foremast…'
^ One hundred and seventy feet… one hundred and seventy-five feet. The driver heard MacGowan without replying, his eyes fixed on the footage counter, the instrument which warned him how low the net had gone. One hundred and eighty feet. He stopped the descent, spoke into his walkie-talkie. 'Winter, you're twenty feet above the ocean. From now on I'll be listening for any ^ ^ instructions to drop you further. And Winter, I've just been informed they have a lookout top of the foremast…'
^ The driver switched his walkie-talkie to 'receive'. He had one more vital operation to perform. He sat in his cab, staring at the weight indicator gauge. When that lost about five hundred pounds, the approximate weight of the three men, he would whip the net back up through the fog. The assault team would have gone aboard. Or into the ocean.
^ Which is what we didn't foresee Winter thought grimly. He was in the middle of the net with Cassidy on his right, Sullivan on his left, the three of them pressed together shoulder to shoulder, like men stretched on a multiple rack. The net was swaying gently, stopped in mid-air, enveloped in fog so like porridge that they couldn't see anything, let alone the ocean twenty feet or so below. They turned slowly below the invisible hook above them. The distant dirge of a foghorn was the only sound as they hung and twisted on the net. There was not a breath of wind, only the clammy feel of the all-pervading fog, the clammy sweat of fear.
^ They have a lookout on the foremast,' Winter whispered to Cassidy. 'Which is too damned close to where we'll land for comfort…'
^ 'Can't shoot him,' Cassidy said, 'that would alert them on the bridge before we could get anywhere near it…' Cassidy's voice sounded strained and unnatural in the fog. Winter was just about able to see him. How the hell was he ever going to see the ship's forepeak if it did pass below them?
^ 'Carpenter's store,' Winter said. 'We may have to wait in there a bit – it's on the fo'c'sle. Did you hear that, Sullivan?'
^ Winter peered up at his watch. Bloody thing should arrive any second now, all 50,000 tons of it, gliding across the water like a moving wall of steel… He tensed, he couldn't help it. The fog warning, one prolonged blast, sounded to be in his ear, going on and on and on. He gazed down. Porridge, nothing but porridge. Any second now and they would feel the ship – as it slammed against them. It was close enough, dear God – the ship's fog ^ ^ warning blast was still deafening him. Where the hell was the bloody tanker –
^ The fog was not as dense as it had seemed. Less than six feet below a grey, blurred platform had started to glide past under them. Like a huge revolving platform. Winter thought he saw a man. Then he was gone. And Winter was gone. Dropping. With the others.
^ Two hundred feet above, the weight indicator needle flashed back over the gauge. Four hundred and ninety pounds. Gone! The driver pressed a lever. Full speed. The scramble net whipped upwards, out of sight. 'They've gone!' he shouted to MacGowan.
^ Winter hit the deck like a paratrooper, rolling, taking the impact on his shoulders as he slammed against the port rail. He came to his feet with a knife in his hand. A blurred figure came out of the fog, wearing a parka. Terrorist… The figure stopped, his head bent over backwards as Cassidy, behind him, clamped a hand over his mouth. Winter rammed in the knife, high up in the struggling man's chest. Still holding the knife handle, he felt the terrorist's last-convulsive spasm, then the man slumped in Cassidy's arms. Sullivan helped the American carry the body to the rail where they heaved it over the side. They heard no splash, only the steady beat of the ship's engines as ^ Challenger ^ glided in towards the Bay under Golden Gate bridge. Winter left the Skorpion which had fallen from the Frenchman's hand close to the rail – it would help convey the impression the man had fallen overboard.
^ 'Follow me,' he whispered, 'and keep close. The fog's thinner already…'
^ 'Too thin to risk moving past that foremast yet,' Cassidy agreed, 'and that lookout may have walkie-talkie communication with the bridge…'
^ Winter found the hatch, began unfastening it while Cassidy looked aft, watching anxiously for the foremast. The fog was thinning – as it so often did east of Golden Gate. He swore under his breath as he saw the lower part of the foremast coming into view, but the top was still blotted out. What the hell was Winter playing at?
