Алистер Маклин - Air Force One is Down

Philpott chuckled drily, without a trace of humour.

‘Large force,’ he muttered. ‘A middle-aged has-been and a knocked-about flier. I ask you!’

Branches flailed at the head of Philpott’s knocked-about flier as he cursed for the hundredth time after falling for what seemed to be the thousandth time. If McCafferty had not been too drastically knocked about before, he was now receiving more than his fair share.

His plan, which he still followed, had been to approach the castle not from below or from the level of the road, but from above. As Mac had ruefully admitted to himself, bidding farewell to his sad-eyed donkey, that meant climbing the mountain. He had taken the lugubrious animal up as far as he dared if he was to avoid either being spotted from the castle or thrown off the donkey’s back, for by now they were struggling up near-vertical slopes.

Finally the donkey snorted and brayed his refusal to go any further, and McCafferty could not altogether blame him. He watched the donkey slide and plunge back down the mountainside and hoped the animal would still be around when he needed it later for his rendezvous with Philpott. He was not burdened with his back-pack either, though he trusted that the now positively wealthy postman’s daughter would not yield to temptation and search it.

So he had continued on foot, hanging for dear life on to the stunted shrubs, wiping dust motes from his streaming eyes, and being slowly flayed by the trees. He had brought a pair of two-way radios and selected and assembled for armament, a sub machine-gun with a leather sling and as he climbed it began to weigh on his back like a Howitzer. At last he reached a ledge wide enough to allow him to lie at full length and get his breath back. He sat up, soothed his aching muscles, zipped his anorak against the sharper chill of the air, and looked down upon Castle Windischgraetz.

The castle was even more spectacular from his lofty perch, which gave a true bird’s-eye view of it. He noted the twin courtyards and the chasm which the drawbridge would normally span, and the wooded country over to his left, the trees clustered thickly at the point where the hillside rose shallowly from the track, then thinning out a few hundred yards higher until, at his level, they were practically non-existent.

Mac found that his ledge circumvented almost the entire mountain, and he decided to take the opportunity and oversee the castle and all its grounds. He followed the curve of the castle as it hugged the convex bulge of the mountain, and noted the Kamov still sitting on the jerry-built launch-pad, its rotors spinning. To the left of the castle from the American’s viewpoint lay a large car-park reaching back to the mountainside. It was tree-shaded, and the trees then wandered up the gentle slope. It was there that McCafferty first saw the running man.

He adjusted his field glasses and was so intent on focusing on the darting, crouching figure that the significance of the Kamov’s whirling blades didn’t strike him until the little helicopter had actually taken off and started to buzz the inclined woodland. At the same time, Mac became aware – and cursed himself fluently for not noticing before – that men were searching the lower slopes of the hill below the castle, with the helicopter snarling over them like an angry gnat.

But their quarry – and who could it be but the running man? – was above the castle. One up to the escapee, Mac thought, for the man must have got free from the castle … and now the hunt was up. McCafferty at last trained his binoculars on the fugitive, but even before identification became certain, he knew it was going to be Bert Cooligan …

The agent had tied the rope securely to the kingpost of the eave and lowered himself to the next level – a balcony outside an unoccupied room. He signalled to Sabrina and she unhooked the line and threw it down to him.

Cooligan smashed another window and repeated the trick until he dropped even lower, but still he was a full ten feet from the ground, and every second he remained visible on the castle wall he was in acute danger. He scanned the terrain beneath him, but could see nothing except, directly below, a tarpaulin shrouding a shape which seemed vaguely familiar.

Cooligan abandoned the rope and used footholds in the rock to make his final descent … and froze as an armed guard wandered out and dragged the covering from the courier’s motorcycle. Had he raised his eyes by even six inches he must have seen the agent, clinging motionless over his head. Bert hardly dared to breathe; he couldn’t believe his luck would hold, and no one else would come.

But the sentry remained a lone voyeur until, shaking his head – for he would never be able to afford such a bike – he wandered off and took up his post at the main gate.

Cooligan dropped the last couple of yards, landing almost on the motor-cycle, and then he heard, coming from the eyrie above, the last sound he wanted to hear: a shout of warning.

He was protected to a degree by the natural bulge of the castle wall and the slight overhang at first floor level, which was why he hadn’t spotted the bike at once. Bert got astride the machine, switched on the ignition and twisted the throttle until the engine roared its defiance at Achmed, who had discovered his absence from the attic room.

The Arab didn’t have a clear sighting, only the noise of the motor-cycle giving him a sense of direction, but he loosed off a volley of bullets from his machine-pistol. They served to alert the guard at the entry arch, but by that time Bert had already passed through the inner courtyard, and was driving hell-bent for freedom.

The guard made the mistake of aiming his rifle at the swerving target and firing two single shots. He realised in time that he had no chance of hitting Cooligan, so he threw down the rifle and started to raise the drawbridge.

Bert could see the handle turning, and the thick slab of oak lurch off the ground on its rusty chains. He could hear, even above the engine noise, the aggrieved squeal of the mechanism, and when he passed the guard the drawbridge was already three feet up. But for Cooligan there could be no stopping.

As the Honda hit the drawbridge the guard let go of the wheel, and the bridge started an even more raucous and protesting descent. The motorcycle shot off the end and bounced perhaps a dozen feet clear at the other side. Bert yelled and gunned the motor as he sped away from the castle under a hail of bullets from Fayeed, still at the smashed slit window, and from two more guards at the bridge. Cooligan swerved and then caught sight of the guard up ahead at the closed steel road barrier.

At the moment he spotted the guard, Bert was swaying to the right, and that was the way he elected to go, taking the air once more as the bike left the road and crashed through a screen of trees and shrubs. The guard at the barrier was still two hundred yards short of him, the bridge sentries the same distance behind him – but everyone had seen the direction he had taken.

He fleetingly considered using the machine as a scramble bike and taking it to the floor of the valley, but twisting to avoid a pair of saplings, he crashed full-pelt into a rotting tree stump.

Bert was catapulted off into a bush, but clawed himself clear and began to run along the side of the hill. He figured that if he could get beyond the barrier he might stand a chance of crossing the road and taking to the higher ground, which could throw off his pursuers.

He made it undetected, and was still running for cover when McCafferty saw him …

Sipping a long Scotch on the rocks, Philpott again scanned the notes he had taken at Sonya’s dictation of Smith’s plans to collect the ransom. He was waiting now for a picture to be wired from Rome to Zagreb, which the Yugoslav minister had promised would be brought straight out to the airport by dispatch rider, but first there was another visitor. The man carried a bulky bag of soft chamois leather and juggled meaningfully with it.