Authors: Wilbur Smith

Wild Justice (11 page)

BOOK: Wild Justice

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T
he other 747 had been grounded for servicing when the emergency began, and it was parked in the assembly area only a thousand yards from where Speedbird 070 stood, but the main service hangars and the corner of the terminal buildings effectively screened it from any observation by the hijackers.

Although it wore the orange and blue of South African Airways with the flying Springbok on the tail, it was an almost identical model to its sister ship. Even the cabin configurations were very close to the plans of Speedbird 070, which had been teleprinted from British Airways Headquarters at Heathrow. It was a fortunate coincidence, and an opportunity that Colin Noble had seized immediately. He had already run seven mock Deltas on the empty hull.

âAll right, you guys, let's try and get our arses out of low gear on this run I want to better fourteen seconds from the “go” to penetrationâ' His strike team glanced at one another as they squatted in a circle. on the tarmac, and there were a few theatrical rollings of eyes. Colin ignored them. âLet's go for nine seconds, gang,' he said and stood up.

There were sixteen men in the actual assault group â seventeen when Peter Stride joined them. The other members of Thor were technical experts â electronics and communications, four marksmen snipers, a weapons quartermaster, and a bomb disposal and explosives sergeant, doctor, cook, three engineering N.C.O.s under a lieutenant, the
pilots and other flight personnel â a big team, but every man was indispensable.

The assault group wore single-piece uniforms of close fitting black nylon, for low night visibility. They wore their gas masks loosely around their necks, ready for instant use. Their boots were black canvas lace-ups, with soft rubber soles for silence. Each man wore his specialized weapons and equipment either in a back pack or on his black webbing belt. No bulky bulletproof flak jackets to impede mobility or to snag on obstacles, no hard helmets to tap against metal and tell tales to a wary adversary.

Nearly all the group were young men, in their early twenties, hand picked from the U.S. Marine corps or from the British 22.SAS regiment that Peter Stride had once commanded. They were superbly fit, and honed to razor's edge.

Colin Noble watched them carefully as they assembled silently on the marks he had chalked on the tarmac, representing the entrances to the air terminal and the service hangars nearest to 070. He was searching for any sign of slackness, any deviation from the almost impossible standards he had set for Thor. He could find none. âAll right, ten seconds â to flares,' he called. A Delta strike began with the launching of phosphorus flares across the nose of the target aircraft. They would float down on their tiny parachutes, causing a diversion which would hopefully bunch the terrorists in the flight deck of the target aircraft as they tried to figure out the reason for the lights. The brilliance of the flares would also sear the retina of the terrorists' eyes and destroy night vision for many minutes afterwards.

âFlares!' shouted Colin, and the assault group went into action. The two âstick' men led them, sprinting out directly under the gigantic tail of the deserted aircraft. Each of them carried a gas cylinder strapped across his shoulder, to which
the long stainless steel probes were attached by flexible armoured couplings â these were the âsticks' that gave them their name.

The leader carried compressed air in the tank upon his back at a pressure of 250 atmospheres, and on the tip of his twenty-foot probe was the diamond cutting bit of the air-drill. He dropped on one knee under the belly of the aircraft ten feet behind the landing gear and reached up to press the point of the air-drill against the exact spot, carefully plotted from the manufacturer's drawing, where the pressure hull was thinnest and where direct access to the passenger cabins lay just beyond the skin of alloy metal.

The whine of the cutting drill would be covered by the revving of the jet engines of aircraft parked in the southern terminal. Three seconds to pierce the hull, and the second âstick' man was ready to insert the tip of his probe into the drill hole.

âPower off,' Colin grunted; at that moment electrical power from the mains to the aircraft would be cut to kill the air-conditioning.

The second man simulated the act of releasing the gas from the bottle on his back through the probe and saturating the air in the aircraft's cabins. The gas was known simply as FACTOR V. It smelled faintly of newly dug truffles, and when breathed as a five per cent concentration in air would partially paralyse a man in under ten seconds â loss of motor control of the muscles, unco-ordinated movement, slurred speech and distorted vision, were initial symptoms.

Breathed for twenty seconds the symptoms were total paralysis, for thirty seconds loss of consciousness; breathed for two minutes, pulmonary failure and death. The antidote was fresh air or, better still, pure oxygen, and recovery was rapid with no long-term after-effects.

The rest of the assault group had followed the âstick' men and split into four teams. They waited poised, squatting
under the wings, gas masks in place, equipment and weapons ready for instant use.

Colin was watching his stopwatch. He could not chance exposing the passengers to more than ten seconds of Factor V. There would be elderly people, infants, asthma sufferers aboard; as the needle reached the ten-second mark, he snapped.

âPower on.' Air-conditioning would immediately begin washing the gas out of the cabins again, and now it was âGo!'

Two assault teams poured up the aluminium scaling ladders onto the wing roots, and knocked out the emergency window panels. The other two teams went for the main doors, but they could only simulate the use of slap-hammers to tear through the metal and reach the locking device on the interior â nor could they detonate the stun grenades.

âPenetration.' The assault leader standing in for Peter Stride on this exercise signalled entry of the cabins, and Colin clicked his stopwatch.

âTime?' asked a quiet voice at his shoulder, and he turned quickly. So intent on his task, Colin had not heard Peter Stride come up behind him.

âEleven seconds, sir.' The courteous form of address was proof of Colonel Colin Noble's surprise. âNot bad â but sure as hell not good either. We'll run it again.'

âRest them,' Peter ordered. âI want to talk it out a bit.'

