Flight 741

by Don Pendleton

  The would-be rapist hit him with a looping right, his snarl obscured by blood and mucus draining from a flattened nose. The punch closed Blanski's eye and snapped his teeth together, even as a boot slammed between his shoulder blades. The two of them were on him as he toppled, sprawling, and his one clear eye beheld a third assailant pounding in to join the melee with an automatic pistol in his fist.

  They battered him with fists and boots and weapons while he did his best to fend them off, prevent them from inflicting any lethal damage. Once he saw an opening and kicked out sharply, heels together, cutting one man's legs from under him and toppling him backward, but then the other two bored in with a renewed ferocity, their fists and firearms hammering his ribs, his arms, his face.

  They hadn't shot him, dammit, but the vindication of his hunch was scarely any consolation now. They didn't need to shoot him, once they had him down and at their mercy. As conscious thought began to flicker, fade, Mike Blanski knew that he had lost his gamble.

  He took the bitter knowledge with him into surging darkness, broken only by the sallow flares of pain.

  * * *

  Steve Korning heard the shooters grunting with the animal exertion of the beating they were dishing out, but he required another hazy moment to be certain they were working over someone else. His body was a twisted tapestry of pain, and with the sudden understanding that the bastards had themselves another human football, he experienced a rush of sweet relief.

  Supplanted instantly by shame.

  It might be Julie, and the bitter vision brought him to all fours, the dizziness receding as a haggard fury took its place. The greasy shits would have to kill him this time. They would have to use the guns as something more than bludgeons, if they hoped to keep his fingers from their throats.

  But for the moment, Korning's hands were climbing hooks, not weapons. Incredibly, he made it to his feet, a bloodied human punching bag who made the passengers avert their faces, frightened or embarrassed to observe the damage he had suffered while they played the role of captive audience. He scanned the cabin, glancing automatically in the direction of the lavatories, spotting three of Raven's men intent on stopping someone who was lying prostrate in the aisle.

  "You fucking bastards!"

  Korning moved to intercept them, lurching woodenly on legs that felt like fence posts, fighting for his balance as the giddy waves came back full force. Whoever they were whipping might be a memory before he reached them, and he knew he couldn't pull the attackers off in any case, but he could lock his hands around one throat, and he could take one rotten bastard with him when he went.

  Except that he would never have the chance.

  Before he took a dozen shaky strides, the curtains rattled open and the Raven jostled past him, shouldering him roughly to the side. Determined not to fall, he clutched the nearest seat and held himself erect with desperate strength. He heard the Raven shouting at his men in Arabic, berating them in angry tones, and watched him pull them off the prostrate figure of a man.

  The victim was unrecognizable, his face averted, veiled with crimson — but it was a man! Steve did a double take and spotted Julie crumpled in the lavatory doorway, knees drawn up against her chest, eyes closed.

  Unconscious?

  Dead?

  He put one foot before the other haltingly, aware that they might turn on him at any moment. It didn't matter anymore. He had to know if Julie was alive, if there was anything that he could do.

  The tallest of the gunners saw him coming, turned to head him off, and Korning realized the bastard's nose was broken, flattened like a piece of pepperoni on his face.

  The bloodied gunner braced himself, his feet apart, the submachine gun rising in his hands. There was a glint of madness in his eyes, and Korning knew that it was death he saw reflected in the mutilated face.

  Still, Korning took another shaky step. The Ingram found a point of reference on his chest, and he could see the gunner's knuckle whiten as he took up trigger-slack.

  The Raven interposed himself, facing down the gunner, shouting at him through the Nixon mask in mixed-up Arabic and English, ordering him out of coach. The gunner hesitated, felt the others watching him, knew that they would back the Raven in a showdown. Finally he retreated, with a final bloody sneer for Korning as he passed.

  The Raven didn't try to stop Korning as he went to Julie, pausing long enough beside the unconscious man to see that he was still alive. The blood had flowed from ragged scalp wounds, cuts above his eyes, but if they hadn't fractured anything, he ought to come around in time.

  Korning reached the lavatory entrance, knelt to run a trembling hand through Julie's hair. She flinched instinctively, then risked a glance and saw him bending over her. A sluggish recognition, backed by tears, and when he put his arms around her there was no resistance. Only bitter weeping, as her soul and battered body purged their pain.

  He held her, and they rode it out together, isolated for the moment from the danger that surrounded them. A moment or an hour hence, they might be called upon to offer up their lives, but for the moment they had each other, and it helped.

  Chapter Eight

  He couldn't say precisely where the nightmare ended and the slow return to consciousness began, but through it all Mike Blanski was aware of pain. Before it got a toehold on his mind, he opted for diversionary hypothetical, comparing his sensations of the moment with a host of other pains he had experienced across the years. A bullet wound. A stabbing. Tumbles from the ancient backyard oak tree, as a child. A broken heart.

  No contest.

  He had lived through worse, and he would live through this, provided the bastards hadn't ruptured anything inside. He tried to move and regretted it at once, but couldn't let it go. Slowly he straightened, checking his limbs and finding that he could see once crusted blood was wiped away. His ribs and back were throbbing, but there was no tightness in his abdomen, none of the bloated feeling that accompanied internal bleeding.

