Colin Forbes - Year of the Golden Ape

^ Grabbing one of the white towels from out of the bathroom, she used her felt-tip pen to inscribe the three letters large-size on the towel. SOS. She went back to the porthole and waited. It was much closer now, she could tell from the engine sound, although the bow of the ship concealed how close it was. If only it would fly along the port side, along her side of the ship. The engine beat became a sharp drumming staccato. She leaned out of the porthole again and still she couldn't see it. She licked her dry lips and waited with the towel in her hands.

^ The air coming in through the porthole was almost warm; the tanker was now moving through far more southerly latitudes than when it had sailed from Alaska. The engine beat of the incoming Sikorsky was rising to a roar when the cabin door behind Betty Cordell opened and the armed guard came inside. He ran across to the porthole, slammed it shut, pulled the curtain over it and dragged the towel out of her hand. 'You sit over the bed,' he said in halting English. She sat down on the edge of the bunk and clasped her trembling hands in front of her.

^ 'You are bad,' he said, looking at the marked towel. 'LeCat will not like…'

^ 'Tell Winter,' she said in a weary voice. 'He won't like it either…'

^ Inside the day cabin the seamen not on duty were lying face down on their stomachs while three guards stood close to the walls pointing pistols at them. The curtains were drawn over the portholes. The same scene was taking place inside the galley where Wrigley had joined Bates, the cook, on the floor. It was a further order Winter had issued on the bridge when he saw the Sikorsky coming – that the prisoners above engine-room level must be put in a position where it would be impossible for them to signal to the US Coast Guard plane.

^ The Sikorsky reached the bow, flew at fifty feet above the ocean along the port side of the tanker. 'Wave!' Winter shouted from the rear of the bridge. 'Do you want your helmsman to get a bullet in the back?' Bennett waved without enthusiasm, and then Mackay noticed something – the helmeted pilot inside his dome was not waving back. Which was damned odd.

^ The machine flew past the stern and Winter watched it going through the rear window. 'Doesn't the pilot normally acknowledge your wave?' he asked. 'I didn't see him wave back…'

^ 'They don't always,' Mackay lied. 'If they're near the end of a patrol they're only interested in getting back home…'

^ Half a mile beyond the tanker's stern the Sikorsky was circling; then, squat-nosed and small, it headed straight back towards the tanker steaming away from it. As it came closer Winter gave a fresh order. 'Don't wave at it this time. Just watch it go. Do they ever communicate with you by radio when they're as close as this?'

^ 'Not often,' Mackay said neutrally. He wasn't at all sure what was happening. The machine flew past them again, this time along the starboard side, still only fifty feet above the waves, which meant it passed below bridge deck level. On the main deck one seaman was hosing down the open areas while the other two seamen swabbed with brushes. They had decided to use the hose on their own initiative, to make it look good. As one of them said, 'Even if it lands and has Marines aboard those buggers will shoot our lads before they can get to them

…' Mackay, as he watched, had never seen them work harder. He thought he understood why. Kinnaird, pale-faced, came running on to the bridge a moment later. He handed a message to Winter.

^ 'I decided to bring it up…' Because you were scared, Winter thought, because you had to see what was happening. 'They've requested permission to land…'

^ Mackay swung round, his face grim and alert. And how are you going to cope with that, you bastard? Winter stood quite still for only a few seconds, watching the distant Sikorsky as it circled a mile ahead of the tanker which was now steaming towards it. He caught Mackay's expression and smiled bleakly, then gave the order to Kinnaird. 'Refuse permission to land. Tell them the deck-plates under the landing point were weakened by the typhoon, that we have two injured seamen aboard – not seriously – but they will need to go to hospital for a check-up when we reach Oleum…'

^ The Sikorsky flew over them once more, making this last run directly over the tanker at a height of one hundred feet, then it turned away and headed on a due east course until it was out of sight. 'Where would it have come from?' Winter asked.

^ 'Off some weather cutter, I suppose,' Mackay lied. 'How the devil would I know?'

^ But he did know. There was no chance of a weather cutter being stationed so close to the Californian coast. And the machine had

^ At 4.30pm on Tuesday, half an hour before dusk, Winter leaned out of the smashed window on the bridge and watched the blip coming in from the south on the starboard side, the Sikorsky returning from the trawler ^ Pecheur.

^ During the height of the typhoon Kinnaird had exchanged frequent position messages with the ^ Pecheur, ^ so they each knew where the other vessel was. And because the ^ Pecheur ^ had steamed through the night over a hundred miles south of the tanker she had escaped the typhoon. Which was just as well, Winter reflected: had the trawler endured only a quarter of the tanker's ordeal the Sikorsky would undoubtedly have been ripped from her deck and hurled into the ocean.

^ Winter had deliberately left it as late as possible before summoning the Sikorsky to return. A helicopter sitting on the ^ Challenger's ^ port quarter would hardly have heightened an impression of normality if they had been seen and reported on by a passing ship – let alone by the genuine US Coast Guard machine which had circled them three times. Winter was still worried about that incident, as he was about the unprecedented signal from the San Francisco Port Authority. He turned round as Betty Cordell came on the bridge.

^ 'We'll be standing off the Californian coast in less than an hour,' he told her soberly. 'We are scheduled to dock at Oleum at twenty-two hundred hours. Don't count on it,' he warned her.

^ 'Within forty-eight hours you are likely to be ashore – in San Francisco – with the story of your life,' he told her cynically.

^ Winter went down off the bridge to meet the machine when it landed. The sky had changed during the past few minutes, and now an overcast from the north was spreading itself above the tanker as it continued heading direct for San Francisco. Winter, secretive by nature, had not felt inclined to answer Betty Cordell's last question. In less than an hour he had to fly away from the tanker, leaving LeCat in sole command.

^ 'So we stop her where she is now – about ten miles off the coast,' Mayor Peretti said. 'We order her to stay in her present position and send out a vessel with Marines aboard. Is that agreed, gentlemen?'

^ The table in the mayor's office was large and there was just room for everyone. Seated on Peretti's right, Sullivan looked round the table and marvelled. God, what a change in only a few hours. Gathered round the table was a representative of almost every law-enforcement agency in the States. Karpis of the FBI was there. Next to him sat Vince Bolan, police commissioner. Col Liam Cassidy of the US Marine Corps sat beyond him, and beyond him was Garfield of the Coast Guard and O'Hara of the Port Authority. Several other men whose functions Sullivan hadn't grasped made up the balance.

^ The Coast Guard helicopter which had circled the ^ Challenger ^ three times, which had flown past her twice at lower than bridge level, had no sooner landed when its cameras had been rushed to the processing laboratory where technicians waited. It was the enlarged prints taken from these films, infra-red films which had penetrated into the shadows on the bridge of the tanker, which had brought these men rushing to the mayor's office from all over the city, from the Presidio itself. The prints clearly showed men with guns standing at the rear of the bridge, guns pointed in the direction of the officers at the front of the bridge.