Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  Peter was a hundredth of a second slow, numbed by the blast, fumbling slightly at the butt of the Walther, thumbing the hammer as it snapped out of the quick-release holster, and then he went in feet first through the hatch, like a runner sliding for home base. He was still in the air when he saw the girl in the red shirt running forward brandishing the camera, and screaming something that made no sense, though his brain registered it even in that unholy moment.

  He fired as his feet touched the deck and his first shot hit the girl in the mouth, punching a dark red hole through the rows of white teeth and snapping her head back so viciously that he heard the small delicate bones of her neck crack leas they broke.

  Ingrid used both arms to cover eyes and ears, crouching forward into the appalling blast of sound and light that swept through the crowded cabins like a hurricane wind, and even when it had passed she was reeling wildly clutching for support at a seat back, trying to steady herself and judge the moment when the attackers were into the hull.

  Those outside the hull would escape the direct force of the explosives she was about to detonate; there was a high survival chance for them. She wanted to judge the moment when the entire assault team penetrated the hull, she wanted maximum casualties, she wanted to take as many with her as possible, and she lifted the camera above her head with both hands.

  "Come on!" she shrieked, but the cabin was thick with swirling clouds of white acrid smoke, and the dangling hoses twisted and writhed like the head of the Medusa. She heard the thunder of a shot pistol and somebody screamed, voices were chanting, "Lie down" Everybody down"

  It was all smoke and sound and confusion, but she watched the dark opening of the emergency hatchway, waiting for it, finger on the detonator button of the camera.

  A supple black-clad figure in a grotesque mask torpedoed feet first into the cabin, and at that same instant Karen shrieked beside her.

  "No, don't kill us," and snatched the camera from Ingrid's raised hands, jerking it away by the strap, leaving Ingrid weaponless. Karen ran down the aisle through the smoke, still screaming, Don't kill us!"

  holding the camera like a peace offering. "Caliph said we would not die." She ran forward screaming frantically. "Caliph-" and the black-clad and masked figure twisted lithely in the air, arching his back to land feet first in the centre of the aisle; as his feet touched the deck so the pistol in his right hand jerked up sharply but the shot seemed muted and un-warlike after the concussion of the stun grenades.

  Karen was running down the aisle towards him, screaming and brandishing the camera, when the bullet took her in the mouth and wrenched her head backwards at an impossible angle. The next two shots blended into a single blurt of sound, fired so swiftly as to cheat the hearing, and from such Close range that even the Velex explosive bullets ripped the back out of Karen's shirt and flooded it with a brighter wetter scarlet as they erupted from between her shoulder blades. The camera went spinning high across the cabin, landing in the lap of an unconscious passenger slumped in one of the central seats between the aisles.

  Ingrid reacted with the instinctive speed of a jungle cat, diving forward, flat on the carpet aisle below the line Of fire; shrouded by the sinking white smoke of the grenades she wriggled forward on her belly to reach the camera.

  It was twenty feet to where the camera had landed, but Ingrid moved with the speed of a serpent; she knew that the smoke was hiding her, but she knew also that to reach the camera she would have to come to her feet again and reach across two seats and two unconscious bodies.

  Peter landed in balance on the carpeted aisle, and he killed the girl swiftly, and danced aside, clearing space for his number two to land.

  The next man landed lightly in the space Peter had made for him, and the German in the red shirt jumped out from the angle of the rear galley and hit him in the small of the back with a full charge of buckshot. It almost blew his body into two separate parts, and he seemed to break in the middle like a folding penknife as he collapsed against Peter's legs.

  Peter whirled at the shot, turning his back on Ingrid as she crawled forward through the phosphorous smoke.

  Kurt was desperately trying to pull down the short, thick barrel of the pistol, for the recoil had thrown it high above his head. His scarlet shirt was open to the navel, shiny hard brown muscle and thick whorls of black body hair, mad glaring eyes through a greasy fringe of black hair, the scarred lip curled in a fixed snarl.

