The cabin door was still open and Sutter peered out, looking for the four CIA officers. There was no sign of them, but he knew there was no time to waste.
He seized Watts’ body around the chest and pulled the dead man to the rear of the passenger cabin, then opened the toilet door, dragged him inside and sat him on the bowl. Two minutes later, he jammed Pertwee on top of Watts and forced the door closed.
He walked back to the cockpit, quickly peeling off his white overall. Underneath, he was wearing the universal uniform of corporate pilots — a short-sleeved white shirt, very dark blue slacks and black shoes. He glanced out of the door. The other ‘ground engineer’ — Jeffrey Haig — looked up from his position near the foot of the steps, and Sutter nodded.
Moments later, Haig joined him, carrying a toolbox. It contained two special items they’d purchased that afternoon in Barcelona: a forged-currency detector and a set of assay tools designed to check the purity of precious metals.
‘You got the capsules?’ Sutter asked. Haig nodded silently and pulled a small plastic bottle from his pocket. ‘OK. I’ll drop the rubber jungle. Be quick.’
Haig walked back into the passenger compartment, where overhead panels had now opened and from which oxygen masks were dangling. He pulled on a bio-filter mask, opened the plastic bottle and, with a pair of tweezers, inserted one capsule into the oxygen tube feeding each mask. The capsules were a simple but clever design, with a central hole to allow free flow of oxygen, but containing a powerful and virtually odourless narcotic.
On his way back to the cockpit, Haig glanced out of the door and saw the four Americans leaving the terminal building. He re-entered the cockpit and dropped into the co-pilot’s seat. ‘They’re all on their way back now,’ he announced.
Sutter pulled on the blue jacket Watts had hung up in the crew wardrobe — it wasn’t a bad fit. He then stood at the cockpit door, his back towards the passenger cabin, as the CIA men resumed their seats. Then he walked across, scratching an imaginary itch on his forehead to partially shield his face, and closed the cabin door. But none of the passengers took the slightest notice of him.
Locking the cockpit door behind him, Sutter sat down in the captain’s seat. Haig was still working his way through the last couple of items on the checklist.
‘Strictly speaking,’ he remarked, ‘we should be doing these checks together.’
‘I trust you.’ Sutter grinned at him. ‘Finished?’ Haig nodded. ‘Good. Switch on the “seat belt” sign and let’s get going. But make sure you keep the toilet door locked. We don’t want one of our passengers going to take a leak and finding the john’s full of stiffs.’
The G450 taxied smoothly off the hardstanding towards the threshold of the active runway. Sutter held a commercial pilot’s licence and instrument rating in his real name and, though he’d never flown this model before, he had no doubt that he would be able to handle it.
Ten minutes after engine start, Sutter eased back on the control column, listened to the rumble as the landing gear retracted, and turned the aircraft gently onto an easterly heading for the transit across the Mediterranean and its next, and unscheduled, landing at Cairo.
Well under an hour later, the Gulfstream was already two hundred miles from Barcelona, cruising at 0.78 Mach, and holding level at forty-one thousand feet on upper air route UM601 heading east. The aircraft had just passed beacon Balen, about midway between Barcelona and the island of Sardinia.
‘Time we sent our passengers to sleep,’ Sutter decided. ‘You ready?’
Haig nodded, and pulled his seat belt a little tighter. Sutter checked the navigation radar to ensure no other aircraft were in their vicinity, then disengaged the autopilot, throttled back, and pushed the control column forward. The Gulfstream reacted immediately, pitching sharply nose-down, and the two men felt the increasing tension as their bodies pushed against their belts. Sutter eased the column back gently, still keeping the G450 in a fairly steep dive, and adjusted the throttles.
‘Drop the rubber jungle,’ he ordered and, as Haig released the cabin’s oxygen masks, Sutter selected passenger address.
‘We’ve a slight problem. A possible cabin pressurization failure, and we’ve just started a rapid descent as a precaution. Place an oxygen mask over your face, pull the tube to start the flow of gas, and then just breathe normally. There’s no immediate cause for alarm.’ Sutter left the P.A. enabled as he called across to Haig: ‘Make a Pan call and tell them we’re in an emergency descent requesting fifteen thousand or lower.’ Then he deselected the switch. ‘That should make sure our passengers do what they’re told.’
Haig was already talking to the en-route controlling authority.
The reply came swiftly. ‘November Two Six is cleared initial descent to Flight Level two zero zero against opposite direction traffic range twenty-eight level one eight zero. Call approaching two four zero. Expect further descent clearance shortly. Squawk emergency.’
Haig keyed in 7700 on the SSR transponder. ‘Roger, Marseille. November Two Six is squawking emergency, in descent to two zero zero to call approaching two four zero.’
In the cabin, the four CIA officers adjusted the oxygen masks over their faces and pulled on the hoses, as they’d been instructed. Grant Hutchings was slower to react than the other three and, just a few moments after he’d tugged on the hose, he pulled the mask off his face and sniffed suspiciously. He’d breathed pure oxygen before, and knew it was effectively odourless, but the gas coming out of the mask had a definite smell. Very faint, but unmistakably there.
Hutchings took a deep breath and looked round with a puzzled expression. He was having no trouble at all in breathing but, if there had been a depressurization, that should be impossible because the aircraft was still far too high. Normal breathing would not be possible until the Gulfstream had descended to about twelve thousand feet. And the cabin should be getting colder — a lot colder — which it wasn’t. Then there was the strange odour. Something wasn’t right.
Hutchings released his seat belt and stood up. John Baxter was sitting directly opposite him and, as Hutchings looked across the cabin, he suddenly fell forward limply against the restraint of the belt. Hutchings spun round to look at the other two men. Roger Middleton was already slumped sideways across his seat and, even as he watched, Andy Franks also suddenly collapsed.
Hutchings stepped over to Baxter and ripped off the oxygen mask, then did the same for Middleton and Franks. What the hell was going on here? Realizing the oxygen supply had to be contaminated, he bent over Franks and pressed his hand to the side of the man’s neck. He found a pulse, weak and irregular, but it was there. He then checked Middleton with the same result. Something in the emergency oxygen tanks had knocked the other three men unconscious. But at least they were alive, and now they were breathing normal cabin air, so they’d presumably soon come round.
But how had this happened? Clearly the aircraft had been sabotaged. Somebody on the ground at Andrews or somewhere had tampered with the emergency systems. What about the flight crew? Did they breathe from the same oxygen supply as the passengers? Hutchings was suddenly aware that the Gulfstream was still in a rapid descent, but were the pilots lying unconscious over their controls as the aircraft headed straight down towards the Mediterranean?