Алистер Маклин - Air Force One is Down

‘There’s a heavy radar return building up ahead, Naples,’ Latimer continued. ‘Request change in routing to Geneva.’

Naples considered the question, and radioed back, ‘Roger, Air Force One. Change to a heading of two-seven-six. Do you copy?’

Naples got an affirmative, and Latimer signed off …

Bartolomeo Volpe had tucked his student books into his battered document case in the social sciences lecture theatre at the University of Bologna and left early with the permission of his tutor who, like Bartolomeo, was a cadre chieftain in the Red Brigades. At about the same time, Christina Patakeminos leaned back in her chair in the social sciences lecture theatre at the University of Athens, closed her eyes, and waited impatiently for the mid-morning break.

Bartolomeo boarded a plane heading south, and arrived in Naples at the precise scheduled time passed on to him in the instructions from his local Communist cell. He queued for a bus to take him out of the city, and checked his watch and grinned as he imagined the dark-eyed Christina doing much the same thing from Athens’ Egypt Square.

Neither the boy nor the girl – who had become lovers at a youth seminar in Sofia a bare six weeks earlier – knew from whom the Athens and Bologna Communists received their orders. The ignorance did not bother them; they bombed when and where they were told to bomb; killed whomever they were told to kill. They were admirable products of international terrorism.

No killing on this one, the Italian thought regretfully as the bus dropped him at the appointed spot on the coast road. Important, though, the cell had said: a strike at the very roots of capitalism.

The electricity cables feeding Naples Control radar station skirted the sea cliffs in a dark gully away from the main road. The supply to Athens Control was also strategically hidden near the cliffs dropping down to the Aegean Sea from the Plain of Marathon.

Bartolomeo checked the time again, his eyes almost crossing on the second hand as it swept round to zero-minute. He levered the lid off a junction box and clamped a small magnetic timing device to its metal side. Then he clipped through a pair of wires laid bare in the cable, and twisted their ends on to the twin terminals of the timer. The clock hands were set for thirty-five minutes.

Hundreds of miles away, Christina Patakeminos followed the same drill-sequence down to the last letter, smiling to herself as she thought of Bartolomeo duplicating her movements south of Naples. They pressed the switches on their timers barely half a second apart.

Bartolomeo screwed down the lid of the junction box, shinned off the pylon and walked away into the night, whistling an aria from Verdi’s Luisa Miller . Christina hummed a catchy little number by Theodorakis and hitched a lift back to Athens …

Jagger was surprised to meet Sabrina Carver on his way to the flight deck of Air Force One.

‘Trouble, Airman?’ he queried.

Sabrina shook her head, and her mane of dark hair lifted off her shoulders and settled again.

‘Just being diplomatic,’ she replied. ‘Feisal – you know, the Arab boy – wanted to see the works. Colonel Fairman said it’d be all right.’

Jagger nodded and brushed past her, scarcely noticing the contact, fingering the strap on the holster of his gun.

Sabrina shrugged and murmured, ‘Mac, you sure are one business-like fella.’

Jagger rapped on the locked door of the flight deck and was admitted at the same instant as the Naples Controller said ‘Christ Almighty!’ when his radar screen blanked out.

‘Hey, what the–?’ exclaimed an operator.

‘Where’s everything gone?’ screeched a supervisor.

‘Everything including us, Athens and Air Force One,’ the Controller returned grimly. He blinked rapidly and snorted his disbelief.

‘Tried the hot line?’ the supervisor asked.

‘Dead.’

‘Shee–it.’

‘Quite.’

General Morwood, in the Pentagon Operations Room, was almost as tersely expressive when he took the call from Naples.

‘Lost them?’ His eyes went to the wall map, smaller than UNACO’s but still showing the Boeing’s tracer. ‘How can you have lost them?’ he demanded. ‘We still have them on the inertial guidance track.’

‘I mean we’ve lost all our radar, sir,’ the Naples Controller said a shade desperately, ‘and so have Athens. As far as we know, Air Force One is still there. And of course, General, if you say it is … well, that’s good enough for me.’

Morwood motioned to his closest aide, a full Colonel.

‘Tell Philpott at UNACO what’s happening,’ he whispered, covering the mouthpiece, ‘then listen in here. I’m gonna tear the heads off Naples and Athens.’

‘Hi there, Mac,’ carolled Latimer as Jagger climbed into the flight deck, ‘getting bored back there?’

Fairman added a greeting and Kowalski gave the security chief a wry grin. Feisal’s eyes were widening as he studied the instrumentation.

‘Yeah,’ Jagger returned, ‘I thought you guys might need livening up a bit. Eh, sonny,’ he drawled to the Arab boy, ‘maybe you’d better get back to your seat, huh? You can come up here again later.’

Jagger’s tone was light and casual, but Fairman looked at the security man’s eyes and whispered, ‘Something up?’

Jagger nodded. Feisal hesitated, and appealed mutely to the Commander. Fairman patted his shoulder and said, ‘Scoot, kid. Like the Colonel says, you can be our guest another time.’

Reluctantly, the boy edged out through the door.

Fairman waited until the door closed, and then inquired, ‘What the hell’s wrong, Mac? Do you have problems we don’t know about?’

Jagger grinned crookedly, shaking his head.

‘Not exactly, Tom,’ he said, ‘it’s you who have the problems.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like this.’ Jagger pulled out his gun and rammed it into the back of the first flight engineer’s neck. ‘All of you,’ he commanded, ‘freeze.’

Basil Swann stuttered out the news that Morwood’s operations room had reported radar blackouts from Naples and Athens.

Philpott slammed down his glass on the table, rose to his feet and crossed to the office door, Sonya just behind him. He strode into the UNACO Ops centre and stared at the map. The green snake was still inching across the Mediterranean.

‘I was about to add, sir,’ Swann said, ‘that General Morwood said not to panic, because his trace still shows AF One, and so does ours. He says it must be purely a localised fault.’

Philpott stared at him in amazement.

‘ Two localised faults?’ he inquired acidly. ‘Naples and Athens going out at the same time is sheer coincidence? Nothing to worry about?’

His face started to go red until Sonya squeezed his arm.

‘We are not panicking, Basil,’ she said, ‘but we are concerned.’

‘Too damned right we are,’ Philpott snorted. ‘Even if Morwood can convince himself that something like a widespread electrical storm can simultaneously knock out a pair of radar dishes hundreds of miles apart, he can’t convince me .’

Swann gulped with difficulty and asked for instructions. Philpott pounded his fist with his palm, and his brow creased in concentration.

‘It’s got to be Smith,’ he muttered, ‘and even then he’d need some help.’

‘Sir?’ Swann inquired.

‘Get this, Basil,’ Philpott replied, pointing a rocksteady finger. ‘I want a squadron of fighters from Naples Command scrambled. Do it now – and I mean NOW – and tell them to stand by. I want no questions from them, no arguments, just action.’

Swann nodded. ‘And their orders, sir?’