engineer’s seat; at her shoulder stood the darkhaired girl. She wore the cartridge belt across the shoulder of her bright red shirt, like a bandolier and she carried the big ugly pistol on her hip.
Ingrid held the microphone to her lips, and combed the fingers of her other hand through the thick golden tangle of her tresses as she spoke. One hundred and ninety-eight British subjects. One hundred and forty-six American nationals-” She was reading the list of her captives. “There are one hundred and twenty-two women on board, and twenty-six children under the age of sixteen years.” She had been speaking for nearly five minutes and now she broke off and shifted in her seat, turning to smile at Karen over her shoulder. The darkhaired girl smiled in return and reached across to caress the fine mass of golden hair with a narrow bony hand, before letting it drop back to her side.
“We have copied your last transmission.”
“Call me Ingrid.” She spoke into the mike with the smile turning into a wicked grin. There was a moment’s silence as the controller in the tower recovered from his shock.
“Roger, Ingrid. Do you have any further messages for us?”
“Affirmative, Tower. As this is a British aircraft and as three hundred and forty-four of my passengers are either British or American,
I want a spokesman, representing the embassies of those countries. I
want him here in two hours” time to hear my terms for the release of passengers.”
“Stand by, Ingrid. We will be back to you immediately we have been able to contact the ambassadors.”
“Don’t horse around,
Tower.” Ingrid’s voice snapped. “We both know damned well they are breathing down your neck.
Tell them I want a man here in two hours otherwise I am going to be forced to put down the first hostage.” Peter Stride was stripped down to a pair of bathing trunks, and he wore only canvas sneakers on his feet.
Ingrid had insisted on a face-to-face meeting, and Peter had welcomed the opportunity to assess at close range.
“We’ll be covering you every inch of the way there and back,”
Colin Noble told Peter, fussing over him like a coach over his fighter before the gong. “I’m handling the gunners, personally.” The snipers were armed with specially hand-built .222 magnums with accurized barrels that threw small light bullets with tremendous velocity and striking power. The ammunition was match-grade, each round lovingly hand finished and polished. The infra-red telescopic sights were readily interchangeable with the laser sights, making the weapon deadly accurate either in daylight or at night. The bullet had a clean, flat trajectory up to seven hundred yards.
They were perfectly designed man-killers, precision weapons that reduced the danger to bystanders or hostages. The light bullet would slam a man down with savage force, as though he had been hit by a charging rhinoceros, but it would break up in his body, and not over-penetrate to kill beyond the target.
“You’re getting into a lather,” Peter grunted. “They want to talk, not shoot not yet, anyway.”
“The female of the species-” Colin warned, that one is real poison.”
“More important than the guns are the cameras, and sound equipment.”
“I went up there and kicked a few arses.
You’ll get pictures that will win you an Oscar my personal guarantee.” Colin checked his wristwatch. “Time to go. Don’t keep the lady waiting.” He punched Peter’s shoulder lightly.
“Hang loose,” he said, and Peter walked out into the sunshine,
lifting both hands above his shoulders, palms open, fingers extended.
The silence was as oppressive as the dry fierce heat, but it was intentional. Peter had frozen all air traffic, and had ordered the shut down of all machinery in the entire terminal area. He did not want any interference with his sound equipment.
There was only the sound of his own footfalls, and he stepped out briskly but still it was the longest walk of his life, and the closer he got to the aircraft, the higher it towered above him. He knew that he had been required to strip almost naked, not only to ensure that he carried no weapons, but to place him at a disadvantage to make him feel ill at ease, vulnerable. It was an old trick the Gestapo always stripped the victim for an interrogation so he held himself proud and tall, pleased that his body was so lean and hard and muscled like an athlete’s. He would have hated to drag a big, pendulous gut and sagging old-man’s tits across those four hundred yards.
He was halfway there when the forward door, just behind the cockpit, slid back and a group of figures appeared in the square opening. He narrowed his eyes: there were two uniformed figures, no three British Airways uniforms, the two pilots and between them the shorter slimmer feminine figure of a stewardess.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, but beyond them he could make out another head, a blonde head but the angle and the light were against him.
Closer, he saw that the older pilot was on the right,
short-cropped grey curls, ruddy round face that would be Watkins, the commander. He was a good man, Peter had studied his service record.
He ignored the co-pilot and stewardess and strained for a glimpse of the figure beyond them, but it was only when he stopped directly below the open hatch that she moved to let him get a clear view of her face.
Peter was startled by the loveliness of that golden head, by the smooth gloss of young sun polished skin and the thundering innocence of wide-set, steady, green eyes for a moment he could not believe she was one of them, then she spoke.
“I am Ingrid,” she said. Some of the most poisonous flowers are the loveliest, he thought.
“I am the accredited negotiator for the British and American
Governments,” he said, and switched his gaze to the beefy red face of
Watkins. “How many members of your commando are aboard? “he asked.
“No questions!” Ingrid snapped fiercely, and Cyril Watkins extended four fingers of his right hand down his thigh without a change of expression.
It was vital confirmation of what they already suspected, and
Peter felt a rush of gratitude towards the pilot.
“Before we discuss your terms, Peter said, “and out of common humanity, I would like to arrange for the wellbeing and comfort of your hostages.”
“They are well cared for.”
“Do you need food or drinking water?” The girl threw back her head and laughed delightedly.
“So you can dope it with laxative and have us knee-deep in shit?
Stink us out, hey?” Peter did not pursue it. The doped trays had already been prepared by his doctor”
“You have a gunshot casualty on board?”
“There are no wounded aboard,” the girl denied flatly, cutting her laughter short but Watkins made the circular affirmative sign of thumb and forefinger, effectively contradicting her, and Peter noticed the spots of dried blood on the sleeves of his white shirt. “That’s enough,” Ingrid warned Peter. “Ask one more question and we’ll break off-“
“All right,” Peter agreed quickly. “No more questions.”
“The objective of this commando is the ultimate downfall of the brutally fascist, inhuman, neo-imperialistic regime that holds this land in abject slavery and misery denying the great majority of the workers and the proletariat their basic rights as human beings.” And that,
thought Peter bitterly, even though it’s couched in the garbled jargon of the lunatic left, is every bit as bad as it can be. Around the world hundreds of millions would have immediate sympathy, making
Peter’s task just that little bit more difficult. The hijackers had picked a soft target.
The girl was still speaking, with an intense, almost religious fervour, and as he listened Peter faced the growing certainty that the girl was a fanatic, treading the thin line which divided sanity from madness. Her voice became a harsh screech as she mouthed her hatred and condemnation, and when she had finished he knew that she was capable of anything no cruelty, no baseness was beyond her. He knew that she would not stop even at suicide, the final act of destroying the Boeing, its passengers and herself he suspected she might even welcome the opportunity of martyrdom, and he felt the chill of it tickle up along his spine.
They were silent now, staring at each other, while the hectic flush of fanaticism receded from the girl’s face and she regained her breath, and Peter waited, controlling his own . misgivings, waiting for her to calm herself and Continue.
