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It was about half an hour later that Ben fancied he heard the noise of engines. He couldn’t be sure at first above the pandemonium produced by the developing volcano. It was now hiding most of its sights behind a great pall of black smoke which the wind off the sea was carrying away to the north. He looked to where Papa was asleep with his head resting on Francesca’s shoulder. She was dozing as well but her head jerked up as he looked across at her. Perhaps she too had heard it.
Ben got up and tried to tell from which direction the sound was coming. A few seconds later the helicopter came into sight over the eastern rim of the crater. It was a small glass bubble of a machine with a couple of occupants. It was moving in a broad circle around the perimeter as though they were photographing or observing the volcanic action.
Francesca woke her father and jumped to her feet. She started waving and gesticulating long before the helicopter approached close enough for the crew to see them. Ben thought it more than likely that they would be too busy watching the spectacle to notice any people sheltering under the south east cliffs.
The craft seemed to follow the line of the rim, keeping at a respectful distance from the main activity. For a while it disappeared from sight behind the rising cloud of smoke and dust. When it appeared again it was heading straight for them. As it started to come closer Ben also took off his jacket and started to wave it in wide, expansive movements. The action seemed to work. Almost at once the helicopter dropped towards them. He and Francesca waved and shouted furiously. The pilot came down inside the crater and dropped towards their little shelf. The two occupants waved and gesticulated at them. Then they suddenly passed right over their heads, zoomed up over the rim behind them, and disappeared. Francesca was mortally disappointed.
“Don’t worry,” said Ben. “At least they know we’re here. That helicopter was too small to help us. I expect they’ve gone to report what they’ve seen and soon we should have a rescue party coming.”
He hoped he was right. He knew that if they stayed in the crater much longer they were likely to be overwhelmed by volcanic activity or landslips or hit by falling rocks.
The next twenty minutes passed desperately slowly. Then suddenly a big military helicopter appeared over the rim just above their heads and dropped down towards their little platform. On the side of its hull Ben could see the insignia of the United States Navy and a large door was open with two men sitting on the cill, their legs dangling into space. A gale of downdraught battered around their expectant faces. A few seconds later one of the men was being winched down to the flatter terrain below them.
“Come on,” Ben shouted. “They won’t want to stay here for any longer than absolutely necessary.”
They helped Papa down the rough slope to meet the waiting American who was standing there with a big grin across his face.
“We kinda thought you might wanna lift,” he drawled.
Ben shook him warmly by the hand. “Boy, are we pleased to see you. How did you come to be here?”
“Tell you that when we get up top. Come on, let’s have the old feller first.”
The man fastened Papa into the harness and explained through Francesca how he should hold himself with his head back and his legs loose. Then he gave a thumbs-up sign and the old man was whisked up into the sky. They certainly seemed to be in a hurry. Francesca went next and Ben followed a couple of minutes later, leaving the crewman to come up last.
He found himself hauled in through the door by a burly American with a crew-cut and dumped unceremoniously on his back on the floor. There was sharp snick as the harness was released from the middle of his stomach and the winch whirred again as it was dropped down to the waiting crewman. At almost the same time the helicopter seemed to buck in a gust of hot air and Ben was precipitated across the cabin into Francesca’s waiting arms.
“Wow! That one was a bit close,” shouted the winch man.
Ben picked himself up and turned to face the clear blue eyes of another American who must have been well over six feet six inches tall.
“Gee, buster,” the man grinned. “You sure seem to have got yourselves into a hot situation there. Now get shackled on to this safety rail.”
He turned back to help the other man as he scrambled inboard. The door was pulled shut, a couple of words were spoken over the intercom, and the helicopter started a powerful climb. On one side the walls of the crater seemed to be only a few feet away from the whirling rotor blades.
Ben looked out of the other side window at the eruption of the volcano. Now there appeared to be massive jets of steam and smoke spurting everywhere. The bulging centre of the crater seemed to be collapsing slowly into the magma beneath. Great boulders, some half the size of a house, were being tossed out of the core. Glowing gobbets of lava were scattering all about in recurrent bomb-bursts. Bright red magma streamed up out of the ground and poured across the floor of the crater which had remained semi-dormant for centuries. Ben saw it lap up against the building which housed the observatory. It pushed in the side wall and the flat roof collapsed into the lava. Flames flared as the combustible elements vaporized.
On the other side of the crater the trees around the edge of the forested area burst into flames in the intense heat even before the hot magma reached them. It seemed to Ben that they had just got out in time. Nothing would survive for long in that superheated cauldron. Solfatara was starting to blow its top.
“Jesus Christ,” blasphemed the winch man.
