Lotto shouted another command as he holstered his pistol and went back inside the boat and two Somalis lifted up the crewman and tossed him over the side. The dead pirate quickly followed. One of the crewmen took the binoculars for himself and Stratton and Hopper, with Sabarak close by, were left alone. A large pool of blood had formed in front of them.
By the time the sun set, the pirates had organised themselves, and the flotilla, along with its new and largest addition, continued south towards Somalia. By the next morning, they had changed direction and were heading east. The blood on the deck had dried and cracked across the deeper pools.
It had been a cool night but all of them had slept. Stratton looked over the side. He couldn’t see anything but blue-grey ocean. But the air smelled different. And there were seagulls. Not in any great abundance. A handful flying close to the vessel, inspecting it from on high. The flying scavengers were going to be disappointed though. These Somalis were harvesters of the sea all right, but a much different kind.
Stratton got to his feet and stretched his stiffened body and checked the horizon the other side of the bridge house. The guards were watching him but it was like they had become used to his curiosity and took it to be harmless.
He couldn’t see a distinct coastline but he knew it was there. A strong shadow divided the sea and sky. He looked back at the cargo vessel cruising behind them, attached by several thick steel cables. The speedboats were divided up between the stern of both mother craft and bulker.
Most of the pirates still appeared to be on board the carrier. Stratton could imagine the night they’d had looting the crew’s belongings, the cargo and getting into the captain’s safe, which always contained cash in several currencies. He leaned back on the edge of the boat looking at the water. He felt the urge to jump into it, but only to cool off. This was beginning to feel like it could be a drawn-out affair.
Stratton had been held captive many times before. But not by pirates. They were a new experience for him. On this occasion he was an economic commodity. He had a monetary value to them. They were going to put him and Hopper up for sale. That was unless the Saudi could change the stakes.
A craggy, arid scar of land became visible as the light improved, a lifeless spur of yellow and grey rock with few trees. As they drew closer to the coast, dozens of what had looked like bobbing seagulls hundreds of metres away became small fishing boats. When the pirate boat passed by them, the two or three occupants in each paused to watch, nets in their hands. There was the occasional wave of an arm. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sight to them. A couple of younger fishermen watched with envious eyes, perhaps wondering when it would be their turn to gain a chance of becoming rich.
Stratton could make out buildings beyond a golden beach that stretched as far as the eye could see in both directions. A pall of smoke hung in the air above the habitats like a thin, floating carpet. The town was on a slight incline from the water’s edge and at first looked like a sprawling caravan park until the structures became small single-storey brick and mud houses. A hundred or so in all, simple and square with flat roofs and nothing in between them but sand.
Dozens more fishing boats dotted the water in front of the town and along the coast in both directions. Several of the smaller, faster pirate boats left the flotilla and headed for the beachfront, their powerful engines roaring in pitches as they bounced over the heavy waves.
As Stratton looked further along the coastline, he counted three large commercial ships in a line, anchored a short distance apart and quite close to the shore. The seabed evidently fell steeply away from the beach.
The coastline curved sharply beyond the last of the three ships in the shape of a hook, turning back on itself to form a kind of cul-de-sac. It came to a point where it doubled back again to continue its course. The bows of the largest ship, a merchantman as long as a football field, were almost inside the entrance to the cul-de-sac that acted like a sea mole, providing a level of protection from the heavier seas coming down the coast.
When the pirate mother craft was a few hundred metres from the stern of the nearest anchored cargo vessel, it turned to head directly towards the beach. A stone’s throw from the sand the engines went into full and noisy reverse to bring it to a halt. A couple of anchors were tossed over the side to prevent the waves from pushing the boat up on to the beach.
Stratton studied the cargo ships. They looked like they had been abandoned. So they were more than likely hijacked vessels. The town didn’t look equipped to handle any kind of heavy cargo, that was for sure.
He wondered where the crews were and suspected he might soon be joining them.
4
A Somali hauled Stratton, Hopper and Sabarak in a line along the side of the deck to a waiting skiff. They climbed over the side, their hands still tied, and down a ladder to the small boat where they sat opposite armed guards. The skiff’s pilot, an old man with greying head hair and beard, hardly looked at them. He had done this a thousand times.
The waves dumped heavily on to the sandy beach but the old pilot displayed a high level of skill and experience to take the little craft over the crest of a large wave and to a fairly smooth stop in the returning frothy surf. The water had looked dark and murky from the pirate boat but along the beach it was transparent.
Stratton stepped into the water expecting it to be warm to match the air and dusty surroundings but it was cool and fresh as it flooded his loose laceless boots, which he almost left behind in the sand as he walked up the steep incline.
The beach was littered in trash of all kinds. Mostly modern trash. Plastic bottles and cartons, pieces of old timber, wrappings, chunks of moulded polystyrene of the type used for packing electronic goods. The high-tide mark was a dark oil stain that ran the length of the beach.
