Алистер Маклин - Air Force One is Down

Mac dragged the Arab off the bed and threw him to the floor, and Sabrina reached down for her clothing to hide her shame and humiliation, even greater revulsion flashing from her eyes.

‘That’s not a nice way to look at someone who’s just saved you from a fate worse than death – and most probably death as well,’ McCafferty said. ‘You don’t have to say “Thank you”, but at least you needn’t make me feel you’d rather I was down there on the floor and he was back on the bed having his evil way with you.’

‘In some ways,’ Sabrina spat at him, ‘I’d prefer Achmed to you, if it’s got to happen. He may have been an animal, but it was honest lust from a straightforward lecher. You’re so tricky, Mister, so – polluted, I think I’d rather die than know you’ve touched me.’

Mac sighed. ‘Jesus, this guy really made a mess of my life without knowing the slightest damned thing about me.’

Sabrina pulled the bedclothes up to cover herself, as much against the chill in the air as to cloak her nakedness.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘Who are you talking about.’

McCafferty explained. Unsurprisingly, like Basil Swann and Bert Cooligan, she didn’t believe him. But, again like her two colleagues, she came to be convinced, and was still avidly questioning him when Achmed seized the knife from the floor and struck at the American’s stomach. Sabrina’s warning half-scream alerted him, and he stepped back far enough to let the point of the blade pass through his shirt-front and scrape the skin.

Mac swung the machine-gun again, and Achmed, who had risen to his knees and was lunging forward once more with the knife, felt the gun barrel rake his face. He spat and sprang to his feet, blood leaking from his mouth. He sensed that Mac dared not fire the gun for fear of alerting a guard, and leapt at the American with the knife held high. Mac smashed the gun into the Arab’s wrist and the blade flew across the room.

Mac’s foot shot out and hooked around Achmed’s bare leg. Fayeed swivelled and started to fall, and McCafferty, holding the sub machine-gun now in both hands, looped the sling around the Arab’s neck twisting the gun until the knot was tight. Using the weapon like a straight arm in a Chinese stranglehold, he imprisoned the Arab’s head and rammed his knee into the small of Achmed’s back, the rifle a rigid bar on the Arab’s throat. No other noise came from Achmed Fayeed, pseudo-princeling of Bahrain, and he died in less than a minute, his face suffused, his sight masked by bursting blood vessels, his mouth engorged by the swollen tongue.

Slinging the sub machine-gun once more across his back, and partially concealing it with his anorak in case anyone spotted it as American issue, McCafferty escorted Sabrina downstairs under cover of Fayeed’s machine-pistol. He had noticed another jeep in the interior courtyard, loaded with supplies, and three more in the car-park.

The castle seemed empty, but Mac was treading warily in the event that the ringer was still around, for he had not been among the passengers. Neither could he chance meeting a guard who might be on first-name terms with the ringer. When he reached the courtyard, an orderly was packing the last of the supplies on the jeep. He glanced curiously at McCafferty and the girl, but made no comment.

Sabrina whispered, ‘Where is everybody, for God’s sake?’

‘Gone,’ Mac replied tersely. ‘They left in a bus. Where to, I don’t know. I only wish I did. What’s more, I’ve no idea how we’re going to find them.’

‘The boy, Feisal, too,’ Sabrina said, ‘was he with them? I’ve got to know, because he’s ill, and I’m the only one who can treat him.’

Mac confirmed, low-voiced, that Feisal had been on the bus.

They made their way across the drawbridge, passing what seemed to be the only three remaining guards. One, who had been leaning against an entrance pillar, came upright and alert when he saw McCafferty.

‘Back so soon?’ he inquired in thick, heavily-accented English.

‘Orders,’ Mac said.

The guard’s round, pockmarked face took on a puzzled expression, and he murmured something in Serbo-Croat to one of the others. Then he fixed his eyes on Mac again and said, carefully, ‘Orders from where? Mister Smith left long before you did.’

McCafferty glanced at the car-park and saw only two jeeps: the ringer must have used one to join the main party at wherever it was the hostages had been taken.

He plucked the communicator from his belt and sneered, ‘There are other ways of receiving orders than having somebody shout them at you, dummy. If you want to know, I was sent back to get her –’ indicating Sabrina.

‘Isn’t the Arab looking after her?’ the guerilla asked with a suggestive leer.

Mac grinned. ‘He was. Now he’s recovering.’

The guard laughed and translated for his friends. McCafferty said he had been told by Smith to bring Sabrina in immediately. Achmed and the other sentries were to wait a further half-hour, and follow in the last jeep.

‘And the supply-truck?’ the guerilla inquired, waving his machine-gun towards the internal yard.

‘It’s to go as soon as it’s ready,’ Mac ordered.

‘To the caves?’

‘Where else?’

Mac prodded Sabrina towards the nearest jeep, and she drove it out of the car-park on to the road.

‘Caves?’ she mused.

‘Seems like it. Anyway, it’s the only clue we have. What we must do now is get behind the supply-truck and follow it, and we’ve got only this one vehicle. As I need it myself, I don’t quite see how we’re going to manage.’

They rounded a bend in the road and Mac could see in the distance the red and white cross-bar of the road barrier. A guerilla lounged indolently beside the weighted end.

‘Damn it,’ McCafferty cursed, ‘I was afraid of this. We have to pick up Bert Cooligan at some stage, and I wanted everyone from the castle to think we’d gone straight to the caves.’

‘What will you do?’

‘What I have to.’

He motioned to her to stop by the barrier, and got out of the jeep just as the sentry started to press down on the leaded fulcrum.

‘Speak English?’ Mac asked the guerilla.

‘A little,’ the man replied unsurely.

Mac pointed at the guard’s chest, and then in the direction of the castle.

‘ You – go back there ,’ he instructed.

The Yugoslav nodded cheerfully, slung his rifle, and turned to leave. As he did so, McCafferty threw an arm around his throat and drove Achmed Fayeed’s knife into his back. The sentry slumped to the ground without a cry, and Mac dragged him to the downward slope and rolled the body into a patch of undergrowth.

‘Now what?’ Sabrina asked.

McCafferty ditched the knife and said, ‘I’ve just remembered that we do have more than one vehicle.’

‘That’s right,’ Sabrina put in excitedly, ‘Bert got away on a motor-cycle.’

Mac nodded. ‘You take the jeep and follow the supply-truck, and I’ll recover the bike and use it to link up with Philpott.’

‘Why not the other way round?’ she returned. ‘I’d be less noticeable on the bike, with a crash-helmet, and Mr Philpott would have a more comfortable ride in the jeep.’

McCafferty shook his head wonderingly and replied, ‘I might have known it. I suppose you were the High School scramble champion?’

Sabrina winked at him. ‘Not quite, but I made him teach me how to ride.’

They squared the ground where Mac thought the motorcycle might be, and Sabrina found it.

‘It’s in one piece,’ she shouted triumphantly, hauling it upright and jumping on the starter. ‘And what’s more it works.’