Shooting Script

by Gavin Lyall

  I said softly: ‘Perhaps just enough to want to save him from those long dull evenings in the cat-house?’

  Her head came round with a snap and her face was a hard, glittering glare. For a moment it looked as if I was going to be smoking my pipe from somewhere around my tonsils.

  Then she suddenly flashed a wide grin. ‘Maybe. Maybe – once. Women are suckers for wanting to save men from a man’s world. Never works. I’m not too particular about wedding rings, but I’m damned if I’ll settle for a brand on the backside.’

  ‘I’m encouraged to hear it.’

  Her voice got a little colder. ‘Don’t puff out your throat at me, Carr.’

  We ate at the stars’ table, which meant that the food got brought to us instead of queueing up for it. It was the same food; peas and rice with chicken, which is about as close to a Jamaican national dish as you’ll get, apart from salt cod and ackee. Whitmore, Luiz, the director, J.B., four others, and me.

  Whitmore said. ‘We got to get somebody in to do the Spanish for us. You heard what that slob of a writer asked the boys to shout about just now? -“Viva el liberador”, for Chrissake.’ He looked at Luiz. ‘You heard that?’

  Luiz shrugged elegantly. ‘To me, it seemed reasonably appropriate. Those of Spanish blood who rush across rivers under fire often shout the mostnaïvethings.’

  Whitmore grunted. ‘Well, we got to get somebody.’ He turned to me. ‘Anybody you know speak Spanish, fella?’

  ‘I know one man. I don’t know if he’d be free, though.’

  ‘We can try him. Tell J.B.’

  So I gave her Diego Ingles’ name and a telephone number where you could sometimes catch him between beds.

  Another man, who seemed to be head of the camera team, suddenly asked me: ‘Have you ever flown a camera plane before?’ His accent was English English, so I seemed to have struck another part of the eighty per cent.

  I shook my head. ‘I haven’t agreed to fly this one, yet.’

  J.B. said: ‘He’s worried about what we might get for him.’

  The cameraman looked a little contemptuous. ‘It’ll be my neck up there, too, you know. So if I don’t mind-‘

  ‘That’s splendid,’ I said, ‘as long as your neck’s as good as mine at recognising a crackedmainspar.’

  Whitmore said calmly: ‘What kind of plane d’you want, fella?’

  ‘I’d’ve thought a helicopter was the most versatile. But I’m no helicopter pilot.’

  J.B. said: ‘Choppers are out. You know what they cost an hour?’

  The cameraman said: ‘Vibration.’

  The director pushed away his plate and started fitting a cigarette into a stubby holder. ‘We can do without the aerials, Walt.’

  ‘Sure – you can cut any picture at the bone. So who pays to see dry bones?’

  I said: ‘There’s a Harvard – what you’d call a Texan – on the Boscobel strip. A film company used it as a Jap bomber last year.’

  The cameraman said impatiently: ‘We’re not looking for Jap bombers. And you can’t do good aerials from a single-engined plane: it has to be hand-held stuff and you don’t get the down-ahead tracking shots.’

  Whitmore nodded, planted his elbows solidly on the table, and started to peel an orange in big tearing, sweeping strokes. ‘Okay, fella. So what do you figure we should get?’

  I said carefully: ‘If you want to shoot down and ahead you need twin engines – and a glass nose. That wipes out my Dove. You’d better try and pick up an old bomber – B-25 or a B-26 – with a bomb-aimer’s position in the nose. There’s still a lot of them around, in Central and South America.’

  Whitmore cocked an eyebrow at the cameraman, then the director. Then said: ‘Sounds good. Can you find one, J.B.?’

  ‘I can start people looking.’

  ‘Fine, fine.’ He ate a strip of orange. ‘Hell, maybe we could write it into the picture. Say instead of where the government sends a patrol on horses, they send a bomber. That’s where we’re walking up the river. So I have a Browning or a Thompson and I’m standing in these goddamn rapids up to my knees and shooting hell out of this bomber overhead. Could make a great scene.’

  The table went very quiet. The director slowly put both hands to his head and started muttering.

  But itwould make a great scene – for Whitmore. Him standing to his knees in foaming white water, blazing defiance at the sky with a tommy-gun.

