Shooting Script

TWENTY-TWO

At this time, I had the strip to myself. The terminal hut was dark and locked, the hangar of small planes quiet. At diis end of the island, Hurricane Clara was strictly my problem from now on.

I walked down to the east end of the runway with the hurricane lamp, lit it, and hung it up on a tree just right of the runway. At 3,000 feet it would be just a spark of light, but that's all you really need for a night takeoff: an aiming point. As long as I remembered to aim left of it.

I walked back up to the Mitchell. There, I took off the rudder control locks so that the first north wind would bang the rudders and wake me – in the unlikely event of my being asleep. Then, because you don't officially start a sleepless night until you start trying to sleep, I sat down against the nose-wheel, lit my pipe, and breathed smoke at the sky.

It drifted away slowly. The night was very still, very clear and very dark, with that gigantic echoing distant darkness youonly get in the tropics. Not quiet, though: the trees and bushes – not quite a jungle – on either side of the runway buzzed and clicked and purred busily, with an occasional squawk or squeal to break the monotony. But a tropical night never gets spooky the way a northern night can. At least, not on an island where the worst things that can bite you are scorpions and hotels.

I smoked and looked at several thousand stars and wondered if, somewhere out there among the bug-eyed green monsters, there wasn't some poor bug-eyed green bastard sitting under an old bomber waiting for an ammonia storm and looking out at the stars and wondering if, somewhere out there…

On an engineering-type guess at the stars and odds involved, I decided there probably was. And maybe he was even thinking about how he'd come to get mixed up in somebody else's war and trying to work out how he felt about it. And perhaps remembering that he'd have no bomb-aimer, so he'd have to go in low, like a fighter-bomber, and wondering how low he dared go with 500-pounders. Even assuming the delayed-action fuses worked on bombs that had probably been stockpiled for years in the steam heat of some Central American hideout…

I banged my pipe out on the brake drum and went to bed.

I didn't know what woke me, except that I wasn't much asleep anyway and tuned to catch the first sound as the start of the north wind. I just found myself sitting up among the engine and cockpit covers in the rear fuselage and listening.

Nothing.

So I went through the usual charade of pretending I was going to get back to sleep without getting up to make sure there was nothing. After a bit of that, I crawled over to one of the old gun windows.

Two men, walking up the runway in the starlight towards me.

A couple of old crop-spraying friends come to tell me Clara had recurved north and I could cease my lonely vigil? Like Hell. I woke up with a jolt. As the two rounded the end of the wing, they both pulled out knives.

For a moment I thought about sealing myself up tight in the Mitchell. I could probably have done it: an aeroplane is a fairly solid affair. All I needed to do was jam the floor hatch tight… Then I knew I'd got to go down there.

Oh yes? And with what? – against two knives.

No use looking around; it was as dark as the inside of a coffin in here. I wonderedif I'd left any tools lying around -but I knew I hadn't. And somebody would have pinched them anyway.

Then I remembered the tail 'gun', the piece of painted broomstick stuck through the rear-gunner's window. I crawled quickly and, I hoped, quietly back there.

It jammed for a second, then slid free; it was only held in by insulation tape. About three feet long and smooth in my hands, which suddenly seemed damp.

I poked a cautious eyebrow up into the transparent aiming blister above. They were standing a few yards off, staring at the side of the aeroplane. I froze, thinking they'd heard me. But they seemed to be discussing something. Finally one of them got out a piece of paper, looked carefully around, and struck a match to read it by. The other leant in over his shoulder.

Two sharp Spanish faces, one with a small black moustache. Open-necked white shirts. I couldn't see any more. The match died. They looked back at the aeroplane, discussed a little more – then moved forward, under the wing.

I crawled for the hatch. It was open, for ventilation and wind noise. I eased down, hoping the little collapsible step wouldn't creak. But it was too rusty and jammed-up for that. Me and my broomstick arrived on the tarmac a few feet behind the wing without being spotted.

One of them was bending down beside the starboard wheel, the other out by the nose. I took three long careful steps and, as I reached the wing, ran.

The man by the nose saw me and yelled. The odier jerked up and around, his hands and knife coming up in front of his chest. I swung the stick like a baseball bat.

It crashed through his hands and thumped on his chest; he bounced back against die engine. But he still had the knife.

I lunged with the stick, like a bayonet. He said the Spanish for 'Oof and folded forwards – and the knife clinked on the tarmac.

