Wild Justice Read Online Free PDF Page B

straining ahead for the first glimpse of the target.
    His trained gunfighter’s eye picked out the dark speck against the distracting background of cloud and sunlight and he made an almost imperceptible movement of the controls to avoid the direct head-on approach to the target.
    The speck swelled in size with disturbing rapidity as they converged at combined speeds of nearly fifteen hundred miles per hour, and at the instant he was certain of his identification the leader took his flight, still in a tight ‘finger five’, up into a vertical climb from which they rolled out neatly five thousand feet above the target and on the same heading, immediately reducing power to conform in speed to the big aircraft far below.
    â€˜Cheetah, this is Diamond leader – we are visual, and target is a Boeing 747 bearing British Airways markings.’
    â€˜Diamond Leader, this is Cheetah, conform to target, maintain five thousand feet separation and avoid any threatening attitudes. Report again in sixty seconds.’
    M ajor-General Peter Stride’s executive jet was arrowing southwards and leaving its enormous protégé lumbering ponderously along in its wake. Every minute increased the distance between the two aircraft, and by the time they reached their ultimate destination – wherever that might be – there would probably be a thousand miles or more separating them.
    However, the big Hercules’s slow speed became a virtue when the need arose to take its heavy load of men and equipment into short unsurfaced strips in unlikely corners of the earth – perhaps in the ‘hot and high’ conditions that a pilot most dreads.
    It was the Hawker’s job to get Peter Stride to the scene of terrorist activity as swiftly as possible, and the general’s
job once there to stall and procrastinate and bargain until Colin Noble’s assault team caught up with him.
    The two men were still in contact, however, and the small central television screen in front of Peter was permanently lit with a view of the interior of the Hercules’s main hold. When he lifted his head from his work, Peter Stride could see a picture of his troops, all in the casual Thor overalls, lounging or sprawled in abandoned attitudes of relaxation down the central aisle of the Hercules. They also were veterans at the hard game of waiting, while in the foreground Colin Noble sat at his small work desk, going through the voluminous check list for ‘condition Charlie’ which was the next state of alert when terrorist activity was confirmed.
    Watching Colin Noble at work, Peter Stride found a moment to ponder once again the enormous cost of maintaining Atlas, most of it paid by the United States intelligence budget, and the obstacles and resistance that had been overcome to launch the project in the first place. Only the success of the Israelis at Entebbe and of the Germans at Mogadishu had made it possible, but there was still violent opposition in both countries to maintaining a dual national counteraction force.
    With a preliminary click and hum the central screen of Peter’s communications console came alive and Dr Parker spoke before his image had properly hardened.
    â€˜I’m afraid it’s condition Charlie, Peter,’ he said softly, and Peter was aware of the rush of his blood through his veins. It was natural for a soldier whose entire life had been spent in training for a special moment in time to welcome the arrival of that moment – yet he found contempt for himself in that emotion; no sane man should anticipate violence and death, and all the misery and suffering which attended them.
    â€“ the South Africans have intercepted and identified 070. It entered their airspace forty-five seconds ago.’
    â€˜Radio contact?’ Peter asked.
    â€˜No.’ Parker shook his great head. ‘It is declining contact, and we must assume that it is under the control of militants – so