The next morning I got the boys down at Port Antonio to work stripping out the seats and bomb-bay tank from the Mitchell, then wangled a company car over to Kingston to pick up my jeep (the cops had finally got tired of finding each other's fingerprints on it) and a suitcase of dirty shirts I'd been saving until my laundry could go on the company's bill.
By the time I'd got back to Port Antonio via dumping the jeep at Boscobel, they'd nearly finished. The seats, the central heating, and the bomb-bay tank were all out, and they were just sealing off the ends of the fuel feed, which seemed to have been designed by a kitten and a ball of wool.
Then I fired them, handed over a wad of Whitmore's dollars, and let them find their own way back to Palisadoes. When they were out of sight, I took out my torch and ducked down for a private look around the bay itself.
Standing on the ground, I was inside it from about my hips up: a hot, dark metal box full of old oily grime and petrolfumes. About eight feet lengthways nearly four wide, and six high. And the first quick flash of the torch convinced me the attack was off: the roof of the bay was quite bare.
I ducked out for a breath of air and a reconsideration. To be quite honest, as an ex-fighter pilot I couldn't remember ever having seen a bomb rail or shackle before; they were just words I'd picked up. But I was quite certain the roof of that bay didn't have any, and just as certain that anything that'll hold a 500-pound bomb can't be knocked up in a dull evening with a cigar box and a couple of rusty hairpins.
And it isn't something you put a 'wanted' ad in the Daily Gleaner for, either.
I took a deep breath and ducked in again just to make sure.
The roof of the bay was still empty. But when I turned the torch on the sides, they were lined with heavy metal stringers that seemed far too strong just to support the thin metal of the box – it wasn't even the outside skin of the aeroplane itself. And spaced along them, two to each side, were four thin, irregular-shaped steel boxes. I stared at them in the torchlight. They were just over a foot long,"with two flat hooks sticking down at either end.
I dipped a finger in a pool of petrol on the tarmac beneath and rubbed it over one of the boxes. And I knew the attack was on again.
Surprisingly clear and non-rusty under the grime, the lettering came up: Bomb Shackle Mk, S.
'You know, they must've hung the bombs on thesides of the bay, one above the other, and let 'em roll out and down?' I said. 'I suppose I should have guessed: you wouldn't need a bay six foot high if you were just going to hang 'em from the roof, and I suppose it must've worked – as long as you pressed the buttons in the right order – but still-'
'Will it work now?' Whitmore asked.
He and Luiz had been waiting for me on die Boscobel strip when I flew the Mitchell in soon after five. Apparently J.B. was off visiting a sick contract and Miss Jiminez had decided, after all, that she'd better go and watch Diego's coffin being shoved aboard a Venezuelan freight plane.
'With a lot of work,' I said slowly. I held up the shackle I'd managed to get off the rail. 'The shackles are in pretty good condition – I suppose because the thing was being used as a bomber in Colombia up to a couple of years back. You get the shackles off the rails, hook on the bombs – two hooks, you wouldn't want a bomb waggling around on just one – winch the whole lot up, fit the shackle back on to the rail. Then these' -1 tapped a couple of little levers sticking out of the top of the shackle – 'fitted into some sort of release gear.
"The trouble is,' I went on, 'that all that gear's gone. It must've worked on electro-magnets, with a coil in the circuit to step up the power, and probably the whole thing duplicated to avoid hang-ups. And on top ofthat, a fusing circuit – you wouldn't take off with the bombs fused and there's no way of getting at them from inside the plane.'
Whitmore nodded, reached out, and pushed the hooks closed. Then slapped the trip levers with a huge finger. The hooks came open with a vicious littleclack.
It was a cold shivery sound in the hot sun. Whitmore looked at Luiz and grinned slowly. 'Sounds simple enough.'
'Simple?' I stared at him.
'Hell, fella – one thing afilm unit's got is electricians. We got 'em like that guy in The book had pimples.'
'Job,' Luiz said. 'And boils.'
Whitmore jerked his head. 'He played a Bible picture once. Anyhow, I'll get the boys down to work on her tomorrow. Hell, she's in the script – so why can't she drop a few bombs? Rig some dummies outa beer cans or something. Have 'em going off along the river, bang-bang-bang; use dummy charges. We got a scene there.'