  Peter hit him in the chest, taking no chance, and as he reeled backwards still fighting to aim the pistol, Peter hit again, in the head through the temple just in front of the left ear; the eyelids closed tightly over those wild eyes, his features twisted out of shape like a rubber mask and he went down face first into the aisle.

  "Two." Peter found that, as always in these desperate moments, he was functioning very coldly, very efficiently.

  His shooting had been as reflexively perfect as if he were walking a combat shoot with jump-up cardboard targets.

  He had even counted his shots, there were four left in the Walther.

  "And two more of them," he thought, but the smoke was still so thick that his visibility was down to under fifteen feet, and the swirling forest of dangling oxygen hose still agitated by the grenade blasts cut down his visibility further.

  He jumped over the broken body of his number two, the blood squelching under his rubber soles, and suddenly the chunky black figure of Colin Noble loomed across the cabin.

  He was in the far aisle, having come in over the starboard wing.

  In the writhing smoke he looked like some demon from the pit, hideous and menacing in his gas mask. He dropped into the marksman's crouch, holding the big Browning in a double-handed grip, and the clangour of the gun beat upon the air like one of the great bronze bells of Notre Dame.

  He was shooting at another scarlet-shirted figure, half seen through the smoke and the dangling hoses, a man with a round boyish face and drooping sandy mustache. The big Velex bullets tore the hijacker to pieces with the savagery of a predator's claws. They seemed to pin him like an insect to the central bulkhead, and they smashed chunks of living flesh from his chest and splinters of white bone from his skull.

  "Three," thought Peter. "One left now and I must get the camera." He had seen the black camera in the hands of the girl he had killed, had seen it fall, and he knew how deadly important it was to secure the detonator before it fell into the hands of the other girl, the blonde one, the dangerous one.

  It had been only four seconds since he had penetrated the hull, yet it seemed like a dragging eternity. He could hear the crash of the slap-hammers tearing out the door locks, both fore and aft. Within seconds there would be Thor assault teams pouring into the Boeing through every opening, and he had not yet located the fourth hijacker, the truly dangerous one.

  "Get down! Everybody down!" chanted the grenade men, and Peter spun lightly, and ran for the flight deck. He was certain the blonde girl would be there at the control centre.

  Then, in front of him lay the girl he had shot down, the long, dark hair spread out around her pale, still terrified face. Her hair was already sodden with dark blood, and the black gap in her white teeth made her look like an old woman. She blocked the aisle with a tangle of slim boneless limbs.

  The forward hatch crashed open as the lock gave way, but there were still solid curtains of white smoke ahead of him. Peter gathered himself to jump over the girl's body, and at that instant the other girl, the blonde girl, bounded up from the deck, seeming to appear miraculously from the smoke, like some beautiful but evil apparition.

  She dived half across the block of central seating, groping for the camera, and Peter was slightly off balance, blocking himself in the turn to bring his gun hand on to her. He changed hands smoothly, for he was equally accurate with either, but it cost him the tenth part of a second, and the girl had the strap of the camera now and was tugging desperately at it. The camera seemed to be snagged, and Peter swung on her, taking the head s
hot for she was less than ten paces away, and even in the smoke and confusion he could not miss.

  One of the few passengers who had been breathing oxygen from his hanging mask, and was still conscious, ignored the chanted orders "Get down! Stay down!" and suddenly stumbled to his feet, screaming, "Don't shoot! Get me out of here! Don't shoot!" in a rising hysterical scream.

  He was directly between Peter and the red-shirted girl, blocking Peter's field of fire, and Peter wrenched the gun off him at the moment that he fired. The bullet slammed into the roof, and the passenger barged into Peter, still screaming.

  "Get me out! I want to get out!" Peter tried desperately to clear his gun hand, for the girl had broken the strap of the camera and was fumbling with the black box. The passenger had an arm around Peter's gun arm, was shaking him wildly, weeping and screaming.

