Shooting Script

Here's your final shooting script: There are just ten, not eleven, jets now. According to a message from Miss J's old man, they crashed another last week.

Sunrise in SB is at 5.22 tomorrow.

The weather there is supposed to be pretty cloudy. This is a good thing, isn't it? Means you have somewhere to hide. Anyway, for God's sake don't take any risks. You hear me?

And when you get back, if I'm not around DON'T TALK to anyone. Stay under cover until I can tell you what to say.

Look after yourself, Keith

J.B.

I grinned. It was somehow a very J.B. letter.

Then I shrugged, stuffed it in my pocket, and looked around. Luiz and Miss Jiminez were talking quietly by the bomb-bay.

'They aren't coming down,' I said.

Luiz nodded, as if he wasn't surprised, then said:'Juanitawould very much like to see if the nets work.'

'I'd like to see myself. Climb in and pull the plug.'

'Oh no, my friend.7 want to watch.'

We glared at each other.

He turned to Miss Jiminez.'Juanita- perhaps you would care to press the very button which will, tomorrow, strike out such a blow for your father's cause?'

Her eyes glittered. She'd justlove to.

'You speak like snake, with forked tongue,' I whispered, rememberinga Unefrom several Whitmore Westerns.

'My own hands,' he said grimly, 'they loaded that net. I want tosee.' He shunted her up through the forward hatch.

I shooed the company car away; this was a strictly private demonstration. Luiz dropped out of the hatch again. 'I think she understands the idea. I told her to-'

She understood it.

The net suddenly sagged below the bay, then poured bricks on to the tarmac in a clattering roar. Yellow dust exploded up around the plane.

I said: 'About a half-second delay. That means I'd better drop at…' I tried to think where.

Luiz said: 'My God. It works.'

But we were working by the station-wagon's headlights before we had all four nets strung and loaded, brick by filthy, heavy, sharpedged brick. Any time the Bricklayers' Union wants to bar me from ever handling a brick again, I'll come out and picket myself.

Miss Jiminez didn't last the course: the dirty, slogging little details of war didn't seem to be anything Qausewitóhad said much about. She pushed off at dusk.

It was eight o'clock by the time Luiz and I were cleaned upand sitting down at the long Spanish bar of the Plantation Inn.

He said thoughtfully: 'You may have a drag problem, from those nets hanging down after the bricks are gone.'

I'd realised that already, but without seeing any way around it. 'It may not be too bad. If it is, you can try hacking open the bomb-bay with the fire axe and cutting them loose.'

He seemed a little dubious about that, but just grunted and" looked at his watch. 'At what time do we take off?'

I pulled J.B.'s letter from my pocket and uncrumpled it. 'Sunrise is at five twenty-two – so it'll be light enough for an attack about fifteen minutes before. Say five minutes after five. It's about four hundred and fifty miles; two and a half hours at normal cruise. Let's aim at a two o'clock take-off and give ourselves half an hour in hand for bad weather or getting lost or a wing falling off.'

He nodded. 'So I'll pick you up at – quarter-past one?'

Tine." I finished my drink, stood up, turned away. Then turned back. 'Just why are you really coming on this trip?'

He shrugged. 'Perhaps – I rehearsed being a gunner for three years, in the war. I want to play it, just once, for the camera.'

'Luiz, you're a damned liar.'

But he just smiled. After a moment, I went away.

I had my room door half open before I realised the light was on inside. And not only the light. Miss Jiminez.

This time, she was out of mourning. She was out of practically everything, everything being a tight white silk Chinese dress with a slit skirt reaching almost to journey's end and a high collar with a big cutaway just below to give a fine close-up of her strategic high ground.

I leant limply back on the door, shoving it closed. The last diing I wanted right now wasa briefingon what Clausewitz said about how to drop bricks ona uneof jet fighters.

I didn't get it. She stood up, slowly, gracefully, and said gently: 'This is an early celebration of tomorrow, Capitán. Would you like a drink?'

. There, on the bedside table, was a half-bottle of champagnein a silver ice-bucket. Two glasses.

I nodded blankly and she poured the stuff out – expertly, too. She handed me one and smiled softly. 'To tomorrow, then. I think in England you say "confusion to the enemy"?'

'Er- yes.' Well, that or 'Request take-off, anyway.

'Confusion to ¿he enemy.' She drank, watching me across the glass. I took a quick swallow.

* There was a short pause. Then I said: 'Well – it's nice of you to drop in and wish me luck.'

She straightened herself, put her head slightly back and slightly on one side and said simply: 'Capitán, I just wanted to be sure you had – everything you needed.'

My mouth may have been open; I know my eyes were. She might have made it more obvious by having herself brought in naked on a plate with water-cress round the edges, but only might.

But I just couldn't see why. I've got a fairly high opinion of myself – anyway, nobody has a higher one – but I didn't see how I'd suddenly jumped into the class, and bed, of a rich Venezuelan society girl who was well known to despise my strategic reading.

She said: 'Tomorrow you must be most brave, most noble, Capitán.'

Then it clicked. She was ready to lay down her… well, just lay down, for her father's cause. To ensure my devotion to duty.

Suddenly she was just a big, busty girl in a tarty dress. And I remembered a strong, small body against me in the silence of the Mitchell's cabin – and not bribing me to go out and drop bricks on anybody in the morning.

I finished my glass in a gulp and said deliberately: 'I think I've got everything I need – except sleep.'

A small frown rippled across her forehead. 'Tomorrow, Capitán, you could become a trueliberador.'

'Maybe. But I'm going anyway, you know.'

'A true hero of the República.'

'Sure. I know. They'll name an Avenida Keith Carr and have it end in the Plaza del Mitchell with the starboard induction manifold on a granite plinth and an Eternal Oil Leak dripping at the bottom. And it'll last all of five years. Until the next revolution.'

Her eyes blazed, shocked. 'There will be no more revolutions! When the generals are gone and there is a true democracy… You don't believe me?'

I dumped more champagne in my glass. I hadn't planned on any more drinking this evening, but it seemed my plans had stopped mattering anyway.

'My beliefs don't matter,' I said carefully, 'but just for the record, I believe democracy's simply a habit. Like smoking or drinking or driving safely. Not checks and balances, not one-man-one-vote. Just millions of people saying – instinctively -"Christ, they can't dothat! " But it takes time to build up that sort of instinct. And meanwhile, revolution's a habit, too. Your old man isn't exactly trying to breakthat habit tomorrow, is he?'

'He has no choice!'

I shrugged and said wearily: 'Well… maybe he hasn't, in a way. I don't know. I don't even care. Just take it that I'm going tomorrow, if the Mitchell holds up. And that's all you want, isn't it? My reasons don't matter.'

She glared, but a little uncertainly. 'Napoleon believed that morale was three times as important as physical power.'

I grinned. 'But not tonight, Josephine.'

She stared a split second longer, slammed the champagne glass on the floor, and stalked out. The slam of the door shivered the whole building.

After a while I just kicked the pieces of glass under the bed, stripped, and flopped into bed.

TWENTY-FIVE

A light, steady tapping woke me. I rolled out of bed, staggered across to the door, and jerked it open without remembering to ask who it was. Luiz slid quickly inside and shut the door.