Nobody else spoke. They were all silenced by the terrifying scale of the eruption.
The next second the helicopter slipped over the rim of the crater and the scene was abruptly wiped from their horrified gaze. All they could see now was the trailing black clouds of smoke which climbed erratically into the lowering skies as they fled from the awful sight.
The craft pitched forward and began to forge out across the bay in a southerly direction. Soon they were over the sea and looking down on the grey, white-combed waves.
“Where are we going?” asked Ben.
“Don’t ask me, chum. I don’t get to give the orders round here.”
“Where have you come from?”
“Us? We’re carrier-based. We were just coming in for an official visit to Naples. Look over there. That’s the Franklin D. Roosevelt anchored down there just outside the harbour. We only got in half an hour ago. No sooner do we get here than the word comes to send up this whirly-bird. That’s all I know.” He shrugged apologetically.
“I’d still like to know where we’re going.”
“Perhaps you’d better ask me that.”
Ben spun round. “Donna! How did you get here?” He grinned. “It’s incredible the habit you always seem to have of turning up in the right place at the right time.”
“I don’t know how I ought to take that.” She had just descended the ladder from the flight deck and looked as cool and well-manicured as though she had only left her hotel room five minutes before.
“Donna – it was only three hours ago that we left you to fight off a bunch of crooks with nothing but a little hand gun. Your only means of escape was a wrecked car. How the hell did you manage to end up here so quickly?”
She came over, took his arm and seated him beside Francesca. Then she sat on the other side of him. “Well, I’ll tell you all about it. It’s better if we talk here than on the flight deck. It’s even noisier up there.”
“Go on then,” urged Francesca. “Tell us what happened.”
Donna patted her hair into place. “Really - it was just as I said it would be. As soon as our friends saw that you’d made a break they lost interest in me and couldn’t wait to get to hell out of the place. I held ‘em up for about ten minutes – managed to wing one of ‘em. Then they were away like they’d got a hornet up their ass.”
“So how did you get back? – just hail a passing cab?”
She looked at him a bit sharply to try and judge whether he was pulling her leg.
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br /> “No. We’re a bit more sophisticated than that. I forgot to tell you that I had a two-way radio in the car. Top secret stuff, I’m afraid. I got picked up nearly two hours ago.”
“We?” asked Francesca. “What does 'we' mean? Who are these people who have been playing around in helicopters while we were nearly being burned alive in the Solfatara?”
“It’s just a way of talking,” said Donna shortly. Ben noticed once again that the two women seemed to rub each other up the wrong way.
“But how did you come to be sitting in this helicopter?” he asked. “I thought you were scared of flying.”
She smiled. “Honey, I’d pretend to be Icarus in order to rescue you.”
He ignored that comment, suddenly aware that Francesca was watching him closely.
“You’ve got to admit it’s a bit of a strange coincidence, Donna,” he said. “The lady who sits beside me on the plane to Naples is conveniently on hand to rescue me from thieves when I get into trouble. That could be more or less explained by your claim that you were following me. But then you just happened to be passing when Francesca and I were escaping from the Villa Cimbrone.”
“And what about arranging the hotel room?” Francesca chipped in.
“After that you gave up part of your holiday to help us break into the Villa Rafallo. You gave me a gun to protect myself when we’re inside the Villa. You came roaring round the corner to pick us up when we escaped. Finally you turn up in the helicopter that rescues us from Solfatara. There’s got to be some reason for it all.”
Donna’s smile had faded. “This is getting to sound like a bit of third degree.”
“Well, you can’t expect us to accept that it’s all pure coincidence. That’s stretching our credulity too far.”
She was silent for a while, biting her lip as she looked down at the floor. At last she said, “Well, I guess it does need a bit of explanation. But I’m sorry – I can’t give it to you at this minute. There’ll be a guy meeting us who may be willing to explain it to you. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait till then.”
After that she looked out through the window and would tell them no more. Ben followed her gaze. He saw that they were approaching land again. In those last few minutes they had crossed the Bay of Naples and soon they were climbing through a valley in the Sorrento peninsula. On either side Ben could see the rugged limestone crags reaching high above them. Some of the highest were topped with spectacularly sited shrines and crosses.
However Ben’s thoughts were on other things. He didn’t know why but he felt a certain sense of betrayal. He began to wonder whether Donna and the shady people behind her had been using him all the time. He felt as though she had been lurking in the background, pulling the strings that had him running all over Southern Italy. Now she was going to turn him over to some boss of hers to extract whatever help he might still be able to give. But why did he feel bitter about it? Perhaps he’d grown fonder of her than he realised. Now it just seemed that the whole thing had been nothing more than a job to her.
The Mafia Emblem Page 59