Spandau Phoenix (98 page)

Smuts had expected something like this, and despite Hess's optimism, he had prepared for treachery. He had two marksmen waiting in the corridors on either side of the reception hall, and he had reinforcements on the way. This morning, when Major Graaff had called to report -that he had taken Dieter Hauer into custody, Smuts had requested a contingent of NIS men to holster his own force. Graaff had enthusiastically agreed. Smuts,hoped they would arrive soon.

He took a last look at his marksmen, then opened the great teak door and stepped back.

Wearing flowing white robes, Prime Minister Jalloud swept into the hall and threw his arms wide in greeting.

"Herr Horn!" he exclaimed. "The historic day has come! Allah has brought us here safely. May He smile upon our business!"

Hess nodded curtly. "Guten Abend, Herr Prime Minister."

Dr. Sabri and the four bodyguards stepped over the threshold.

"Where is Major Karami?" Smuts asked. "I had hoped to see him again."

Jalloud smiled. "I'm afraid Major Karami was called away at the last moment to attend to pressing military matters.

I'll bet he was, Smuts thought wryly, flexing his fists to channel off tension. "Sorry to hear it."

"Would anyone like refreshments?" Hess asked. "It is a long flight from Tripoli."

"I'm afraid Our Leader has forbidden any delay, Herr Horn," Jalloud said softly. "He awaits our return with the utmost anticipation."

"To business then. I assume you wish Dr. Sabri to verify.

the weapon's operational readiness before we load it?"

"If we might so impose," Jalloud said timidly.

In that instant, inexplicably, Smuts decided that if trouble was coming, Prime Minister Jalloud knew nothing about it.

The Afrikaner signaled his marksmen by touching his right eyebrow with his right hand. He intended to trigger any treachery long before the Libyans gained access to the basement complex.

"With all respect, Mr. Prime Minister," he said, "I must ask that your bodyguards wait here. We allow no fiream the basement."

Jalloud looked uncomfortable. "But Our ]Leader provided these men to assist with the loading of the weapon."

"The bomb weighs more than a thousand kilograms," Smuts replied.

"It must be loaded mechanically. In fact, I have my doubts about your jet's ability to carry both the weapon and passengers. I had assumed you would bring a cargo plane."

"I see," Jalloud said slowly, wondering why no one in Tripoli had thought of this. Or perhaps, he thought with a shiver, someone did. "By all means," he said. He turned to the bodyguards. "You will wait here while Dr. Sabri checks the weapon."

Taken aback by this request, the soldiers hesitated. Their orders had been to wait until they gained access to the basement before carrying out their mission. But the Afrikaner had forced their hand.

Simultaneously reaching the same conclusion, Major Karami's four assassins raised their Uzis as one.

Their faces showed even more surprise than Prime Minister Jalloud's when Smuts's concealed marksmen opened fire with their R-5

assault rifles. The gray-clad-Afrikaners emptied their clips into the line of assassins from eight meters away, blowing all four backward against the great teak door.

"The elevator!" Smuts shouted. "Everyone get inside!

Move!"

While Hess's wheelchair whirred toward the open elevator, Prime Minister Jalloud and Dr. Sabri shouted ri-antic Arabic and crawled along behind him. Jalloud took a bullet in the left arm, but in his panic he barely felt it. Smuts had looked back to make sure that Hess was safe inside the elevator when a stunned Libyan.sat up with a wild cry and let off a long burst of bullets in his direction.

"Body armor!" Smuts shouted. "Head shots only!"

Bullets ricocheted through the marble-floored reception hall. One Libyan took Smuts's advice before the Afrikaners did; his teflon-coated 9mm slugs exploded the head of one of Smuts's marksmen like a cantaloupe. The surviving Afrikaner avenged this loss, then scurried to shelter behind a large rosewood chiffonier against the far wall.

Another Libyan darted outside to use the doorway as a firing position.

