Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (175 page)

"God bless you, my boy. God bless you." And her body trembled against him. Gently Peter set her aside and went on, and though he smiled it was with his lips only, for there was steel in his heart.

There were Thor guards on the main administrative offices on the mezzanine floor armed with submachine guns, but they stood aside for him and Peter went through.

Colin Noble was still in his black skin-tight assault suit with the big .45 on his hip, and a cheroot clamped between his teeth.

"Take a look at this lot," he called to Peter. The desk was covered with explosives and weapons. "Most of it's ironcurtain stuff but God alone knows where they got these." He indicated the double-barrelled shot pistols. "If they had these custom built, it would have cost them plenty."

"They have got plenty," Peter answered drily. "The ransom for the OPEC ministers was one hundred and fifty million dollars, for the Braun brothers twenty five million, for Baron
Altmann another twenty million that's the defence budget for a nation." He picked up one of the shot pistols and opened the breech.

It had been unloaded.

"Is this the one she used to gun down the hostages?" Colin shrugged. "Probably, it's been fired through both barrels." Colin was right, there were black specks of burned powder down the short smooth bores.

Peter loaded it with buckshot cartridges from the pile on the desk, and walked on down the long office with the covered typewriters on the deserted desks and the airline travel posters decorating the wall.

Along one wall the three bodies of the hijackers were laid out in a neat row, each encapsulated in its separate translucent plastic envelope.

Two Thor men were assembling the contents of their pockets personal jewellery, meagre personal effects and they were packing them into labelled plastic bags.

The body of Peter's Number Two was against the far wall, also in his plastic body-bag, and Peter stooped over him. Through the plastic he could make out the features of the dead man's face. The eyes were wide and the jaw hung open slackly. Death is always so undignified,
Peter thought, and straightened up.

Still carrying the shot pistol, Peter went on into the inner office, and Colin Noble followed him.

They had the girl on another stretcher, a plasma drip suspended above her, and the Thor doctor and his two orderlies were working over her quietly, but the young doctor looked up irritably as Peter pushed open the door, then his expression changed as he recognized Peter.

"General, if we are going to save this arm, I have to get her into theatre pretty damned quickly. The joint of the shoulder is shattered-" The girl rolled the lovely head towards Peter. The thick springing golden hair was matted with drying blood, and there was a smear of it across one cheek.

Now her face was completely drained of all colour, like the head of an angel carved out of white marble. The skin had a waxen, almost translucent, lustre and only the eyes were still fierce, not dulled by the painkilling drugs that they had injected into her.

I have asked the South Africans for co-operation-" the doctor went on, they have two top orthopaedic surgeons standing by, and they have offered a helicopter to fly her into the Central Hospital at Edenvale."

Already she was being treated, even by Thor, as the major celebrity she was. She had taken her first step along the rose-strewn pathway to glory, and Peter could imagine how the media would extol her beauty they had gone berserk with extravagant praise for the swarthy ferrety-eyed Leila Khaled with her fine dark mustache they would go over the top for this one.

Peter had never known any emotion so powerful as the emotion that gripped him now.

"Get out," he said to the doctor.

Sir? "The man looked startled.

"Get out," Peter repeated, "all of you." And he waited until the opaque glass door closed behind them, before he spoke to the girl in conversational tones.

"You have made me abandon my own principles, and descend to your level." The girl watched him uncertainly, her eyes flickered to the shot pistol that Peter held dangling from his right hand.

"You have forced me, a career soldier, to disobey the orders of a superior officer in the face of the enemy." He paused. "I used to be a proud man, but when I have done what I must do now I will no longer have much of which to be proud."

"I demand to see the American
Ambassador," said the girl huskily, still watching the pistol. "I am an American citizen. I demand the protection-" Peter interrupted her,
again speaking quickly. "This is not revenge. I am old and wise enough to know that revenge has the most bitter taste of all human excesses."

