by John Denis
‘Most?’
‘Uh-huh. The strip was built for jets, but not very big ones.’
‘It’s impossible,’ Fairman protested.
Jagger shook his head. ‘Good, old-fashioned airmanship, Tom. But mind the gully at the far end.’
‘Gully!’
‘Yeah. The runway sort of — well, peters out. It’s quite a deep drop.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
Jagger smiled and said, ‘Maybe a prayer would help.’
Kowalski remarked that there was an island coming up to port.
‘Well don’t tell us,’ Latimer remarked peevishly, ‘you’re the navigator. What is it?’
If they were on course, Kowalski explained, it would be the island of Vis. ‘See any others?’ he asked.
‘To where?’
‘Starboard.’
Latimer probed the blackness, and identified two shapes looming on the right. He passed the news to the navigator. ‘Spot on,’ Kowalski said, ‘the first one’s Hvar and the second Brac. It’s dead straight now until landfall.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ Fairman said.
The Commander requested further details from Jagger of the landing strip. The runway itself, the ringer told him, would be marked by paraffin flares. Fairman’s jaw dropped. ‘You did say paraffin flares?’
‘Sure. They’re very effective in fog.’
‘It isn’t foggy,’ Latimer pointed out.
‘Don’t bet on it,’ Jagger replied, ‘they get funny weather around here.’
Fairman sighed and said, ‘Go on.’
Jagger grinned and assured the Commander that the worst of the bad news was over. ‘That was the primitive aspect,’ he added. ‘Beyond that they’re quite well equipped. They have a transponder there which operates on your radar frequency, so you’ll be able to pinpoint the exact position.
‘They’ve also got VHF radio — battery-powered, naturally — and they’ll use that to keep you abreast of conditions on the ground.’
‘They speak English, then,’ Fairman inquired acidly, ‘not ancient Sumerian or Stone Age grunt language?’
‘One of them almost certainly speaks all three.’
Latimer asked if, assuming they were almost there, the plane could have back its VHF radio for tuning to the correct frequency. ‘Sure, Pat,’ Jagger replied, ‘you can have the radio, but I’ll do the tuning. The less you know the better.’
Holding a headset to his ear with his free hand, Jagger adjusted the frequency to 118.1 and made contact with the Kosgo base. He handed the communicator to Fairman. The Commander heard a precise and cultured English voice recite all the details he needed to know: the runway-heading, atmospheric pressure reading at aerodrome level, and the wind speed and direction.
‘Do call again,’ Smith added, ‘when the transponder blip indicating the exact position of the airfield appears on your screen.’ Fairman grunted and surrendered the headphones to Jagger, who signed off.
‘Happier?’ the ringer said.
Fairman ignored him and told Latimer, ‘We’ll drag her in low and slow. When the blip comes on I’ll take the controls and try it at about 110 knots. Then we’ll coast in and snatch it back to manual if — or, I hope, when — we spot the lights.’
The Boeing ran for a further twenty miles at 250 feet, straight as a die to Kowalski’s immense satisfaction, when the green spot started glowing on the weather radar screen.
‘Tell your friends we have them on visual,’ Fairman instructed Jagger, unconsciously treating him as part of the normal complement of Air Force One — which indeed, as far as Fairman was concerned, he was, although not on the flight deck. When Jagger had passed on the intelligence, Fairman added, without turning to look at the ringer, ‘If you know what you’re doing, you’ll keep out of the way for the next ten, fifteen minutes.’
Jagger held on to the back of Fairman’s seat as the plane bucked, and moved the point of his gun until the short hairs on the back of the Commander’s neck erected of their own volition, though the metal had not touched him. ‘Listen, Tom,’ Jagger purred, ‘if you don’t land this aircraft, I will.’
‘That,’ said Latimer, ‘I should like to see.’
‘But you wouldn’t see it, Pat, that’s the point,’ Jagger replied smoothly. ‘You’d all be dead.’
Silence fell on the crew and they concentrated perhaps too minutely on the task in hand. Jagger had rammed the message home, and not one among them doubted that he meant what he said …
Sabrina closed the door of the galley after slipping the catch of the lock. At least Wynanski and Jeanie were still alive, though she calculated they would not regain consciousness for some time. But who had done it? And why? And what could she do about it?
