.

Avalanches of silver and pink cloud tumbled down the sky, and the sun,

still below the horizon, flung long lances of golden light across the heavens. The pilot leaned forward against his shoulder straps and lifted the Polaroid visor of his helmet with one gloved hand, straining ahead for the first glimpse of the target.

His trained gunfighter’s eye picked out the dark speck against the distracting background of cloud and sunlight and he made an almost imperceptible movement of the controls to avoid the direct head-on approach to the target.

The speck swelled in size with disturbing rapidity as they converged at combined speeds of nearly fifteen hundred miles per hour,

and at the instant he was certain of his identification the leader took his flight, still in a tight “finger five” , up into a vertical climb from which they rolled out neatly five thousand feet above the target and on the same heading, immediately reducing power to conform in speed to the big aircraft far below.

“Cheetah, this is Diamond leader we are visual, and target is a

Boeing 747 bearing British Airways markings.”

“Diamond Leader, this is

Cheetah, conform to target, maintain five thousand feet separation and avoid any threatening attitudes. Report again in sixty seconds.”

Major-General Peter Stride’s executive jet was arrowing southwards and leaving its enormous protege lumbering ponderously along in its wake.

Every minute increased the distance between the two aircraft, and by the time they reached their ultimate destination wherever that might be there would probably be a thousand miles or more separating them.

However, the big Hercules’s slow speed became a virtue when the need arose to take its heavy load of men and equipment into short unsurfaced strips in unlikely corners of the earth perhaps in the “hot and high” conditions that a pilot most dreads.

It was the Hawker’s job to get Peter Stride to the scene of terrorist activity as swiftly as possible, and the general’s job once there to stall and procrastinate and bargain until Colin Noble’s assault team caught up with him.

The two men were still in contact, however, and the small central television screen in front of Peter was permanently lit with a view of the interior of the Hercules’s main hold. When he lifted his head from his work, Peter Stride could see a picture of his troops, all in the casual Thor overalls, lounging or sprawled in abandoned attitudes of relaxation down the central aisle of the Hercules. They also were veterans at the hard game of waiting, while in the foreground Colin

Noble sat at his small work desk, going through the voluminous check list for “condition Charlie” which was the next state of alert when terrorist activity was confirmed.

Watching Colin Noble at work, Peter Stride found a moment to ponder once again the enormous cost of maintaining Atlas, most of it paid by the United States intelligence budget, and the obstacles and resistance that had been overcome to launch the project in the first place. Only the success of the Israelis at Entebbe and of the Germans at Mogadishu had made it possible, but there was still violent opposition in both countries to maintaining a dual national counteraction force.

With a preliminary click and hum the central screen of Peter’s communications console came alive and Dr. Parker spoke before his image had properly hardened.

“I’m afraid it’s condition Charlie, Peter,” he said softly, and

Peter was aware of the rush of his blood through his veins. It was natural for a soldier whose entire life had been spent in training for a special moment in time to welcome the arrival of that moment yet he found contempt for himself in that emotion; no sane man should anticipate violence and death, and all the misery and suffering which attended them.

the South Africans have intercepted and identified 070. It entered their airspace forty-five seconds ago.”

“Radio contact?” Peter asked.

“No.” Parker shook his great head. “It is declining contact, and we must assume that it is under the control of militants so now I’m going to be at this desk until this thing is settled.” Kingston Parker never used the emotive word terrorist” and he did not like to hear it from his subordinates either.

“Never hate your adversary blindly,” he had told Peter once.

“llnderstand his motives, recognize and respect his strengths and you will be better prepared to meet him.”

“What cooperation can we expect?” Peter asked.

“All African States that we have so far been able to contact have offered full cooperation, including overflight, landing and refuelling facilities and the South Africans are being helpful. I have spoken to their defence minister and he has offered the fullest possible cooperation. They will refuse 070 landing clearance, of course, and

I

anticipate that it will have to go on to one of the black states farther north, which is probably the militants” intention anyway. I

think you know my views about South Africa but in this instance I

must say they are being very good.” Parker brought into the television shot a black briar pipe with a big round bowl, and began to stuff it with tobacco.

His hands were large, like the rest of his body, but the fingers were long and sup pleas those of a pianist which of course he was.

And Peter remembered the scented smell of the tobacco he smoked. Even though he was a nonsmoker, Peter had not found-the odour offensive.

Both men were silent, deep in thought, Parker frowning slightly as he seemed to concentrate on his pipe. Then he sighed and looked up again.

“All right, Peter. Let’s hear what you have.” Peter shuffled through the notes he had been making. “I have prepared four tentative scenarios and our responses to each, sir. The most important consideration is whether this is a strike “A Vallemande” or “A

l’italienne’!—” Parker nodded, listening; although this was well-travelled ground they must go over it again. A strike in the

Italian fashion was the easier to resolve, a straight demand for cash.

The German tradition involved release of prisoners, social and political demands that crossed national boundaries.

They worked on for another hour before they were interrupted again.

“Good God.” It was a measure of Kingston Parker’s astonishment that he used such strong language. “We have a new development here.” It was only when 070 joined the eastern airway and began to initiate a standard approach and let down, without however obtaining air traffic control clearance, that South African Air force Command suddenly realized what was about to happen.

Immediately emergency silence was imposed on all the aviation frequencies while the approaching flight was bombarded by urgent commands to immediately vacate national airspace. There was no response whatsoever, and one hundred and fifty nautical miles out from

Jan Smuts International Airport the Boeing reduced power and commenced a sedate descent to enter controlled airspace.

“British Airways 070 this is Jan Smuts Control, you are expressly refused clearance to join the circuit. Do you read me, 070?”

“British

Airways 070 this is Air force Command. You are warned that you are in violation of national airspace. You are ordered to climb immediately to thirty thousand feet and turn on course for Nairobi.” The Boeing was a hundred nautical miles out and descending through fifteen thousand feet.

“Diamond Leader, this is Cheetah. Take the target under command and enforce departure clearance.”

The long sleek aircraft in its mottled green and brown battle camouflage dropped like a dart, rapidly overhauling the huge multi-engined giant, diving down just behind the tailplane and then pulling up steeply in front of the gaily painted red, white and blue nose.

Skilfully the Mirage pilot stationed his nimble little machine one hundred feet ahead of the Boeing and rocked his wings in the Follow me” command.

The Boeing sailed on serenely as though it had not seen or understood. The Mirage pilot nudged his throttles and the gap between the two aircraft narrowed down to fifty feet. Again he rocked his wings and began a steady rate-one turn onto the northerly heading ordered by Cheetah.

The Boeing held rock steady on its standard approach towards

Johannesburg, forcing the Mirage leader to abandon his attempts to lead her away.

He edged back alongside, keeping just above the jet-blast of the

Boeing’s port engines until he was level with the cockpit and could stare across a gap of merely fifty feet.

“Cheetah, this is Diamond One. I have a good view into target’s flight deck. There is a fourth person in the cockpit.

It’s a woman. She appears to be armed with a machine pistol.” The faces of the two pilots were white as bone as they turned to watch the interceptor. The woman leaned over the back of the left-hand seat, and lifted the clumsy black weapon in an ironic salute. She smiled and the

Mirage pilot was close enough to se how white her teeth were.

a young woman, blonde hair, the Mirage pilot reported. “Pretty very pretty.”

“Diamond One, this is Cheetah.

Position for head-on attack.” The Mirage thundered instantly ahead and climbed away swiftly, the other four aircraft of the flight sweeping in to resume their tight “finger five” formation as they went out in a wide turn ahead of the Boeing.

“Cheetah. We are in position for a head-on attack.”

“Diamond

Flight. Simulate. Attack in line astern. Fivesecond intervals.

Minimum separation. Do not, I say again, do not open fire. This is a simulated attack. I say again, this is a simulated attack.”

“Diamond

One understands simulated attack.” And the Mirage F.1 winged over and dived, its speed rocketing around the mach scale, booming through the sonic barrier in a fearsomely aggressive display.

Cyril Watkins saw him coming from seven miles ahead.

“Jesus,” he shouted. “This is real,” and he lunged forward to take manual control of the Boeing, to pull her off the automatic approach that the electronic flight director was performing.

“Hold her steady.” Ingrid raised her voice for the first time.

“Hold it.” She swung the gaping double muzzles of the shot pistol onto the flight engineer. “We don’t need a navigator now.” The captain froze, and the Mirage howled down on them, seemed to grow until it filled the whole view through the windshield ahead. At the last possible instant of time the nose lifted slightly and it flashed only feet overhead, but the supersonic turbulence of its passage struck and tossed even that huge machine like a piece of thistledown.

“Here comes another, “Cyril Watkins shouted.

“I mean it.” Ingrid pressed the muzzles so fiercely into the back of the flight engineer’s neck that his forehead struck the edge of his computer console, and there was the quick bright rose of blood on the pale skin.

The jet blasts struck the Boeing one after the other as the

Mirages attacked. Ingrid clutched wildly for support with her free hand, but kept the pistol jammed into the navigator’s neck. “I mean it,” she kept shouting. “I’ll kill him and they could hear the screams of the passengers even through the bulkhead of the flight deck.

Then the last Mirage was passed and gone and the Boeing’s flight director recovered from the battering of close separation and quickly realigned the aircraft on the radio navigational beacons of Jan Smuts

Airport.

“They won’t buzz us again.” Ingrid stepped back from the flight engineer, allowing him to lift his head and wipe away the trickle of blood on the sleeve of his shirt. “They can’t come again. We are into controlled airspace.” She pointed ahead. “Look!” The Boeing was down to five thousand feet, but the horizon was obscured by the haze of smog and summer heat.

To the right rose the smooth silhouette of the Kempton Park Power

Station cooling towers and, closer at hand, the poisonous yellow tablelands of the mine dumps squatted on the flat and featureless plain of the African high veld

Around them human habitation was so dense that hundreds of windowpanes caught the early morning sun and glittered like beacons.

Closer still was the long, straight, blue streak of the main runway of Jan Smuts Airport.

“Take her straight in on runway 21 ingrid ordered.

“We can’t,-“

“Do it,” snapped the girl. “Air traffic control will have cleared the circuit. They can’t stop us.”

“Yes, they can,” Cyril

Watkins answered. “Just take a look at the runway apron.” They were close enough now to count five fuel tenders, to see the Shell company insignia on the tanks.

“They are going to block the runway.” With the tankers were five brilliant red vehicles of the fire service and two big white ambulances. They bumped wildly over the grass verge of the runway and then, one after the other, tenders and fire control vehicles and ambulances parked at intervals of a few hundred yards down the white-painted centre line of the runway.

“We can’t land,” said the captain.

