It was an American voice, hard and flat and final.
“Oh.”
Automatically the smuggler’s hand went inside his shirt. He took out the moist packet and held it out as if it was some kind of a peace offering. Like the scorpion, a month earlier, he sensed the raised stone above him.
“Give me a hand with the gas.”
It was the voice of an overseer giving an order to a coolie, but the smuggler stepped quickly forward to obey.
They worked in silence. Then it was finished and they were on the ground again. The smuggler had been thinking desperately. He summoned up the voice of an equal partner, the voice of someone who knew the score and had an equal control.
He peered into the patch of indigo blackness where the pilot stood with his hand on the ladder.
“I’ve been thinking things over and I’m afraid…”
And then the voice stopped and the lips drew back from the teeth in the open mouth, and the mouth began to make a noise between a snarl and a scream.
The gun in the pilot’s hand stammered three times. The smuggler said “Oh” in an obsequious voice. He pitched backwards into the dust and gave one heave and lay still.
“Don’t move.” The clanging voice came over the plain with the screeching echo of the amplifier. “You’re covered.” There was the sound of an engine starting up.
The pilot didn’t wait to wonder about the voice. He leapt for the ladder. The door of the cockpit slammed and there was the whirr of the self-starter. The engine roared and the rotor blades swung and slowly gathered speed until they were two whirlpools of silver. Then there was a jerk and the helicopter was in the air and climbing vertically straight up into the sky.
Down among the low bush the truck stopped with a jerk and Bond leapt for the iron saddle of the Bofors.
“Up, Corporal,” he snapped to the man at the elevation lever. He bent his eyes to the grid-sight as the muzzle rose towards the moon. He reached to pull the firing selector lever off ‘Safe’ and put it on ‘Single Fire’. “And left ten.”
“I’ll keep feeding you tracer.” The officer beside Bond had two racks of five yellow-painted shells in his hands.
Bond’s feet settled into the trigger pedals and now he had the helicopter in the centre of the grid. “Steady,” he said quietly.
‘Boompa’.
The spangled tracer swung lazily up into the sky just below the speed of sound.
Low and left.
The Corporal delicately twisted the two levers.
‘Boompa’.
The tracer curved away high over the rising machine. Bond reached forward and pulled the selector lever to ‘Auto Fire’. The movement of his hand was reluctant. Now it would be certain death. He was going to have to do it again.
‘Boompa-boompa-boompa-boompa-boompa.’
The red fire sprayed across the sky. Still the helicopter went on rising towards the moon, and now it was turning away to the north.
‘Boompa-boompa’.
There was a flash of yellow light near the tail rotor and the distant bang of an explosion.
“Got him,” said the officer. He picked up a pair of night-glasses. “Tail rotor’s gone,” he said. And then, excitedly, “Gosh. It looks as if the whole cabin’s going round with the main •rotor. Pilot must be getting hell.”
“Any more?” said Bond, holding the whirring machine in his sights.
“No, Sir,” said the officer. “Like to get him alive if we can. But it looks as if… yes, he’s out of control now. Coming down in great swoops. Must be something wrong with the main rotor blades. There he goes.”
Bond raised his head from the grid sight and shaded his eyes against the blazing moon.
Yes. There he was. Only about a thousand feet up now, the engine roaring and the great blades whirring uselessly as the tangle of metal pitched and yawed down the sky in long drunken staggers.
Jack Spang. The man who had ordered Bond’s death. Who had ordered Tiffany’s death. The man Bond had only once seen for a few minutes in an overheated room in Covent Garden. Mr Rufus B. Saye. Of The House of Diamonds. Vice-President for Europe. The man who played golf at Sunningdale and visited Paris once a month. ‘Model citizen,’ M had called him.