Year of the Golden Ape (31 page)

^{'That's a thought,' Cassidy said slowly. 'Go on, I'm listening...'}

^{'The main problem is dropping three or four heavily armed men off the bridge span - off the highway level - down on to the ship as it passes under the bridge. We have to lower them ahead of the tanker coming in ...'}

^{'Some kind of mechanical cradle ?' Sullivan suggested.}

^{'No, a scramble net,' interjected Cassidy.}

^{'Exactly,' Winter agreed. 'Or a cargo net - whatever we can grab hold of. Something men can cling on to during the long drop.' He looked round the table. 'How long a drop is it from the highway span ?'}

^{'Two hundred feet . . .' O'Hara, the Port Authority chief sounded dubious.}

^{'It can be done,' Winter said emphatically. 'For lowering the net we need a mobile crane - with a foot counter...'}

^{'A what?' someone asked.}

^{'Foot counter,' Cassidy repeated. He had been whispering to an aide by his side who was making notes. 'The guy operating the crane has to know how far he's dropped them - so he holds them just above deck level as the tanker comes in ...'}

^{'And a weight indicator,' Winter added.}

^{'So he knows when the men have dropped off,' Cassidy explained. 'Three men in the net weighing a hundred and sixty pounds apiece - makes four hundred and eighty pounds of man-load. The indicator loses that amount, the crane operator knows they're down, he whips the net back up out of sight. That way, if they get aboard unseen in the fog, they have time to assemble on the fo'c'sle and reconnoitre the ground before they go in to the attack.'}

^{MacGowan, who was unusually silent, sat with his chin in his hand, carefully saying nothing as the technical side of the plan was worked out. Earlier, Winter had privately outlined this plan to the Governor, who found it possible - just possible if the fog was thick enough. It was a wild, audacious plan, but so had been Winter's previous plan to hi-jack the
Challenger -
a plan which succeeded because it had been so totally unexpected. And it was unlikely that LeCat and the other terrorists would foresee men dropping down on top of them like spiders suspended from threads.}

^{Its greatest virtue, as MacGowan saw it, was that it got round LeCat's insistence that no aircraft, no surface or underwater craft must approach the tanker, on pain of shooting the hostages. The tanker itself would sail up to the airdrop point. And there was no other possible plan - God knows they had chewed that over long enough.}

^{MacGowan found it fascinating as the discussion of the plan continued - the way Winter was gradually dominating the meeting. Personality, he decided, of a rare order. A man who was so sure of himself, so compelling, that they were all, reluctantly, falling under his spell. MacGowan had once known another man like this in his early days as state prosecutor, a man he had known as guilty of the charge brought against him. MacGowan had lost this case, the defendant had gone free-because of his cold, clinical personality, the way he had swayed the jury.}

^{'How will you know where to place that mobile crane?' the Governor asked ultimately. 'It has to be positioned exactly over the tanker's deck
before
she reaches the bridge ?'}

^{'Radar,' Winter said. 'We need mobile radar positioned on the bridge to track the
Challenger's
approach. When Mackay sets a course he keeps it - and he won't start weaving about inside that channel...'}

^{MacGowan leaned forward, his hairy hands clenched on the table. 'As we work it out, we should start setting it up. We can't keep LeCat outside for ever.'}

^{...
Golden Gate channel will be clear within a few hours. Await next signal which may well authorise your entry into San Francisco Bay. Arrangements have been made to take off your wounded.}

^{It was the fifth signal LeCat had received which was signed MacGowan, Governor of the State of California. This did something to soothe his irritation at the constant delay in permitting the tanker to proceed. And when daylight had come earlier on the morning of Wednesday January 22, when the sun had dissolved the fog in the channel, LeCat had reluctantly accepted the idea that there had been a collision.}

^{About three miles from where the tanker stood off the coast, close to the distant Golden Gate bridge, two cargo ships were apparently locked together in mid-channel while another ship with a crane was close by. MacGowan had arranged for this tableau to be set up before dawn and O'Hara of the Port Authority had organised the 'collision'. Any doubts LeCat might have had about the genuineness of this scene were dispelled when he asked Kinnaird to tune him in to mainland news bulletins.}

