Алистер Маклин - Air Force One is Down

He turned to Cooligan.

‘It’s Smith and the hostages,’ he said, ‘I think they’re all in the bus, except maybe one.’

‘Which one?’ Bert demanded.

Mac hesitated. ‘I don’t know if she was even among them, but she was supposed to join the flight.’

‘Do you mean Sabrina Carver?’ Bert asked.

‘Yes. They were all there but for her.’

‘Then she must still be back at the castle,’ Cooligan said, ‘and Mac – there’s something you don’t know. She’s not just AF One crew: she’s an agent of UNACO, your people. She’ll be in deadly danger.’

‘I do know, Bert,’ McCafferty said, ‘and that’s why I’m going to get her out.’

McCafferty left one of the communicators with Cooligan and instructed him to stay under cover.

‘I’ve got a plan,’ he explained. ‘It’s worked once already, and I don’t see why it shouldn’t come good again. I’ll keep your uniform on for the moment, if you don’t mind.’

He trotted back to the castle, the gun still slung over his shoulder, and was challenged by the guards. McCafferty, who was now in the curious position of playing himself in the mad scenario mapped out by Smith, curtly told the sentries that one of the jeeps escorting the hostages’ bus had broken down. Mac noted that many of the guerillas had already left the castle, and seized the opportunity to get rid of a few more to even up the odds. He ordered three sentries to help with the repairs to the jeep or, if it couldn’t be fixed, to get it off the road.

The remaining two guerillas guarded the main entrance, and Mac left them as he made his way to the attic room where Sabrina was being held, following directions supplied by Bert Cooligan. He mounted the narrow steps and rapped on the door, expecting Sabrina to reply, but it was a man’s voice that he heard, raised in a hoarse and chilling shout of triumph …

Sabrina had first of all feared that Cooligan would be captured or killed before he even reached the ground, so quickly was his escape discovered. It was sheer bad luck that Achmed Fayeed, inflamed by the brutal murder of Hemmingsway, had determined to follow Smith’s suggestion that Sabrina Carver should be made to suffer for her deception aboard Air Force One: and suffer she would.

Achmed had brooded on the beautiful girl in the room at the top of the castle, and eventually reached a decision. He ran up the stairway, intending to isolate Sabrina and make her submit to him. He unlocked the door and threw it open; Sabrina and Feisal were still at the window monitoring Cooligan’s progress. Achmed, who had himself imprisoned the Secret Service agent in the attic, realised immediately what had happened. He called for a guard to join him and ran to the window, smashing the glass with the butt of his machine-pistol and loosing off a volley of shots at the hastily-glimpsed target.

Fayeed cursed when he saw Cooligan shoot the drawbridge on the stolen Honda. He shouted at the guerilla who answered his summons to take Feisal to the trophy room and inform either Smith or Dunkels that the agent had escaped. Sabrina was about to follow Feisal, but Achmed caught her arm and pulled her roughly back into the room. He backhanded her and she fell to the bed, her head ringing from the force of the blow.

The Arab kept his gun on Sabrina as the door closed behind the guerilla and the terrified boy.

Achmed said, ‘You have crossed us for the last time. I do not think Mister Smith will care too much what happens to you, and I know he shares my opinion that it would be a pity to waste your obvious talents, by killing you too quickly.

‘You owe me your body, you Yankee bitch, and you’re going to pay up. If you haven’t known an Arab before, I can assure you that we’re experts in our treatment of women. You’ll never have another experience like it.’ He laughed, but it was an ugly sound. ‘You won’t, in any case, but your last love-making might just as well be your best.’

Achmed cradled the machine-pistol in the crook of his arm, leaving his other hand free to loosen the broad leather belt on his battledress trousers.

‘Get your clothes off, slut,’ he commanded, and when she stayed unmoving he drew from a sheath at his belt a long-bladed knife. ‘I said undress, or I’ll cut you naked with this, and I don’t care whether it’s the clothes or your lovely fair skin that comes away.’

Sabrina continued to look at him with utter contempt in her blue eyes. Achmed stole towards her, his belt half-undone, the gun in one hand, the knife in the other.

‘Which is it to be?’ he whispered. ‘Easy – or hard? Pleasure – or pain? I’m going to have you whether you like it or not, whether you’re willing or not, whether you fight me or not. I don’t give a damn what state you’re in when I finally get your legs open. I can use you just as well dead as alive.’

Sabrina’s flesh crawled with fear and disgust as she saw how unmistakably ready he was for her, even beneath the rough material of his uniform. She had hoped her refusal even to answer him might infuriate him, goad him into hasty action; but he held the knife like a trained fighter, and the pistol pointed unwaveringly at her face.

Still with her lips compressed and her eyes blazing with hatred, she knelt on the bed and shrugged off her AF One blazer. Her fingers flicked through the buttons on her blouse, and unhooked the fastener of her skirt. She rose from her knees to her feet without using her hands for support, and towered over him on the bed. The sounds of vehicles leaving the castle nagged at the edges of her mind, but she ignored them. She slipped out of the blouse and pulled down the zip of the skirt. The garment fell to the counterpane, and she stepped away from it.

As a strip routine, it lacked even a scant suggestion of style or titillation. Hers were the actions of a woman who was about to be raped; her eyes never left his, and her teeth clenched in defiance. She would never, she swore to herself, go willingly to him; and Achmed would swiftly discover that Sabrina Carver had ways of defeating him even in the height of his lust.

Sabrina kicked the blouse and skirt off the bed, and stood looking down at him, her fingers laced before her, resting on her lightly tanned belly.

‘The rest,’ Achmed muttered hoarsely, ‘take off the rest.’

She made no move to obey.

‘Kneel!’ he ordered, and she allowed her body to sag and fold until it slumped before him.

‘The rest,’ he said, gesturing again at her brassiere and briefs with the point of the machine-pistol.

More quickly than his eyes could follow, her hand came up and wrenched at the barrel of the gun, twisting his finger in the trigger-guard until he gave a howl of pain and yanked it out of her grasp.

‘You will pay for that,’ he panted, ‘by God you will pay for that.’

Sabrina’s eyes were on the snout of the gun, and she did not see the knife as its point came up to slit through the front of her brassiere and hook it off her body, leaving a faint line of blood welling on the creamy skin of her naked breasts. Her hands flew to cover them, and Fayeed hooked two fingers in her silken briefs and ripped the wisp of cloth from her groin. She could not suppress the cry of pain and outrage, and now fear, that was the only sound so far to leave her lips.

Sabrina fell backwards and her legs parted. The Arab saw her open and unprotected, and tore off his belt to bare his own body. He spun the knife to lodge it quivering in a floorboard, and dropped the machine-pistol to the ground. He bellowed in his native tongue a cry of victory compounded with lust, knelt on the bed in front of her, spread her legs wide … and slumped sideways over her as McCafferty crashed the butt of his sub machine-gun into the back of his head.