Алистер Маклин - Air Force One is Down

‘That is your prerogative,’ Zeidan grunted, ‘and could well be your epitaph.’

‘If it is my epitaph, Sheikh Zeidan, I can promise you it will also be yours and that of your grandson.’

Latimer snapped from the darkening lip of the ledge, ‘You must be certifiable, Smith, if you think you can get away with killing all of us, because that’s what you’ll have to do, and take the ransom as well.’

Smith looked across at him, his good humour and confidence restored.

‘Fortunately for you, Major, I am neither insane nor an instinctual killer. But … if you provoke me too much, any of you, or if you should attempt to escape, you have my promise that you will not leave this place alive.’ He turned and remounted the stone steps, and left silence, doubt and terror behind him …

McCafferty had just been able to make out Sabrina’s Honda in the distance as he spun the wheel of the jeep to take the opposite direction for his appointment with Philpott. He reached the village without meeting another vehicle, recovered his pack from the postman’s daughter, and fortified himself with a few beers to while away the time. He didn’t have long to wait: he saw the helicopter before its engine noise reached him, and made a bet with himself, which he won, that the pilot would land in the same field where he himself had parked the UTVA. Mac saw Philpott stoop unnecessarily as he ran under the rotors, and appreciated how truly alone they were when the helicopter promptly took off again.

Philpott listened to McCafferty’s account, and questioned him closely on key points. When Mac had finished, Philpott said grimly, ‘So we still don’t know exactly where the hostages are, and we can’t find out until we make contact with Cooligan.’

‘That’s the size of it,’ Mac conceded.

‘Or what Sabrina’s doing, or whether she’s in danger.’

‘That, I must admit, is the part that worries me most,’ McCafferty replied.

She was at that moment squirming back down the hillside, mostly on her bottom, to repossess the Honda. She got to it undetected, kicked the motor into life, and was wheeling the machine on to the track to take the same route back to the castle, when she looked up and saw the helicopter bearing down upon her.

Dunkels had been airborne before Sabrina arrived at the caves. His radio link with the castle had revealed not only that Cooligan had not been recaptured, but also that Fayeed had been strangled, and that Sabrina Carver was missing. The German had analysed the confused message about the mysterious reappearance of Jagger at a time when the ringer ought to have been at the caves with Smith and the hostages.

He reported to Smith, who quickly grasped that the genuine McCafferty was back on the scene to ring the changes on his alter ego by posing as himself.

‘How can you be sure?’ Dunkels asked.

Smith rounded on him, his control slipping, fury twisting his features.

‘Jagger was here !’ he screamed, ‘so he couldn’t have been up there, idiot. He’s still here. Take the helicopter – now! Find Carver and bring her to me – alive. I must know Philpott’s movements. Look for a motorcycle … they’ll have abandoned the jeep.

‘McCafferty will have gone by now to join Philpott’s force, but Carver will be around here somewhere, on the motorcycle Cooligan used. Get her, Dunkels.’

‘How d’you know she’ll be around here?’ Dunkels asked unwisely as he turned to leave.

‘Because she’ll have followed the supply-jeep here,’ Smith sneered, almost frantic with rage now. ‘The timing fits, you fool. Get out! Now! And do not return without her.’

Sabrina ducked off the road and skidded to a halt under a sturdy beech tree. She could hear the Kamov circling overhead, and peered up into the branches. The sun was leaving the sky now, but the twilight air was crisp and clear, and she saw Dunkels at the controls ease the helicopter lower and lower until its blades threatened to decapitate her tree.

She unclipped the machine-pistol, took careful aim, and fired a burst through the foliage at the grey, swooping shape. Dunkels jerked back on the stick as a stray bullet ricocheted off the fuselage of the Kamov. He rose above the little copse and flew out of range, then buzzed her hiding-place like an angry wasp. He sighted a clear space to his left, and gained height again, banking sharply at the end of his spiral to signal his obvious intention of landing.

Sabrina took the bait. While the Kamov hovered a few feet from the ground she remounted the Honda, throttled up and roared away from the concealment of the trees. It was only when she heard the rising engine whine of the helicopter that she realised she had been tricked: Dunkels had merely made a landing feint to flush her out of cover.

She swore fluently and skirted a tufted hillock to crash through a hedge which she hoped might lead to another coppice, only to find herself in an even bigger field. There was a wood at the other side, though, and she was streaking towards it when Dunkels caught up with her again. The first bullets from his own machine-gun tore red divots out of the bumpy ground.

The German played cat-and-mouse with her, and she could see him through the perspex awning of the cockpit, laughing as he brought the helicopter down to block her path and force her to swerve dangerously away. Then he backed off and she resumed her course, but wrenched at the handlebars again as the rushing blades of the Kamov fanned the air only a few yards from her face. Dunkels chased her this time, forcing her back the way she had come until she spun the Honda round and, ducking low in the saddle, drove it straight under his wheels.

But she had neither the speed nor the manoeuvrability to elude him, and the end was inevitable, for Dunkels had noticed something she could not have seen: between the field and the copse that was her target lay a small pond, sunk into a dip in the ground, and not visible from her vantage-point.

As a sheepdog would, he herded her across the pasture, and like a rabbit fleeing the teeth of a snapping hound, Sabrina scuttled in the direction he wanted her to go, lurching and weaving to avoid the helicopter and the constant stream of bullets. She had hated being chased as a child, and when she was cornered, her resolve to fight always gave way to hysteria. She was sobbing now, and close to total panic when the Honda left the ground and back-flipped her off to dump both of them in the middle of the pond.

Sabrina lay stunned and half-drowning in the murky water. She came to as Dunkels gripped her by the collar and hauled her to the muddy bank. He stood astride her, letting her lay there in her misery. Then he leaned down, grasped her hair, pulled up her head and smashed his fist into her face.

For the second time she lost consciousness, and when her brain again struggled through the mists of returning awareness, the noise of the Kamov’s engine completed her disorientation. She collected her thoughts and flexed her arms and legs. Dunkels had not even considered it necessary to tie her.

Above the roar of the helicopter, Bert Cooligan caught the few words she managed to get out before Dunkels shot Sabrina’s communicator to pieces.

‘Bert!’ she screamed, ‘they’ve got me! They’re taking me to the caves!’

Sonya Kolchinsky felt oddly comforted by the presence of Brigadier Tomlin standing beside her in the prow of the motor launch, cutting through the Adriatic off the coast of Dalmatia. Since Philpott had been told he was in complete charge of the operation, Sonya had used UNACO’s authority to browbeat the Yugoslavians into yielding every ounce of assistance she could squeeze from them. With a fair-sized naval task-force at her disposal, she had bludgeoned the Deputy Minister of the Interior into conceding a NATO commanding officer. Tomlin had needed no second bidding, and jetted over from Naples almost before the words were out of the politician’s mouth.