Murray was clambering up to the cabin when he saw the knife jab out in Ryderbeit’s hand and one of the pilot’s begin sinking to the floor. The second crew member, his helmet flopping back, earphones scrunched and awry, was trying to get away, backing up against the corner of the cabin; then he whipped round with something in his hand and No-Entry grabbed his wrist, and the roaring darkness burst round them like a paper bag. The man went over backwards, sliding against the edge of the cabin with the side of his face suddenly gone. The Negro stood with a heavy .45 automatic in his hand, shaking his head: ‘What a damned mess!’ he muttered. And there came a loud hammering on the forward door. Ryderbeit was already in one of the pilots’ seats, running his hands over the controls, ignoring the static whine of the R/T monotone: ‘Curly Mantle to Lazy Dog, do you hear me?’
The hammering kept up on the door outside. He checked the last knob, looked through the side window and yelled back at Murray: ‘There’s a Moke out there — empty! See who the bastards are, and try and keep ’em sweet. If not’ — and he nodded at the M16 in Murray’s hands — ‘blow ’em in half! I’m goin’ to need a few more seconds to get my revs up. We’ve got a full payload back there, soldier!’
Behind them No-Entry had lowered the dead pilot, with half his head shot away, feet first down the steel steps on to the cargo floor, leaving a broad messy smear. Murray tried not to look at him. The .45 bullet had smashed the skull like a soft-boiled egg, splattering bone and brain-pulp over the floor and walls of the cabin. Jones was now dragging him across to the edge of the dark narrow hull of the aircraft on which lay two solid slabs of tight-packed, black waterproof paper laid in two piles at least three feet high, with scarcely room to squeeze down between them. But Murray did not stop to examine them. As he started towards the door he could feel his rubber soles growing sticky on the steel floor. The pitch of the engines was rising, the hammering on the door getting louder, frantic now, as he reached the double swing-lock and began to turn it.
He opened it less than an inch and saw her face staring up at him — a distraught fragment of face with her mouth open and dark hair swept down over one eye. She put her whole weight against the door and he glimpsed a Mini Moke with U.S. Army markings parked just below the wing. In the background, across the wide dark apron, a stream of headlamps and more flashing red beacons were converging towards them. He grabbed her through, slamming the door behind her and swinging the lock back into position.
She turned and pulled herself against him, arms round his neck, hair all over his face, not looking at the cargo or the three crumpled corpses — Sanderson down by the door, with his delicate features twisted sideways, the pulped head of the pilot down in the cargo bay, or the second crew member who was still up in the cabin, bleeding heavily from just under the heart. She went on holding him, as Murray yelled up at Ryderbeit: ‘They’re coming — half a dozen at least!’
Ryderbeit raised his hand without turning, his voice still intoning the pilot’s catechism to No-Entry Jones: ‘Flaps up — half throttle — check air-brakes — full throttle…’ The floor lurched and they began to move. Murray broke away from her and seized hold of one of the hammock seats. He saw her look down at Sanderson, then at the pilot in the cargo bay, and her face showed an indifference that was faintly shocking.
The floor was swaying, the stacks of cargo beginning to shift and tremble under their tight wire moorings, each layer of packages separated by a plywood raft. Jackie had pressed herself down the narrow passage between them, steadying herself against the top of the left-hand pile, and now began neatly slitting the shiny charcoal-black paper with her fingernail, folding the edge back and tearing the whole sheet away as far as the wire binding.
As Murray followed her he felt the floor lift. She turned and kissed him, beginning to laugh, holding out a thick sheaf of bills bound in a wrapper with the seal of La Banque de L’lndo-Chine.
‘C’est épousstoufflant!’ she cried, using the old-fashioned Sorbonne slang, ‘blown out in a gust of wind’. Murray peered down at them, and in the dim red light from the cabin he could just make out, under the sealed wrapper, the plump humorous features of old Ben Franklin, sitting nobly on the Century — the one hundred dollar bill. He nodded slowly, giddily. ‘We had to kill at least four men to get those. One of them was your husband.’
She looked at him with mild surprise. ‘Oh? Where?’
‘Back at ATCO III compound — he walked in and found us. Ryderbeit did it with a knife.’
She nodded slowly. ‘Well, perhaps Monsieur Ryderbeit has some virtue after all.’
Murray said nothing. He took one of the packs of Centuries and made his way back up to the cabin steps, trying to avoid the sludge on the floor. Ryderbeit sat without earphones, with the R/T turned up on the HF wavelength, droning with the weird jabber of modern warfare: ‘Lover Boy to Glamour Girl, check out your five-zero over perimeter’ — ‘Crackerjack to Glamour Girl, we have total alert
