Year of the Golden Ape (38 page)

^{The smoke shell spun upwards, out of sight, lost in a swirl of fog. He heard it strike the bridge. He took two steps forward. Black smoke billowed, spread a curtain of darkness masking the bridge windows. Cassidy had run into the open. He fired three times at the heads of two men which appeared over the edge of the port wing deck. One of them slumped forward, toppled, landed almost at the American's feet. He waited, carbine aimed upwards. The second man reappeared, as Cassidy knew he would, bloody idiot. Cassidy fired again and the man fell over backwards out of sight.}

^{It was happening so quickly it was like a film being run at high speed. Blurred images. Sullivan flying up a ladder. The smoke obscuring three decks of the bridge. Cassidy going up a com-panionway, vanishing inside the smoke. Shots firing repeatedly, a steady drumfire of shooting, the ship coming horribly alive. Winter had long ago disappeared up another ladder. Entering an alleyway, Winter saw a guard who, seeing Winter, threw up his hands. Winter shot him twice through the chest. MacGowan's orders were explicit. 'No prisoners, no phoney trials with some gabby mouthpiece crying over them. Shoot the lot . . .' Winter ran down the alleyway, heading for a certain objective, the day cabin where so many seamen had been kept prisoner. He turned a corner, saw the entrance to the day cabin. A terrorist, Lomel he thought, had just kicked open the door and was standing back with his Skorpion aimed, ready to shoot the unarmed hostages inside. Winter shot him twice. When you are hit by a .45 bullet the sensation is like collision with a charging rhino. Lomel was hit by two .45's. He was carried over sideways, slammed against a bulkhead where he slid to the floor. Winter kept on running, trod over him, kept on running...}

^{Betty Cordell moved very cautiously, like a hunter stalking a beast whose whereabouts are uncertain, straining her ears to catch the slightest sound as she moved up the companionway step by step. The ship seemed eerily silent, the alleyways oddly deserted, as though she were moving through an abandoned ship. She was going the long way round to get to the bridge, to approach it from the starboard wing deck.}

^{The Armalite .22 survival rifle she had assembled was equipped with a ten-shot magazine. The ammunition was high-speed hollowpoint. The rifle was single-shot, with two trigger pressures. And she was carrying two spare ten-shot magazines in her coat pocket.}

^{She reached the top of the companionway and another empty passage stretched ahead of her. Where had all the guards gone? She would walk into someone when she least expected it. She took a firmer grip on the rifle. Then she heard rifle shots, an irregular fusillade. She began running...}

^{On the bridge LeCat grasped instantly what was happening when he saw black smoke - that an attack was coming. He shouted a warning. 'Shoot down through the smoke - to the base of the bridge . . .' He swore when nobody did anything. The guards at the window were choking, their eyes running, coughing and spitting black smoke, staggering like drunken marionettes. 'Fools!' LeCat screamed. 'Get to the window - shoot down..,' The guards at the rear of the bridge rushed forward, leaned out, firing through the smoke at random, all of them, including LeCat, bunched together as a cannonade of shots and a reek of cordite filled the bridge and then LeCat remembered Mackay and swung round as the captain was moving towards him.}

^{Betty Cordell came on to the bridge from the starboard wing.}

^{Her rifle was waist-high, held the way her father had taught her to hold it. 'In an emergency shoot from there - keep the barrel
straight and shoot...' She came on to the bridge and saw half-a-dozen terrorists close together at the front. She saw LeCat. LeCat saw her.}

^{The terrorist leader was stupefied. The woman. With a gun. His reflexes, faster than most men's, failed him for one fatal second. Betty Cordell held the rifle hard against her hip, her finger on the trigger. There was not a split-second's hesitation. She was firing, her trigger finger moving non-stop, bullet after bullet, killing live targets for the first time, a ten-shot magazine, moving the muzzle in a slight arc, right to left, firing - firing - firing ... Three bullets struck LeCat. Four other terrorists died instantly. The barrel was angled slightly upwards. One man wasn't hit at all. Turning from the window, hauling up his pistol, he was thrown off-balance by a body falling against him. Betty Cordell rammed in a second magazine, began firing non-stop again. The uninjured terrorist, lifting his pistol, was struck by two bullets. She swivelled the rifle.}

^{Mackay stared at her, astounded, frightened by her expression. No nerve, no fear, she stood as if not caring if she were killed, cold, ice-cold, her eyes narrowed against the smoke as LeCat staggered across the deck towards the table where the radio detonator lay. She fired twice at his back and he took two more bullets, then her rifle clicked, empty. LeCat fell over the table, reached out for the detonator.}

^{LeCat, veteran soldier, veteran terrorist, now had five bullets inside him, but it is on record that men have moved carrying more bullets. His hand was clawing its way across the table like a crab walking because he could no longer use his shoulder hinge. There was smoke and confusion and screaming from a mortally wounded guard and the clatter of running feet. Winter came on to the bridge, saw what no one else had seen, saw the crab-like hand close over the radio-detonator. He guessed what it was, couldn't understand why it was there, raised his gun, fired twice. Two bullets struck the sprawled terrorist - .45's, not .22's - and his body jumped as though jerked by an electric charge. It could have been a reflex - his index finger pressed the switch down.}

^{Winter grabbed hold of him by the back of his hair, lifted his head and stared down at LeCat. 'Why the detonator?' The
Frenchman's eyes were still open. Winter shook him roughly. 'Why the detonator ? What have you done?' LeCat hardly seemed to recognise the Englishman whose face was stubbled and smeared and smoke-blackened. Winter shook him again. 'What the hell have you done?'}

^{'Nuclear device... ten minutes... San Francisco goes.' LeCat's face twisted into what might have been a hideous grin and then the eyes rolled and the head flopped.}

^{Ten minutes. The nuclear device was activated.}

¹⁹

^{'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.}

^{'MacGowan has a chopper standing by,' Winter said. 'Medics, Marines, the lot. Did you know about this nuclear device? Could he have been bluffing?'}

^{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 ...'}

^{'We know. We've known - lived with it - for hours ...'}

^{'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?'}

^{'Certain. I saw him do it.' Winter paused as he heard the distant
beat of a helicopter's rotors. 'He said we had ten minutes before it detonates. I don't believe him - he needed time to get well clear...'}

^{'How much time?' MacGowan's voice was tense, abrupt.}

^{'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
Pêcheur,
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...'}

^{'You know where the device is?'}

^{'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?'}

^{'They won't be able to do anything, I'm sure. LeCat was an
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...'}

^{'Your what?'}

^{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..."}