Airship

by McAlan, Peter

  For the first time there was a catch in Nieman’s voice.

  Terrasino realised that it was hopeless trying to reason with the man. He tried to force his voice to stay calm and friendly.

  ‘So what do you want us to do, Kurt? Just tell us what you want?’

  There was a bark of laughter from Nieman.

  ‘Don’t think that I will fall for any tricks,’ he called. ‘It is too late. The Albatross is doomed. It, too, will end its life amid the fires of hell like all the rest!’

  He punctuated his statement with another shot.

  A figure abruptly threw itself down beside Terrasino. It was Tom Saxon. The security chief glanced hopelessly at him.

  ‘This creep is really out of his skull, Saxon,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve tried talking with him but it’s useless.’

  Saxon peered along the corridor.

  ‘We’ve cordoned off this section so far as we are able, using members of the project’s technical crew. There are men on the level below and in the parallel corridors.’

  ‘Then it’s probably a question of just waiting,’ said Terrasino. ‘He’s got an automatic with him and I don’t know how much ammunition.’

  ‘You can’t fool me,’ suddenly came Nieman’s voice. ‘I know you are plotting to capture me, whispering about me.’

  ‘We’re just trying to talk with you, Nieman,’ called Saxon. ‘We’re just trying to find out what you want of us?’

  Nieman’s laughter was much higher-pitched now.

  ‘I want nothing more — it is too late, too late for all of you. I have placed my incendiary device. Soon the Albatross will be destroyed and God’s will be done.’

  Saxon felt himself go cold and beside him Terrasino exhaled slowly.

  ‘So the bastard has planted a bomb,’ Terrasino said.

  ‘We’ve got to get that maniac and find it,’ hissed Saxon. ‘Damned right?’ the security chief snapped back, easing from his holster his Walther PPK automatic. ‘Are you sure that this section is blocked off?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay. We only have one chance. I’m going to rush him while you try to distract him by talking.’

  Saxon grabbed Terrasino’s arm.

  ‘That’s bloody ridiculous! He’ll gun you down before you’re halfway along the corridor.’

  ‘All I need is one clear shot at the bastard,’ returned Terrasino. ‘There’s a recess five yards up. If I can get there, I stand a chance.’

  Saxon was dubious.

  ‘Christ, man!’ swore Terrasino. ‘It’s the only chance we’ve got. We can play it cool and hang around until his bomb goes off or we can make a fighting chance of it.’

  Saxon shrugged. He supposed Terrasino was right. They had to do something to try to avert a catastrophe.

  He leant forward.

  ‘Nieman,’ he called. ‘This is Tom Saxon. Look, why don’t we — you and I — meet in the corridor and talk about this?’

  ‘What for?’ sneered Nieman’s voice.

  ‘Well, we can talk this thing through. You don’t really want to kill yourself, do you? And that’s what will happen if we sit around waiting for the bomb to go off.’

  ‘I am prepared. I have made my peace with my maker. It is God’s will.’

  ‘Now, surely you’ve mistaken what it is God really wants you to … ’

  Terrasino touched his arm lightly, sprang to his feet and sent two shots blazing down the corridor, at the same time making a crouching sprint towards the recess.

  There came a snarl of rage, almost a scream, and three shots blazed back.

  Terrasino gave a cry and collapsed before he had gone two yards.

  Saxon grabbed him by the leg and hauled him back to cover.

  There was blood all over Terrasino’s right thigh, staining his pants. His face was white, teeth gritted against the pain. He still held his automatic in his hand.

  ‘I told you, I warned you not to try anything!’ came Nieman’s cry of rage.

  Saxon ignored him and hauled off his neck-tie, twisting a make-shift tourniquet around Terrasino’s leg.

  ‘Flesh wound, I think,’ he muttered, trying to sound encouraging.

  There was a scrabbling noise at Nieman’s end of the corridor.

  Saxon frowned as he glanced along towards the sound.

  ‘I think he’s going up the service ladder,’ he muttered.

  ‘We’ve got to get him, to find that bomb,’ groaned Terrasino.