  Just to be technical, a bomber doing 200 mph would be 100 yards ahead one moment and 100 yards behind two seconds later. Perhaps that’s why so few bombers ever get shot downwith Browning automatic rifles and Thompson submachine guns.

  It would still be a great scene – and everybody round the table knew it.

  Luiz said: ‘I think I see where we all get our feet wet once more.’

  Whitmore ate another piece of orange. ‘Fine. Tell the dialogue boys what we want.’ He looked back at me. ‘Now we got another problem. We need a location. We can do all the jungle, river, tin-roof village stuff here. But justa couplascenes, we need some real Spanish architecture. Something like those big two-peak churches you get in Mexico – you know?’

  I knew. I’d seen him park his horse outside that type of church half a dozen times. It labelled the film Spanish New World faster than you could speak it aloud.

  The cameraman said: ‘Puerto Rico – I did a documentary there once. It’s full of-‘

  J.B. said:‘Not Puerto Rico. We’d be back in US labour laws. The budget’ll blow to hell and we’ll never make Eady.’

  The director said: ‘Walt – we can get Roddie down here and he’ll build you one in a week.’

  J.B. said: ‘Roddie costs money. He’s another American salary, Boss.’

  ‘Will you let the man speak?’ Whitmore roared. Everybody shut up. He nodded to me. ‘You’re the local boy, fella. Let’s hear from you.’

  ‘Nothing like that in Jamaica: we’ve been British too long.’ I shut my eyes, pinned up a mental map of the Caribbean, and started touring. ‘Cuba’s the nearest, but… Mexico’s seven hundred miles, the nearest point in South America’s a good five hundred. There’s Haiti just down the road, but I’ve never heard of anybody getting any work done in Haiti.’

  The director said: ‘Let’s get Roddie down.’

  ‘And there’s the República Libra.’

  Whitmore and Luiz looked at each other. Luiz gave another slow shrug. ‘We could take a look this weekend.’

  ‘Yeah. ‘ Whitmore looked at the cameraman. ‘You wanted to do some servicing on the cameras anyway, right? So we won’tshoot Saturday and Sunday and our friend’ll fly us down to the República. There’ll be’ – he counted round the table: himself, the director, Luiz, a delicately dressed young man who hadn’t said anything yet, and J.B. “There’ll be six of us. Fix a hotel, will you, J.B.?’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. Everybody looked at me. ‘The Republica’s having a little trouble right now. I don’t know how they’re reacting to strangers: they may want to keep them out, they may want to let them in just to prove everything’s nice and normal. I just don’t know.’

  Luiz said gently: ‘But we can find out.’

  ‘Yes. But you’ve got an extra problem with me. They seem to have taken against me: decided I’ve been helping the rebels. A couple of their jets bounced me the other day. So however they take to you, they may not be too glad to see me in Bartolomeo.’

  ‘You don’t wanna go?’ Whitmore asked bluntly.

  ‘Not quite that.’ It might be the best thing to go – a chance to argue it out with the Repúblicaauthorities when I could offer them solid proof that I might bring profitable trade to the country. It might put the Republic back on my map – and I certainly needed places on that map.

  ‘Not quite that,’ I said again. ‘Just that they might not think I’m adding tone to your business.’

  ‘I guess they won’t put me in jail,’ Whitmore said. Then his face tightened into a thin, slightly crooked smile. I knew that expr
ession: it came when the unshaven character at the far end of the bar announces that he can’t stand the smell of lawmen. ‘Just stick close to me, fella. We’ll manage.’

  The director caught my eye and took a deep, weary breath. He knew that expression – and the scene that came after it: the bar-room brawl.

  NINE

  Film companies don’t seemto mind getting up at crop-spraying hours, so they were waiting for me when I put down at Boscobel at seven on Saturday morning.

  They made an assorted bunch. J.B. was in a crisp blue-and-white striped linen suit and dark-blue blouse; Luiz in a dark-blue silk suit with a yellow scarf at the neck; Whitmore looking like a big-game hunter in fawn beach trousers, an army shirt, and the same broad hat he wore in the film. The director just looked English in an open-necked shirt under a tweed jacket, and the art director looked very art directorish in a waisted crocodile-skin jacket, tight trousers, and high boots.

