Shooting Script

by Gavin Lyall

  I fumbled on the bedside light and stared at him with the deep hatred of a man still half asleep for another man who is spritely, shaven, and neatly dressed in a medium-brown lightweight suit.

  ‘Why that rig?’ I growled. ‘The invitations didn’t say fancy dress.’

  ‘My friend, when you are going to behave illegally, I believe it¿s agood thing to dress respectably. It may possibly help.’ He looked around, found a glass, and filled it with, hot black coffee from a flask I hadn’t even noticed he was carrying.

  I sipped, splashed water around, and scraped a razor over my face without quite mowing off my ears. By then he’d sorted through my clothes and come up with my light-grey washable suit.

  ‘It will have to do,’ he said graciously.

  Outside, the night was dead still but not quite clear: a faint haze of high cloud washed out most of the stars. It meant a no-wind takeoff; better than a crosswind, but not as good as I’d hoped for.

  We drove my jeep to Boscobel, and the gate was still unlocked. So I went up to the Mitchell, left Luiz and collected the hurricane lamp, and then drove to the other end and put it back on its tree.

  Then I did a careful pre-flight check of the plane with a torch and climbed aboard just after two o’clock.

  Luiz was already in the right-hand seat, the Browning parked down beside him, and twiddling with a transistor radio in his lap.

  ‘Music while we worjc?’ I asked.

  ‘Jiminez planned to take over the radio as the first thing.’

  I sat down, remembering the pattern; obviously taking over the radio station – so that you can tell the citizenry that you’ve taken over everything else even if you haven’t – would be top priority.

  ‘Getting anything?’

  He frowned. ‘No…’

  ‘Well, who else’d have a radio turned on at two in the morning?’

  ‘I hope that is it.’ But he went on tuning.

  ‘See if you can get Miami for some weather.’

  But Miami was off the air or out of range.

  I turned on the master switch. ‘Let’s go, then.’

  He watched the lights come on across the instrument panel as I began the starting sequence. ‘So – it is really going to happen?’

  I looked up, surprised. ‘That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, of course. One old worn-out American bomber, flown by – forgive me, my friend – by one old English pilot and a worn-out actor is going to drop a load of bricks on some aged jet fighters. Yes, that sounds very much likea Repúblicarevolution to me. Now, I believe it.’

  His voice had a bitter edge on it.

  I shrugged.‘Dicho y hecho.‘And pressed the energise switch. The lights dimmed; gradually a faint whine started in the port engine as the flywheel built up energy. When the whine had reached a steady note I flicked the switch across to ‘Mesh’.

  The propeller grunted, groaned, turned, staggered, coughed, spun. I stabbed the prime button and caught it with the throttle. Blue flames crackled outside the window; in the noise, I motioned Luiz to put on his headset. Now for the starboard engine.

  It caught – but as I pushed up the throttle, the whole plane shuddered to a long grinding screech.

  I jerked the switch back tooff, but the grind went on.

  ‘What is it?’ Luiz asked – a crackling voice in my headphones.

  ‘Starter motor’s jammed in mesh. Won’t come declutched.’

  I whanged the pitch to full revs to try and shake it out; all it did was double the racket.

  ‘Shouldn’t we start again?’ Luiz called.

  ‘That starter’ll never start anything again. Just hope it chews itself to pieces soon.’

  We waited. Then there was a tearingthump and just the engine noise. Something had bust – the flywheel probably. Spinning at a ratio of 100 to 1 with the engine itself, my burst of revs had probably thrown it to 200,000 rpm. Goodbye flywheel. I hope you didn’t take anything with you when you went.

  But the engines both ran up and settled down all right. After a few minutes testing the hydraulics and magnetos, I swung around on to the runway, pointed her just left of the distant spark of light that was the hurricane lamp, and put down full flap. Widi them and a bit of luck, I was going to make one of the shortest takeoffs the old lady had ever lived through.

  I made sure Luiz’s hand was on the undercarriage lever andnot on the flaps, shoved the throttles up to full power against the brakes, paused, then flipped off the brakes. And we ran.

