Shooting Script

by Gavin Lyall

  Shooting Script

  Gavin Lyall

  Author’s 4th novel. As a former RAF pilot, a former Air Correspondent for The Sunday Times, Lyall certainly knows about flying.Combining his expertise with fast-paced, well-written plots has made him one of the most popular writers of action thrillers. An adventure story, influenced by the works of Hammett and Chandler. In this one, Keith Carr, piloting cargo around the Carribean, finds himself mixed up with potentially lethal local politics.

  Gavin Lyall

  Shooting Script

  ONE

  They came at me from high on the right, out of the afternoon sun. From just where they should have been. So perhaps I should have seen them coming.

  Once, I would have done. But this time I was sitting half-asleep in the driving seat of a Dove trudging at 150 knots down Route Delta to Puerto Rico and not worrying about anything more than whether my cargo of seedlings would leave the cabin with a smell that I’d have to pay to get cleaned out.

  The first I knew was when they flicked across less than a hundred yards ahead; two bright silver H-shapes in the sky, suddenly there, suddenly gone.

  I came awake with a thump and a terrible sick feeling of being defeated. Beaten. Then it turned quickly to anger, and I swung the nose of the Dove around the sky, searching. But there are no guns in the nose of a Dove.

  I’d recognised the shapes, of course: Vampire jets. And I knew where they must have come from – the República Libra. I was just south of the coastline, just past Santo Bartolomeo. But I hadn’t known the Repúblicaowned any jet fighters, not even seventeen-year-old ones.

  They reappeared ahead, nearly a mile away and climbing. I watched them, angrily. If they wanted to try the same joke twice, I was going to slap on full power and swing straight at them. And if they rammed each other trying to get out of my way, then hard luck and maybe somebody’ll paint your names in gold on the Honour Board… And if I got rammed? Or shot out of the sky in this old unarmed crate?

  This wasn’t how I’d learned the game. I started looking for a cloud to hide in. Live through today – but tomorrow…

  But they kept going in the fast shallow climb jets use until they were out of sight eastwards, the same direction I was going. I watched them go.

  An hour and three-quarters later I touched down at San Juan airport. I parked among the usual clutter of freight and private aircraft just east of the airport building, found the man who was supposed to collect my cargo, and left him and a squad of officials arguing over whether the seedlings were suffering from the Colorado Beetle or just dialectical materialism. I went on up to the Meteorological Office.

  The duty officer there recognised me as a regular even if he couldn’t recall my name. We said ‘Hi’ to each other, and then I asked if he’d heard of any good hurricanes recently.

  ‘Bit early in the season,’ he commented.

  I shrugged and said: ‘July, stand by,’ quoting die old Jamaican tag about hurricanes: ‘June, too soon; July, stand by; August, you must; September, remember; October, all over.’ In a Jamaican accent, it even rhymes.

  He nodded and shoved across the weather chart he’d been working on. ‘Got a small circular disturbance east of Barbados.’

  ‘What’s it going to do?’

  He smiled. ‘I’ll tell you and you tell me what’ll win the three o’clock at Hileah Park on Saturday.’

  ‘Meteorology’s marvellous except when it comes to predicting the weather.’

  ‘We’ve got a Coastguard flight down there. Should be a report in an hour. Which company’s looking after your plane while you’re here?’

  I grinned, perhaps a little sideways. ‘And I have a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce meeting me outside.’

  He smiled back and pulled a piece of paper out of a pile on his desk. ‘Give me your name and hotel and I’ll ring you if it gets within two hundred miles of here – okay?’

  ‘Keith Carr. I’m booked in at the El Portale. Thanks.’ For a meteorologist, he was almost human.

  Then I noticeda Macdonald World Air Power Guideon the shelf behind him, and asked if I could take a look. I turned up the Repúblicaand there, shoved in among the usual Mustangs and Thunderbolts and their ‘shortage of spares’ was a neat handwritten note that read just ‘12 Vampire F.5’.

  ‘When the hell did the Repúblicaget Vampires?’

  He looked up. ‘Couple of weeks or so. Have you been tangling with them?’

  ‘Two of them made a dummy pass at me this afternoon.’

