Anthony Horowitz - Eagle Strike

“Time to roll!” Cray announced.

Alex and Sabina were led back to the truck. Cray climbed into the jeep next to Henryk, who was driving, and they set off. It was difficult for Alex to see what was happening now as he only had a view out of the back, but he guessed that they had left the car park and were following the perimeter fence around the airport. The alarms seemed to have got louder; presumably they were getting nearer to them. A number of police sirens erupted in the distance and Alex noticed that the road had got busier as cars tore past, the drivers desperate to get away from the immediate area.

“What"s he doing?” Sabina whispered.

“The plane isn"t on fire,” Alex said. “Cray"s tricked them. He"s evacuating the airport. That"s how we"re going to get in.”

“But why?”

“Enough,” Yassen said. “You don"t speak now.” He reached under his seat and produced two gas masks which he handed to Alex and Sabina. “Put these on.”

“Why do I need it?” Sabina asked.

“Just do as I say.”

“Well, it"ll ruin my make-up.” She put it on anyway.

Alex did the same. All the men in the truck, including Yassen, had gas masks. Suddenly they were completely anonymous. Alex had to admit that there was a certain genius to Cray"s scheme.

It was a perfect way to break into the airport. By now all the security personnel would know that a plane carrying a deadly nerve agent was about to crash-land. The airport was in the throes of a full-scale emergency evacuation. When Cray and his miniature army arrived at the main gate, it was unlikely that anyone would ask them for ID. In their biochemical suits they looked official.

They were driving official-looking vehicles. The fact that they had arrived at the airport in record time wouldn"t be seen as suspicious. It was more like a miracle.

It happened exactly as Alex suspected.

The jeep stopped at a gate on the south side of the airport. The guards there were both young.

One of them had only been in the job for a couple of weeks and was already panicking, faced with a red alert. The cargo plane hadn"t landed yet but it was getting closer and closer, stumbling out of the air. The fire was worse, clearly out of control. And here were two trucks and an army vehicle filled with men in white suits, hoods and gas masks. He wasn"t going to argue.

Cray leant out of the door. He was as anonymous as the rest of his men, his face concealed behind the gas mask. “Ministry of Defence,” he snapped. “Biochemical Weapons division.”

“Go ahead!” The guards couldn"t hurry them through fast enough.

The plane touched down. Two fire engines and an assortment of emergency vehicles began to race towards it. Their truck overtook the jeep and came to a halt. Looking out of the back, Alex saw everything.

It started with Damian Cray.

He was sitting in the passenger seat of the jeep and had produced a radio transmitter. “It"s time to raise the stakes,” he said. “Let"s make this a real emergency.” Somehow Alex knew what was about to happen. Cray pressed a button and at once the plane exploded, disappearing in a huge fireball that erupted out of it and at the same time consumed it.

Fragments of wood and metal spun in all directions. Burning aviation fuel spilt over the runway, seeming to set it alight too. The emergency vehicles had fanned out as if to surround the wreckage, but then Alex realized that they had received new orders from the control tower.

There was nothing more they could do. The pilot and his crew on the plane were certainly dead.

Some unknown nerve gas could even now be leaking into the atmosphere. Turn round. Get out of there. Go!

Alex knew that Cray had cheated whoever had flown the plane, killing them with exactly the same cold-blooded ruthlessness with which he killed anyone who got in his way. The pilot would have been paid to send out the false alarm and then to fake a crash landing. He wouldn"t have known that there was a load of plastic explosive concealed on board. He might have expected a long stay in an English prison. He hadn"t been told his job was to die.

Sabina wasn"t watching. Alex couldn"t see anything of her face—the gas mask had fogged up—

but her head was turned away. For a moment he felt desperately sorry for her. What had she got into? And to think that this had all begun with a holiday in the South of France!

The truck jerked forward. They were inside the airport. Cray had managed to short-circuit the entire security system. Nobody would notice them—at least not for a while. But the questions still remained. What had they come for? Why here?

And then they slowed down one last time. Alex looked out. And at last everything made sense.

They had stopped in front of a plane, a Boeing 747-200B. But it was much more than that. Its body had been painted blue and white, with the words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA written across the main fuselage and the Stars and Stripes emblazoned on its tail. And there was the eagle, clutching a shield, just below the door, mocking Alex for not having guessed before. The eagle that had given Eagle Strike its name. It was the presidential seal and this was the presidential plane, Air Force One. This was the reason why Damian Cray was here.

Alex had seen it on the television in Blunt"s office. The plane that had brought the American president to England. It flew him all over the world, travelling at just below the speed of sound.

Alex knew very little about it, but then virtually all information about Air Force One was restricted. But one thing he did know. Just about anything that could be done in the White House could be done on the plane, even while it was in the air.

Just about anything. Including starting a nuclear war.

There were two men standing guard on the steps that led up to the open door and the main cabin.

They were soldiers, dressed in khaki combat gear and black berets. As Cray got out of the car, they brought up their guns, moving into a position of alert. They had heard the alarms. They knew something was happening at the airport but they weren"t sure what it had to do with them.

“What"s going on?” one of them asked.

Damian Cray said nothing. His hand came up and suddenly he was holding a pistol. He fired twice, the bullets making hardly any sound—or perhaps the noise of the gun was somehow dwarfed by the immensity of the plane. The soldiers twisted round and fell onto the tarmac.

Nobody had seen what had happened. All eyes were on the runway and the still-burning debris of the cargo plane.

Alex felt a surge of hatred for Cray, for his cowardice. The American soldiers hadn"t been expecting trouble. The president was nowhere near the airport. Air Force One wasn"t due to take off for another day. Cray could have knocked them out; he could have taken them prisoner. But it had been easier to kill them; already he was putting the gun back into his pocket, two human lives simply brushed aside and forgotten. Sabina stood next to him, staring in disbelief.

“Wait here,” Cray said. He had removed his gas mask. His face was flushed with excitement.

Yassen Gregorovich and half the men ran up the steps onto the plane. The other half stripped off their white suits to reveal American army uniforms underneath. Cray hadn"t missed a trick. If anyone did chance to turn their attention away from the cargo plane, it would seem that Air Force One was under heavy guard and that everything was normal. In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth.

More gunfire came from inside the plane. Cray was taking no prisoners. Anyone in his way was being finished without hesitation, without mercy.

Cray stood next to Alex. “Welcome to the VIP lounge,” he said. “You might like to know, that"s what they call this whole section of the airport.”