Year of the Golden Ape

13

^ At ten o'clock on Monday evening the outriders of Typhoon Tara closed round the ^ Challenger, ^ great waves which rolled towards the ship at regular intervals. It was this irregularity which bothered Mackay. If the giant combers grew in size they could be very dangerous indeed.

^ The British crew's counter-attack against the terrorists was due to be launched at the height of the typhoon. Hoping that sooner or later Mackay would remove his veto on the plan, Bennett had worked out the details meticulously, almost as meticulously as Winter had planned the seizure of the tanker.

^ The total crew numbered twenty-eight men. Of this complement six men were on duty in the engine-room – excluding Monk – three more on the bridge (Mackay, the officer of the watch and the helmsman), and the cook and steward were on almost permanent duty in the galley. So eleven men were on duty while the remaining sixteen – again excluding Monk – were under guard in the captain's day cabin. It was this reserve of sixteen men cooped up in the day cabin which Bennett had his eye on.

^ 'First we get rid of LeCat,' he had suggested to Mackay during one of their frequent trips to the chart-room, 'then Monk helps me deal with my own escort guard when I go back to the day cabin – before I get there. The two of us then set about dealing with the armed guard on the day cabin…'

^ It was a planned escalation of release. And Bennett had also considered the problem of weapons. One pistol would become available when his own escort had been disposed of; a second pistol would be in their hands when the day cabin guard was eliminated. And other weapons could be improvised from the storage cupboard where Monk was still biding. Ropes, for example could quickly be converted into nooses for strangulation. In his own way, Bennett could be as ruthless as LeCat.

^ But everything depended on the elimination of LeCat. If a fierce struggle developed for control of the ship and Winter died, LeCat must not be alive to assume control. With LeCat taking over command, the reprisals would be atrocious, both Mackay and Bennett agreed. LeCat must go first.

^ The captain had listened to his first officer's proposal with some misgiving; he disliked violence and he mistrusted the odds against them – with the terrorists holding the guns. For the moment he had given approval for Monk to try and get rid of LeCat, but he had reserved judgement on the rest of Bennett's plan. This was the state of Mackay's thinking when Typhoon Tara began to close in on the ^ Challenger,

^ And already another part of Bennett's plan was taking shape -the guards were beginning to feel the effects of sea-sickness. This was why he had planned the break-out for when the typhoon was at its height; he could expect maximum disorganisation of Winter's carefully-planned security system.

^ The wind began to rise. LeCat, who had come on to the bridge where Bennett stood with Mackay, disliked the wind – it was so unpredictable. He stood at the front of the bridge as the wind rose, heaping up the seas in moving mountains which rolled all round the tanker. In the darkness there was a feeling of endless movement – the tanker pitching and tossing, the bridge tilting so LeCat had to spread his feet to counter the movement.

^ 'You'll cope with it though…' It was Winter's voice. He had come quietly on to the bridge, had heard the remark, had seen that it was directed at LeCat. Mackay swung round and stared at the tall Englishman.

^ 'Winter, have you any conception of the power of a Pacific typhoon? Have you ever experienced one before?'

^ 'The Aegean can be choppy, I grant you,' Mackay said grimly, 'but this is the big ocean. Out here nature has elbow room to marshal her power – and all the power man has harnessed in the atom bomb is like a match-flame compared with what we may see tonight…'

^ The 'rowing boat' remark had frightened LeCat; now the inadvertent reference to a nuclear device reinforced his fears. The Frenchman was staring towards the distant forecastle which contained below decks the carpenter's store. Inside that tiny compartment he had stored away something which might have only the fraction of the power of a typhoon, but the thought that he might not have stowed it safely, that it might already be shifting about the bulkheads, cannoning against them under the impact of the rising storm, was making his hands sweat so profusely that they were running with moisture. And Mackay had said far worse was on the way.

^ 'Inside twenty-four hours we shall have left this ship,' Winter warned Mackay. 'We shall be no more than an unpleasant memory – so I advise you to nip in the bud any mad ideas Bennett may have about organising 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 shavings filled his nostrils. He switched on his heavy torch.

^ He was inside a large cell, a working cell. A carpenter's table was clamped to the deck, some shavings were neatly stored in a wooden box, the Zodiac inflatable boat was roped to a bulkhead ring alongside the outboard motor. The large suitcases containing the wet-suits and air bottles were wedged in between table and bulkhead, roped to each other and then to the table legs clamped to the deck. Underneath the pile was another suitcase-like object, the nuclear device.