But now the second man was coming around the propeller. I stooped, grabbed the knife, and waggled it fiercely, to show him I was in the same business by now. He stopped.

'Avanze, amigo,'I suggested. I wanted him under die wing with me. If he knew about knife-fighting, he knew about it in the open and the light. I didn't know any more than you pick up from American films about teenage Ufein the rich suburbs. But under the wing was my world. I'd worked here, had an instinctive feel of heights, distances, obstructions.

Slowly, he hunched into the knife-fighting crouch, the blade weaving hypnotically in front ofhim. He knew, all right.

I shortened my left-hand grip on the stick for a quicker swing and copied his crouch.

'You may have plane tickets,' I said conversationally, 'but they won't be any use tomorrow. All flights'll be cancelled. There's a hurricane coming -un huracán-so you'll be stuck here. Just wailing in the final departure lounge, for the police. It'll be like picking money out of the gutter. Apúrese, amigo.'

Heapúresed, all right – a fast sliding step and a wriggling thrust with the knife. I caught it on the stick and tried to twitch the knife out of his hand; no luck. I lunged myself and he stepped back and banged into a propeller blade and swore, but when I lunged again he'd slipped away.

He circled towards the wingtip, rotating me so that my back was to the first friend, still gasping and grunting down by the wheel – but due to wake up and join the party at any moment.

All right: if his pal had decided he should play a part, let him play a part. I stepped aside and back, dropped the stick and grabbed the man up by shoving a forearm under his chin and lifting. Then I banged the haft of the knife against his ribs. I thought I heard both of diem gasp.

'You understand, ' I said to the one with the knife, 'that if this fight is to go on I must first kill your friend. Esjusto, no?'

'Como usted quiera.'Asyou like. But perhaps not quitenonchalantenough to be convincing. The man on my arm squirmed nervously.

I said:'Como usted quiera,'and swung the knife wide so it glinted in the starlight.

The other man said: 'No! '

I waited. Car headlights swept across the airstrip. Two cars.

I yipped:'Policía!'although I didn't think it was.

The man with the knife looked – at the cars, at me, at the trees on the edge of the runway. Suddenly he chose the trees.

I let the man on my arm drop and he dropped, saying something both unmistakable and unforgivable about his partner's mother as he went down.

I warned him not to hurry off, then stepped out to meet the cars. As they pulled up, I recognised them: Whitmore's station-wagon, J.B. 's Avanti. The gang was all here – right down to Miss Jiminez.

Whitmore stepped out, saw the knife in my hand, and said: 'We're friends. You don't need that, fella.'

'Not mine. Belongs to a couple of gents who came calling.' And nodded at the man under the wing. 'The other's heading for the hills.'

That stiffened them. Then Miss Jiminez plunged a hand into her vast crocodile bag and came up with a silver-plated automatic. 'Where are they? They killed my brother.' The pistol swung in a rather too comprehensive sweep.

'Not with knives, they didn't,' I said mildly.

Whitmore and Luiz walked up under the wing and came out half-carrying the man over to the cars' headlights.

'What are you all doing here?' I asked. I'd finally had time to look at my watch, and it was just past one in the morning.

J.B. said: 'We got some news. It can wait, though.'

In the pool of light from the headlights Miss Jiminez was pointing the gun at the trio of Whitmore, Luiz, and the man.

Whitmore said testily: 'Put that damn thing away.'

Reluctantly, she decided it wasn't really necessary and tucked it back in her bag. 'But he must talk. We mustmake him to talk.'

In the light, the man looked about fortyish, medium high, medium fat, and much more than medium frightened.

Whitmore said: 'You heard the lady. Start talking.'

The man shrugged and muttered: 'No unnerstan'.'

Whitmore clamped a vast hand on his shoulder and shook him like a jammed door. Miss Jiminez said: 'We must make him to talk now. Some torture.' She looked around for inspiration.

I said: 'Why don't I start up an engine and you feed his arm into the propeller? By the time you reach his elbow he'll probably be talking a blue streak.'

J.B. said: 'Are youserious?'

Ishrugged. 'As much as anybody here. What do we want him to talk about? Where he comes from? – we know where he comes from. Who sent him? – we know who sent him. What for? – we know. Ask him about the weather in Santo Bartolomeo and throw him away.' Whitmore let go and stood back. 'You could have a point there, fella.'

Miss Jiminez stared: 'You mean – to let him go free?'

I said: 'Unless you wanthim as a souvenir.'