  Saxon glanced over his shoulder, then back into the blackness. He stood up carefully, still slightly crouching, and began to haul Terrasino back towards the section doorway. No more shots rang out as they reached it and Parish bent forward to help drag the security chief through.

  Badrick was there, looking white-faced, along with Maclaren and the other security man, Sands.

  ‘Get Terrasino to sickbay,’ snapped Saxon to Parish.

  ‘No way!’ snarled Terrasino. ‘It’s my job to nail that bastard.’

  ‘Get to sickbay,’ returned Saxon. ‘I’m responsible for the safety of this ship. Get going,’ he added to Parish.

  Terrasino tried to haul himself up but his shoulders slumped. He had fainted. His automatic fell from his grasp. Saxon bent and picked it up. It was many years since he had handled a gun. It seemed unfamiliar. He checked the mechanism to refresh his memory and pocketed the weapon.

  ‘I’m going after Nieman,’ he said as Parish, using a fireman’s lift, carried the security chief away.

  Maclaren and Badrick said nothing as Saxon turned and began to walk slowly along the corridor. There were no shots from the darkness. Nieman had moved upwards, towards the central inspection ladder which led out onto the ship’s skin. Halfway along the corridor, Saxon turned and beckoned to Sands, the other security guard, to move forward as a back-up. Then he moved on to the small section which led to the stairwell. The door was marked ‘maintenance crew only’. It was swinging open. Saxon thrust his hand into his pocket and drew out the automatic. In the semi-gloom he again checked the safety catch and then, flattening himself against the wall, he edged to the open door. He could hear nothing except a strange sighing, whistling noise. A cold draught of air was coming from somewhere. Swiftly, he jerked his head into the stairwell section. It was empty.

  Where was Nieman?

  There was only one way he could have gone — upwards; up the ladder to the maintenance inspection gallery which ran along the ‘spine’ of the airship’s upper surface from nose to tail. It was a small flat walkway, three feet wide, which, when the ship was grounded, engineers could walk along while checking the surfaces for skin damage.

  Nieman must be crazy. They were flying at five thousand feet. Saxon suddenly realised the irony of his thought. Nieman was crazy.

  Badrick and Maclaren had joined Sands behind him.

  Saxon looked at them and shrugged.

  ‘The crazy bastard has gone topsides,’ he announced.

  Badrick looked relieved.

  ‘Well, at least he’s taken his damned bomb out of the ship. If it explodes out there, damage will be negligible.’

  ‘We don’t know that, Mr. Badrick,’ replied Saxon. ‘We don’t know if he was carrying the bomb or not. While Nieman is insane, he is certainly no fool. He may have already planted his bomb somewhere in the ship. I’ll have to follow him out there and make sure.’

  Maclaren shook his head.

  ‘Not in these weather conditions, Saxon. It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘No more dangerous than sitting on a time-bomb,’ replied Saxon.

  He turned and began to climb up the ladder. Maclaren laid a hand on his arm. Saxon gave him a questioning glance.

  ‘Saxon … Tom … I’m sorry about what I said earlier. About you being a lush.’

  Saxon grinned.

  ‘Forget it. It was true anyway.’

  He resumed his climb upwards and found that the hatch leading out onto the giant vessel’s upper surface was open. Saxon raised his eyes cautiously
over the hatchway rim. It was just twilight outside and he could make out the figure of Nieman about ten yards away, one hand only gripping the safety lines which stretched along the walkway. The wind was blustering and strong. In his other hand Nieman still held his revolver. Saxon found his mind detached enough to recognise the type of gun Nieman was carrying. It was a .38. A Smith and Wesson Centennial Airweight. Nieman was leaning into the air flow, almost holding himself upright in the slip-stream. Gently, slowly, Saxon began to climb outside.

  The movement must have been caught in the corner of Nieman’s eye because the man turned and sent a bullet crashing in his direction.

  ‘Keep back! Keep back, blast you!’ came his snarl of rage.

  Saxon ducked back below the hatch rim.

  ‘It’s alright, Nieman,’ he called. ‘No one wants to hurt you.’

  Privately he thought: if I get my hands on you I’ll personally throw you overboard!