“Take her off automatic and fly her in by hand.” The girl’s voice was different, hard, cruel.

The Boeing was sinking through a thousand feet, lined up for runway 21 and directly ahead the revolving red beacons on top of the fire vehicles seemed to flash a direct challenge.

“I can’t pile into them,” Cyril Watkins decided, and there was no longer hesitation nor doubt in his tone. “I’m going to overshoot and get out of here.”

“Land on the grass,” the girl shrieked. “There is open grass on the left of the runway put her down there.” But Cyril

Watkins had leaned forward in his seat and rammed the bank of throttles forward. The engines howled and the Boeing surged into a nose-high climb.

The young flight engineer had swivelled his stool and was staring ahead through the windscreen. His whole body was rigid, his expression intense and the smear of blood across his forehead was in vivid contrast to the pallor of his skin.

With his right hand he gripped the edge of his desk, and the knuckles of his fist were white and shiny as eggshell.

Without seeming to move the blonde girl had pinned the wrist of that rigid right hand, pressing the muzzles of the pistol into it.

There was a crash of sound, so violent in the confines of the cabin that it seemed to beat in their eardrums. The weapon kicked up as high as the girl’s golden head and there was the immediate acrid stench of burned cordite.

The flight engineer stared down incredulously at the desk top.

There was a hole blown through the metal as big as a teacup, and the edges were jagged with bright bare metal.

The blast of shot had amputated his hand cleanly at the wrist.

The severed member had been thrown forward into the space between the pilots” seats, with the shattered bone protruding from the mangled meat. It twitched like a crushed and maimed insect.

“Land,” said the girl. “Land or the next shot is through his head.”

“You bloody monster,” shouted Cyril Watkins, staring at the severed hand.

“Land or you will be responsible for this man’s life.” The flight engineer clutched the stump of his arm against his belly and doubled over it silently, his face contorted by the shock.

Cyril Watkins tore his stricken gaze from the severed hand and looked ahead once more. There was wide open grass between the runway markers and the narrow taxiway.

The grass had been mown knee-high, and he knew the ground beneath it would be fairly smooth.

Cyril’s hand on the throttle bank pulled back smoothly, almost of its own volition, the engine thunder died away and the nose dropped again.

He held his approach aligned with the main runway until he was well in over the threshold lights. He did not want to alert the drivers of the blocking vehicles to his intention while they still had time to counter it.

“You murderous bitch,” he said under his breath. “You filthy murderous bitch.” He banked the Boeing steeply, realigned it with the long strip of open grass and cut the throttles completely, bringing her in nose-high and just a fraction above the stall, flaring out deliberately low and banging the Boeing down into the grass for positive touch down.

The huge machine settled to the rough strip, jolting and lurching wildly as Cyril Watkins fought the rudders to keep them lined up,

holding his nose wheel off with the control yoke, while his co-pilot threw all her giant engines into reverse thrust and trod firmly down on the main landing gear brakes.

The fire engines and fuel tankers flashed past the starboard wing tip. The startled faces of their crews seemed very close and white then 070 was past, her speed bleeding off sharply so her nose wheel dropped and she rocked and swayed gradually to a dead stop just short of the brick building which housed the approach and landing beacons,

and the main radar installations.

It was 7.25 a.m. local time and Speedbird 070 was down.

“Well, they are down,” intoned Kingston Parker.

“And you can well understand the extreme efforts that were made to prevent them. Their choice of final destination settles one of your queries, Peter.”

“ Peter nodded. “It’s got to be political.

I agree, sir.”

“And you and I must now face in dreadful reality what we have discussed only in lofty theory-” Parker held a taper to his pipe and puffed twice before going on.

Morally justifiable militancy.”

“Again we have to differ, sir.”

Peter cut in swiftly. “There is no such thing.”

“Is there not?” Parker asked, shaking his head. “What of the German officers killed in the streets of Paris by the French resistance?”

“That was war,” Peter exclaimed.

“Perhaps the group that seized 070 believes that they are at war

“With innocent victims?” Peter shot back.

“The Haganah took innocent victims yet what they were fighting for was right and just.” As an Englishman, Dr. Parker you cannot expect me to condone the murder of British women and children.” Peter had stiffened in his chair.

“No,” Parker agreed. “So let us not speak of the MauMau in Kenya,

nor of present-day Ireland then but what of the French Revolution or the spreading of the Catholic faith by the most terrible persecution and tortures yet devised by man were those not morally justifiable militancy?”

“I would prefer to call it understandable but reprehensible. Terrorism in any form can never be morally justifiable.”

Provoked himself, Peter used the word deliberately to provoke and saw the small lift of Parker’s thick bushy eyebrows.

“There is terrorism from above as well as from below.” Parker picked up the word and used it deliberately. “If you define terrorism as extreme physical or physiological coercion used to induce others to submit to the will of the terrorist there is the legal terror threat of the gallows, the religious terror threat of hell fire, the paternal terror threat of the cane are those more morally justifiable than the aspiration of the weak, the poor, the politically oppressed,

the powerless victims of an unjust society? Is their scream of protest to be strangled-” Peter shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Protest outside the law-“

“Laws are made by man, almost always by the rich and the powerful laws are changed by men, usually only after militant action. The women’s suffragette movement, the civil rights campaign in this country-” Parker broke off and chuckled. “I’m sorry, Peter.

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 oldfashioned 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 nodded 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 printouts 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 printout 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 three 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.

Stride did not smoke; Parker removed the old black briar from his own mouth, regarded it affectionately for a moment. It was his one indulgence, a harmless one despite what the surgeon-general of the

United States had determined, and he took the stem firmly between his teeth again.

Stride took alcohol in moderation and was considered knowledgeable on the subject of wine. He raced occasion ally, more as a social outing than as a serious punter, and the odd fifty pounds he could well afford. There was no evidence of other gambling. However, he did not hunt, nor did he shoot traditional pursuits of the English gentleman.

Perhaps he had moral objections to blood sports, Parker thought,

though it seemed unlikely, for Stride was a superlative marksman with rifle, shotgun and pistol. He had represented Britain at the Munich

Olympics as a pistol shot, winning a gold in the fifty metre class, and he spent at least an hour every day on the range.

Parker turned to the page of the printout that gave the man’s medical history. He must be superbly fit as well his body weight at the age of thirty-nine was one pound less than it had been at twenty-one, and he still trained like a front-line soldier. Parker noticed that he had logged sixteen parachute jumps the previous month.

Since joining Atlas he had no opportunity or time for golf, though when he was with NATO Stride had played off a handicap of three.

Parker closed the folder and played on softly, but neither the sensual polished feel of cool ivory beneath his fingertips nor the achingly lovely lilt of the music could dispel his sense of disquiet.

Exhaustive as the report was, yet it left unanswered questions, like why Stride had downgraded himself to accept the command of Thor he was not the kind of man who acted ill-advisedly. Yet the most haunting questions that nagged at Parker were just how strong were his qualities of resilience and independent thought, just how strongly was he driven by his ambitions and that penetrating intellect and just how great a threat such a man would present to the evolution of Atlas into its ultimate role.

“Doctor Parker, sir,” his assistant knocked lightly and entered,

“there are new developments.” Parker sighed softly. “I’m coming,” he said, and let the last sad and beautiful notes fall from his long,

powerful fingers before he stood up.

The Hawker slid almost silently down the sky. The pilot had closed down power at five thousand feet and made his final approach without touching the throttles again. He was ten knots above the stall as he passed over the boundary fence and he touched down twenty feet beyond the chevron markings of the threshold of runway One five, instantly applying maximum safe braking. One five was the secondary crosswind runway and the Hawker’s roll-out was so short that every part of the approach and landing had been screened by the buildings of the main airport terminal from where Speedbird 070 stood at the southern intersection of the main taxiway.

The pilot swung the Hawker through 360” and backtracked sedately up runway 15, using just enough power to keep her rolling.

“Well done,” grunted. Peter Stride, crouching behind the pilot’s seat. He was almost certain that nobody aboard 070 had remarked their arrival.

“They’ve prepared a slot for us, with hook up to the electrical mains at the north-” Peter broke off as he saw the apron marshal waving them in with the bats, and beyond him a tight group of four men waiting. Three of them wore camouflage battle dress and the other the trim blue uniform, cap and gold insignia of a senior South African police officer.

The uniformed officer was the first to greet Peter as he came down the Hawker’s fold-out air-stairs.

“Prinsloo.” He shook hands. “Lieutenant-General.” He ranked

Peter, but it was a police, not a military appointment. He was a stocky man, with steel-rimmed spectacles, a little paunchy, and not less than fifty-five years of age. He had the rather heavy features,

the fleshiness of jowl and lips, that Peter had noticed so often in

Belgian and Dutch peasants during his NATO tour in the Netherlands.

A

man of the earth, dour and conservative.

“Let me introduce Commandant Boonzaier.” This was a military rank,

equivalent to that of colonel, and he was a younger man, but with the same thick accent and his features cast in the same mould. A tall man,

however, only an inch or so shorter than Peter but both of the South

Africans were suspicious and resentful, and the reason was immediately apparent.

“I have been instructed to take my orders from you, General,” and there was a subtle shift of position, the two officers ranging themselves beside Peter, but facing each other, and he was aware instantly that not all the hostility was directed at him. There had been friction between police and military already and the basic value of Atlas was underlined yet again.

A single clean-cut line of command and of responsibility was absolutely essential Peter’s mind flicked back to the shoot-out at

Larnaca Airport between Egyptian commandos and Cypriot national guardsmen, from which the hijackers of the grounded jet emerged unscathed while the airfield was littered with the burning wreckage of the Egyptian transport aircraft and dozens of dead and dying Cypriots and Egyptians.

The first principle of terrorist strategy was to strike at the point where national responsibilities were blurred. Atlas cut through that.

“Thank you.” Peter accepted command without flaunting it. “My backup team will land in just over three hours” time. We will, of course, use force only as a last resort but if it comes to that, I

will use exclusively Atlas personnel in any counter-strike. I would like to make that quite clear immediately.” And he saw the line of the soldier’s mouth harden with disappointment.

“My men are the elite “It’s a British aircraft, most of the hostages are British or American nationals it’s a political decision,

Colonel. But I would value your help in other areas.” Peter turned him aside tactfully.

“Firstly, I want you to suggest a position where I can place my surveillance equipment and then we will go over the ground together.”

Peter had no difficulty selecting his forward observation post. The service manager’s roomy, sparsely furnished office on the third floor of the terminal building overlooked the entire service area and the southern portion of the taxiway where the Boeing stood.

The windows had been left open when the offices were evacuated, so there was no need to change the external appearance of the room.

