Shooting Script

NINETEEN

It was twilight when we pulled into Shaw Park. J.B.'s Avantiand Whitmore's white station wagon were parked there, so I leant on the bell of Apartment C.

Luiz opened the door. He started to smile at me, then caught the view over my shoulder and went into shock. It was nice to see it happen to a professional.

He recovered quickly and made an elegant gesture that just happened to shove me out of the Uneof sight.'Señorita Jiminez? I am called Luiz Monterrey. I knew your father. May I express my sorrow at the death of your brother? I should wear mourning' – he was still in film clothes; he plucked distastefully at the torn, smudged frilly shirt – 'but an actor must wear mourning in his heart. That, I do. But youmust be tired, please-' I was suddenly alone on the doorstep.

He was a pro, all right.

I hauled the luggage out of the car to release the driver for other company business, and walked into Apartment Cmyself. And straight into the muzzle of a gun.

I recognised it as one of the lever-action rifles they'd used in the river-crossing scene; the face behind it seemed vaguely familiar from the film-set, too.

'Blanks, I trust?' I said.

'You could find out – the hard way.' The face was grim and steady. 'Now say somep'n about who you are and why.'

J.B. came around the corner of the passage. 'All right, Doug – he's one of ours.'

The rifle drooped towards the floor – a little disappointed, I thought.

'After Diego,' J.B. explained, 'the Boss Man started taking a few precautions. He's licenced to have real ammunition for that thing in case he wants to go hunting alligators down on the Black River. Come on through.'

I dumped the luggage just inside the door, and said to the man Doug: 'You're in a bad position there: coming in with the light behind me I could have been Santa Clausor Fidel Castro. Either way, you could have made a bad mistake.'

'Only if you was Santy Glaus,' he said calmly.

In the living-room facing over the patio and beach, Whit-more was offering Miss Jiminez a drink and she was saying she'd rather have a wash and brush up first. J.B. led her off through the bedroom.

Whitmore waved at me, then sprawled himself down on the sofa. 'Buy yourself a drink, fella.' The room was littered with bottles, glasses, dirty plates – they'd obviously just finished dinner – and yellow pages of shooting scripts. I started searching.

'Hell,' he said thoughtfully, 'that's quite a piece of tail you brought in.'

Luiz over-acted an anguished wince.

Whitmore grinned at him. 'If you wanna go riding withouta. horse, fella, I ain't competing.'

'You gringo peasant.'

Whitmore grinned even wider. Then he turned back to me, 'How's this aeroplane look?'

Luiz shook his head. 'A girl like that comes in – and the man wants to talk about aeroplanes.'

'I already said my piece about her and you didn't seem to like it.'

J.B. came back. 'Didn't know what I was letting you in for, Carr. That's quite a piece of-'

'My God,' Luiz said, 'Americans.'

J.B. looked at him, surprised, then smiled wickedly. 'You really getting hot pants about her, Luiz? I'll get you a pass key for her room.'

'What about this aeroplane?' Whitmore roared.

By then I'd found myself an unopened bottle of Red Stripe and half a plate of not-quite-cold prawns and rice. I swallowed and said: 'I've had a couple of men working on it at Port Antonio – I paid their fares from Kingston each day, if that's all right – and North American sent in some parts yesterday, so…' I gave him a fairly full progress report. It added up to the hope that the Mitchell would be ready for an air-test the next afternoon.

'After that,' I said, 'you can start filming as soon as you can fit cameras. But she'll need some more work before she does a bombing raid – if you still want to go on with that.'

He stared. 'Hell, yes. What's the matter?'

'Nothing,' I shook my head. 'Just – just every time I think of it, the crazier it sounds.'

'It'll work, won't it?'

'Yes, I think it'll work.'

'Okay then. So what needs doing to her?'

I listed the items. I wanted to rip out all the excess weight -those seats and central heating in the rear, the bomb-bay tank. I'd learnt, from gossip around the airport, that some Mitchells had been fitted with such tanks in the war, so I hoped that it had been normal to leave the bomb rails and shackles in above them. If so, all I'd need to do was make sure they worked and then rewire the release mechanism.

Luiz said thoughtfully: 'You will have to work carefully, my friend. If the generals hear we are re-converting the aeroplane to a bomber…' he shrugged.

'She's in the script now,' Whitmore said. 'We can cover a lot of the work as dolling her up for the picture.'

Luiz looked doubtful.

I said: 'Frankly, I don't think there's much we can do on the security side except not make it too obvious. They must know we've got the Mitchell and if they believe I may be going to use it against them, we can't stop 'em believing, whatever we do. Still, once we've got the big changes made on her, I'll take over rigging her for bombing myself. That's as secure as we can get.'