They walked up the coarse, steep sand. It went from soft to compacted and near enough flat in about forty paces, halfway to the beachfront houses. The Somali guard halted them.
Stepping on land immediately altered Stratton’s attitude towards escaping. He felt infused with a sense of opportunity. On the vessel he had been trapped, confined. It was no longer a case of if he would try to escape, but when. He considered the broader strokes at first, dividing his options between land, air or back to the sea. The latter was the more obvious choice. All he had to do was acquire a boat and sail it due north. Escaping across country would be more difficult. The only safe haven he could think of was Mogadishu. The United Nations had several bases in the capital but Stratton didn’t know the locations of any outside of it. And Mogadishu was a long way south, close to Kenya. That put it at many hundreds of miles. Through hostile tribal areas where the locals would likely try to kill him as a matter of course. As for the air option, he had no knowledge of Somali airfields. But it wouldn’t help that much if he did: he had no real idea where he was save on the north coast of Somalia, which was as long as the southern coast of Yemen at around six hundred miles.
A group of children ran from between a row of mud houses to see the new arrivals. They came at Stratton and Hopper from all angles but were driven back by the guards. In front of Stratton, Lotto looked proud of his catch as he arrived on the beach and marched up the soft sand at their head and on to the firm packed hinterland and towards the town. The prisoners were pushed to follow him as a part of the display. The people of the town clearly revered him.
Everything about the place had a dilapidated and uncared for look about it. The beachfront homes were set back about a hundred metres from the surf. About a mile beyond the town the land rose up to a line of dark hills, running across them a prominent cliff edge like a faultline, a yellow ridge that became orange and brown as it angled up the peaks. They looked barren and dry and scorched by the heat of the sun. Everywhere Stratton looked the ground was hard, like it had been hammered solid and covered in dust.
The town was no better than the beach. The longer he looked at the houses the worse they got. All but a few were made of mud. The rest were of b
rick or both, constructed poorly with levels and angles clearly guessed at rather than measured. Trash everywhere. Not the kind of trash one would expect to find in a poor, isolated African village not all that far from the stone age. Modern cardboard packing, plastic wrapping, moulded polystyrene. For centuries the town had relied on the sea to provide everything it needed to sustain life. And it still did but there was a new kind of life support. Fishermen had become pirates. The backward, isolated and impoverished town was overflowing with the finest detritus of the developed world. A new washing machine being used as an outside table since there was no electricity or piped water for it to function as it was designed. One house had a collection of flatscreen televisions stacked outside its front door, just discarded – superfluous to requirements as there was no signal. A group of men were unloading boxes from a mule-drawn cart and taking them into a house. As Stratton watched he could see they contained brand-new laptop computers.
Each habitat was a standalone dwelling with gaps between them wide enough to drive a truck through. The Somalis led Stratton and the others along a wide, deeply rutted track through the town. The main thoroughfare. Stalls lined the route in places, offering a morsel of local vegetables, all dry and withered.
The local people stared at the two white men as they marched up the incline of the road. They had seen such people before but any newcomer was still a curiosity in their lives. A Suburban rumbled past, the fat black man behind the wheel wearing a tailored jacket and sunglasses. He glanced at the prisoners and gave a nod to Lotto as he drove past.
A quarter of the way into the town the pirate captain brought the cortège to a halt and had a word with a couple of lethargic armed men standing at the entrance to a street. When Lotto continued away up the main thoroughfare, Stratton and the others were pulled down the side street.
Up ahead, a group of scruffily clothed armed men loitered, mostly sitting and smoking between the houses, a couple of them dozing. As Stratton and the others reached them, the guards that had been dozing came to life to inspect the new arrivals. The escort guards spoke to them while Stratton, Hopper and Sabarak stood in the street under the hot sun and waited.
Lotto suddenly arrived from a side street and went to the door to one of the nearby huts and opened it. It was dark inside but Stratton could make out several grimy faces looking up towards the door. Lotto looked in on the hut, stood for a few seconds. Then he pulled the door closed, crossed to the hut opposite, opened the door to that one and looked inside. Then he said something over his shoulder and the Somali guards shoved the three prisoners over to the hut. Lotto indicated for them to go inside.
The room was about six metres square, its floor of dirt. It stank of sweat. There were no furnishings of any kind. About a dozen men were sat on the ground with their backs to the walls. They took up a third of the wall space. There were a couple of buckets in the centre of the floor full of water, a cup beside each.
The men looked up at them. They were grimy and miserable wretches, their boots also without laces, their hands tied with either string or heavy fishing line. ‘Sit,’ the pirate captain ordered. It was the first word of English he had spoken and it sounded odd coming from his lips.
