Jack Higgins - Last Place God Made

by Last Place God Made [lit]

  "Exactly, and that was no good. They sustained pretty heavy losses at first until pilots discovered she was so maneuverable you could fly her like a single-seater."

  "With the fixed machine-gun as the main weapon?"

  "That's right. The observer's Lewis just became a useful extra. They used to carry a couple of bombs. Not much -around two hundred and forty pounds - but it means you can take a reasonable pay load. If you look, you'll see the rear cock-pit has been extended at some time."

  I peered over. "You could get a couple of passengers in there now."

  "I suppose so, but it isn't necessary. The Hayley can handle that end of things. Let's get her outside."

  We took a wing each and pushed her out into the bright sunshine. In spite of her shabby appearance, she looked strangely menacing and exactly what she was supposed to be - a formidable fighting machine, waiting for something to happen.

  "I've known people who love horses - any horse - with every fibre of their being, an instinctive response that simply cannot be denied. Aeroplanes have always affected me in exactly the same way and this was an aeroplane and a half in spite of her shabby appearance and comparatively slow speed by modern standards. There was something indefinable here that could not be stated. Of one tiling I was certain - it was me she was waiting for."

  Hannah said, "You can take the Hayley. I'll follow on in this."

  I shook my head. "No, thanks. This is what you hired me to fly."

  He looked a little dubious. "You're sure about that?"

  I didn't bother to reply, simply went and got my canvas grip and threw it into the rear cockpit. There was a parachute in there, but I didn't bother to get it out, just pulled on my flying jacket, helmet and goggles.

  He unfolded a map on the ground and we crouched beside it. The Rio das Mortes branched out of the Negro to the north-east about a hundred and fifty miles farther on. There was a military post called Forte Franco at its mouth and Landro was another fifty miles upstream.

  "Stick to the river all the way," Hannah said. "Don't try cutting across the jungle whatever you do. Go down there and you're finished. It's Hum country all the way up the Mortes. They make those Indians you mentioned along the Xingu look like Sunday-school stuff and there's nothing they like better than getting their hands on a white man."

  "Doesn't anyone have any contacts with them?"

  "Only the nuns at the medical mission at Santa Helena and it's a miracle they've survived as long as they have. One of the mining companies was having some trouble with them the other year so they called the head men of the various sub-tribes together to talk things over, then machine-gunned them from cover. Killed a couple of dozen, but they botched things up and about eight got away. Since then it's been war. It's all martial law up there. Not that it means anything. The military aren't up to much. A colonel and fifty men with two motor launches at Forte Franco and that's it."

  I folded the map and shoved it inside my flying jacket. "From the sound of it, I'd say the Hunas have a point."

  He laughed grimly. "You won't find many to sympathise with that statement around Landro, Mallory. They're a bunch of Stone Age savages. Vermin. If you'd seen some of the things they've done..."

  He walked across to the Hayley, opened the cabin door and climbed inside. When he got out again, he was carrying a shot-gun.

  "Have you got that revolver of yours handy?" I nodded and he tossed the shotgun to me and a box of cartridges. "Better take this as well, just in case. Best close-quarters weapon I know; 10-gauge,?-shot automatic. The loads are double-0 steel buckshot. I'd use it on myself before I let those bastards get their hands on me."

  I held it in my hands for a moment, then put it into the rear cockpit. "Are you flying with me?"

  He shook his head. "I've got things to do. I'll follow in half an hour and still beat you there. I'll give a shout on the radio when I pass."

  There was a kind of boasting hi what he said without need, for the Bristol couldn't hope to compete with the Hayley when it came to speed, but I let it pass.

  Instead I said, "Just one thing. As I remember, you need a chain of three men pulling the propeller to start the engine."

  "Not with me around."

  It was a simple statement of fact made without pride for his strength as I was soon to see, was remarkable. I stepped up on to the port wing and eased myself into that basket seat with its leather cushions and pushed my feet into the toestraps at either end of the rudder bar.

  I made my cockpit checks, gave Hannah a signal and wound the starting magneto while he pulled the propeller over a com-pression stroke. The engine, a Rolls-Royce Falcon, exploded into life instantly.

  The din was terrific, a feature of the engine at low speeds. Hannah moved out of the way andI taxied away from the hangars towards the leeward boundary of the field and turned into the wind.

  I pulled down my goggles, checked the sky to make sure I wasn't threatened by anything else coming in to land and opened the throttle. Up came the tail as I pushed the stick forward just a touch, gathering speed. As she yawed to star-board in a slight cross-wind, I applied a little rudder correc-tion. A hundred and fifty yards, a slight backward pressure on the stick and she was airborne.

  At two hundred feet, I eased back the throttle to her climb-ing speed which was all of sixty-five miles an hour, banked steeply at five hundred feet and swooped back across the air-field.

  I could see Hannah quite plainly, hands shading his eyes from the sun as he gazed up at me. What happened then was entirely spontaneous: produced by the sheer exhilaration of being at the controls of that magnificent plane as much as by any desire to impress him.

