Gavin Lyall - Judas Country

I threw myself into the cockpit, ramming myself on to the controls, as far forward as I could get. Behind me there was a crash as Jauni dropped the box, a crunch as the door-steps touched the ground and a scream as the customs officer fell off them.

Maybe he made the difference, maybe it was also Ken backing in behind me. She slowed, the tail bumper touched gently, then the whole caboodle swung back on its nosewheel with a slam that lifted my gold filling.

But nosewheels are built for slamming; tails aren't.

Ken shouted: 'Drop the gun! Drop it!'

He had both hands on the Smith, pointing straight up the gangway between the seats. I couldn't see what at.

Then he fired.

Inside the aeroplane, the noise was like a grenade. I leant over Ken's shoulder. At the far end – about eight feet away -Janni was picking himself off a scatter of champagne boxes, Jehangir was clinging to the last seat, looking as surprised as hell.

As I watched, he lurched and his left leg slid eighteen inches out of his trouser cuff. He stared at it. The leg rolled a little, the foot at an impossible angle.

Ken said:'Now lose that gun! '

Jehangir let it fall, lowered himself on to the seat-arm, grabbed his leg and hauled it back into his trouser. 'You know what this will cost me?'

'Would your stomach have been cheaper? Now get the hell off this aeroplane.'

Janni was on his feet, giving Ken a vicious glare, then helping the master up. Holding his leg more-or-less in place. Jehangir shuffled to the door. Janni helped him on to the steps.

Jehangir turned for one last word. Ken took it instead: Til tell you something: I was so rushed back then, I couldn't remember which leg was which.'

Jehangir vanished. When we felt their weight go off the steps, Ken moved back to watch them. 'Wind her up. I'll do the chocks and pitot head.'

I was calling for taxi clearance before I'd got the second engine started.

Ken dropped into the right-hand seat as we turned across the front of the main terminal. 'I got the cargo back forward but not tied down. Shouldn't be bumpy tonight, though.'

'How's the door?'

'Bit bent at the top, but it latches.' He shook his head. 'I didn't expect his damn leg to come right off. Wonder what it counts as? Can't be grievous bodily harm, can it?'

'I expect the French have a word for it.' We got to the run-up area off runway 18 as a big jet started its takeoff. The line of lights crawled, walked, ran and slanted steeply into the dark sky.

'Whiskey Zulu, request takeoff.'

'Whiskey Zulu, hold at run-up.'

I'd been listening to the tower long enough to get a picture of what was going on around, which included a Pan Am flight established on the approach. They'd let us go after that had landed.

I ran up the engines briefly, did a perfunctory mag and pitch check. Out low beyond the city two new stars sparkled alive; Pan Am'slanding lights.

The tower said: 'Whiskey Zulu, cancel takeoff. Return to parking ramp and shut down.'

Ken glared at the little cabin speaker. 'The hell withthat. Just Jehangir pulling one of Aziz's tricks.'

I flipped off the brakes and pushed open the throttles. 'Beirut Tower, Whiskey Zulu: your transmission faint and intermittent but understand clear to takeoff. Rolling.'

The Tower screamed: 'Whiskey Zulu, negative I Return to ramp!'

'You're still indistinct, but thanks and good night.'

A deep but tense American voice broke in: 'What the hell's going on down there? Is that runway clear or not?'

'Stand by, Pan Am,' the Tower soothed him. 'Whiskey Zulu, return to… no, whereare you, Whiskey Zulu?'

'Whaddaya mean, stand by? D 'you think I'm in a Goddamnballoon? I'm past the outer marker! '

The Queen Air broke ground, I snapped up the wheels and banked steeply right, over the sea, and left them to sort it out between themselves.

I levelled out at 5,000 and put in the autopilot; it could have done the climb for me, but I was still new enough to this aeroplane to want to handle the controls more than was strictly necessary.

Outside, the night was dark, moonless, crystallising as we got away from the dust and haze of the coastline. And still: no cloud, just a southwest wind with no sense of ambition.

Ken said: 'Nicosia in time for a late dinner, then. What after that?'

'Back to the Castle. Then either Kapotas gets the okay from London for us to fly the aeroplane home, or we cable the bank and buy our own tickets.'

'Tomorrow's Sunday.'

'So we're stuck there till Monday anyhow.'

After a moment he said: 'What about Mitzi – and the sword?'

'What about it? We haven't a blind idea where it is except probably still Israel. We did our best for Mitzi, but now it's time to resign from the crusade and get back into something profit-making.'

He was quiet for a while. Then: 'Did you know I was deported from Israel?'

The Consulate said.'

'1 meant to tell you myself. So we couldn't go to Israel anyway… but I'd like to have found King Richard's sword.'

'Me too. And the Holy Grail and Henry Morgan's treasure and King Solomon's mines. Not necessarily all in the same week, though.'

'Screw you, too.' But when I glanced across, he was grinning. 'I suppose really it wasn't our type of weapon, anyway.'

'One sword, king-size, only one previous owner… Mind the store for me?'

'Where are you going?'

'Back to dump the cargo.'

He sat up. 'Oh Christ no. I tell you, that stuff'scapital?

'It's jail bait. We've been lucky so far, mostly because we've kept ducking and weaving, but lucky besides. Just think how many people know by now: Jehangir and Co., Aziz and Kapotas and anybody they've told, then Kingsley and God-knows-who in Europe.'

'Yes, but it's still-'

'And when we reach Nicosia we're due for a bollocking about that takeoff from Beirut – they're sure to have complained. If just one official gets snoopy, then kiss me good night, head warder.'

'Well, maybe, but…" he sounded wistful. 'I mean, those pistols are all new. Average £50 apiece just on a legal sale across the counter. That's a thousand quid before we open another box.'

'Ken, we can'tarrange a legal sale. We aren't arms dealers. We were never the bright boys who fix for stuff to go from A to B and somebody called C to carry it. We were C, pig in the middle. But at least we insisted on honest manifests and end-use certificates and all.'

'An honest end-use certificate? We knew bloody well that half the stuff we carried was going to wind up in some other country.'

'I'm not talking about morality, dammit, I'm talking about getting caught. Those certificates were protection.'

'Were they?' – sourly.

'Mostly. And you only did two years. If they'd thought you were a freelance smuggler…'

He nodded but said doggedly: 'It's stillcapital. Like something I've been investing the last two years… a chance to get started again. There must besomething we can do with it -more than the fish can, anyway.'

It's tricky to argue with that, particularly when you agree with most of it. The fact that the load probably belonged to lehangir, at least legally or morally – or come to think of it, not quite either – wasn't bothering me. I wriggled back out of my seat. 'Okay. The champagne papers'll see us through for the unopened boxes. But the opened stuff goes out. Are you keeping the Smith?'

'Just in case comrade lehangir hasn't switched to breeding lovebirds.' He had a point, there. I slid the cockpit door behind me before turning on the cabin lights.

The escape hatch is the last full-sized window on the starboard side, just behind the wing and opposite the door. It came loose easy enough, with a blare of engine noise and wind, and the aeroplane twitched with the increased drag. I threw the submachine-guns first.