She nodded again to Kurt, and with a toss of his head he flicked the lank locks of hair from his eyes and thrust the pistol into his belt.
From the locker above his head he brought down two of the plastic grenades. Holding one in each fist he pulled the pins with his teeth and held the rings hooked over his little fingers.
With his arms spread like a crucifix, he ran lightly down the aisle.
“These grenades are primed. Nobody must move, nobody must leave their seats no matter whatever happens. Stay where you are.” The fourth hijacker took up the cry from him, holding primed grenades in both hands above his head.
“Nobody move. No talking. Sit still. Everybody still.” He repeated in German and in French and his eyes had the same hard, glossy glitter of the drug high.
Ingrid turned back towards the flight deck.
“Come, sweetheart.” She placed an arm round the girl’s shoulder,
shepherding her towards the open hatchway but the child shrank away from her with dread.
“Don’t touch me, “she whispered, and her eyes were huge with terror. The boy was younger, more trusting. He took Ingrid’s hand readily.
He had thick curly hair, and honey brown eyes as he looked up at her. “Is my daddy here?” he asked.
“Yes, darling.” Ingrid squeezed his hand. “You be a good boy now,
and you’ll see your daddy very soon.” She led him to the open hatchway.
“Stand there,” she said.
Peter Stride was uncertain what to expect, as the boy stepped into the open hatchway high above him.
Then next to him appeared a plump middle-aged woman in an expensive but rumpled, high-fashion silk dress, probably a Nina Ricci,
Peter decided irrelevantly. The woman’s elaborate lacquered hairstyle was coming down in wisps around her ears, but she had a kindly humorous face and she placed a protective arm about the boy-child’s shoulders.
The next person was a taller and younger woman, with a pale sensitive skin; her nostrils and eyelids were inflamed pink from weeping or from some allergy and there were blotches of angry prickly heat on her throat and upper arms.
Under the loose cotton maternity dress her huge belly bulged grotesquely, throwing her off balance; she stood with her thin white legs knock-kneed awkwardly and blinked in the brilliant sparkling sunshine, her eyes still attuned to the shaded gloom of the cabin.
The fourth and last person was a young girl, and with a sudden blinding stab of agony below the ribs Peter thought it was
Melissa-Jane. It took a dozen racing beats of his heart before he realized it was not her but she had the same sweet Victorian face, -the classical English skin of rose petals, the finely bred body of almost woman wit h delicate breast-buds and long coltish legs below narrow boyish hips.
There was naked terror in her huge eyes, and almost instantly she seemed to realize that Peter was her hope of salvation. The eyes turned on him pleading, hope starting to awaken.
“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t let them hurt us.” So softly that
Peter could hardly catch the words. “Please, sir. Please help us.”
But Ingrid was there, her voice rising stridently.
“You must believe that what we promise, we mean. You and your evil capitalist masters must understand completely that we will not let a single deadline pass without executions. We have to prove that for the revolution we are without mercy. You must be made to understand that our demands must be met in full, that they are not negotiable. We must demonstrate the price for missing a deadline.” She paused. “The next deadline is midnight tonight. If our demands are not met in full by then you must know the price you will be made to pay.” She halted again, and then her voice rose into that hysterical shriek.
“This is the price!” and she stepped back out of sight.
Helpless with dread, Peter Stride tried to think of some way to prevent the inevitable.
“Jump!” he shouted, lifting both hands towards the girl.
“Jump, quickly. I will catch you!” But the child hesitated, the drop was almost thirty feet, and she teetered uncertainly.
Behind her, ten paces back, the darkhaired Karen and the blonde lion-maned girl stood side by side, and in unison they lifted the short, big bored pistols, holding them in the low double-handed grip,
positioning themselves at the angle and range which would allow the mass of soft heavy lead beads with which the cartridges were packed to spread sufficiently to sweep the backs of the four hostages.
“Jump!” Peter’s voice carried clearly into the cabin, and Ingrid’s mouth convulsed in a nervous rictus, an awful parody of a smile.
“Now!” she said, and the two women fired together. The two shots blended in a thunderous burst of sound, a mind-stopping roar, and blue powder smoke burst from the gaping muzzles, flying specks of burning wadding hurled across the cabin, and the impact of lead shot into living flesh sounded like a handful of watermelon pips thrown against a wall.
Ingrid fired the second barrel a moment before Karen, so this time the two shots were distinct stunning blurts of sound, and in the dreadful silence that followed the two men in the passenger cabins were screaming wildly.
“Nobody move! Everybody freeze!” For Peter Stride those fractional seconds seemed to last for long hours. They seemed to play on endlessly through his brain, like a series of frozen frames in a grotesque movie. Image after image seemed separated from the whole, so that forever afterwards he would be able to recreate each of them entire and undistorted and to experience again undiluted the paralysing nausea of those moments.
The pregnant woman took the full blast of one of the first shots.
She burst open like an overripe fruit, her swollen body pulled out of shape by the passage of shot from spine to navel, and she was flung forward so she somersaulted out into space. She hit the tarmac in a loose tangle of pale thin limbs, and was completely still, no flicker of life remaining.
The plump woman clung to the boy beside her, and they teetered in the open doorway around them swirled pale blue wisps of gunsmoke.
Though she kept her balance, the tightly stretched beige silk of her dress was speckled with dozens of tiny wounds, as though she had been stabbed repeatedly with a sharpened knitting needle. The same wounds were torn through the boy’s white school shirt, and little scarlet flowers bloomed swiftly around each wound, spreading to stain the cloth. Neither of them made any sound, and their expressions were startled and uncomprehending. The next blasts of sound and shot struck them solidly, and they seemed boneless and without substance as they tumbled forward, still locked together. Their fall seemed to continue for a very long time, and then they sprawled together over the pregnant woman’s body.
Peter ran forward to catch the girl-child as she fell, and her weight bore him to his knees on the tarmac. He came to his feet running, carrying her like a sleepy baby, one arm under her knees and the other around her shoulders. Her lovely head bumped against his shoulder, and the fine silken hair blew into his face, half blinding him.
“Don’t die,” he found himself grunting the words in time to his pounding feet. “Please don’t die.” But he could feel the warm wet leak of blood down his belly, soaking into his shorts, and dribbling down the front of his thighs.
At the entrance to the terminal buildings Colin Noble ran out a dozen paces and tried to take the child from his arms, but Peter resisted him fiercely.
Peter relinquished the frail, completely relaxed body to the Thor doctor and he stood by without word or expression of regret as the doctor worked swiftly over her.
Peter’s face was stony and his wide mouth clamped in a hard line when the doctor looked up at last.
“I’m afraid she’s dead, sir.” Peter nodded curtly and turned away.
His heels cracked on the echoing marble of the deserted terminal hall and Colin Noble fell in silently beside him. His face was as bleak and expressionless as Peter’s, as they climbed into the cabin of the Hawker command aircraft.
Sir William, you point at us for holding enemies of the State without trial.” The Foreign Minister leaned forward to point the accuser’s finger. “But you British discarded the citizen’s right of