He walked off to look at my jeep.
Luiz sighed. 'Another scene where I get my feet wet.'
I grinned, then asked: 'Can they really do it?'
'My friend – you recall we are already building a fifty-foot church for this picture? A little matter like arranging a bomb-release circuit… They will do it.'
Whitmore walked back. 'That your jeep, fella?'
I'd said 'yes' before I realised my mistake. They needed an old, battered jeep for the scene outside the church. Of course.
The next morning, the boys moved in. They were either good electricians or good actors; either way, they knew more about what they were doing than I did. So I just suggested where they could mount the release buttons – over some of the empty sockets at the top of the instrument panel – and left them to get on with it.
The art director had also arrived, without his crocodile jacket, but with a couple of scene-painters to help give the Mitchell a little movie make-up. This consisted of spraying her silver, shoving a couple of painted broomsticks in the nose and tail positions to look like machine guns, and inventing Amazonian Air Force insignia for her wings and sides. I tried to help on this last one by pointing out that every combination of shapes and colours they dreamed up had already been used by a real South American country.
Finally the art director told me they'd use a mixture of Malayan and Congolese symbols – a completelydarling yellow star on a totallyravishing square of ultramarine (he was going to redecorate his bathroom inexactly the same colours just assoon as he got home) – and meantime would Ipleasego away?
So I checked up on the weather – a maximum of 15 knots from 70 degrees, with a slightly suspicious circular disturbance north of Barbados – then went away to die Golden Head Tavern, just up the road.
At that time of day, the little bar was quiet, almost empty. The only other customer was sitting up at the bar, his back to me.
I went up and ordered a Red Stripe. The customer said quietly: 'Can I buy you that one?'
A knobbly, tanned face, cropped greying hair, milky-coffee-coloured suit. It took a moment to place him, he was so far out of place.
Then I had it. 'Agent Ellis, I believe? Aren't you on CIA territory?'
He smiled easily. 'I'm on holiday. But you know – the Bureau once had a sort of responsibility out this way. The Caribbean, South America. Counterespionage, in the war. Before they invented the CIA.'
FBI small talk again.
My beer arrived and I said: 'Here's to yourholiday. Hope you don't get troubled by work.'
'No trouble.' He drank. 'Heard I might find you here, these days. Remembered I'd promised you something.' He felt in a side pocket and handed over a small rectangle of brass.
On it, engraved in neat capitals, wasit'd screw me up all over the caribbean. Then I remembered the phrase, back in the bar of the Sheraton at San Juan.
I grinned, turning the plate in my hands. A small hole at each corner, ready to be pinned to an instrument panel. And a lot neater than any of the notices I'd met pinned to panels in any aeroplane before. It was a professional job and it must have cost him money.
'Why the hell did you do this?' I asked.
He looked down at his glass and frowned thoughtfully. 'You're a trained fighting man, Carr. You did a good job in Korea and I happen to think that's important. But it isn't a very saleable talent. Well, we taught it you – so maybe we owe you something.' He nodded at the plate. 'That, anyway.'
'You're wrong, of course,' I said softly. 'A good fighter pilot's never working for anybody but himself.'
'Maybe. You still did a good job. And I diink that about covers it. Unless it's too late, of course.'
I twisted my eyebrows at him. 'What d'you mean?'
'I hear you lost your plane in the Repúblicaa couple of weeks back.'
'That's right.'
'And now you have an old bombing plane.'
'Walt Whitmore has it.'
'And you fly it.'
I nodded. But if news of die Mitchell was spreading so far and so wide, perhaps it was time to put my cards on the table. I mean pretend to. I said: 'So? You think Whitmore wants to get mixed up in Repúblicapolitics?'
He sipped bis beer, frowned, and sipped again. 'No-o,' he said finally. 'That's what I can't figure. Nothing in his filesuggests he'd do anything so altruistic. Hell, nothing in his file suggests he knows any words that long. And I can't see why else he'd get involved. But-'
'You've got a file on Whitmore?'
'Sure. We've got a file on everybody with that much money – if we know they've got it. There's two things make a crook: one's wanting a million, the other's having it.'
'I'd settle for less.'
'And your plane back, perhaps? You wouldn't have done a deal with Jiminez, would you?'
'I wouldn't know Jiminez from the cat's grandmother.'
