Doug could see the danger as clearly as his passenger, and he lifted the Bell’s nose a little to skip back beyond the complex of deck furniture and set down on a square of uncluttered deck beside the long sheaf of pipes which reached down the centre of the ship. The rotors continued to turn, moved by the momentum which had brought them safely this far, but the undercarriage settled solidly as the weight of the machine met the green steel deck. Richard unloosened the seat belt and turned to Doug. ‘Well…’ he began.
The roaring broke over them then. It was not the thunder of the shock in Richard’s ears at all. It was the sound of the wind which had followed them down the last five hundred metres to sea level. The wind swept across the forecastle head and plucked the helicopter off the deck once more.
‘Jump!’ yelled Doug as he began to wrestle with the controls.
Richard swung the door wide and leaned to one side. The seat belt was loose and it fell back to allow him the movement he needed. He half stepped, half fell out onto the deck. The steel was moving past at considerable speed and Richard hit hard. He rolled sideways, trying to minimise the damage which the unforgiving steel was all at once trying to do to him, only to be brought up short when the back of his head came into violent contact with the raised edge of a hatch cover.
He never saw the Bell, with Doug Buchanan still wrestling fruitlessly with the controls, collide with the top of the mid-deck Sampson post, explode into flames and whirl away downwind into the suddenly stormy sea.
The last wreckage from the blazing helicopter had fallen, hissing wildly, into the choppy sea, before the first crew-member was on his knees by Richard’s side. This was Cadet Wally Gough, currently on deck duty. He arrived in a flurry of sand which would have graced a seaside beach and crashed onto his knees beside the inert figure of die commanding officer which lay, as though crucified, face-up to the thick brown sand-filled sky.
Wally was studying for his First Aid certificate in his spare time, however, and he knew just what to do. He checked around for near and present danger but there was none. The helicopter had taken its debris far away out to sea. Apart from the Captain’s lifeless body there was nothing of it left.
First, Wally gripped the big man by his shoulders and shook him gently. ‘Captain! Captain, can you hear me?’ he shouted at the top of his lungs. His voice was snatched away by the power of the wind and hurled after the blazing wreckage of the helicopter. Richard Mariner made no response at all.
Working by the book, Wally eased the great grey-templed head back until the square jaw fell and he could check that the Captain’s tongue was not blocking his airway. Shocked, increasingly terrified, the boy leaned forward until his chilled cheek was a couple of centimetres above Richard’s lips and his wide-eyed gaze reached down the great barrel of his chest. There was no sign of breath and no stir of breathing — although the wind interfered with both sensation and vision. The clothing billowed massively but Wally had no doubt that the Captain’s chest remained still.
It was with a rapidly sinking heart, therefore, that he placed his chilled fingers against the cool flesh of the Captain’s neck and began checking for a pulse. He could find no sign of life at all and he shouted out loud as the full shock hit him. With trembling fingers he reached for the dead man’s collar. Only rigid self-control kept Wally from tearing the buttons wide, for he knew how dangerous such a movement could be if the Captain was still alive but his neck or spine was injured. But even in the hollow of his throat the terrified cadet could feel no pulse. No pulse at all.
When he looked up, he was horrified to find himself utterly alone. It had never occurred to the young cadet, only on his second voyage, that the deck of a supertanker could be so lonely — that the bridge house could be so far away.
He took a deep breath and choked upon a mouthful of airborne sand. Then, fighting to control his breathing, his heart-rate and his panic, he lifted Captain Mariner’s left arm and laid it on the deck above his head, angled away from his face. He took the massive right arm, folded it across the barrel chest until the back of the hand was by the left cheek and the palm was facing out. He raised the right leg until it was bent with the knee pointing upwards and he carefully rolled the body onto its side so that it lay — uselessly, pointlessly, but by the book — in the Recovery Position.
Then he pounded off towards the distant bridge looking for help. Or, more precisely, looking for Sally Bell, First Officer and ship’s medical officer.
She was on the bridge, seemingly unaware of the full horror of the accident, going through a series of checks over the phone with the Chief Engineer designed to ensure that the impact of the helicopter against the Sampson post had not damaged the fabric of the ship.
Wally looked wildly around the shocked faces on the bridge around him. ‘Number One, the Captain’s on the deck,’ he babbled. ‘I saw him fall out of the ‘copter as it went over the side but I think the impact has killed him. I can’t see any respiration and I can’t find any pulse!’
Sally Bell lowered the phone. ‘What?’ she snapped. ‘Where is the Captain?’
‘He’s on the main deck by the Sampson post but I can’t find any signs of life.’
‘Tell the Radio Officer to contact Dr Higgins at once,’ Sally ordered, though it was not clear exactly who she was talking to. ‘Tell her to get over here as fast as ever she can. Tell her it looks like Captain Mariner is dead.’
Then she was gone out into the sudden sandstorm on the deck to see the truth for herself.
Chapter Nineteen
The RAF helicopter skimmed in on fuel vapour and a prayer on the back of the evening wind. Porthleven heaved up lazily out of Mount’s Bay below and the B3304 unwound like a grey ribbon across the mile or two of Cornwall leading up to Helston town. They followed it, passing low over the sleepy, gloaming-shaded countryside, before falling away to the right towards their final destination. The pilot had picked up air traffic control at the naval air base at Culdrose away over the Scillies and they guided him down onto the pad as the last of the light died away.
The chopper was met on the pad by an ambulance. The four yellow body bags were lifted reverently out, loaded and transported at once to the camp’s medical facility. Here they were placed in cold drawers where they remained through the night because the helicopter had arrived well after sunset, the duty medical officer was out at a formal dinner in Falmouth, and there was apparently no real need for haste in spite of the mystery surrounding the death of one and the very existence of another.
The camp’s senior medical officer was the first one to see them in the morning, for he arrived, full of a traditional English breakfast as dispensed by the mess, at the same time as his orderlies so that he was there right from the undoing of the first zip. Bodies taken from the sea were commonplace enough here, for the big Sea Kings squatting on the concrete apron outside were all too often called for air-sea rescue work in the Channel and the Western Approaches. Bodies discovered on icebergs had a certain amount of novelty, but not enough to arouse much interest in the blue-uniformed breast of Captain Edward Penmarrick MD. The body of Sergeant Dundas, however, was more intriguing, he thought as he glanced up from the medical notes which had arrived with the bodies. Two of the bags were open now, and the still, marble-pale faces of the drowned soldiers lay open for the first time since they had been bagged up on Psyche. Penmarrick glanced down again, wondering if either man was this Dundas, but there was no immediate evidence of the discolouration noted by the doctor. What was the name? Higgins. Asha Higgins.