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

He gave me another frightened glance and set off to the plane, a lumbering grey shape behind the runway lights. I walked three steps behind him and unsympathetically watched him stumble in his fear.

‘Hurry,’ I said again, and he stumbled faster. The thought of the Citroën returning was like a devil on my tail[491]. I was just not going to be taken again. There were five bullets left in the gun. The first for Rous-Wheeler, the next for Yardman, and after that… he would have Giuseppe with him, and at least two others. Not nice.

‘Faster,’ I said.

Rous-Wheeler reached the ladder and stumbled up it, tripping over half the steps. He went awkwardly back through the plane just as I had said and flopped down panting on one of the seats. I followed him. Someone, Alf I supposed, had given the mares some hay, and one of the bales from Billy’s now dismantled wall had been clipped open and split. The binding wire from it lay handy on the flattened aft box. I picked it up to use on Rous-Wheeler, but there was nothing on the comfortable upholstered double seat I could tie him to.

He made no fuss[492] when I bound his wrists together. His obvious fear made him flabby and malleable, and his eyes looked as if he could feel shock waves from the violence and urgency which were flowing through me.

‘Kneel down,’ I said, pointing to the floor in front of the seats’ He didn’t like that. Too undignified.

‘Kneel,’ I said. ‘I haven’t time to bother about your comfort.’

With a pained expression that at any other time would have been funny he lowered himself on to his knees. I slid the ends of the wire through one of the holes in the seat anchorages on the floor, and fastened him there securely by the wrists.

‘I ss… say…’ he protested.

‘You’re bloody lucky to be alive at all, so shut up.’

He shut up. His hands were tied only a couple of feet away from the blanket which covered Patrick. He stared at the quiet mound and he didn’t like that either. Serve him right, I thought callously.

‘What… what are you going to do?’ he said.

I didn’t answer. I went back up the cabin, looking at the way they’d re-stored the cargo. Aft box still flat. The walls of the next one, dismantled, had been stacked in the starboard alley. On the peat tray now stood a giant packing case six feet long, four feet wide, and nearly five feet tall. Chains ran over it in both directions, fastening it down to the anchorages. It had rope handles all the way round, and Yardman had said something about using a block and tackle[493], but all the same manoeuvring it into its present position must have been a tricky sweaty business. However, for the sake of forwarding the passage of this uninformative crate Yardman had also been prepared to steal a plane and kill three airmen. Those who had no right to it wanted it very badly.

I went up further. The four mares were unconcernedly munching at full haynets[494] and paid me scant attention. Through the galley and into the space behind the cockpit, where Mike’s body still lay. Burial had been the last of the jobs. Uncompleted.

The luggage compartment held four more crates, the size of tea chests. They all had rope handles and no markings.

Beyond them was the open door. It represented to me a last chance of not going through with what I had in mind. Yardman hadn’t yet come back, and the Cessna was ready. If I took it, with its radio and full tanks, I would undoubtedly be safe, and Yardman’s transport business would be busted[495]. But hed’ still have the D.C.4 and the packing cases…

Abruptly I pulled up the telescopic ladder and shut the door with a clang. Too much trouble, I told myself, to change my mind now. I’d have to take Rous-Wheeler all the way back to the Cessna or shoot him, and neither course appealed[496]. But the situation I found in the cockpit nearly defeated me before I began.

Billy had shot Bob as he sat, through the back of the head. The upper part of him had fallen forward over the wheel, the rest held firmly in the seat by the still fastened safety strap across his thighs. In the ordinary way even stepping into the co-pilot’s seat in the cramped space was awkward enough, and lifting a dead man out of it bodily was beyond me[497]. Blacking my mind to the sapping thought that this was a man I had known, and considering him solely as an object which spelled disaster to me if I didn’t move it I undid the seat belt, heaved the pathetic jackknifed figure round far enough to clear his feet and head from the controls, and fastened the belt tight across him again in his new position, his back half towards me.

With the same icy concentration I sat in Patrick’s place and set about starting the plane. Switches. Dozens of switches everywhere: On the control panel, on the roof, in the left side wall and in the bank of throttles on my right. Each labelled in small metal letters, and too many having to be set correctly before the plane would fly.