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

If I’d been up for a quarter of an hour, I thought, and if I’d started from the northern plain, and if I could only remember within a hundred miles how broad Italy was, then I might have some idea of when I’d be over the sea. Not yet, anyway. There were pinpricks of lights below me, and several small clusters of towns. No conveniently lit airports with welcoming runways.

If I’d taken the Cessna, I thought wretchedly, it would have been easy. Somewhere, by twiddling the knobs, I’d have raised radio contact with the ground. The international air language was English. A piece of cake. They’d have told me my position, what course to set, how to get down, everything. But if I’d taken the Cessna, I would have had to leave the D.C.4 intact, because of the mares. I’d thought at first of piling a couple more five gallon cans under the big plane and putting a match to it, and then remembered the living half of the cargo. Yardman might be cold-bloodedly prepared to kill three airmen, but I baulked at roasting alive four horses. And I couldn’t get them out, because the plane carried no ramp. With time I could have put the engines out of action… and with time they could have mended them again. But I hadn’t had time. If I’d done that, I couldn’t have got the Cessna out and away before Yardman’s return.

I could have taken Rous-Wheeler in the Cessna and landed safely and put Yardman Transport out of business. But I was as greedy as Billy: half wasn’t enough. It had to be all. I could choke on all, as Billy had.

The useless thoughts squirrelled round and round[509], achieving nothing. I wiped my face again on the sleeve of my jersey and understood why Patrick had nearly always flown in shirt sleeves, even though it was winter.

Italy couldn’t be much wider than England. If as wide. A hundred and twenty, a hundred and forty nautical miles[510]. Perhaps more. I hadn’t looked at the time when I took off. I should have done. It was routine. I hadn’t a hope if I couldn’t concentrate better than that. A hundred and forty miles at two twenty knots… say a hundred and sixty miles to be sure… it would take somewhere between forty and forty-five minutes. If I’d had the sense to look at my watch earlier I would have known how far I’d gone.

The lights below grew scarcer and went out. It was probably too soon to be the sea… it had to be mountains. I flew on for some time, and then checked my watch. Midnight. And still no lights underneath. The Apennines couldn’t be so broad… but if I went down too soon, I’d hit them. I gave it another five minutes and spent them wishing Billy’s burns would let up again. They were a five star nuisance[511].

Still no lights. I couldn’t understand it. I couldn’t possibly still be over the narrow Apennines. It was no good. I’d have to go down for a closer look. I throttled back, let the nose go down, and watched the altimeter hands go anti-clockwise through seven, six, five, four. At four thousand feet I levelled out again, and the night was as black as ever. I’d certainly hit no mountains, but for all I could see I was a lost soul in Limbo[512]. It wasn’t a safe feeling, not at all.

When at last I saw lights ahead I was much more uneasy than reassured. It was twelve fifteen by my watch, which meant I had come nearly two hundred miles already, and Italy couldn’t be as wide as that. Or at least I wouldn’t have thought so.

The lights ahead resolved themselves into little clusters strung out in a horizontal line. I knew the formation too well to mistake it. I was approaching a coastline. Incredulity swamped me. I was approaching from the sea.

Nightmares weren’t in it. I felt a great sense of unreality, as if the world had spun and rearranged its face, and nothing was ever going to be familiar again. I must be somewhere, I thought, taking a fierce grip on my escaping imagination. But where on earth, where literally on earth, was I?

I couldn’t go on flying blindly south-west for ever. The coast line must have a shape. About three miles short of it I banked to the right, wheeling northwards, guided by nothing more rational than instinct, and flew along parallel with the few and scattered lights on the shore. The sea beneath was black but the land was blacker. The line where they met was like ebony against coal, a shadowy change of texture, a barely perceptible rub of one mass against another.

I couldn’t, I thought, bullying my mind into some sort of order, I couldn’t possibly have flown straight across the Gulf of Genoa and now be following the Italian coast northwards from Alassio. There weren’t enough lights, even for that time of night. And I knew that coastline well. This one, I didn’t. Moreover, it ran due north for far too long. I had already been following it for fifteen minutes: fifty-five miles.