^ There had been no movement, everything was as he had left it. He heaved a sigh of relief. God he was earning his two hundred thousand dollars. Time to get back on deck, to get back to the bridge. The sense of instability was worst at the bow of the tanker, quite terrifying. LeCat went back up the ladder and out on deck.

^ Buffeted by the blinding wind and spume, LeCat closed the hatch and hung on to the starboard rail. The ship was climbing steeply, going up and up at so acute an angle he had trouble staying on his feet. His experience at sea warned him that this was a very big wave indeed. He lifted his head and saw beyond the bow a cliff of water sliding down above him, a grey, massive wobble which seemed about to collapse on top of him. LeCat froze.

^ This was the sight Monk saw as he looked up, the sight of LeCat holding on to the starboard rail and staring for'ard with his back turned to the main deck. Monk hesitated, saw that he had a unique opportunity and hauled himself up the ladder on to the fo'c'sle as the ship reached the crest of the giant wave.

^ LeCat heard nothing. He reacted to instinct as it struck him how vulnerable he was. Monk was almost on top of him, his marlinspike raised, when LeCat swung round. LeCat's right hand flashed out, the fingers stiffened. His left hand held on to the rail. Monk was too close to dodge and his other hand was grasping the rail. The nails of LeCat's stiffened fingers slashed across Monk's eyes and he was blinded as the Frenchman grabbed for the flailing marlinspike. Twisting his wrist, the Frenchman forced Monk's body backwards against the rail. The marlinspike dropped, going over the side as the tanker hovered on the wave crest and then fell into the green chasm below.

^ They were both holding on to the rail with one hand, knowing that if they let go they were overboard. LeCat let go of Monk's sprained wrist and his clawed hand flew upward, grasping Monk by the throat, squeezing, pushing the seaman over backwards as the ship went on dropping. With his sprained hand Monk tried to locate LeCat's eyes, crawling upwards over the powerful chest. LeCat dropped his head, bit the exploring hand savagely. As Monk began to choke LeCat released the grip on his throat, grabbed a handful of clothes and heaved the seaman upwards and outwards. Hoisting his feet clear off the deck, he bent him over the rail, gave one fierce heave – and Monk was gone.

^ LeCat knew how he had been fooled now. Returning along the catwalk after killing Monk, he had gone to his cabin where he changed into dry clothes, then he had gone straight to the engine room where he spent some time. After studying each member of the crew, he made a ^ ^ fresh head-count. This time Foley had not tricked him with his quick-change act; LeCat spotted the disguise, the seaman naked to the waist with the greasy cap and hornrimmed spectacles. But he had not appeared to notice. 'Six… seven.' Then he left the engine-room, much to Brady's relief.

^ LeCat had no intention of reporting to Winter what had happened; he would not even let him know that one of the British seamen was missing. LeCat disagreed violently with Winter's methods of controlling the prisoners: terror was the only effective method of controlling men, of keeping them under. And chance had given him such a weapon. From now on the British crew would be wondering what had happened to that seaman; uncertainty, the unknown plays havoc with men's nerves. He would fray their nerves to shreds so they were pliant when he took over command.

^ Inside her locked cabin – Winter kept the key in his pocket – Betty Cordell had no sleep. She lay awake in her bunk, fully dressed in slacks and sweater, listening to the ominous creaking of the woodwork, the horrifying smash as the ocean shuddered the bulkhead, the endless howl of the wind outside the porthole where at times it seemed it was about to burst the glass.

^ Earlier she had made her final report to Mackay – who made one of his frequent visits to the chart-room – on the exact position of every guard on board. She had the impression that they were checking her information against data supplied by Wrigley, that for some reason the information was valuable to them, but they had thanked her and told her nothing.

^ She checked her watch. 4am. The typhoon seemed to be getting worse – her cabin was being tilted at angles she never imagined it could assume while the ship remained afloat. The noise was terrible – the wind, the ocean – almost deafening as though she were outside on the main deck. She comforted herself with the thought that maybe this often happened, that on the bridge Mackay regarded it as almost routine for this part of the Pacific in January…

^ She was wrong. On the bridge at 4am Mackay regarded what was happening as anything but routine. They were moving close to the eye of the typhoon, but they had not reached it – and Mackay was beginning to fear for the survival of the 50,000-ton vessel.