  ‘Probably the two that came in here – just over an hour ago.’ He nodded eastwards, towards the National Guard base at the far end of the mam runway. ‘On a good-will visit. So maybe you’ll meet them around town and congratulate them personally.’

  ‘A good-will visit?’

  ‘That’s what it says here.’ He stood up and walked to the door with me. ‘Happen our circular disturbance grows up into a real hurricane, it’ll be the first of the year. So we’re set to call it Annette.’

  ‘I knew a girl once-‘

  ‘Ahh.’ He patted my shoulder and smiled a deep satisfied smile. ‘I had a kind of bet with myself – that I’d get at least a dozen pilots each saying exactly that before five o’clock. You make eleven, and there’s half an hour to go.’ He sighed. ‘Me, I’ve never met an Annette in my life.’

  ‘They’re all just crazy about pilots.’

  He pushed me firmly out of the door.

  I got my overnight case out of the Dove, rang the agency that sometimes finds me cargoes in Puerto Rico, then took a taxi into town.

  San Juan has changed – grown up, perhaps – in the last few years. Mind, I never knew it when it was a quaint old Spanish-colonial town, and I haven’t met anyone who did. Now it’s a five-mile stretch of hotels, offices, and freeways strung along the shore from the airport to the Navy airbase, all as clean and crisp as an architect’s model. It’s a great place if you happen to be a building or a car, but dogs and human beings are frowned on. You could call it growing up.

  The El Portaleis built in the same style, only smaller and stepped back a few hundred yards and dollars from the big hotels down on the beach. I checked in, drank a couple of cans of beer in the drugstore beside the lobby, and read a paper to see if it suggested why República jetsshould have taken to jumping innocent charter flights. It didn’t, of course. So Iwent upstairs, took a shower, and then lay down on the bed to watch the sky darken and the line of big hotels over on the beach start lighting up like Christmas trees.

  The phone woke me.

  The room was flat dark by then. I groped around for the receiver and answered it with a prehistoric grunt.

  A voice said: ‘Mr Keith Carr of Kingston?’

  You didn’t have to have heard the voice before to recognise it. You hear it all over the world, and everywhere it sounds the same. As precise and impersonal as an income-tax form, and about as welcome. The voice of authority.

  The voice said: ‘Agent Ellis, Federal Bureau of Investigation.5 I grunted again.

  ‘I believe you’re leaving for Kingston again tomorrow, Mr Carr, so perhaps I could have a friendly talk with you sometime this evening.’

  ‘D’you mean I have a choice?’

  ‘You’re not an American citizen, Mr Carr. Just a friendly talk.’

  I didn’t say anything. He went on: ‘I could come to your hotel, or perhaps you’re going out somewhere. I could meet you there.’

  I chewed on this for a moment. Then I thought of something. ‘There’s a couple of República Libra pilots in town. Find out where they’re staying and I’ll meet you there.’

  There was a long official silence at his end. Then: ‘That isn’t exactly my job, Mr Carr.’

  ‘All right. Where I’ll be this
evening is walking round the big hotels looking for them. You can come along on that if you like.’

  ‘Hold the line, please.’ There was another silence. After a while he came back. ‘I understand they’re staying at the Sheraton. Why-‘

  ‘Then I’ll see you in the roof bar there at nine – all right?’

  ‘Why do you want to meet these pilots, Mr Carr?’

  ‘Just a friendly talk, Mr Ellis.’

  TWO

  Iate a hamburger down in the drugstore, then walked up to the Sheraton, timing it to arrive at just five past nine. The FBI would be dead on time, of course – and that made him the host.

  I’d cheerfully said I’d ‘see’ him up in the 24th-floor bar, but I’d forgotten the lighting they went in for there: a small frosted-glass lamp parked in front of each drinker. Just enough light to make every woman look beautiful and every bar bill unreadable. A big hotel thinks of such things.

  So I just stood there looking lost, until somebody stood up from one of the tables, walked across and said quietly, ‘Mr Carr?’

  About all I could tell in that light was that he was a little shorter than me, a little wider in the shoulders, and with lightish crew-cut hair. His age could have been anything from twenty-five to forty-five. We sat down and a waiter with radar eyes took my order for Bacardi Silver Label and bitter lemon.