  He would live.

  His mind flashed back to grappling for the girl, her slender body crushed beneath his weight and that of his assailants. Blanski tried to look around for her, but his position on the floor precluded any serious reconnaissance. From where he lay, he could see that he was naked, bloodied — hell, he knew that anyway — and that the other passengers were staring at him with concern. Or was it simple curiosity?

  No matter.

  Sitting up was half the battle, and he got it on the second try, his ribs and spine protesting loudly all the way. Once up, he slumped against the armrest of the nearest seat to keep himself from falling back again.

  It seemed to take forever, but finally he braced his back against the seat, securing a view along the aisle to either side. The lavatory door stood open, empty, but he smiled in satisfaction at the brownish bloodstains on the jamb. Score one for his side, sure, and if the bastard walked away, at least he would be hurting now, remembering that it could cut both ways.

  It had been foolish for him to risk his life — the lives of everyone aboard — but now in retrospect he didn't mind the cost. If he had spared the stewardess a moment of her terror, it was good enough. The rest was simply gravy.

  He had moved against the Shiite guards, and lived. They hadn't used their weapons, hadn't sparked a general massacre on board, and that confirmed his hunch that they were under orders not to fire except in case of bona fide emergency. The Raven would be waiting, counting down the hours to his deadline, wondering how far the Western whipping boys would go to keep a load of tourists safe and sound.

  He wondered what time it was and checked his watch. Then he remembered that it had been taken from him with his clothes. But his gut was speaking to him once again, alerting him to danger as the Raven's deadline crept around. For all he knew it might have passed already, leaving them at the mercy of a madman.

  Counting down the doomsday numbers in his head, Mike Blanski wondered if the Raven would make good his word. He had the reputation of ha
rd-core homicidal maniac, responsible for murders, bombings and assassinations, but a hijack wasn't quite his usual style. If he was walking unfamiliar ground, he might tread gingerly — or he might go overboard the other way and kill them all.

  Whichever way it went, the Raven deserved some credit, of a sort. He had been active twice as long as any other big-name terrorist, and the authorities had never laid a finger on him yet. They had come close, but close was only good enough to get a number of their men annihilated in the process. They had never boxed the Raven, never wounded him as far as anybody knew. And he had never spent a night in jail.

  If he was shifting gears to airline piracy, reverting after all these years, Beirut was perfect for his comeback. There would be no prosecution here, especially with the Shiite backup team he had selected for the mission. If and when the Western powers cracked or agreed to terms, he simply had to free the hostages and walk away. There were a million places he could hide in Lebanon or Libya, once he dumped the 747 and its human cargo.

  Unless he wanted something more from the experience.

  It was entirely possible, of course. The Raven had been out of touch for better than a year. He might be looking for a comeback that would reassert his status in the world of slay-for-pay. Commercial terrorism was a thriving industry, with bombings and assassinations catered on demand, and no one carried out a contract better than the Raven. Except that in his absence, there were those who hinted that he couldn't cut it anymore. Some even said he had been killed, disposed of by a sponsor who was disappointed with his services.

  Wherever he had been, whatever might be in his mind, the deadline for delivery was closing fast.

  From what Blanski could determine, peering past a row of huddled older women, gauging the position of the sun, it must be nearly noon.

  As if in answer to his thoughts, the curtain separating coach from more exclusive seats was suddenly withdrawn, and Blanski saw the Raven in his Nixon mask, surveying his domain. He wore the Russian automatic tucked inside his belt, and he was carrying an ax. The flankers held their Ingrams up and ready, just in case.

  The Raven moved to center stage, and gave the naked passengers in front a chance to squirm before he spoke.

  "Your government has failed to meet my deadline," he declared, and Blanski heard an anxious groan begin to worm its way around the cabin. "They have made it necessary for me to present a sacrifice."

  He raised the ax and let it rest across one shoulder.

  "Volunteers?"

  * * *

  The cuffs were binding him, and Bobby Maxwell shifted in his seat to take the pressure off, his eyes fixed firmly on the Raven. In his gut, Bobby knew that he might never have another chance.

  He tried to raise his hands, was stymied by the chain around his waist and finally struggled to his feet.

  "Hold on a sec."

  He felt three hundred pairs of eyes converging on him, but he concentrated on a single pair. The Nixon eyes, and the intelligence that lay behind them, thinly veiled.

  The Raven faced him, moving back in Bobby's general direction with the ax still propped across his shoulder.

  "Ah."

  Just that, and nothing more.

  "I really don't belong here," Maxwell blurted out. "I'm like those guys you're trying to spring, you know? Political."

  The Raven stopped ten feet away, his own eyes boring into Maxwell's through the hollow Nixon orbs.

  "What is your crime?" he asked.

  "Armed robbery. It was a revolutionary act."

  "I see."

