instruments in front of him, taking his eyes off the view outside the windscreen for only a moment.
“Vee-one,” Piaget warned to his right.
The Airbus was gathering speed rapidly now, and instead of sluggishly responding to his touch the rudder pedals and side-stick controller had come alive. They were flying, almost.
“Vee-R,” Piaget said.
“Rotate.” Elver eased back on the jet fighter-type stick to his left, and the jetliner’s nose came smoothly off the surface of the runway. With his right hand, he maintained the throttles all the way to their stops, and the plane seemed to surge forward.
“My numbers are green,” Piaget said.
The jetliner’s speed was approaching one hundred sixty knots, well into the partial flaps-down flying speed envelope for their weight. The runway markers were a complete blur.
“Vee-two,” Piaget announced.
“Lifting off,” Elver said, easing the stick back and the Airbus came off the runway, almost by itself, the bumpy ride instantly disappearing.
“On the numbers,” the first officer advised.
“Begin reducing flaps,” Elver ordered, and Piaget began retracting them. Their speed immediately started to increase and Elver eased the stick farther back, the plane barreling up into the cloudless sky.
Once out of the pattern, flaps up and landing gear retracted, Elver planned on turning over control to Piaget so that he could go back to the head. He was picking up a bug of some kind, and frankly, he felt like hell.
Boorsch’s stomach was tied in knots. He’d known excitement in his life, and he had been anticipating this moment ever since he’d gotten the call forty-eight hours ago.
But he’d never expected anything could give him such a lift, such intense pleasure as this.
The Stinger missile and launcher were comfortably heavy on his right shoulder where he stood behind the Air Service van. He could hear the roar of the huge Airbus, and he knew that it was off the ground now.
It was time.
Stepping away from the rear of the van, he raised the Stinger, finding and centering the jetliner’s bulk in the launcher’s sights. The plane was climbing directly toward him, impossibly loud and impossibly huge.
He no longer cared if he was visible from the tower. At this point no power on earth could prevent what was about to happen.
He lost the aircraft in the Stinger’s sights, but then got it again, centering the engine on the portside wing in the inner ring.
With his cheek on the conductance bar, he thumbed the missile’s activation switch and the launcher began to warble.
“A miss almost always comes from too early a shot,” the words of their instructor echoed in his ears. “In this business one must have the patience of Allah.”
Allah had nothing to do with it, but Boorsch did understand timing. The Stinger was a fine weapon, but it could not produce miracles.
“Give it a chance and it will perform for you as you wish.”
The jetliner was climbing now at an increasingly steep angle, its engines producing their maximum thrust and therefore their maximum heat.
He pushed the forward button, uncaging the missile’s infrared seeker head. Almost instantly the tone in his ear changed, rising to a high-pitched scream as the missile locked on to its target.
Still Boorsch waited, certain that by now someone in the tower must have spotted him and called security. Soon the airport and surrounding highways would be crawling with cops.
The Airbus passed directly overhead, and Boorsch led it perfectly.
At the last moment he raised the sights slightly, pulled the trigger, and the missile was off, the launcher bucking against his shoulder no harder than a 20-gauge shotgun.
Chapter 7
“Mori Dieul Raymond,” one of the tower operators shouted in alarm.
The moment they had spotted the lone figure emerging from behind the Air Service van, with what even at this distance was clearly recognizable as some sort of a missile, Flammarion had gotten on the phone to security with one hand and on the radio to flight 145 with the other.
The Swissair copilot came back first. “Swissair one-four-five.”
For an instant Flammarion stood with his mouth open, hardly believing what he was seeing with his own eyes. The missile had been fired.
“Abort! Abort!” he screamed into the microphone.
“Security, Bellus,” a voice on the telephone answered.
“Say again, tower?” the Swissair copilot answered calmly.
The missile’s exhaust trail was clearly visible in contrast against the perfectly blue sky. About one hundred feet above the ground it made a slight loop before it began its graceful curve up and to the west directly behind the departing jetliner.
In that short instant it struck Flammarion that the weapon was a live thing; a wild animal stalking its prey, which in effect it was.
But it was so incredibly fast.
“Abort!” he shouted as the missile suddenly disappeared.
For a split second Flammarion’s breath was caught in his throat. Something had happened.
The missile had malfunctioned. It had destroyed itself in mid-air. It had simply disintegrated, the pieces falling to earth much too small to be seen from this distance.
A fireball began to blossom around the engine on the left wing. Suddenly it grew to tremendous proportions, and pieces of the jetliner-these big enough to easily be distinguished from this distance-began flying everywhere.
Something had struck them on the port side, and the Airbus began to sag in that direction, slowly at first, but with a sickeningly increasing acceleration.
Alarms were flashing and buzzing all over the place, and Elver’s panel was lit in red.
“We’ve lost our portside engine,” Piaget shouted.
“I can’t hold it,” Elver shouted. “She’s going over!” He had the stick and right rudder pedal all the way to their stops, but still the jetliner continued to dive as she rolled over to port.
He thought it was almost as if they had lost their left wing. The entire wing!
His copilot, Piaget, who had been on the radio with the tower, was speaking loudly but calmly into the microphone. “Mayday, mayday, mayday! This is Swissair one-four-five, just off the end of runway two-six. We’ve lost control. We’re going in. We’re going in. Mayday, mayday, mayday!”
Elver reached out and chopped all power to the starboard engine. The powerful thrust on that wing was helping to push them over.
Piaget should be given a commendation for his coolness and dedication under pressure.
It was just a fleeting thought, replaced by the certainty that none of them were likely to survive beyond the next fifteen or twenty seconds.
The reduced thrust on the starboard wing seemed to have the effect of slowing their port roll, but only for a moment or two. Then they continued over.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday…!” Piaget was shouting into the microphone.
The ground was very close now. Looking out the windshield Elver estimated their altitude at less than one hundred feet.
He could hear people screaming in utter terror and hopelessness back in the passenger compartment, but a moment of calmness came over him now that he knew for sure he was going to die.
It was happening too fast, Elver thought. And much sooner than he’d ever expected.
The moment before impact he reached out for the master electrical switches.
