resistance. It's not worth it.'
^ To hide his astonishment Mackay walked to the front of the bridge, walking upwards as the ship tilted. Winter's intuition was diabolical, as though he had guessed the first officer's plan, which was impossible. Quite apart from the growing fury of the typhoon as it came up to midnight, the atmosphere on the bridge was strained.
^ Once again he had asked Winter what was going to happen when the ship reached San Francisco and once again the Englishman had refused to tell him anything. And there had been a violent argument about turning out all the lights – including navigation lights. It was criminal, Mackay had said bitingly, to sail in mid-ocean without navigation lights.
^ But Winter had insisted; the lights had been turned out. The trouble was they were within only a few miles of the US weather cutter ^ Champlain ^ which was on two weeks' station in this part of the Pacific. Winter wanted no communication between the ^ Challenger ^ and this vessel, and if they sailed without lights the chances were they would pass her by unseen. Unless they collided with her in the dark…
^ Storm, collision, explosion, shipwreck – these were the four hazards the master of a seagoing tanker feared. And two of them now faced the ^ Challenger ^ Mackay thought grimly as he stared down at the main deck. They were caught up in Typhoon Tara, and as if that were not enough to worry about, this madman, Winter, had seen to it that they might face collision with the weather cutter ^ Champlain ^ somewhere out there in the heaving ocean. Bennett was right Mackay told himself: we have to make ^ some effort to rid ourselves of these gangsters before they destroy us.
^ With no lights on except the one over the wheel and the illumination from the binnacle, Mackay's night sight was exceptionally good. He almost stiffened, but held himself motionless when he saw a shadowy figure moving along the catwalk sixty feet below on the main deck. He immediately recognised the short, wide-shouldered figure from the agile way he moved. LeCat. Why the hell was he heading for the forecastle in conditions like these?
^ For most of the day Monk, the seaman who had escaped from the engine-room when Brady filled the place with clouds of steam, had survived undetected inside a large storage cupboard for cleaning materials on the deck below the bridge. It was close to midnight when Monk opened the door cautiously, no wider than a crack. He saw LeCat walking away from him down the alleyway.
^ Monk had just finished consuming the iron rations he had taken with him inside the roomy cupboard; two bottles of beer and sandwiches provided by Wrigley before he left the engine-room. Hemmed in by the large collection of brushes and buckets inside the storage cupboard, Monk was stiff from staying in the same cramped position for so many hours. He would have to watch that if it came to a hand-to-hand grapple with LeCat. Air supply had been no problem; ventilator holes had been drilled in the door to prevent a musty atmosphere building up, and the manic pitching and tossing of the ship was nothing new to Monk. He opened the door wider.
^ The alleyway was deserted except for the diminishing figure of LeCat walking away from him. Monk waited until LeCat vanished round a corner and then left the cupboard, closing the door behind him. The alleyway tilted at a surrealist angle as Monk moved along it, splaying his legs to counter the motion. Somewhere, not far away, LeCat was moving ahead of him and Monk approached the corner with caution.
^ In his right hand he held a marlinspike, as vicious a weapon as can be found aboard a ship. And he was dressed to merge with darkness; a thick, dirty grey pullover, a scarf of much the same ^ colour, and heavy trousers. His boots were rubber-soled. Close to the corner he paused, listening. The overhead lamps in the alleyway were dim, the shadows moved with the tilt of the ship, moved sometimes like a hunched, waiting man crouched behind a corner. The ship creaked and shuddered with the impact of the ocean. As he went round the corner a door began slamming.
^ Thud-thud-thud… The slamming door was caused by the ship's movement, by the wind blasting into the alleyway Monk was looking along. Only seconds earlier LeCat must have stood in this alleyway, seconds before he went outside and down the ladder on to the main deck. Monk was surprised. Where could the French terrorist be going on a night like this?
^ A bleak smile crossed his severe face. Couldn't be better: LeCat had gone down on to the open deck. In a typhoon a man could get washed overboard just by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He crept towards the slamming door, held it open only a few inches. The wind pushed at the door, screamed through the gap in his face. He had to press his shoulder hard against it to hold it.