  But not as fast as at Barranquilla. We were heavier now, 2,000 pounds of bricks and a lot of fuel. On the windless runway we picked up speed slowly… slowly… slowly…

  At 80 I tried a little back pressure: the nosewheel lifted sluggishly. I waited, the spark of light rushing closer, getting brighter, then hauled full back on the control column.

  And yelled: ‘Gear up.’

  A sudden roar as the undercart doors started to open, a momentary heaviness as the wheel legs buckled before she was clear of the ground, and then we were flying – just. The light flicked away below, the tops of the trees rushed past, and we were staggering flatly towards the coast, picking up speed. And finally over the sea, retracting the flaps and pulling gently into the laden climb to our cruising height.

  I throttled back carefully. After a time Luiz said: ‘That was – quite exciting. I understand why you preferred to take off at night.’

  ‘Yes.’ Iwas busy checking everything within reach to make sure its nervous system hadn’t been strained by the takeoff. I was still worried by the starter motor crack-up; you don’t usually bust a large piece of equipment violently without it leaving scars, but nothing was showing up on the starboard engine instruments. And itwas only a starter motor…

  I climbed on a heading of 098, both magnetic and true: in this area the magnetic variation was too small to bother with. Twenty minutes after takeoff we passed through 8,000 feet. I took her up another 200, levelled out until I had 180 mph on the clock, then throttled back to lean cruising power and let her slide gently downhill to 8,000 exactly. Known as ‘putting her on the step’; you get a little more airspeed for the same fuel, or the same speed for less fuel. Theoretically, you can’t do either – but with a good theoretical knowledge of aerodynamics you can prove a bumble bee is too heavy to fly.

  When I flattened out again at 8,000, the airspeed had crept up to 185 – and it stayed there. I smiled, a little smugly, and started to sing.

  I didn’t want to join the Air Force;

  I don’t want to go to war.

  I’d rather hang around

  Piccadilly Underground

  Living on the earnings of a high-born lady…

  Luiz was looking at me curiously. ‘Battle hymn of the RAF,’ I explained. ‘Ah.’ He reached into a pocket. ‘You are sure you would not prefer a cigarette?’

  We sat almost shoulder-to-shoulder in the cramped cockpit, cold in the high night air rushing past, dim in the faint glow of the instruments. And bracketed by the dry roar of the engines, die splatter of white flame from the exhaust stubs.

  An hour after takeoff I was squinting through the exhaust flames on my side, trying to make out PointeàGravois in Haiti, which should be our first landfall. It wasn’t there, but the northern horizon was a rampart of clouds, so probably Haiti was up there somewhere. At diis height we were probably getting a dying breath of north wind from sister Clara.

  I decided to assume we were on time but off course to starboard. I altered the heading to due east – largely because it was easy to steer. Navigation in the Caribbean is never critical – not with islands popping up every hour to give youa definitefix.

  What worried me more was that the starboard engine had missed a couple of beats in the last ten minutes. In itself nothing important, except that I had my mind on that engine after its starter troubles. And aeroplanes usually play fair with you: they wheeze and cough and tremble before they die – if you’re awake enough to notice the s
igns.

  Yet there weren’t any other signs: the rpm held steady, oil pressures and temperatures were normal. I laid a hand on the metal of the engine control pedestal. It trembled slightly, but it always had. Just the normal palsies of old age. So… So?

  Luiz said: ‘And still nothing.’ He had the radio in his lap and was twiddling.

  ‘It’s only just past three in the morning.’

  ‘I hope you are right.’ He turned it off.

  The starboard engine missed another beat.

  He asked: ‘Where do you want me for the attack itself?’

  ‘Better be down in the nose. You’ve got a good view, there; you can tell me anything you see.’

  ‘My friend, you do not sound very impressed with my… usefulness.’

  ‘You know exactly damn well why I’m not.’

  The engine missed again – bad enough for him to notice, this time. He turned away, staring out at the exhaustfiâmes.

  I had caught a flicker – no more – on the rpm dial, a shudder on the oil pressure. But now both were normal again. Just in the general way a doctor hands out a pill, I pushed the starboard mixture to full rich. It would cool things, if there was a hot spot the temperature gauges didn’t show. It might bum off any carbon on the plugs. But mostly it would show the engine that I, the doctor, cared.

