The hotel lobby was crowded with tourists; sitting on their luggage, swearing at a deserted desk, shouting down phones that didn't answer. A few of them looked at us hopefully – until they saw Luiz's uniform and gun, Ned's flying suit.
At the back, on a table flanked with potted palms, a radio loudspeaker was making a triumphant, but possibly rather weary speech. It said 'Jiminez' several times, so it sounded as if he was still in business down there. The only people listening were three locals – senior civil servants, judging by the size of the pistols in their belts. Probably they'd decided the Americana, under Bosco's wing, was the safest place for them that morning.
There were no Air Force men around apart from a couple of guards_ outside the glass front door. We arranged ourselves carefully – Ned led the way, J.B., Whitmore, and I followed, and Luiz – still looking like a general dressed as a private escorting us. We aimed for the back door.
Whitmore said: 'I need a gun.' We'd left his pistol up in the room; now he was staring hard at the pocket where I still had Ned's Magnum.
I shook my head. 'You could have it rather than me, but Ned's got to carry it through the air base gate. He'd look damn suspicious with an empty holster.'
'Yeah.' He saw the sense of it – reluctantly. 'Hell, though.'
Then he saw the civil servants.
He half-turned his head to Luiz and said out of the side of his mouth: 'Get one of those guys with us.'
Luiz frowned, then looked resigned, and took a diversion past the group.'Señor, por favore. Presidente-Generalissimo Bosco…'Then we were round a corner and I couldn't hear any more.
As we came out into the open by the deserted patio bar, Whitmore hung back. I heard footsteps in the corridor behind, then the whack of a fist. Ned, who hadn't noticed anything before, stopped. 'What the hell are you-?'
Luiz and Whitmore came out behind us, Whitmore carrying a fancy gunbelt covered in cartridge loops and silver studs and examining a big, long cowboy-type revolver.
'A real Colt forty-five,' he said happily. 'Hell, that's great.'
Luiz said wearily: 'Why did you think I chosehim, Walt?'
"Thanks, fella.' He twirled the revolver expertly.
'Put the bloody thing away,' I snarled. 'You're a prisoner under escort.'
He looked down at his loose, one-button jacket, realised how obvious the belt would be, and sadly threw it into a bush. He jammed the Colt down the back of his trousers.
Ned shook his head in disbelief. 'You never stop playing, do you?'
Luiz said: 'My friend, he is not playing. He's real.'
We climbed into the white Mercedes.
After about ten minutes, Luiz said suddenly: 'Just here,' and Ned stopped the car. Luiz climbed out, went over to a tree at the roadside, and came back carrying the Browning Automatic Rifle.
Assuming that by now the ambush would have been cleared off the direct route, we were using the coast road again. I didn't want to run into Air Force traffic.
Ned looked at the rifle curiously. 'That the thing you wasshooting at me with? You stuck one about five inches in front of me nose.'
Luiz smiled apologetically. 'I am sorry. Carr was not holding our plane completely steady.'
Ned gave him a look, banged the Mercedes into drive and growled: 'Well, you're kidding yourself anyway. You won't get past the gate carrying that. Nobody in our lot carries BAR's – can't afford 'em.'
'They are expensive,' Luiz agreed, 'compared with these unfortunate little tin things.' He held up the sub-machine gun and sneered at it. Then sighed and handed the rifle to the back seat. 'Hide it somewhere. I will carry the tin thing through the gate.'
Ned said: 'We've about a couple of miles to go. What d'you want me to do?'
'Where's the Dove parked?' I asked, shaking cartridges out of his Magnum.
'Second hangar. Past the tower.'
'Guarded?'
'You don't guard planes on a guarded base, matey. But it could be crowded. They might've hauled in a couple of Vamps to work on 'em there.'
I handed forward the empty revolver and said: 'But it wouldn't be odd if you drove your car right up there?'
'No-o.' He sounded a little reluctant. He was committed to helping us, but that didn't stop him hoping he'd fail. 'So what's your plan for the gate?'
'What's the normal procedure?'
'Him' – he nodded at Luiz – 'he hands over his own pass and mine. I explain who the hell you are--'
'Prisoners Boscowants to interrogate, fast,' I said.