She frowned, trying to adjust to the idea. Then she said slowly: 'But a principle of good counterespionage is never to give the enemy even a negative report – unless it is deceptive, of course. Do we wish him to report failure?'

'But his pal got away anyhow; we can't stophim reporting. Just hope he knows dictators well enough to be scared of saying he fell down on the job.' I walked over to the man and, standing clear of his breath, ran my hands through his pockets. As I expected, I came up with a passport.

I looked up in time to catch a stare of sullen hatred. 'Now look,' I said quietly, 'I just saved yourlife. Not your job, perhaps, but at least your life. Don't come looking for this passport: I'll burn it. And don't come looking for me; you aren't good enough. Vamos, amigo.'

He went, reluctantly-and unbelieving at first, then accelerating. By the time he reached the trees he was in top gear.

I tapped the passport against the knife, still in my hand. 'It'll delay him, even if he dares go back there. And taking a man's passport is a pretty childish punishment: he'll hate to admit to it.'

J.B. said: 'What I don't see is why they didn't use guns. I mean, if they used one at a busy airport like Kingston at around nine o'clock, why not on a deserted airstrip at one in the morning?'

The legal mind.

I said: 'They weren't after me – just the Mitchell. Going to slash her tyres. They didn't know I was here at all. Spent an age standing out there arguing if it was the right plane. I suppose the markings threw them off.' I nodded at that 'Amazonian' insignia on her flank.

Whitmore said: "That'd have fixed her, huh? Slashed tyres?'

'No spares. They must've guessed that. But I could get some in a few days. They should have guessed that, too.'

'A few days is all they need.'

'What d'you mean?'

He jerked his head.'Juanita- she got a radio message from her old man. He wants the attack for' – he looked at his watch – 'thirty hours' time.'

After a while, I said slowly: 'Well, if the bombs are here by then – and I can rig a fusing circuit-'

Whitmore said flatly: 'No bombs. ' Then to J.B.: 'Tell him.'

She unfolded a copy of the Miami Herald and read tone-lessly: ' "Four aeroplane bombs were found hidden under the nets of a fishing boat boarded by a Guatamalan Navy patrol boat in the Gulf of Honduras last night. The destination of the bombs is not known for certain, but it was surmised that they were headed for anti-Castro rebels in Cuba or possibly even Florida…" Well, they're wrong.'

'They aren't likely to be wrong for ever. What happens when the boat crew talks?'

Whitmore said: 'They didn't know. We were dealing with a guy in Kingston and he was sending out a boat to meet 'em halfway.'

Then I remembered Agent Ellis and his 'holiday'. If the FBI had once had contacts here, Ellis was old enough to have known them – and bright enough to have remembered them.

He should be able to claim expenses on this holiday.

But I just nodded and said: 'Well – that seems to do it. So Jiminez can't move. Anyway, we could have a hurricane here tomorrow.'

Luiz said quietly: 'That is exactly the point, my friend: the hurricane. The Repúblicahas had bad winds and rain all day. Telephones are out, roads are blocked by landslips, communications are mostly gone. The army is stranded in the hills, the jets have been grounded all day. That is what Jiminez wants: he can take over Santo Bartolomeo before anybody knows.' He sighed. 'It makes sense… so he moves at midnight. In twenty-three hours' time.'

'It makes sense if the Vampires were blown around, or if Ned flew them off the island-'

"The message,' Miss Jiminez said, 'says they are still there and they were not harmed.'

'Then tell him not to move! Christ, with the Vamps loose-'

'Capitán,'she said calmly, 'we have solved the problem. You will drop mortar shells instead.'

Whitmore said quickly: 'Seems there's a shipment of 3-inch mortar shells on the way to Jiminez. We can get 'em diverted here before tomorrow night.'

Miss Jiminez said: 'For the same weight, you can carry nearly two hundred shells. In fact, it might be better than bombs anyway.'

I looked carefully around them. 'Mortar shells?' I said. 'Two hundred of them? How do I attach them to just four shackles? And fused, I suppose -live, before I took off. It just needs one to shake loose among two hundred… I want a fast take-off, but not without the plane.'

Miss Jiminez gave me a look that made it clear Clausewitz wouldn't have condescended to fight in the same war as me. Even on the other side.

J.B. said: 'Well, no posse, no horse – better turn in your badge, Carr.'

Whitmore heaved his shoulders, growled: 'I suppose we could always throw rocks at them.'