The overhang of the observation balcony on the floor above shaded the interior, and the office was deep enough to ensure that an observer out there in the bright glare of sunshine would not be able to see into the room, even with a powerful lens. The militants would expect surveillance from the glass control tower high above any deception,

however trivial, was worth while.

The surveillance equipment was lightweight and compact, the television nm eras were neither of them bigger than a super 8 mm. home movie camera and a man could carry in one hand both of the aluminium extension tripods.

However, the cameras could zoom to 800 mm. focal length, and then repeated on the screens of the command console in the cabin of the

Hawker, while the image was simultaneously stored on videotape.

The audio intensifier was more bulky, but no heavier. It had a four-foot dish antenna, with the sound collector in the centre.

The telescopic sight could aim the intensifier at a sound source with the accuracy of a sniper’s rifle. It could focus on the lips of a human being at eight hundred yards” distance and clearly record normal conversation at that range, passing sound directly to the command console and at the same time storing it on the big magnetic tape spools.

Two of Peter’s communications team were posted here, with a plentiful supply of coffee and doughnuts, and Peter, accompanied by the

South African colonel and his staff, went up in the elevator to the glass house of the control tower.

from the air traffic control tower there was an unobstructed view across the airfield and over the apron and service areas around the terminal. The observation platform below the tower had been cleared of all but military personnel.

I have road blocks at all the main entrances to the airfield.

Only passengers with confirmed reservations and current tickets are being allowed through, and we are using only the northern section of the terminal for traffic.” Peter nodded and turned to the senior controller. “What is the state of your traffic pattern?”

“We have refused clearance to all private flights, incoming and departing. All domestic scheduled flights have been re-routed to

Lanseria and Germiston airports, and we are landing and despatching only international scheduled flights but the backlog has delayed departures by three hours.”

“What separation are you observing from

070?” Peter asked.

“Fortunately the international departures terminal is the farthest from the aircraft, and we are not using the taxiways or the apron of the southern section. As you see, we have cleared the entire area except for those three S.A. Airways aircraft which are undergoing overhaul and servicing, there are no other aircraft within a thousand yards of

07O.”

“I may have to freeze all traffic, if-” Peter paused, “or should I say, when we have an escalation.”

“Very well, sir.”

“In the meantime, you may continue as you are at present.” Peter lifted his binoculars and once again very carefully examined the huge Boeing.

It stood in stately isolation, silent and seemingly abandoned. The bright, almost gaudy marking gave her a carnival air.

Red and blue and crisp sparkling white in the brilliant sunlight of the high veld She was parked fully broadside to the tower, and all her hatches and doors were still armed and locked.

Peter traversed slowly along the line of perspex windows down the length of the fuselage but over each of them the sunshades had been firmly closed from the interior, turning them into the multiple eyes of a blinded insect.

Peter lifted his scrutiny slightly onto the windshield and side panels of the flight deck. These again had been screened with blankets, hung over them from inside, completely thwarting any glimpse of the crew or their captors and certainly preventing a shot into the flight deck, although the range from the nearest corner of the terminal was not more than four hundred yards, and with the new laser sights one of Thor’s trained snipers could pick through which eye of the human head he would put a bullet.

Snaking across the open tarmac of the taxiway was the thin black electrical cable that connected the aircraft to the mains supply, a long, vulnerable umbilical cord. Peter studied it thoughtfully, before turning his attention to the four Panhard armoured cars. A little frown of irritation crossed his forehead.

“Colonel, please recall those vehicles.” He tried not to let the irritation come through in his tone. “With the turrets battened down, your crews will be roasting like Christmas geese

“General, I feel it my duty-” Boonzaier began, and Peter lowered the glasses and smiled. It was a charming, friendly grin that took the man by surprise, after the previous stern set of features and yet the eyes were devoid of humour, cracking blue and hard in the craggy granite of the face.

“I want to defuse the atmosphere as much as possible.” The necessity to explain irked Peter, but he maintained the smile.

“Somebody with four great cannons aimed at him is more likely to make a bad decision, and pull the trigger himself. You may keep them in close support, but get them out of sight into the terminal car park, and let your men rest.” With little grace the colonel passed the order over the walkie-talkie on his belt, and as the vehicles started up and slowly pulled away behind the line of hangars, Peter went on remorselessly.

“How many men have you got deployed?” He pointed to the line of soldiers along the parapet of the observation balcony, and then to the heads visible as specks between the soaring blue of the African sky and the silhouette of the service hangars.

“Two hundred and thirty.”

“Pull them out,” Peter instructed, “and let the occupants of the aircraft see them go.”

“All of them?”

incredulously.

“All of them,” Peter agreed, and now the smile was wolfish, “and quickly, please, colonel.” The man was learning swiftly, and he lifted the miniaturized walkie-talkie to his mouth again. There were a few moments of scurrying and confusion among the troops on the observation deck below before they could be formed up and marched away in file.

Their steel helmets, like a bobbing line of button mushrooms, and the muzzles of their slung weapons would show above the parapet, and would be clearly visible to an observer in the Boeing.

“If you treat these people, these animals-” the colonel’s voice was choked slightly with frustration, if you treat them soft-” Peter knew exactly what was coming, “and if you keep waving guns in their faces, you will keep them alert and on their toes, Colonel. Let them settle down a little and relax, let them get very confident.” He spoke without lowering the binoculars. With a soldier’s eye for ground he was picking the site for his four snipers. There was little chance that he would be able to use them they would have to take out every single one of the enemy at the same instant but a remote chance might just offer itself, and he decided to place one gun on the service hangar roof, there was a large ventilator which could be pierced and would command the port side of the aircraft, two guns to cover the flight deck from both sides he could use the drainage ditch down the edge of the main runway to get a man into the small hut that housed the approach radar and ILS beacons. The hut was in the enemy’s rear. They might not expect fire from that quarter. point by point from his mental checklist Peter planned his dispositions, scribbling his decisions into the small leather-covered notebook, poring over the large-scale map of the airport, converting gradients and angles into fields of fire, measuring “ground to cover” and “time to target” for an assault force launched from the nearest vantage points, twisting each problem and evaluating it, striving for novel solutions to each, trying to think ahead of an enemy that was still faceless and infinitely menacing.

It took him an hour of hard work before he was satisfied.

Now he could pass his decisions to Colin Noble on board the incoming Herc, and within four minutes of the big landing wheels hitting tarmac his highly trained team with their complex talents and skills would be in position.

Peter straightened up from the map and tucked the notebook under the flap of his button-down breast pocket.

Once again he scrutinized every inch of the silent, battened-down aircraft through his glasses but this time he allowed himself the luxury of gut emotion.

He felt the anger and the hatred rise from some hidden depth of his soul and flush his blood and tighten the muscles of his belly and thighs.

Once again he was confronted by the many-headed monster. It crouched out there in ambush, waiting for him as it had so often before.

He remembered suddenly the shards of splintered glass littering the cobbles of a Belfast street and glittering like diamond chips in the arc lamps, the smell of explosives and blood thick in the air.

He remembered the body of a young woman lying in the gutted interior of a fashionable London restaurant. Her lovely young body stripped by the blast of all but a flimsy pearl-coloured pair of French lace panties.

He remembered the smell of a family, father, mother and three small children, burning in the interior of their saloon car, the bodies blackening and twisting in a slow macabre ballet as the flames scorched them. Peter had not been able to eat pork since that day.

He remembered the frightened eyes of a child, through a mask of blood, a dismembered arm lying beside her, the pale fingers still clutching a grubby little rag doll.

The images flashed in disjointed sequences across his memory,

feeding his hatred until it pricked and stung behind his eyes and he had to lower the binoculars and wipe his eyes with the back of his hand.

It was the same enemy that he had hunted before, but his instincts warned him that it had grown even stronger and more inhuman since last he had met and fought it. He tried to suppress the hatred now, lest it cloud his judgement, lest it handicap him during the difficult hours and days that he knew lay ahead but it was too powerful, had been too long nurtured.

He recognized that hatred was the enemy’s vice, that from it sprang their twisted philosophy and their monstrous actions, and that to descend to hatred was to descend to their sub-human levels yet still the hatred persisted.

Peter Stride understood clearly that his hatred was not only for the ghastly death and mutilation that he had witnessed so often. More it was fostered by the threat that he recognized to an entire society and its civilized rule of law. If this evil should be allowed to triumph, then in the future laws would be made by the wild-eyed revolutionary, with a gun in his fist the world would be run by the destroyers instead of the builders, and Peter Stride hated that possibility more even than the violence and the blood, and those he hated as a soldier hates. For only a soldier truly knows the horror of war.

His soldier’s instinct now was to immediately engage the enemy and destroy him but the scholar and philosopher in him warned that this was not the moment, and with an enormous effort of will he held that fighting man’s instinct in check.

Yet still he was deeply aware that it was for this moment, for this confrontation of the forces of evil, that he had jeopardized his whole career.

When command of Atlas had been plucked away and a political appointee named in his place, Peter should have declined the offer of a lesser position in Atlas. There were other avenues open to him, but instead he had elected to stay with the project and he hoped that nobody had guessed at the resentment he felt. God knows, Kingston

Parker had no cause for complaint since then. There was no harder working officer on Atlas, and his loyalty had been tested more than once.

Now all that seemed worth while, and the moment for which he had worked had arrived. The enemy waited For him out there on the burning tarmac under an African sun, not on a soft green island in the rain nor in the grimy streets of a crowded city but still it was the same old enemy, and Peter knew his time would come.

His communications technicians had Colin Noble on the main screen as Peter ducked into the Hawker’s cabin that was now his command headquarters, and settled into his padded seat. On the top right screen was a panoramic view of the southern terminal area, with the

Boeing squatting like a brooding eagle upon its nest in the centre of the shot. On the next screen beside it was a blow-up through the

800 mm. zoom lens of the Boeing’s flight deck. So crisp was the detail that Peter could read the maker’s name on the tab of the blanket that screened the windshield. The third small screen held a full shot of the interior of the air traffic control tower. In the foreground the controllers in shirt sleeves sitting over the radar repeaters, and beyond them through the floor to ceiling windows still another view of the Boeing. All these were being shot through the cameras installed an hour earlier in the terminal building. The remaining small screen was blank, and Colin Noble’s homely, humorous face filled the main screen.

“Now if only it had been the cavalry instead of the U.S. Marines, Peter said, you’d have been here yesterday-“

“What’s your hurry, pal. Doesn’t look like the party has started yet.” Colin grinned at him from the screen and pushed his baseball cap to the back of his head.

“Damned right,” Peter agreed. “We don’t even know who is throwing the party. What’s your latest estimate on arrival time?”

“We’ve picked up a good wind one hour twenty-two minutes to fly now,“Colin told him.

