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^ 'The ship-to-shore?' Winter turned round and looked at Mackay. Under the bridge windows was a grisly sprawl of men and blood. One terrorist, Andre Dupont, was wheezing and panting, bent forward over his stomach. No one took any notice of him. Betty Cordell had gone limp and Sullivan was holding her up, taking the rifle away from her gently.
^ 'Chart-room…' Mackay led the way, turned on the ship-to-shore.
^ The ship-to-shore crackled. A familiar voice, tired but still steady, rasped into the chart-room from the mainland. 'MacGowan here. ..'
^ 'Winter speaking. We've taken the ship. LeCat is dead. Before he died he said something about a nuclear device…'
^
^ 'He activated it before he died – with a radio-detonator. We need a bomb squad…'
^ 'Bomb squad is aboard the chopper already on the way to you.' MacGowan paused. 'You're sure he activated it?'
^ 'My guess – I warn you it can only be a guess – is maybe up to two hours. I told you we had a second escape plan in case the seaplane didn't work. Walgren would have driven LeCat to the coast near Stinson beach. He had to get there, radio the ^ Pecheur, ^ wait for the chopper to pick him up. He wouldn't want to be on the mainland when the nuclear device detonated. I still say two hours…'
^
^ 'No one does. The only chance is to try and get the tanker into the Pacific before she detonates…'
^ 'Nothing in your way. We've been planning for this contingency.' MacGowan sounded calmer. 'There's a Captain Bronson aboard the chopper who can take over from Mackay. He'll get the ship out, if anyone can.' He paused. 'Assuming your guess on timing is correct…'
^ 'I'm not issuing any guarantee,' Winter snapped. 'But they needed time to get away. On the other hand, LeCat was dying when he said ten minutes. What does a dying man say?'
^ 'God be with you – with us all,' MacGowan said. 'I'm signing off- you'll be busy…'
^ Mackay had left the chart-room, was already on the phone to the engine-room. LeCat had kept the engine- room chief at his post, had ordered him to maintain boiler pressure in case, for some unforeseen reason, he had wanted the ship moved to another position in the Bay. Mackay replaced the phone as Winter came back on to the bridge. 'Brady will get her moving as soon as he can.'
^ 'An American tanker master is aboard that chopper coming in,' Winter warned him. 'He's coming because MacGowan assumed you'd be exhausted…'
^ 'MacGowan is not taking over this ship,' Mackay snapped. 'If this is her last voyage, I'm taking her out. Did you say something about a bomb squad?'
^ ^ ^ expert. He'll have boobytrapped the device.' Winter turned as he heard someone talking in French.
^ Cassidy was bent over the injured terrorist who was now sitting up and babbling. He looked at Winter. 'He's trying to tell us something, I guess – but I don't know the language…'
^ Winter crouched down, beside Dupont, putting an arm round his shoulders and speaking quietly in French. 'Take it more slowly, Andre, and then we'll get you ashore into a comfortable hospital bed. What is it you are trying to say?'
^ He crouched close to Andrews face, telling him to repeat it, slowly, please, then he looked up at Mackay. 'The device is at the bottom of an empty oil tank, and LeCat did plant boobytraps -anti-lift mechanisms. I think the bomb squad will confirm they can't touch it.'
^ 'Which means,' Cassidy said quietly, 'that we'll be steaming out on top of a floating volcano, but we have to get the ship clear of the city – if we can…'
^ The helicopter came aboard a couple of minutes later and Mackay led the bomb squad to the empty wing tanks. The dead terrorists were collected from different parts of the island bridge and put into the police launch which had arrived from Pier 31. At Winter's suggestion – there was no time to waste – the corpses on the bridge were heaved out of the window and dropped to the main deck. Dupont was carried aboard the helicopter on a stretcher, but he died on his way back to San Francisco.