  I got everybody and a few suitcases on board and we took off around seven-thirty.

  I’d been a little worried about how to announce our arrival to Santo Bartolomeo without issuing Ned aninvitationto come and breathe jet fumes down my neck – or worse. I could just appear over the end of the runway, of course; that wouldn’t be difficult. But it would also give them a reasonable cause for complaint: you’re supposed to file a flight plan. So in the end I’d just sent a cable the night before saying I’d be in by noon carrying several important American businessmen, repeat important. Flight plans usually carry both less and more than that, but I could say the cable office had cocked it up.

  Whitmore spent most of the trip up beside me, crammed into the copilot’s seat and staring out through a huge pair of binoculars whenever there was anything to stare at. I held off radioing an estimated time of arrival until we were almost crossing the coast, ten minutes from landing. If Ned could scramble a section of Vamps in that time on a Saturday, he’d been working even harder than he claimed.

  As I turned north to angle round the city, the dark cross of asphalt runways came up a couple of miles to our left.

  Whitmore leaned across. “That the field?’

  ‘The military air base. The civil airport’s over on the east, the other side of town.’

  ‘Yeah?’ He peered through the binoculars. ‘What they got?’

  ‘Squadron of Vampire jets, two or three DC-3s for transport, some light trainers and communications jobs. And the usual old prop fighters rotting for lack of spares.’

  ‘Yeah. I can see the jets. All lined up.’

  I could just about see them myself: a line of sparkling silver dots. I tried to count them, to make sure they were all safely on the ground, but the sparkle blurred them into each other.

  Whitmore asked: ‘Can we get closer?’

  I thought he was overdoing the little-boy-watching-trains act a bit. ‘No. They get pretty touchy about people looking over the fence on this island.’ I was clear of the city by now. ‘Turning starboard,’ I warned him.

  There was a sudden shadow over the cockpit and a thump as we rode into a blast of hot jet exhaust. Then a Vampire pulling out of its pass and climbing ahead.

  Without thinking, I yanked the Dove’s nose savagely around and pointed it: if there was a gunsight on the windscreen, a gun-button on the control wheel… There wasn’t. My stomach clenched into a knot of helpless anger. Damn you, damn you, damnyou; nobodydoes that to me!

  The door behind me swung open and the art director asked: ‘What was that?’

  ‘We got bounced. Tell everybody to fasten their seatbelts.’ He hesitated, then Whitmore said calmly: ‘Shut the door, fella.’ The door slapped shut.

  I glanced across. The big man was firmly pulling his own belt tight. He caught my eye and gave a small twist of a smile. ‘You’re the boss here, fella.’

  We were at only 2,000 feet. About a thousand feet higher, and out to the left, the Vampire was levelling out of his climbing turn and coming back past me before diving in behind for another pass.

  Ned had said: ‘Next time I could get orders to shoot.’ And now was next time… But – it wasn’t Ned in the Vamp. Hisfighter pilot instinct went too deep to have allowed him to pull up ahead of me, to turn his back on another plane even if it was unarmed.

  I yanked back the throttles and pushed the Dove’s nose hard down. The Vampire saw it and turned in a little earlier and a little steeper than he should have. No, it wasn’t Ned.

  I swung hard left, into and underneath him, forcing him to tighten and steepen his turn even more if he was going to bring his guns to bear. But coming downhill in a jet, he was going too fast. His wings swung vertical for a moment as he tried to make it, then he levelled and soared away up to start again from scratch.

  ‘Missed, you bastard.’

  Whitmore twisted around, watching the Vampire over his shoulder. ‘You figure he’s going to shoot?’

  ‘I figure on keeping out of his sights.‘Was that all 1 figured?

  We were below 1,500 feet now and still going down in wide spirals. But the Vampire had learned something. He’d positioned himself only about five hundred feet higher this time and – as far as I could judge – he’d slowed down a lot. He circled in a gentle turn outside our spiral, waiting his moment.

  Keeping an eye on the Vampire, I put my right hand down on the flaps lever. ‘Get your hand on this,’ I told Whitmore. ‘When I say “Flaps” I want it all the way down. But not before. Don’t practise.’ I felt his big paw push mine aside.

