Colin Forbes - Year of the Golden Ape

^ 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.