They stood together at the full windows in the south wall of the air traffic control tower, and studied the big red, white and blue aircraft for the hundredth time that day.

The heat of the afternoon had raised thunderheads, great purple and silver mushroom bursts of cloud that reached to the heavens. Trailing grey skirts of torrential rain they marched across the horizon, forming a majestic backdrop that was almost too theatrical to be real, while the lowering sun found the gaps in the cloud and shot long groping
fingers of golden light through them, heightening the illusion of theatre.

âSix hours to deadline,' Colin Noble grunted, and groped for one of his scented black cheroots. âAny news of concessions by the locals?'

âNothing. I don't think they will buy it.'

âNot until the next batch of executions.' Colin bit the end from the cheroot and spat it angrily into a corner. âFor two years I break my balls training for this, and now they tie our hands behind our backs.'

âIf they gave you Delta, when would you make your run?' Peter asked.

âAs soon as it was dark,' Colin answered promptly.

âNo. They are still revved up high on drugs,' Peter demurred. âWe should give them time to go over the top, and start downing. My guess is they will dope again just before the next deadline. I would hit them just before thatâ' He paused to calculate. ââ I'd hit them at fifteen minutes before eleven â seventy-five minutes before the deadline.'

âIf we had Delta,' Colin grunted.

âIf we had Delta,' Peter agreed, and they were silent for a moment. âListen, Colin, this has been wearing me down. If they know my name, what else does that gang of freaks know about Thor? Do they know our contingency planning for taking an aircraft?'

âGod, I hadn't worked it out that far.'

âI have been looking for a twist, a change from the model, something that will give us the jump even if they know what to expect.'

âWe've taken two years to set it up tightlyâ' Colin looked dubious. âThere is nothing we can change.'

âThe flares,' said Peter. âIf we went, we would not signal the Delta with the flares, we would go in cold.'

âThe uglies would be scattered all through the cabins, mixed up with passengers and crewâ'

âThe red shirt Ingrid was wearing. My guess is, all four of them will be uniformed to impress their hostages. We would hose anything and everybody in red. If my guess is wrong, then we would have to do it Israeli style.'

Israeli style was the shouted command to lie down, and to kill anyone who disobeyed or who made an aggressive move.

The truly important one is the girl. The girl with the camera. Have your boys studied the videotapes of her?'

They know her face better than they do Fawcett Majors',' Colin grunted, and then, âthe bitch is so goddamned lovely â I had to run the video of the executions three times for them, twice in slow motion, to wipe out a little of the old chivalry bit.' It is difficult to get a man to kill a pretty girl, and a moment of hesitation would be critical with a trained fanatic like Ingrid. âI also made them take a look at the little girl before they put her in a basket and took her down to the morgue. They're in the right mood.' Colin shrugged. âBut what the hell, Atlas isn't going to call Delta. We're wasting our time.'

âDo you want to play make-believe?' Peter asked, and then without waiting for an answer, âLet's make believe we have a Delta approval from Atlas. I want you to set up a strike timed to “go” at exactly 10.45 local time tonight. Do it as though it was the real thing â get it right in every detail.'

Colin turned slowly and studied his commander's face, but the eyes were level and without guile and the strong lines of jaw and mouth were unwavering.

âMake-believe?' Colin Noble asked quietly.

âOf course,' Peter Stride's tone was curt and impatient, and Colin shrugged.

âHell, I only work here,' and he turned away.

Peter lifted the binoculars and slowly traversed the length of the big machine from tail to nose, but there was no sign of life, every port and window still carefully covered
â and reluctantly he let his binoculars sink slightly until he was staring at the pitiful pile of bodies that still lay on the tarmac below the forward hatch.

Except for the electrical mains hook-up, the delivery of medicines and the two occasions when Peter himself had made the long trip out there, nobody else had been allowed to approach the machine. No refuelling, no refuse nor sanitary removals, no catering â not even the removal of the corpses of the murdered hostages. The hijackers had learned the lesson of previous hijacking attempts when vital information had been smuggled off the aircraft in refuse and sewerage at Mogadishu, and at Lod where the storming party had come disguised as caterers.

Peter was still gazing at the bodies, and though he was accustomed to death in its most obscene forms, these bodies offended him more deeply than any in his life before. This was a contemptuous flaunting of all the deepest rooted taboos of society. Peter was grimly content now with the decision of the South African police not to allow any television teams or press photographers through the main gates of the airport.

Peter knew that the world media were howling outrage and threats, protesting in the most extreme terms against the infringement of their God-given rights to bring into the homes of all civilized people images of dreadful death and mutilation, lovingly photographed in gorgeous colour with meticulous professional attention to all the macabre details.

Without this enthusiastic chronicling of their deeds, international terrorism would lose most of its impetus and his job would be a lot easier. For sneaking moments he envied the local police the powers they had to force irresponsibles to act in the best interests of society, then as he carried the thought a step further, he came up hard once again against the question of who was qualified to make such decisions on behalf of society. If the police made that
decision and exerted it, was it not just another form of the terrorism it was seeking to suppress? âChrist,' thought Peter angrily, âI'm going to drive myself mad.'

He stepped up beside the senior air traffic controller.

âI want to try again,' Peter said, and the man handed him the microphone.

âSpeedbird 070 this is the tower. Ingrid, do you read me? Come in, Ingrid.'

He had tried a dozen times to make contact in the last few hours, but the hijackers had maintained an ominous silence.

âIngrid, come in please.' Peter kept trying, and suddenly there was the clear fresh voice.

âThis is Ingrid. What do you want?'

BOOK: Wild Justice

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