  From across the central block of seats, Colin Noble fired once.

  He was still in the starboard aisle and the angle was almost impossible, for he had to shoot nine inches past Peter's shoulder, and through the forest of dangling hose.

  His first shot missed, but it was close enough to flinch the girl's head violently, the golden hair flickered with the passage of shot, and she stumbled backwards, groping with clumsy fingers for the detonator.

  Peter chopped the hysterical passenger in the throat with the stiffened fingers of his right hand and hurled him back into his seat, trying desperately to line up for a shot at the girl knowing he must get the brain and still her fingers instantly.

  Colin fired his second shot, one hundredth of a second before Peter, and the big bullet flung the girl aside, jerking her head out of the track of Peter's shot.

  Peter saw the strike of Colin's bullet, it hit her high in the right shoulder, almost in the oint of the scapula and the humerus, shattering the bone with such force that her arm was flung upwards in a parody of a communist salute, twisting unnaturally and whipping above her head; once again the camera was flung aside and the girl's body was thrown violently backwards down the aisle as though she had been hit by a speeding automobile.

  Peter picked his shot, waiting for a clean killing hit in the head as the girl tried to drag herself upright but before he could fire, a mass of black-costumed figures swarmed out of the smoke, and covered the girl, pinning her kicking and screaming on the carpet of the aisle.

  The Thor team had come in through the forward hatch, just in time to save her life, and Peter clipped the Walther into his holster and stooped to pick up the camera gingerly. Then he pulled off his mask with his other hand.

  "That's it. That's all of them, he shouted. "We got them all.

  Cease fire. It's all over." Then into the microphone of the transceiver, "Touch down! Touch down!" The code for total success.

  Three of his men were holding the girl down, and despite the massive spurting wound in her shoulder, she fought like a leopard in a trap.

  "Get the emergency chutes down," Peter ordered, and from each exit the long plastic slides inflated and drooped to the tarmac already his men were leading the conscious passengers to the exits and helping them into the slide.

  From the terminal building a dozen ambulances with sirens howling, gunned out across the tarmac. The back-up members of Thor were running out under the glare of floodlights, cheering thinly. "Touch down!

  Touch down!" Like prehistoric monsters the mechanical stairways lumbered down from the northern apron, to give access to the body of the Boeing.

  Peter stepped up to the girl, still holding the camera in his hands, and he stood looking down at her. The icy coldness of battle still gripped him, his mind felt needle sharp and his vision clear, every sense enhanced.

  The girl stopped struggling, and looked back at him. The image of a trapped leopard was perfect. Peter had never seen eyes so fierce and merciless, as she glared at him. Then she drew her head back like a cobra about to strike, and spat at him. White frothy spittle splattered down the front of Peter's legs.

  Colin Noble was beside Peter now, pulling off his gas mask.

  "I'm sorry, Peter. I was going for the heart."

  "You'll never hold me," shrieked the girl suddenly. "I'll be free before Thanksgiving!" And Peter knew she was right. "The punishment that a befuddled world society meted out to these people was i usually only a few months" imprisonment, and that often suspended. He remembered the feel of the dying child in his arms, the warm trickle of her blood running over his belly and legs.

  "My people will come for me," the girl spat again, this time into the face of one of the men who held her down.

  "You will never hold me. My people will force you to free me."

  Again she was right, her capture was a direct invitation for further atrocity, the wheel of vengeance and retribution was set in motion.

  For the life of this trapped and vicious predator, hundreds more would suffer, and dozens more would die.

  The reaction was setting in now, the battle rage abating, and Peter felt the nausea cloying his bowels. It had been in vain, he thought; he had thrown away a lifetime's strivings and endeavour to win only a temporary victory. He had checked the forces of evil, not beaten them and they would regroup and attack again, stronger and more cunning than ever, and this woman would lead them again.

