Flying finish / Бурный финиш. Книга для чтения на английском языке

Yardman had left my jacket lying on the flattened box, and in my jacket pocket was a small sharp penknife. I sat down on the side of the shallow platform, trying to pretend to myself that it wasn’t because my legs were buckling at the knees but only the quickest way to reach the jacket. The knife was there, slim and familiar. I clicked open the blade, gripped it firmly, and sawed away blindly at some unseen point between my wrists. The friction of dragging the rope along had frayed it helpfully, and before I’d begun to hope for it I felt the strands stretch and give[444], and in two more seconds my hands were free. With stiff shoulders I brought them round in front of me. Yardman had no personal brutality and hadn’t tied tight enough to stop the blood. I flexed my fingers and they were fine.

Scooping up wallet and jacket I began the bent walk forward under the luggage rack and over the guy chains, stepping with care so as not to make a noise and fetch the five outdoor decorators in at the double[445]. I reached the galley safely and went through it. In the space behind the cockpit I stopped dead for a moment. The body of Mike the engineer lay tumbled in a heap against the left hand wall.

Tearing both mind and eyes away from him I edged towards the way out. On my immediate right I came first to the luggage bay, and beyond that lay the door. The sight of my overnight bag in the bay made me remember the black jersey inside it. Better than my jacket, I thought. It had a high neck, was easier to move in, and wouldn’t be so heavy on my raw skin[446]. In a few seconds I had it on, and had transferred my wallet to my trousers.

Five of them round the plane, I thought. The exit door was ajar, but when I opened it the light would spill out, and for the time it took to get on to the ladder they would be able to see me clearly. Unless by some miracle they were all over on the port side, painting the tail. Well, I thought coldly, I would just be unlucky if the nearest to me happened to be Billy with his gun.

It wasn’t Billy, it was the man I didn’t know, Giuseppe. He was standing at the root of the starboard wing painting out the airline’s name on the fuselage, and he saw me as soon as I opened the door not far below him. I pulled the door shut behind me and started down the ladder, hearing Giuseppe shouting and warning all the others. They had ladders to get down too, I thought. I could still make it.[447]

Giuseppe was of the hard core, a practising militant communist. He was also young and extremely agile. Without attempting to reach a ladder he ran along the wing to its tip, put his hands down, swung over the edge, and dropped ten feet to the ground. Seeing his running form outlined on the wing against the stars I veered away to the left as soon as I had slid down the ladder, and struck out forwards, more or less on the same axis as the plane.

My eyes weren’t accustomed to the light as theirs were. I couldn’t see where I was going. I heard Giuseppe shouting in Italian, and Yardman answering. Billy tried a shot which missed by a mile[448]. I scrambled on, holding my arms up defensively and hoping I wouldn’t run into anything too hard. All I had to do, I told myself, was to keep going. I was difficult to see in black and moved silently over the grass of the field. If I got far enough from the plane they wouldn’t be able to find me, not five of them with Alf no better than a snail. Keep going and get lost. After that I’d have all night to search out a bit of civilisation and someone who could speak English.

The field seemed endless. Endless. And running hurt. What the hell did that matter, I thought dispassionately, with Billy behind me. I had also to refrain from making a noise about it in case they should hear me, and with every rib-stretching breath that got more difficult. In the end I stopped, went down on my knees, and tried to get air in shallow silent gulps. I could hear nothing behind but a faint breeze, see nothing above but the stars, nothing ahead but the dark. After a few moments I stood up again and went on, but more slowly. Only in nightmares did fields go on for ever. Even airfields.

At the exact second that I first thought I’d got away with it, bright white lights blazed out and held me squarely in their beams. A distant row of four in front, a nearer row of four behind, and I a black figure in the flarepath. Sick devastating understanding flooded through me. I had been trying to escape down the runway.

Sharply, almost without missing a step, I wheeled left and sprinted; but Giuseppe wasn’t very far behind after all. I didn’t see or hear him until the last moment when he closed in from almost in front. I swerved to avoid him, and he threw out his leg at a low angle and tripped me up.