Unlatching the lid on the long metal box he flipped it open. For a moment or two he just stared at what the case contained, but then he reached inside and ran his fingertips lovingly over the nearly four-foot-long Stinger ground-to-air missile, and smiled.
Chapter 4
In the Orly Airport’s Security Operations room the direct line from the control tower buzzed.
Police Sergeant Marie-Lure Germain answered it. “Security, Germain.”
“Ah, Marie-Lure, there’s an Air Service truck parked by the inner marker just off the end of zero-eight. What are you showing in your log?”
“Just a moment, Raymond,” she said. Raymond Flammarion was the day shift tower supervisor.
He was a stickler for detail. No one liked him but everyone respected his abilities.
Nothing appeared on the situation board which showed activity in and around the airport.
She turned back to her console. “Nothing here.”
“Well, I am looking at the van through binoculars this very moment, ma cherie. The rear door is open, but I don’t see anybody out there. And you know, considering Interpol’s warning…?”
“I’ll check it out.”
“Please do, and get back to me. There’s not an aircraft in or out today that is not completely full, if you catch my meaning.”
“Give me a minute, Raymond. Somebody probably forgot to file.” Marie-Lure hung up, and punched up the number for the gate guard hut out there on her operations phone.
The connection was made immediately and the number began to ring.
At twenty-three, Marie-Lure was one of the youngest members of Orly’s security staff which, augmented as it was just now from the Police Contingency Pool out of Paris, numbered nearly one hundred people. But she was conscientious and professional. She’d been trained at the Academie de Police in Paris, and had graduated in the top five percent of her class.
After five rings without answer, she broke the connection and redialed. Again there was no answer. It was possible the phone was out of order, and it was possible that both officers had stepped away from the hut. But just now it was bothersome.
She put down the phone and beckoned the shift supervisor, Lieutenant Jacques Bellus, who ponderously got up from behind his desk on the raised dias and came over. He’d accepted an early retirement two years ago as a Chief Inspector with the Paris Police to take this job. It was much safer.
“Have the bad people finally arrived?” he asked.
“Flammarion has spotted an Air Service maintenance truck off the end of zero-eight.
He wants to know what we have on it.”
Bellus glanced up at the situation board.
“We show nothing,” Marie-Lure said. “And now there is no answer from security out there.”
“Who is on duty this morning?”
Marie-Lure brought up the information on her computer. “Capretz and Gallimard.”
Bellus grunted. “Have you called Air Service?”
“I didn’t want to alarm anyone yet.”
“Well, call them, and I’ll try the guard hut again,” Bellus said and he picked up the operations phone.
Marie-Lure telephoned the Air Service Dispatch Office across the field at the Air France Service Hangar. The dispatcher answered on the first ring.
“Air Service.”
“This is Orly Security. What are your people doing out at the inner marker off zero-eight this morning? We’re showing nothing on our board.”
“There shouldn’t be anyone there, so far as I know,” the young man replied. “Moment.”
Marie-Lure could hear the shuffle of papers, and a couple of seconds later the dispatcher was back.
“The work order is here. Apparently some mec
stuck it in the wrong order. Looks like an unscheduled adjustment on the marker frequency.
Sorry, but I didn’t know a thing about this. Someone will get the axe.”
“Send a runner over with a copy of the work order, would you?”
“As soon as possible. We’re busy this morning.”
“Merci.” Marie-Lure hung up.
Bellus shook his head and hung up. “Still no answer. What’d Air Service have to say for itself?”
“The work order was apparently misplaced. They’ll send it over as soon as they can.”
“Have we got anybody nearby this morning?”
“I think Dubout might still be over by one-eight. He could get over the back way, but he’d have to cross the runway.”
“Get him on the radio, and then get authorization from the tower.”
“Do you want to delay air traffic for a few minutes?” she asked.
Bellus pondered the suggestion for a moment, but then shook his head. “As long as it’s a legitimate Air Service order, I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“Yes, sir,” Marie-Lure said, and she got on the airport security frequency to raise Sergeant Dubout.
The passengers on Swissair 145 would be in the final boarding process by now. Boorsch stood out of sight from anyone who might be looking this way from the tower or the terminal, and studied the plane with the binoculars. The boarding tunnel was still in place, but the baggage compartment hatches in the belly of the Airbus had been closed, and the baggage handlers had withdrawn.
The air was suddenly very still and thick with the odors of the airport and of Paris.
French smells, somehow, that Boorsch found offensive. Frogs were filthy people, even worse than the sub- human Polaks or Kikes, although France itself was a pleasant enough country.
Boorsch lowered the glasses, then raised them again to study the tower, and then the maintenance hangars across from the main terminal. Normal activity, so far as he could see. Nothing out of the ordinary. If any alarms had been sounded, they were not outwardly visible.
Sooner or later, of course, airport security would realize that something might be wrong with their access road guards out here, though the presence of this van would cause no real questions. He’d personally taken care of that earlier this morning during the shift change at the Air Service Dispatch office.
Someone would come out to investigate. That was why his timing had to be so tight.
Only minutes now and he would be finished here and he could make his escape.
Laying the glasses aside, Boorsch carefully removed the Stinger missile and its handheld launcher from its metal container. The unit, which was about four feet long and a little less than four inches in diameter, weighed thirty-one pounds, including the reusable launcher and the rocket with its solid-fuel propellant, high-explosive warhead and infrared heat-seeking guidance system.
In theory the missile was simple to use. Point it at a heat-emitting target. Uncage the firing circuits, and when the missile’s sensing circuitry locked on to a viable target a steady tone would sound in the operator’s ear. At that moment the user pushed the fire button, and the Stinger was away, accelerating almost immediately to a speed of one thousand feet a second, with an effective range of four thousand yards.
In practice however, first-time users almost always missed even the easiest of targets.
Like using a shotgun to shoot clay pigeons, the operator needed to lead the target … especially an accelerating target such as a jetliner taking off.
Of the six ex-STASI comrades who’d trained with the Stinger in Libya, Boorsch had been the best, so when this emergency had developed, he’d been the natural choice for the assignment.
“Don’t let us down, Karl,” he’d been instructed. “This is important to the project.
Very important.”
The walkie-talkie in the front of the van came to life. “Three,” the man patrolling the N7 transmitted.
Carefully laying the missile down, Boorsch hurried around to the front, and snatched up the walkie-talkie.
