Алистер Маклин - Air Force One is Down

‘I’ll probably come alone,’ Philpott warned him. ‘I still have to case the scene in Yugoslavia. I’ve no idea what help or co-operation I’ll get from the authorities, so I’d better not promise you an army of deliverance. The chances are it’ll be just you and me, Joe.’

‘You’d better be in good form, then,’ Mac returned cheerfully, though he felt far from confident at the prospect ahead of them.

Philpott signed off, and while McCafferty set out by donkey and on foot to reconnoitre the castle of Windischgraetz, the UNACO director’s plane commenced its descent to Zagreb …

Feisal eased his slim body out of the hole and found himself looking down the sheer side of the mountain. He gulped and withdrew his head, then glanced up, and to both sides. The fissure ran out in the mouth of the cave above the castle, and the boy scaled the remaining distance easily. He was now virtually on the castle roof, and he stepped gingerly on to one of the pyramid towers, from where he could see the cliff, the road and the valley beyond, and just caught sight of the sloping eave in front of the sentry-slit in his own room.

He edged round the other face of the pyramid and descended to a flatter part of the roof. Looking up, he saw a flag-pole projecting from the top of the tower, its fastening rope trailing from the bare stem.

The boy smiled, and was about to remount the tower when the sound of voices reached him from below. Feisal knelt and crept to the very rim of the castle. The voices came from a ventilation-port set high into the wall of what he judged to be the trophy room, where the hostages were imprisoned. Mister Smith was speaking.

‘… so it would appear, gentlemen, that your respective governments care less for your lives than for the comparatively trifling sum it will cost to save them. At any rate, I can place no other construction on their request for a two-hour delay. I cannot believe they would be so foolish as to contemplate tracking us down at this place, since by so doing they will inevitably sacrifice all of you. Therefore, I repeat, I can only assume they are weighing your lives in the balance against a mere fifty million dollars in diamonds.’

Smith had separated the ministers from the crew, who were valueless to him. He had Dunkels at one shoulder, Jagger at the other, both armed with Schmeisser machine-pistols, and Fayeed leading a guerilla group which commanded the rest of the trophy room.

Hawley Hemmingsway, easily the tallest and strongest man in the room, folded his arms and said, with a disdainful sneer, ‘Maybe they just don’t relish having to deal with scum like you, Smith. That would at least be understandable.’

Smith regarded him with tolerant amusement, but the shaft had struck home. Smith never suffered criticism easily; it was part of the megalomaniac’s armour that he must always be supremely right, above reproach, fêted and admired for the aesthetic beauty of his crimes. Above all, though, he prided himself on his iron control, which rarely deserted him and which was needed now to suppress his rising anger. He was framing a suitably tart reply when Sheikh Zeidan saved him the trouble.

The old Arab raised a cautionary hand and growled to Hemmingsway, ‘Easy, my friend, easy. Patience. You would not, would you, trade insults with a rabid dog? No, you keep your counsel and remove yourself from his solitary path.’

Smith’s teeth clenched and his eyes bored into Zeidan’s, but he could not hold the cripple’s burning, scornful gaze. But Hemmingsway, the Boston aristocrat with six centuries of traceable English and colonial blood in his veins, had never needed to curb his temper with such creatures as he saw before him.

He unfolded his arms and let them swing easily at his side, breathing noisily through parted lips, his eyes wild, the very marrow of his culture and civilisation affronted.

‘I thank you for your advice, Your Excellency,’ he said, ‘but I have spent large portions of my life dealing with vermin such as these at various levels in war and politics. It is as well to make them completely aware that men such as you and I and your colleagues cannot, will not , be intimidated. We cannot and will not be used as pawns in the games of these sordid mercenaries, sold over their sleazy counter as merchandise to provide money for prolonging their disgusting lives, to give them–’

‘Why don’t you just button your lip, like the man says.’

The dry, softly-spoken words from Cody Jagger, cut through Hemmingsway’s outburst and laid an aura of menace over the room which had not been there before. Dr Hamady looked for the source of the sound and visibly quailed when he met Jagger’s cold stare. Dorani plucked nervously at Hemmingsway’s sleeve, but the American shook him off. Sheikh Arbeid tore his gaze away from Jagger’s, then met other eyes everywhere he looked … dead eyes, of eagles, deer, boars, great fierce dogs; accusing and unforgiving eyes.

It was breaking-point for Hemmingsway, though. Where Smith possessed at least the responsibility and lustre of command, Jagger, the renegade American, the traitor for gain, was so far beneath Hemmingsway’s contempt that what little control that was left to him snapped.

‘ You , McCafferty,’ he breathed, ‘ you … without you none of this would have been possible. You sold yourself and your country and your honour to this pack of lice to line your pockets and crawl away into whatever sewer will have you.’

Flecks of foam appeared at the corners of his mouth and he took one, two steps towards Jagger, until they were separated by no more than ten feet.

‘Come back, Hemmingsway,’ Dr Hamady pleaded.

‘No nearer, pal,’ Jagger said. ‘I’m telling you.’

But Hemmingsway did not even hear them. He was shaking now with fury, and his eyes and senses could only encompass the man standing before him.

‘That you should presume even to speak to me is so loathsome to me that I could vomit at the mere thought of you,’ he stormed. ‘Compared with you, Smith is a knight in shining armour. If it’s the last thing I do, McCafferty, I will see that you suffer for your treachery. I will ensure that you pay for soiling the uniform you still wear. Because do you hear, you filth, you trash … do you? I’m going to tear your body apart with my own hands–’ another step forward, ‘I’m going to rip–’

Without aiming, without even moving, Jagger tightened his finger on the trigger of the machine-pistol and sent a stream of slugs into Hemmingsway, who was still coming at him, arms outstretched. One of the hands flew off, severed at the wrist; Hemmingsway’s face disappeared, its contours and definition merging into a mash of blood and bone; his trunk was almost bisected as the bullets cut through him and the clamour and gunsmoke assaulted the senses of every man in the room.

Smith had made a feeble attempt to restrain his ringer, but it would have been unavailing, for Cody Jagger was a man of the jungle; he had no conscience, no finesse, no scruples. And no control, since he had never needed to exercise any. Hemmingsway had genuinely believed he had dealt with the worst kinds of men, but he had never encountered Jagger’s type, the totally amoral creature of the twilight underworld.

When it was over, Smith laid his hand on Jagger’s arm and kept it there, looking into the ringer’s face with a calm, level gaze until the killing-light died in Cody’s eyes.

‘So, gentlemen,’ Smith said gravely, turning his false and handsome face back to the Arabs, ‘it has come to this. You have insulted my honour, and that of my men. I am, though you will not accept it, a man of honour. I did not plan this … you can have no conceivable doubt of that. Yet maybe it will serve as an indelible warning to you and to those governments who have so little regard for you that they have failed to take me seriously.