"You cannot do it-" The girl's voice rose, the same strident tones, but now shriller still with fear. "They will destroy you." But
Peter went on as though she had not spoken. "It is not revenge, he repeated. "You, yourself, gave the reason clearly. If you continue to exist, they will come to get you back. As long as you live, others must die and they will die stripped of all human dignity. They will die in terror, the same way you murdered-"

"I am a woman. I am wounded. I am a prisoner of war," screamed the girl, trying to struggle upright.

"Those are the old rules, Peter told her. "You tore up the book,
and wrote a new one I am playing to your rules now. I have been reduced to your level."

"You cannot kill me," the girl's voice range wildly. "I still have work-"

"Colin," Peter said quietly, without looking at the man.

"You'd better get out now." Colin Noble hesitated, his right hand on the butt of the Browning, and the girl rolled her head towards him imploringly.

"You can't let him do it."

"Peter, -" Colin said.

"You were right Colin." Peter spoke quietly. "That kid did look a lot like Melissa-Jane." Colin Noble dropped his hand from the pistol and turned to the door. Now the girl was shrieking obscenity and threat, her voice incoherent with terror and hatred.

Colin closed the door softly and stood with his back to it. The single crash of shot was shockingly loud, and the stream of filthy abuse was cut off abruptly. The silence was even more appalling than the harrowing sounds which had preceded it. Colin did not move. He waited four, five seconds before the door clicked open and General
Peter Stride came out into the main office. He handed the shot pistol to Colin and one barrel was hot in his hand.

Peter's handsome aristocratic features seemed ravaged, as though by a long wasting disease. The face of a man who had leapt into the abyss.

Peter Stride left the glass door open, and walked away without looking back. Despite the terrible expression of despair, he still carried himself like a soldier and his tread was firm.

Colin Noble did not even look through the open door.

"All right," he called to the doctor. "She's all yours now." And he followed Peter Stride down the broad staircase.

There was a long hard gallop over good going and open pasture to the crest of the ridge, with only one gate. Melissa-Jane led on her bay filly, her Christmas gift from Uncle Steven. She was in the midst of the passionate love affair that most pubescent girls have with horses, and she looked truly good astride the glistening thoroughbred.

The cold struck high colour into her cheeks and the braid of honey-coloured hair thumped gaily down her back at each stride. She had blossomed even in the few weeks since last Peter had seen her and he realized with some awe and considerable pride that she was fast becoming a great beauty.

Peter was up on one of Steven's hunters, a big rangy animal with the strength to carry his weight, but the gelding was slogging hard to hold the flying pair that danced ahead of him.

At the hedge, Melissa-Jane scorned the gate, gathered the filly with fine strong hands and took her up and over.

Her little round bottom lifted out of the saddle as she leaned into the jump, and clods of black earth flew from the filly's hooves.

As soon as she was over she swivelled in the saddle to watch him,
and Peter realized that he was under challenge.

The hedge immediately appeared to be head-high and he noticed for the first time how the ground fell away at a steep angle beyond. He had not ridden for almost two years, and it was the first time he had been up on this gelding but the horse went for the jump gamely, and they brushed the top of the hedge, landed awkwardly, stumbled with
Peter up on his neck for an appalling instant of time in which he was convinced he was to take a toss in front of his daughter's critical eye; caught his balance, held the gelding's head up and they came away still together.

"Super-Star!" Melissa-Jane shouted laughing, and by the time he caught her she had dismounted under the yew tree at the crest, and was waiting for him with her breath steaming in the crisp calm air.

"Our land once went right as far as the church-" Peter pointed to the distant grey needle of stone that pricked the belly of the sky, " and there almost to the top of the downs." He turned to point in the opposite direction.

