now and Mackay thought the engine was coughing.
^ 'Clear the main deck, Mr Bennett…' Mackay's expression tightened as the puff expanded into a billow of ominous smoke. 'Turn the ship into the wind. Reduce speed to fourteen knots.' Mackay walked quickly back on to the navigating bridge where Betty Cordell was keeping out of the way, staying close to the front of the bridge. Mackay stood beside her and she was careful to say nothing. The chopper was closer and smoke was pouring off her, plucked away by the wind.
^ Mackay looked grim: fire was something you could do without aboard a tanker carrying fifty thousand tons of oil. And he faced an impossible choice – either to let her land on deck or signal her to stand clear, in which case the chopper might sink before a boat could reach her.
^ Sixty feet below where he stood by the bridge window with the American girl, men were already evacuating the main deck. The engine throb was slower. The huge vessel was beginning her turn into the wind. Bennett issued more orders for fire stations to be manned. 'Shall I get off the bridge?' Betty Cordell suggested. Mackay shook his head. 'Might be a story in it for you – so long as it doesn't end in tragedy…'
^ The huge ship continued its turn as the helmsman gripped the wheel. Mackay checked the time by the bridge clock. It was exactly one in the afternoon of Sunday January 19. 'Get a message off to the mainland,' he ordered. 'I am picking up your helicopter Number 5421 …'
^ Bennett phoned the radio cabin, instructed Kinnaird to send the signal instantly, then returned to the front of the bridge. 'I wonder where she comes from, sir? We're over two hundred miles from the Canadian coast…'
^ There isn't one stationed on the chart within five hundred miles. I'm afraid I don't quite understand this…'
^ Thank God for small mercies,' Mackay growled. The smoke was disappearing; no more was emitting from the machine which was now turning in a circle to fly towards the bow of the ship, Mackay wasn't too happy about what might happen in the next few minutes. Landing a helicopter aboard a moving ship in mid-ocean calls for a certain skill.
^ They waited and it was very quiet on the bridge. All the necessary orders had been given. The tanker, originally proceeding at seventeen knots through a gentle swell, had reduced speed to fourteen knots, had turned into the wind. A skilled pilot should have no trouble landing his machine under these conditions -providing his engine kept functioning. Inside three minutes she should have landed.
^ Mackay looked down along the main deck. It had been cleared of all personnel except for three fire-fighting seamen on the forecastle – close to the landing point. Visibility was good: the white-painted circle on the port bow where the helicopter should alight showed up clearly. 'Permission to land,' Mackay said. Bennett relayed the message to the radio cabin.
^ The machine was hovering now, letting the 50,000-ton tanker steam towards it. 'Seems to have his machine under perfect control now,' the sceptical Bennett commented. 'Wonder what's wrong with it?'
^ Winter maintained his hover, letting the lozenge-shaped steel platform cruising over the ocean come towards him. He had turned off the tap which had fed heavy oil into the exhaust -creating the ominous smoke Mackay had seen from the starboard wing deck.
^ The psychological timing was important. First he had emitted smoke as they were approaching the ^ Challenger ^ to worry the captain, to persuade him to give permission to land. Then he had later turned it off in case Mackay became too worried and decided to refuse permission. The radio cracked and Kinnaird's signal came through. 'Permission to land…'
^ The ^ Pecheur ^ Winter had flown off was forty miles away, too far away for Mackay to see her even from his high bridge. It had been an anxious time, searching for the tanker even while Kinnaird wirelessed ^ Challenger's ^ position at frequent intervals, a reasonably safe action since this was the time of day when he sent a routine report to the London office. But they had found her.
^ Seated beside Winter, staring at the ocean, LeCat had heard the final words through his headset. 'We're going in…' His stomach muscles tightened. It was always like this just before an attack -the physical and mental shock to the system when you realised it was really going to happen. Just like Algeria…
^ 'Remember what I told you,' Winter warned. 'I go out first. You wait until I'm on the catwalk and almost under the bridge. The others stay inside – the sight of a dozen men piling out on deck will alarm them. We must seize control before the penny drops…'
^ LeCat took out his Skorpion pistol, balancing the weapon in his hand. A quite unnecessary gesture, it put a finer edge on his nerves. When they got moving it would be all right: it was the last few seconds before the landing which were unpleasant.