J.B. said: 'A delegation from the American Embassy.'
'Make up your minds.'
Luiz said: 'I fear that will not work anyway.' He was examining the pass he'd pulled out of a pocket in his uniform. 'This photograph looks most unlike me – I am happy to say.'
'Then you're stuck again,' Ned said calmly. 'Anywhere else I can drop you?'
I leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder. 'Gambling man – you lost a bet, remember? Now get us through the gate.'
Just the purr of the Mercedes at half speed, the thrum of the tyres on the jointed concrete road.
Then Ned said quietly: 'All right. Just sit tight and look proud and hope they haven't heard I'm down fromcoronel.'
The base swung into sight as the trees thinned out.
It was wrapped in a nine-foot barbed-wire fence, which was a lot more protection than I'd ever seen on any other airfield. But perhaps I just hadn't been in any other country where the most likely trouble was civil war – war without a front line.
The gate was just a gap, blocked by a thin red-and-white striped pole, but with a wooden trestle wrapped in more barbed wire that could be shoved into place in a few seconds. On one side was a small wooden guard hut. On the other, a concrete pit with a man leaning on a light machine gun. Two other guards, both with rifles.
Just before we reached it, Ned trod on the accelerator, then the brake, so we arrived on locked wheels, scattering gravel. Before we were even stopped, he had his head out of the window and shouting.
'Don't you know this bloody car by now? Get out the bloody road! '
The guard on his side stiffened nervously.'Si, Coronel. Excepto General Bosco-'
'PRESIDENTE Bosco, idiota!' Ned screamed.
The guard got even stiffer. By now he was standing so tall he could hardly see into the car at all.'Si, Coronel, si. Excepto-'
'What's a matter? You know me, you knowhim' – a jerk of the hand at Luiz – 'and them'snorteamericanosthe Presidentewants to see. All right?'
The guard looked unhappy.
'Telefono,'Nedsaid decisively. He shoved open his door.
'No, no, Coronel.'The guard spun around and yelled at his companion. The striped pole swung up. The guard whipped his rifle to the 'present' and we were through.
I said quietly: "Thank you, Ned.'
There isn't a military organisation in the world where a loud enough shout from a high enough rank can't bypass the most elaborate security arrangements. You can spend as long as you like telling sentries to demand passes, authorizations, identifications – but you'll always have spent longer telling them to jump when a colonel says jump.
And people still wonder why the military is so damn bad at keeping military secrets.
After a hundred yards, we swung left and were cruising around the wide perimeter track itself. And ahead of us, the collapsed shape of a Vampire, the one that had been Ned's Number Two that morning. Nobody was working on it, and as we pulled off on to the grass to pass it, I saw why. It looked as if it had been hit by a gigantic shotgun: there were a dozen and more jagged holes the size of a spread hand punched through it; one rudder assembly was wiped clean off; a main undercarriage leg was gone. And the concrete a hundred yards all around it was littered with scattered and smashed bricks.
We'd got that one, all right. The Mitchell and me.
Ned said: 'Thank you, Keith.'
Then we were back on the track and coming up across the front of the first hangar on our left. A shabby old C-47 transport parked beside it, and tucked away inside, rusty and rotting, a couple of propeller fighters without propellers.
We passed the control tower on our right; a big office block, set well back, on our left. The second hangar came up ahead.
So far, the base had the tense, creepy feeling of being quiet – but not empty. Quiet because there were a lot of people all working hard and silently in their proper places, not walking around borrowing cigarettes and taking a coffee break. But all awake and alert.
Just one shot – maybe just one move that made us no longer fit into the pattern – and we'd have a hundred men on our necks.
'Exactly where's the Dove?' I asked – and found myself whispering.
'Far side.'
'Nothing blocking it?'
'Shouldn't be.' But reluctantly. 'Standing orders diat it's always kept clear.'
'Drive up. Not fast, not slow.'
Luiz turned and handed the sub-machine gun over die seat back; I hoisted die rifle from under our feet and passed it awkwardly forward.
Then we were crossing the front of the hangar and die base certainly wasn't empty and not even silent any more.