'You knew his son.'
'I didn'tknow I knew his son – not until after he got shot. By the people you seem so fond of back in the República.'
He eyed me thoughtfully. 'Now there's a funny thing. Because political assassination's mostly an amateur business. Tends to make a man a martyr. You know people have been writing Diego on the walls in Santo Bartolomeo this last week? Me, I wouldn't have thought he rated it, from what I'd heard.'
I just shrugged.
He ploughed on regardless. 'Particularly dictators don't like assassination. Not since Trujillo got his, anyway. Could plant an idea, you know.' He stood up from his bar stool. 'I better get on with my holiday.'
The little brass plaque was lying on the counter. I pushed it towards him. 'You forgot something.'
He looked down at it and sighed. 'I thought it might be too late.' • 'No – just that I already have a souvenir. ' I tossed the pair of dice on the bar-top. 'These were pinched off General Bosco. I'll roll you for the next beer – if I do the rolling.'
The barman materialised at my elbow. 'No dicing allowed, sir – nowyou know that,' he said reproachfully.
'We're not playing. These are joke dice; my friend's buying into the company that makes them.'
That got me looks from both Ellis and the barman. But after a moment the barman faded suspiciously away again.
Ellis juggled the dice in his hand. 'Dictator's dice, huh?
Well, I'm not surprised; anybody who shoots dice with a dictator deserves it. Don't get me wrong, Carr: I don't think Castillo and Bosco aresaints. But loaded dice don't kill anybody; revolutions do. And never dictators. They've always got a bag of gold bars packed, a fast car to catch the last plane out. It's the poor hungry bastards out on the street to buy a can of beans who get killed by revolutions.' He leant a hand on the bar. 'Itold you, Carr: 150 revolutions in the last ISO-years -and a lot more that didn't work. And how many real democracies and stable economies have you got south of Mexico? But almost all of them killed somebody."
'A little softer on the violins,' I said sourly, 'and you'll have it in the top ten next week.'
His face got cold and tight. 'All right, Carr; all right. I'm just a sort of cop. They give me a gun so I guess I'm allowed to kill people. But basically I'm supposed to bring them back alive. Now you tell me about fighter pilots.'
'You missed out something about your job: it's pensionable – if you keep your record nice and clean. You think you'restopping a revolution in the Repúblicaby running around Jamaica and Puerto Rico waving your little grey list? You're just keeping your record clean.'
For a moment, I thought he was going to hit me. But he'd been in the FBI too long for that. After a moment he said quietly: 'It's the professionals who do the real killing, Carr. Give the guy in the street a gun and he wouldn't know if he was going to hit a barn door or next Tuesday.' He reached and picked up the metal plaque. 'I guess it was too late all along. Maybe it'll be in time for someone else.' He slipped it in his pocket.
Just to needle him, I said: 'You could be wrong, of course. If Jiminez ever took over, your State Department might suddenly decide he was a good thing and everybody who helped him was a hero.'
'Sure. Or they might just be smart enough to guess that most of the people who helped were the people who turn up helping any revolution. And a Government Department never throws away a list, Carr. They get paid on the number of filing cabinets they can fill up.'
There wasn't anything to say to that, so I didn't say it. He just looked at me a few moments longer and then walked quietly away, out into the high midday sun.
By the time I got back to Boscobel, the scene-painters had finished and gone and the Mitchell stood glowing silver in the afternoon sun and looking, oddly, more shabby than ever. Maybe that the paint didn't so much hide the wrinkles and dents as suggest somebody wanted them hidden. On film, she'd probably look clean and new; close up, on the ground, she was an honourable old lady with paint forced on her face by some young creep in a pink mesh shirt.
The electricians were still working, so I just handed out a few 'Jolly good show – you chaps reallydo know your business, what?' remarks such as pilots use for ground crews who are doing something totally incomprehensible. And went away again.
I hoped they did know their business, though. After sixteen years flying, the most important thing I'd learned about electricity in aeroplanes is that it's the first thing to go wrong.
I checked the weather again with a phone call to Palisadoes met office – tomorrow's wind was forecast the same as today's, but the circular disturbance was getting a little more circular and disturbing. Still, it hadn't grown up enough to earn a name yet.
But that night, it did: Hurricane Clara.