Clutching every support — walls, furniture — that came to hand, she struggled back to the stateroom with the tooled leather first-aid kit in her hand. Dr Hamady, who had unbuckled his seat-belt and was crouching solicitously over the crippled Zeidan and his grandson, leapt to help her as she lost her balance and crashed against a table. They remained precariously rooted to the floor, until Hamady realised that they were no longer bending over to compensate for the steeply-inclined angle of the plane.
Sabrina straightened and gasped with relief. ‘So,’ said Dorani from his seat, ‘we have ceased to dive.’
Sheikh Arbeid, the taciturn Iraqi, placed a cup on the polished surface of the table before him. It rattled slightly, but stayed in position. He grunted confirmation.
Sabrina hurried to Sheikh Zeidan and gently released his hold on the boy, who was now almost unconscious. She loosened his seat-belt, then unzipped the trousers of Feisal’s immaculate grey suit. Zeidan gripped the arm of his wheelchair with his left hand, and with the other took the boy’s legs on his lap until he was fully stretched. Sabrina pulled down his trousers and underpants, pinched and swabbed a patch of flesh on the boy’s small, taut buttock, and injected a dose of insulin.
Almost immediately, Feisal’s feverish mutterings ceased and his breathing became calmer. Zeidan carefully patted the beads of perspiration from his grandson’s face, and whispered in Arabic, ‘Sleep, my jewel, my prince.’
All the OPEC ministers and their aides had now resumed their seats, and Hamady, who had courteously waited for the medication to be finished, fixed Hawley Hemmingsway with an angry glare.
‘You mentioned some time ago, Minister,’ he said, ‘that you would endeavour to discover why we have been put to this considerable danger, let alone discomfort. If you do not accept that we have been placed in peril, I would urge you to consider that His Excellency Sheikh Zeidan’s grandson could still become gravely ill. I think you owe us an apology and a full explanation.
‘I can speak only for the Monarch and Government of Saudi Arabia, but for my part I assure you that we shall feel inclined to accept neither the apology nor the explanation unless they are completely satisfactory, and the situation is restored immediately to normality. As for the oil accord, in the service of which we have undergone this humiliating experience … well, I leave that to your imagination, Mr Hemmingsway.’
The American Energy Secretary sat stunned and silent. Then he breathed a sigh and nodded his head slowly. ‘Clearly, Dr Hamady, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I have no more idea than you do what is going on. I now propose to find out.’
He rose from the seat, and his eyes met Sabrina Carver’s. He read in them the clear message of warning and danger, reserved at the moment for him alone, though Zeidan, watchful as ever, had caught the interchange. ‘Come with me, young lady,’ Hemmingsway growled, and led the way towards the flight deck …
‘Lights up ahead, I think,’ Latimer exclaimed.
‘Coastal lights,’ Kowalski cautioned. ‘We’re approaching land now. Could be anything.’
The Commander called for flaps, and Latimer reached out his left hand to operate the lever mounted in the centre console. Position indicators on the right of the instrument panel registered his actions, which were monito
red by Fairman and Kowalski — and, above all, by Jagger.
The aircraft’s speed died rapidly and Fairman demanded more. Then he ordered the landing gear to be lowered. Latimer obeyed like an automaton, the tension and strain mirrored on his handsome face. A distant rumbling beneath the aircraft signalled the dropping of the landing gear. With the mild thump that always accompanies the final locking of the undercarriage, the jarring motion communicating itself through the floor to the soles of Jagger’s feet, three green lights flashed on above the operating lever on Latimer’s side of the flight deck.
The flight system was still controlling the aircraft, but the Boeing showed a tendency now to pitch and wallow, as all airliners do when they are operating close to their stalling speed. The eddies and currents and warm air thermals coming from the sea and the liberal scattering of tiny islands did nothing to help steady her progress …
With the stateroom door firmly closed behind them, Hemmingsway grabbed Sabrina’s arm and whispered hoarsely, ‘What the hell’s going on here, Airman? You know something, don’t you? Well, tell me!’
Sabrina wrenched her arm away and said, ‘You’re hurting me, sir. You have no need to. I’ll tell you what I know — and I’d better warn you, it’s all bad.’
