Shooting Script

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-'