"MacLean, Alistair - Santorini" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Alistair)

Scanned and proofed by xyz April 2003.


Alistair MacLean

Santorini (Copyright Devoran Trustees Ltd, 1986)

Fontana/Collins.


Back Cover

Santorini

In the heart of the Agean Sea a luxury yacht is on fire and sinking fast. Minutes later a four engined jet with a fire in it's nose cone crashes into the sea.

Is there a sinister connection between these two tragedies. And is it an accident that the Ariadne, a NATO spy ship, is the only ship in the vicinity - the only witness?

Only commander Talbot of the Ariadne, can provide the answers as he uncovers a deadly plot involving drugs and terrorism - leading to the heart of the Pentagon.




To Tom and Rena







Chapter 1.

An overhead broadcaster on the bridge of the frigate Ariadne crackled into life, a bell rang twice and then O'Rourke's voice came through, calm, modulated, precise and unmistakably Irish. O'Rourke was commonly referred to as the weatherman, which he wasn't at all.

'Just picked up an odd-looking customer. Forty miles out, bearing 222.'

Talbot pressed the reply button. 'The skies above us, Chief, are hotching with odd-looking customers. At least six airlines criss-cross this patch of the Aegean. NATO planes, as you know better than all of us, are all around us. And those pesky fighter-bombers and fighters from the pesky Sixth Fleet bloweth where the wind listeth. Me, I think they're lost half the time.'

'Ah! But this is a very odd odd-looking lad.' O'Rourke's voice was unruffled as ever, unmoved by the less than flattering reference to the Sixth Fleet, from which he was on temporary loan. 'No trans-Aegean airline uses the flight path this plane is on. There are no NATO planes in this particular sector on my display screen. And the Americans would have let us know. A very courteous lot, Captain. The Sixth Fleet, I mean.'

'True, true.' The Sixth Fleet, Talbot was aware, would have informed him of the presence of any of their aircraft in his vicinity, not from courtesy but because regulations demanded it, a fact of which O'Rourke was as well aware as he was.

O'Rourke was a doughty defender of his home fleet. 'That all you have on this lad?'

'No. Two things. This plane is on a due south-west to north-east course. I have no record, no information of any plane that could be following this course. Secondly, I'm pretty sure it's a big plane. We should see in about four minutes - his course is on a direct intersection with ours.'

'The size is important, Chief? Lots of big planes around.'

'Not at 43,000 feet, sir, which is what this one is. Only a Concorde does that and we know there are no Concorde's about. Military job, I would guess.'