Читать книгу Biggles Flies Again - W E Johns - Страница 8

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The following morning he examined with interest the big map in the pilots’ room at the aerodrome. A pencil line, drawn by Wilkinson, enclosed an oblong-shaped area roughly twenty miles long by ten miles deep.

“It’s generally supposed that Estaban’s estancia is somewhere about there, but, of course, no one knows for certain,” he told them.

“I see,” said Biggles vaguely. “Well, it looks rough country to me and I don’t think I shall wear out any shoe-leather looking for Consuelo. Come on, Algy, we had better run over the machine; she’ll need an overhaul before we leave.”

“Where’s Smyth?” he went on, with a change of tone, when they were out of earshot.

“He’s cleaning the machine. Why?”

“Good. Is the camera still aboard?”

“Yes.”

“We still have plenty of unexposed plates, haven’t we?”

“Plenty.”

“Fine! Let’s do a little reconnaissance.”

A few minutes later the “Vandal” was in the air, climbing as quickly as possible for height. Progress was slow, for the aerodrome at Alto de la Paz is situated fourteen thousand feet above sea-level, considerably higher than the normal ceiling of a civil aircraft. For this reason Smyth had been left behind in order to lighten the load as far as possible, and with Biggles at the controls Algy was ready to operate the camera.

When they were five thousand feet above the aerodrome the pilot struck off at a tangent and headed towards the snowy crest of Mount Illimani. As they neared it he edged away towards the lower peaks on the right, but even so he had not much more than a few hundred feet to spare when he slipped across them and looked ahead for what lay beyond. Something struck the plane with the vibrating crack of a whip-lash, and a small round hole appeared in the lower port plane. Biggles grimaced, and made a mental note that Wilkinson had evidently spoken the truth about Estaban’s bodyguard of snipers.

Once over the main range the ground fell away in an awe-inspiring series of lesser ranges. As far as the eye could see, the landscape presented a vista of serrated ridges of rock, torn and split by the torture of innumerable earthquakes, and Biggles realised for the first time the difficulty of his task. Something caught his eye and he changed his course slightly towards it. It was a lake, one of those peculiar to the Andean range, situated thousands of feet above sea-level. It was near the end of a large plateau, bleak and stony and broken by occasional patches of tola scrub.

“What a place!” he mused. And then a movement attracted his attention and he peered down intently. Sheep? No, llamas, he thought, and stared at a group of animals grazing on the edge of the plateau near the entrance of a small ravine. He pointed, and signalled to Algy to start exposing plates.

For half an hour he flew up and down at the same altitude until every inch of the plateau, the lake, and their environs had been covered by the camera, and then he turned his nose back towards the aerodrome.

For the rest of the day they worked hard, Biggles and Smyth developing and printing the plates, Algy mounting them up together on a large white card. When he had finished, a single photograph was made of the whole and a bird’s-eye picture of the valley lay before them.

“If he’s in the area Wilks marked out, he is here,” said Biggles, laying a finger on the photograph, after a minute examination. “A lizard couldn’t find a foothold anywhere else. Here is the pass.” He traced a faint wavering line with the point of his pencil. “From the machine it seemed to lose itself on the plateau, but you can still faintly see it in the photograph. Here it goes, straight across. Now look over here in the corner; notice how all these small tracks converge on that point, and that is where the llamas were. The vertical photograph only shows rock and a tiny fissure, but I should say the rock overhangs a canyon, and that is where Estaban and his friends must hang out. Do you think you could land the ‘Vandal’ on that lake, Algy?” he concluded abruptly.

Algy looked up in surprise. “Of course I could.”

Biggles nodded. “The thing that worries me most, though,” he said, “is whether you could get her off again. It’s high up, remember, very high up, and on that flat surface with no wind the ‘Vandal’ might not unstick.”

“She’ll come off all right; there is plenty of room and we can dismantle everything we don’t need for the job. What’s the idea?”

Biggles leaned forward and whispered in his ear for some minutes; when he had finished Algy looked at him dubiously.

“I don’t think much of it,” he said, very serious for once.

“Well, it sounds all right to me,” replied Biggles. “Let’s go and find Wilks.”

They found him in his office, checking up and signing log-books.

“Have you got a parachute here, Wilks?” asked Biggles quietly.

“No. Why?”

“Oh, I just wondered.”

“Wait a minute. I believe there is a sample the Irvin people sent down some time ago. It was a special job, extra large, I believe, for high-altitude work, but we didn’t buy any.”

“Let’s see it,” demanded Biggles.

Wilks looked at him curiously. “What crazy scheme have you got in your head, now?” he asked.

“Never mind that,” replied Biggles. “Get me the brolly, and if your people hear any aviating tonight tell them not to worry. We are going to try an experiment if it’s fine.”