'If you're going to work for us we'd better put a real writer on your dialogue. All right – a Scotch. A thin one.'
I mixed it, found myself a bottle of Red Stripe, and sat down again. The evening wound down gently; the surf hissed politely on the beach beyond the patio; the lizard sentries drowsed at their posts.
After a while, she said quietly: 'Carr – whyare you flying this raid?'
'I'm making a profit at it – I'm getting an aeroplane out of it, one way or anodier.'
She shook her head impatiently. 'You're not a damn fool, Carr. I know your record; I saw you figure out everything we'd been up to with Diego and getting that bomber. You know you could've tried other ways of getting your plane back. Diplomatic pressure, spilling the story to the papers, bringing law-suits – I'd've been forced to help you, morally, anyway. But this way you may not get your plane but you damn sure will get run out of the Caribbean.'
The grey list. I shrugged, then asked: 'That's my legal position, is it?'
'Ah, legally you probably aren't too badly off. It doesn't seem to be an offence in Jamaica to start a war as long as you don't start it here. They might get you under the Foreign Recruitment Law, but they need an order in council to bring that into force. And they'll get you for having bombs – unless you swear you picked them upen route. But all that isn't the real trouble.'
'I know.'
'A pilot's always vulnerable. If they want to get you, they can trip you up on a dozen licencing troubles, safety standards… They'll run you out.'
'I know.'
She eyed me carefully. 'You'renot a damn fool, not that way.' Then she tossed her empty glass on to the crowded table; two other glasses toppled, rolled, smashed on the floor. She watched them, expressionless. Then said quietly: 'When you first walked in here, I thought you were a pretty toughindependent character. I thought maybe you'd be able to tell the Boss Man to go climb a tree. But then he calls for a posse and everybody grabs a deputy's badge and jumps on a horse -and then they can say "I rode with Whitmore." I've seen it happen before.'
'You think that's why I'm going?'
'Isn't it?' she flared. 'It isn't for your plane – and you don't give a damn about Jiminez, that's for sure. Well, you've joined the posse; the Boss Man thinks you're really one of the boys. That's wonderful.'
I stood up. The evening was dead. Among other things. 'Room 17, I think you said? And the desk knows I'm coming?'
She nodded. I found my own way out. And I didn't feel a thing. And that was pain enough.
TWENTY
The next morning I got the boys down at Port Antonio to work stripping out the seats and bomb-bay tank from the Mitchell, then wangled a company car over to Kingston to pick up my jeep (the cops had finally got tired of finding each other's fingerprints on it) and a suitcase of dirty shirts I'd been saving until my laundry could go on the company's bill.
By the time I'd got back to Port Antonio via dumping the jeep at Boscobel, they'd nearly finished. The seats, the central heating, and the bomb-bay tank were all out, and they were just sealing off the ends of the fuel feed, which seemed to have been designed by a kitten and a ball of wool.
Then I fired them, handed over a wad of Whitmore's dollars, and let them find their own way back to Palisadoes. When they were out of sight, I took out my torch and ducked down for a private look around the bay itself.
Standing on the ground, I was inside it from about my hips up: a hot, dark metal box full of old oily grime and petrolfumes. About eight feet lengthways nearly four wide, and six high. And the first quick flash of the torch convinced me the attack was off: the roof of the bay was quite bare.
I ducked out for a breath of air and a reconsideration. To be quite honest, as an ex-fighter pilot I couldn't remember ever having seen a bomb rail or shackle before; they were just words I'd picked up. But I was quite certain the roof of that bay didn't have any, and just as certain that anything that'll hold a 500-pound bomb can't be knocked up in a dull evening with a cigar box and a couple of rusty hairpins.
And it isn't something you put a 'wanted' ad in the Daily Gleaner for, either.
I took a deep breath and ducked in again just to make sure.
The roof of the bay was still empty. But when I turned the torch on the sides, they were lined with heavy metal stringers that seemed far too strong just to support the thin metal of the box – it wasn't even the outside skin of the aeroplane itself. And spaced along them, two to each side, were four thin, irregular-shaped steel boxes. I stared at them in the torchlight. They were just over a foot long,"with two flat hooks sticking down at either end.
I dipped a finger in a pool of petrol on the tarmac beneath and rubbed it over one of the boxes. And I knew the attack was on again.
Surprisingly clear and non-rusty under the grime, the lettering came up: Bomb Shackle Mk, S.
'You know, they must've hung the bombs on thesides of the bay, one above the other, and let 'em roll out and down?' I said. 'I suppose I should have guessed: you wouldn't need a bay six foot high if you were just going to hang 'em from the roof, and I suppose it must've worked – as long as you pressed the buttons in the right order – but still-'
'Will it work now?' Whitmore asked.
He and Luiz had been waiting for me on die Boscobel strip when I flew the Mitchell in soon after five. Apparently J.B. was off visiting a sick contract and Miss Jiminez had decided, after all, that she'd better go and watch Diego's coffin being shoved aboard a Venezuelan freight plane.
'With a lot of work,' I said slowly. I held up the shackle I'd managed to get off the rail. 'The shackles are in pretty good condition – I suppose because the thing was being used as a bomber in Colombia up to a couple of years back. You get the shackles off the rails, hook on the bombs – two hooks, you wouldn't want a bomb waggling around on just one – winch the whole lot up, fit the shackle back on to the rail. Then these' -1 tapped a couple of little levers sticking out of the top of the shackle – 'fitted into some sort of release gear.
"The trouble is,' I went on, 'that all that gear's gone. It must've worked on electro-magnets, with a coil in the circuit to step up the power, and probably the whole thing duplicated to avoid hang-ups. And on top ofthat, a fusing circuit – you wouldn't take off with the bombs fused and there's no way of getting at them from inside the plane.'
Whitmore nodded, reached out, and pushed the hooks closed. Then slapped the trip levers with a huge finger. The hooks came open with a vicious littleclack.
It was a cold shivery sound in the hot sun. Whitmore looked at Luiz and grinned slowly. 'Sounds simple enough.'
'Simple?' I stared at him.
'Hell, fella – one thing afilm unit's got is electricians. We got 'em like that guy in The book had pimples.'
'Job,' Luiz said. 'And boils.'
Whitmore jerked his head. 'He played a Bible picture once. Anyhow, I'll get the boys down to work on her tomorrow. Hell, she's in the script – so why can't she drop a few bombs? Rig some dummies outa beer cans or something. Have 'em going off along the river, bang-bang-bang; use dummy charges. We got a scene there.'
He walked off to look at my jeep.
Luiz sighed. 'Another scene where I get my feet wet.'
I grinned, then asked: 'Can they really do it?'
'My friend – you recall we are already building a fifty-foot church for this picture? A little matter like arranging a bomb-release circuit… They will do it.'
Whitmore walked back. 'That your jeep, fella?'
I'd said 'yes' before I realised my mistake. They needed an old, battered jeep for the scene outside the church. Of course.
The next morning, the boys moved in. They were either good electricians or good actors; either way, they knew more about what they were doing than I did. So I just suggested where they could mount the release buttons – over some of the empty sockets at the top of the instrument panel – and left them to get on with it.