  ‘Hurt me?’ Nieman gave a hysterical laugh. ‘Nothing can hurt me now. I have accomplished my holy task.’

  ‘How about your bomb, Kurt? It’ll just blow you to pieces and not even touch the ship. So why stay out there freezing?’

  The answer was a coarse laugh.

  Saxon ventured his head up again, ducking as the black muzzle of the .38 swung in his direction. Even as he dodged below the hatch rim he heard the hammer fall on an empty chamber; heard Nieman, with a curse, depress the trigger twice more and then fling the useless weapon towards the hatch.

  Saxon raised himself up, grasping one of the safety lines, and pressed himself forward in the sudden cold rush of air that thrust at his body.

  Nieman was backing along the catwalk, crouching low in the slip-stream.

  Behind him, Maclaren yelled for him to come back but Saxon ignored him. His mind was alert and determined. He had to get to Nieman and make sure whether the man carried his bomb. If he had already planted it …

  ‘It’s all over, Nieman,’ he cried as loudly as he could into the wind.

  He came within a few yards of the man and then, without warning, Nieman lashed out at him with his foot. Saxon swayed backwards, the wind pushing him hard so that he swung out of reach of Nieman’s boot with little effort. Nieman slipped forward and nearly lost hold of the safety line.

  ‘It’s over, Nieman,’ cried Saxon again.

  ‘No!’ The word was just a scream.

  Nieman tried to kick out at Saxon again; again Saxon dodged and reached out a hand towards the man. Nieman darted backwards; as he did so, he stumbled, tried to regain his balance and fell, his hands clutching in the air, letting go of the safety line. To Saxon’s horror, the man began to slide across the surface of the gigantic hull, his hands feebly scrabbling for a hold against the smooth fibreglass skin. His figure gathered momentum and then … then it had stopped and lay spread-eagled about ten yards away from Saxon. Saxon could see his white face staring upwards, the eyes large and piercing.

  ‘Hang on, Nieman!’ he cried, turning to look for a rope or safety line to throw down to the engineer.

  Sands was peering out of the hatch behind him. Saxon edged backwards.

  ‘I need a rope, a safety line … ’

  Sands ducked below the hatch rim and swiftly reappeared with a bundle of thick yellow nylon climbing rope, which was hooked with safety clips. Grabbing it, Saxon made his way back to the point above Nieman and hooked the rope onto the safety lines, testing it cautiously with his weight. Then he let the rope slip down gently towards Nieman’s spread-eagled figure.

  ‘Grab the rope!’

  The man didn’t seem to hear. He made no move.

  Biting his lips, Saxon twisted the rope over his shoulder and began to edge across the curving surface of the hull. He had a bad moment when his shoes slipped against the smooth fibreglass and he nearly fell but, using rock-climbing techniques, he leant backwards, edging down the outer surface of the ship, trying not to look into the vista of the foaming ocean five thousand feet below in the grey twilight.

  He was a yard away from Nieman.

  He turned and reached out a hand.

  ‘Come on, Nieman,’ he cried.

  A crazed face peered back with a maniacal gleam.

  ‘You are all doomed! I have already planted my bomb … inside the ship … doomed!’

  Saxon saw the smile of exultation on the man’s face.

  ‘Grab the rope, Nieman!’ he called.

  ‘No! I go to my rest now … to my God! His will be done!’

  Without warning, Nieman suddenly released his hold on the skin surface and seemed to push himself backwards into space. His body bounced and tumbled down the hull until it was lost to Saxon’s vision. He could imagine it as a black speck falling thousands of feet into the ocean below.

  For a while he hung at the end of the rope drained of energy, sick with strain.

  Slowly he began to haul himself back towards the catwalk. Sands and Maclaren were there to help him up and through the hatch. When he had climbed back down into the maintenance section stairwell he turned towards their white anxious faces — Badrick, Maclaren and the security man. He stood for a while trying to regain his breath, then he forced himself to speak.

  ‘He didn’t have the bomb with him. He’s already planted it somewhere on the ship. We don’t even know when it’s due to go up!’