^ It was Winter who had chosen the Czech Skorpion. 32 pistol for arming the terrorists. LeCat would have preferred a heavier-calibre gun. The version which slipped inside a shoulder holster carried ten rounds; another version which would not fit inside holsters carried twenty rounds. It was, up to a point, like a small sub-machine gun. Winter had issued the strictest instructions that there should be no shooting, but in case something did happen a heavier-calibre weapon would have been more dangerous; after all, they were landing on a floating oil tank.
^ The ocean came up to them hungrily, a grey, white-capped ocean, cold and forbidding. Winter was descending towards the water as the tanker came on at fourteen knots, and it looked as though they could be submerged – with the massive steel bow riding over them. LeCat leant sideways, saw the unstable water coming up.
^ He disliked the sensation because he was wholly at the mercy of another man's skill. Slipping the Skorpion back inside its shoulder holster, he pulled his parka front together to hide it. Behind him another thirteen men crouched together nervously, not enjoying the experience, not looking at each other for fear their nervousness showed. There was Andre Dupont, who had flown with Winter the day they had attacked the Italian Syndicate motor cruiser in the Mediterranean, who had phoned through LeCat's order to Hamburg that Sullivan must now be killed. There was Alain Blancard, a veteran of Algeria and a skilled sniper. And there were eleven others.
^ LeCat, ignoring the intense vibration, the thumping beat of the rotor overhead, pressed his cheek hard against the window. Where was the bloody tanker? They were almost in the sea. Had Winter, despite his pilot's skill, mistimed it? LeCat's stomach ached with the strain and his hands were sweating. Where the hell was the ship? Grey steel slid past below them, so close he felt he could reach out and touch it. There was a bump. They were landing.
^ The pilot cut the motor, the rotor-whizz faded, the blades appeared, spinning fast, then more slowly before they stopped moving. The three seamen on the forecastle with fire-fighting apparatus ran down on to the main deck as the machine's door opened and a tall man jumped out, landed in a crouch, straightened up and headed along the catwalk for the bridge.
^ 'Doesn't waste much time, does he?' Bennett remarked. 'Big chap, must be six feet tall…'
^ The pilot was still wearing his helmet and face shield over his eyes and this gave him a sinister appearance as he half-ran along the catwalk, glanced up at the bridge, saluted and disappeared. In the distance Bennett saw two more men jump out of the machine and then start talking to the three seamen. It all seemed very normal, a routine rescue 'Five more men have come out of that machine,' Bennett said sharply. 'How many is the damned thing carrying?'
^ Mackay strode to the front of the bridge and stared along the main deck. He counted five more men coming out of the helicopter while he watched, but they were all staying close to the landing point, chatting with the three seamen as far as he could see. 'Send the bosun down there,' he said. 'Send him with a walkie-talkie…'
^ 'Stay exactly where you are, gentlemen. If anyone moves the captain dies from a bullet – instead of from old age -'
^ Mackay spun round. The pilot stood in the wrong place – he was standing at the entrance from the starboard wing deck. He must have dodged along under the bridge when he was out of sight. He held a pistol in his right hand and the muzzle was aimed at Mackay's stomach. The gun, with only one-and-a-half inches of the barrel protruding from the body of the weapon, had a highly lethal look.
^ 'This is a hi-jack,' the pilot warned. 'We shan't hesitate to shoot…'
^ 'The Weathermen. Stop asking questions. You…' The pilot gestured towards Bennett. 'Go and stand at the front of the bridge where my men can see you. Then wave to them – swing your arms round like a windmill.'
^ The helmsman, a man called Harris from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, gripped his wheel and kept the vessel on course. He had received no fresh orders from the captain. By the window Betty Cordell froze. 'Do as he tells you,' Mackay said quietly to Bennett.
