I looked around for my beer. Ned was still with us, watching me, completely expressionless. Luiz was still playing with the dice; Whitmore and J.B. were frowning ateach other's feet as they chewed over the changed programme.
I found my glass, emptied it, and said: 'I seem to have bitched up the trip pretty thoroughly.'
Whitmore looked up, then shook his head. 'No sweat, fella. If they're going to pick on us, I'd rather it happened now than when we got the full unit in. And I still like the way you drop your shoulder in the punch.' He pulled out his cigarettes. 'So what's a check four gonna cost you, fella?'
'Three thousand pounds. Eight thousand dollars. No – more: they won't have engineers qualified on Doves down here, so I'd have to fly them in and put them up for a couple of weeks.' Then I shook my head. 'It doesn't make any odds. They're going to sit on the plane just as long as they want, no matter what I do or don't do.'
Ned gave one very small nod.
Whitmore grunted. 'Well, looks like you got trouble, fella. Maybe we can figure something out. I'm going to get some chow: we can still take a ride around die sights this afternoon, right? What time's that plane go?'
'About eleven,' Ned said.
Whitmore ignored him. 'Howsabout you, fella?'
'I,' I said firmly, 'am going to do a little drinking.'
He nodded appreciatively. 'Just stick around the hotel. We'll see you make the flight.' Finally he turned to Ned. 'Thanks for everything, Coronel.'
Ned just looked at him, stolid, expressionless. Whitmore and J.B. walked away.
Luiz came away from the table still idly shaking the dice in his hands; the croupier chased after him. Luiz said something fast and quiet in Spanish that stopped him like a slap in the face.
Then there were just Ned and me.
After a while he said: 'You want to get started on that drinking?'
'Yes; step aside. You're blocking the route to the bar.'
He stayed where he was. 'I ain't going to apologise to you, Keith. Frankly, I'd've liked to see you banged in jail a few months. But I didn't expect him to pinch your plane.'
'Don't cry too hard. You'll wet your pistol.'
'You don't have to believe me.'
'I don't even have to waste time deciding whether I believe you or not. Now stand aside.'
'I didn't expect him to ground you,' he said doggedly.
I just stared. But perhaps, in a way, I did believe him. Being in jail is one thing: you can get out of jail. Losing your plane is having the whole sky pulled from under your feet.
'All right,' I said. 'So I believe you. Now will you-?'
Til buy you the first bottle. I owe you that for slugging Miranda. I been wanting to do that myself a long time.'
'So why didn't you?'
Tm a colonel – remember? His superior officer. I ain't used to being a superior. You can't slug hardly anybody.'
We seemed to be walking out together. So – why not? Unless I was going to practise high dives into a whisky bottle in my own room, Ned was still better company than anybody I'd meet at the bar.
We got into a lift. On the way up, he said: 'You'll get the insurance on your plane, won't you?'
I looked at him. 'D'you want to bet? Confiscation'll come under "riots, strikes, and civil disturbances" and on the standard policy you aren't insured against them. Anyway, I'd have to prove confiscation – and I can't see you helping me on that. I'm just grounded for safety reasons, and an insurance company isn't going to pay onthat. Not after I swore to keep the plane up to standard.'
He frowned. 'Yeh. You really have got trouble.'
We got out at the top floor and walked down a normal hotel corridor and round a corner. I was just about to ask where the hell we were going, when he stopped outside an unnumbered door and started turning keys in a couple of locks that were a lot more serious than any an hotel normally uses.
It was a wide, cool room looking – surprisingly – inland. At first sight it seemed to be just another millionaire suite: lined with low expensive-looking Scandinavian cupboards and cabinets, thick green wall-to-wall carpeting, modern copper lampshades, ice-cold air-conditioning. Then you saw the touches that were Ned's: a heavy old green baize card tablewith a ring of tall leather chairs, the three telephones, the easel with a map board, the Braun T1000VHP receiver on the window-sill.
That was why the room faced inland, of course: most of the air messages would be coming from inland.
Ned walked over to the receiver, switched it on, and tuned it delicately. All he got was a faint crackle and hum. He picked up a red telephone, got an immediate answer, and said:'Coronel Rafter at the Americana. I'll be here most the day.'
He put the phone down and waved at a cabinet. 'Start the round. I'll have a beer.'