  Chapter Thirteen

  They gathered in John G. Badrick’s stateroom; Maclaren, Oscar Van Kleef, Saxon and Terrasino. Terrasino was white-faced and limping but the flesh wound was not serious, just painful, and he had insisted on attending. Strain and tension told on every face as the chairman of Pan Continental offered drinks.

  ‘So we have a bomb on board,’ Badrick said heavily. ‘We don’t know where it is or when it is timed to go off. And we are ten hours out from the Irish coast.’

  Terrasino spoke first.

  ‘Nieman was mad but clever. There was a certain logic in his madness.’

  ‘Logic?’ grunted Maclaren cynically.

  ‘Let’s work on the thesis that Nieman was paranoid. It seems to have held up so far. The paranoiac is, as I have said before, the world’s champion grudge-holder. He is subject to unalterable, systematised and logically constructed delusions. Nothing you can say will cause him to change his mind, and he defends his arguments with a degree of logic once his central premise is accepted.’

  ‘So where does that get us?’ demanded Badrick.

  ‘What I am saying,’ continued Terrasino, ‘is that once you accept the central premise of the man’s paranoia then everything follows a logical pattern. He often has a superior intellect and sharp perceptions, so we are not dealing with anyone who is haphazard in his thinking. The only difference lies in our interpretation of what is reality.’

  ‘How does this help us find where Nieman planted his bomb?’ asked Saxon.

  Terrasino wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead. His leg was painful and sore and he kept feeling sick.

  ‘Nieman was convinced he had been ordered by God to destroy this airship, right? Nieman said it was God’s will that the Albatross go up in flames. He alluded to Sodom and Gomorrah. I reckon he wants a public demonstration of his faith.’

  ‘A public demonstration?’ frowned Van Kleef. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘The Albatross must not only go up in flames but must be seen to go up in flames. I believe that his bomb will be timed to go off when we are somewhere over England, so that people can witness what Nieman would call “the hand of God” at work.’

  Badrick glanced at his watch.

  ‘In other words, we have about fourteen hours to find and defuse the bomb.’

  Terrasino shrugged.

  ‘I’m not saying that is the word of the law, but I am saying it is a probability rather than a possibility.’

  ‘Alright,’ agreed Saxon. ‘So we have fourteen hours … perhaps. But where do we start looking? This vessel is as big as a small town.’

  Terrasino looked at Van Kle
ef.

  ‘That is a question which you are best able to answer, Oscar.’

  The chief designer frowned.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Get back to Nieman’s logic. He knew this ship as well as anyone. He was the chief electrical engineer on the project. If he wanted to incinerate the ship in a great, spectacular fire, how would he accomplish it?’

  ‘With difficulty, seeing that this is a helium-filled ship and inert gas is not going to make a spectacular fire,’ interposed Maclaren.

  ‘Are you sure that your deductions are right — that Nieman wants to create a holocaust fire?’ asked Badrick.

  ‘We are not sure of anything,’ replied Terrasino. ‘We can only work on probabilities.’

  He turned back to Oscar Van Kleef who was stroking his forehead with a puzzled expression.

  ‘Well?’ prompted the security chief. ‘How would Nieman go about it?’

  ‘The only area where you would get a sustained fire on this ship is where the power and fuel storage is, on the lower levels, abaft the centre. A bomb elsewhere would do considerable damage, even cause the ship to break up in the right circumstances, but an incendiary device placed in the fuel storage area would create a fire sufficient to cause the type of holocaust which Terrasino is contemplating.’

  Terrasino sat back with a sigh.

  ‘Then that is the place I think we should concentrate on,’ he said. ‘Get everyone away from the area as far as possible and let us start a search. On no account is anyone to touch the device when it is found. It may be booby trapped — in fact, that’s very likely, knowing Nieman.’

  It was Maclaren who started to issue the instructions. But Badrick was frowning.

  ‘Just a minute. If, as you say, Nieman’s idea is to ignite the bomb over England and the logical place is in the fuel storage, surely the fuel tanks would be empty at that time.’

  Terrasino found himself nodding. It was a point he hadn’t thought of.