"Yes." Melissa-Jane slipped her arm through his as they stood close together under the yew. "The family had to sell it when
Grandfather died. You told me. And that's right too. One family shouldn't own so much." Peter glanced down at her, startled. "My God,
a comrnu rust in the family. An asp in the bosom." She squeezed his arm. "Don't worry, Daddy darling. It's Uncle Steven who is the bloated plutocrat. You're not a capitalist you aren't even employed any more-" And the instant she had said it, her laughter collapsed around her and she looked stricken. Oh, I didn't mean that. I truly didn't." It was almost a month now since Peter's resignation had been accepted by the War Office, but the scandal had not yet run out of steam.

The first heady paeans of praise for the success of Thor's Delta strike had lasted only a few days. The glowing editorials, the full front pages, the lead news item on every television channel, the effusive messages of congratulations from the leaders of the Western governments, the impromptu triumph for Peter Stride and his little band of heroes, had quickly struck an odd note, a sudden souring of the ecstasies.

The racist Government of South Africa had actually agreed to the release of political prisoners before the assault, one of the hijackers had been taken alive, and died of gunshot wounds received in the terminal buildings. Then one of the released hostages, a freelance journalist who had been covering the medical convention in Mauritius and was returning aboard the hijacked aircraft, published a sensational eye-witness account of the entire episode, and a dozen other passengers supported his claims that there had been screams from the fourth hijacker, screams for mercy, before she was shot to death after her capture.

A storm of condemnation and vilification from the extreme left of the British Labour Government had swept through the Westminster parliament, and had been echoed by the Democrats in the American
Congress. The very existence of the Thor Command had come under scrutiny and been condemned in extravagant tenons. The Communist parties of France and Italy had marched, and the detonation of an
M-26
hand grenade one of those stolen by the Baader-Meinhof gang from the
American base in Metz amongst the crowd leaving the Parc des Princes football stadium in Paris had killed one and injured twenty-three. A
telephone call to the offices of France Soir by a man speaking accented
French claimed that this fresh atrocity was revenge for the murder of four hijackers by the Imperialist execution squad.

Pressure for Peter's discharge had come initially from the
Pentagon, and there was very little doubt that Dr. Kingston Parker was the accuser, though, as head of Atlas, he was never identified, total secrecy still surrounding the project.

The media had begun to demand an investigation of all the circumstances surrounding Thor. And if it is ascertained that criminal irregularities did indeed exist in the conduct of the operation, that the person or persons responsible be brought to trial either by a military tribunal or the civil courts." Fortunately the media had not yet unravelled the full scope of Atlas Command. Only Thor was under scrutiny; they did not yet suspect the existence of either Mercury or
Diana.

Within the War Office and the governments of both America and
Britain, there had been much sympathy and support for Peter Stride but he had made it easier for his friends and for himself by rendering his resignation. The resignation had been accepted, but still the left was clamouring for more. They wanted blood, Peter Stride's blood Now
Melissa-Jane's huge pansy violet eyes flooded with the tears of mortification. "I didn't mean that. I truly didn't."

"One thing about being out of a job I have more time to be with my favourite girl." He smiled down at her, but she would not be mollified.

"I don't believe the horrible things they are saying. I know you are a man of honour, Daddy."

"Thank you." And he felt the ache of it,
the guilt and the sorrow. They were silent a little longer, still standing close together, and Peter spoke first.

"You are going to be a palaeontologist-'he said.

"No. That was last month. I've changed my mind. I'm not interested in old bones any more. Now I'm going to be a doctor, a child specialist."

"That's good." Peter nodded gravely. "But let's go back to old bones for a moment. The age of the great reptiles. The dinosaurs why did they fade into extinction?"

"They could not adapt to a changing environment." Melissa-jane had the answer promptly.

Peter murmured," - A concept like honour. Is it outdated in today's world, I wonder?" Then he saw the puzzlement, the hurt in her eyes, and he knew they had wandered onto dangerous ground. His daughter had a burning love for all living things, particularly human beings. Despite her age, she had a developed political and social conscience, distinguished by total belief in shining ideals and the essential beauty and goodness of mankind. There would be time in the years ahead for the agony of disillusion. The term "man or woman of honour" was Melissa-Jane's ultimate accolade.