Permissible Limits (42 page)

With forty minutes’ flying left in our tanks, Harald gave me a new compass heading. What he called ‘the classroom stuff’ was evidently over. Before we returned to Standfast, he wanted to show me a little action.

I flew south-east for maybe fifteen minutes. Soon the neat rectangles of citrus fields gave way to an endless tract of swamp dotted with dark-green islands of mangrove. Its flatness and lack of features - no trees, no hills - robbed the landscape of depth and dimension, and looking down it was hard to work out where the water ended and the sky began. These, I knew, were the Everglades - a huge area of humid, knee-deep wilderness teeming with alligators, snakes and mosquitoes - and the rattling cocoon of the noisy old Harvard suddenly seemed an altogether nicer proposition than fighting it out with the reptiles and insects below. I’d heard stories about this place. How a snake called the water moccasin could finish you off in five minutes. How female alligators liked nothing better than the taste of human flesh. Even from three thousand feet I could well believe it, and when Harald directed my attention to a curl of smoke away to port, I was at first reluctant to investigate.

‘
What is it?’ I asked him.

‘
Some guys from Standfast, part of Chuck’s detail. Let’s go look.’

I nosed the Harvard down and dipped a wing. For some reason, Harald wanted me to approach from the west.

‘
You’re looking for five hundred feet at the bottom of the run,’ he said. ‘Give yourself plenty of room for the pull-out.’

Run? Pull-out? I pressed the intercom button.

‘
Say again?’

‘
Chuck’s leading an infil exercise. He drops in with the Huey and off-loads the guys. It’s our job to make it realistic’

‘
How?’

‘
OK, you see the button at the end of the throttle lever?’

My thumb found the button. In our Harvard, it triggered the bomb-release mechanism.

‘
Got it,’ I confirmed.

‘
OK, now look at the dash. You know where to find the bomb-master and selector switches?’

I did. The bomb-master switch is on the left-hand side of the dashboard, the last in a line of six. The selector switches, four of them, fell to my other hand. Here again, we had the same configuration in the Old Glory Harvard. Keeping the original armament fit, according to Adam, had brought a tear to many a veteran’s eye. I glanced up at the rearview mirror. Harald was gazing out to the right, his lips curled in what might have been a smile.

‘
Which switch?’ I asked him.

‘
Second from the right. Starboard inboard.’

I reached for the master switch and flicked it down, then my right hand found the bomb-selector switch. During our brief refuelling stop back at Standfast, one of the mechanics had taken me across to the hangar for a glass of iced tea, and looking back out at the apron I’d seen a couple of guys attaching something to the underside of the starboard wing, but only now did it occur to me that the sleek olive canister might actually have a purpose.

‘
What happens when I press the bomb release?’ I enquired drily, ‘Only I really liked Chuck.’

I
could hear Harald laughing again, but this time it sounded real.

‘
It’s only smoke,’ he assured me. ‘And Chuck knows the routine backwards.’

We were passing a thousand feet in a shallow dive, the airspeed nudging 160 knots. There was a gyro gunsight mounted on top of the dashboard and Harald told me to level the pipper once I’d found the guys in the swamp.

‘
Where are they?’

‘
I don’t know.’

At 700 feet, seeing nothing but islands of mangrove, I pulled the Harvard out of the dive. Flying the plane from the front cockpit was infinitely easier and I winged it over as we began to climb again, still not knowing quite what I was looking for.

‘
There! Three o’clock low.’

I looked down to the right, following Harald’s instructions. At first I didn’t see it. Then a strange, feathery pattern on the water drew my attention, the downdraught from a rotor blade, and I realised I was looking at a helicopter. It was the old Huey I’d seen beside the hangar earlier. The jungle camouflage blended perfectly with the greens and browns of the swamp.

‘
What now?’

‘
Go for it again, same heading. He’ll be dropping the guys in any time now.’

Checking the compass, I pulled the Harvard into a climb, pushing the throttle forward against the stops and holding it there. Passing 3,000 feet I levelled off, then winged the old plane over, heading back. For the first time in my flying career I felt a thrill of what I can only describe as bloodlust. No one had ever asked me to look for the bomb-release button before. Not in earnest. Not with flesh and blood on the receiving end.

‘
Promise it’s just smoke.’

‘
Don’t you trust me?’

I didn’t have time to answer. I was too busy trying to locate the helicopter. From 1,500 feet it looked like an insect. Seconds later, I heard Harald’s voice again. He was shouting.

‘
He’ll break to the right. Wait until I say.’

The Huey was fattening in the gunsight. Suddenly it sheared away to the right, leaving tiny figures splashing around in the swamp. They looked hopelessly vulnerable. I could see one or two faces raised skywards, then a man running. I glanced at the altimeter. I was God up here, but I was fast running out of height.

‘
Tell me when,’ I yelled.

‘
Now!’

I felt the little black button give under my thumb. At the same time I hauled back on the stick as hard as I could. The airframe was juddering around me and for one horrible moment I thought I’d left it too late. Then I caught a blur of faces and bits of green and brown racing past and finally a huge patch of blue, blue sky that filled the gunsight and seemed to spill over the rest of the cockpit. I could hear the thump-thump of my own blood pulsing through my head and I felt a wild exhilaration that even now I find hard to describe. I wanted to share it with Harald but I didn’t know how to put it, so in the end I cranked the speed up to 140 knots and barrel-rolled the fat old trainer, my own way of saying thank you for one of the most exciting pieces of flying I’d ever experienced. The fact that I’d just crossed the line between flying for pleasure and flying for some infinitely darker purpose didn’t, I think, occur to me. All I could think of was the undeniable fact that I’d hacked it. Harald had set me a task, I’d followed the brief, and - guess what - we were still in one piece.