^ ^ ^ made no noise. It was well-oiled, thank God, but this was a British tanker, not one of your Liberian efforts. He opened the hatch and let the others go down the ladder first, then he followed them, pausing when the hatch was almost closed, peering out through the inch-gap. The fog was still too thick to see the breakwater, let alone the bridge, but it was drifting away from the top of the foremast. Winter, peering through the narrow gap, saw the lookout clearly, staring south with night-glasses pressed to his eyes. Winter closed the hatch cover very slowly.
^ On the bridge of the ^ Challenger ^ Mackay was having a violent argument with LeCat as the ship moved towards Alcatraz Island which was already clear on the radarscope.
^ 'LeCat, I will not take this ship near San Francisco. We're bound for Oleum – that's near Richmond on the east side of the Bay…'
^ 'Then we will shoot Bennett in front of you on this bridge.' Second Officer Brian Walsh gulped as LeCat gave an order in French for one of the guards to fetch Bennett. Then LeCat told the guard to wait as the captain protested. 'You cannot murder a man just like that. It's inhuman…'
^ 'You will be murdering Bennett – you have it in your power to save him. Come into the chart-room with me…' LeCat led the way and inside the chart-room he pointed to a chart on the table. 'You will take the ship to this position – where the cross is…' He was indicating the mark Winter had made on the chart before he left the ship.
^ 'I must know what is going to happen before I agree,' Mackay said grimly.
^ 'I want to be close in so I can use the ship-to-shore to conduct negotiations with the authorities. When they have agreed to my demands we shall go ashore to this pier. There we shall board a bus they will have supplied and drive to the airport where a plane will be waiting to fly us to Damascus.' I have, LeCat thought, as he watched Mackay's face, made it sound convincing. 'Now you know what will happen,' LeCat continued, 'get on with it. I have no desire to shoot anyone – it would complicate matters.'
^ ^ indicated on the chart. 'That is barely half a mile from the San Francisco waterfront.'
^ 'That is correct. Now, will you do what I say or do I have Bennett brought to the bridge? Time is not on my side so I have no patience left…'
^ Without a word Mackay went back on to the bridge and gave instructions to the helmsman personally. Then he went to the front of the bridge and stood there with his hands behind his back, looking down the full length of the main deck where the fog cleared until he could see the distant fo'c'sle. He went on staring in the same direction, never giving a thought to the fact that under the fo'c'sle lay the carpenter's store.
18
^ At 3am the ^ Challenger – ^ which had increased speed inside the Bay – was anchored half a mile from Pier 31 on the San Francisco waterfront. Ship-to-shore radio-telephone equipment had been set up in MacGowan's office in response to a signal from LeCat that he wished to establish direct contact with the Governor of California. Foreseeing long hours ahead of the action committee, MacGowan had brought in beds which now occupied adjoining rooms. It appeared that the three-man assault team had gone to ground – as Winter had warned might happen.
^ Watchers along the waterfront and high up on the Bay bridge linking San Francisco with Oakland across the Bay had scanned the stationary vessel through powerful night-glasses. There were no lights aboard the vessel, no sign of movement anywhere. 'It must be the thinning of the fog which stopped them,' MacGowan told General Matthew Lepke of the Presidio. They dare not try and storm the bridge until the fog provides cover – there's six hundred feet of exposed deck between the fo'c'sle and the bridge at the stern. All the hostages would be murdered before they got ^ ^ there – and they would probably be shot down before they ever reached the bridge structure…'
^ Gen. Lepke, fifty-five years old and rumoured to be moving into the Pentagon over the heads of fifteen other generals, was a spare, wiry man with a bird-like face and restless eyes. 'Cassidy will know what he's doing,' he