The cabinet turned out to be a wood-covered refrigerator filled to withstand a long siege if you didn't happen to care about food. There were bottles of everything I could think of including several of Australian Swan beer. How Ned managed to get that hauled in across 9,000 miles… but perhaps being a superior officer has its compensations.
I poured his beer and gave myself a Scotch stiff enough to stand up without the glass. When I turned round Ned had dumped his gun and harness on the table and stripped off his flying suit, leaving him in just a pair of striped underpants. He took the beer, said 'Cheers,' and went out through the side door. I heard a shower start.
I took a long gulp of whisky just to set the tone for the afternoon, and wandered over to the receiver. It was a neat square job, a little smaller than a portable typewriter stood on end, well styled without being fussy: you could read the wavelength exactly. I read it.
Then I looked at the telephones: red, green, white. I wondered what the green one was for, then wondered about picking up the red one and telling the squadron to scramble and dive itself into the sea. In the end I just took another mouthful of whisky and walked over and picked up Ned's revolver.
It was a Smith amp; Wesson Magnum.357. A squat, heavy gun as used by the Chicago police because it's supposed to drill clear through a car engine from end to end. Also as carried by most pilots in Korea in case we met the whole Chinese Army standing end to end. By putting both hands on the gripand holding very tight, you might actually have hit the Chinese Army. About hitting a car engine you'd better ask the Chicago police.
I put it back in the holster.
The receiver crackled and said faintly:'Ensayo. Uno, dos, tres, cuatro. 'Another voice said: 'Okay. Cinco, cinco.'
Ned stuck his head out of the bathroom, dripping water. 'What was that?'
'The squadron's gone on strike for a forty-whore week.'
'Whatwas it, sport?'
'Just testing.'
He ducked back and I walked over to the map on the easel. It was standard ICAO one-millionth-scale air map, but with a number of neat pen markings noting the airfields. There was the civil airport, the local base, and another military field up in a rather pointless position on the north coast. I knew about them. But I hadn't known about another base marked about sixty miles to the west, just before the real hills started. It was logical, though: most of the rebel troubles would come in those hills, and you could use a forward airstrip up there both for bringing in supplies and parking a flight of Vampires just a few minutes away from action.
Most of the rest of the markings I guessed were small-plane strips on the big plantations. Not long enough for regular military use, but nice to know about in case you wanted to crash-land.
Ned came in wrapped in a crisp white towelling bath-robe that seemed oddly fancy with his great hairy hands and feet sticking out of it. He gave me a sharp look, but didn't tell me to get away from the map. I got away anyhow, sat down at the card table, and began a count-down on my pipe.
'This is one of the best ops rooms I've ever seen,' I remarked.
'Just a weekend joint.' He nodded at the ceiling. 'The General's got the pent-house.'
That was logical, too, when you thought about it. It's easier to seal off the top of a big hotel against assassins than it would be a house. And it solves all the servant problems for you, too.
'What about General Castillo?'
He chuckled. 'He lives in a tent, poor bug-bitten bastard. Leading the noble army in the field.'
'And why isn't the noble Air Force in tents, too? Your forward base not secure enough? Or are you having supply problems?'
He smiled, but with his mouth firmly shut. He might be ready to talk about the Army; he wasn't going to spill any of the Air Force's secrets.
I took my pipe for a short walk to get it a bit of air it hadn't breathed three times already. At the end of it, I found myself by the refrigerator, so I filled up my glass again. Ned shook his head at a second beer. I walked back to the table and struck the third match.
'Feel like any food?' Ned asked.
'No, thanks.'
'I could get up some sandwiches.'
'If you want to eat them yourself.'
After a moment he asked: 'Like to suck a piece of ice?'
'No.'
'You're going to get loaded fast.'
'That's right. I got grounded today – remember?'
He nodded slowly. The red telephone buzzed.
He was there in a couple of strides. He listened for a while, then said: 'Scramble the forward section. Tell 'em not to go above ten and tell the army to put down smokewhen they see the planes -not before.' He put down the phone. 'Damn army's always putting down smoke markers the moment they run into anything. Rebels know what it means by now, so they scarper before we can get there.'
'How frightfully unsporting of them.'
He didn't answer. My crack just hung there with the pipe smoke and turned sour and dwindled and died. The room had gone very quiet. Only the radio breathed softly to itself.
After a time I got up to pour myself another drink, and found I was moving on tiptoe, shutting the refrigerator door as gently as I could. I opened my mouth to say something, then didn't. I just listened.