^{Peretti had issued a statement, reporting the 'collision', and this had been broadcast across the world as an adjunct to the reports of the hi-jack. For LeCat it was a satisfying day, receiving signals from the Governor of California, listening to bulletins from as far away as London, England, where always the main and lengthy news item was the terrorists' hi-jack. For the first time in his life, Jean Jules LeCat was world news.}

^{'I think they are now taking me seriously,' he told Mackay, after showing him the fifth signal late in the day. 'If, however,
we do not start moving soon, I will shoot two of your crew and throw them overboard. You understand?'}

^{'I only understand that there has been a collision which you can see with your own eyes . . .' Mackay stared out of the smashed bridge window. It looked as though the fog wouldn't be coming back this evening, which was just as well if he had to take his ship through Golden Gate tonight.}

^{It was dark in San Francisco at six o'clock, it was chilly inside MacGowan's office where the thermostat was fixed at the obligatory sixty-two degrees. And it had been decided that a three-man assault team would be dropped from Golden Gate bridge, a figure both Winter and Cassidy agreed on. 'Send down more men on to a fogbound deck and they'll end up shooting each other,' Cassidy warned.}

^{They had been meticulous about the weapons the three men would carry. 'A gun with great stopping power,' Winter had insisted, 'the terrorists on board have to be picked off one by one as they are found. And a silent weapon, too. The DeLisle carbine would be ideal, but you don't have it over here ...' Karpis of the FBI had found three DeLisles - by checking with the Alcohol and Tax Division which had registered four of these guns in Hollywood, of all places. A firm supplying the film and TV industry with weapons had the guns in stock. MacGowan had phoned a police chief in Los Angeles, a patrol car had sped to the firm on Hollywood Boulevard, and within one hour the carbines were aboard a plane for San Francisco.}

^{Over at Fort Baker on the far side of Golden Gate bridge, a mobile crane was already on the move - in response to a call from Cassidy's aide. The Coast Guard people were bringing in radar, two scramble nets were already stored near the bridge, Commissioner Bolan had warned a number of patrol car drivers they would be needed that night, and a detachment of Marines were engaged in last-minute firing practice. At six-fifteen Cassidy looked round the table and asked the big question.}

^{'Who goes on the one-way trip ?'}

^{There was silence for a moment and then Cassidy spoke again. 'I'm making the trip. I need two more people who know that ship - I don't.'}

^{'You'll be taking me,' Sullivan said quietly. 'I've come all the way from Bordeaux to sit in on this meeting. But I'd like a little practice with the DeLisle gun when it arrives.'}

^{'Ex-naval intelligence,' Cassidy said. 'You qualify. That leaves one more volunteer...'}

^{Winter for once said nothing, feeling he would be excluded if he pushed himself forward. He lit a cigarette and stared at the Marine colonel with a blank expression. Cassidy smiled unpleasantly. 'You started this thing, so it's up to you to help finish it . . .'}

^{'That I won't sanction,' Peretti protested violently. 'He could still be tricking us ...'}

^{'How, for God's sake?' MacGowan burst out. 'Or do you want him to have another session with your bloody lie-detector? This is a job for somebody who knows that ship well - for Christ's sake, Peretti, we're not going down the rope into the fog...'}

^{'There isn't any fog,' the mayor pointed out. 'Do they go down it if it's a clear night - with the moon shining down on them like a spotlight ?'}

^{'We've already decided,' Cassidy snapped. 'If there's no fog we can't make it. But we have to send the signal bringing the tanker in soon - it will take it hours to get there, moving at only half a knot.' He looked back at Winter. 'As I was saying, it's up to you to help us finish this thing. Have you any objections?'}

^{'Yes,' Winter said, 'we're wasting time. I want to get out to Golden Gate to take a closer look at that bridge...'}