“Right, let’s get down to it,” Peter said, and he began his briefing, going carefully over the field notes he had taken.

When he wanted to emphasize a point, Peter called for a change of shot from his cameramen, and they zoomed in or panned to his instruction, picking up the radar shed or the service hangar ventilator where Peter was siting his snipers.

The image was repeated not only on the command console but in the cavernous body of the approaching Hercules so that the men who would be called to occupy those positions could study them now and prepare themselves thoroughly for the moment. The same images were hurled across the stratosphere to the circling satellite and from there bounced down to appear, only slightly distorted, on the screens of

Atlas Command in the west wing of the Pentagon. Sagging like an old lion in his armchair, Kingston Parker followed every word of the briefing, rousing himself only when a long telex message was passed to him by his assistant, then he nodded a command to have his own televised image superimposed on Peter’s command console.

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, Peter, but we’ve got a useful scrap here. Assuming that the militant group boarded 070 at Malic, we asked the Seychelles Police to run a check on all joining passengers. There were fifteen of them, ten of whom were Seychelles residents. A local merchant and his wife, and eight unaccompanied children between nine and fourteen years of age. They are the children of expatriate civil servants employed on contract by the Seychelles (3overnment, returning to schools in England for the new term.” Peter felt the weight of dread bring down upon him like a physical burden. Children, the young lives seemed somehow more important, somehow more vulnerable. But Parker was reading from the telex flimsy in his left hand, the right scratching the back of his neck with the stem of his pipe.

“There is one British businessman, Shell Oil Company, and well -known on the island, and there are four tourists, an American, a

Frenchman and two Germans. These last four appeared to be travelling in a group, the immigration and security officers remember them well.

Two women and two men, all young. Names Sally-Anne Taylor, twenty-five years, American, Heidi Hottschauser, twenty-four and Gunther Retz,

twenty-five, the two Germans and Henri Larousse, twenty-six, the

Frenchman. The police have run a back check on the four. They stayed two weeks at the Reef Hotel outside Victoria, the women in one double room and the two men in another. They spent most of the time swimming and sunbathing until five days ago when a small ocean-going yacht called at Victoria. Thirty-five foot, single-hander around the world,

skippered by another American. The four spent time on board her every day of her stay, and the yacht sailed twenty-faut hours before the departure of the 07O.”

“If the yacht delivered their arms and munitions, then this operation has been planned for a long time,” Peter pondered, land damn well planned.” Peter felt the tingling flush of his blood again, the form of the enemy was taking shape now, the outline of the beast becoming clearer, and always it was uglier and more menacing.

“You have run the names through the computer?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Parker nodded. “Either there is no intelligence record of them, or the names and passports are false-” He broke off as there was sudden activity on the screen that monitored the air traffic control tower, and another voice boomed out of the secondary speaker;

the volume was set too high, and the technician at the control board adjusted it swiftly. It was a female voice, a fresh, clear young voice speaking English with the lilt and inflexion of the west coast of

America in it.

“Jan Smuts tower, this is the officer commanding the task force of the Action Commando for Human Rights that has control of Speedbird 070.

Stand by to copy a message.”

“Contact!” Peter breathed. “Contact at last.” On the small screen Colin Noble grinned and rolled his cheroot expertly from one side of his mouth to the other.

“The party has begun,” he announced, but there was the razor edge in his voice not entirely concealed by his jocular tone.

The three-man crew had been moved back from the flight deck, and were held in the first class seats vacated by the group of four.

Ingrid had made the cockpit of the Boeing her headquarters, and she worked swiftly through the pile of passports, filling in the name and nationality of each passenger on the seating plan spread before her.

The door to the galley was open and except for the hum of the air-conditioning, the huge aircraft was peculiarly silent.

Conversation in the cabins was prohibited, and the aisles were patrolled by the red-shirted commandos to enforce this edict.

They also ordered the use of the toilets: a passenger must return to his seat before another was allowed to rise. The toilet doors had to remain open during use, so that the commandos could check at a glance.

Despite the silence, there was a crackling atmosphere of tension down the full length of the cabin. Very few of the passengers, mostly the children, were asleep, but the others sat in rigid rows, their faces taut and strained watching their captors with a mixture of hatred and of fear.

Henri, the Frenchman, slipped into the cockpit.

“They are pulling back the armoured cars,” he said. He was slim,

with a very youthful face and dreaming poet’s eyes. He had grown a drooping blond gunfighter’s mustache, but the effect was incongruous.

Ingrid looked up at him. “You are so nervous,” She shook her head. “it will all be all right.”

“I am not nervous,” he answered her stiffly.

She chuckled fondly, and reached up to touch his face.

“I did not mean it as an insult.” She pulled his face down and kissed him, thrusting her tongue deeply into his mouth.

“You have proved your courage often,” she murmured.

He dropped his pistol onto the desk with a clatter and reached for her. The top three buttons of her red cotton shirt were unfastened,

and she let him grope and find her breasts.

They were heavy and pointed and his breathing went ragged as he teased out her nipples. They hardened erect like jelly beans but when he reached down with his free hand for the zipper of her shorts,

she pushed him away roughly.

“Later,” she told him brusquely, “when this is over. Now get back into the cabin.” And she leaned forward and lifted a corner of the blanket that screened the side window of the cockpit. The sunlight was very bright but her eyes adjusted swiftly and she saw the row of helmeted heads above the parapet of the observation deck. So they were pulling back the troops as well. It was nearly time to begin talking but she would let them stew in their own juice just a little longer.

She stood up, buttoned her shirt and adjusted the camera on its strap around her neck, paused in the galley to rearrange the shiny mass of golden hair and then walked slowly back down the full length of the central aisle, pausing to adjust the blanket over a sleeping child,

to listen attentively to the complaints of the pregnant wife of the

Texan neurosurgeon.

“You and the children will be the first off this plane I promise you.” When she reached the prone body of the flight engineer, she knelt beside him.

“How is he?”

“He is sleeping now. I shot him full of morphine,”

the fat little doctor muttered, not looking at her, so she could not read the hatred in his expression. The injured arm was elevated to control the bleeding, sticking up stiffly in its cocoon of pressure bandages, oddly foreshortened with the bright ooze of blood through the dressing.

“You are doing good-” She touched his arm. “Thank you.” And now he glanced at her startled, and she smiled such a radiant lovely smile,

that he began to melt.

“Is that your wife?” Ingrid dropped her voice, so that he alone could hear and he nodded, glancing at the plump little Jewish woman in the nearest seat. “I will see she is amongst the first to leave,”

she murmured, and his gratitude was pathetic. She stood and went on down the aircraft.

The red-shirted German stood at the head of the tourist cabin,

beside the curtained entrance to the second galley.

He had the intense drawn face of a religious zealot, dark burning eyes, long black hair falling almost to his shoulders a white scar twisted the corner of his upper lip into a perpetual smirk.

“Kurt, everything is all right?” she asked in German.

“They are complaining of hunger.”

“We will feed them in another two hours but not as much as they expect-” and she ran a contemptuous glance down the cabin. “Fat,” she said quietly, “big fat bourgeoisie pigs,” and she stepped through the curtains into the galley and looked at him in invitation. He followed her immediately, drawing the curtains behind them.

“Where is Karen?” Ingrid asked, as he unbuckled his belt.

She needed it very badly, the excitement and the blood had inflamed her.

“She is resting at the back of the cabin.” Ingrid slipped the button that held the front of her shorts together and drew down the zipper. “All right Kurt,” she whispered huskily, “but quickly, very quickly.” Ingrid sat in the flight engineer’s seat; at her shoulder stood the darkhaired girl. She wore the cartridge belt across the shoulder of her bright red shirt, like a bandolier and she carried the big ugly pistol on her hip.

Ingrid held the microphone to her lips, and combed the fingers of her other hand through the thick golden tangle of her tresses as she spoke. One hundred and ninety-eight British subjects. One hundred and forty-six American nationals-” She was reading the list of her captives. “There are one hundred and twenty-two women on board, and twenty-six children under the age of sixteen years.” She had been speaking for nearly five minutes and now she broke off and shifted in her seat, turning to smile at Karen over her shoulder. The darkhaired girl smiled in return and reached across to caress the fine mass of golden hair with a narrow bony hand, before letting it drop back to her side.

“We have copied your last transmission.”

“Call me Ingrid.” She spoke into the mike with the smile turning into a wicked grin. There was a moment’s silence as the controller in the tower recovered from his shock.

“Roger, Ingrid. Do you have any further messages for us?”

“Affirmative, Tower. As this is a British aircraft and as three hundred and forty-four of my passengers are either British or American,

I want a spokesman, representing the embassies of those countries. I

want him here in two hours” time to hear my terms for the release of passengers.”

“Stand by, Ingrid. We will be back to you immediately we have been able to contact the ambassadors.”

“Don’t horse around,

Tower.” Ingrid’s voice snapped. “We both know damned well they are breathing down your neck.

Tell them I want a man here in two hours otherwise I am going to be forced to put down the first hostage.” Peter Stride was stripped down to a pair of bathing trunks, and he wore only canvas sneakers on his feet.

Ingrid had insisted on a face-to-face meeting, and Peter had welcomed the opportunity to assess at close range.

“We’ll be covering you every inch of the way there and back,”

Colin Noble told Peter, fussing over him like a coach over his fighter before the gong. “I’m handling the gunners, personally.” The snipers were armed with specially hand-built .222 magnums with accurized barrels that threw small light bullets with tremendous velocity and striking power. The ammunition was match-grade, each round lovingly hand finished and polished. The infra-red telescopic sights were readily interchangeable with the laser sights, making the weapon deadly accurate either in daylight or at night. The bullet had a clean, flat trajectory up to seven hundred yards.

They were perfectly designed man-killers, precision weapons that reduced the danger to bystanders or hostages. The light bullet would slam a man down with savage force, as though he had been hit by a charging rhinoceros, but it would break up in his body, and not over-penetrate to kill beyond the target.

“You’re getting into a lather,” Peter grunted. “They want to talk, not shoot not yet, anyway.”

“The female of the species-” Colin warned, that one is real poison.”

“More important than the guns are the cameras, and sound equipment.”

“I went up there and kicked a few arses.

You’ll get pictures that will win you an Oscar my personal guarantee.” Colin checked his wristwatch. “Time to go. Don’t keep the lady waiting.” He punched Peter’s shoulder lightly.

“Hang loose,” he said, and Peter walked out into the sunshine,

lifting both hands above his shoulders, palms open, fingers extended.

The silence was as oppressive as the dry fierce heat, but it was intentional. Peter had frozen all air traffic, and had ordered the shut down of all machinery in the entire terminal area. He did not want any interference with his sound equipment.

