Grivas’s teeth flashed. ‘You’re a stupid man, O’Hara; do you think I do this for personal reasons? But since you mention it, you said not long ago that sitting in the captain’s seat gave you authority.’ He lifted the gun slightly. ‘You were wrong — this gives authority; all the authority there is. Now change course or I’ll blow your head off. I can fly this aircraft too, remember.’
‘They’d hear you inside,’ said O’Hara.
‘I’ve locked the door, and what could they do? They wouldn’t take the controls from the only pilot. But that would be of no consequence to you, O’Hara — you’d be dead.’
O’Hara saw his finger tighten on the trigger and bit his lip before swinging the control column. The Dakota turned to fly south, parallel to the main backbone of the Andes. Grivas was right, damn him; there was no point in getting himself killed. But what the hell was he up to?
He settled on the bearing given by Grivas and reached forward to the auto pilot control. Grivas jerked the gun. ‘No, Señor O’Hara; you fly this aircraft — it will give you something to do.’
O’Hara drew back his hand slowly and grasped the wheel. He looked out to starboard past Grivas at the high peaks drifting by. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked grimly.
‘That is of no consequence,’ said Grivas. ‘But it is not very far. We land at an airstrip in five minutes.’
O’Hara thought about that. There was no airstrip that he knew of on this course. There were no airstrips at all this high in the mountains except for the military strips, and those were on the Pacific side of the Andes chain. He would have to wait and see.
His eyes flickered to the microphone set on its hook close to his left hand. He looked at Grivas and saw he was not wearing his earphones. If the microphone was switched on then any loud conversation would go on the air and Grivas would be unaware of it. It was definitely worth trying.
He said to Grivas, ‘There are no airstrips on this course.’ His left hand strayed from the wheel.
‘You don’t know everything, O’Hara.’
His fingers touched the microphone and he leaned over to obstruct Grivas’s vision as much as possible, pretending to study the instruments. His fingers found the switch and he snapped it over and then he leaned back and relaxed. In a loud voice he said, ‘You’ll never get away with this, Grivas; you can’t steal a whole aeroplane so easily. When this Dakota is overdue at Santillana they’ll lay on a search — you know that as well as I do.’
Grivas laughed. ‘Oh, you’re clever, O’Hara — but I was cleverer. The radio is not working, you know. I took out the tubes when you were talking to the passengers.’
O’Hara felt a sudden emptiness in the pit of his stomach. He looked at the jumble of peaks ahead and felt frightened. This was country he did not know and there would be dangers he could not recognize. He felt frightened for himself and for his passengers.
III
It was cold in the passenger cabin, and the air was thin. Señor Montes had blue lips and his face had turned grey. He sucked on the oxygen tube and his niece fumbled in her bag and produced a small bottle of pills. He smiled painfully and put a pill in his mouth, letting it dissolve on his tongue. Slowly some colour came back into his face; not a lot, but he looked better than he had before taking the pill.
In the seat behind, Miss Ponsky’s teeth were chattering, not with cold but with conversation. Already Miguel Rohde had learned much of her life history, in which he had not the slightest interest although he did not show it. He let her talk, prompting her occasionally, and all the time he regarded the back of Montes’s head with lively black eyes. At a question from Miss Ponsky he looked out of the window and suddenly frowned.
The Coughlins were also looking out of the window. Mr Coughlin said, ‘I’d have sworn we were going to head that way — through that pass. But we suddenly changed course south.’
‘It all looks the same to me,’ said Mrs Coughlin. ‘Just a lot of mountains and snow.’
Coughlin said, ‘From what I remember, El Puerto de las Aguilas is back there.’
‘Oh, Harry, I’m sure you don’t really remember. It’s nearly fifty years since you were here — and you never saw it from an airplane.’
‘Maybe,’ he said, unconvinced. ‘But it sure is funny.’
‘Now, Harry, the pilot knows what he’s doing. He looked a nice efficient young man to me.’
Coughlin continued to look from the window. He said nothing more.
James Armstrong of London, England, was becoming very bored with Joe Peabody of Chicago, Illinois. The man was a positive menace. Already he had sunk half the contents of his flask, which seemed an extraordinarily large one, and he was getting combatively drunk. ‘Whadya think of the nerve of that goddam fly-boy, chokin’ me off like that?’ he demanded. ‘Actin’ high an’ mighty jus’ like the goddam limey he is.’
Armstrong smiled gently. ‘I’m a — er — goddam limey too, you know,’ he pointed out.
‘Well, jeez, presen’ comp’ny excepted,’ said Peabody. ‘That’s always the rule, ain’t it? I ain’t got anything against you limeys really, excep’ you keep draggin’ us into your wars.’
‘I take it you read the Chicago Tribune,’ said Armstrong solemnly.
Forester and Willis did not talk much — they had nothing in common. Willis had produced a large book as soon as they exhausted their small talk and to Forester it looked heavy in all senses of the word, being mainly mathematical.
Forester had nothing to do. In front of him was an aluminium bulkhead on which an axe and a first-aid box were mounted. There was no profit in looking at that and consequently his eyes frequently strayed across the aisle to Señor Montes. His lips tightened as he noted the bad colour of Montes’s face and he looked at the first-aid box reflectively.
IV
‘There it is,’ said Grivas. ‘You land there.’
O’Hara straightened up and looked over the nose of the Dakota. Dead ahead amid a jumble of rocks and snow was a short airstrip, a mere track cut on a ledge of a mountain. He had time for the merest glimpse before it was gone behind them.
Grivas waved the gun. ‘Circle it,’ he said.
O’Hara eased the plane into an orbit round the strip and looked down at it. There were buildings down there, rough cabins in a scattered group, and there was a road leading down the mountain, twisting and turning like a snake. Someone had thoughtfully cleared the airstrip of snow, but there was no sign of life.
He judged his distance from the ground and glanced at the altimeter. ‘You’re crazy, Grivas,’ he said. ‘We can’t land on that strip.’
‘You can, O’Hara,’ said Grivas.
‘I’m damned if I’m going to. This plane’s overloaded and that strip’s at an altitude of seventeen thousand feet. It would need to be three times as long for this crate to land safely. The air’s too thin to hold us up at a slow landing speed — we’ll hit the ground at a hell of a lick and we won’t be able to pull up. We’ll shoot off the other end of the strip and crash on the side of the mountain.’
‘You can do it.’
‘To hell with you,’ said O’Hara.
Grivas lifted his gun. ‘All right, I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘But I’ll have to kill you first.’
O’Hara looked at the black hole staring at him like an evil eye. He could see the rifling inside the muzzle and it looked as big as a howitzer. In spite of the cold, he was sweating and could feel rivulets of perspiration running down his back. He turned away from Grivas and studied the strip again. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked.