Kingfisher

' It's all right,' Charlie whispered. 'It's over.' He checked himself, surprised that again he'd spoken in Russian. Spread- eagled over the man's body he could only see his head, pale and with the skin stretched drum-tight, and the reflection where the tears ran.

'You walk at my speed,' Charlie said, louder, and pulled the man up, arms round the flabbiness of his waist. He didn't know whether they'd made the dead ground of the wing or not. Hell of a weight the bugger was, had to carry him really, made him use muscles he'd forgotten. In step, an exhausted dance routine… just a few more seconds and they'd be clear, out of range. Charlie didn't look back, his eyes unwavering on the pole in the perimeter fence that he had chosen.

'Not long now,' he said. 'Just a few more yards. Then it's over.'

And endlessly beating through his mind the memory of the hunched and coiled figure in the doorway, the gun clamped to his shoulder, the saucer eyes expanded behind the sight. Be a bloody killing job now. Have to cut you down, Isaac, have to, won't we? Because you're not offering any other way.

Isaac had not fingered in the doorway.

One fierce and uncontrolled burst of gunfire with the barrel pulling high and left and he had realized that the opportunity to cut down the fugitive was lost. Perhaps he could have taken the Briton with an aimed shot, but it would have been a lucky one, and the wing was looming into his orbit. He realized his reactions had been slow, dulled by lack of sleep, but still slow, and sufficient to endanger them all. And the girl had again failed. Pity, really, because she was a part of them, from the same blood, but she had failed when they needed her. Not all her fault, partly his own, had underestimated the man who came, and had been tricked and would suffer for it. It was a calm evaluation that he made, stemming from the same calmness that immediately took him away from the open space, where the rifles that were trained on him could have exacted a revenge.

Could no longer rely on the girl. Obvious, and should have been seen earlier, but proven now.

So which of them could be relied on? Rebecca lay slumped on the carpet, the pistol still in her two hands as if the shock of firing it had toppled her. David, quiet and without comment, apart from them, taking refuge at the far end of the aircraft where he could make believe that his work was in watching the passengers. They have lost their faith, the two of them; they do not believe any more in escape.

He shouted to David, 'There is still time till ten o'clock and we will do then as we have promised.'

There was no reply, and he expected none. He did not even bother to gaze down the aisle to witness David's reaction. Like sheep they would follow him, and like sheep they would scatter if he faltered.

George Davies lay on his stomach beside the sniper behind the forward wheel of the central tanker.

'Could you have had him?'

'The one with 'the curly hair, with the SMG? No problem.'

'There was no instruction, you were right not to fire.'

'Three, four seconds I had him.'

"They haven't clarified on it yet. Up till now it's been not to shoot unless we can get the two men, both of them together. And I have to call in and ask.'

'Take a bloody light year that; they won't hang about for us.'

'Always the same when you bring a coach trip down from

London to handle it.'

'Any talk of us going in and busting it open?'

"Not at the moment. Can be done if they want it, but it's not ideal.'

'Make any difference, what the ciwie did, pulling that chap out?' The marksman spoke from the side of his mouth, conversationally and without deference to rank. Head never moving, steady on a line down the rifle barrel, searching the greyness of the door's opening.

'Shouldn't think so, there was nothing on the net about it first. Reckon he acted off his own bat, didn't think out the consequences, just couldn't sit there and watch it all in glorious technicolour.,

'Had a point there.'

'We'll have to see.'

All the years they'd trained for this, exercises and rehearsal runs, sometimes thinking it was for real, usually knowing it wasn't. All the alerts, all the false alarms. Living and sleeping the problem for four years since the squad was formed, and he didn't know the answers. 'Expert' he was supposed to be, and he didn't know. Nobody did for that matter, but it didn't make the pill any sweeter.

The television camera with the long lens showed the committee in the tower that Charlie Webster had reached the safety of the cropped grass at the side of the runway. He was on his knees beside the man that he had rescued. The episode was completed. They waited for him to call in on the radio, and when there had been no transmission presumed that the set was broken.

The Assistant Chief Constable gave rapid orders, content that he was again able to perform a function, and separated from the tiresome world of conjecture and interpretation. A civilian ambulance should be sent to the pair. Under no circumstances should they be allowed to take cover behind the petrol tankers some fifty yards to their left: those in the plane should not have the chance of even a glimpse of the troops, and should continue to believe that the vehicles were abandoned, untenanted. Clitheroe mentioned to any who cared to listen that a major breakthrough had been achieved: they now had in their possession an eyewitness from the aircraft who would be able to furnish an up-to-the-minute description of the state of mind of both hi-jacker and hostage. The Home Secretary remained by the monitor that showed the interior of the aircraft recorded by the fish-eye. Isaac occasionally obliged by coming into view, but David stayed at the far end of the aircraft and was not seen. The girl passed the length of the aisle as if communicating messages. Still no sound from the microphones that were serviced by sheepish and frustrated technicians.

'Has Mr Webster's action helped or hindered us?'

He spoke to the room in general, not turning from the set, his hands clamped on the sides of his cheeks, elbows firmly on the table, feeling the tiredness that was common to all who had spent the last five and a half hours in the tower; a tiredness that came not from lack of sleep but from the frustration of playing the part continuously of voyeurs, unable to alter significantly the course of events.

The Assistant Chief Constable had finished his delivery of instructions.

'It's not yet ten, seven minutes or so to go, and there's seventy more they can pick from. What Mr Webster did may have had the opposite effect to what we have been hoping for. In effect he may have warmed them up.' The policeman knew that his words were not welcome, but time he was heard out and his experience and knowledge realized. 'It's not the sort of thing that is likely to weaken them – quite the reverse. It's a slap in the face for them. I would expect them to try to hit back.'

' I think you're wrong,' said the Home Secretary quietly. 'I hope so. We were all prepared to sit here and watch that poor man die. We had reconciled ourselves to it, justified our non-interference in a way we would have done with an inter- ministerial memorandum. We had passed the buck. That man is now alive because a decisive step was taken. We have a little dignity now. Not much, because it was not we who authorized Mr Webster's action. But we have some, and dignity is important…'

'Minister, by the time the day's over we may have some dignity and we may have three or six dead passengers. The two don't equate on my scales.' The back of his neck, clipped and smooth, was reddening where it met with the white laundered shirt above the pressed collar of his tunic.