  Ellis said: ‘You know Bacardi have got over sixty per cent of the rum market in the States and only about three per cent in Puerto Rico itself. Funny. Some people think they came in here after Castro nationalised their plant in Cuba. But they’ve been here since 1936. Biggest taxpayer on the island now. And the Puerto Ricans still don’t drink their rum. Funny.’

  FBI small-talk. If I’d ordered Scotch he’d have made me feel at home by reciting the life story of Bonny Prince Charlie.

  The waiter brought my drink and Ellis managed not to say ‘Cheers’ and we drank. I said: ‘We now come to the main attraction of the evening: a friendly talk from the FBI.’

  He leant his elbows on his knees and twiddled his glass and said: ‘Let’s just call it advice, Mr Carr. You probably know we helped the Federal Government draw up a black list of pilots grounded for illegal flights to Cuba. Either for Castro or against. Those are all American pilots, of course; we can’t pull a flying licence out from under anybody else. But – like withall these things – there’s always a list of people who aren’t on the list. Cuban, Mexican, Venezuelan, Colombian – and some English.’

  ‘The grey list.’

  ‘It’s been called that.’

  ‘A bit of trouble with the Customs whenever you land in the States. A bit more difficult to get somebody to service your plane. A bit of a problem with visas. Just enough to take the profit out of a flight. You meanthat list?’

  ‘I’ve heard it happens,’ he admitted.

  ‘I haven’t been in Cuba in four years. Not even illegally.’

  ‘Sure. And none of those things have happened to you.’ He sipped his drink. ‘But the list’s being expanded; that always happens, too. The State Department’s getting worried about the República Libra now.’

  ‘About that earthly paradise? Just because it goes in for a little midnight beating-up, arrest-without-trial, a few basement executions?’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘No. Oh, sure it happens. But it always has. We don’t like it, but… No. They’re worried about a real blow-up. The opposition to the generals has been building up since Jiminez went back in. You knew about that?’

  ‘I’d heard a rumour.’ Jiminez was the Republica’s Robin Hood – or a lousy Commie or a great liberal leader or a racketeer gangster or… The only thing anybody really knew about Jiminez was that he thought Jiminez would make a great next president of the República, and the sooner the better. The better for whom nobody would know until it was too late.

  He’d been down in South America somewhere for the last four years: skipped or chased out by the two generals who were currently running the República: Castillo of the Army, Boscoof the Air Force. The Navy was just a couple of old subchasers and a few PT boats, so the admiral didn’t rate a part-dictatorship. The admiral, if he’d got any sense, lived in the nearest bar and was careful to keep his ships slightly unserviceable so nobody could suspect him of political ambition.

  Ellis said: ‘Jiminez is supposed to be up in the hills organising things – and I mean organising. This isn’t shotgunsand machettes. Castillo’s got half the army out chasing them and last week they captured a three-inch mortar. That didn’t get into the Repúblicain somebody’s hip pocket. Now you see where I’m going?’

  As my night vision improved, I could pick out a little more about him. But still not his age. He had light, steady eyes and a knobbly face full of small muscles, frozen in the weary I’ve-read-the-file-on-you expression that’s the first lesson taught at the FBI Academy.

  He was wearing a milky-coffee-coloured lightweight suit with the jacket kept buttoned, probably because he had a gun on his belt. Shoulder holsters went out with double-breasted suits.

  I saw what he was getting at, all right. But I also saw why the Repúblicahad suddenly decided to spend good beer money on a dozen jet fighters. They didn’t need them for aerial defence – one nice thing about the Caribbean is that nobody ever goes to war. They can’t afford it. With everybody on his own island, a war would mean a big navy, invasion fleets, long supply lines. So they keep their troubles at home. But a properly handled squadron of jets can be a good ground-attack weapon: fast, flexible, plenty of firepower. You won’t catch a rebel by hauling a tank over mountain roads at 5 mph. But a jet jumping over the hill on a couple of minutes’ notice might do it.

  Ellis said: ‘Well, Mr Carr?’

