The Khufra Run. Jack Higgins

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СКАЧАТЬ waved a hand, the coffin was set down, the gilt handles unscrewed quickly, the lid removed.

      Some people appear to shrink in death. Certainly the boy in the coffin seemed no more than thirteen, although the face had been so heavily made up with cosmetics that he resembled a waxworks dummy. Nothing human about him at all. I presumed that most of the damage was covered by the stiff blue suit.

      Jiminez took another pinch of snuff. ‘The skull was crushed and the flesh completely removed from the left cheek by the impact. One would never guess now, of course.’

      The customs officer crossed himself. ‘Amazing. You are a true artist, Senor Jiminez, nothing less.’

      ‘One must think of the parents,’ Jiminez nodded to his underlings who replaced the lid, raised the coffin once more on the trestle and took it down the steps to the Otter.

      The customs officer handed me the documents. ‘All would appear to be in order, Senor Nelson. I wish you a safe flight.’

      He saluted and moved away and Jiminez glanced up at the sky. ‘A perfect night for it if the weather forecast is anything to go by’

      ‘Let’s hope so.’ I zipped up my flying jacket. ‘I wouldn’t like my passenger to have an uncomfortable ride.’

      He permitted himself one of those brief graveyard smiles of his. ‘You know, I like you, my friend. You have a sense of humour where death is concerned. Not many people do.’

      ‘It takes practice,’ I said. ‘Lots of practice. I’ll be in touch.’

      I went down the steps to the Otter where his men had just finished stowing the coffin. I climbed into the cockpit, did the usual routine check, started the engine and ran her down into the water. I took up the wheels and taxied down-wind, leaning out of the side window, checking the channel for boats before making my run.

      When the moment came, she lifted like a bird as usual, everything suddenly light and effortless and as I stamped on the right rudder bar and swung out across the quay, Jiminez was still standing down there in the fading light staring up at me. I’d first flown the Otter for a film company who were doing all their location work in Almeria on the Spanish Mediterranean coast for the good and sufficient reason that it’s a hell of a sight cheaper than Hollywood these days.

      When the film was completed they decided it wasn’t worth the expense of having the Otter shipped back to the States. As it became reasonably obvious that no one in the Mediterranean area seemed particularly anxious to buy a floatplane specifically designed to stand the rigours of the Canadian north, they let me have her cheap.

      Most people thought I was crazy, but there was money to be made island-hopping in the Balearics. Ibiza, Majorca, Minorca, Formentera. At least I got by, especially in the season and there were always the extras to help things along, like this present trip, for instance.

      It was a fine night, as Jiminez had predicted, with very little cloud and a full moon, stars strung away to the horizon. All very pleasant, but I had more pressing matters on my mind, switched over to automatic pilot and took another look at the chart.

      There was no wind to speak of, certainly not more than five knots and I’d allowed for that in my original calculation. There was really very little to be done except to check my figures, which I did, then poured a cup of coffee from a flask and smoked a cigarette.

      Thirty-eight minutes out of Cartagena, I took over manual control and went down to two thousand feet. Exactly three minutes later I got my signal right on the button, a blue light followed by a red, flashed half-a-dozen times, some private joke of Turk’s who swore it was taken from the old China Coast signal book and meant I have women on board.

      I went down fast and banked across the boat, a forty-foot diesel yacht from Oran to the best of my knowledge, although the background details were not really my affair. The red light flashed again and I turned away into the wind, eased back on the throttle and started down.

      The sea was calm enough and visibility excellent thanks to that full moon. A final burst of power to level out in the descent and I splashed down. I kept the engine ticking over and opened the side door. The motor yacht was already moving towards me. When it was twenty or thirty yards away, it slowed appreciably. I counted four men on deck as usual with another in the wheelhouse. I could see them quite clearly in the moonlight. A rubber dinghy was already in the water by the starboard rail, two of them dropped into it and paddled across.

      They drifted in under the port wing and a tall, bearded man in yellow oilskins stepped on to the float, clutching a bulky package against his chest with both hands. He steadied himself for a moment then passed it up to me. As I took it from him, he dropped back into the dinghy without a word and they paddled back to the boat.

      I took off again immediately and as I drifted into the air, the boat was already moving away in the general direction of the North African coast. Five minutes later and I was back at three thousand feet and dead on course for Ibiza.

      As Turk had said, easy as falling off a log, and each time I repeated the performance we shared two thousand good tax free American dollars.

      When I first met Harry Turk he was tied hand and foot to a tree on the edge of a small clearing in the jungle which was being used as a base camp by North Vietnamese regular troops operating behind the American lines. It was raining at the time, which was hardly surprising, as it was the middle of the monsoon season, but in spite of his incredibly filthy condition, I was able to make out that he was a Marine Corps sergeant, as they trussed me up beside him.

      Before walking away one of the guards booted me in the side with enough force to crack two ribs, as I later discovered and I writhed around in the mud for a while. I had thought Turk asleep, but now he opened one eye and stared at me unwinkingly.

      ‘What’s your story, General?’

      I said, ‘You’ve got it wrong. Squadron Leader. What you’d call a major.’

      He opened the other eye at that. ‘Heh, since when have the British been in this war?’

      ‘They haven’t,’ I said. ‘I did pilot training on a short service commission with the R.A.F. then transferred to the Royal Australian Air Force a couple of years back. This is my second tour out here.’

      ‘What happened?’

      ‘I was hitching a lift on a Medivac helicopter to Saigon out of Din To when we came across a wrecked Huey in the corner of a paddy field with what looked like a survivor waving beside it.’

      ‘So you went down on your errand of mercy and discovered you’d made a big mistake.’

      ‘We were caught in the crossfire of two heavy machine guns. I was the only one who got out in one piece.’

      He nodded gravely. ‘Well, as my old grannie used to say, you’ve got to look on the bright side, General, and thank the good Lord. If you’d been taken by the Viet Cong instead of these regular troops they’d have strung you up by your ankles and cut your throat.’

      I think it was that remarkable composure of his which impressed me most from the start, for when he closed his eye and went back to sleep, his face, which I could see clearly pillowed on his right arm against the tree trunk, was as serene and untroubled as any child’s.

      I fell asleep myself in the end in spite of the torrential rain and the cold and awakened again СКАЧАТЬ