^ He waited for his night vision to develop. Sharp-eyed from watching the quiver of gauge needles, the engine- room artificer watched the blurred shape below him on the main deck where sea was washing over it. In the darkness he caught movement rather than the outline of a man, the movement of the Frenchman climbing up on the catwalk. For some crazy reason LeCat was going away from the bridge, heading along the catwalk towards the distant forecastle. Monk took a firmer grip on the marlinspike. Couldn't be better.
^ Monk waited until LeCat had disappeared along the catwalk, then he went out, closed the door and shinned rapidly down the swaying ladder. He reached the bottom as an inundation of sea swept inboard, swirling round his knees. Ignoring it, he held on to the ladder, staring up at the bridge. No glow of light, the whole vessel was in darkness. The bridge didn't worry him – he guessed that the guards were sea-sick and that the last place they would look was out over the ocean. If Mackay saw him it didn't matter. Monk was puzzled about the lack of navigation lights, but he assumed there must have been some temporary power failure. He ^ ^ headed for the catwalk as the water subsided over the rail.
^ Instead of following LeCat up on to the catwalk, Monk moved along its outer edge on the port side, staying down on the main deck, hanging on to the lower rail. It was very dark and Monk, soaked to the waist, was creeping forward with extreme caution, relying entirely on his eyesight to locate the Frenchman. It would be impossible to hear him – the slam of the waves, the surge of the water and the howl of the wind muffled any sound LeCat might make. It worried Monk that the Frenchman had vanished. If he were waiting inside one of the curved, open-ended shelters spread along the catwalk at intervals it would be impossible to see him.
^ He continued moving forward with the wind in his face, sucking the breath out of him, drenched to the skin, his hair plastered to his skull, his hands and feet growing numb with the penetrating chill, his marlinspike tucked in his belt so he could use both hands to cling to the rail as the vessel pitched and tossed with increasing violence. Still no sign of LeCat. He had just passed a shelter when he heard something behind him. He swung round, holding the rail with one hand, grabbing for the marlinspike with the other, and heard the same sound – the slam of the water against the breakwater which protected the distribution area for'ard of the bridge.
^ Monk waited a moment, swearing under his breath, his heart thumping. He was still determined to find LeCat without having any idea how much was at stake. He had volunteered to finish off the Frenchman, but it was only later in the day – long after Monk had hidden himself inside the cupboard – that Bennett had developed his plan for a mass break-out. And the key to this plan was the elimination of LeCat. Monk moved on towards the forecastle.
^ The bloody ship seemed to have stretched out, all seven hundred and fifty feet of her, and it took him an age before he passed the last shelter, and then he was under the forecastle, staring up as the bow climbed a huge comber, the whole deck heaving up as though some huge underwater creature was lifting the tanker out of the ocean. It was a freak wave. Monk's stomach warned him that the trough beyond would be one hell of a drop.
^ ^ him, trying to wrench his hand ^ off ^ the rail, as spume struck him in the face with a stinging slap like the cut of a whip, as the deck went on climbing like a lift going up non-stop. One bloody hell of a drop beyond this… Then he saw LeCat.
^ Monk stared up, stunned. The Frenchman must be mad, clear out of his mind, couldn't possibly know anything about the sea. He had just come up out of the hatch leading down into the carpenter's store and was perched on the forecastle. The Pacific was going to do the job for him.
^ LeCat was a courageous man – if courage is defined as doing something which scares the guts out of you. Sometimes one fear submerges another – and scared as LeCat was of Typhoon Tara, he was even more scared by his dread of the nuclear device coming adrift, cannoning from side to side against the bulkheads of the carpenter's store.
^ Reaching the forecastle, he clawed his way up the ladder, drenched in spray, the wind screaming in his ears, threatening to tear him off the ladder and hurl him overboard. Here, up on the forecastle, he was even more exposed to the wind than he had been below on the main deck. Getting the hatch open was an ordeal of strength, and he chose a moment when the tanker was climbing out of a trough, mounting the glassy wall of another huge wave. Opening the hatch, he went down the ladder inside, closing the hatch cover above him. The smell of wood
