The Ocean Dove

by Carlos Luxul

  ‘We’ve got the bodies of the others,’ Dan said. ‘Easy DNA match. But this one, I’m not letting this get compromised.’

  ‘It’s your party. But if anyone asks, I’ve seen a laptop and now a sheet …’

  ~

  Behind the blue door was a terraced house. Stairs led up from the hall with two rooms to the side knocked into a lounge–diner. At the back was a kitchen with steamed-up windows where a retired couple were making tea in relays.

  ‘There you go, darling,’ the woman said, as an eye in a balaclava winked and crooked a little finger daintily from a nice bit of floral Crown Derby.

  The door opened. A black balaclava carrying a heavy rifle stepped in. He went across to Jock and said something. They both turned to look at Dan. The new pair of eyes smiled.

  ‘Do I know you?’ Dan said.

  ‘Don’t reckon you do,’ a soft west-country voice said. ‘But I know you – seen you from that tower block overlooking the terminal.’

  ‘Okay, got it …’ Dan nodded, the bullets ricocheting at Choukri’s feet falling into place. ‘Why didn’t you shoot him?’

  ‘You was doing okay.’ The man shrugged, tapping a boot against Jock’s. ‘Best I could do was let him know, like. Anyway, I couldn’t. You was standing right in the way, mate.’

  ‘I told him to stop fucking about and do the both of you.’ Jock laughed.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ Dan said, ‘And the other one, by the containers, that was you?’

  The guy nodded.

  ‘Well, I owe you. Thanks,’ Dan said. ‘And there was green stuff coming out of his mouth …’

  ‘Khat. Saw it in Yemen last year.’ They quietened when the lady of the house came in with another tray of tea and sandwiches. As she turned and left, Dan said, ‘Can you send someone up to the terminal? There’s a bit of evidence I forgot.’

  Jock’s arms folded across his chest as Dan explained what had happened. Eventually, he shook his head. ‘And my guy’s going to get down on his hands and knees, fingertip search in the dirt, and he’ll find it – the end of this cunt’s nose …’

  ‘Yeah. Where I spat it out.’

  The comms-man got through to Thames House. A minute later they found LaSalle.

  ‘There’s twelve dead,’ Dan said. ‘Plus one still alive but in a bad way, and one missing. There should be fourteen crew. The missing one is the chief officer, the mate.’

  ‘Okay,’ LaSalle said.

  ‘I think he’s slipped over the side into the river. Could be anywhere now. He’s got a forty-five-minute start on us.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Can you get on to the PLA and …’

  ‘PLA?’

  ‘Port of London Authority. They can tell you who the ship’s agent is and the agent will have the crew list, with names, passport numbers, everything.’

  ‘Okay, we’re on it. Can you get yourself in here?’

  Dan turned around.

  ‘We’ll be out of here in about ten,’ Jock said.

  ‘In about half an hour,’ Dan said, ending the call and looking at Jock. ‘Via the M11?’

  The signals man tried to raise Julie and another cup of tea was put in Dan’s hands, with a corned beef and pickle sandwich.

  He felt guilty at his hunger, eating in silence, staying away from the window, unwilling to look. He was soaked from the waist down, his legs and shoes black, hands and arms cut, lip split. The inside of his thigh had been gashed by barbed wire, a rib was cracked and his nose was broken. But it meant nothing to him, absolutely nothing, compared with what he knew lay upriver in a ten-mile radius from where he was drinking tea in a very English way, served by a very English woman whose parents had no doubt talked nostalgically of the blitz. Her father had probably worked on the river or the docks before they became airports, exhibition halls and global financial centres. It was touching to see dust rings on the sideboard; she had evidently got her wedding china out specially. At his feet was a trail of dirt he had trodden into the carpet. He looked up apologetically, meeting a forgiving smile.

  ‘Another cup of tea, darling?’

  ‘No thanks,’ he said.

  But he did ask if he could clean himself up at the kitchen sink. A mirror propped on a shelf told him his face was a mess. The hot water felt good, though it made his nose bleed again. He stuffed some kitchen roll in a nostril and checked the swelling around an eye. As he dried his hands the signals man called out, ‘I’ve got your missus on.’

