Shooting Script

After a time she asked: 'Would the generals really do that?'

'I told you, they don't know. Only Ned and I know…' Then, quieter: 'Yes, they'll do it. They'll have to: with the Army stuck in the hills, Ned and the Vamps are the only weapon they've got. They'll use him.'

'Only you're going to stop him.'

'Hurricane permitting.'

She nodded, then walked slowly and thoughtfully out across the headlights to the Mitchell and stood looking up at theshining wrinkled side. And said softly: 'And that's the only reason?'

'Call it good commercial sense, if you like,' I growled. 'There won't be much trade for a charter pilot to pick up in SB after Ned and the boys have worked the town over.'

'I like your noble reasons better, Keith.' Then her voice got serious again. 'It's not something personal against Rafter?'

'I left that business eight years back – remember?'

'Was… this sort of thing why?'

'Perhaps. Or perhaps because you get to like it. You like seeing a man go down burning.' I shrugged. 'Why not? Most people who're good at their jobs like the job – and I was good, all right. But – I didn't have to like liking it. And I couldn't change: go on shooting down fighters but change the reasons. I couldn't think "That's a blow for freedom and democracy" or "That's probably saved a pal's Ufe."I'd always be doing it because I was Keith Carr, the Great Unbeatable – because I liked it.'

'But – tomorrow?'

I smiled. 'You don't count the ones you knock out on the ground anyway. Old fighter pilot tradition.'

She looked up at me. 'Keith – I'm sorry; I was wrong about you…' She shivered, as if from a sudden wind or an old memory. But there wasn't any wind. 'Give me a cigarette, will you?'

'Sorry.'

'Of course: you aren't an owner-smoker. Some in the car.'

I found a pack on the crash-pad above the dashboard. I also found the headlight switch and turned it off. Then walked back to her in the quiet, dusty starlight.

We lit the cigarettes. For a long time nobody said anything. Far down the strip a small light twinkled like a fallen star; my oil lamp, waiting patiently to become a flarepath. Waiting for the north wind.

I reached and ran a hand through her long, tangled silky hair. She stiffened. 'Wait – Keith… You know I fixed this whole thing. I got Jiminez's signature on his promise to the Boss Man, that afternoon.'

Td guessed that. A nice watertight contract?'

'Look – I'm Whitmore'slawyer.' There was a small, desperate edge to her voice. 'Ihad to^ say it was a good deal. He spends twelve thousand on the aeroplane and a few hundred on you – and most of it deductible – for a chance, a good chance, at a quarter of a million. Ihad to say that's a good deal. But not for you. You don't have to be any part of it.'

'I know. I'm a free man.'

'Keith, you could get killed.'

'Not me. I told you: I was good. The type that waits until he's got the height and he's up-sun and can get the other fighter in the back. We don't take risks. We don't gamble. We cheat.'

'Korea was a long time ago,' she said doubtfully. 'You could have forgotten-'

I stretched my hands and laid them on her shoulders. 'Like I had over Santo Bartolomeo that day?'

And suddenlyshe was holding me, her strong body straining against me, her hair flooding my eyes. And whispering: 'Keith – don't get yourself killed, justdon't…'

Then the dusty starlight and the lamp glittering at the end of the strip and the north wind itself, if it were there, were something in another country, beyond another hill Much later, and much sleepier, she said: 'Youare slipping, you know… you forgot to ask me what the J.B. is for.'

'Yes. You must tell me sometime, when we've got nothing better to talk about.'

'I will. I absolutely insist on you knowing. Besides, you might lose your British citizenship if they found out you didn't even know my name.' Then her voice changed. 'What about that man – Colonel Rafter?'

'What about him?'

'If you raid him tomorrow – won't he have to come after you?'

'I don't think so. Ned's a commercial pilot. He flies ground-attack, but just the way Pan Am flies passengers. He won't like it – but he won't come chasing me unless he's got a nice watertight contract saying he'll make a profit out of it.'

She was quiet for a while. I gave up groping around theengine covers for the cigarettes and just lay, watching the dim square of light that was a gun window.

Her voice was sleepy again when she said: 'You know, I've never been seduced in an aeroplane before. I wonder, if it was flying…'

'Greedy.'

She chuckled softly. 'Maybe sometime then. Keith – do I get to go with you?'

'Where?'

'Wherever you go – when you get run out of the Caribbean on a rail.'

'Hmm. It may not be exactly a Man and a Home and a Back Yard and… I don't know what it'll be.'

'I think I'd like that.'

I frowned. 'What about Whitmore?'

'You're going to need a hot lawyer a lot more than he will, after tomorrow. And I don't think you could afford my fees.'

'Why d'you think I seduced you?'

She laughed sleepily and put her arms around me again.

I was woken by a banging on the fuselage side. The morning sun was streaming dustily through the gun windows; the fuselage was stuffy – and empty, apart from the rumpled engine covers.

One of the spray pilots shoved his head up through the aft hatch. 'God, but you charter pilots really believe in your sleep. It's nine o'clock.'

I stared athim blearily. 'What's the weather?'

He grinned. 'No hurricane. She recurved; turned north-west four-five hours ago. So no trip to Caracas.' He looked around the fuselage. 'Well, at least you had a quiet night.'

I nodded. 'Yes. A quiet night.'

TWENTY-FOUR

I staggered down to the Golden Head for a wash and several cups of coffee. I'd finally found J.B.'s pack of cigarettes; I lit one and just sat, brooding.

A quiet night. And suddenly, something in your Ufethat you may never say goodbye to. Something fixed; a commitment. Funny how it changes a man. And funny how it doesn't. I was still Keith Carr, still unbeatable, still going on a visit to Ned Rafter in… about seventeen hours' time.

I was back with the Mitchell by ten.

Until the nets and bricks arrived, I couldn't do much practical work, so I sat down in the shade of a wing to work out me theory. I'd said a fighter pilot could do any low-level attack -but perhaps mostly because, like most fighter pilots, I'd never had a high opinion of bomber pilots. In fact, like most fighter pilots, I'd never had a very high opinion of any other pilot.

Now, it began to look a little complicated.

Say I was going in at 150 mph at 100 feet. In falling a mere 100 feet, a brick would hardly lose any of its forward speed -it would hit the ground when I was still dead overhead. I suddenly became glad I wasn't using bombs.

Working backwards from that, I had to drop the first bricks as many seconds before I passed over the first Vampire as it took a brick to fall 100 feet. Let that be known as Carr's First Law. On to number Two.

A brick accelerates downwards at 32 feet per second per second – ignoring air resistance. So it falls 16 feet in the first second, 48 in the second, 80 in the third – say two-and-a-half seconds for 100 feet. Bung in air resistance and call it three: I dropped three seconds early. Carr's Second Law.

Number Three was easy: at 150 mph. I was doing just over 200 feet a second, so I dropped a bit more than 600 feet early… It seemed a hell of a long way. But it was right.

That left me with just the problems of holding precise speed, height, and course and judging exactly 600 and a fewfeet. Possibly bomber pilots did need a trace of intelligence. The few that ever hit anything, that is.