The colour left Hemmingsway’s big, florid face as Sabrina filled him in on the scene in the rear galley. He wanted to speak, but the words refused to come.
‘If you’re trying to ask me if we’ve been hijacked, sir,’ Sabrina said, ‘the answer is: yes, I believe we have. Whatever’s happening to us is being master-minded from the flight deck, which I’m sure will be locked against us. But I think there’s a way to get more evidence that should convince everyone back there.’
She led the way to the rest room cabin, and pushed at the door. It met an immediate obstacle, giving them no more than a two-inch-wide aperture into the room. Hemmingsway lent his weight to hers, and the body of the fallen engineer rolled across the carpeted floor and folded itself around a leg of the card-table.
Sabrina’s mouth set into a grim line. ‘I was afraid of this most of all,’ she said, indicating one of the three men.
‘Who’s that?’ Hemmingsway asked.
‘The Secret Service agent, Bert Cooligan. And his gun’s been taken,’ she replied.
‘And that means what?’
‘It means,’ Sabrina said, ‘that the security chief, Colonel McCafferty, must be up there —’ jerking her head towards the nose of the plane ‘— under arrest like the flight deck crew. We don’t have anybody else who can help.’
Hemmingsway looked shrewdly into her eyes. ‘Not even you, I suspect, young lady, because you’re no ordinary stewardess, are you?’
Sabrina smiled and said, ‘No, I’m not, but I’m on your side, like Joe McCafferty. But the point is — I’m not armed, so we’re still back where we were.’
Hemmingsway’s tall frame had slumped as he realised the gravity of their position, then he pulled himself up with a visible effort. ‘I’m not taking this lying down, Airman,’ he snapped. ‘I’m going up front now. I’m going to find out who’s kidnapped us, why, and where they’re taking us.’
‘I wouldn’t advise that, sir,’ Sabrina returned anxiously. Hemmingsway fixed her with a fierce, but controlled stare. ‘In a real sense, Airman,’ he continued, ‘it’s my plane, my responsibility, my job to do something about it. And I don’t shirk my responsibilities. Ever.’
He led the way from the rest room cabin and halted before the flight deck, Sabrina at his elbow. Hemmingsway raised his hand to rap on the locked door, but a voice, sharp and incisive, came behind them.
‘Freeze,’ said Achmed Fayeed. They turned and saw the gun, pointing at the left lapel of Sabrina’s blazer. Achmed stepped backwards and motioned them to follow. Hemmingsway opened the door and let Sabrina precede him into the stateroom, then stumbled through himself as the Arab brutally shoulder-charged him. Hemmingsway lurched into a table and fell to the floor, his head resting against the base of Zeidan’s wheelchair.
Zeidan’s piercing eyes fixed on the face of his aide, and he said, ‘What is the meaning of this outrage, Achmed?’
Fayeed straightened up and sneered, ‘Surely, you can see for yourself, cousin. This aircraft has been commandeered under my orders, and is now being flown to a place designated by myself and my friends.’
‘And what happens next?’ Dorani inquired, completely unruffled, like the other Arabs.
‘You will be told that at the right time,’ Achmed returned. ‘For the moment, you are my prisoners. Remain in your seats, and fasten the belts.’
Hemmingsway climbed to his feet, breathing almost as heavily as Feisal had been a few moments before. ‘You won’t get away with it, damn you,’ he hissed, ‘this plane belongs to the Presid—’
‘I am aware,’ Achmed cut in, ‘who the aircraft belongs to. That is why we have stolen it. And you are wrong, Mr Hemmingsway, in any case. We have already got away with it. You are powerless to prevent us from accomplishing our purpose, and your people back in Washington, and yours, and yours —’ ranging around the room ‘— do not, in fact, know what is happening, and would not believe it if they did.’
‘Why not?’ Zeidan asked curiously.
‘Because they think you are dead,’ Achmed replied.
Sabrina paled and clutched at the head of Arbeid’s seat. Achmed said to her, ‘Your assistance as a stewardess is no longer needed, and your function as a secret agent has been nullified. Sit down with the rest, and fasten your seat-belt.’
Dumbly, Sabrina complied. Philpott’s worst fears had been realised: a strike in the air had been launched at the President’s Boeing.
