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shirt. ‘They can’t come again. We are into controlled airspace.’ She pointed ahead. ‘Look!’
    The Boeing was down to five thousand feet, but the horizon was obscured by the haze of smog and summer heat. To the right rose the smooth silhouette of the Kempton Park Power Station cooling towers and, closer at hand, the poisonous yellow tablelands of the mine dumps squatted on the flat and featureless plain of the African highveld. Around them human habitation was so dense that hundreds of windowpanes caught the early morning sun and glittered like beacons.
    Closer still was the long, straight, blue streak of the main runway of Jan Smuts Airport.
    Take her straight in on runway 21,’ Ingrid ordered.
    â€˜We can’t—’
    â€˜Do it,’ snapped the girl. ‘Air traffic control will have cleared the circuit. They can’t stop us.’
    â€˜Yes, they can,’ Cyril Watkins answered. ‘Just take a look at the runway apron.’
    They were close enough now to count five fuel tenders, to see the Shell company insignia on the tanks.
    â€˜They are going to block the runway.’
    With the tankers were five brilliant red vehicles of the fire service and two big white ambulances. They bumped wildly over the grass verge of the runway and then, one after the other, tenders and fire control vehicles and ambulances parked at intervals of a few hundred yards down the white-painted centre line of the runway.

    â€˜We can’t land,’ said the captain.
    Take her off automatic and fly her in by hand.’ The girl’s voice was different, hard, cruel.
    The Boeing was sinking through a thousand feet, lined up for runway 21 and directly ahead the revolving red beacons on top of the fire vehicles seemed to flash a direct challenge.
    â€˜I can’t pile into them,’ Cyril Watkins decided, and there was no longer hesitation nor doubt in his tone. ‘I’m going to overshoot and get out of here.’
    â€˜Land on the grass,’ the girl shrieked. ‘There is open grass on the left of the runway – put her down there.’
    But Cyril Watkins had leaned forward in his seat and rammed the bank of throttles forward. The engines howled and the Boeing surged into a nose-high climb.
    The young flight engineer had swivelled his stool and was staring ahead through the windscreen. His whole body was rigid, his expression intense and the smear of blood across his forehead was in vivid contrast to the pallor of his skin.
    With his right hand he gripped the edge of his desk, and the knuckles of his fist were white and shiny as eggshell.
    Without seeming to move the blonde girl had pinned the wrist of that rigid right hand, pressing the muzzles of the pistol into it.
    There was a crash of sound, so violent in the confines of the cabin that it seemed to beat in their eardrums. The weapon kicked up as high as the girl’s golden head and there was the immediate acrid stench of burned cordite.
    The flight engineer stared down incredulously at the desk top. There was a hole blown through the metal as big as a teacup, and the edges were jagged with bright bare metal.
    The blast of shot had amputated his hand cleanly at the wrist. The severed member had been thrown forward into the space between the pilots’ seats, with the shattered bone
protruding from the mangled meat. It twitched like a crushed and maimed insect.
    â€˜Land,’ said the girl. ‘Land or the next shot is through his head.’
    â€˜You bloody monster,’ shouted Cyril Watkins, staring at the severed hand.
    â€˜Land or you will be responsible for this man’s life.’
    The flight engineer clutched the stump of his arm against his belly and doubled over it silently, his face contorted by the shock.
    Cyril Watkins tore his stricken gaze from the severed hand and looked ahead once more. There was wide open grass between the runway markers and the narrow taxiway. The grass had been