There was only the sound of his own footfalls, and he stepped out briskly but still it was the longest walk of his life, and the closer he got to the aircraft, the higher it towered above him. He knew that he had been required to strip almost naked, not only to ensure that he carried no weapons, but to place him at a disadvantage to make him feel ill at ease, vulnerable. It was an old trick the Gestapo always stripped the victim for an interrogation so he held himself proud and tall, pleased that his body was so lean and hard and muscled like an athlete’s. He would have hated to drag a big, pendulous gut and sagging old-man’s tits across those four hundred yards.

He was halfway there when the forward door, just behind the cockpit, slid back and a group of figures appeared in the square opening. He narrowed his eyes: there were two uniformed figures, no three British Airways uniforms, the two pilots and between them the shorter slimmer feminine figure of a stewardess.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, but beyond them he could make out another head, a blonde head but the angle and the light were against him.

Closer, he saw that the older pilot was on the right,

short-cropped grey curls, ruddy round face that would be Watkins, the commander. He was a good man, Peter had studied his service record.

He ignored the co-pilot and stewardess and strained for a glimpse of the figure beyond them, but it was only when he stopped directly below the open hatch that she moved to let him get a clear view of her face.

Peter was startled by the loveliness of that golden head, by the smooth gloss of young sun polished skin and the thundering innocence of wide-set, steady, green eyes for a moment he could not believe she was one of them, then she spoke.

“I am Ingrid,” she said. Some of the most poisonous flowers are the loveliest, he thought.

“I am the accredited negotiator for the British and American

Governments,” he said, and switched his gaze to the beefy red face of

Watkins. “How many members of your commando are aboard? “he asked.

“No questions!” Ingrid snapped fiercely, and Cyril Watkins extended four fingers of his right hand down his thigh without a change of expression.

It was vital confirmation of what they already suspected, and

Peter felt a rush of gratitude towards the pilot.

“Before we discuss your terms, Peter said, “and out of common humanity, I would like to arrange for the wellbeing and comfort of your hostages.”

“They are well cared for.”

“Do you need food or drinking water?” The girl threw back her head and laughed delightedly.

“So you can dope it with laxative and have us knee-deep in shit?

Stink us out, hey?” Peter did not pursue it. The doped trays had already been prepared by his doctor”

“You have a gunshot casualty on board?”

“There are no wounded aboard,” the girl denied flatly, cutting her laughter short but Watkins made the circular affirmative sign of thumb and forefinger, effectively contradicting her, and Peter noticed the spots of dried blood on the sleeves of his white shirt. “That’s enough,” Ingrid warned Peter. “Ask one more question and we’ll break off-“

“All right,” Peter agreed quickly. “No more questions.”

“The objective of this commando is the ultimate downfall of the brutally fascist, inhuman, neo-imperialistic regime that holds this land in abject slavery and misery denying the great majority of the workers and the proletariat their basic rights as human beings.” And that,

thought Peter bitterly, even though it’s couched in the garbled jargon of the lunatic left, is every bit as bad as it can be. Around the world hundreds of millions would have immediate sympathy, making

Peter’s task just that little bit more difficult. The hijackers had picked a soft target.

The girl was still speaking, with an intense, almost religious fervour, and as he listened Peter faced the growing certainty that the girl was a fanatic, treading the thin line which divided sanity from madness. Her voice became a harsh screech as she mouthed her hatred and condemnation, and when she had finished he knew that she was capable of anything no cruelty, no baseness was beyond her. He knew that she would not stop even at suicide, the final act of destroying the Boeing, its passengers and herself he suspected she might even welcome the opportunity of martyrdom, and he felt the chill of it tickle up along his spine.

They were silent now, staring at each other, while the hectic flush of fanaticism receded from the girl’s face and she regained her breath, and Peter waited, controlling his own . misgivings, waiting for her to calm herself and Continue.

“Our first demand-” the girl had steadied and was watching Peter shrewdly now, 4 our first demand is that the statement I have just made be read on every television network in Britain and the United

States, and also here upon the South African network.” Peter felt his loathing of that terrible little box rise to the surface of his emotions.

That mind-bending electronic substitute for thought, that deadly device for freezing, packaging and distributing opinion. He hated it,

almost as much as the violence and sensation it purveyed so effectively. “It must be read at the next occurrence of 7 p.m. local time in LOS Angeles, New York, London and Johannesburg-” Prime time, of course, and the media would gobble it up hungrily, for this was their meat and their drink the pornographers of violence!

High above him in the open hatch the girl brandished a thick buff envelope. “This contains a copy of that statement for transmission it contains also a list of names. One hundred and twenty-nine names,

all of them either imprisoned or placed under banning orders by this monstrous police regime. The names on this list are the true leaders of South Africa.” She flung the envelope, and it landed at Peter’s feet.

“Our second demand is that every person on that list be placed aboard an aircraft provided by the South African Government. Aboard the same aircraft there will be one million gold Kruger Rand coins also provided by the same government. The aircraft will fly to a country chosen by the freed political leaders. The gold will be used by them to establish a government in exile, until such time as they return to this country as the true leaders of the people.” Peter stooped and picked up the envelope. He was calculating swiftly. A single Kruger

Rand coin was worth $170 at the very least. The ransom demand was,

therefore, worth one hundred and seventy million dollars.

There was another calculation. “One million Krugers will weigh well over forty -tons,” he told the girl. “How are they going to get all that on one aircraft?” The girl faltered. It was a little comfort to Peter to realize that they hadn’t thought out everything perfectly.

If they made one small mistake, then they were capable of making others.

“The government will provide sufficient transport for all the gold and all the prisoners,” the girl said sharply. The hesitation had been momentary only.

“Is that all?” Peter asked; the sun was stinging his naked shoulders and a cold drop of sweat tickled down his flank.

He had never guessed it could be this bad.

“The aircraft will depart before noon tomorrow, or the execution of hostages will begin then.” Peter felt the crawl of horror.

“Execution.” She was using the jargon of legality, and he realized at that moment that what she promised she would deliver.

“When those aircraft arrive at the destination chosen by the occupants, a prearranged code will be flashed to us, and all women and children aboard this aircraft will immediately be released.”

“And the men?” Peter asked.

“On Monday the sixth three days from now, a resolution is to be tabled before the General Assembly of the United Nations in New

York. It will call for immediate total mandatory economic sanctions on

South Africa including withdrawal of all foreign capital, total oil and trade embargoes, severance of all transport and communications links, blockade of all ports and air borders by a U.N.

peace-keeping force pending free elections under universal suffrage supervised by U.N. inspectors-” Peter’s mind was racing to keep ahead of the girl’s demands. He knew of the U.N. motion, of course, it had been tabled by Sri Lanka and Tanzania. It would be vetoed in the Security Council. That was a certainty but the girl’s timing brought forward new and frightening considerations. The beast had changed shape again, and what he had heard sickened him. It surely could not be merely coincidence that the resolution was to be tabled within three days of this strike the implications were too horrible to contemplate. The connivance, if not the direct involvement, of world leaders and governments in the strategy of terror.

The girl spoke again deliberately. “If any member of the Security

Council of the U.N. America, Britain or France uses the veto to block the resolution of this General Assembly, this aircraft and all aboard her will be destroyed by high explosive.” Peter had lost the power of speech. He stood gaping up at the lovely blonde child, for child she seemed, so young and fresh.

When he found his voice again, it croaked hoarsely. “I don’t believe you could have got high explosive aboard this aircraft to carry out that threat,” he challenged her.

The blonde girl said something to somebody who was out of Sight,

and then a few moments later she tossed a dark round object down to

Peter.

“Catch!” she shouted, and he was surprised by the weight of it in his hands. It took only a moment to recognize it.

“Electronically fused!” The girl laughed. “And we have so many I

can afford to give you a sample.” The pilot, Cyril Watkins, was trying to tell him something, touching his own chest but Peter was occupied with the explosive in his hands. He knew that a single one of these would be fully capable of destroying the Boeing and all aboard her.

What was Watkins trying to tell him? Touching his neck again.

Peter transferred his attention to the girl’s neck. She wore a small camera slung around her neck. Something connecting camera and grenade perhaps? Is that what the pilot was trying to tell him?

But now the girl was speaking again. “Take that to your masters,

and let them tremble. The wrath of the masses is upon them. The revolution is here and now,” she said, and the door of the hatchway was swung closed. He heard the lock fall into place.

Peter turned and began the long walk back, carrying an envelope in one hand, a grenade in the other, and sick loathing in his guts.

Colin Noble’s rugged frame almost filled the hatchway of the

Hawker, and for once his expression was deadly serious, no trace of laughter in his eyes or at the corners of the wide friendly mouth.

“Doctor Parker is on the screen.” He greeted Peter who was still buttoning his overalls as he hurried to the command plane. “We copied every word, and he was hooked into the system.”

“Christ, it’s had, Colin,” Peter grunted.

“That was the good news,” Colin told him. “When you have finished with Parker, I’ve got the bad news for you.”

“Thanks, pal.” Peter shouldered his way past him into the cabin, and dropped into his leather command chair.

On the screen Kingston Parker was hunched over his desk, poring over the teleprinter sheet on which the entire conversation between

Ingrid and Peter had been recorded, the cold empty pipe gripped between his teeth, the broad brow creased with the weight of his responsibility as he studied the demands of the terrorist commando.

The communications director’s voice from off-screen alerted

Parker.

“General Stride, sir. “And Parker looked up at the camera.

“Peter. This is you and me alone. I have closed the circuit and we will restrict to single tape recording. I want your first reaction,

before we relay to Sir William and Constable-” Sir William Davies was the British Ambassador and Kelly Constable was the United States

Ambassador to Pretoria.

“I want your first reaction.”

“We are in serious trouble, sir,”

Peter said, and the big head nodded.

“What is the militant capability?”

“I am having my explosives team take down the grenade but I have no doubt that they have the physical capability to destroy 070, and all aboard. I reckon they have an overkill potential of at least ten.”

“And the psychological capability.”

“In my view, she is the child of Bakunin and Jean Paul

Sartre-” Again Parker nodded heavily and Peter went on.

“The anarchist conception that destruction is the only truly creative act, that violence is man recreating himself. You know Sartre said that when the revolutionary kills, a tyrant dies and a free man emerges.”

“Will she go all the way?” Parker insisted.

“Yes, sir.” Peter answered without hesitation. “If she is pressed she’ll go all the way you know the reasoning. If destruction is beautiful, then self-destruction is immortality.

In my view, she’ll go all the way.” Parker sighed and knocked the stem of his pipe against his big white teeth.

“Yes, it squares with what we have on her.”

“You have read her?”