Despite the daylight, neon lights flared across die metal rafters. They'd hauled three Vamps insidediere, and men -maybe fifty in all – were swarming over them like bees. The screaming, whining, raiding of electric tools swamped the car. I nearly panicked, nearly shouted to drive on. Butdiere, against die far wall, just a few yards inside die hangar and facing out across the field, was die Dove.
Ned curled in towards it.
'Not right in front, chum,' I said. But he swung wide and stopped in line widi die hangar wall.
The silence was a sudden, shocking tiling. Everybody in the hangar had stopped to watch us – us, die men from die outside, who knew how diings were going in town.
Ned pulled on die handbrake with a loud rasp and said: 'It's your party, matey. Introduce your guests.'
'Get out and show yourself.'
But Luiz was die first out, with an exaggerated military leap ending in a rigid at-attention, die rifle stiff across his chest. I shuffled past him and muttered: 'Wrong air force, chum.'
Then I turned to look around the hangar, as a visitor would, making it slow and deliberate. Fifty men stared back. Buttherewas safety in numbers. One man will come and ask questions just because there's nobody else to ask them; with fifty, each reckons there's forty-nine others to make the first move.
I hoped. Repeat, hoped.
Then, slowly, the noise built again as man after man turned back to us work.
Whitmore had to lean in over my shoulder to make himself heard.
'We'll never get away with this, fella. The second you pressthebutton, we'll have every goddamn man in the shop on our necks.'
'They're mechanics. You don't carry a gun to repair a plane.'
He cocked a slow eyebrow. 'Or she may not even be fuelled. Or the batteries-'
'She's the General's getaway plane. She'll be ready to get away.'
Logical-but with a lot of hope sprinkled on top. I turned and strolled back towards the Dove.
Luiz was still standing guard by the car, Ned near him. J.B. was leaning inside the open door, her hands out of sight behind it: she must have had the sub-machine gun there. And Whit-more had his Colt, Luiz the rifle – but Ned still had the Magnum. Well, if it came to a gunfight, my job was throwing rocks.
As I rounded the little aeroplane's nose I casually kicked the chock away from the nosewheel, then ducked under the wing-tip down to the door on the left side. That put the Dove between me and the honest workmen.
After the Mitchell, she seemed abruptly unfamiliar; lower, a little wider, and clean, neat, modern. I smiled to myself: I'd never expected to thinkthat of her. Then the familiar Dove smell hit me, and I knew her perfectly again. I dipped my head just the right. amount, angled myself sideways just enough to pass between the passenger seats, and walked quickly up to the cockpit.
I didn't need to sit down. I just leant in over the seats and ran my hands across the controls and switches. Quietly, she woke up. Lights came on across the panel, instrument needles jumped off their stops, swayed, settled down. The fuel was there, the power was there, the air pressures were there – more than I'd ever seen on her. The General must really have had some work done. I shifted the fuel, throttle, and pitch levers to where I wanted them; but that was all I could do. The next stage was the noisy one.
I hurried back and out of the door. The group had drifted in beside the Dove's nose, out of sight of the hangar. Except for Luiz, still stiffly at attention in a way the República Air Force had never achieved.
'All aboard that's coming aboard,' I said.
J.B. and Whitmore moved. Luiz stayed. Out of the side of his mouth, he said: 'I think, my friends, that I will stay.'
Everybody turned. Whitmore said: 'You're doing what?'
'Jiminez can use this gun. Perhaps me also.'
Whitmore blew up like a 500-pounder. 'Christ, you got a picture to finish! '
Luiz smiled very slightly. 'Perhaps in a week or so, Walt. When things are settled – one way or another.'
I said: 'You could've picked a better place to stay; not the middle of a fortified base.'
'I shall take the car.'
'You won't get it through the gate.'
'I think there is a hole in the wire – where Señor Rafter crashed. I can take the car that far.'
'It'll be guarded.'
He hefted the rifle in his hands. "They will not be quick to shoot at this uniform.'
Whitmore said: 'You're still crazy.'
This time Luiz turned. 'Walt-I also have an investment to protect. Not as big as yours, perhaps – but I have it.'
I said softly: 'Just one Ufe.'
But nobody else knew what we were talking about.
I said: 'All right – if anybody's going, let's go.'
Ned said: 'Nobody's going.'