  Still with his head screwed round, staring out of the window, Luiz asked: ‘Do you think we will have to abort the mission?’

  ‘Hell, no.’ Or did I mean – Not yet? She’d fly on one engine, all right – it’s the first thing you practise with a twin-engined aeroplane – but she’d be limping along at around a hundred and forty, and that engine would be drinking nearly a gallon a minute. And – damn it – there’s no crossfeed on a Mitchell; each engine uses the fuel from the tanks in its own wing. We could run out of fuel on the good engine and still have 400 totally unusable gallons left in the other wing. // we lost an engine-At that point we lost it for about a second; the Mitchell slewed to the right. Then, with a broadside of backfiring, she caught again. Instinctively I hauled her back on to 090 degrees.

  Yet the oil pressure was normal, the temperatures a bit below – but that was the effect of the rich mixture.

  ‘I think it must be electrical,’ I said, as calmly as I could. It would be, of course. If anybody could invent an aeroplane without electrics, he’d get an award from every pilot in the world, headed by the Keith Carr Medal with Crossed Beer Bottles. The nice thing about a jet engine isn’t the speed; it’s that the thing doesn’t need continuous ignition and will keep you steaming around the sky when every blasted wire’s fallen out of the aeroplane.

  Reluctantly, I reached out and tried cutting the magnetos. With one out, I got a normal – normal for this tub – drop of around two hundred revs. With the other cut-I held her against the vicious swing, snapped the switch back to Both and the engine caught again in a ragged blast of thunder.

  ‘It’s a magneto, all right,’ Luiz said knowledgeably. I frowned at him, then remembered he’d already flown a hundred times as many hours in this vintage of American bombers as I ever would – I hoped. And he was right, anyway. One of the magnetos was as good as dead.

  Well, it happens all the time: that’s why they give you two magnetos per engine. But even with electricity, there has to be a reason. I tried to remember where the magnetos were installed on a Cyclone engine… Then I remembered, all right: in the rear casing, right alongside the starter motor.

  Now I saw the cold, thin tight-rope ahead – and behind. It’s the classical pattern of flying: ignore a small thing, and it grows on you like a cancer. I’d ignored that starter motor, let it spin itself to bits – but forgotten it might not be entirely in bits. Some part was still spinning, rubbing the motor casing, building up heat and melting the magneto wiring. In a few minutes, those wires would be trickles of hot metal. Then on to the second magneto… already it must be affected, or the whole engine couldn’t have cut.

  Ignore a cancer and it eats you hollow; forget a jammed motor and it slowly poisons an engine. Just an ounce or two of busted metal, spinning out of control only a few feet away, and no way to stop it up here at 8,000.

  ‘I’m going to have to feather that engine,’ I announced.

  Luiz said: ‘We must turn back then.’

  I looked at him. ‘We can still reach the target. We won’t get back to Jamaica on one – but we can get on to Puerto Rico. That’s less than a couple of hundred miles from-‘

  He said calmly: ‘We must not make the attack.’

  ‘I thought,’ I said, ‘that you came along just to see Ididn’t turn back. To make sure I was a press-on type that Clausewitz would have been proud of.’

  ‘Then you misunderstand, my friend. One thing a revolution cannot afford isa nasco. To come in an old bomber and drop just bricks is bad enough, but to crawl in on one engine and because of that perhaps to miss… Could a futurepresidentebe one who employed such a feeble weapon? Jiminez would never survive the joke. It is better not to start than to fail so ludicrously.’

  ‘I wasn’t planning to fail.’

  The engine missed. The second magneto was feeling the heat, all right.

  I swung back on to heading. Luiz said: ‘You understand? It is better to go back now.’

  ‘If I cut her now, before she fails on her own account, she’ll cool off. Then I can restart her for periods later – it’ll take time for the heat to build up again. We can make the attack itself on two engines.’

  ‘You are certain?’

  ‘No – I’m only the pilot. But if Ican’t restart her we can reconsider the whole business then. And still make Puerto Rico on one.’