You don't have to like the man in the other cockpit. You canwant to kill him – not angrily, but coldly and carefully enough to have trained yourself to wait until you're close enough to shoot at the cockpit, not just the plane. But you understand him; you can't help understanding him. Because the instruments he watches, the controls he handles, are the same as in your own cockpit. Because his problems of speed and height, range and fuel, sun and cloud, are your problems. You know him far better than you know a ground soldier on your own side, fighting for your own cause.
So you don't have to like him, or his cause either. But you do have to sit still and breathe quietly and listen when a man you know is going into action.
It took a long time. The air-conditioning built up a chill that made me shiver. Ned hunched on the far side of the table, just watching the radio.
Then suddenly it crackled fast Spanish. Ned grabbed the phone and yelled: 'Tell the stupid cows to speak English! Jiminez could be monitoring this channel! '
He slammed the phone down. 'Christ – nobody thinks a man who'll buy three-inch mortars might have the sense to buy a normal shortwave receiver as well.'
'And learn to speak English too, maybe.'
He shrugged. 'I'm trying to get 'em used to code, too. It takes time.'
The radio crackled faintly, but we weren't picking up the transmissions from the base: close as it was, there must have been a hill between it and the Americana.
Then, slowly and carefully, like a reciting schoolboy: 'Green leader calls "Goalpost". I have seen the smoke. It is a roadblock. With muchrebeldes.I am going to shoot it.' Pause. 'Green two -1 break left, break left,now! '
'Code,' I said softly. 'What does he say when he speaks in clear – tell you about his birthmarks?'
'He said "Goalpost", didn't he?'
'If you call that code for home base…' Neither of us were really listening – even to ourselves. We were both living the rolling turn, the long wriggling dive as you bring your guns to bear, and the last dangerous seconds as the ground rushescloseand you're forcing the nosedown because the range is shortening.
'Target hypnotism,' they call it – and, a couple of days later, a 'fighter pilot funeral' when they bury a box of sand with a few grain-sized pieces of you mixed in.
The radio gave a few distant crackles; now they were too low to reach over this range.
'They make two passes?' I asked.
'On a target like this, yeh.'
'Every man a hero.' The second pass is the worst. If there's anybody left alive on the ground (and if there isn't, why are you attacking again?) you've given him a dress rehearsal: he's got his eye in to your speed and angle.
But why should I care? If Jiminez' boys managed to knock down a Vampire – and damn little chance they stood with rifles, even light machine-guns, against a Vamp's four twenty-millimetre cannon – that suited me fine.
I still understood the man in the cockpit far better than the poor bastard with a rifle down at the roadblock.
Then, distant but getting louder quickly: '… have shoot ourmunitio. Roadblock is destroyed. Manyrebeldesare dead-'
Ned growled: 'That means two men and a dog.'
'… Army advancing. I request instructions. Over.'
Ned looked at his watch and picked up the phone. 'Tell 'em to return Goalpost. And tell the army we're through for the day.'
He snapped off the radio. The room suddenly seemed much too cold, the whisky bitter on my tongue. Well, maybe the next one would taste better. I filled my glass, then opened a window to let in a little heat and the friendly, distant hum of traffic on the Avenida Independencia. I leant against the sill and sipped.
After a time, I said: 'And that concludes our Saturday afternoon programme of sport from the Free Republic.'
Ned looked at me, then shrugged and went to get himself another beer. 'You can't have all your battles big ones, Keith -not if you're a pro. It's the amateurs who feel brave just because it's D-Day; you know that.'
'I know pros aren't the answer in this place, either, Ned.'
'Yeh? You think Jiminez'd sell off the Vamps if he got in?'
'I'll tell you one thing he'd sell off: you – in small pieces.'
He stared at me, then nodded slowly. Nobody builds up hate so much as a ground-attack pilot; a strafing fighter is partly a terror weapon, swooping omnipotent out of the sky, soaring away back. If you get hit by ground fire, you do your damndest to land well away from the people you've been shooting up. Rules of war don't apply to a god who's fallen off his pedestal.
'Yeh, could happen,' he said finally. 'But – I wonder who'd get my job then. You? That what you pushing for?'
'I'm not pushing, Ned. I'm not a professional any more.'
