word, being mainly mathematical.
Forester had nothing to do. In front of him was an aluminium bulkhead on which an axe and a first-aid box were mounted. There was no profit in looking at that and consequently his eyes frequently strayed across the aisle to Señor Montes. His lips tightened as he noted the bad colour of Montes’s face and he looked at the first-aid box reflectively.
IV
‘There it is,’ said Grivas. ‘You land there.’
O’Hara straightened up and looked over the nose of the Dakota. Dead ahead amid a jumble of rocks and snow was a short airstrip, a mere track cut on a ledge of a mountain. He had time for the merest glimpse before it was gone behind them.
Grivas waved the gun. ‘Circle it,’ he said.
O’Hara eased the plane into an orbit round the strip and looked down at it. There were buildings down there, rough cabins in a scattered group, and there was a road leading down the mountain, twisting and turning like a snake. Someone had thoughtfully cleared the airstrip of snow, but there was no sign of life.
He judged his distance from the ground and glanced at the altimeter. ‘You’re crazy, Grivas,’ he said. ‘We can’t land on that strip.’
‘You can, O’Hara,’ said Grivas.
‘I’m damned if I’m going to. This plane’s overloaded and that strip’s at an altitude of seventeen thousand feet. It would need to be three times as long for this crate to land safely. The air’s too thin to hold us up at a slow landing speed – we’ll hit the ground at a hell of a lick and we won’t be able to pull up. We’ll shoot off the other end of the strip and crash on the side of the mountain.’
‘You can do it.’
‘To hell with you,’ said O’Hara.
Grivas lifted his gun. ‘All right, I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘But I’ll have to kill you first.’
O’Hara looked at the black hole staring at him like an evil eye. He could see the rifling inside the muzzle and it looked as big as a howitzer. In spite of the cold, he was sweating and could feel rivulets of perspiration running down his back. He turned away from Grivas and studied the strip again. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he asked.
‘You would not know if I told you,’ said Grivas. ‘You would not understand – you are English.’
O’Hara sighed. It was going to be very dicey; he might be able to get the Dakota down in approximately one piece, but Grivas wouldn’t have a chance – he’d pile it up for sure. He said, ‘All right – warn the passengers; get them to the rear of the cabin.’
‘Never mind the passengers,’ said Grivas flatly. ‘You do not think that I am going to leave this cockpit?’
O’Hara said, ‘All right, you’re calling the shots, but I warn you – don’t touch the controls by as much as a finger. You’re not a pilot’s backside – and you know it. There can be only one man flying a plane.’
‘Get on with it,’ said Grivas shortly.
‘I’ll take my own time,’ said O’Hara. ‘I want a good look before I do a damn thing.’
He orbited the airstrip four more times, watching it as it spun crazily beneath the Dakota. The passengers should know there was something wrong by this time, he thought. No ordinary airliner stood on its wingtip and twitched about like this. Maybe they’d get alarmed and someone would try to do something about it – that might give him a chance to get at Grivas. But what the passengers could do was problematical.
The strip was all too short; it was also very narrow and made for a much smaller aircraft. He would have to land on the extreme edge, his wingtip brushing a rock wall. Then there was the question of wind direction. He looked down at the cabins, hoping to detect a wisp of smoke from the chimneys, but there was nothing.
‘I’m going to go in closer – over the strip,’ he said. ‘But I’m not landing this time.’
He pulled out of orbit and circled widely to come in for a landing approach. He lined up the nose of the Dakota on the strip like a gunsight and the plane came in, fast and level. To starboard there was a blur of rock and snow and O’Hara held his breath. If the wingtip touched the rock wall that would be the end. Ahead, the strip wound underneath, as though it was being swallowed by the Dakota. There was nothing as the strip ended – just a deep valley and the blue sky. He hauled on the stick and the plane shot skyward.
The passengers will know damn well there’s something wrong now, he thought. To Grivas he said, ‘We’re not going to get this aircraft down in one piece.’
‘Just get me down safely,’ said Grivas. ‘I’m the only one who matters.’
O’Hara grinned tightly. ‘You don’t matter a damn to me.’
‘Then think of your own neck,’ said Grivas. ‘That will take care of mine, too.’
But O’Hara was thinking of ten lives in the passenger cabin. He circled widely again to make another approach and debated with himself the best way of doing this. He could come in with the undercarriage up or down. A belly-landing would be rough at that speed, but the plane would slow down faster because of the increased friction. The question was: could he hold her straight? On the other hand if he came in with the undercarriage down he would lose airspeed before he hit the deck – that was an advantage too.
He smiled grimly and decided to do both. For the first time he blessed Filson and his lousy aeroplanes. He knew to a hair how much stress the undercarriage would take; hitherto his problem had been that of putting the Dakota down gently. This time he would come in with undercarriage down, losing speed, and slam her down hard – hard enough to break off the weakened struts like matchsticks. That would give him his belly-landing, too.
He sighted the nose of the Dakota on the strip again. ‘Well, here goes nothing,’ he said. ‘Flaps down; undercarriage down.’
As the plane lost airspeed the controls felt mushy under his hands. He set his teeth and concentrated as never before.
V
As the plane tipped wing down and started to orbit the airstrip Armstrong was thrown violently against Peabody. Peabody was in the act of taking another mouthful of whisky and the neck of the flask suddenly jammed against his teeth. He spluttered and yelled incoherently and thrust hard against Armstrong.
Rohde was thrown out of his seat and found himself sitting in the aisle, together with Coughlin and Montes. He struggled to his feet, shaking his head violently, then he bent to help Montes, speaking quick Spanish. Mrs Coughlin helped her husband back to his seat.
Willis had been making a note in the margin of his book and the point of his pencil snapped as Forester lurched against him. Forester made no attempt to regain his position but looked incredulously out of the window, ignoring Willis’s feeble protests at being squashed. Forester was a big man.
The whole cabin was a babel of sound in English and Spanish, dominated by the sharp and scratchy voice of Miss Ponsky as she querulously complained. ‘I knew it,’ she screamed.