Horizontal again, I glanced up at the mirror. Harald was half-turned round in his seat, looking back at the guys in the swamp.

‘
Upwind and on target, Ellie.’ He sounded gleeful. ‘You really rattled their cage.’

After we’d landed back at Standfast, Harald disappeared without a word. I watched him hurrying across the tarmac towards the hangar, and it was one of the mechanics who finally clambered on to the wing and helped me out. When I asked him where Harald had gone, he said he didn’t know, and the longer I stood there in the blazing sun, the more attractive the prospect of the afternoon off became. Only now did I realise how exhausted I was. With no life-and-death decisions left to make, all I wanted to do was sleep.

I hung around in the shade of the hangar for maybe half an hour. Then the mechanic who’d rescued me earlier took pity on me again and ferried me across to the Casa Blanca. The house was empty except for the sound of music from a radio in the kitchen. I let myself into my room. Someone had made the bed and I stepped out of my sweaty flying suit and slipped gratefully between the cool, crisp sheets.

A noise outside the window awoke me hours later. I’d been dreaming about that first landing in the Harvard, the runway this
time
shoelaced with thick lengths of
white nylon tape.
It had felt horribly real, like dumping the plane into a cat’s cradle, and I was seconds away from certain death when the sound of a woman’s voice jerked me awake.

I got up on one elbow, rubbing my eyes. It was the voice of someone old, almost singsong, calling a name I didn’t recognise. I went to the window. Along the fence, inside the open gate, a thin black figure was bent over a stick. It was Monica. She was calling into the wilderness, the way you might try and summon a pet cat or dog. Beside her stood the girl who’d brought me my morning tea. She was carrying some kind of metal cage. It was about the size of a shoe box and there was something moving around inside it. As I watched, Monica raised her stick, pointing down the path that led into the dense wall of green, then tugged at the girl’s arm. The pair of them ventured forward, disappearing for a minute or so before returning with the cage empty. Monica tapped the girl lightly with her stick, a gesture - I thought - of approval, then both women turned back towards the house.

I stood at the window for a while, staring into the wilderness. The wind had got up a little and it carried a rank, slightly sour smell I’d never come across before. It spoke of fertility and decay and I thought at once of the vast expanse of swamp we’d flown across only hours ago. Monica, it seemed, had returned this little parcel of Florida to its virgin state. Quite why she’d want to do this was beyond me but I kept wondering about the metal cage the girl had been carrying, and what it might contain. The answer of course was to go and have a look and I was debating whether to do just that when I heard a shuffle of footsteps on the bare wooden floor outside.

It was Monica. She stood in the open doorway. She was holding a cordless telephone in one hand and a slip of paper in the other. I took the slip of paper and she peered up at me while I made sense of the figures. The handwriting, I knew at once, was Harald’s. He’d scribbled a phone number, underlining the prefix three times. The end of the number was all too familiar. 0860 354876. My own mobile.

I glanced down at Monica. She had a strange twisted smile on her face.

‘
Nice young man,’ she said at last. ‘Jamie, I think Harald said his name was.’

I was confused for a moment, then I remembered that I’d left my mobile with Jamie at the airport. I didn’t think it would work in the States. There seemed no point taking it.

‘
He phoned? Jamie phoned?’

‘
This morning, my dear. Very early.’ The smile, if anything, widened.’Twice.’

‘
Twice?
‘

‘
So Harald tells me.’

‘
Ah…’

I looked at the number again. Maybe this was why Harald had been so curt with me, so distant. He’d fielded the calls from Jamie at God knows what hour and drawn the appropriate conclusions. Not that it was any of his business. Not that it should have made the slightest bit of difference.

‘
Is Harald around? Only I obviously owe him an apology.’

‘
Harald’s gone to Miami, my dear. He’ll be back tomorrow.’ She offered me the phone. ‘Now then, do you want to talk to your young man?’

‘
Not now.’ I almost resented the way she was thrusting the phone at me. ‘No thanks.’

I swear Monica looked disappointed. Then she reached forward, taking my hand the way she’d done that first time we met. In a second or two she’d be asking about Jamie, who he was, what he meant to me. We were friends, allies. Whatever secrets I had would be safe with her.

I began to back into my room. I was still only half-dressed. Monica turned to go, then stopped.

‘
I nearly forgot,’ she said. ‘Chuck wants you to meet his wife. He says she’s been cooking for you all day.’ Her eyes strayed to the phone number. ‘Be nice to meet new people, my dear. Don’t you think so?’

Chuck called for me at seven o’clock. He was wearing civilian clothes this time, a pair of nicely cut chinos and a blue and white striped shirt that really suited him, and as we drove around the airfield perimeter track I was glad I’d made the effort to iron a frock and put on a squirt or two of decent perfume. Whether she’d meant to or not, Monica had hit the mark. The Casa Blanca was already beginning to feel just the slightest bit claustrophobic.

Chuck lived forty minutes away, in a small township called Corkscrew. When I laughed at the name, he looked amazed.

‘
That Maplewhatever place of yours -’

‘
- durcombe.’

‘
Mapledurcombe, yeah. And you think
Corkscrew’s
wild?’

I told him how ancient Mapledurcombe was, how it went with the grain of an old, old country, and when he demanded to know
more,
I
found
myself
turning
the
last four years inside out,
explaining about all the building work we’d done, and Adam’s passion for vintage aircraft, and exactly how we’d set about building a bridge to all the USAAF veterans who’d made Old Glory such a success. The idea behind the business fascinated him. His own father had flown against the Japanese and he knew only too well how powerful the tug of those wartime years had become. Something like Old Glory was exactly the kind of dream vacation folks like Chuck’s dad were looking for. With proper marketing, he said, we’d make a fortune.