Colin Forbes - Year of the Golden Ape

^ 'We can't just stand around and let them get away with it,' the first officer murmured. 'Ultimately I want to organise a mass break-out. Subtracting the man who flew off in the chopper, there are fourteen terrorists and twenty-eight crew-we outnumber them two-to-one…'

^ 'So we need to cut down the odds – by getting rid of one or two key terrorists. I don't think we'll aim to tackle Winter yet – he's the only one you can talk to, and I don't think he'd be an easy man to catch off guard. My plan is to go for LeCat – he's a very nasty piece of work and seems to be second-in-command.' Bennett unrolled a fresh chart as Dupont peered inside the chart-room, then disappeared. 'I had a word with the chief down in the engine-room while the guard was boozing wine. Brady says Monk would be more than happy to go after LeCat – if Monk can go missing and stay missing without Winter knowing …'

^ 'The ship was seized with violence,' Bennett argued. 'LeCat was close to assaulting the American girl when Wrigley turned up in time. Some of these men are killers, LeCat certainly, I'm sure. And men do go overboard frequently at sea…'

^ 'My bet is it won't, sir. Typhoons have a nasty habit of changing direction. I think we ought to be prepared – which means we must organise Monk's disappearance if we can.'

^ 'You could be right…' The captain stared down at the chart, weighing pro's and con's. If something happened to Winter and LeCat assumed control, he wouldn't give twopence for the lives of his crew. 'All right,' Mackay said, 'we'll give it a try – but warn Monk to be very careful…'

^ At ten o'clock at night the ^ Challenger ^ was still proceeding through calm seas. Within two hours it would be Monday January 20.

^ Typhoon Tara came out of the spawning ground of the most hellish and violent weather in the world – out of the north Pacific. A US weather satellite first spotted her menacing growth; a US weather plane confirmed that something enormous was building up north-east of Hawaii.

^ Winter was the first man on board to receive all weather reports coming in from the mainland; receiving them from Kinnaird, he read them and promptly passed them to Mackay. After all, Mackay had to get the tanker to San Francisco. When the captain had absorbed this new signal reporting on Typhoon Tara, Winter took it back to the radio cabin where Kinnaird, increasingly nervous about the job he had undertaken to lay his hands on his dream bonanza – ten thousand pounds – sat in front of the transmitter. It was five o'clock on the morning of Monday January 20.

^ 'When does the next routine report go off to Harper in London?' Winter demanded.

^ 'Submit this weather report…' Winter was writing out the report in a quick, neat hand. 'Alter it to conform to technical jargon, but this is the gist of it.'

^ 'Because you can't think ahead – like so many people. Our great problem may be to persuade the authorities at San Francisco to let this ship enter the Bay as soon as we reach the entrance. There could be a delay for any number of reasons – a lot of shipping in the channel, fog… The port authority is far more likely to let us steam straight in if they think we're in trouble – if we have men aboard injured while we were fighting the typhoon.'

^ 'I have to be right – ninety per cent of the time – if we are to survive.'

^ The signal Winter had written out was simple and graphic. ^ Moving through typhoon conditions. Two seamen injured and out of commission. Main deck awash. Speed reduced to eight knots effective. Wind strength one hundred and ten miles per hour. Mackay.

^ Deep down in the engine-room, not one hundred feet from where Winter stood as he handed the signal to Kinnaird, the mechanical man, Ephraim, went on flashing out radio signals to the master computer a third of the way across the world in The Hague, diligently reporting on present conditions. ^ Speed seventeen knots…

^ Just as the similarity with a prisoner-of-war camp had occurred to Mackay, so it occurred to Winter to reinforce security on the ship by checking the numbers of the British crew at frequent intervals. He had put this idea into operation within thirty minutes of coming aboard, and it was the engine-room which most concerned him. While at sea, and including the chief, Brady, there were seven men on duty inside the vast and cavernous engine-room. So easy for a man to go missing.

^ It was six in the morning – the tanker was less than twenty-four hours' sailing time away from San Francisco – when Brady made a gesture to Monk, the engine-room artificer, and Monk dis-appeared behind a steel maintenance door flush with the wall. On his platform Brady wore his normal grim expression: he was taking a calculated gamble. This time it was LeCat who was going to check the seven men.

^ The gamble lay in the fact that the Frenchman had spent little time in the engine-room; he was quite unfamiliar with the crew who worked there. The risk lay in the fact that it was LeCat himself who would personally count the crew. Brady watched him descending the vertical ladder backwards, hopeful that the terrorist might slip and plunge down to land crushed on the steel grilles below. It was an empty hope: LeCat descended swiftly and agilely, then gestured to one of the armed guards to come with him.

^ 'We will count the crew,' LeCat announced as he reached the control platform and stood looking up at the chief. 'Everyone will stay exactly where he is…' He had his Skorpion pistol in his hand and it amused him to point it at the chief's large stomach. 'If anyone moves, he will be shot.'

^ Brady exploded, shouting to make himself heard above the din of the machinery. 'If you want this ship to reach San Francisco you will get your bloody count over with and get to hell out of my engine-room.'

^ 'So?' LeCat climbed very deliberately up on to the platform and beside Brady his assistant Wilkins was sweating. Not that it showed particularly; in the engine-room everyone sweats. LeCat himself was sweating enjoyably with the heat – it reminded him of summer in Algeria. He touched the chief's stomach with the tip of his Skorpion. 'One twitch of my finger and you are meat for the sharks…'

^ Brady stood quite still, looking down at the pistol. 'One twitch of your finger and you'll never reach the mainland. I keep this ship moving – not even the captain can do that.'

^ LeCat smiled unpleasantly, withdrew his weapon. 'You are right, of course,' he agreed. 'But when we do reach California we shall no longer need you, shall we?' Leaving Brady with this unsettling thought, he began counting the crew.

^ They were scattered round the engine-room and LeCat had to thread his way among the machinery to find them. He didn't mind; he was convinced that his threat to shoot any man who moved would keep the British motionless. He counted three men and then found Foley round a corner, bent over a machine-guard, wearing vest and trousers, his bald head gleaming with sweat as he stood with his back to the Frenchman. 'Four…'

^ LeCat moved on with the guard, went round another corner, and Foley moved. Hauling off his vest so he was naked to the waist, he grabbed a soiled cap from behind the machine, jammed it on his head, then he crawled on his hands and knees along the gratings until he was under the control panel. On the platform Brady, who was watching the catwalk guard above, made a signal. Foley stood up, walked five paces to stand beside Lanky Miller. Pulling a pair of large horn-rimmed spectacles out of his pocket, he put them on.

^ Thirty seconds later LeCat came round a corner and stopped to look at the two men carefully. 'Six… seven.' The full complement of engine-room staff. Lighting a cigarette, LeCat continued studying the two seamen. Lanky Miller was the tallest member of the crew, six foot two inches tall. Beside him Foley's height seemed to have shrunk. LeCat stared at him, frowning.