  Bobby Maxwell had heard enough of all that revolutionary crap inside the joint to fake it like a pro, and never mind that politics had been the farthest thing from anybody's mind when they had taken out that armored car. They'd left a note to cover all the bases, and the state police were searching high and low for militants until the goddamn FBI had turned a latent fingerprint. Not Bobby's, bet your life. He wasn't dumb enough to make that kind of mistake, but once the federals had started popping his accomplices, it wasn't long until they had his name and his record.

  "You are a... revolutionary?"

  Bobby didn't like the way he hesitated, rolled the word around inside his mouth as if he was testing it for traces of corruption.

  "Right. We popped an armored car to raise some money for our unit." Terrorists would understand that kind of shit. "I was shopping for some weapons when they ran me down in Frankfurt."

  "There are guns in the United States."

  Oh, shit.

  "We didn't want to risk it, okay? The undercover pigs are into everything these days. You can't get laid without..."

  He let it trail away, sensing that he'd edged beyond some boundary, invisible though it might be. Were Arabs puritanical on sex? He knew they didn't go for pork — or, hell, was that the Jews? Whatever, he was in it now, and what a frigging time to have to cope with Third World attitudes on sex.

  "We thought it would be safer overseas," he finished loosely. "Guess we screwed it up."

  "You did, indeed."

  "How's that?"

  The Nixon face was smiling back at him insipidly.

  "A revolutionary is prepared to sacrifice."

  He didn't like the sound of that, but he was in too deep to turn around.

  "That's right."

  The Raven beamed approval at him through the latex mask. "You have a chance to serve the people's revolution now."

  "That's all I ask."

  The Raven swiveled toward his flankers, never lowering the ax. "He'll do."

  The backup gunners sidled forward, waited while he hobbled out to meet them in the aisle. They stood on either side of him, and their free hands slid beneath his arms.

  "Hey, I can walk."

  The Raven turned away, and Bobby Maxwell was propelled along behind him, shackles scarcely hampering him now. The Arabs were a good deal stronger than they looked. They fairly lifted Bobby off his feet, and in an instant he was close behind the Raven, standing near the exit hatch, above the wing.

  The hatch release was set on manual, and Bobby watched the Raven as he threw the lever, let the cover fall away. A blinding shaft of daylight made the convict squint, but he was not about to miss the show. A rubber slide was rolling down and out in front of him, inflating like some kind of giant life vest, ready to receive evacuees.

  The Raven turned to face him once again. "Do you believe in God?"

  "I never been the real religious type. Too busy with the politics."

  "Ah, well."

  The Nixon face was nodding, not at him but at the flankers now, and Maxwell didn't have a chance to think what that might mean before a pair of boot heels caught him in the hollows just behind each knee. His jarring impact with the deck took Bobby's breath away, and several heartbeats passed before he realized that he was kneeling in the open doorway of the 747, staring into space.

  "Hey, hold on a second now..."

  The Raven stood behind him now, and when he spoke his voice was distant, hideously calm.

  "Perhaps your god remembers you."

  * * *

  From where he sat with Julie Drake, Steve Korning watched the Raven's gunners lead their prisoner in the direction of the exit hatch. The idiot might believe that he had snowed them with his line of crap, but Korning read a different message in the Raven's attitude, his voice. His gut suspicion was confirmed once they had blown the hatch, and Raven's flankers dropped the pigeon to his knees.

  "What are they doing?" Julie whispered.

  "Shh. Be quiet now. Don't watch."

  He used one hand to turn her face away and felt her burrow in against his shoulder. She had already seen enough, and he would spare her what was coming if he could.

  Korning watched the Raven as he stood behind his sacrificial goat, the crash ax balanced on his shoulder, both hands wrapped around the curving handle. They should have hidden it away... but there had been no time. No time for anything when he had taken Raven to the cockpit. Captain Murphy
and his crew had more important problems on their minds than hiding axes from a gang of men already armed with guns.

  "Perhaps your god remembers you."

  The words were spoken softly, but they carried in the stillness of the cabin. Off to Korning's right, a burly red-faced man anticipated what was coming, and he vomited between his naked feet.

  In one electric motion, the Raven raised the ax above his head and brought it flashing down. His target panicked at the final instant, twisted to the side and took the blow across one shoulder. He grunted as the force of impact carried razor-steel through flesh and cartilage and into solid bone. The blow released a bloody geyser that left droplets clinging to the manic Nixon face.

  Disgusted that his stroke had failed, the Raven tugged and twisted on the ax. Finally he resorted to kicking at his human prey until the blade wrenched free.

  He struck again, and this time the dying convict took it on the skull.

  Steve Korning felt his stomach turning inside out, but there was nothing left to give. He choked the spasm down and watched, frozen, as the Raven took a step back and gestured to his henchmen with the ax. They shuffled forward, bending down to roll the tattered bundle out and through the exit hatch.

  And Korning realized that he was clutching Julie tightly enough to crush her now, and with an effort, he relaxed. The worst was over. Please, God, it had to be. One of the Raven's crewmen had produced a bullhorn — yet another token from the cockpit — and he passed it over now. The Raven lifted it, the mouthpiece pressed against his latex lips.

  "You see that I am serious now," he told an audience invisible from Korning's seat. "I give you six more hours... as a token of good faith."