^{The fog came at 8pm.}

^{It came in a great solid bank, sliding down the channel towards Golden Gate bridge like a siege train, sending out long fingers of grey vapour across the silent ocean surface. Rolling in from the Pacific, the fingers wrapped themselves round Mile Rocks lighthouse, enveloped it, then stretched themselves towards the bridge. Standing on the sidewalk of the six-lane highway span Winter saw it coming by the light of the moon. It reached the bridge, rolled underneath Winter, spread north along the Marin County shore, south towards the city. It was a very heavy fog indeed.}

^{For the first time since the great bridge had been opened in 1937 no traffic flowed across it - it had been closed at both ends. A huge mobile crane was positioned close to where Winter stood near the centre of the span. He could see the radar operator a few feet away. A telephone link had been set up between the radar operator and the crane driver, and the crane, normally bright orange, had been converted to a neutral grey with quick-drying paint.}

^{'Satisfied?' MacGowan asked from behind Winter.}

^{'You've got the dummy traffic organised?'}

^{'Waiting - at either end of the bridge.'}

^{Because there had to be traffic moving across the highway span as the tanker approached Golden Gate bridge - a deserted bridge might strike LeCat as abnormal, and if he saw it above the fog there must be nothing to attract his attention to the span. Winter walked over to the crane and leaned over the sidewalk rail. Suspended from the crane a large scramble net hung over the invisible drop - invisible because there was nothing below but fog. This was the transport which would carry them one hundred and eighty feet down into the depths until they were suspended just above
Challenger's
deck height.}

^{'The way that tanker will be crawling in towards us,' MacGowan said, 'she should pass under this point at about one in the morning.'}

^{'You realise, don't you,' Winter warned, 'that when we land on the fo'c'sle we may have to hide for some time - to wait for the right moment to attack the bridge?'}

^{'I just pray it won't be too long,' the Governor commented. 'The longer it is, the more time for something to go wrong.'}

^{Wearing the same grey combat fatigues as Winter and Cassidy Sullivan came back from the Marin County end of the bridge at a brisk trot. Limbering up, stiff with sitting in on so many meetings, he had plenty of space for his exercise - the bridge is over a mile-and-a-half long from shore to shore. Leaning over the rail, he peered down where he was going. 'Like pea soup,' he remarked. 'Let's hope to God it stays that way.'}

^{For over half an hour Winter moved restlessly about with
Cassidy, checking everything, asking questions, repeating the performance he had carried out when he had gone on board the
Pêcheur
in Victoria, Canada. The
Pêcheur,
waiting out in the Pacific, would soon be under observation from a submarine which had been despatched from San Diego. The seaplane moored in Richardson Bay was also under observation by a concealed detachment of Marines and a small artillery piece was trained on the aircraft. All escape hatches which LeCat and the others might use had now been closed.}

^{'Something will go wrong, of course,' Winter remarked at one stage to Cassidy. 'There's always something you didn't foresee no matter how carefully you plan an operation...'}

^{'So, we change our minds fast - maybe while we're hanging in mid-air.'}

^{And they had planned it carefully. Two cars without lights were parked close to the crane and inside were six Marines, marksmen with their rifles who had been hand-picked by Cassidy. MacGowan had insisted on the precaution: if the fog cleared suddenly as the tanker came up to the bridge the men inside the scramble net - suspended in mid-air - would be sitting ducks for any armed terrorists on the main deck. If this happened the Marines would dive out of their cars, hang over the rail and pick off as many terrorists as they could.}

^{At either end of the bridge a man waited with a cine-camera equipped with a telephoto lens. If the fog cleared even for a moment they would take as much film as they could of the tanker - they might just photograph something vital. Other men had gone up inside the elevators which ran up the towers and now they were perched five hundred feet up above the highway span, just below the airway beacons, men with powerful night-glasses and walkie-talkies through which they could communicate with O'Brien, the bridge superintendent. They had, Winter decided at the end of his inspection tour, done everything possible. Until one o'clock...}