The director caught my eye and took a deep, weary breath. He knew that expression – and the scene that came after it: the bar-room brawl.
NINE
Film companies don't seemto mind getting up at crop-spraying hours, so they were waiting for me when I put down at Boscobel at seven on Saturday morning.
They made an assorted bunch. J.B. was in a crisp blue-and-white striped linen suit and dark-blue blouse; Luiz in a dark-blue silk suit with a yellow scarf at the neck; Whitmore looking like a big-game hunter in fawn beach trousers, an army shirt, and the same broad hat he wore in the film. The director just looked English in an open-necked shirt under a tweed jacket, and the art director looked very art directorish in a waisted crocodile-skin jacket, tight trousers, and high boots.
I got everybody and a few suitcases on board and we took off around seven-thirty.
I'd been a little worried about how to announce our arrival to Santo Bartolomeo without issuing Ned aninvitationto come and breathe jet fumes down my neck – or worse. I could just appear over the end of the runway, of course; that wouldn't be difficult. But it would also give them a reasonable cause for complaint: you're supposed to file a flight plan. So in the end I'd just sent a cable the night before saying I'd be in by noon carrying several important American businessmen, repeat important. Flight plans usually carry both less and more than that, but I could say the cable office had cocked it up.
Whitmore spent most of the trip up beside me, crammed into the co-pilot's seat and staring out through a huge pair of binoculars whenever there was anything to stare at. I held off radioing an estimated time of arrival until we were almost crossing the coast, ten minutes from landing. If Ned could scramble a section of Vamps in that time on a Saturday, he'd been working even harder than he claimed.
As I turned north to angle round the city, the dark cross of asphalt runways came up a couple of miles to our left.
Whitmore leaned across. "That the field?'
'The military air base. The civil airport's over on the east, the other side of town.'
'Yeah?' He peered through the binoculars. 'What they got?'
'Squadron of Vampire jets, two or three DC-3s for transport, some light trainers and communications jobs. And the usual old prop fighters rotting for lack of spares.'
'Yeah. I can see the jets. All lined up.'
I could just about see them myself: a line of sparkling silver dots. I tried to count them, to make sure they were all safely on the ground, but the sparkle blurred them into each other.
Whitmore asked: 'Can we get closer?'
I thought he was overdoing the little-boy-watching-trains act a bit. 'No. They get pretty touchy about people looking over the fence on this island.' I was clear of the city by now. 'Turning starboard,' I warned him.
There was a sudden shadow over the cockpit and a thump as we rode into a blast of hot jet exhaust. Then a Vampire pulling out of its pass and climbing ahead.
Without thinking, I yanked the Dove's nose savagely around and pointed it: if there was a gunsight on the windscreen, a gun-button on the control wheel… There wasn't. My stomach clenched into a knot of helpless anger. Damn you, damn you, damnyou; nobodydoes that to me!
The door behind me swung open and the art director asked: 'What was that?'
'We got bounced. Tell everybody to fasten their seatbelts.' He hesitated, then Whitmore said calmly: 'Shut the door, fella.' The door slapped shut.
I glanced across. The big man was firmly pulling his own belt tight. He caught my eye and gave a small twist of a smile. 'You're the boss here, fella.'
We were at only 2,000 feet. About a thousand feet higher, and out to the left, the Vampire was levelling out of his climbing turn and coming back past me before diving in behind for another pass.
Ned had said: 'Next time I could get orders to shoot.' And now was next time… But – it wasn't Ned in the Vamp. Hisfighter pilot instinct went too deep to have allowed him to pull up ahead of me, to turn his back on another plane even if it was unarmed.
I yanked back the throttles and pushed the Dove's nose hard down. The Vampire saw it and turned in a little earlier and a little steeper than he should have. No, it wasn't Ned.
I swung hard left, into and underneath him, forcing him to tighten and steepen his turn even more if he was going to bring his guns to bear. But coming down-hill in a jet, he was going too fast. His wings swung vertical for a moment as he tried to make it, then he levelled and soared away up to start again from scratch.
'Missed, you bastard.'
Whitmore twisted around, watching the Vampire over his shoulder. 'You figure he's going to shoot?'
'I figure on keeping out of his sights.'Was that all 1 figured?
We were below 1,500 feet now and still going down in wide spirals. But the Vampire had learned something. He'd positioned himself only about five hundred feet higher this time and – as far as I could judge – he'd slowed down a lot. He circled in a gentle turn outside our spiral, waiting his moment.
Keeping an eye on the Vampire, I put my right hand down on the flaps lever. 'Get your hand on this,' I told Whitmore. 'When I say "Flaps" I want it all the way down. But not before. Don't practise.' I felt his big paw push mine aside.
He said calmly: 'Got it.'
I waited until the sun was where it wouldn't blind the Vampire or me, turned extra steeply for a few seconds, then straightened out as if I'd spotted where I wanted to go and was heading there direct.
Come on, you bastard: try and bite me.
He bit. He flipped over and came down in the classic 'curve of pursuit', the long curling dive to end up sitting on my tail.
I turned into and under him again – but now he was expecting that. He was moving slow enough to follow me. He tightened his diving curve, holding me easily, swinging smoothly into firing range.
I levelled the Dove and pulled back the throttles. The Vampireslid behind my left shoulder, almost dead behind us. I yelled: 'Flaps down! '
The lever clicked in the silence. Then it was as if I'd stamped on the brakes: the Dove collided with a soft pillow of air and bounced soggily upwards, into the Vampire's path.
Suddenly he was on top of us.
He reared like a startled horse, jerking into a wildly tight turn. His wings blurred with mist condensing in the shattered airflow, then flicked level as he stalled out. He shuddered past a few yards to the left and I caught a glimpse of a helmeted, hunched figure in the cockpit, fighting controls that weren't controlling anything any more. His nose began to swing inexorably downwards.
A Vampire can lose over two thousand feet in a gentle stall. This one had only 1,200 feet to lose – and he was as totally stalled as I've seen an aeroplane. There was nothing to do now but watch him die.
To bale out of a Vampire 5 you dump the cockpit canopy, roll on your back and drop out – if you're still in control.
I put the Dove's nose down, pushed up the throttles: we were close to stalling ourselves. Below, the cockpit canopy flashed off the Vampire, so perhaps he tried at the last second to jump. Then he was a burst of flame and a swelling cloud of smoke on the harsh green countryside. From inside the Dove you couldn't even hear the bang.
TEN
We landed at Santo Bartolemeo five minutes later.
The control tower didn't throw a banquet in my honour, but hadn't got any orders to cut my throat, either. And they knew Whitmore's name when I dropped it on their toes a few times. They cleared me in with just a few nasty remarks about how to write a flight plan, but I swallowed that easily.
Nobody said anything about a crashed Vampire.
It was at least possible that nothingwould be said. If the pilot hadn'thad orders to intercept, he might not have radioed that he was doing something without orders. So he might just be written off as a training crash: Ned must be expecting crashes, even if he hadn't had them already. And I'd been investigating officer on too many RAF crashes to worry about eye-witnesses. All Ned would learn from them would be that five Boeing 707s had simultaneously burst into flames three feet above their rooftops.