Whitmore's white station-wagon swung in through the gates and trundled slowly up the runway. I watched it quietly, almost apprehensively. It stopped; Luiz got out. Only Luiz.
I went over to help him unload. He took die bundle of nets, I picked up the small drum of cable.
'From Montego Bay,' he said, carrying the bundle. 'Officially, we are supposed to be having a fishing scene but -such scenes often get cut.'
'All deductible, anyway.'
He dumped the bundle and gave me a look. I avoided it, put down the drum, and started unpicking the nets. 'Whitmore or J.B. coining down?' I asked, casually.
'Perhaps when they have the church sequence finished. I spoke to J.B. on the phone. She seemed… tired.' Again he tried to catch my eye, but I went on sorting the nets.
They turned out to be about a three-quarter-inch mesh, roughly circular, perhaps ten feet in diameter. I didn't know anything about fishing, but I guessed these had been the type diey used for casting into the surf – before the snorkel-fisher tourists had chased every fish outside the reef.
Luiz was fingering the end of the cable. 'Why do you need this, my friend?'
"Thread it around the edge of the nets to take the weight.' I held up the net itself: the edging was thick, rough string, stiff with creosote or something. 'Each net's to hold about five hundred pounds, remember.'
He looked at the cable doubtfully. 'Five hundred pounds…'
'Not so much. Just imagine four girls hanging on one end.'
'What a remarkable imagination you have, my friend. But I shall try.' He closed his eyes and smiled dreamily.
I said: 'Oh God.'
He opened his eyes. 'What is it?'
I'd just realised it might be more than 500 pounds – and also why bombers flew so sedately to the target, as if they were afraid of waking the air gunners. You've got a hook diat'll take a 500-pounder – but then you do just a one-g turn and the pull on that hook doubles. In fighters, I'd done more than 6-gturns. If I'd been carrying a 500-pounder then, the pull on thehook would have topped 3,000 pounds…
'I think it'll work,' I said. 'But it'll be a damn gentle ride.'
'I am happy to hear it,' he said. 'Because I am comingalso.'
I glared. 'Like hell you are.'
'You recall I was once a gunner?' He beckoned me over to the station-wagon and pointed in through the back window. On the floor lay a fat, heavy-looking rifle. After a moment, I remembered it as something the Americans had used in Korea: the BAR, Browning Automatic Rifle.
After a few more moments I said: 'So you were an air gunner – and you want to bringthat on an air attack?'
He shrugged, nodded.
I said: 'What is it – -30 calibre? And a cyclic rate of about five hundred rounds a minute?'
He nodded again.
'I see. In Korea we were using Sabres armed with six -50 calibre guns firing 1,200 round a minute each. Thirty or forty times the punch of just that thing. And even then we'd have done better with twenty-millimetre cannons. Christ,you know all this, Luiz.'
He smiled deprecatingly. 'My friend – I was good. And I might be lucky.'
'You aren't asking because you're either good or lucky.'
He just said: 'You are worried about the extra weight?'
'Not so much…' Him and the gun would only add 200 pounds or less, and that could be balanced by using him as copilot, to yank up the undercart the instant we broke ground. I'd prefer an extra 200 pounds than the extra seconds of drag from leaving the wheels down if I couldn't spare a hand at the moment of take-off.
I shrugged. 'All right: you've re-enlisted.'
He nodded graciously – but still didn't tell me why he was coming. It might be because he didn't want just to stand by with Miss Jiminez looking on. Or perhaps as a political commissar, to make sure my resolution didn't get a little weary in the wee small hours.
He picked up one of the nets. 'Perhaps you will show me how I am to do this threading.'
It was a long, hard grind in the sun, and we had to invent the details by trial and error; there's no manual of how to load a bomber with nets full of bricks.
In the end we doubled over the nets – I didn't like cutting and weakening them – into palliasses the dimensions of the bay: about eight by three-and-a-bit. Then I started screwing big ringbolts in four layers, along the bomb rails and at each end of the bay. The cables would be threaded through them as well as the mesh, each end of each cable ending in a loop hooked into a shackle; it had suddenly become useful having two hooks on each shackle.
When I pressed the button, the cables would jump off the hooks, the weight of bricks would force down the net and pull the free cables back through the mesh and ringbolts, letting more and more of the net loose until the load spilled out. That was the theory, anyway.
I knew the cables would jam after a few feet – but all I needed was one end to stay free long enough to open enough net. And I'd have 500 pounds of bricks pulling on it for me.
It was crude and it wasn't going to empty each net in one sudden jerk – but I didn't want it to. I wanted to spill a steady stream of brkks over a whole line of Vampires, not four loads on just four of them.
'But how do you know, my friend,' Luiz asked, 'that diey will be neatly lined up for you?'
'We know they are normally, and if Ned doesn't know we're coming… Anyway, did you ever see a military airfield where the planes weren't lined up?'
'No-o. But I only saw training fields. There, they lined up even the potatoes at lunchtime.'
'Well, there's a good reason for lining up planes. You can run the refuelling bowsers and rearming trucks and servicing gang right down them, one-two-three-four. Commanders are always getting caught with their planes lined up because they like fast servicing better than dispersing the damn things all over the field.'
'Let us hope so,' he said solemnly, sucking a finger that had got stabbed on an end of cable.
We had a wash, several dabs of iodine, a couple of beers, and a light lunch at the Golden Head and were back with the Mitchell by two.
By then I had half the ringbolts in place and Luiz had got two cables cut to the right length and the ends spliced and bound into loops. But still no bricks. And no J.B.
We soldiered on. We h'ad the airstrip to ourselves and the afternoon sun. With its British traditions, Jamaica doesn't have an official siesta – just that everybody goes to sleep in the afternoons.
The inside of the bomb-bay was like a Turkish bath gone critical. I ducked out, lay down under the shadow of the wing, and said: 'Give me a cigarette, will you?'
He threw the pack across.
'Thanks.' I lit one, puffed smoke at die wing above, and asked: 'How much chance does Jiminez stand – if we get die Vamps, I mean?'
He considered. Then: 'Good, I would diink. Of course, he is taking a risk at this tune of year, widi the university on vacation.'
'He's what?'
'The university students, my friend, are always a strong force in any liberal revolution. To make the move when they are on holiday, scattered all over die country, is to forgo valuable support. But die hurricane gives him a great chance to take Santo Bartolomeo. If he can dodiät, dien…' He shrugged.
'Then what? He won't have the whole country. And die Army'll roll home sometime – widi tanks and artillery and-'
'A revolution is not a war, my friend. It is not even truly a military affair. After all – who is the enemy? Just a few leaders, diat is all. Do army officers wish to be at war wim the civil servants? The soldiers widi die peasants? Does die whole Army wish to fight a colonial war in its own country, among its own homes and wives and children?