^ At 4am the watches changed and Bennett, who had overstayed his watch at midnight, was urgently recalled to the bridge, relieving Second Officer Brian Walsh. Mackay had taken an unprecedented decision. 'Sorry to bring you up again,' the captain remarked.'but the situation makes me thoughtful.'

^ The situation makes me thoughtful… For Mackay this was the equivalent of ordering panic stations. Bennett, who trusted his master's judgement, also began to wonder whether they would survive the night.

^ From the bridge window the view was horrific. The ^ Challenger ^ was labouring amid a world of violence which never stopped moving, so the mind could never adjust as the ship wallowed amid waves ninety feet high – as high as a nine-storey building – from crest to trough. There was no moon, no sky, only the massive cauldron of seething ocean as the ninety-foot waves bore down on the vessel from all quarters. Mackay was standing close to the window when the wave struck.

^ The wind strength was now one hundred and ten miles an hour, the strength Winter had noted down in the signal he had earlier handed to Kinnaird for his imaginary typhoon. As a prophet Winter was being vindicated with a vengeance. The wind's scream was now so ferocious that it had drowned out the thump of the labouring engine beat, a manic scream which chilled the guards as they stared at each other across the width of the bridge. Then the scream was momentarily lost as another sound penetrated the bridge, a tremendous whoomph as a giant wave struck the port side.

^ A great column of surf and spume climbed for'ard of the port side of the bridge, then a white shadow broke full against the bridge, blinding all vision as the vessel shook under the impact. The thought flashed through Mackay's tired mind that they were caught between two powerful and competing wave systems, then there was a second whoomph as a second wave exploded, far too close to its predecessor. The wave rhythm had gone, the ocean had gone wild, the wind strength climbed to one hundred and twenty-five miles an hour as the bridge plunged and toppled like a building collapsing floor by floor.

^ The quartermaster damned near lost his grip on the wheel, the stocky guard on the port side let go of his grip on the rail and was thrown clear across the bridge, vomiting all over the deck as his pistol slid ahead of him. The other guard retrieved the weapon as it slid over and touched his boots. A head-breaking crack like a gun going off resounded inside the bridge. But it wasn't the head of the guard which had cracked – as the spray ran off the armoured glass of the window the captain stared at a zigzag fracture which disfigured the window. Carried forward at the speed of a projectile, the sea had struck the glass like lead shot. Walsh, who had lingered on the bridge, wanting to stay near his captain, winced.

^ 'My God, sir,' Walsh gasped. 'I've never seen that happen before…'

^ Winter came on to the bridge as he was speaking, as the stocky guard hauled himself to his feet, reaching out for his pistol with a trembling hand. 'I'll take that,' Winter said crisply, 'go get yourself cleaned up…' He waited until the tilting deck was momentarily level, then went across to join Mackay by the bridge window.

^ Winter had not been expected back on the bridge, for the simple reason that no one knew when to expect him. Tireless, he roamed all over the bridge structure from one level to another, checking, checking, always surprising people by his arrival – both the terrorists and the British crew. He deliberately followed no set routine because it kept them off balance, and never more than this night of the typhoon which he foresaw could be the time of maximum danger. If the crew – spearheaded by Bennett, of course -attempted a break-out it would be at the height of the storm, while the guards were disabled all over the ship with sea-sickness.

^ Wind speed rose to one hundred and thirty miles an hour -almost without precedent. Winter clung to a rail, watching Mackay, knowing that this man was the real barometer of the extent of their danger. Sixty feet ^ ^ below the bridge there was a surge of sea – the main deck vanished under the teeming ocean, was below water level. Catwalk, breakwater, pipes and valves -all had disappeared. Only the two derricks and the distant foremast showed above the raging surface. It was as though the ship had gone down except for the island bridge which floated like a remnant of a submerged ship. For two more hours Tara battered the ^ Challenger, ^ and then she turned away, heading south-west into the vast reaches of the Pacific.

^ As dawn came at 7.12am, it was a time of relief and bitterness for Bennett; relief that they had survived, and bitterness that they had lost their last chance to take back their ship. Monk had never reappeared after Mackay had seen him moving along the main deck after LeCat. The French terrorist had reappeared later in the engine-room when he had sprung his surprise head-count. There would, Bennett felt sure, never be another chance. If they hadn't managed it at the height of the typhoon when half the guards were seasick, they were unlikely to pull if off in broad daylight. And the ^ Challenger, ^ though much delayed and thrown off course by Tara, was now little more than twelve hours' sailing time from San Francisco. Winter had won the game.