It’s a British aircraft, and the final destination would probably have been chosen to further complicate the issue and inhibit any counteraction.” Parker paused, and a small crease of worry appeared for a moment in the broad smooth forehead.
“I have put Mercury on condition Alpha as well if this M is a strike the final destination could just as easily be eastwards of the aircraft’s last reported position.” Atlas’s offensive arm comprised three identical units.
Thor would be used only in Europe or Africa. Mercury was based on the American Naval base in Indonesia and covered Asia and Australasia,
while Diana was in Washin ton itself and ready for counteraction in either of the American continents.
“I have Tanner of Mercury on the other relay now. I will be back to you in a few seconds, Peter.”
“Very well, sir.” The screen went blank, and in the chair beside him Colin Noble lit one of his expensive
Dutch cheroots and crossed his ankles on the desk in front of him.
“Seems the great god Thor came down to earth for a little poon tang When he’d finished pleasuring one of the vestal virgins he thought he’d let her know the honour she’d been given. “I’m Thor,” he told her. ““Tho she agreed, “but it wath loth of fun.”” Peter shook his head sorrowfully. “That’s funny?” he asked.
“Helps to while away the time.” Colin glanced at his wristwatch.
“If this is another false alarm, it’s going to make it thirteen straight.” He yawned. There was nothing to do.
It had all been done before. Everything was in the ultimate state of readiness. In the huge Hercules transport, every item of a comprehensive arsenal of equipment was ready for instant use. The thirty highly trained soldiers were embarked. The flight crews of both aircraft were at their stations, the communications technicians had set up their links with satellites and through them to the available fligence computers in Washington and London. It remained only to wait the greater part of a soldier’s life was spent waiting, but
Peter had never become hardened to it. It helped now to have the companionship of Colin Noble.
In a life spent in the company of many men it was difficult to form close relationships. Here in the smaller closed ranks of Thor in shared endeavour they had achieved that and become friends, and their conversation was relaxed and desultory, moving casually from subject to subject, but without relaxing the undercurrent of alertness that gripped both men.
At one stage Kingston Parker came on the screen again to tell them that search and rescue aircraft had found no indications at the last reported position of 070, and that a photographic run by the “Big Bird”
reconnaissance satellite had been made over the same area, but that film would not be ready for appraisal for another fourteen hours.
Speedbird 070 was now one hour six minutes past “operations normal” and suddenly Peter remembered Melissa-Jane. He asked communications for a telephone line and dialled the cottage. There was no reply, so the driver would have collected her already. He hung up and rang Cynthia in Cambridge.
“Damn it, Peter. This really is most inconsiderate of you.”
Freshly aroused from sleep, her voice was petulant, immediately awakening only Antipathies. “Melissa has been looking forward to this-“
“Yes, I know, and so have U and George and I had arranged-“
George, her new husband, was a Political History don; despite himself
Peter quite liked the man. He had been very good to Melissa-Jane.
“The exigencies of the service.” Peter cut in lightly and her voice took on a bitter edge.
“How often I had to listen to that I hoped never to hear it again.” They were on the same futile old treadmill and he had to stop it.
“Look, Cynthia. Melissa is on her way” In front of him the big television screen lit and Kingston Parker’s eyes were dark with regret,
as though he mourned for all mankind.
“I have to go,” Peter told the woman whom once he had loved, and broke the connection, leaning forward attentively towards the image on the screen.
“The South African radar de fences have painted an unidentified target approaching their airspace,” Kingston Parker told him. “Its speed and position correspond with those of 070. They have scrambled a Mirage flight to intercept but in the meantime I’m assuming that it’s a militant strike and we’ll go immediately to condition Bravo, if you please, Peter.”
“We are on our way, sir.” And beside him Colin Noble took his feet off the desk and thumped them together onto the floor. The cheroot was still clamped between his teeth.
The target was live and the pilot of the leading Mirage F. 1
interceptor had his flight computer in “attack” mode and all his weaponry missiles and cannon were armed. The computer gave him a time to intercept of thirty-three seconds, and the target’s heading was constant at 210” magnetic and its ground speed at 483 knots.
Ahead of him the dawn was rising in wildly theatrical display.
Avalanches of silver and pink cloud tumbled down the sky, and the sun,
still below the horizon, flung long lances of golden light across the heavens. The pilot leaned forward against his shoulder straps and lifted the Polaroid visor of his helmet with one gloved hand, straining ahead for the first glimpse of the target.
His trained gunfighter’s eye picked out the dark speck against the distracting background of cloud and sunlight and he made an almost imperceptible movement of the controls to avoid the direct head-on approach to the target.
The speck swelled in size with disturbing rapidity as they converged at combined speeds of nearly fifteen hundred miles per hour,
and at the instant he was certain of his identification the leader took his flight, still in a tight “finger five” , up into a vertical climb from which they rolled out neatly five thousand feet above the target and on the same heading, immediately reducing power to conform in speed to the big aircraft far below.
“Cheetah, this is Diamond leader we are visual, and target is a
Boeing 747 bearing British Airways markings.”
“Diamond Leader, this is
Cheetah, conform to target, maintain five thousand feet separation and avoid any threatening attitudes. Report again in sixty seconds.”
Major-General Peter Stride’s executive jet was arrowing southwards and leaving its enormous protege lumbering ponderously along in its wake.
Every minute increased the distance between the two aircraft, and by the time they reached their ultimate destination wherever that might be there would probably be a thousand miles or more separating them.
However, the big Hercules’s slow speed became a virtue when the need arose to take its heavy load of men and equipment into short unsurfaced strips in unlikely corners of the earth perhaps in the “hot and high” conditions that a pilot most dreads.
It was the Hawker’s job to get Peter Stride to the scene of terrorist activity as swiftly as possible, and the general’s job once there to stall and procrastinate and bargain until Colin Noble’s assault team caught up with him.
The two men were still in contact, however, and the small central television screen in front of Peter was permanently lit with a view of the interior of the Hercules’s main hold. When he lifted his head from his work, Peter Stride could see a picture of his troops, all in the casual Thor overalls, lounging or sprawled in abandoned attitudes of relaxation down the central aisle of the Hercules. They also were veterans at the hard game of waiting, while in the foreground Colin
Noble sat at his small work desk, going through the voluminous check list for “condition Charlie” which was the next state of alert when terrorist activity was confirmed.
Watching Colin Noble at work, Peter Stride found a moment to ponder once again the enormous cost of maintaining Atlas, most of it paid by the United States intelligence budget, and the obstacles and resistance that had been overcome to launch the project in the first place. Only the success of the Israelis at Entebbe and of the Germans at Mogadishu had made it possible, but there was still violent opposition in both countries to maintaining a dual national counteraction force.
With a preliminary click and hum the central screen of Peter’s communications console came alive and Dr.
