Wild Justice by Wilbur Smith Read Free Book Online

mown knee-high, and he knew the ground beneath it would be fairly smooth.
    Cyril’s hand on the throttle bank pulled back smoothly, almost of its own volition, the engine thunder died away and the nose dropped again.
    He held his approach aligned with the main runway until he was well in over the threshold lights. He did not want to alert the drivers of the blocking vehicles to his intention while they still had time to counter it.
    â€˜You murderous bitch,’ he said under his breath. ‘You filthy murderous bitch.’
    He banked the Boeing steeply, realigned it with the long strip of open grass and cut the throttles completely, bringing her in nose-high and just a fraction above the stall, flaring out deliberately low and banging the Boeing down into the grass for positive touch down.
    The huge machine settled to the rough strip, jolting and lurching wildly as Cyril Watkins fought the rudders to keep them lined up, holding his nose wheel off with the control yoke, while his co-pilot threw all her giant engines into reverse thrust and trod firmly down on the main landing gear brakes.

    The fire engines and fuel tankers flashed past the starboard wing tip. The startled faces of their crews seemed very close and white – then 070 was past, her speed bleeding off sharply so her nose wheel dropped and she rocked and swayed gradually to a dead stop just short of the brick building which housed the approach and landing beacons, and the main radar installations.
    It was 7.25 a.m. local time and Speedbird 070 was down.
    â€˜W ell, they are down,’ intoned Kingston Parker. ‘And you can well understand the extreme efforts that were made to prevent them. Their choice of final destination settles one of your queries, Peter.’
    â€˜â€œÃ€ l’allemande”—’ Peter nodded. ‘It’s got to be political. I agree, sir.’
    â€˜And you and I must now face in dreadful reality what we have discussed only in lofty theory—’ Parker held a taper to his pipe and puffed twice before going on. ‘– Morally justifiable militancy.’
    â€˜Again we have to differ, sir.’ Peter cut in swiftly. ‘There is no such thing.’
    â€˜Is there not?’ Parker asked, shaking his head. ‘What of the German officers killed in the streets of Paris by the French resistance?’
    â€˜That was war,’ Peter exclaimed.
    â€˜Perhaps the group that seized 070 believes that they are at war—’
    â€˜With innocent victims?’ Peter shot back.
    â€˜The Haganah took innocent victims – yet what they were fighting for was right and just.’
    â€˜I’m an Englishman, Dr Parker – you cannot expect me to condone the murder of British women and children.’ Peter had stiffened in his chair.
    â€˜No,’ Parker agreed. ‘So let us not speak of the MauMau
in Kenya, nor of present-day Ireland then – but what of the French Revolution or the spreading of the Catholic faith by the most terrible persecution and tortures yet devised by man – were those not morally justifiable militancy?’
    â€˜I would prefer to call it understandable but reprehensible. Terrorism in any form can never be morally justifiable.’ Provoked himself, Peter used the word deliberately to provoke and saw the small lift of Parker’s thick bushy eyebrows.
    â€˜There is terrorism from above – as well as from below.’ Parker picked up the word and used it deliberately. ‘If you define terrorism as extreme physical or physiological coercion used to induce others to submit to the will of the terrosist – there is the legal terror threat of the gallows, the religious terror threat of hell fire, the paternal terror threat of the cane – are those more morally justifiable than the aspiration of the weak, the poor, the politically oppressed, the powerless victims of an unjust society? Is their scream of protest to be