  Closing the blue door behind him, a single glance told Dan they had got on board the Ocean Dove just in time. The road was jammed with cars, vans and trucks, the wharf swarming with flashing blue lights and every colour of uniform.

  The Osprey was in a school playground. When he stepped on board, Tom Bergen was there already, asleep in a seat. The SAS were going to take him back to Hereford with them.

  One of the balaclavas met Dan’s eye and handed him a tattered crisp bag, the colours and writing faded. ‘Best I could do.’ The man shrugged. ‘It was just lying around.’

  Dan looked at it, carefully folded, seemingly empty. Then his fingers rounded on something small, something fleshy. Holding it gingerly, he slipped it in his pocket.

  Thirty-three

  The balaclavas were removed when the Osprey was airborne. Dan had no interest in their faces. His own was pressed to the window. The route to the M11 only skirted the fringes of London and he was painfully aware it would get worse when they flew diagonally over the city to Thames House. Up here, for the time being, he knew he was being spared the rawest detail, detached, looking on from a distance.

  The suburbs were still green but the city’s core was black. Smoke was rising from square mile after mile. Flames licked from tall buildings, some of them still all too recognisable. From landmark buildings, the greenery of parks, bends in the river, he was able to identify specific areas, the devastation from Canary Wharf to the City, across the West End, up to North London, out to Kensington and Chelsea, all along the south bank.

  There was so much detail to take in. Looking out over it, he realised that detail was inconsequential in the greater scheme – and there was most definitely a greater scheme. The guns must have been fitted in Bar Mhar, he reasoned, when Azmi’s man had said it was innocently receiving repairs to its steelwork. But who had lied – Azmi’s man, Azmi, Hak, or all three of them? And had the agent been Azmi’s man, or Hak’s? He only had Hak’s word that Azmi had overruled him and hand-picked the guy himself.

  He thought back to the last information he had, when the Ocean Dove had sailed from Bar Mhar, making calculations in his head. Pakistan to Port Elizabeth was about fifteen days. From there up to West Africa was around another fourteen, then a dozen more to London. So, about forty days, with a few days in hand for bad weather, the possibility to speed up or slow down and a day to bunker en route. And that would necessarily have been somewhere discreet, somewhere offshore? He racked his mind. Of course, Algoa Bay, an easily forgettable element of the Port Elizabeth complex, with its discreet offshore facilities. The schedule fitted together perfectly – to arrive today, on Friday, 10 June.

  But it had just been a voyage, a mere component. Once again, he realised, it had all been part of a meticulous greater scheme. A shudder ran down his neck, thinking about how far back it might all stretch, perhaps many years, perhaps to the very foundation of OceanBird itself, a company that had quite possibly been set up with one overriding objective.

  He shook his head, mindful of the here and now, the imperative of the moment. Without having to give it a moment’s thought, he knew there would be time enough over the coming days to examine every last detail. The more he considered it, the more he realised it was going to be a harrowing exercise, delving not only into the who, what and why of their enemy, but into his own performance too.

  The pilot had Julie’s GPS position from her phone. Dan could see the scene on the motorway was unchanged. Lines of blocked traffic stretched into the distance and to the j
unction with the similarly static M25 ring road.

  He hurried up the embankment to meet her, trying to make light of the look of horror in her face as she waited at the fence.

  ‘Look at you!’ she cried, tears welling in her eyes as she ran her fingers lightly over his cuts and bruises.

  Jock’s men made a fuss of Phoebe when they boarded – a much-needed comfort of hope and purity for cynically hardened men. Tender fingers stroked her cheeks, fingers that had squeezed triggers less than an hour before.

  It had taken only minutes to get from the river to the motorway. In merely a few more they would be at Thames House, and Dan knew they would be dreadful minutes for Julie. The scenes below were harrowing and so far she had only seen them from a distance.

  Coming in over London she turned away from the window, drawing her legs up and burying her head in Dan’s chest. ‘But what if I’m right?’ she said softly, her fingers digging into him. He remembered the argument, remembered his words, remembered her dismissal. But he said nothing, only hugging her more tightly.

  He looked over her shoulder at the faces around them. They had seen horror before. They had sensibilities that were inured and defence mechanisms that deflected through black humour and euphemism. There was a good-looking woman with them in a summer skirt that had ridden up. But there was no banter. No one caught his eye. The cabin was silent. Grim, unblinking faces were set at the windows.

