Алистер Маклин - Air Force One is Down

Sabrina started to obey when the Boeing gave a sudden, violent lurch. Sheikh Dorani clutched the arms of his seat. Doctor Ibrahim Hamady, of Saudi Arabia, leaned forward to rescue a cup that was skating off the table, and Sabrina heard a noise from the rear of the plane, which she correctly identified as kettles and pots crashing to the floor. Sheikh Zeidan’s imposing face registered startled apprehension when a gasping, retching sound came from the seat beside him. He bent over the boy, who was battling for breath, taking in huge gulps of air.

The Bahraini turned to Sabrina and snapped his fingers imperiously.

‘His medication. Quickly, young lady,’ he urged.

Fighting the angle of the aircraft to stay upright, Sabrina started for the rear galley where she had left the syringe and insulin capsules.

She encountered no one else along the route, which for some reason that she could not pinpoint worried her more than it should have done, and reached the galley. She jerked open the door, and her astonished gaze fell on the bodies of Master Sergeant Pete Wynanski and Airman Jeanie Fenstermaker …

One at each side, the two leading fighters in the Eagle flight drew abreast of the dark and sinister shape of the Boeing. The Eagle leader called the plane, but his only reply was an impenetrable buzz of static.

‘There’s not a single light showing on her,’ the pilot of the second fighter reported. ‘Anything visible your side?’

‘Nothing,’ Eagle leader replied. ‘Drop back a bit, will you? Get as close in as you can. See if you can spot anything – anything. A movement, the flicker of a match. Any Goddamned thing you can see to convince me and Naples Control and UNACO that this isn’t just a ghost, because that’s how it looks to me, and I can’t make a report like that without getting a free pass to the funny farm.’

The second plane peeled away and came up behind the Boeing again, adjusting his speed to that of the huge grey shape. The pilot, insofar as he was able, examined every inch of the liner, checking the external markings and scrutinising each window along the fuselage as the moonlight briefly caught her. He speeded up and peered into the darkened, empty flight deck.

The pilot dived and resumed a course parallel with his leader.

‘Nothing,’ he confirmed, ‘absolutely one big fat zero. Not a sign of life anywhere. Something God-awful, unimaginable, must have happened. She’s just been abandoned – crew, passengers, everybody.’

‘Zilch!’ his leader retorted, and then, more graphically, ‘Balls! that’s Air Force One there, baby, not some mystery joy-rider – and not the Marie Celeste , either. The crew of AF One don’t just chuck the passengers overboard and jump out of a ship that’s to all intents and purposes flying perfectly normally. Are you sure you didn’t spot something, overlook something? It could have seemed unimportant, but it may be the clue we’re after.’

There was silence, except for the crackle of static, and then the second pilot’s voice, hesitant and confused, came over again.

‘There was something – yeah … you know, that didn’t seem quite, sort of, right, kosher. But I thought I was just seeing things – or not seeing them, even.’

‘What was it?’ Eagle leader demanded. ‘For Christ’s sake, tell me!’

‘Well, it was the–’

The sky was lit by a blinding flash and a glare of orange, then crimson, light, shading to a fierce yellow. The shock-wave reached the two fighters fractionally before the huge blast of sound boomed in their ears. The two little planes bucked and leapt through the wispy clouds and screamed away to right and left, each performing tight circles to come round again and dive towards the wreckage of the Boeing as it dropped from the night sky.

The fiery cigar shape of the Boeing’s fuselage was now starkly illuminated as the fighters chased it down to the sea. Eagle leader made his panic-stricken report to Naples base, where it was received with uncomprehending horror.

‘Shot down?’ Naples queried.

‘No!’ Eagle leader roared, ‘ not shot down. It just – exploded. There was no missile . It must have been a bomb. A bomb – on an empty aircraft.’

‘Empty?’ from Naples.

‘Positive. Empty, and in total darkness.’

‘And it was Air Force One,’ Naples pressed.

‘Affirmative.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Affirmative.’

‘No.’

There was silence from Naples, then the robot voice said, ‘Who was that?’

‘Eagle Two,’ the pilot of the second fighter confirmed.

‘And you’re saying–’ the Controller left the question hanging in the air.

‘I’m saying I don’t think it was Air Force One,’ the airman rejoined.

This time Naples refused to break the silence, and the USAF pilot said, ‘First, some information. What kind of main hatch, you know, the actual door, did Air Force One have?’

‘What kind of door?’ Naples echoed in bafflement. ‘An ordinary one, as far as we know.’

‘Dimension, say, four feet?’

A busy, almost frenetic, silence occupied Naples now. Then the Controller came back.

‘We have the specification of the Boeing in front of us. It had a normal-sized hatch, built for average height and weight passengers. Why do you ask, Eagle Two?’

‘Because this bird didn’t ,’ the fighter pilot crowed triumphantly. ‘I checked it in the air on the level, and again on the way down. This Air Force One’s door measured all of seven feet wide.’

‘Then it was–’ began Eagle leader.

‘Then it couldn’t have–’ put in Naples Control.

‘No,’ replied Eagle Two, ‘it wasn’t a VC-137C stratoliner nor any other kind of Boeing 707-320B airliner. My guess is that it was some old freighter tarted up to look like Air Force One …’

‘… My guess, too,’ murmured Malcolm Philpott, who had been patched through to the three-way conversation. ‘And what’s more, I know who did it.’

Sonya Kolchinsky burst into his office, her face alive with strain and concern.

‘Is it true?’ she asked. ‘General Morwood says Air Force One has been shot down or bombed. Is it true?’

Philpott turned in his chair and chuckled up at her.

‘Oh yes, it’s true, my pet. But tell General Morwood not to worry: we’ve got another one.’

A crumbling outcrop of wartime ruins framed against the night sky above the remains of a concrete bunker lay just to the right of the runway where it ended in a sudden crevasse. Dirt ramps had been banked up to mark the very limit of usable track, but they would be frighteningly ineffective against the weight of a plunging jet.

Paraffin lamps, spluttering noisily, their flames dancing and weaving, paralleled each other down the entire length of the runway, with a battery of them at the end, but there was no disguising the fact that Mister Smith’s Kosgo airstrip had not been designed to take a Boeing 707.

Smith lounged against a low concrete wall, directing the placement of the forty-strong reception committee – all in rough battle fatigues, all heavily armed.

‘Why are we here?’ the girl asked. Her elfin face peeped out from the hood of a sable fur coat, her hands were encased in a matching muff, and her feet in sable-lined grey leather boots.

‘We wait,’ Smith replied in Serbo-Croat.

‘For what?’

Smith raised a finger to her lips and said, ‘Hush, little one.’

She followed his gaze as he peered into the sky.

Barely audible on the breeze, the throaty growl of a jet engine cut like an idling bandsaw through the thick, low cloud. Smith ran his fingers over the girl’s lips and she licked the tip of each one …