Peter asked eagerly.

“We got a firstclass voice print, and the computer cross matched with her facial structure print.”

“Who is she?” Peter cut in impatiently; he did not have to be told that the sound intensifier and the zoom video cameras had been feeding her voice and image into the intelligence computer even as she issued her demands.

“Her born name is Hilda Becker. She is a third-generation American of German extraction. Her father is a successful dentist widowed in

1959. The girl is thirty-one years old-” Peter had thought her younger, that fresh young skin had misled him. “- I.Q. 138.

University of Columbia 1965-68, Master’s degree in Modern Political

History. Member of SDS that’s Students for a Democratic Society-“

“Yes.” Peter was impatient. “I know.” Activist in Vietnam war protests. Worker for the draft evasion pipeline to Canada. One arrest for possession of marijuana 1967, not convicted. Implicated with

Weathermen and one of the leaders of on-campus rioting in the spring of 1968. Arrested for bombing of Butler University and released. Left

America in 1970 for further study at Dusseldorf. Doctorate in

Political Economics 1972. Known association with Gudrun Ensslin and

Horst Mahler of the Baader-Meinhof. Went underground in 1976 after suspicion of implication in the abduction and murder of Heinrich

Kohler, the West German industrialist—2 Her personal history was an almost classical development of the modern revolutionary, Peter reflected bitterly, a perfect picture of the beast. “Believed to have received advanced training from the PFLP in Syria during 1976 and

1977.

No recorded contact since then. She is a habitual user of cannabis-based drugs, reported voracious sexual activity with members of both sexes-” Parker looked up. “That’s all we have, he said.

“Yes,” Peter repeated softly. “She’ll go all the way.”

“What is your further assessment?”

“I believe that this is an operation organized at high level possibly governmental-“

“Substantiate!” Parker snapped.

“The coordination with UNO. proposals sponsored by the unaligned nations points that way.”

“All right, go on.”

“For the first time we have a highly organized and heavily supported strike that is not seeking some obscure, partisan object. We’ve got demands here about which a hundred million Americans and fifty million Englishmen are going to say in unison, “Hell, these aren’t unreasonable.””

“Go on, “said Parker.

“The militants have picked a soft target which is the outcast pariah of Western civilization. That U.N. resolution is going to be passed a hundred to nil, and those millions of Americans and Englishmen are going to have to ask themselves if they are going to sacrifice the lives of four hundred of their most prominent citizens to support a government whose racial policies they abhor.”

“Yes?” Parker was leaning forward to stare into the screen.

“Do you think they’ll do a deal?”

“The militants? They might.” Peter paused a moment and then went on. “You know my views, sir. I oppose absolutely dealing with these people.”

“Even in these circumstances?” Parker demanded.

“Especially now. My views of the host country’s policies are in accord with yours, Doctor Parker. This is the test.

No matter how much we personally feel the demands are just, yet we must oppose to the death the manner in which they are presented. If these people win their objects, it is a victory for the gun and we place all mankind in jeopardy.”

“What is your estimate for a successful counter strike

Parker demanded suddenly, and even though he had known the question must come, still Peter hesitated a long moment.

“Half an hour ago I would have put the odds at ten to one in our favour that I could pull off condition Delta with only militant casualties.”

“And now?”

“Now I know that these are not fuddle-headed fanatics.

They are probably as well trained and equipped as we are, and they have had years to set this operation up.”

“And now? “Parker insisted.

“We have a four to one in our favour of getting them out with a

Delta strike, with say less than ten casualties.”

“What is the next best chance?”

“I would say there is no middle ground. If we failed, we would be into a situation with one hundred per cent casualties we would lose the aircraft and all aboard, including all Thor personnel involved.”

“All right then, Peter.” Parker leaned back in his chair,

the gesture of dismissal. “I am going to speak with the President and the Prime Minister, they are setting up the link now. Then I will brief the ambassadors and be back to you within the hour.” His image flickered into darkness, and Peter realized that all his hatred was suppressed. He felt cold, and functional as the surgeon’s blade.

Ready to do the job for which he had trained so assiduously, and yet able to assess and evaluate the enemy and the odds against success.

He pressed the call button. Colin had been waiting beyond the soundproof doors of the command cabin, and he came through immediately.

“The explosives boys have taken down the grenade. It’s a dandy.

The explosive is the new Soviet Q composition, and the fusing is factory manufacture. Professional stuff and it will work. Oh, baby,

will it ever work. Peter hardly needed this confirmation, and Colin went on as he flung himself untidily in the chair opposite Peter.

“We put the list of names and the text of the militant statement on the teleprinter for Washington,-” He leaned forward and spoke into the cabin intercom. “Run that loop without sound first.” Then he told

Peter grimly. “Here’s the bad news I promised.” The loop of video tape began to run on the central screen. It had clearly been shot from the observation post in the office overlooking the service area.

It was a full shot of the Boeing, the background flattened by the magnification of the lens and swimming and wavering with heat mirage rising from the tarmac of the main runway beyond the aircraft.

In the foreground were Peter’s own naked back and shoulders as he strode out towards the aircraft. The lens had again flattened the action so that Peter appeared to be marking time on the same spot without advancing at all.

Suddenly the forward hatch of the Boeing changed shape as the door was slid aside, and the cameraman instantly zoomed in for the closer shot.

The two pilots and the air hostess in the doorway, the camera checked for a few frames and then zoomed closer.

The aperture of the lens adjusted swiftly, compensating for the gloom of the interior, and the shot was close and tight on the blonde girl’s head for a heartbeat, then the head turned slightly and the lovely line of her lips moved as she spoke it seemed like three words before she turned back full face to the camera.

“Okay,” Colin said. “Run it again with neutral balance on the sound.” The entire loop reran, the cabin door opened, there were the three hostages, the fine golden head turned, and then the words “Let’s slide,” from Ingrid, but there was background hiss and clutter.

“Let’s slide? “Peter asked.

“Run it again with the bass density filter on the sound, Colin ordered.

The same images on the screen, the golden head turning on the long neck.

“It’s slide.”” Peter could not quite catch it.

“Okay,” Colin told the technician. “Now with full filter and resonance modulation.” The repetitive images, the girl’s head, the full lips parting, speaking to somebody out of sight in the body of the aircraft.

Very clearly, unmistakably, she said, “It’s Stride.” And Peter felt it jolt in his belly like a fist.

“She recognized you,” said Colin. “No, hell, she was expecting you!” The two men stared at each other, Peter’s handsome craggy features heavy with foreboding. Atlas had one of the highest security classifications. Only twenty men outside the close ranks of Atlas itself were privy to its secrets. One of those was the President of the United States another was the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Certainly only four or five men knew who commanded the Thor arm of

Atlas and yet there was no mistaking those words the girl had spoken.

“Run it again,” Peter ordered brusquely.

And they waited tensely for those two words, and when they came they were in the clear tilt of that fresh young voice.

“It’s Stride,“said Ingrid, and the screen went blank.

Peter massaged his closed eyelids with thumb and forefinger. He realized with mild surprise that he had not slept for nearly forty-eight hours, but it was not physical weariness that assailed him now but the suddenly overwhelming knowledge of treason and betrayal and of undreamed-of evil.

“Somebody has blown Atlas,” said Colin softly. “This is going to be a living and breathing bastard. They’ll be waiting for us at every turn of the track.” Peter dropped his hand and opened his eyes. “I

must speak to Kingston Parker again,” he said. And when Parker’s image reappeared on the main screen he was clearly agitated and angry.

“You have interrupted the President.”

“Doctor Parker-” Peter spoke quickly. Circumstances have altered. In my opinion the chances of a successful Delta strike have dropped. We have no better than an even chance.”

“I see.” Parker checked the anger. “That’s important. I will inform the President.” The lavatories were all blocked by this time, the bowls almost filled, and the stench permeated all the cabins despite the air-conditioning.

Under the strict rationing of food and water most of the passengers were suffering from the lethargy of hunger, and the children were petulant and weepy.

The terrible strain was beginning to show on the hijackers themselves. They were standing a virtual non-stop watch, four hours of broken rest followed by four of ceaseless vigil and activity. The red cotton shirts were rumpled and sweat-stained at the armpits, the sweat of nervous and physical strain, eyes bloodshot and tempers uncertain.

just before nightfall, the darkhaired 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 semiconscious 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 antiterrorist 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 at 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 halfway 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

America can again cast their veto with impunity?” Peter made no reply.

“Answer me!” she screamed suddenly. “They do not believe we are serious, do they?”

“I am a messenger only,” he said.

“You’re not,” she screamed in accusation. “You’re a trained killer. You’re a pig!” She lifted the pistol and aimed with both hands at Peter’s face.

“What answer must I take back?” Peter asked, without in any way acknowledging the aim of the weapon.

“An answer-” Her voice dropped again to an almost conversational level. Of course, an answer.” She lowered the pistol and consulted the stainless steel Japanese watch on her wrist. “It’s three minutes past noon three minutes past the deadline, and they are entitled to an answer, of course.” She looked around her with an almost bewildered expression. The drug was having side effects, Peter guessed.

Perhaps she had overdosed herself, perhaps whoever had prescribed it had not taken into account the forty-eight sleepless hours of strain that preceded its use.

“The answer,” he prodded her gently, not wanting to provoke another outburst.

“Yes. Wait,” she said, and disappeared abruptly into the gloom of the interior.

Karen was standing over the four hostages on the fold down seats.

She looked around at Ingrid with smouldering dark eyes. Ingrid nodded once curtly, and Karen turned back to her prisoners.

“Come,” she said softly, “we are going to let you go now.” Almost gently she lifted the pregnant woman to her feet with a hand on her shoulder.

Ingrid left her and passed swiftly into the rear cabins.

She nodded again to Kurt, and with a toss of his head he flicked the lank locks of hair from his eyes and thrust the pistol into his belt.

From the locker above his head he brought down two of the plastic grenades. Holding one in each fist he pulled the pins with his teeth and held the rings hooked over his little fingers.

With his arms spread like a crucifix, he ran lightly down the aisle.

“These grenades are primed. Nobody must move, nobody must leave their seats no matter whatever happens. Stay where you are.” The fourth hijacker took up the cry from him, holding primed grenades in both hands above his head.

“Nobody move. No talking. Sit still. Everybody still.” He repeated in German and in French and his eyes had the same hard, glossy glitter of the drug high.

Ingrid turned back towards the flight deck.

“Come, sweetheart.” She placed an arm round the girl’s shoulder,

shepherding her towards the open hatchway but the child shrank away from her with dread.

“Don’t touch me, “she whispered, and her eyes were huge with terror. The boy was younger, more trusting. He took Ingrid’s hand readily.