  He said softly: ‘You really wish to make this raid.’

  ‘You’ve noticed, have you?’

  When he didn’t say any more, I tilted the plane into a shallow dive to keep the speed up, throttled back both engines to reduce the swing, then jabbed the starboard feathering button and cut the levers back.

  As its blades twisted to meet the airflow side-on, the propeller slowed, came to a wavering stop. I twirled on rudder trim to balance die uneven pull of die port engine, and at 7,000 feet we levelled out again; slightly nose-high, slightly crabbing, the speed coming down to 150 – but still heading on 090 degrees.

  When I got everything balanced into die new pattern, I said: ‘So that’s why you killed Diego.’

  He looked at me, moved his lips, but had forgotten to push his transmit switch. Then he remembered and said: ‘Why should you think this thing? He was the son of my old friend Jiminez.’

  ‘It’s been worrying me – since that fuss around the plane last night. Tirâtwas the sort of secret service the generals run: a couple of down-and-outs sent just to slash the tyres. Not a tough hired killer. And you always had the best chance: you were with Diego all that evening, running around die airport. And you come from Repúblicaoriginally – so you’d likely know as much about snake pistols as anybody there. You could have brought one to Jamaica – you might have thought it was snake country, too. But I never sawwhy you should have killed him.’

  He waited to be sure I’d finished, then: ‘But now you think you see?’

  ‘You just told me: a revolution can’t afford a fiasco. Diego flying this raid would’ve been die fiasco of die year. He’d’ve cracked up on takeoff or missed or run it into die ground at that end – somediing, anyway. With your aircrew training youmust’ve seen he wasn’t the type. But now – he’s a martyr and everybody thinks the generals are foul assassins.’

  ‘And a true professional is flying the raid, no?’

  I looked at him sharply, then realised that was right, too. ‘You’re a cold-hearted bastard, Luiz.’

  In the faint light from the instruments I saw his face wince with pain. Then he nodded slowly. ‘Perhaps… perhaps I am, to have done this thing. Yet – he was a playboy, but he was ready to die for his father’s cause. And probably on this attack he would have died – stupidly. Perhaps. I
only arranged things a little better.’

  ‘And it – doesn’t worry you?’

  ‘About being found out? I think it unlikely, my friend.’

  ‘That wasn’t quite what I meant.’

  ‘You have killed people yourself?’

  ‘Yes, but-‘ I paused. ‘I was going to say “Only in a good cause.” But that’s the only reason anybody ever gets killed.’

  ‘And perhaps from a distance, in an aeroplane, with your own side cheering you on. That, perhaps, makes it easier.’

  After a time, I asked: ‘Does Whitmore know?’

  ‘Yes: I had to tell him. He knows I have the snake gun. But for him, I had to pretend it was an affair over a girl. He would not have understood the truth.’

  ‘And J.B.?’

  ‘No.’ He looked at me. ‘Will you tell her?’

  I shrugged. ‘I doubt it’ll come into the conversation.’

  He went on looking. ‘And you, my friend?’

  ‘It’s still film star bites dog, isn’t it? – Who’d listen? But I won’t tellher, if that’s what you mean. That’s your problem.’

  After another time, he said quietly: ‘Yes, that is what I meant. She should have been her brother, then…’ But he left it there.

  With the port engine grinding its heart out, we crabbed on across the night.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Just before we should have reached the Punta del Almirante, the southernmost tip of the Repúblicaitself, I tried restarting the starboard engine. For an air start you don’t need a starter motor: unfeathering the blades should let the airflow spin the prop to a speed at which it’ll fire the engine – and it did.

  I throttled back the port engine to give it a rest – that was the main object of the exercise – and kept the speed down to 160 mph. We still had time to make Santo Bartolomeo at five past five. And if Clara had left most of the island still covered in cloud, first light would be a little late today.

  The faint northerly wind must have backed to westerly -which made sense, if the hurricane was now about due north of us. Anyway, we reached the Punta afew minutes ahead of my revised ETA, and a bit north of track, so that we crossed the point itself for a few miles until the coastline swung sharply back north again.