Gavin Lyall - Shooting Script

'As the actress said to the bishop,' the radio man added.

I stepped to the door and looked up at the sky. So, super-stitiously, did every other pilot in the group. But it was still clear and blue except for the fluffy white cumulus building up on the Blue Mountains; the wind was the normal gentle easterly. Nothing to see – yet.

But the eye of a hurricane isn't big; the hard core, the 150-mph winds spinning around the calm centre, isn't usually more than forty miles across. And that's the part that does the real damage: guts houses, throws steamers halfway up Main Street, flips heavy aircraft on their backs. But it's still only theyolk of a broken egg; the white spreads far and wide. Clara could be changing clouds 1,000 miles from her eye, dragging winds into an anti-clockwise spiral 500 miles ahead.

And there was our trouble: coming as she was, the first hint we'd get of Clara would be a shift of wind so it came from the north. And with only an east-west runway – like every runway in Jamaica -a north wind would be a crosswind. It might be too much crosswind to risk a take-off. So I could find myself pinned down with the eye still nearly five hundred miles off -and even if it didn't arrive for another twenty-four hours, me and die Mitchell would still be here when it did.

The spray pilot asked: 'Going this afternoon?'

It would make sense. Yet the first wind-shift could hardly come before three o'clock in the morning. And it might not come at all. Sooner or later Clara wouldhave to recurve – turn north and east. And Caracas, or anyornersafe airport south of here, was a lot of petrol away…

'I'll wait,' I decided.

'It must be love,' the radio man said.

The spray pilot snorted. 'If he's got any sense he'll be sleeping with the plane tonight.'

I nodded. It would be nice to trust die met office to ring me at the hotel if the wind shifted northerly and reached more than, say fifteen knots, but… I'd be sleeping widi die plane. I was the aircraft captain.

I walked up the runway to see how die electricians were getting on and warn diem not to leave any loose ends diis evening. But diey were just about finished. A new set of clean, bright plastic-covered wires direaded along the dowdy soundproofing behind the cockpit; a neat little panel of one master switch and four press-buttons on the instrument panel.

'Works okay,' the chief assured me. 'And when they've finished the scene, we'll strip it out. Can use them coils and magnets again. Unless you was thinking of setting up professionally as a bomber?'

Big joke. Everybody laughed brightly.

I had a quick drink at the Golden Head, dienback to diehotel to stockpile a little sleep, stopping on the way to buy an oil lamp.

At seven I woke up and rang the Palisadoes met office – and Clara was still coming. Reports were also in about what she'd done to Puerto Rico during the early morning: trees and telephone lines down, flooding, landslips in the interior – the usual catalogue. But all at a range of three hundred miles at least. The Repúblicamust have got the same treatment during the day. Well, I just hoped General Boscogot caught out of doors without a raincoat.

But not me. I wanted no part at all of sister Clara. She sounded a very big girl by now.

I washed, had a solitary drink at the bar, a leisurely dinner, and finally forced myself to head for Boscobel at half-past nine.

At this time, I had the strip to myself. The terminal hut was dark and locked, the hangar of small planes quiet. At diis end of the island, Hurricane Clara was strictly my problem from now on.

I walked down to the east end of the runway with the hurricane lamp, lit it, and hung it up on a tree just right of the runway. At 3,000 feet it would be just a spark of light, but that's all you really need for a night takeoff: an aiming point. As long as I remembered to aim left of it.

I walked back up to the Mitchell. There, I took off the rudder control locks so that the first north wind would bang the rudders and wake me – in the unlikely event of my being asleep. Then, because you don't officially start a sleepless night until you start trying to sleep, I sat down against the nose-wheel, lit my pipe, and breathed smoke at the sky.

It drifted away slowly. The night was very still, very clear and very dark, with that gigantic echoing distant darkness youonly get in the tropics. Not quiet, though: the trees and bushes – not quite a jungle – on either side of the runway buzzed and clicked and purred busily, with an occasional squawk or squeal to break the monotony. But a tropical night never gets spooky the way a northern night can. At least, not on an island where the worst things that can bite you are scorpions and hotels.

I smoked and looked at several thousand stars and wondered if, somewhere out there among the bug-eyed green monsters, there wasn't some poor bug-eyed green bastard sitting under an old bomber waiting for an ammonia storm and looking out at the stars and wondering if, somewhere out there…

On an engineering-type guess at the stars and odds involved, I decided there probably was. And maybe he was even thinking about how he'd come to get mixed up in somebody else's war and trying to work out how he felt about it. And perhaps remembering that he'd have no bomb-aimer, so he'd have to go in low, like a fighter-bomber, and wondering how low he dared go with 500-pounders. Even assuming the delayed-action fuses worked on bombs that had probably been stockpiled for years in the steam heat of some Central American hideout…

I banged my pipe out on the brake drum and went to bed.

I didn't know what woke me, except that I wasn't much asleep anyway and tuned to catch the first sound as the start of the north wind. I just found myself sitting up among the engine and cockpit covers in the rear fuselage and listening.

Nothing.

So I went through the usual charade of pretending I was going to get back to sleep without getting up to make sure there was nothing. After a bit of that, I crawled over to one of the old gun windows.

Two men, walking up the runway in the starlight towards me.

A couple of old crop-spraying friends come to tell me Clara had recurved north and I could cease my lonely vigil? Like Hell. I woke up with a jolt. As the two rounded the end of the wing, they both pulled out knives.

For a moment I thought about sealing myself up tight in the Mitchell. I could probably have done it: an aeroplane is a fairly solid affair. All I needed to do was jam the floor hatch tight… Then I knew I'd got to go down there.

Oh yes? And with what? – against two knives.

No use looking around; it was as dark as the inside of a coffin in here. I wonderedif I'd left any tools lying around -but I knew I hadn't. And somebody would have pinched them anyway.

Then I remembered the tail 'gun', the piece of painted broomstick stuck through the rear-gunner's window. I crawled quickly and, I hoped, quietly back there.

It jammed for a second, then slid free; it was only held in by insulation tape. About three feet long and smooth in my hands, which suddenly seemed damp.

I poked a cautious eyebrow up into the transparent aiming blister above. They were standing a few yards off, staring at the side of the aeroplane. I froze, thinking they'd heard me. But they seemed to be discussing something. Finally one of them got out a piece of paper, looked carefully around, and struck a match to read it by. The other leant in over his shoulder.

Two sharp Spanish faces, one with a small black moustache. Open-necked white shirts. I couldn't see any more. The match died. They looked back at the aeroplane, discussed a little more – then moved forward, under the wing.

I crawled for the hatch. It was open, for ventilation and wind noise. I eased down, hoping the little collapsible step wouldn't creak. But it was too rusty and jammed-up for that. Me and my broomstick arrived on the tarmac a few feet behind the wing without being spotted.