  He said calmly: ‘Got it.’

  I waited until the sun was where it wouldn’t blind the Vampire or me, turned extra steeply for a few seconds, then straightened out as if I’d spotted where I wanted to go and was heading there direct.

  Come on, you bastard: try and bite me.

  He bit. He flipped over and came down in the classic ‘curve of pursuit’, the long curling dive to end up sitting on my tail.

  I turned into and under him again – but now he was expecting that. He was moving slow enough to follow me. He tightened his diving curve, holding me easily, swinging smoothly into firing range.

  I levelled the Dove and pulled back the throttles. The Vampireslid behind my left shoulder, almost dead behind us. I yelled: ‘Flaps down! ‘

  The lever clicked in the silence. Then it was as if I’d stamped on the brakes: the Dove collided with a soft pillow of air and bounced soggily upwards, into the Vampire’s path.

  Suddenly he was on top of us.

  He reared like a startled horse, jerking into a wildly tight turn. His wings blurred with mist condensing in the shattered airflow, then flicked level as he stalled out. He shuddered past a few yards to the left and I caught a glimpse of a helmeted, hunched figure in the cockpit, fighting controls that weren’t controlling anything any more. His nose began to swing inexorably downwards.

  A Vampire can lose over two thousand feet in a gentle stall. This one had only 1,200 feet to lose – and he was as totally stalled as I’ve seen an aeroplane. There was nothing to do now but watch him die.

  To bale out of a Vampire 5 you dump the cockpit canopy, roll on your back and drop out – if you’re still in control.

  I put the Dove’s nose down, pushed up the throttles: we were close to stalling ourselves. Below, the cockpit canopy flashed off the Vampire, so perhaps he tried at the last second to jump. Then he was a burst of flame and a swelling cloud of smoke on the harsh green countryside. From inside the Dove you couldn’t even hear the bang.

  TEN

  We landed at Santo Bartolemeo five minutes later.

  The control tower didn’t throw a banquet in my honour, but hadn’t got any orders to cut my throat, either. And they knew Whitmore’s name when I dropped it on their toes a few times. They cleared me in with just a few nasty remarks about how to write a flight plan, but I swallowed that easily.

  Nobody said anything about a crashed Vampire.

  It was at least possible that nothingwould be said. If the pilot hadn’thad orders to
intercept, he might not have radioed that he was doing something without orders. So he might just be written off as a training crash: Ned must be expecting crashes, even if he hadn’t had them already. And I’d been investigating officer on too many RAF crashes to worry about eye-witnesses. All Ned would learn from them would be that five Boeing 707s had simultaneously burst into flames three feet above their rooftops.

  Well, I’d find out. But it still wasn’t the best start to what I’d hoped would be a good-will visit. I went back downstairs, got my passport stamped, and went through to join the others in the dingy-modern lobby.

  They were standing round a smeared glass case showing a model of what the grand and glorious new airport terminal would look like – when the government stopped spending the taxes on American blondes and Swiss bank accounts. Even the model had several years’ dust on it by now.

  The director and art director gave me rather white, suspicious looks; Whitmore and Luiz just nodded. J.B. marched up and whispered fiercely: ‘Just what really happened back there before we landed?’

  ‘Man made a pass at us, missed, and crashed.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  I shrugged. ‘I thought you’d be used to men doing that.’

  Her eyes glittered. ‘Whatmade him crash?’

  ‘One of those rare non-habit-forming vices: stalling at twelve hundred feet.’

  ‘And you think it’s just a joke?’

  ‘You’d have preferred a serious ending? Like him shooting us down?’

  ‘You can’t be sure-‘

  ‘This way, I can.’

  She stared at me a few moments more, sizzling quietly, her face in hard still lines. Angry like that, she seemed oddly feminine and somehow defenceless. I started to grin, and she jammed on her sunglasses and turned away.

  The lobby was beginning to fill with outbound passengers. Whitmore dropped a hand on my shoulder and said: ‘Lot of artillery around, fella.’

  There was. About half a dozen of the passengers – all of them a little fatter or better dressed than the average – were shoving through the crowd with revolvers jammed in their hip pockets or slung on wide, fancy cowboy belts.