Two seconds later he staggered back into the great hall, blood spurting from his throat. Smuts's Zulu driver appeared in the doorway with a long hunting knife in his hand. The Zulu moved quickly to another downed Arab, dispatched him with his knife, then fell to a long burst from the surviving Libyan assassin. Smuts's marksman knocked down the last Libyan as Smuts himself hustled Jalloud and the dazed physicist into the cubicle where Hess waited.

"Stay here!" Smuts ordered his marksman. "I'll reinforce you soon."

The elevator door slid shut. Ten seconds later, the last Libyan to fall opened his eyes, brought up his Uzi and fired a sustained burst from the floor. Two slugs struck the Afrikaner guard in the head, killing him instantly. Groaning in agony, Major Karami's last surviving assassin began crawling toward the elevator.

From Hans and Ilse's bedroom the skirmish in the reception hall sounded like the Battle of the Bulge. When the firing stopped, Hans shoved open the door.

"Where do we go?" he asked. "Should we try to get out?

They're probably guarding the main doors."

Ilse poked her head outside the door. "There's nowhere to run, I told you! We've only got onr, chance! Stern!"

Hans could think of no better plan. "All right," he said.

"But stay behind me, understand?"

Another burst of machine gun fire rattled in the reception hall.

"Behind you," Ilse murmured, wondering where Smuts might be holding Stern.

Keeping close to the wall, they started down the corridor, away from the sound of the gunfire.

High in the observatory tower, Pieter Smuts searched the ' airstrip through a pair of powerful Zei@s field glasses. Dusk was falling fast.

He saw the wreckage of the JetRangers shot down last night spread out over the eastern end of the runway. In the midst of the debris sat Hess's own Lear, scorched black and missing most of its tail. There was a single guard standing beneath the Libyan Leaijet.

No one else.

Where was the main body of the assault force? Where was Major Karami?

Behind Smuts, Hess nodded restlessly in his wheelchair.

He was trying desperately to fathom the reason for the Libyan soldiers'

attempt to kill their prime minister. Jalloud himself sat propped against a bank of satellite recei moaning from the pain of his shattered arm. Shaking in fear, Dr. Sabri ministered to him as best he could.

"No sign of Karami yet," Smuts said, pulling the field glasses away from his eyes. "But it will be dark soon. That's when he'll come."

"VAo?" Hess murmured, still dazed by the suddenness of the attack.

"Yes," Jalloud groaned. "It is Karami. It must be."

Smuts glanced at the Vulcan gun. A trim young Afrikaner sat in the firing cage, his alert eyes checking the fearsome weapon's nightvision system. Three more gray-clad South Ahicans manned the radar and communications gear.

"Why?" Hess cried indignantly. "Has Qaddafi gone mad?"

Smuts chuckled quietly. "He always has been. We knew this was a risk.

We needed more time."

14 Sir," interrupted a radar controller, "I show one aircraft approaching from the north. He's very close. He must have been flying ten feet off the veld!"

Smuts pressed a button on his console. "Attention unidenfified aircraft," he said tersely. "You have entered restricted airspace.

Turn back now or you will be fired upon. Repeat, turn or be fired upon."

"It must be the Air Zimbabwe jet," said the radar man, "An hour ago I marked him as a civil airliner bound for -Jo'burg. He must have sneaked off his flight path after he went into the ground clutter."

Smuts waved his hand to the Vulcan gunner. The Afrikaner donned his targeting goggles and depressed two foot pedals. With a deep hydraulic hum the entire turret rotated to face the airstrip.

Inside the approaching Yak-42, Major Ilyas Karami stood behind the anxious pilot and listened indifferently to Smuts's flint-edged threats.

"Do they have anti-aircraft guns, Major?" the pilot asked.

"Shut up!" Karaini snapped. "You know what to say."

The pilot picked up his mike. "This is Air Zimbabwe Flight 132," he said in a quavering voice. "We are in disWe have an avionics malfunction. Do you read?"

-"MajorKarami,"crackledSmuts'svoice."Thisisyourfi-,W warning.

Turn back now or be shot out of the sky."

"Your mother fucks goats!" Karami bellowed.

"He knows who you are!" cried the pilot. "The mission's been compromised! We're unarmed! We must turn back!"