^ The machine also flew away Betty Cordell who had gone into a state of shock, and the dead bodies of Foley and Wrigley. Kinnaird, the wireless operator, was the only terrorist who survived; hearing the shooting, he sensibly locked the door of the radio cabin and only came out when Winter ordered him to. He was taken off in the helicopter, guarded by a Marine. Within ten minutes of coming aboard, the leader of the bomb squad, a Captain Grisby, reported to Cassidy. 'It's as bad as can be. We daren't even breathe on it. The device is rectangular in shape, measures sixty centimetres long by thirty centimetres wide, and is attached to the hull at the bottom of the tank by magnetic clamps. It also has two separate anti-lift mechanisms linked to it which we can't neutralise. No way. So, while you get the ship moving, we'll plant our own explosives…'
' Grisby outlined the plan he had decided on before he came aboard. Some kind of immovable boobytrap had been foreseen by Grisby – after he read the report on LeCat's technical expertise which Karpis had obtained from Paris. If the device couldn't be moved the ship must be moved – as far out into the Pacific as they could make it. Every effort would then be made to ensure the device exploded underwater- so the tanker had to be sunk quickly. The only way was dangerous but MacGowan and Gen. Lepke had agreed it was worth trying – anything to try and minimise the radiation hazard to San Francisco and other communities. Grisby was going to lace the hull of the ship with jet-axe explosive charges of enormous power; he was going to try and blow the ship apart so the front section of the tanker – which contained the device -would sink first and fast.
^ 'The charges will be set off by time mechanisms – timed to detonate after we've been lifted off. I brought in with us on the chopper enough explosive to blow up the Presidio. The trouble is,' Grisby explained with a humourless smile, 'the charges could just detonate the device – but since that's coming anyway, we figure we have nothing to lose…'
^ He left Cassidy to join his team who were already setting about their grisly task. Bronson, a tough-minded forty-year-old from San Diego, who had come aboard to take command of the ship, had changed his mind after talking to Mackay. 'He's haggard, tired, keyed up,' he informed MacGowan over the ship-to-shore, 'but he's still twice as capable as I am of taking out his own ship. And he'll get more out of the crew. I'm staying aboard – strictly as a passenger, courtesy Captain Mackay…'
^ The mainland was still blacked out when the ^ Challenger ^ began moving. In the late evening radio and TV stations all over the States were reporting on the massive blackout which extended from Yuba City in the north to Santa Barbara in the south, from San Francisco to the Nevada border. It was exceptional, the scale of the blackout, but by now the States was becoming used to ^ ^ power failures. This was simply a very big one, and the news of the nuclear device had not yet leaked.
^ The ^ Challenger ^ moved through the fog and the darkness, building up speed. And this too, as Grisby had pointed out, was a risk which was not calculable. It was unlikely, but not impossible, that the mounting vibrations of the engines might trigger off the device. Mackay's reply was that he would move through Golden Gate at maximum possible speed. Inside the steel tomb where the device lay, LeCat's clock mechanism was moving down towards zero.
^ They were heading through the night for Golden Gate bridge, which was still closed to traffic, and this was MacGowan's next nightmare as the ship began to move away from the city, the most scenic and beautiful city in America which Sheikh Gamal Tafak had chosen for devastation. As he waited in his office, lit by an emergency generator, MacGowan knew that it was highly possible the device would detonate as the tanker was passing under the great bridge. He was now waiting for radio reports from the American operator, Petersen, who had accompanied Bronson and replaced Kinnaird. The ship was within two minutes' sailing time of the bridge.
^ The siren sounded every two minutes, one prolonged blast which carried faintly through the fog. Before she had left, Mackay had spoken over the Tannoy, giving any member of the crew who wished to, permission to leave in the helicopter. No one had boarded the machine. Mackay's final comment before he switched off was characteristic. 'It's your funeral…' The fog thinned enough for them to see the huge span overhead as they came up to the bridge. 'And this,' Bronson thought to himself, 'would be just the moment for the device to detonate…' He stood two paces