  "We are the revolution." The girl lifted her uninjured arm in the clenched fist salute. "We are the power. Nothing, nobody can stop us." When this woman had fired a load of buckshot through the swollen body of the pregnant woman it had distorted her shape completely. The image was recaptured entire and whole in Peter's memory, the way she had burst open like the pod of a ripe fruit.

  The blonde woman shook the clenched fist into Peter's face.

  "This is only the beginning the new era has begun." There was a taunt and a sneering threat in her voice, uttered in complete confidence and Peter knew it was not misplaced. There was a new force unleashed in the world, something more deadly than he had believed Possible, and Peter had no illusions as to the role that blind fortune had played in his small triumph. He had no illusion either that the beast was more than barely wounded; next time it would be more powerful, more cunning, having learned from this inconsequential failure and with the reaction from battle came a powerful wave of dread and despair that seemed to overwhelm his soul. It had all been in vain.

  "You can never win," taunted the woman, splattered with her own blood, but undaunted and unrepentant, seeming to read his very thoughts.

  "And we can never lose," she shrieked.

  Gentlemen." The South African Prime Minister spoke with painful deliberation. "My cabinet and I are firmly of the opinion that to accede to the terrorists" demands is to take a seat on the back of the tiger, from which we will never be able to dismount." He stopped, hung his great granite-hewn head for a moment and then looked up at the two ambassadors. "However, such is the duty we owe to humanity and the dignity of human life, and such is the pressure which two great nations can bring to bear upon one much smaller, that we have decided unanimously to agree in full to all the conditions necessary for the release of the women and children, -" A telephone on the table top in front of the American Ambassador began to shrill irritatingly, and the Prime Minister paused, frowned slightly.

  "However, we place complete faith in the undertaking given by your governments-" He stopped again for the telephone insisted. You had better answer that, sir! he told Kelly Constable.

  "Excuse me, Prime Minister." The American lifted the receiver, and as he listened an expression of utter disbelief slowly changed his features. "Hold the line, "he said into the receiver, and then, covering the mouthpiece with his hand, he looked up. "Prime Minister it is a very great pleasure to inform you that three minutes ago the Thor assault team broke into Flight 070 and killed three of the terrorists they wounded and captured a fourth terrorist, but there were no casualties among the passengers. They got them all out, every last one of them. Safe and sound." The big man at the head of the table sagged with relief in his seat, and as the storm
of jubilation and self, congratulation broke about him, he started to smile. It was a smile that transformed his forbidding features, the smile of an essentially fatherly and kindly man. "Thank you, sir," he said, still smiling. "Thank you very much."

  "You are guilty of blatant dereliction of your duty, General Stride, "Kingston Parker accused grimly.

  "My concern was entirely with the lives of hostages and the force of moral law." Peter answered him quietly; it was less than fifteen minutes since he had penetrated the hull of the Boeing in a blaze of fire and fury.

  His hands were still shaking slightly and the nausea still lay heavily on his guts.

  "You deliberately disobeyed my specific orders." Parker was an enraged lion, the mane of thick shot-silver hair seemed to bristle, and he glowered from the screen; the vast power of his personality seemed to fill the command cabin of the Hawker. "I have always had grave reservations as to your suitability for the high command with which you have formal been entrusted. I have already expressed those reservations in writing to your superiors, and they have been fully justified."

  "I understand by all this that I have been removed from command of Thor," Peter cut in brusquely, his anger seething to the surface, and Parker checked slightly.

  Peter knew that even Kingston Parker could not immediately fire the hero of such a successful counter-strike. It would take time, a matter of days, perhaps, but Peter's fate was sealed. There could be no doubt of that, and Parker went on to confirm this.

  "You will continue to exercise command under my direct surveillance. You will make no decision without referring directly back to me, no decision whatsoever. Do you understand that, General Stride?" Peter did not bother to reply; he felt a wildly reckless mood starting to buoy his sagging spirits, a sense of freedom and choice of action such as he had never known before.

  For the first time in his career he had deliberately disobeyed a superior officer, and luck or not, the outcome had been a brilliant success.