And his words came back to her: ‘If that happens, nobody can help you. You’re on your own … ’
* * *
Fairman was sweating, and he knew Latimer had spotted it. The Commander was finding it difficult to do no more than rest his hands and feet lightly on the controls, following the effect of the pulses sent out from the computer brain that was really flying the machine. His eyes kept flickering to the airspeed indicator, resolutely steady at 110 knots.
‘Three miles or so, I reckon,’ Latimer said. ‘See anything?’
‘Not a thing,’ Fairman replied. His next words were cut short by Jagger.
‘There!’ Cody yelled, pointing ahead. They strained their eyes through the clouded night and saw, dimly, a signalling light a short distance away.
‘Altimeter setting,’ Fairman snapped.
‘One-zero-zero-nine,’ Jagger answered. ‘Wind, three-seven-oh degrees at one-six.’
‘Right on the nose, baby,’ Fairman continued. ‘OK, I have control.’ As he spoke, he flicked the switch on the left of his control column to cancel the automatic system, and settled down to pilot the Boeing manually.
The aircraft juddered as they hit a patch of turbulence, and the starboard wing dropped sharply. Fairman righted it again in what was really a reflex action. The runway, picked out by the flickering dots of the paraffin lamps, was in sight. Fairman eased his hands forward to start the landing.
He muttered to himself, not caring whether anyone else heard, that it was like being back at flying school. When the end of the runway slid down the windshield, you were too high. When it slid up, too damned low. So far it remained dead centre, and Fairman hoped, prayed, that it would stay there.
It was a long, dangerously slow, descent. Air Force One shot out the searching beams of its own landing lights, and a hundred tons of aeroplane followed the twin rays as they raked the pitted track between the smoking paraffin lamps.
Fairman completed the run in, and the great silver airliner burst on to the runway in a squeal of tyres. Fairman’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the steering column and fought to keep it under control.
‘Reverse thrust!’ he yelled. Latimer obeyed. The noise of the jets rose in an ear-splitting boom to a crescendo as all seventy-six thousand pounds of thrust were diverted to slow the liner’s pro
gress along the absurdly short landing strip.
Air Force One rattled and shook, and the plane’s speed fell dramatically, throwing the stateroom passengers violently against their restraining belts. Crockery, personal articles, document cases, all flew off the tables and smashed against the bulkhead.
Outside, the girl’s hand flew to her mouth and cut off a shriek of terror as the huge shape bore down on them. She pulled at Smith’s arm, and he allowed himself to be dragged back behind the low wall, as if that afforded any ultimate protection from the racing jetliner.
Fairman watched the faint, flickering bank of lights at the end of the strip draw closer and closer. Then, suddenly, there was nothing in the windscreen but blackness.
Latimer, Kowalski and Jagger held on to anything that wouldn’t move, and the Boeing slewed into a hard right turn, its tyres smoking. It came to rest nearly at a right angle to the gully, its port wing hanging out over the deep gash of the crevasse. Latimer licked his dry lips and said, ‘Hairy.’ ‘Cut engines,’ Fairman breathed. The pilot chopped the switches and the whining jets died to a whimper.
‘Excellent,’ Smith purred. ‘You see, my lovely Branka,’ he said to the girl, ‘you can always rely on the United States Air Force in an emergency.’
* * *
Two Air Force Ones? Morwood queried. Definitely, Philpott explained: one hijacked and diverted, the other taking its place until the radar picked up the scent again. Then it would be seen cruising along the correct course at the correct altitude, and its crew would bail out at the appropriate time, probably when a ship was waiting at a prearranged signal to pick them up. The bomb on board the plane would throw the Pentagon and UNACO into total confusion while the real AF One was spirited away.
‘Like where?’ Morwood demanded.
The angle of turn before the liner disappeared from the inertial guidance system trace would indicate Greece or Yugoslavia, Philpott surmised.
‘No closer than that?’ Morwood persisted.
‘If you want me to guess,’ Philpott replied, ‘I’d say Yugoslavia. If it’s Smith and he has help, which I believe he may, then it’ll be Yugoslavia, because he could not operate with complete freedom in Greece, and neither could the sort of assistance I think he’s getting.’
