The Sinkiang Executive

Chapter Eight: SLINGSHOT

I swung round as the van came up because they had the power ground-unit ru

“Franzheim! Have you seen my gloves?”

He threw open the door. “I got the whole bit!”

Time was 08:17 and we were late but it wasn’t critical because the drizzle was steady and the daylight was only just getting through.

I put the gloves on and Franzheim gave me a hand with the parachute harness.

“So they found that guy?”

“What guy?”

“That god dammed guard.”

“No.”

I shrugged the harness comfortable.

“Oh Jesus,” he said.

I wished he’d shut up.

Major Co

“Got the helmet?”

Franzheim passed it down to me and climbed out of the van.

“Did you get your medical?” he asked me.

“Last night.”

I noticed Lambach, the base commander, trotting steadily across to the hangar, the dogs watching him as he neared. I couldn’t see Ferris anywhere.

Baccari was coming over from the mobile steps, looking up at the sky.

It wasn’t really the sky: it was a thousand-foot ceiling to the haze.

“Everything’s go,” he said and put a thumb up.

“Listen, has anyone told the people on our side of the border to leave me alone?”

“How’s that again?” I had to repeat it because of the noise from the ground-unit. He stood back and looked at me. “What the fuck d’you think we’re ru

Franzheim gave a discordant laugh but it didn’t help. Everyone knew that bloody corporal hadn’t been found and they seemed to think they were setting me up for an execution.

“You want to put your hat on?” Franzheim asked me.

“Are we that close?”

“Sure.”

“All right.”

He helped me with it. We’d been handling it the right way up all the time to keep the rain out but the leather was ice cold and felt tighter than it was. The roar of the power-unit was muffled now but I couldn’t hear anything else. Someone came up and I saw it was Ferris. He said something and I bent towards him and tapped the side of the helmet.

“Everything is under control.” He gave me a small plain envelope and I wasn’t surprised because I’d known all along that this thing stank of sealed orders. “Open on arrival. Feeling all right?”

“Yes,” I said, and watched him as he walked away, feeling oddly reassured to think that if Slingshot was going to finish me there’d always be Ferris, a thin sandy man with untidy hair walking for ever across the rainswept airports with his head down and his mac flapping and his mind on the access, the rendezvous, the courier route while his eye watched the ground for a beetle.

“Boots tight?”

“What?”

Franzheim.

I couldn’t hear in this bloody helmet.

He said it again and I bent down and checked the laces When I straightened up I heard the sound of the power-unit dying away. Co

There was a deep puddle and we splashed through it. “We’re ready for strap-up,” Co

“They’ll be giving me lights, won’t they?”

“Sure thing.”

“I’ll use those.”

I went up the steps and got into the cockpit and they began crowding around me, plugging in leads and making the man-machine co

One of them tapped my helmet and I looked up.

“Okay?” Co

“Yes.”

“Everything’s go.” He patted the helmet again. “Good luck.”

I nodded. Someone else put his thumb up, Franzheim, I think: there were so many of them, a lot of faces and arms. I nodded again to reassure him; then they left me and I turned my head and saw the steps moving away. I reached up and slid the canopy shut.

The engines were rumbling and one of them fired, and thirty seconds later the other one came in. They began whining now, their sound rising slightly and then falling as they stabilized at idle with the exhaust gas temperature still cool at 380 degrees. Co

Pressurize.

I flicked the switch.

Check trim.

I moved the controls, watching the mirror.

Okay. I turned my head and saw him holding his thumb up. Wait for the green.

What about those lights?

You’ll get them.

I began waiting for the tower to come through. They’d strapped the clip-board to my right knee and I took the pencil out: I couldn’t crow-fly the first leg to the Carpathian range because it would take me twice across the Hungarian-Czechoslovakian border, so the initial magnetic course was 148 and I filled it in. ETA for the turning-point was thirty-five minutes after take-off and I left it blank because I didn’t have the data: the time was now 08:21 and the tower was still out.

Co

“Shit,” I said to anyone who was listening.

Co

I was begi

Tower to 8X454.

Hear you, I said. Where the hell have you been?

Stand by.

Sweat was itching.

Then Co

Internal power.

I switched over.

I’m on internal.

They turned off the ground-unit and the staff began moving clear.

Chocks gone. You can proceed to the runway.

I slipped the brakes.

There were no lights yet and I thought of asking for them again, but Co