  The great German ace, Max Immelmann, came up with a brilliant ploy that gave him two shots at an enemy in a dog-fight for the price of one and without losing height. The famous Immelmann Turn, biblical knowledge for any fighter pilot.

  I tried it now, diving in on Hannah, pulled up in a half-loop, rolled out on top and came back over his head at fifty feet.

  He didn't move a muscle, simply stood there, shaking a fist at me. I waved back, took the Bristol low over the trees and turned up-river.

  You don't need to keep your hands on a Bristol's controls at cruising speed. If you want an easy time of it, all you have to do is adjust the tailplane incidence control and sit back, but that wasn't for me. I was enjoying being in control, being at one with the machine if you like. Someone once said the Bristol was like a thoroughbred hunter with a delicate mouth and a stout heart and that afternoon over the Negro, I knew exactly what he meant.

  On either side, the jungle, gigantic walls of bamboo and liana which even the sun couldn't get through. Below, the river, clouds of scarlet ibis scattering at my approach.

  Thiswas flying - how flying was meant to be and I went down to a couple of hundred feet, remembering that at that height it was possible to get maximum speed out of her. One hundred and twenty-five miles an hour. I sat back, hands steady on the stick and concentrated on getting to Landro before Hannah.

  I almost made it, banking across the army post of Forte Franco at the mouth of die Rio das Mortes an hour and a quarter after leaving Manaus.

  I was ten miles upstream, pushing her hard at two hundred feet when a thunderbolt descended. I didn't even know the Hayley was there until he dived on my tail, pulled up in a half-loop, rolled out on top in a perfect Immelmann Turn and roared, towards me head-on. I held the Bristol on course and he pulled up above my head.

  "Bang, you're dead." His voice crackled in my earphones. "I was doing Immelmanns for real when you were still breast-feeding, kid. See you in Landro."

  He banked away across the jungle where he had told me not to go and roared into the distance. For a wild moment, I won-dered if he might be challenging me to follow, but resisted the impulse. He'd lost two pilots already on the Mortes. No sense in making it three unless I had to.

  I throttled back and continued up-river at a leisurely hundred miles an hour, whistling softly between my
teeth.

  FOUR

  Landro

  I came to Landro, dark clouds chasing after me, the horizon closing in - another of those sudden tropical rainstorms in the offing.

  It was exactly as I had expected - a clearing in the jungle at the edge of the river. A crumbling jetty,pirogues drawn up on the beach beside it, a church surrounded by a scattering of wooden houses and not much else. In other words, a typical up-river settlement.

  The landing strip was at the north end of the place, a stretch ofcampo at least three hundred yards long by a hundred across. There was a windsock on a crude pole, lifting to one side in a slight breeze and a hangar roofed with corrugated iron. Hannah was down there now with three other men, push-ing the Hayley into the hangar. He turned as I came in low across the field and waved.

  The Bristol had one characteristic which made a good land-ing difficult for the novice. The undercarriage included rubber bungees which had a catapulting effect if you landed too fast or too hard, bouncing you back into the air like a rubber ball.

  I was damned if I was going to make that kind of mistake in front of Hannah. I turned down-wind for my approach. A left-hand turn, I throttled back and adjusted the tail trimmer. I glided down steadily at just on sixty, selected my landing path and turned into the wind at five hundred feet, crossing the end of the field at a hundred and fifty.

  Landing speed for a Bristol is forty-five miles an hour and can be made without power if you want to. I closed the throttle, eased back the stick to flatten my glide and floated in, the only sound the wind whispering through the struts.

  I moved the stick back gradually to prevent her sinking and stalled into a perfect three-point landing, touching the ground so gently that I hardly felt a thing.

  I rolled to a halt close to the hangar and sat there for a while, savouring the silence after the roar of the engine, then I pushed up my goggles and unstrapped myself. Hannah came round on the port side followed by a small, wiry man in overalls that had once been white and were now black with oil and grease.

  "I told you he was good, Mannie," Hannah said.

  "You did indeed, Sam." His companion smiled up at me.

  The liking between us was immediate and mutually recog-nised. One of those odd occasions when you feel that you've known someone a hell of a long time.

  Except for a very slight accent, his English was perfect. As I discovered later, he was fifty at that time and looked ten years?lder which was hardly surprising for the Nazis had imprisoned him for just over a year. He certainly didn't look like a professor. As I've said, he was small and rather insigni-ficant, untidy, iron-grey hair falling across his forehead, the face brown and wizened. But then there were the eyes, clear grey and incredibly calm, the eyes of a man who had seen the worst life had to offer and still had faith.

  "Emmanuel Sterne, Mr Mallory," he said as I dropped to the ground.

  "Neil," I told him and held out my hand.

  He smiled then, very briefly and thunder rumbled across the river, the first heavy spots of rain staining the brown earth at my feet.

  "Here we go again," Hannah said. "Let's get this thing inside quick. I don't think this is going to be any five-minute shower."