They might have wanted to argue the point, but just then Miss Jiminez came back into the room. Maybe looking a little fresher, although I hadn't noticed anything wrong in that department before.

Whitmore stayed sprawled where he was. I bent myself into that half-on-the-feet position the British use for showing they're being polite. Luiz went across the room like a pouncing tiger and started easing her into a chair like a foot into a shoe.

'A drink, Señorita?'he suggested. 'Or may I show you to your room? And I will arrange dinner.'

She hit him with a ten-kilowatt smile and said she'd settle for a gin and tonic.

The conversation lapsed. Beyond the open french windows the sky darkened and the sea breathed politely on the empty beach. A fat lizard came out to stand sentry duty in the light spilling on to the patio.

Finally I said: 'Any idea of when this raid's supposed to come off?'

Luiz spun round and snapped: 'We are not discussing that any more.'

I smiled crookedly: I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen now.

It did. Miss Jiminez looked up brightly. 'You are talking about the bombing of the generals' aeroplanes?'

Luiz said soothingly:'Señorita, you need not concern yourself-'

'But this is what I am here for.'

He looked baffled. Whitmore said slowly: 'I thought you came to take home your brother.'

'I came to avenge him. I will have him sent home tomorrow. I will stay here.'

Luiz chewed his lip. Whitmore put on a puzzled frown. J.B. gave me a sharp glance, but didn't say anything.

I said 'Well – when?'

'When the aeroplane is ready,' Miss Jiminez said, 'I will inform my father. After that, he will give one day's warning.'

I nodded. 'When are the bombs coming? And what bombs?'

'Diego was fixing that,' Whitmore said. 'We ain't heard anything since – I'm trying to get in touch again.'

Luiz stopped eating his lip and said: 'Four 500-pounders.'

'High-explosive?'

'Yes.'

I nodded again. The Mitchell would carry 2,000 pounds, all right. In fact, given a long enough runway, I was pretty sure the Mitchell would carry everything you could cram into her and your Uncle Harry's bathtub besides. She was a hell of a load-carrier – given a long enough runway. But that was the problem: I couldn't see the authorities at Palisadoes or Mon-tego Bay, which had the long runways, giving flight clearance to this particular jaunt.

I looked at Miss Jiminez. 'I want your father to understand that I can't do this attack at just any time of day. It's got to be-'

She gave me a smile that raised flash burns. 'But of course. As your Kitchener of Khartoum once said, "We have to make war as we must, and not as we would like to." It must be dawn or dusk.'

Everybody was staring at her. I shook my head and muttered: 'You ain't heard nothing, yet.' Then, louder: "That's right. They seem to send at least a section up to forward base near the mountains during the day-'

'At Cordillera,' she said.

"That's the place, is it? But they don't seem to leave aircrafton it overnight. I'd guess Ned's scared of guerrilla raids and doesn't trust the army to-'

'The generals do not trust each other,' she said. 'General Boscohas been recruiting ground troops for his Air Force -like your RAF Regiment – to become an airfield defence unit. He now has about three thousand men. Some are seconded from his other branches; many of the non-commissioned officers were once policemen.'

Now Luiz was really staring. Then he shook his head to see if he was still awake, and asked:'Señorita, how do you know these things?'

She seemed surprised.'Señor, you forget who is my father.'

Whitmore said: 'Your father's 500 miles from Caracas.'

'Señor Whitmore, the Repúblicais not closed like a door. Letters come. Aeroplanes land there.'

Luiz persisted. 'But your brother did not know all these things.'

'My brother was my mother's son,' she said – quite sharply. 'I am my father's daughter. Diego knew what I told him.'

I'd begun to suspect something like that. I'd never seen Diego as the hard-working spider in the middle of an intelligence web. And the link between the Repúblicaand Caracas -because of the common language and something of a common history – would be much stronger than between the Repúblicaand Jamaica.

But mostly I was interested in the news of the trouble between the Air Force and the Army. I saw why-Ned had worked the cumbersome old system of controlling ground-attack fighters from right back at home base instead of letting the Army direct them on target from up on the front line – the way Ned himself had learnt it in Korea.

But that wasn't the point right now. I said: 'Right – I attack at first light or last light. All things considered, it hadbetterbe-'

'Dusk would be best,' Miss Jiminez said briskly. 'You would be more certain to catch all of them on the ground, then.'

'It had better be dawn,' I said firmly.

I got a sharp, rather startled, look.

'Purely military problem,' I said soothingly. 'With bombs and full fuel that plane's going to be pretty heavy for a short strip like Boscobel or Port Antonio. So I want the air as cool as I can get it for take-off; more power for the engines, more lift for the wings. If I go in at last light, I take off in the afternoon: If I attack at first light, I take off "around two in the morning. It's as simple as that.'

