Shooting Script

I nodded and put the third match to my pipe. Experience had shown that this was the one voted most likely to succeed.

Whitmore said: 'Do you reallylike that thing?'

The match died, disillusioned. I took the pipe out of my mouth and looked at it. 'I'm told it grows on you.'

'Not only on you, fella. Would you like a butt instead?'

'If you insist.' I put the pipe down and lit one of his Chesterfields.

J.B. shook her head wearily. 'There's a boy who's got the price of cigarettes licked.'

Ned said: 'All right, Keith. You're under arrest.'

He was standing, feet spread, pointing a bluntfingerlike a pistol and giving me a look as friendly as a blowtorch. He obviously hadn't wasted any time: he was still in a stained lightweight flying suit, covered in zips and pockets, with a fat stubby revolver in a shoulder harness buckled over the lot. In the carefully-staged half-light of the patio bar, he looked like the scene from a Whitmore film where the hero staggers shirtless into the Southern ballroom.

The two tall air policemen in white helmets and heavy webbing holsters didn't look as if they belonged, either. It didn't stop them moving towards me.

Then J.B. slid off her stool and said crisply: 'I'm Mr Carr's lawyer. Will you tell me the charge, please?'

Ned jerked his head round and gave her a suspicious frown. Then he said heavily: 'Yeh – I suppose I should've expected something like you. Well, we can start with murder and an act of war and see what builds up from there.'

She took off her sunglasses and looked at him as if he'd crept out of the wall. 'You are quite certainyou have the power of arrest?'

'Yeh. You sure you got the right to practise law here?' She flicked him a brief condescending smile. 'I didn't want you to make a fool of yourself – whoever you are.'

It seemed time to make some introductions. I said:'Coronel Ned Rafter, commanding the Repúblicafighter squadron. Meet Miss J.B. Penrose.' I waved a hand down thebar. 'And you'll have recognised Walt Whitmore and Luiz Monterrey, of course.'

Of course he hadn't; he'd only been looking at me. He lifted a hand slowly to his stubbly hair, scratched, and said: 'Yeh, I suppose I should've expected somebody like you, too.' He turned back to me. 'You sure pick your witnesses before you throw your punch.'

Whitmore stuck out a hand. 'Glad to meet you, Coronel. Have a beer.'

Ned looked at the hand, then shook his head. 'I've come forhim. I'll make do with that.'

Whitmore said: 'Anything he's supposed to have done, I was there at the time.'

'Yeh. I'm beginning to get the idea.'

J.B. asked smoothly: 'What were the charges again, Coronel?'

'I want a statement from Keith in front of the General for a court of enquiry,' he growled. 'He don't move out of my sight until we've got that.'

'We're down to a subpoena for an enquiry now, are we?' she asked. 'Let's work on it a bit more. We could get your "act of war" down to a parking ticket yet.'

But that did it. Ned's face clamped tight. 'Bring him in! '

The two guards moved for me.

I slid off the stool and stood waiting, feeling the old anger surge up inside. Nobody does this to… But you're always hitting the wrong men. The man in the Vampire hadn't bought the Vampire himself, hadn't been the one who decided I was a danger to the state. The two guards might like their work -they looked as if they did – but they were still under orders. You can never hit the men who give the orders. But maybe the time comes when you've got to hitsomebody…

The decision had been made for me. The guard on my right seized my arm. Then a huge hand landed on his shoulder, twisted him as easily as I could turn a switch, and another hand thumped in just under the white helmet. The guard took a short backwards sprint and fell over a bamboo table.

The second guard was tearing at his holster, pulling a long revolver. I grabbed the gun by the cylinder and hit him in thestomach with my right. He grunted and pulled the trigger – but the cylinder couldn't turn, the gun couldn't fire. I hit him again and he started to fall, dangling from the gun in my left hand.

J.B. let out a yell. Whitmore took three strides and a swinging place-kick. The first guard's arm whipped out straight and his revolver sailed out of the bar on to the lawn.

There was a thundering bang.

Ned was still standing there, surrounded by fading wisps of smoke, his arm stretched sideways where he'd fired into the open. Then his gun swung back towards us.

'All right,' he said grimly, 'if you all won your Oscars, let's get back to where we started.'

Whitmore turned to him. Ned twitched the gun. 'I justmight want to become famous.'

Whitmore shrugged, smiled slightly, and walked back to me. 'Turning out a better day than I expected, fella. I like the way you drop your shoulder with the punch.'

'Thank you. That was a nice piece of place-kicking.'

We grinned at each other. Luiz murmured: 'One for all and all for one. And that was the one picture hedidn't play in.'

Whitmore gave him a look, then said easily: 'Okay, so let's go see the General.'

J.B. said: 'Just you wait a minute, Coronel.'She was looking white and angry.

'You're in the Repúblicahere,' Ned snapped. 'If you want to try your hand at prosecuting, you can start on me: for blowing size eleven holes in your clientsunless they start moving right now.'

I tossed the guard's gun over the bar into a sink full of crushed ice, and we all went to see the General.

ELEVEN

I'd expected Aride out to the air base or at least downtown to the Hall of Justice. Instead, we just pushed through a small crowd of tourists and hotel staff who'd come to see – from a distance – what the shot had been about, turned left in the hotel lobby and ended up in the casino room.

This was one thing they did better here than in San Juan. It was a tall, arched, elegant room decorated in the style of Louis the Fifteenth or Onassis the First or somebody. Anyway, long scarlet drapes, white paint, gold mouldings, and chandeliers like crystal clouds, glowing gently – only gently. At tropical high noon, the place had the soft, seductive atmosphere of midnight. You could feel the money in your pocket fighting to be out and into the action.

The room looked pretty full for lunchtime, until I remembered it was Saturday. A white dinner jacket hurried up to us, staring horrified at Ned – perhaps more at his old flying suit than the gun in his hand. Then he recognised him.

'General Bosco,' Nedsaid flatly.

The white jacket nodded a smooth dark head towards the craps tables. We filed across.

Either the General didn't like rolling dice with the mob, or the mob had more sense than to roll dice with a man who's fifty per cent of a dictator. Despite the crowd, he had a whole craps table to himself, an aide-de-camp in a gold-braided uniform, a croupier, and a couple of characters keeping the crowd at a distance with watchful plain-clothes expressions that were far more obvious than the bulges under their jackets.

The General had his back to us, rolling the dice across the table. But the aide caught my eye and smiled hungrily, and I knew him: Capitán Miranda.

Ned marched up and said: 'General – about that crash. I've got Carr, the pilot of the Dove.'

Boscoturned slowly and looked at him.

Perhaps he looked like half a dictator, but I really wouldn'tknow; my personal experience of dictators is slight, although not as slight as I'd like. To me he was a tallish, well-built character in his fifties, putting on a bit of a stomach, with a full but not too fleshy face, a hooked beak of a nose, neat greying hair and moustache, heavy eyebrows over slow dark eyes. He was wearing a snappy dark-blue uniform with five gold stars on the cuffs, gold wings, and three rows of medal ribbons – which was restrained of him since he'd probably awarded most of them to himself.