Suddenly a brilliant line of tracer fire flashed.up through the gray clouds. It passed high over the nose of the jet, then swung back and forth, searching out the airborne intruder.

"Allah protect us!" the pilot wailed, instinctively beginning an evasive maneuver. He had flown MiG fighters in combat, but to sit helpless in an unarmed airliner was a new and terrifying experience for,him.

Karami pulled a pistol from his hip holster and laid the barrel against the pilot's temple. "Land this whore!" he shouted. "Now!"

"Where?" shrieked the pilot.

"I see the flares!" the copilot yelled. "Dive!"

Steeling his nerves, the pilot banked sharply and headed down toward a line of flares laid by Jailoud's "bodyguards."

It would be a belly-flop landing, but he didn't care. Never in his life had he wanted so badly to get on the ground.

Smuts cursed as he saw the chain Of green starbursts light up the center line of the runway. "Shoot out the flares!" he screamed.

"They can't land without them!"

6,M y goggles are going crazy!" the gunner protested. "I can't see a bloody thing!"

"Take them off! Shoot!"

The roar of the Vulcan blotted out everything. Hess covered his ears and shouted something, but no one heard him.

The gunner made a valiant effort to extinguish the flares, but only succeeded in knocking a few out of line. The main effect of the Vulcan was to rip the surface of the newly laid asphalt to pieces.

Suddenly Hess gasped in horror. Dropping out of the sky like a great prrhistoric bird was the Libyan Yak-42. It roared past the turret in profile as it fell earthkvard.

"There they are!" Smuts yelled. "Fire! Fire!"

The gunner depressed his trigger. Scarlet tracer rounds arced from the Vulcan's flaming barrels, reaching out for the black apparition ...

Suddenly the turret's elevator door hissed open. Smuts turned in disbelief, then dived protectively across Hess's wheelchair.

Inside the elevator-Trapped on the floor with his back against the wall-was the surviving Libyan assassi screamed a curse, raised his Uzi and fired. Bullets sprayed wildly throughout the confined space, hammering the polycarbonate windows and tearing through the faceplates of sensitive electronic gear. One of the South African technicians took a round in the back of the head and fell dead over his console. The radar technician managed to draw his pistol and get off three shots before a ricochet caught him in the neck.

And then there was silence. The Libyan had run out of ammunition.

Smuts heaved himself off of Hess, picked up the dead radar man's pistol, and shot the Libyan twice through the face. It took him three more seconds to realize the true significance of the silence. The Vulcan had stopped firing! When Smuts whirled he saw why. His gunner had been blinded by flying glass. Worse, the Vulcan's electronic targeting system had been damaged beyond repair!

"The prime minister has been hit again!" Dr. Sabri cried.

Smuts took no notice of the physicist. He darted to the broad window.

The Libyan jet had landed safely! Through his field glasses he watched fifty commandos spill onto the tarmac. He forced himself to stay calm.

Soon the Libyans would be at the edge of the shallow bolo that surrounded the house. Inside the killing zone. He dropped his field glasses and jerked the bleeding gunner from the Vulcan's operating chair, then climbed in himself. He put his eyes to the visual aiming goggles and scanned the airstrip. Beneath a wide door in the rear of the Yak-42 he saw Arabs lowering some type of artillery piece from the plane by means of winches. Smuts grinned like a demon and opened fire.

The armor-piercing bullets streaked across the Wash and raced toward the plane.

But just as the tracer beam reached the laboring Arabs, Smuts released the trigger. Destroying the jet might not be the smartest option in these circumstances, he realized. With no means of escape, the Libyans might fight twice as fiercely to take the house. As he watched the Arabs beneath the plane, Smuts noticed something sitting about ten meters behind the Yak-42's tail. It was a pickup truck.

What the hell is that for? he wondered. Then he knew. They'd brought the truck to tow the big gun and to haul their stolen bomb from the house to the plane! Smuts jammed his thumb down on the Vulcan's trigger. It took longer than normal to acquire the Toyota using visual aiming only, but once he did, the uranium-tipped slugs chewed the Toyota into scrap metal in seconds.