Алистер Маклин - Air Force One is Down

She had been cleaned, waxed and polished in preparation for the OPEC trip, and her tyres given a wash and brush-up, and she stood now on the runway at Muharraq, proud and gleaming and lovely in the yellowing rays of the sun, waiting for yet another manifest of passengers to board her who would never be charged for their journey.

The starboard engines, three and four, were already running to supply power and air-conditioning and to prepare the Boeing for a rapid start. The stores and spares inventories had been minutely examined and approved and, together with the baggage of the OPEC ministers, sent on ahead. On the flight deck the crew were at their posts for the necessary pre-flight procedures.

Master Sergeant Pete Wynanski, Chief Steward, handed ‘Airman’ Sabrina Carver a print-out of the guest-list.

‘Study it,’ he snapped, ‘because this ain’t a Bunny Dip for Hollywood moguls. These oil ministers are not just VIPs – they’re EDPs.’

‘They’re what?’

‘They’re what – “Sergeant”.’

‘Sorry. They’re what – Sergeant?’

‘EDPs. Exceptionally Distinguished Passengers. I don’t want any of ’em sloshing around in wet socks because you spilled drinks over them. ’Kay?’

‘Completely, chief. Uh – Sergeant,’ Sabrina replied. Master Sergeant Wynanski seemed to be the only crew member with an absolute zero-response to her gorgeous body, and he, she reflected ruefully, had to be the one she picked as her boss. ‘There ain’t no justice,’ she mused.

‘Yerright,’ snapped Wynanski, ‘there ain’t. Now – dooties. You’re drinks. Airman Fenstermaker here–’ (indicating a honey-blonde with tinted glasses and an enormous bosom standing alongside Sabrina) ‘–you’re snacks. ’Kay? You may have to swap later. Depends. ’Kay?’

‘Right, Sergeant,’ they chorused, though Sabrina’s brow was furrowed as her eyes ran down the Arab names.

‘ ’S’matter, Carver?’ Wynanski grunted.

‘Well, you said I was drinks, but it looks as if most of them will be sticking to tea,’ Sabrina explained.

‘Look, Carver, fer Chrissakes,’ Wynanski moaned. He had once been a waiter on the Staten Island ferry and had seen life. ‘You gotta unnerstan’ – these guys are Ayrabs. Moslems. Goddit?’

‘Uh-uh,’ she said, shaking her head.

‘They ain’t supposed to like booze,’ Wynanski said, patiently, ‘but from time to time, and especially when they’re out of Ayrabia, they – well – indulge, if you get me. But still they can’t appear to, and they don’t like you to know it, nor anybody else. Right? So. Read down the list again – out loud, so Fenstermaker don’t make a tit outa herself as well. Sorry, Fenstermaker. Nothin’ personal about yah boobs.’

Sabrina spluttered, but regained control and recited from the print-out.

‘Tea with milk and sugar.’

‘That’s straight tea – real tea, from leaves; with milk and sugar, like it says,’ Wynanski pronounced.

‘Tea with sugar but no milk,’ Sabrina intoned.

‘Scotch,’ said Wynanski firmly, ‘on the rocks, no water.’

Sabrina’s mouth dropped open. ‘Ohhh,’ she breathed.

‘ ’Bout time, too,’ Wynanski snarled. ‘Continue.’

‘Tea with lemon.’

‘Vodka. Ice. Lime juice.’

Sabrina made tiny notations.

‘Black coffee, no sugar.’

‘Cognac, neat,’ Wynanski supplied.

‘Tea – no sugar, no milk,’ Sabrina read.

Wynanski looked puzzled.

‘Gimme that,’ he ordered, and scanned the list. Then his brow cleared, and a beatific smile illumined his battered face. ‘How about that?’ he whispered, ‘one o’ these guys got the hots fer Jack Daniels. Whooppee!’

Through the open hatch of the Boeing, the far-off wail of police-car sirens reached Sabrina’s ears. The motorcade, she calculated, must be on the causeway by now.

She found herself keenly anticipating the flight, whatever dangers it might hold. Especially, she was looking forward to seeing McCafferty again. He had made, she decided, quite an impression on her.

Philpott gazed meditatively for the umpteenth time at the computer print-out, dog-eared now, which was pinned to the front of Smith’s UNACO file.

‘Two down,’ he said, ‘three to go.’ He darted an exasperated glance at the ominous barrage of clocks, adjusted for time-zones and the individual preferences of more than a score of countries, sitting atop the electronic mural in the bureau’s nerve-centre, naggingly pushing forward the time for action. ‘And one just about coming up.’

‘Sir?’ Basil Swann inquired.

‘Just thinking out loud,’ Philpott returned. ‘All set for Bahrain?’

Swann replied with a trendy ‘Affirmative’. Air Force One, he supplied, would take off inside half an hour, on schedule. Sabrina Carver – ‘Airman First Class Carver’ – was already on board the Boeing, and Colonel Joe McCafferty, according to his invariable procedure, would board last of all, after delivering the OPEC emissaries.

‘No gremlins in the tracker-bug?’ Philpott asked.

None, Basil assured him. Philpott chewed his lip, and refused to notice the Gulf time-zone clock, which had advanced by no more than a minute since he had last fixed it with a baleful glare. The tension got straight to his stomach, and he eased out a muted burp. Sonya Kolchinsky, from the neighbouring swivel-armchair, gave his hand a sympathetic squeeze.

Of the original five events which the UNACO computer had linked to Smith’s escape, two were already safely dispatched: the gold bullion run to Moscow, and the Middle East defence talks in Cairo.

The bureau’s resident agents – one a Soviet Army physical training instructor, the other sous-chef in a Cairo hotel – had slotted into the operations, and both incidents were accomplished interference-free in their varying ways; but assuredly with no sign of criminal activity, from Smith or anyone else. The third event, chronologically speaking, on the master-list, was the journey Air Force One was about to commence, air-lifting the Arabian oil titans to Washington DC, via Geneva, Switzerland.

Philpott, for reasons he could not isolate, had a stronger feeling of apprehension about this one than the first two, or even the remaining pair. The fatal joker in the Air Force One pack had always been clear to him: the operation could not be controlled from the ground.

Despite the presence of McCafferty, unknowingly backed up by Sabrina Carver, a swift and audacious strike by Smith at the President’s Boeing could succeed, immobilising both agents – or killing them. And Philpott would be powerless to prevent it, or to control the action thereafter. He had insisted as a minimum precaution on a monitoring capacity for UNACO to track the flight. It was impossible, though, to pick up a duplicate radar-trace, so Basil Swann simply arranged a feed of the signal relayed through a communications satellite to the Pentagon.

The signal came from the Boeing’s inertial navigation system, and Swann – against the odds, for it was a closely guarded secret – had discovered the frequency on which it was relayed. The signal was then decoded by the bureau’s computer, which obligingly translated it into a visual display on the vast wall map.

At present it was no more than a pin-point, throbbing expectantly on the island of Bahrain like an unleashed terrier.

But when the plane got airborne, the tracker-bug signal would snake out in a green line across the Middle East, the Near East and the Mediterranean, following whichever course Colonel Tom Fairman had selected to take the Boeing to Geneva.

While the President’s plane was in the skies, doing what it was supposed to do, going where it ought to go, the green tracker-line would continue crawling over the map. But should anything happen to the Boeing, the marker trail would vanish.