Luiz said: 'And still nothing.' He had the radio in his lap and was twiddling.
'It's only just past three in the morning.'
'I hope you are right.' He turned it off.
The starboard engine missed another beat.
He asked: 'Where do you want me for the attack itself?'
'Better be down in the nose. You've got a good view, there; you can tell me anything you see.'
'My friend, you do not sound very impressed with my… usefulness.'
'You know exactly damn well why I'm not.'
The engine missed again – bad enough for him to notice, this time. He turned away, staring out at the exhaustfiâmes.
I had caught a flicker – no more – on the rpm dial, a shudder on the oil pressure. But now both were normal again. Just in the general way a doctor hands out a pill, I pushed the starboard mixture to full rich. It would cool things, if there was a hot spot the temperature gauges didn't show. It might bum off any carbon on the plugs. But mostly it would show the engine that I, the doctor, cared.
Still with his head screwed round, staring out of the window, Luiz asked: 'Do you think we will have to abort the mission?'
'Hell, no.' Or did I mean – Not yet? She'd fly on one engine, all right – it's the first thing you practise with a twin-engined aeroplane – but she'd be limping along at around a hundred and forty, and that engine would be drinking nearly a gallon a minute. And – damn it – there's no crossfeed on a Mitchell; each engine uses the fuel from the tanks in its own wing. We could run out of fuel on the good engine and still have 400 totally unusable gallons left in the other wing. // we lost an engine- At that point we lost it for about a second; the Mitchell slewed to the right. Then, with a broadside of backfiring, she caught again. Instinctively I hauled her back on to 090 degrees.
Yet the oil pressure was normal, the temperatures a bit below – but that was the effect of the rich mixture.
'I think it must be electrical,' I said, as calmly as I could. It would be, of course. If anybody could invent an aeroplane without electrics, he'd get an award from every pilot in the world, headed by the Keith Carr Medal with Crossed Beer Bottles. The nice thing about a jet engine isn't the speed; it's that the thing doesn't need continuous ignition and will keep you steaming around the sky when every blasted wire's fallen out of the aeroplane.
Reluctantly, I reached out and tried cutting the magnetos. With one out, I got a normal – normal for this tub – drop of around two hundred revs. With the other cut- I held her against the vicious swing, snapped the switch back to Both and the engine caught again in a ragged blast of thunder.
'It's a magneto, all right,' Luiz said knowledgeably. I frowned at him, then remembered he'd already flown a hundred times as many hours in this vintage of American bombers as I ever would – I hoped. And he was right, anyway. One of the magnetos was as good as dead.
Well, it happens all the time: that's why they give you two magnetos per engine. But even with electricity, there has to be a reason. I tried to remember where the magnetos were installed on a Cyclone engine… Then I remembered, all right: in the rear casing, right alongside the starter motor.
Now I saw the cold, thin tight-rope ahead – and behind. It's the classical pattern of flying: ignore a small thing, and it grows on you like a cancer. I'd ignored that starter motor, let it spin itself to bits – but forgotten it might not be entirely in bits. Some part was still spinning, rubbing the motor casing, building up heat and melting the magneto wiring. In a few minutes, those wires would be trickles of hot metal. Then on to the second magneto… already it must be affected, or the whole engine couldn't have cut.
Ignore a cancer and it eats you hollow; forget a jammed motor and it slowly poisons an engine. Just an ounce or two of busted metal, spinning out of control only a few feet away, and no way to stop it up here at 8,000.
'I'm going to have to feather that engine,' I announced.
Luiz said: 'We must turn back then.'
I looked at him. 'We can still reach the target. We won't get back to Jamaica on one – but we can get on to Puerto Rico. That's less than a couple of hundred miles from-'
He said calmly: 'We must not make the attack.'
'I thought,' I said, 'that you came along just to see Ididn't turn back. To make sure I was a press-on type that Clausewitz would have been proud of.'
'Then you misunderstand, my friend. One thing a revolution cannot afford isa nasco. To come in an old bomber and drop just bricks is bad enough, but to crawl in on one engine and because of that perhaps to miss… Could a futurepresidentebe one who employed such a feeble weapon? Jiminez would never survive the joke. It is better not to start than to fail so ludicrously.'
'I wasn't planning to fail.'
The engine missed. The second magneto was feeling the heat, all right.
I swung back on to heading. Luiz said: 'You understand? It is better to go back now.'
'If I cut her now, before she fails on her own account, she'll cool off. Then I can restart her for periods later – it'll take time for the heat to build up again. We can make the attack itself on two engines.'
'You are certain?'
'No – I'm only the pilot. But if Ican't restart her we can reconsider the whole business then. And still make Puerto Rico on one.'
He said softly: 'You really wish to make this raid.'
'You've noticed, have you?'
When he didn't say any more, I tilted the plane into a shallow dive to keep the speed up, throttled back both engines to reduce the swing, then jabbed the starboard feathering button and cut the levers back.
As its blades twisted to meet the airflow side-on, the propeller slowed, came to a wavering stop. I twirled on rudder trim to balance die uneven pull of die port engine, and at 7,000 feet we levelled out again; slightly nose-high, slightly crabbing, the speed coming down to 150 – but still heading on 090 degrees.
When I got everything balanced into die new pattern, I said: 'So that's why you killed Diego.'
He looked at me, moved his lips, but had forgotten to push his transmit switch. Then he remembered and said: 'Why should you think this thing? He was the son of my old friend Jiminez.'
'It's been worrying me – since that fuss around the plane last night. Tirâtwas the sort of secret service the generals run: a couple of down-and-outs sent just to slash the tyres. Not a tough hired killer. And you always had the best chance: you were with Diego all that evening, running around die airport. And you come from Repúblicaoriginally – so you'd likely know as much about snake pistols as anybody there. You could have brought one to Jamaica – you might have thought it was snake country, too. But I never sawwhy you should have killed him.'
He waited to be sure I'd finished, then: 'But now you think you see?'
'You just told me: a revolution can't afford a fiasco. Diego flying this raid would've been die fiasco of die year. He'd've cracked up on take-off or missed or run it into die ground at that end – somediing, anyway. With your aircrew training youmust've seen he wasn't the type. But now – he's a martyr and everybody thinks the generals are foul assassins.'
'And a true professional is flying the raid, no?'
I looked at him sharply, then realised that was right, too. 'You're a cold-hearted bastard, Luiz.'
In the faint light from the instruments I saw his face wince with pain. Then he nodded slowly. 'Perhaps… perhaps I am, to have done this thing. Yet – he was a playboy, but he was ready to die for his father's cause. And probably on this attack he would have died – stupidly. Perhaps. I only arranged things a little better.'
'And it – doesn't worry you?'
'About being found out? I think it unlikely, my friend.'