"Alan Williams - Holy of Holies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Alan)

mail! But nothing ventured, nothing gained. Flying should be an exciting
business. It can also be a profitable business - as Jim here will tell you!"

'Ritchie just sat and grinned at me. I noticed that he wasn't drinking much,
and Newby wasn't drinking at all.

'I said something about it being all very well for freelance pilots in Civvy
Street, but in the Services you had to keep to the rules. And Newby said,
"Sometimes rules are meant to be broken." Then he went on at once to ask me,
just as Ritchie had done, about my private life - whether I was married and
had children, and so on. I was getting a bit fed up with this line of
questioning - and I was also unsure of just how much this chap Newby really
knew about me. I supposed that Thurgood must have given some sort of report to
Ritchie before we'd met that evening, 'Then Newby asked me about my
arrangements for leave. I told him I had three weeks due to me, but that
normally I have to give at least two months' notice. Newby pressed me, and I
told him that under special circumstances, such as pleading domestic
difficulties, I might be able to take all three weeks almost at once.

'He and Ritchie looked satisfied. Then Newby asked me if I had ever flown a
Hercules C-130 - one of those heavy four-engined turbo-prop American
transports, some of them over twenty years old, and still working. Damn great
carthorses that can lift off and land with over twenty tons of pay-load on a
three-hundred-yard strip - cruising speed at around three hundred and twenty
knots, and a maximum range, with external fuel-tanks, of 4,700 miles.

'Again they both seemed pleased with my answers. Ritchie then fired off a lot
of questions, most of them fairly technical. Where had I flown a Hercules?
Over what sort of terrain? What sort of weather conditions, and what
pay-loads? Did I have experience of landing one on rough ground, with the
statutory minimum of 300 yards? Above all, could I handle a Hercules solo?

'I pointed out that a Hercules carries a full crew of four. But Ritchie
dismissed this - a full crew included radio and radar operators, and a
co-pilot. "Luxuries," he said, which sounded a bit funny, coming from someone
in the plush taxi-service racket.

'Anyway, the brandy had made me a bit cocky, and I told them I was sure I
could handle a Hercules on my own - after all, what did I have to lose? - and
Ritchie went on to ask how I was at low-flying, and I said I could easily
manage fifty feet, but would prefer if it was over water or flat country, and
he looked at Newby and said something about "doing their best to manage it,"
and they made a little joke about it. Still very friendly, they were.'

'Yes, I'm sure they were.' It was Rawcliffs first comment since Mason had
begun his story, and he regretted it at once. The young pilot, in his
eagerness to unburden himself, needed no prompting. At first Rawcliff had
listened to him with a mildly patronizing patience - the older, wiser man,
following Mason, in his lonely innocence, as he was lured, without subtlety,
by the mad-eyed Thurgood to the suede-walled penthouse with its jazzy girls