  To the left was Canary Wharf and below them the City, gusting in and out of sight in the palls of dust and pillars of smoke. Southwark and the river, its bridges shattered; the Millennium Wheel half submerged; a thread of train hanging from a bridge; a trail of havoc stretching west into the distance. Dan lost count of the number of shells that had hit the Houses of Parliament, now obscured by the billowing smoke coming from its gaping rooftops.

  They put down at the roundabout on the north side of Lambeth Bridge. Thames House was fifty metres away, just across the road.

  Jock opened the Osprey’s door. ‘When this is over, you and the bald cunt, we’ll see you in Hereford at the regimental dinner. Good luck, pal.’

  Bergen slept on and Dan couldn’t begrudge him. No one should be forced to see this. It was better for him to wake tomorrow afternoon and gaze at flowers in the sickbay garden. Perhaps later he could try a look at the television news.

  Phoebe was under Dan’s arm, bedding and a laptop under the other, a chunk of bloody nose in his pocket. They picked their way across the road, Julie gripping him tightly. He glanced to his side as she gasped; the acrid stench of burning flesh, the charred remains of a bus up against a wall, the blackened and macabre bodies still in their seats, petrified in time. A motorcyclist was flopped over a low wall, one of his legs on the other side of the road, still pitifully in an armoured boot. And two schoolgirls, satchels on their backs, wrapped in each other’s arms in a twisted heap. Bloody corpses lay uncovered where they had fallen.

  It had looked bad enough from the helicopter, but at street level it was appalling. Dan’s eyes darted around as they crossed the pavement. Dazed survivors sat in confusion, staring blankly at nothing or looking pleadingly at him. Many were unrecognisable, all looking the same, their ages and sexes indistinguishable, their clothes, faces and hair plastered in the same uniform dust of grey and brick pink, streaked with blood red. A tall man tottered in one direction and then another, his upper clothes torn from his body, a thick wedge of metal sticking out from a bloody shoulder.

  The traffic was still, the way blocked with burned-out vehicles and splintered trees. Only people moved, on the pavement and in the street, hurrying with buckets, bottles of water, tearing the clothes from their own backs for bandages. There was an eerie quiet, of incoherent mumbling, low wailing, the gasps of the dying. Alarms had played out, sirens switched off.

  Smoke poured from the upper levels of Thames House, the reception doors a gaping hole of buckled steel in the frontage, the floor covered in glass, masonry and dust. Staff were trying to help people on the street, but like everyone they had their own problems.

  Bodies lay in the rubble, some staring vacantly, others with makeshift covers over their faces. People were shouting, calling for water and bandages. A woman knelt at the side of a wide-eyed man, tearing the sleeve from her blouse and binding it around the stump of his fingerless hand.

  A shoeless leg poked limply into the passageway as Dan and Julie made their way along. But it was the other leg, with a distinctive shoe on its foot, that caught Dan’s attention. The woman was lying on her side, most of the hair on the back of her head burned away. Dan knelt and gently turned her. He blinked hard as Jo Clymer’s eyes stared up at him. Her face was blackened. There were blast-burns to the side of her head and an ear was streaming blood. He felt her pulse. It was still strong, though her head was shaking and teeth chattering as words – ‘What, how? I do, how, me, me’ – spluttered incoherently from her mouth.

  Dan’s face was close to hers. He ran his hands gingerly over her neck, across her shoulders, down her back and sides, checking for shrapnel and broken bones. ‘No, no,’ he said quietly, looking down into her eyes. ‘You did good, Jo. You did good. Be strong. You can do it. You can do it.’

  Julie was on her knees at his side. He glanced round to her. ‘This has to come out,’ he said, lifting a torn and blood-soaked blouse. A shard of glass the size of a door wedge was sticking out from under Clymer’s ribs.

  ‘Push hard when it’s out – here,’ Dan said, handing her one end of Phoebe’s shawl.

  Julie nodded, her eyes darting between Jo Clymer and Phoebe, who was propped against the wall at her side, her eyes closed, her chin on her chest. Thank God for small mercies, Dan thought.