'We'd bloody well better, if he's really going to make hismove,' I growled. Then an idea struck. 'Although bricks would be better.'

They stared at me. Whitmore said: 'Bricks? D'you mean that?'

'Yes, I mean it.'

'Bricks? What'd they do to jets?'

'Ever seen a jet fighter that's hit a brick wall at 150 miles an hour?'

After a while he said: 'Yeah – I mean no, but I get the idea.'

'It works the other way round, too. We throw the brick wall at the jets – at ISO miles an hour.'

J.B. said: 'D'you think a brick would knock out a jet?'

'Hell, you run into a bird at that speed and it'll knock a hole in a metal skin. And Vampire fuselages aren't even metal: they're plywood. With a lot of delicate stuff inside: radio, hydraulics, ancillary drives. We won't turn them into scrap, like a bomb would, but I'm damned if I'd fly a fighter with several brick-sized holes in it. We'll wreck some and knock out the rest for several days – and that's all you need, isn't it?'

Luiz said: 'One day is probably all we need.'

Whitmore asked quietly: 'How about loading bricks on just four shackles?'

'Yes.' That was a point I hadn't thought out. There was another silence while they let me get down to it.

Suddenly I remembered I was giving up smoking. 'Anybody got a cigarette?'

Without a word, Whitmore handed one over: Luiz flicked a Zippo under my nose.

'Thanks.' I went back to deep thought. It was very quiet in the cold, still glare of light from the headlamps. The things in the trees had given up squawking and squealing and either got down to business quietly or knocked off for the night. The stars were still there, but somehow flatter and dimmer, as if already touched by the dust of the coming day. I didn't know anybody up there.

Whitmore said gently: 'Well, fella?'

'Nets,' I decided. 'Fisherman's nets.'

'Huh?'

'When I first came out here, I knew a pilot who was using an old bomber to fly nitro-glycerine up to a mining company in the Andes. You know hownitrobehaves? Well, he slung it in a fisherman's net in the bomb bay. So it was a sort of hammock, cushioned against rough air bumps. But if he got stuck in really bad weather, he could open the bay doors, press the shackle release – and nonitroto worry about.'

'And it worked?' Luiz asked.

'Fine. Until one day some fool pressed the release when they were still refuelling on the ground. That was five years back and on a clear day you can still hear the echoes. But he wasn't a particular friend of mine anyhow.' – A short silence. Then Luiz said quietly: 'My friend, are you cheering yourself up with these little stories?'

I grinned. 'Sorry. But I think we can do the same thing. Except use several nets, stretched along the bomb-bay in layers. With bricks on each. Then I can release them in sequence, one-two-three-four, right down the Une.'

Whitmore frowned. 'Would that give you enough spread to hit eleven jets?'

'I think so. The bricks'll be pouring out of just one end of the net, so that'll give them a spread. And they aren't streamlined, so some'll topple and slow up a bit, some'll fall end-on, and that'll spread them a bit more. And I'll be going in low -hundred feet or so – so they'll still have most of their forward speed. So those that miss will probably bounce or slide, and that could rip off a wheel – at 150.'

Whitmore looked around at each of us in turn. 'Well,' he said finally, 'that seems the best we can do – right?'

Miss Jiminez said: 'You are really going to drop just bricks on these aeroplanes?'

'We ain't got anything else, honey. You heard what Carr said; it adds up. Anyhow – if he just knocks out half of them, we're fifty per cent ahead of the game. Your old man's going to move anyway, right?'

She frowned. 'He seems to be taking the "calculated risk": that he will gain more from the hurricane than he will lose from Capitán Carr.'

I said: 'Thanks.'

'All right, then,' Whitmore said soothingly. 'Tell J.B. what you need and she can track it down in the morning.'

'I need four nets – strong, but not too big. You'll get them in Kingston or Mo Bay, probably. Then I'd like the remains of that drum of control cable your boys were using to rig the bomb release. And the bricks. Say two thousand pounds of bricks. Don't know where you'd get them.'

Luiz said: 'Roddie used some bricks for the foundation of his church.'

Whitmore snapped his fingers. "That's right. We're tearing the thing down tomorrow anyway. We just send the bricks along here.'

Luiz smiled, a little wanly. 'There is a philosophy there somewhere, Walt. An illusion of a church is used for a real bombing raid.'

'Hell, are you getting religion?'

'No.' Luiz shook his head. 'Come to think of it, it is not a new philosophy.'