  He gave a yell and the other two men arrived on the run. They were simply day labourers who helped out with the heavy work when needed for a pitance. Undernourished, gaunt-look-ing men in straw hats and ragged shirts.

  There were no doors to the hangar. It was really only a roof on posts, but there was plenty of room for the Bristol beside the Hayley. We had barely got it in when the flood descended, rattling on the corrugated-iron roof like a dozen machine-guns. Outside, an impenetrable grey curtain came down between us and the river.

  Mannie Sterne was standing looking at the Bristol, hands on hips. "Beautiful," he said. "Really beautiful."

  "He's fallen in love again." Hannah took down a couple of old oilskin coats from a hook and threw me one. "I'll take you to the house. You coming, Mannie?"

  Mannie was already at the engine cowling with a spanner. He shook his head without looking round. "Later - I'll be along later."

  It was as if we had ceased to exist. Hannah shrugged and ducked out into the rain. I got my canvas grip from the obser-ver's cockpit and ran after him.

  The house was at the far end of the field, not much more than a wooden hut with a veranda and the usual corrugated-iron roof. It was built on stilts as they all were, mainly because of the dampness from all that heavy rain, but also in an attempt to keep out soldier ants and other examples of jungle wild-life.

  He went up the steps to the veranda and he flung open a louvred door and led the way in. The floor was plain wood with one or two Indian rugs here and there. Most of the furniture was bamboo.

  "Kitchen through there," he said. "Shower-room next to it. There's a precipitation tank on the roof so we don't lack for a generous supply of decent water, it rains so damn much."

  "All the comforts of home," I said.

  "I would think that something of an overstatement." He jerked his thumb at a door to the left "That's my room. You can share with Mannie over here."

  He opened the door, stood to one side and motioned me through. It was surprisingly large and airy, bamboo shutters open to the veranda. There were three single beds, another of those Indian rugs on the floor and there were actually some books on a shelf beside the only bed which was made up.

  I picked one up and Hannah laughed shortly. "As you can see, Mannie likes a good read. Turned Manaus upside down for that little lot"

  The book was Kant'sCritique of Pure Reason. Isaid, "This must have been like putting his pan in the river for water and coming up with a diamond."

  "Don't tell me you go for that kind of stuff, too?" he looked genuinely put out. "God help me, now I do need a drink."

  He went back into the living-room. I chose one of the unoccupied beds, made it up with blankets from a cupboard in the corner, then unpacked my grip. When I returned to the other room he was standing on the veranda, a glass in one hand, a bottle of Gordon's gin in the other.

  The rain curtain was almost impenetrable, the first few wooden huts on their stilts at the edge of town, the only other sign of life.

  "Sometimes when it gets like this, I could go crazy," he said. "It's as if this is all there is. As if I'm never going to get out."

  He tried to re-fill his glass, discovered the bottle was empty and threw it out into the rain with a curse. "I need a drink. Come on - if you're not too tired I'll take you up town and show you the sights. An unforgettable experience."

  I put on my oilskin coat again and an old straw sombrero I found hanging behind the bedroom door. When I returned to the veranda he asked me if I was still carrying my revolver. As it happened, it was in one of my flying-jacket pockets.

  He nodded in satisfaction. "You'll find everybody goes armed here. It's that kind of place."

  We plunged out into the rain and moved towards the town. I think it was one of the most depressing sights I have ever seen in my life. A scabrous rash of decaying wooden huts on stilts, streets which had quickly turned into thick, glutinous mud. Filthy, ragged little children, many of them with open sores on their faces, played listlessly under the huts and on the verandas above, people stared into the rain, gaunt, hope-less, most of them trapped in that living hell for what remained of their wretched lives, no hope on earth of getting out.

  The church was more substantial and included a brick and adobe tower. I commented on that and Hannah laughed shortly. "They don't even have a regular priest Old guy called Father Conte who works with the nuns up at Santa Helena drops in every so often to say a Mass or two, baptise the babies and so on. He'll be coming back with us tomorrow, by the way."

  "You want me to go with you?"

  "I don't see why not." He shrugged. "Its only a hundred-mile trip. Give you a chance to fly the Hayley. We'll have a passenger. Colonel Alberto from Forte Franco. He'll arrive about ten in the morning by boat"

  "
What's he do? Some kind of regular inspection?"

  "You could say that." Hannah smiled cynically. "The nuns up there are American. Little Sisters of Pity and very holy ladies indeed. The kind who have a mission. Know what I mean? The government's been trying to get them to move for a year or so now because of the way the Huna have been acting up, only they won't go. Alberto keeps trying, though, I'll say that for him."

  In the centre of the town, we came to the only two-storeyed building in the place. The board above the wide veranda saidHotel and two or three locals sat at a table with-out talking, staring lifelessly into space, rain blowing in on them.

  "The guy who runs this place is important enough to be polite to," Hannah observed. "Eugenic Figueiredo. He's the government agent here so you'll be seeing a lot of him. All mail and freight has to be channelled through him for the entire upper Mortes region."