  Just to annoy him, I said: ‘I thought the FBI was confined to the United States and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Aren’t you treading on Central Intelligence Agency ground?’

  ‘Screw the CIA,’ he said calmly.

  ‘If you say so. But the Republica’s still CIA territory.’ I gave a careful pause. ‘Had you thought the CIA might have hired me?’

  His head came up with a jerk, and even in that light I knew I was getting a hard, penetrating stare. Then he said slowly and quietly, ‘I don’t think so. We know quite a bit about you, Mr Carr. English, thirty-six years old, ten years in the RAF, mostly on fighters. You were in combat with one of our squadrons in Korea, on an officer exchange scheme. The lasteight years you’ve been a civil pilot; the last five out here, in business for yourself. You’re not married, but you’re not queer and you’re not a fanatic. No, I don’t think you’re working for them.’

  ‘Or in other words, screw the CIA.’

  ‘Short, back, and sideways.’ He leant back in his chair. ‘We’re getting off the point. The FBI’s interest is because the arms being found in the Repúblicaare mostly American arms. Okay, so most guns in the Caribbean are American anyway. But somebody’s getting them into the República, and from somewhere. That could make it FBI business. Just could.’

  ‘Well, if you can’t blame it on the CIA, why not try Cuba? I haven’t heard that the generals were top of any popularity polls overthere.’

  He put his hands flat on the table. ‘Mr Carr, in the last five years we’ve blamed Cuban Communists for everything except hurricanes, and I expect the Weather Bureau’s working on that. Sure, they cause trouble; they’re trying to. But we’ve had trouble in the Caribbean since Columbus. The Negro blood hates the Spanish blood, the English and Americans are looked on as a bunch of slave-drivers, and anybody who speaks French thinks everyone else is a slob anyhow. And the military think the civilians are lazy cows and the civilians think the military are trigger-happy racketeers. And they’re both damn right.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘In the Caribbean and Latin America we’ve averaged one revolution a year – the successful ones, mind, not the ones that go blooey – every year for the last 150. Without the help of Communism. On top ofthat mess, Communism’s just an extra pint of b
at’s blood in the pot.’

  ‘You’d better not let J. Edgar Hoover hear you.’ He opened his mouth, and I added quickly: ‘Don’t say it: it could be treason.’

  After a moment he said quietly: ‘I was born here in PR. This is my back yard.’ He shook his head. ‘We’re getting off the point again. We were talking about you, Mr Carr. Where doyou stand?’

  ‘As far aside as I can. I’m in business here. I don’t think the Castillo and Bosco are Abraham Lincoln with diamond knobs on, but I don’t know that Jiminez is likely to be, either. I’m not getting involved in Repúblicapolitics.’

  ‘That doesn’t really answer the question,’ he said slowly. ‘It isn’t politics that makes a revolution: it’s money. You think the Communists put Castro up in Cuba? The hell. It was the big American companies who thought they’d get a better deal from Castro than Batista. They gave him money, bought him guns, one even gave him a private aeroplane. And it wasn’t politicians who flew the planes for him, either. Just pilots – at two, three thousand dollars a ride. Now it’s happening with Jiminez: he’s getting money from somewhere – three-inch mortars don’t come cheap – and somebody’s getting the stuff into the Republic. Maybe boat-owners, maybe pilots – but not politicians.’

  ‘If you’ve got a file on me, you know I fly a twelve-year-old Dove insured for £10,000 with one-third yet to pay.’

  He dived his hand inside his jacket, and for a moment I thought I was going to get shot. But he just pulled out a notebook and pen, and started writing. ‘No – we didn’t know that. We’re not allowed to keep a Jamaicaorfice.’ Helooked up. ‘You still haven’t answered the big question. Could we have it just once, for the record?’

  ‘Or I go on the grey list.’

  Tvegot a job to do. You know that, Mr Carr.’

  I nodded slowly. ‘Yes, I know that. But I’m going to sound pompous for a moment first. I don’t like grey lists. I have an old-fashioned idea that law enforcement agencies should stick to enforcing law. And when there’s no law being broken, they shouldn’t enforce anything else. Such as a grey list. That’s a conviction without a charge, without a trial, without a chance of being found Not Guilty.’