She frowned.'Capitán, even Clausewitz believed that a "purely military judgment is a distinction which cannot be allowed".'

'He should've tried flying an overloaded Mitchell off a 3,000-foot runway in hot weather before he started making wild statements like that.'

'One cannot avoid all risks, Capitán. As Clausewitz said-'

'Clausewitz never said one horse made a cavalry charge. If I miss a couple of Vampires, the attack's still eighty per cent successful. But if I pile into the trees on take-off, you've got a hundred per cent flop. There won't beany attack.'

There'd be a few per cent of Keith Carr missing, too, if I went tree-pruning with a load of 500-pounders. But probably Clausewitz had said something reassuring about that as well, so I kept quiet.

Whitmore said firmly: 'Okay, so you hit 'em at sun-up. If they do get any jets up, you're going to have to come a-run-ning. Be daylight.'

I just nodded. Speed wouldn't be much help against a Vampire that could go twice my speed and more. And no clouds to hide in, not around dawn. 'But at least I won't be making a night landing on a strip that doesn't have any lighting.'

Nobody had thought of that, of course. Whitmore crooked his eyebrows and said: 'But you'll have to take off in the dark – how about that?'

'A sight easier than landing. I can do it with just a hurricane lamp planted at die end of the strip.'

There was a silence while everybody thought up the next problem.

J.B. said suddenly: 'What about radar? Won't they see you coming?'

I had my mouth open when Miss Jiminez said: 'There is no radar in the Caribbean except at Puerto Rico and Cuba. You should know these things if you wish to help.'

J.B.'s face shut with a snap like a rat-trap.

Luiz said:'Señorita Penroseonly does our legal work; she does not pretend to be a general.'

'She makes contracts for my father to sign,' Miss Jiminez said scornfully.

Whitmore came to the rescue again. 'All right, kids. This is just a planning session. The real fighting comes later – and Carr does that.' He looked at me. 'Anything more, fella?'

There was one thing that had better be said, but I was uneasy about saying it in front of Miss Jiminez. I dug out my pipe and started to fill it while I gave myself time to think. Whitmore sighed, grunted, and threw me a cigarette.

I lit it, decided I'd better say my piece anyway, and said: 'Just one thing: we're dealing with an old aeroplane. It could go unserviceable – seriously – at any time. So the attack could be called off at the last minute.' I turned to Miss Jiminez. 'If your father's depending on the raid, you'd better tell him not to move until heknows it's coming off.'

There was no warmth in her look now. It was a hard searchlight stare.'Capitán- the attackmust happen. You must takeany risk.'

There wasn't much warmth in my look, either. Til give you a quotation you don't know: Keith Carr is not, repeatnot expendable. Source, Keith Carr.'

'Capitán, you have joined a noble cause,' she blazed. 'It is too late to remember you are a coward, now.'

'I haven't joined a damn thing. I'm just a hired hand. I'll fly the raid if-'

'For money! ' She bounced up, feet spread, hands on hips, her dark eyes glaring furiously. 'Teach me to fly it, then. / will make the attack! '

I just stared at her: a magnificent, angry huntress, dominating the room, turning Whitmore into a small boy flopped in a corner.

Then I shook my head and said: 'That isn't the point anyway. A starter motor could go, a tyre could burst. Then we wouldn't even get her off the ground – nobody could. Just tell your father wecan't give a guarantee.'

She went on standing there. Luiz said judiciously: 'Perhaps we could give the most careful overhaul, then…' he waved a hopeful hand.

'Overhauls wouldn't do it,' I said wearily. 'She's just too old – all of her. If we started that, we'd find we needed new wings, fuselage, tail, engines… a new aeroplane. I'll check her out on the film flying and fix anything that busts, but she'll still be held together by rust and habit – and even die rust's a bit past it by now. Well, maybe the habit'll keep up long enough. If it does, I'll fly the attack.'

Whitmore nodded. 'Okay, that sounds good enough.' He looked at Miss Jiminez. 'Better tell your old man the position, He can move when he knows Carr's on his way.'

She went on looking at me. 'Perhaps,' she said coldly, 'if the Capitánkeeps his courage in his wallet, he wants us to pay him a little more courage.'

Whitmore said firmly: 'Planning session's over. We got a movie to make tomorrow.'

She gave me one last glare, announced: 'I am eating,' and marched out.

In the silence there was just the click of her heels down the passage to the front door.

Luiz said softly: 'She should have been her brother.'

J.B. stared at him incredulously, 'Jesus, Luiz's gone queer.'