He had thick curly hair, and honey brown eyes as he looked up at her. “Is my daddy here?” he asked.

“Yes, darling.” Ingrid squeezed his hand. “You be a good boy now,

and you’ll see your daddy very soon.” She led him to the open hatchway.

“Stand there,” she said.

Peter Stride was uncertain what to expect, as the boy stepped into the open hatchway high above him.

Then next to him appeared a plump middle-aged woman in an expensive but rumpled, high-fashion silk dress, probably a Nina Ricci,

Peter decided irrelevantly. The woman’s elaborate lacquered hairstyle was coming down in wisps around her ears, but she had a kindly humorous face and she placed a protective arm about the boy-child’s shoulders.

The next person was a taller and younger woman, with a pale sensitive skin; her nostrils and eyelids were inflamed pink from weeping or from some allergy and there were blotches of angry prickly heat on her throat and upper arms.

Under the loose cotton maternity dress her huge belly bulged grotesquely, throwing her off balance; she stood with her thin white legs knock-kneed awkwardly and blinked in the brilliant sparkling sunshine, her eyes still attuned to the shaded gloom of the cabin.

The fourth and last person was a young girl, and with a sudden blinding stab of agony below the ribs Peter thought it was

Melissa-Jane. It took a dozen racing beats of his heart before he realized it was not her but she had the same sweet Victorian face, -the classical English skin of rose petals, the finely bred body of almost woman wit h delicate breast-buds and long coltish legs below narrow boyish hips.

There was naked terror in her huge eyes, and almost instantly she seemed to realize that Peter was her hope of salvation. The eyes turned on him pleading, hope starting to awaken.

“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t let them hurt us.” So softly that

Peter could hardly catch the words. “Please, sir. Please help us.”

But Ingrid was there, her voice rising stridently.

“You must believe that what we promise, we mean. You and your evil capitalist masters must understand completely that we will not let a single deadline pass without executions. We have to prove that for the revolution we are without mercy. You must be made to understand that our demands must be met in full, that they are not negotiable. We must demonstrate the price for missing a deadline.” She paused. “The next deadline is midnight tonight. If our demands are not met in full by then you must know the price you will be made to pay.” She halted again, and then her voice rose into that hysterical shriek.

“This is the price!” and she stepped back out of sight.

Helpless with dread, Peter Stride tried to think of some way to prevent the inevitable.

“Jump!” he shouted, lifting both hands towards the girl.

“Jump, quickly. I will catch you!” But the child hesitated, the drop was almost thirty feet, and she teetered uncertainly.

Behind her, ten paces back, the darkhaired Karen and the blonde lion-maned girl stood side by side, and in unison they lifted the short, big bored pistols, holding them in the low double-handed grip,

positioning themselves at the angle and range which would allow the mass of soft heavy lead beads with which the cartridges were packed to spread sufficiently to sweep the backs of the four hostages.

“Jump!” Peter’s voice carried clearly into the cabin, and Ingrid’s mouth convulsed in a nervous rictus, an awful parody of a smile.

“Now!” she said, and the two women fired together. The two shots blended in a thunderous burst of sound, a mind-stopping roar, and blue powder smoke burst from the gaping muzzles, flying specks of burning wadding hurled across the cabin, and the impact of lead shot into living flesh sounded like a handful of watermelon pips thrown against a wall.

Ingrid fired the second barrel a moment before Karen, so this time the two shots were distinct stunning blurts of sound, and in the dreadful silence that followed the two men in the passenger cabins were screaming wildly.

“Nobody move! Everybody freeze!” For Peter Stride those fractional seconds seemed to last for long hours. They seemed to play on endlessly through his brain, like a series of frozen frames in a grotesque movie. Image after image seemed separated from the whole, so that forever afterwards he would be able to recreate each of them entire and undistorted and to experience again undiluted the paralysing nausea of those moments.

The pregnant woman took the full blast of one of the first shots.

She burst open like an overripe fruit, her swollen body pulled out of shape by the passage of shot from spine to navel, and she was flung forward so she somersaulted out into space. She hit the tarmac in a loose tangle of pale thin limbs, and was completely still, no flicker of life remaining.

The plump woman clung to the boy beside her, and they teetered in the open doorway around them swirled pale blue wisps of gunsmoke.

Though she kept her balance, the tightly stretched beige silk of her dress was speckled with dozens of tiny wounds, as though she had been stabbed repeatedly with a sharpened knitting needle. The same wounds were torn through the boy’s white school shirt, and little scarlet flowers bloomed swiftly around each wound, spreading to stain the cloth. Neither of them made any sound, and their expressions were startled and uncomprehending. The next blasts of sound and shot struck them solidly, and they seemed boneless and without substance as they tumbled forward, still locked together. Their fall seemed to continue for a very long time, and then they sprawled together over the pregnant woman’s body.

Peter ran forward to catch the girl-child as she fell, and her weight bore him to his knees on the tarmac. He came to his feet running, carrying her like a sleepy baby, one arm under her knees and the other around her shoulders. Her lovely head bumped against his shoulder, and the fine silken hair blew into his face, half blinding him.

“Don’t die,” he found himself grunting the words in time to his pounding feet. “Please don’t die.” But he could feel the warm wet leak of blood down his belly, soaking into his shorts, and dribbling down the front of his thighs.

At the entrance to the terminal buildings Colin Noble ran out a dozen paces and tried to take the child from his arms, but Peter resisted him fiercely.

Peter relinquished the frail, completely relaxed body to the Thor doctor and he stood by without word or expression of regret as the doctor worked swiftly over her.

Peter’s face was stony and his wide mouth clamped in a hard line when the doctor looked up at last.

“I’m afraid she’s dead, sir.” Peter nodded curtly and turned away.

His heels cracked on the echoing marble of the deserted terminal hall and Colin Noble fell in silently beside him. His face was as bleak and expressionless as Peter’s, as they climbed into the cabin of the Hawker command aircraft.

Sir William, you point at us for holding enemies of the State without trial.” The Foreign Minister leaned forward to point the accuser’s finger. “But you British discarded the citizen’s right of

Habeas Corpus when you passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and in

Cyprus and Palestine you were holding prisoners without trial long before that. Now your block in Ulster is that any better than what we are forced to do here?” Sir William, the British Ambassador, gobbled indignantly, while he collected his thoughts.

Kelly Constable intervened smoothly. “Gentlemen, we are trying to find common ground here not areas of dispute. There are hundreds of lives at stake-” A telephone shrilled in the air-conditioned hush of the room and Sir William lifted the receiver to his ear with patent relief, but as he listened, all blood drained from his face, leaving it a jaundiced, putty colour.

“I see,” he said once, and then, “very well, thank you,” and replaced the receiver. He looked down the length of the long polished imbuia wood table to the imposing figure at the end.

“Prime Minister-” his voice quavered a little I regret to inform you that the terrorists have rejected the compromise proposals offered by your government, and that ten minutes ago they murdered four hostages. ” There was a gasp of disbelief from the attentive circle of listening men.

“ The hostages were two women and two children a boy and a girl they were shot in the back and their bodies thrown from the aircraft. The terrorists have set a new deadline midnight tonight for the acceptance of their terms. Failing which there will be further shootings.” The silence lasted for almost a minute as head after head turned slowly, until they were all staring at the big hunched figure at the head of the table.

“I appeal to you in the name of humanity, sir.” It was Kelly

Constable who broke the silence. “We must save the women and children at least. The world will not allow us to sit by as they are murdered.”

“We will have to attack the aircraft and free the prisoners,” said the

Prime Minister heavily.

But the American Ambassador shook his head. “My government is adamant, sir as is that of my British colleague-” he glanced at Sir

William, who nodded support we cannot and will not risk a massacre.

Attack the aircraft and our governments will make no attempt to moderate the terms of the U.N. proposals, nor will we intervene in the

Security Council to exercise the veto.”

“Yet, if we agree to the demands of these these animals-” the last words were said fiercely we place our nation in terrible danger.”

“Prime Minister, we have only hours to find a solution then the killing will begin again.”

“you yourself have placed the success chances of a Delta strike as low as even,” Kingston Parker pointed out, staring grimly at Peter Stride out of the little square screen. “Neither the President nor I find those odds acceptable.”

“Doctor Parker, they are murdering women and children out there on the tarmac.” Peter tried to keep his tone neutral, his reasoning balanced.

“Very strong pressure is being brought to bear on the South

African Government to accede to the terms for release of the women and children.”

“That will solve nothing.” Peter could not restrain himself

“It will leave us with exactly the same situation tomorrow night.”

“If we can secure the release of the women and children, the number of lives at risk will be reduced, and in forty hours the situation might have changed. we are buying time, Peter, even if we have to pay for it with a heavy coin.”

“And if the South Africans do not agree? If we come to the midnight deadline without an agreement with the hijackers, what happens then, Doctor Parker?”

“This is a difficult thing to say, Peter, but if that happens-” Parker spread those long graceful hands in a gesture of resignation, we may lose another four lives, but that is better than precipitating the massacre of four hundred. And after that the South Africans will not be able to hold out. They will have to agree to free the women and children at any cost.” Peter could not truly believe what he had heard. He knew he was on the very brink of losing his temper completely, and he had to give himself a few seconds to steady himself.

He dropped his eyes to his own hands that were interlocked on the desk top in front of him. Under the fingernails of his right hand were black half moons, the dried blood of the child he had carried back from the aircraft. Abruptly he unlocked his fingers and thrust both hands deeply into the pockets of his blue Thor overalls. He took a long deep breath, held it a moment, then let it out slowly.

“If that was difficult to say, Doctor Parker console yourself that it was a bloody sight harder to listen to.”

“I understand how you feel, Peter.”

“I don’t think you do, sir.” Peter shook his head slowly.

“You are a soldier-” and only a soldier knows how to really hate violence, Peter finished for him.

“Our personal feelings must not be allowed to intrude in this.”

Kingston Parker’s voice had a sharp edge to it now.

“I must once again forcibly remind you that the decision for condition Delta has been delegated to me by the President and your

Prime Minister. No strike will be made without my express orders. Do you understand that, General Stride?”

“I understand, Doctor Parker,” Peter said flatly. “And we hope to get some really good videotapes of the next murders. I’ll let you have copies for your personal collection.” The other 747 had been grounded for servicing when the emergency began, and it was parked in the assembly area only a thousand yards from where Speedbird 070 stood,

but the main service hangars and the corner of the terminal buildings effectively screened it from any observation by the hijackers.

Although it wore the orange and blue of South African Airways with the flying Springbok on the tail, it was an almost identical model to its sister ship. Even the cabin configurations were very close to the plans of Speedbird 070, which had been tele printed from British Airways

Headquarters at Heathrow. It was a fortunate coincidence, and an opportunity that Colin Noble had seized immediately. He had already run seven mock Deltas on the empty hull.

