Warren Murphy: Survival Course

"Affirmative, Monterrey. Advise we are at thirty-two thousand feet and taking evasive maneuvers to evade unknown approaching object."

"Are you reporting UFO?"

"No, dammit. I don't know what this thing is!"

"UFO. Royer, Air Force One," Monterrey said laconically.

"Dammit," Captain Flagg muttered, feeling the flying wheel go stiff in his hands. "Oh, my God!" he said.

"What?" gasped the copilot.

"The wheel. It's not responding."

"Hydraulics are fine," the copilot said, looking at his array of warning lights. They were amber, not red.

"It won't move."

"I'll try mine."

Before the copilot could take over, his flying wheel moved of its own accord.

"You got it?" the captain asked.

"No."

"What?"

"I'm not touching it," the copilot snapped. "See for yourself."

Captain Nelson Flagg looked over to the copilot's wheel. It was moving to port, putting the aircraft into a slideslip.

"What the hell is happening here? She's flying herself."

"Let's try to bring her back together."

The captain and the copilot put their shoulders into it, trying to hold their wheels steady. The wheels moved as if unseen hands had control of them.

"No go!" the copilot said in defeat.

"This damn ship!" Flagg grated.

Then he forgot all about his cursing as a sputtering incandescent object shot up past their windscreen and, turning sharply, came right at them.

The elevators abruptly moved of their own accord, throwing Air Force One into a steep dive. The approaching rocket disappeared from view.

"I lost it!" the copilot barked, craning to see out his side window. He caught a flash of one F-14 coming around, and only then became aware of the pilot's anxious chatter in his earphones. He ignored it, thinking, where'd that bogey go?

Then a flash of light burst off to starboard. The aircraft shuddered and the controls seized up.

Three red lights lit up, accompanied by the enginefire warning bell, shrill and insistent.

"Number four engine," the copilot called hoarsely. "EPRS on one, two, and three dropping fast."

"Fire the bottle and shut it down," Captain Flagg said crisply. Into his mike he said: "Monterrey. Monterrey. This is Air Force One."

"Royer. Go ahead."

"I am declaring a special emergency at this time. We're going to have to make an emergency landing in the desert."

"Royer. Happy landings, Air Force One," Monterrey said unconcernedly.

"Did he understand what you just said?" the copilot asked Flagg.

"No," returned Captain Flagg, looking down at the intensely black wrinkled mountains that were coming up to greet him. He hit the ident button, which automatically doubled his radar blip for Monterrey's benefit, and switched the transponder to emergency frequency. He wondered if it would matter.

In his private compartment, the President of the United States had already assumed the crash position -crouched over, hands on ankles and head between his knees-when he heard the mushy whump! of the explosion.

It had all happened so fast. A steward had come in to say there was a problem. That was all his Secret Service guards needed. They were on him like reporters, practically smothering him with their bodies, pistols raised ineffectually, looking at one another in sick fear.

"What was that?" one croaked.

"Explosion. "

"Oh, dear God, no."

The President heard them as if through a curtain of roaring in his ears. He was thinking that this was a highly undignified way for the leader of the free world to die. He felt the blood rush into his brain as the craft began to plummet.

He wondered if he would black out before the worst came. In his mind's eye he could see the seats in front of him accordion toward his helpless fetal-positioned body, the way he knew they did in airline crashes.

Crushed between airline seats. It was a ridiculous way for a President of the United States to die, he thought again.

And then he felt the seats in front of him press against the back of his neck, pushing his chin back into his seat. He didn't hear the horrible sound of impact, and he wondered why. In fact, he felt no fear. Only the comforting warmth of the seats around him as they pressed protectively against his coiled body. He felt safe. It was an odd feeling.

Then came a sudden jarring and the President of the United States thought no more thoughts.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he was trying to convince the guerrilla leader that, despite his UPI credentials, he was indeed an American spy.

"You admit this?" the guerrilla leader asked. He wore a colorful poncho over striped trousers. His tall charro hat was the least riotous bit of his costume. He looked like an Incan cowboy.

They were in the heart of the rain forest. Monkeys and macaws chattered in the distance. Remo, whose white T-shirt and black chinos were not exactly jungle attire, nevertheless did not sweat in the Turkish-bath atmosphere. Instead, he was idly wondering what the dozen or more members of El Sendero Luminoso were thinking of. As guerrillas of the Mao-inspired Shining Path revolutionary movement, they were dressed for moving unseen through a pinata forest, not a Peruvian rain forest. Or were pinatas Mexican, not Peruvian? Remo had no idea. He didn't get down south of the border much.

"Sure," Remo said nonchalantly. "I admit it. I'm an American spy."

"I do not believe you," the guerrilla leader-whose name was Pablo-said flatly.

"For crying out loud," Remo said in exasperation. "I just confessed. What more do you want?" His hands, which had been lifted to the canopy of foliage, jumped to his hips. The Belgian FAL rifles, which had started to wilt, came up again. Remo ignored them. There were only seven Senderistas. And only two had their safeties off. That made five of them dead meat from the get-go. The others would be a nuisance if things got sticky. But only that.

"The last time a man claiming to be a reporter came to this province," the Shining Path unit leader said, "we executed him on suspicion of being a CIA spy. Later we were told he was truly a reporter."

"That's right," Remo said. "He wasn't CIA at all."

"But before that," Pablo went on, "a man came here, also claiming to be a reporter. We did not molest this man, and later he bragged that he was DEA."

"He was stupid," Remo growled. "He should have kept his mouth shut. He got an innocent journalist killed. But you clowns are no better. You keep shooting the wrong people."

"Terrible things happen in war."

"What war? You guys are insurgents. If you go away, there's no war."

"We are the future of Peru," the rebel leader shouted, raising his machete in a macho salute. "We are spreading the revolutionary thoughts of Chairman Mao in our homeland."

"The way I hear it," Remo pointed out, "you also cut the fingers off little children."

"That is not our fault!" the rebel leader said. "The oppressors have coerced the people into participating in their sham elections. They make them dip their fingertips in ink and then make marks on their ballots, so the oppressors know by their blue fingertips who has voted and who has not." He smiled wolfishly. "We know too."

Remo's deep-set eyes narrowed. "So you chop off a finger from a child here and a child there, and pretty soon the parents get the message."

"It works."

"It's barbaric."

"You do not understand, yanqui. We are forced to do these things. We tried shooting peasants as an example, but the survivors still insisted on voting."

"Imagine that."

"We find it puzzling too," Pablo mused. "But we are in the right. These children suffer so that future generations will grow up in a Maoist workers' paradise where there are no oppressors, and everyone thinks in harmony. As Chairman Mao once said, 'The deeper the oppression, the greater the revolution.' "