Year of the Golden Ape (39 page)

^{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 behind Mackay with his moist hands in his pockets.}

^{Winter stood close to the bridge window between Sullivan and Bennett, whose head was bandaged; the first officer was still dazed from the blow he had received after he had rushed to the ship-to-shore when Wrigley was murdered. Winter was trying to locate the choppers. The
Challenger
sailed out of the Bay alone, but not alone in the air. A small fleet of American helicopters, ready to take off the crew, was escorting the ship, flying far too
close to her in Mackay's opinion. If something happened now they would be liquidised.
Challenger
went under the bridge, headed down the channel.}

^{Winter, always restless, always wanting to see for himself, started moving round the ship. It was a very strange atmosphere because the crew were unusually silent, attending to their duties. They glanced at him curiously - Mackay had told them briefly over the Tannoy what Winter had done - but he didn't think it was his presence which was keeping them so quiet. To every man on board on that last trip the engine beat sounded louder than it ever had before, as though it were pounding the hull only a few hundred feet away where there was a steel tomb containing a single object.}

^{Mackay left it too late. Appalled that his ship, carrying this obscene thing, might be responsible for hideous casualties on the mainland, he insisted on taking her well out at speed. He took her ten miles out, close to the twenty-fathom line, before he gave the order to abandon ship. Petersen, the American radio operator, in constant touch with the helicopters, signalled them. There was a nervous, controlled rush to get down off the bridge, up out of the engine-room. Mackay remained on the bridge - with Winter. 'Join them Mr Winter,' he said stiffly. 'I shall be coming ...'}

^{'Since I am responsible for this,' Winter replied coldly, 'we shall leave the bridge together. I am in no hurry.'}

^{The crew assembled at the emergency landing point on the port side of the main deck - the normal landing point was too close to the empty wing tank. A Sikorsky was coming down through thin fog with a roar, its rotor whizz a blur above the fuselage. Bennett checked his watch. 'How long have we got?' he asked Grisby, the bomb squad leader. 'Less time than I care to think about...'}

^{The Sikorsky landed, bumped on the deck, a crewman opened the door, the waiting men piled aboard. Bennett counted them again with Cassidy and Sullivan, and the counts checked. They were waiting now only for Mackay and Winter who were expected any moment. The first jet-axe charge detonated prematurely -close to the bridge.}

^{The charge detonated in a wing tank under the distribution area
behind the breakwater on the starboard side. The thunder of the explosion was deafening, like an express train passing over the ship. The deck opened, a huge round jagged hole, and from the hole a stream of oil jetted upwards, curving through the fog in a shallow arc. The blast went away from the helicopter, but the machine shuddered. Inside it the men froze with fear; they thought the nuclear device had detonated.}

^{On the bridge Mackay took the shock of the blast. It lifted him, threw him against the binnacle, and he stood up shakily with blood dripping from his forehead. He looked dazed, not sure what had happened. Winter, who had just missed the blast although he had stood not three feet from the captain, grabbed Mackay and took him off the bridge. He had to man-handle the half-conscious master down a companionway, using a fireman's lift, and when he reached the main deck everyone was aboard the Sikorsky. Bennett started to climb out of the machine. 'Get back inside the bloody machine! I've got him,' Winter yelled. He moved along the deck unsteadily.}

^{Everything was confused. The fog was lifting, lifted perhaps by the detonation of the first charge. There was a stench of oil, oil lying on the deck, oil hissing weirdly as it poured out of the ruptured tank. Despite the explosion the choppers were still buzzing round overhead, searching for survivors. Cassidy was shouting, some warning about the oil lying on the deck. The pilot was shouting behind his controls, anxious to lift off. Winter heard nothing above the hammering beat of the rotors, the hissing of the escaping oil. He reached the machine.}

^{He had wrenched his back, carrying Mackay, and now it was agony to straighten up a little, to hoist the captain up to the hands stretching out to take him. He took a deep breath, jerked himself up, felt as though his back had split in half, then the burden was removed from him as they hoisted Mackay inside the cabin. Winter relaxed into a stoop, bent over like a man playing leapfrog, his head twisted so he could see the machine. 'Next chopper!' The pilot didn't hear him but he saw the upwards gesture of Winter's ringer, indicating the helicopter which had just flown over the ship. Cassidy was still protesting in barrack-room language as the pilot took off.}

^{When Garfield, the Coast Guard chief directing operations, flew over the ship at a hundred feet, he could see Winter clearly on deck by the lights from the bridge which were still functioning on the port side. A tiny figure, he seemed to be hobbling about as another Sikorsky descended to take him off. Garfield adjusted his night-glasses, saw the helicopter's fuselage blot out Winter as it was within ten feet of the deck. The second jet-axe charge detonated. There was a flash in the lenses which nearly blinded him, a roar, his machine shuddered under the shock as the pilot fought for control. When he recovered his vision there was only a huge hole with oil pouring out where Winter had been standing. The rescue machine had gone too.}