“All right, you guys, let’s try and get our arses out of low gear on this run. I want to better fourteen seconds from the “go” to penetration-” His strike team glanced at one another as they squatted in a circle on the tarmac, and there were a few theatrical rollings of eyes. Colin ignored them. “Let’s go for nine seconds, gang,” he said and stood up.

There were sixteen men in the actual assault group seventeen when

Peter Stride joined them. The other members of Thor were technical experts electronics and communications, four marksmen snipers, a weapons quart erA master, and a bomb disposal and explosives sergeant,

doctor, cook, three engineering NCOs under a lieutenant, the pilots and other flight personnel a big team, but every man was indispensable.

The assault group wore single-piece uniforms of close fitting black nylon, for low night visibility. They wore their gas masks loosely around their necks, ready for instant use.

Their boots were black canvas lace-ups, with soft rubber soles for silence. Each man wore his specialized weapons and equipment either in a back pack or on his black webbing belt. No bulky bulletproof flak jackets to impede mobility or to snag on obstacles, no hard helmets to tap against metal and tell tales to a wary adversary.

Nearly all the group were young men, in their early twenties, hand picked from the U.S. Marine corps or from the British 22.SAS regiment that Peter Stride had once commanded. They were superbly fit, and honed to a razor’s edge.

Colin Noble watched them carefully as they assembled silently on the marks he had chalked on the tarmac, representing the entrances to the air terminal and the service hangars nearest to 070. He was searching for any sign of slackness, any deviation from the almost impossible standards he had set for Thor. He could find none. “All right, ten seconds to flares,” he called. A Delta strike began with the launching of phosphorus flares across the nose of the target aircraft. They would float down on their tiny parachutes, causing a diversion which would hopefully bunch the terrorists in the flight deck of the target aircraft as they tried to figure out the reason for the lights. The brilliance of the flares would also sear the retina of the terrorists” eyes and destroy night vision for many minutes afterwards.

“Flares!” shouted Colin, and the assault group went into action.

The two “stick” men led them, sprinting out directly under the gigantic tail of the deserted aircraft. Each of them carried a gas cylinder strapped across his shoulder, to which the long stainless steel probes were attached by flexible armoured couplings these were the “sticks”

that gave them their name.

The leader carried compressed air in the tank upon his back at a pressure of 250 atmospheres, and on the tip of his twenty-foot probe was the diamond cutting bit of the air drill He dropped on one knee under the belly of the aircraft ten feet behind the landing gear and reached up to press the point of the air-drill against the exact spot,

carefully plotted from the manufacturer’s drawing, where the pressure hull was thinnest and where direct access to the passenger cabins lay just beyond the skin of alloy metal.

The whine of the cutting drill would be covered by the revving of the jet engines of aircraft parked in the southern terminal. Three seconds to pierce the hull, and the second stick” man was ready to insert the tip of his probe into the drill hole.

“Power A” Colin grunted; at that moment electrical power from the mains to the aircraft would be cut to kill the air-conditioning.

The second man simulated the act of releasing the gas from the bottle on his back through the probe and saturating the air in the aircraft’s cabins. The gas was known simply as FACTOR V. It smelled faintly of newly dug truffles, and when breathed as a five per cent concentration in air would partially paralyse a man in under ten seconds, loss of motor control of the muscles, uncoordinated movement,

slurred speech and distorted vision, were initial symptoms.

Breathed for twenty seconds the symptoms were total paralysis, for thirty seconds loss of consciousness; breathed for two minutes,

pulmonary failure and death. The antidote was fresh air or, better still, pure oxygen, and recovery was rapid with no long-term.

after-effects.

The rest of the assault group had followed the “stick” men and split into four teams. They waited poised, squatting under the wings, gas masks in place, equipment and weapons ready for instant use.

Colin was watching his stopwatch. He could not chance exposing the passengers to more than ten seconds of Factor V. There would be elderly people, infants, asthma sufferers aboard; as the needle reached the ten-second mark, he snapped.

“Power on.” Air-conditioning would immediately begin washing the gas out of the cabins again, and now it was “Go!” Two assault teams poured up the aluminium. scaling ladders onto the wing roots, and knocked out the emergency window panels. The other two teams went for the main doors, but they could only simulate the use of slap-hammers to tear through the metal and reach the locking device on the interior nor could they detonate the stun grenades.

“Penetration.” The assault leader standing in for Peter Stride on this exercise signalled entry of the cabins, and Colin clicked his stopwatch.

“Time?” asked a quiet voice at his shoulder, and he turned quickly.

So intent on his task, Colin had not heard Peter Stride come up behind him.

“Eleven seconds, sir.” The courteous form of address was proof of

Colonel Colin Noble’s surprise. “Not bad but sure as hell not good either. We’ll run it again.”

“Rest them” Peter ordered. “I want to talk it out a bit.” They stood together at the full windows in the south wall of the air traffic control tower, and studied the big red,

white and blue aircraft for the hundredth time that day.

The heat of the afternoon had raised thunderheads, great purple and silver mushroom bursts of cloud that reached to the heavens.

Trailing grey skirts of torrential rain they marched across the horizon, forming a majestic backdrop that was almost too theatrical to be real, while the lowering sun found the gaps in the cloud and shot long groping fingers of golden light through them, heightening the illusion of theatre.

“Six hours to deadline,” Colin Noble grunted, and groped for one of his scented black cheroots. “Any news of concessions by the locals?”

“Nothing. I don’t think they will buy it.”

“Not until the next batch of executions.” Colin bit the end from the cheroot and spat it angrily into a corner. “For two years I break my balls training for this, and now they tie our hands behind our backs.”

“If they gave you

Delta, when would you make your run?” Peter asked.

“As soon as it was dark,“Colin answered promptly.

“No. They are still revved up high on drugs,” Peter demurred.

“We should give them time to go over the top, and start downing. My guess is they will dope again just before the next deadline. I would hit them just before that-” He paused to calculate. ” - I’d hit them at fifteen minutes before eleven seventy-five minutes before the deadline.”

“If we had Delta,“Colin grunted.

“If we had Delta,” Peter agreed, and they were silent for a moment. “Listen, Colin, this has been wearing me down. If they know my name, what else does that gang of freaks know about Thor? Do they know our contingency planning for taking an aircraft?”

“God, I hadn’t worked it out that far.”

“I have been looking for a twist, a change from the model, something that will give us the jump even if they know what to expect.”

“We’ve taken two years to set it up tightly-” Colin looked dubious. “There is nothing we can change.”

“The flares,” said

Peter. “If we went, we would not signal the Delta with the flares, we would go in cold!

“The uglies would be scattered all through the cabins, mixed up with passengers and crew-“

“The red shirt Ingrid was wearing. My guess is, all four of them will be uniformed to impress their hostages. We would hose anything and everybody in red. If my guess is wrong, then we would have to do it Israeli style.” Israeli style was the shouted command to lie down,

and to kill anyone who disobeyed or who made an aggressive move.

“The truly important one is the girl. The girl with the camera.

Have your boys studied the videotapes of her?”

“They know her face better than they do Fawcett Majors’,” Colin grunted, and then, “the bitch is so goddamned lovely I had to run the video of the executions three times for them, twice in slow motion, to wipe out a little of the old chivalry bit.” It is difficult to get a man to kill a pretty girl,

and a moment of hesitation would be critical with a trained fanatic like Ingrid. “I also made them take a look at the little girl before they put her in a basket and took her down to the morgue. They’re in the right mood.” Colin shrugged. “But what the hell, Atlas isn’t going to call Delta. We’re wasting our time.”

“Do you want to play make-believe?” Peter asked, and then without waiting for an answer,

“Let’s make believe we have a Delta approval from Atlas. I want you to set up a strike timed to “go” at exactly 10-45 local time tonight. Do it as though it was the real thing get it right in every detail.”

Colin turned slowly and studied his commander’s face, but the eyes were level and without guile and the strong lines of jaw and mouth were unwavering.

“Make-believe?“Colin Nobleasked quietly.

“Of course,” Peter Stride’s tone was curt and impatient, and Colin shrugged.

“Hell, I only work here,” and he turned away.

Peter lifted the binoculars and slowly traversed the length of the big machine from tail to nose, but there was no sign of life, every port and window still carefully covered and reluctantly he let his binoculars sink slightly until he was staring at the pitiful pile of bodies that still lay on the tarmac below the forward hatch.

Except for the electrical mains hook-up, the delivery of medicines and the two occasions when Peter himself had made the long trip out there, nobody else had been allowed to approach the machine. No refuelling, no refuse nor sanitary removals, no catering not even the removal of the corpses of the murdered hostages. The hijackers had learned the lesson of previous hijacking attempts when vital information had been smuggled off the aircraft in refuse and sewerage at Mogadishu, and at Lad where the storming party had come disguised as caterers.

Peter was still gazing at the bodies, and though he was accustomed to death in its most obscene forms, these bodies offended him more deeply than any in his life before. This was a contemptuous flaunting of all the deepest rooted taboos of society. Peter was grimly content now with the decision of the South African police not to allow any television teams or press photographers through the main gates of the airport.

Peter knew that the world media were howling outrage and threats,

protesting in the most extreme terms against the infringement of their

God-given rights to bring into the homes of all civilized people images of dreadful death and mutilation, lovingly photographed in gorgeous colour with meticulous professional attention to all the macabre details.

Without this enthusiastic chronicling of their deeds,

international terrorism would lose most of its impetus and his job would be a lot easier. For sneaking moments he envied the local police the powers they had to force irresponsibles to act in the best interests of society, then as he carried the thought a step further, he came up hard once “again against the question of who was qualified to make such decisions on behalf of society. If the police made that decision and exerted it, was it not just another form of the terrorism it was seeking to suppress? “Christ,” thought Peter angrily, “I’m going to drive myself mad.” He stepped up beside the senior air traffic controller.

“I want to try again,” Peter said, and the man handed him the microphone.

“Speedbird 070 this is the tower. Ingrid, do you read me?

Come in, Ingrid.” He had tried a dozen times to make contact in the last few hours, but the hijackers had maintained an ominous silence.

“Ingrid, come in please.” Peter kept trying, and suddenly there was the clear fresh voice.

“This is Ingrid. What do you want?”

“Ingrid, we request your clearance to have an ambulance remove the bodies, Peter asked.

“Negative, Tower. I say again, negative. No one is to approach this aircraft.” There was a pause. “We will wait until we have a round dozen bodies for you to remove-” The girl giggled, still on the drug high, wait until midnight, and we’ll make it really worth your while.”