There was a sudden moment of pain on his face, then he smiled and shrugged. 'In political terms only, of course.'

Then he hurried out after her.

When he heard the apartment door shut, Whitmore shook his head and said: 'She's really got him jumping, huh?'

'He's probably rehearsing to play the lead in The Clause-witz Story,' J.B. said sourly.

'Yeah? And I play the small fat guy Napoleon?'

'You could still do most of the scenes on a horse,' I pointed out.

He just looked at me. 'Thanks, fella.' Then he finished hisdrink, lit a cigarette, and reached for one of the yellow scripts.

'So,' he said after a while, 'if you get the ship ready in acoupladays, we'll schedule the flying shots so you'll be clear whenever Jiminez rings the bell.'

'We've got Roddie's church, too,' J.B. said. 'Should be ready in a day or two.'

'You're actually building a Spanish church?' I asked.

Whitmore looked up. 'Sure. You want us to haul the whole unit to Mexico just for a three-minute sequence?'

J.B. said: 'In films, it's always cheaper to bring the mountain to Mahomet – with Mahomet on union rates.'

I shook my head; it would obviously be stupid to ask if it wouldn't be cheaper still to write the church out of the script. Anyway, it was nice to know a business where the costs were higher than in aviation.

Whitmore made a note on his script, then stood up and stretched. 'So if you're working on her up this end of the island, you better move in here. ' He looked at J.B. 'We got a room booked?'

She nodded.

I said: 'If it'll save you money, I don't mind moving in with J.B. She's got space.' I waved a hand around the big suite.

'Pull your throat in, Carr,' she snapped.

Whitmore grinned. 'Suddenly everybody's sex-crazy.' He nodded at me. 'I don't mind, fella. But if she talks contract law in her sleep don't blame me and don't try to stop her. That's what she's hired for.'

'Get out, you broken-down old cow-catcher.' The anger wasn't entirely faked either.

He just grinned again, waved in one of his big, slow gestures, and strolled whistling down the passage.

J.B. looked at me. 'Your room number's 17, Carr-'

'Fine.'

' – at the Plantation Inn.'

I winced. It was only a few hundred yards up the road, but damn it all…

'You don't trust yourself in the same hotel as me?' I asked.

She just went on looking.

'One last drink,' I suggested. 'Before the intrepid aviator wings off on the dawn patrol.'

'If you're going to work for us we'd better put a real writer on your dialogue. All right – a Scotch. A thin one.'

I mixed it, found myself a bottle of Red Stripe, and sat down again. The evening wound down gently; the surf hissed politely on the beach beyond the patio; the lizard sentries drowsed at their posts.

After a while, she said quietly: 'Carr – whyare you flying this raid?'

'I'm making a profit at it – I'm getting an aeroplane out of it, one way or anodier.'

She shook her head impatiently. 'You're not a damn fool, Carr. I know your record; I saw you figure out everything we'd been up to with Diego and getting that bomber. You know you could've tried other ways of getting your plane back. Diplomatic pressure, spilling the story to the papers, bringing law-suits – I'd've been forced to help you, morally, anyway. But this way you may not get your plane but you damn sure will get run out of the Caribbean.'

The grey list. I shrugged, then asked: 'That's my legal position, is it?'

'Ah, legally you probably aren't too badly off. It doesn't seem to be an offence in Jamaica to start a war as long as you don't start it here. They might get you under the Foreign Recruitment Law, but they need an order in council to bring that into force. And they'll get you for having bombs – unless you swear you picked them upen route. But all that isn't the real trouble.'

'I know.'

'A pilot's always vulnerable. If they want to get you, they can trip you up on a dozen licencing troubles, safety standards… They'll run you out.'

'I know.'

She eyed me carefully. 'You'renot a damn fool, not that way.' Then she tossed her empty glass on to the crowded table; two other glasses toppled, rolled, smashed on the floor. She watched them, expressionless. Then said quietly: 'When you first walked in here, I thought you were a pretty toughindependent character. I thought maybe you'd be able to tell the Boss Man to go climb a tree. But then he calls for a posse and everybody grabs a deputy's badge and jumps on a horse -and then they can say "I rode with Whitmore." I've seen it happen before.'

'You think that's why I'm going?'

'Isn't it?' she flared. 'It isn't for your plane – and you don't give a damn about Jiminez, that's for sure. Well, you've joined the posse; the Boss Man thinks you're really one of the boys. That's wonderful.'

I stood up. The evening was dead. Among other things. 'Room 17, I think you said? And the desk knows I'm coming?'

She nodded. I found my own way out. And I didn't feel a thing. And that was pain enough.