^{Garfield sent away every machine but his own, ordered them back to the mainland. Below him the stern of the
Challenger
was lost under a seething mass of black and oily smoke, but the bow projected from it. The forepart of the ship was still afloat, the nuclear device was still above the surface. He told the reluctant pilot to keep circling. Then three charges detonated simultaneously with a flash and a blasting roar which convinced Garfield the device had exploded. He told the pilot to get the hell out of it. As the machine was turning he saw the forepart of the ship going, the bow rising up like a shark's snout, hovering, then it was sucked under. Seismographs registered the nuclear device's underwater detonation ten minutes later.}

^{The depth of the water, the direction of the blast - mainly south - and the fog, minimised the amount of radiation reaching the mainland, but the sea was polluted. The oil pouring out from the
Challenger
flooded ashore at Carmel-by-the-Sea where sand dunes link the town with the ocean. For six months the only people seen on Californian beaches from San Francisco to San Diego were white-uniformed, helmeted men with Geiger counters. The white whale, which heads south along this coast to its spawning ground off Lower California, was not seen again for five years.}

^{Fifteen minutes before dawn on Thursday January 23 the two British supertankers,
York
and
Chester,
were steaming slowly just north of the Saudi Arabian coastline. The canvas coverings had been stripped from the huge crate-like structures, the skeletal
frames which had faked the crate-like shapes had been removed. On board
York
the strike aircraft were lined up, the pilots in their cockpits. On board
Chester
the Sea King helicopters were in position, the airborne troops already inside them. Dummy pipes and catwalks had been removed from the decks, leaving natural runways.}

^{On the bridge of
York
Gen. Villiers, Chief of General Staff, stood alongside Brigadier Harry Gatehouse, airborne commander. It was very dark, it was fifteen minutes to dawn ...}

^{Round the delta of the Danube in Roumania all military airfields had been closed to traffic. Soviet communication experts had taken over the telephone exchanges in nearby towns. Soviet airborne troops were already aboard their aircraft, had in fact been inside their cramped quarters for several hours. Each pilot had his flight routing which ended in Iraq, close to the Mosul and Kirkuk oilfields, close to Baghdad. The Soviet air commander was smoking cigarettes in an airfield building while he waited for the signal from Moscow...}

^{The British Foreign Office believed it had calculated correctly. When an Anglo-French expedition had once landed at Suez, the Russians grasped their opportunity to take over Hungary. If it became necessary to occupy the Saudi Arabian oilfields as custodian for the West, the Russians would see their opportunity to take over Iraq, and Arab power would be broken. If it became necessary...}

^{The news raced across the world. All the terrorists have been killed, the British tanker
Challenger
is steaming out of the Bay. It reached Baalbek, where Sheikh Gamal Tafak listened to two separate radio bulletins before he believed it. It also reached Tel Aviv.}

^{At nine o'clock in the morning in Baalbek a certain Albert Meyer lifted the phone seconds after it had begun ringing. He listened for a moment, said understood, then replaced the receiver. That was the go-ahead,' he told Chaim.}

^{'He may be coming out - there's a Mercedes pulling up outside the house...'}

^{Chaim was sprawled out on the table as Albert opened the window and then moved out of the field of fire. The closed doorway filled the telescopic sight, came up so near he felt he could reach out and touch it. Albert was at the back of the room, packing the Primus stove inside a canvas satchel. When they left, there would be nothing to show they had ever been there.}

^{The black Mercedes turned in the street, parking a dozen yards from the door with its nose pointed the way it had come. Chaim waited, the rifle nestled against the sandbag, which would also be taken away. The door opened, became a shadowed opening. Sheikh Gamal Tafak came out. The door closed behind him.}

^{His head and shoulders filled the telescopic sight. In Arab garb he was hardly recognisable as the Oil Minister for Saudi Arabia; all the newspaper photographs showed him in European dress. But it was Tafak: the magnification of the 'scope was powerful enough to identify him to Chaim who had studied every photograph he could find of the Arab. Tafak was about to go down the first step when Chaim pressed the trigger.}

^{The magnified image of the Arab blurred. Chaim fired again. P-l-op ... The head disintegrated, thrown back and plastered all over the closed door in a welter of smashed bone and brain and flesh and blood. The upper half of the door was now a reddish smear. The Arab's body toppled down the flight of steps and rolled in the road. The Mercedes drove off at high speed, disappearing in a cloud of dust which settled on the still form lying in the road. The Year of the Golden Ape had ended.}