Shooting Script

He stared curiously. 'You're betting I'll get you through that gate, without tricks – against what?'

'We leave you here when we make a run for Jiminez. Tied up, locked in – but here. In one piece.'

He thought it over. 'You're crazy, rolling dice with me. But-'

'I'll say he is! ' Whitmore exploded.

'Then think of something better.'

'Christ, I can think of a stack of things better'n shooting craps when you got a revolution going on downstairs-'

'Like going downstairs and starting shooting people?' I sneered. 'Look, Mr Whitmore, this is the one chance we've got of getting through that gate: getting Ned on our side. Nothing else'll work, not with that base as nervy as it'll be now. It's been attacked once today already – you rememberthat?'

He lifted the automatic. 'Hell, we could still do it by-'

'Wait,' Luiz said warningly, 'quiet down.' Without anyone noticing, he'd reached the sub-machine gun. Now it pointed, just casually, at Whitmore. Tut down the gun, Walt,' he said pleasantly. 'Don't tempt yourself. This is Carr's play.'

Whitmore stared, totally disbelieving. Then, as the idea sank slowly in, he bent down and flicked the automatic across the carpet. Luiz kicked it under the sofa. 'Thank you. Proceed, gentlemen.'

J.B. said quietly: 'Even if your friend loses' – and I liked that 'even if – 'why should we believe he'll keep his word?'

'Because I know him. He'll cheat us blind, deaf, and dumb – he's a fighter pilot. I told you something about that. But he's also a gambling man – and one thing he'll never do is welsh on a bet. Never. That's the one thing he believes in.'

Todohombretienalgún aspecto dehonor,'Luiz murmured. Every man has some aspect of honour.

Ned glanced sharply at him – he must have known enough Spanish to follow that – then back at me. 'You're pretty crafty, Keith. But I'm not just a gambler, sport, I'm a winner.' And there was just a shade of suspicion behind his voice.

I shrugged. 'All right, so we'll even it up for me a bit. Cutout all the fancy betting and the long odds. Just one play of the dice; one shooter rolls until he wins or loses. That's all there is to it.'

He frowned. My idea wasn't quite what gambling means to a gambling man. He works on a superior knowledge of long-term odds, of balancing winning and losing bets. I was suggesting a straight toss-of-the-coin situation.

I said: 'But I'll shoot if you like. It was my idea.' Somewhere, I'd read that the odds are slightly – about one per cent – against the shooter.

He went on frowning.

I said: 'I just want to get somethingsettled. But if you're scared to take a bet-'

His face snapped shut. 'You've bet, matey.'

The drawer below the telephones was stacked with cards and dice, some still in cellophane wrappers. I took out a pair and clinked them in my hand. They were normal casino dice, the same as they used downstairs – which would be where Ned had got them. 'Where do we play?'

'Up against the wall there. The carpet's smooth enough; we've shot dice there before.'

I looked around the room. At Whitmore, staring grimly back at me; at J.B., arms folded, hugging herself slightly, puzzled; at Luiz, cradling the sub-machine gun easily and comfortably because he knew about machine guns.

Ned said: 'So – shoot.'

I knelt down on the carpet, then nodded back at the guard on the sofa. 'And keep an eye on him.'

Everybody glanced at him. Luiz smiled, nodded, then moved so he could cover the sofa as well as Whitmore.

Ned said: 'I bet I get you through the gate, you bet you leave me here – right?'

I said 'Right' and threw the dice.

The carpet slowed them more than the baize of a craps table would have done; they didn't even reach the wall.

I'd thrown a 6 – no win, no loss.

I looked up. 'You accept that – or do I throw again?'

He shrugged. 'She'll do.' In the thirty-six combinations apair of dice can show, there are five ways of throwing a 6 – but six ways of throwing a 7. And I had to throw another 6 before a?.

I reached for the dice, shook them, rolled them.

An 8. Nothing.

I reached, shook – and far away, through the double windows, the crack of a grenade, the patter of rifle fire. But not my business. No Repúblicapolitics for me. I rolled the dice.

A 4. Nothing.

I collected the dice, looked up at Ned. His face was quite still, but his eyes were-bright and hungry. Locked in the private cockpit of his head, willing the dice, guiding them – with a control column and rudder pedals and throttle that he didn't have. Gambling man.

Then he caught my eye and relaxed instantly. 'The odds're against you, matey.'

Behind me, Whitmore took a rasping breath. 'Christ, we should've done this on the end of a gun, not-'

'Ned's not as impressed with guns as you are,' I snapped. 'He's spent his Ufebeing shot at – and not with blanks.'

Ned just smiled quietly.

I threw another 8. Another nothing. And my hand was damp as I picked the dice up.

Ned said: 'Getting tune for a seven, I'd say.'

I threw. One showed a 4, the other spun on a corner, rocked, settled – a 2.

And after a long time, Ned said quietly: 'I'll get you through the gate.' The light was gone from his eyes.

We stripped off the guard's uniform and left him tied up with a mixture of telephone cable and Ned's ties and belts. Luiz climbed into the uniform – wearing the expression he usually kept for getting his feet wet. In die end, it didn't fit him, but that was fairly normal in the Repúblicaforces. What worried me more was the casual elegance he carried into any clothes; he looked like a general dressed as a private.

But the way he handled the sub-machine gun was still convincing.

Ned led the way down the corridor; Luiz and I were the lastout. As we went through the door, he murmured: "the next time you play with loaded dice, my friend, please remember they are onlycertain to work over a period of time. Not on just one play.'

He'd known what I was doing all along, of course, even if he hadn't seen me switch Ned's dice for Bosco's when everybody glanced at the guard on the sofa.

I shrugged. 'He was pretty suspicious of the idea anyway. If I'd beaten him over a long game… Anyway, the odds were three to two on my side, so Iought to have won.'

He looked at me. 'Yees. But next time, play only for money – please?'

THIRTY-TWO

The hotel lobby was crowded with tourists; sitting on their luggage, swearing at a deserted desk, shouting down phones that didn't answer. A few of them looked at us hopefully – until they saw Luiz's uniform and gun, Ned's flying suit.

At the back, on a table flanked with potted palms, a radio loudspeaker was making a triumphant, but possibly rather weary speech. It said 'Jiminez' several times, so it sounded as if he was still in business down there. The only people listening were three locals – senior civil servants, judging by the size of the pistols in their belts. Probably they'd decided the Americana, under Bosco's wing, was the safest place for them that morning.

There were no Air Force men around apart from a couple of guards_ outside the glass front door. We arranged ourselves carefully – Ned led the way, J.B., Whitmore, and I followed, and Luiz – still looking like a general dressed as a private escorting us. We aimed for the back door.

Whitmore said: 'I need a gun.' We'd left his pistol up in the room; now he was staring hard at the pocket where I still had Ned's Magnum.

I shook my head. 'You could have it rather than me, but Ned's got to carry it through the air base gate. He'd look damn suspicious with an empty holster.'

'Yeah.' He saw the sense of it – reluctantly. 'Hell, though.'

Then he saw the civil servants.

He half-turned his head to Luiz and said out of the side of his mouth: 'Get one of those guys with us.'

Luiz frowned, then looked resigned, and took a diversion past the group.'Señor, por favore. Presidente-Generalissimo Bosco…'Then we were round a corner and I couldn't hear any more.