  He wrapped the other end of the shawl around the razor-edged piece of glass, pressed Clymer’s shoulder to the floor with one hand and yanked with the other. Behind him, at the end of the corridor, there was a familiar voice. He looked round distractedly.

  ‘What is it? Julie said as she stemmed the flow of blood.

  ‘Up there.’ He nodded. ‘LaSalle. I’ve got to see him.’

  ‘I’ll be okay. Go then,’ Julie said, turning back to Jo Clymer. ‘I’m Julie,’ she added. ‘Lie still. Don’t worry. I’ve got you.’

  LaSalle broke away from the group he was talking with. He ran his eye over Dan’s dishevelled state and the bundle under his arm but said nothing. He led the way across the floor.

  ‘How bad is it?’ Dan said.

  ‘Beyond bad. Everything’s out. We’ve set up an emergency command room at the back.’’

  ‘Casualties?’

  ‘I don’t know. Thousands. Tens of thousands … the emergency services can’t move,’ LaSalle said, turning into a passageway and pushing a door open.

  There were a dozen seated around a table and about the same number on their feet. A man was writing bullet points on a whiteboard, words like HM Queen, PM, Americans, lockdown. Two men in military uniforms were standing to the side, one an army colonel, the other in RAF blue. None of the faces were familiar.

  ‘Listen up,’ LaSalle said, rapping the table. He put a hand on Dan’s shoulder and pushed him forward, gesturing that the floor was open. ‘This is Dan Brooks. He’ll debrief us.’

  ‘The one that got away, this is his bedding,’ Dan said, putting it on the table. ‘And this,’ he added, reaching in his pocket, ‘is the end of his nose.’

  ‘His nose …’ someone said.

  ‘I bit it off.’

  The guy nearest to Dan sat back, averting his eyes.

  ‘And this is the guns’ control computer.’

  He plugged his phone into the conference screen, scrolling through the camera roll, pointing each body out, the captain, the chief engineer, the one who was still alive.

  A stocky red-headed man raised a bloodstained hand. ‘He’s been flown to Sidcup hospital. Special Branch are watching him.’

  They all looked on in stony silence at the photos of the guns. Dan ran through their type, range
and capability. The arithmetic of just under a thousand rounds a minute was chilling.

  Breaking the silence, Dan said, ‘Have we got the crew list?’

  A woman in half-moon glasses shuffled some papers and pushed a sheet across. Mubarak was the first name and photo on the list, fifty-four years of age, Egyptian. So that’s him, Dan thought, once a silhouette on LinkedIn, now a bloody mess of dead flesh.

  The next name belonged to the first officer, Choukri Belabas, thirty-two, born in Algeria. It was clearly the face he’d buried his teeth in.

  ‘He’s the one we’re looking for,’ Dan said, explaining the sequence of the severed mooring lines. ‘And we mustn’t forget the nose when the description is circulated,’ he added. ‘It’ll be almost impossible to hide that.’

  Dan turned back to the list. The next name was Faisel Ibn Bhakri, the second officer. He looked at the photo of the choirboy who was still alive, remembering ‘Shoe, shewk, shoot, shootie.’ Now that, he thought, could just have been Choukri …

  LaSalle leant forward, his hands together, fingers drawn up under his own nose, one of them probing it subconsciously. ‘Check the clinics and backstreet doctors. If he was in the river with a wound like that, there’s a risk of, what is it, septicaemia?’

  ‘Tetanus …?’ was offered, along with ‘Weil’s disease …?’

  ‘Check it all, every connection, every prescription for medicine,’ LaSalle said, glancing at a man taking notes along the table.

  Dan looked around the table, unsure if he was supposed to continue, feeling he’d given them everything he could already.

  LaSalle put his hands together under his chin. ‘And why does he get off the ship? Why only him? What’s so special about him?’

  He was thinking aloud, rhetorically, but it didn’t stop the others from looking to Dan for answers. In the shell-shocked remains of their office and city, their silence asked the same collective question – how did you come to fail so miserably in your duty? A pair of cold eyes, a shade lighter than RAF blue, raked him from head to toe, wordlessly asking, aren’t you the specialist? Half-moon glasses perched disdainfully on the tip of a sharp nose – but you’re the case officer?