He stared at me. Then he nodded and said slowly and perplexedly: 'Yeh, that's right, isn't it? If you were a pro, you'd have joined the firm when I offered the job. You worry me, Keith. I don't know if you're working for Jiminez or not -maybe not. But either way, the General made a mistake with you. You should've been in jail. Then we'd've known where you were and you'd have got your plane back at the end. Now – you're loose but you don't have a plane to fly. And that worries me. Because you're still a killer.'
The word had no sting; it was just a statement – a definition of a trade.
He ended up in front of me, stabbing a thick finger at my chest. 'I'll do what I can for you. Try to get your Dove back. I don't think I can do it, but I'll try. You need any money?'
'That could have been more tactfully put, Ned.'
He shook his head impatiently. 'You know I'm loaded right now – so d'you want any of it? Just to take yourself a quiet holiday somewhere for a couple of months?'
'What's all this to you, Ned?'
'If I can't have you in jail, maybe Miami Beach'll do. Just keeping out of the way. Otherwise' – he shrugged – 'I could end up having to kill you.'
'You could end up trying,' I snapped. 'And I mean end up.'
He grinned crookedly. 'You see?'
After a while I grinned back. 'This town ain't big enough for both of us – is that it?'
'It's a small town, all right – the whole damn Caribbean. Okay' – he rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully – 'we just have to wait and see. You want to go on talking politics, or just drink?'
I emptied my glass and handed it over. 'Let's just drink.'
Things got a little fuzzy after that. But somebody got me into a taxi around ten o'clock, and I came slightly awake at half-past eleven and found myself aviating towards San Juan aboard the World's Most Experienced Airline, eating a piece of the World's Most Experienced chicken and with a glass of beer in my other hand.
Luiz was sitting alongside me; J.B. and Whitmore just across the aisle, the two directors somewhere behind.
Luiz leant and dropped a pair of dice on my tray. 'A small souvenir of General Bosco.'
I blinked blearily at them, and the dots blinked blearily back. 'So?'
'My friend, they are loaded.'
I picked them up, dropped them into my glass of beer – the old test for loaded dice. They tumbled slowly and showed a 6 and a 2. I drank them out, dropped them in again. I got a 4 and a 1.
'They don't seem to be winning anything for me. The General ought to fire his dice loaders.'
'My friend – do you think these belonged to the General?'
'You mean the Americana was giving him loaded dice?'
He smiled sunnily. 'So what could they lose? – he does not play against the house, only among his good friends. So the house get his custom, they help him win a little, and his beautiful smile brightens their dark, drab lives. The stick-man was highly annoyed when I first grabbed them before they could be changed and then walked off with them.'
I remembered that fuss with the croupier. 'But I still don't see which sides are weighted.'
He winced. 'My friend, one does not load theside of a dicethese days – it is much too blatant. One loads acorner. Then, if all goes well, that corner must be on the table and one of only three faces will be at the top. I will show you.' He stretched his hand; I fished the dice out of my drink and passed them over. He turned them in his long brown fingers.
'Now these, although they are rather heavily loaded, so they almost always turn up "loaded" faces, are also rather subtle. Each is loaded at a different corner. One can show only a 1, 2, or 4; the other a 2, 4, or 6. Nice harmless numbers – but you can work out for yourself what they mean.'
The hell I could – in my state. I stared Wearily. He sighed and explained: 'Two normal dice can throw thirty-six combinations: One 2, two 3s – and so on up to six 7s, then down again to one 12. But these can throw only nine combinations, including only one 7, one 3 – but two 6s and two 8s. And no 2 or 11 or 12 and some others.
'So: in nine first throws the General will win once with a 7, lose once with a 3 – enough to allay suspicion. But mostly he will throw something else and have to throw it again. Then he has a fifty-fifty chance, and if it is a 6 or an 8, he has a two-to-one chance. Overall it means…' he scribbled a quick formula on his menu card, 'it means he will win thirty-one times out of fifty-four. Say a three-to-two advantage. Enough – but only enough that people will say the General is lucky. And it does a dictator no harm to be known as lucky.'
He handed the dice back. I turned them in my hand, looking for signs of the loading. A great hope; in my current condition I couldn't have seen signs of an elephant loaded into a telephone-box.
'How did you come to spot this?'
'I played with them on the table – and found I threw only those numbers. And also -1 was born in this part of the world. One comes to expect dictators to play with loaded dice.'
'I know just what you mean.'