Everyone along the Californian coast is familiar with the sight of a US Coast Guard helicopter - these machines make daily patrols up and down the foreshore, often flying low over the beaches. So who would think the appearance of Winter's Sikorsky strange? It was deep dusk when Winter came in sight of the coast close to Carmel-by-the-Sea. From the chart spread out over his knees he identified Point Lobos, then he turned due north. There were lights down in Carmel, in Pacific Grove on the Monterey peninsula, and in Monterey itself. All the lights disappeared suddenly. Another power failure. Sheikh Gamal Tafak's oil weapon was biting deep. The helicopter flew on over a dark and quiet ocean, flew on until vague clouds blotted out the sea. Fog. The moon rose and shone down on greyness, a shifting greyness of thick fog banks which made Winter feel he might be thirty thousand feet up in a Jumbo jet, speeding at five hundred miles an hour from Heathrow to Anchorage. That was only six days ago; to Winter it seemed a whole lifetime.
