Gavin Lyall - Shooting Script

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?'