Stratton and Hopper claimed an empty section of wall together. Sabarak selected an isolated corner on the opposite side of the room.
‘You try escape, we break your legs,’ Lotto said in a slow, deliberate tone. His English had a heavy accent but otherwise it was clear. ‘We get same money for you if you are broken or not.’ He grinned. ‘No escape. Nowhere to go. But very tiring to look for you.’
The pirate captain looked along the line of prisoners and stopped at one. He walked over to the prisoner, whose head was lowered, the face hidden by long, dirty black hair. Lotto kicked the prisoner’s outstretched foot with his own but the prisoner didn’t move, as if aware but refusing to look up. Lotto grinned and leaned down to say something that Stratton was unable to hear. He chuckled at the lack of response, straightened up and went to the door.
‘Be good,’ he said, pausing in the doorway. ‘Everyone goes home if you are good. But we break legs and arms if you are not good,’ he added.
He left, his guards closing the door behind him.
Stratton studied the sullen faces that surrounded him. Four were white and European-looking. The rest appeared to be Asiatic, Filipinos and Koreans perhaps. The long-haired prisoner sat back against the wall. To Stratton’s complete surprise it was a girl. When she rested her head back, her hair parted to reveal her face. She was young, Asian and quite beautiful. Her expression was like stone as she glanced at him in response to his stare.
Stratton looked away at the walls and ceiling. Roughly hewn wooden rafters supported a corrugated metal roof. A metal pole in the centre of the room supported the apex. There was a single, narrow opening high on a wall that provided light and ventilation. He knew he could climb through it without much difficulty. He wondered if there was a guard outside and, if so, how attentive to his duties he was at night.
Hopper leaned close to Stratton. ‘Wonder how she ended up here.’
Stratton took another look at her. She was gazing at the floor.
He had heard of women being crew on commercial vessels, though it was more common in Asia than anywhere else. But she didn’t look the type to work and live on board a ship. Despite her appearance, there was something sophisticated about her. She looked educated. She looked delicate but exuded a kind of toughness. Stratton wondered what Lotto had said to her that had amused only him. He suspected it was something crudely sexual.
Stratton put his head back. London would by now know something had gone seriously wrong with the operation. Ramlal and Prabhu had hopefully escaped and informed them that Stratton and Hopper had looked for an escape option in a fishing village. They would assume a boat might have been involved in their escape. London would then have to examine the different scenarios. Stratton doubted anyone in MI6 would even consider they had been taken captive by Somali pirates. And if some bright spark did, it would hardly have been taken seriously. It was unusual for Somalis to operate so close to the Yemen mainland, but not unheard of. Yemeni fisherman had lost many of their boats to Somali raiding parties over the years. But even so, to suspect Stratton and Hopper had been victims of such an event was a stretch.
London would wait twenty-four hours after Stratton’s last communication before beginning an investigation. And then it would be little more than a discreet enquiry through established channels. The kidnapping had been a high-level task and not common knowledge beyond MI6 in London and their partners in the US – this was in general a joint interest programme, but the Brits headed up the Middle East side of the operation. The British Embassy in Yemen wouldn’t have known it was taking place for instance. But they would be alerted to the missing personnel and given the identities. The embassy would still not know what the missing personnel had been doing in Yemen. After several days of hearing nothing, investigators would be sent to the area where Stratton and Hopper had last been seen. They would find a way of including the Yemeni authorities in the search. A clever cover story would have to be created. And when that didn’t produce any results, MI6 might confront the Chinese Secret Service, since Prabhu and Ramlal would have informed them about the intrusion into the operation. A lot of suspicion would be directed towards the Chinese. That could get interesting in itself. The Chinese agent who Stratton had brought to the ground suggested that the British would soon know why the Chinese were interested in Sabarak. But that had probably been on the understanding that Stratton would get the Saudi back to where the British could interrogate him. If the Chinese suspected that hadn’t happened, they would go quiet.
Stratton wondered if London already had any clues as to why the Chinese would want Sabarak. The Chinese wouldn’t be able to shine any light on Stratton and Hopper’s disappearance anyway. The last they could possibly know of the British operatives was them riding out to sea in the boat. In the absence o
f any other explanation, London might well place a high priority on the suspicion that the Chinese were behind the disappearance of their people and the Saudi. The only other alternative would be that Stratton and the others had died at sea for whatever reason. Unlikely maybe but not impossible.
Stratton needed to let London know what had happened as soon as he could, not just to begin the process of his and Hopper’s repatriation. He had to prevent the wrong accusations flying in the wrong direction. That would waste time and draw attention from the important focus, which was Sabarak and the weapons.
If Stratton couldn’t get away himself, or get a message out of there by some other way, the first opportunity the Brits would have of discovering what had happened to them would be when the pirates eventually put out their identities and demanded a ransom payment.
Once that happened, MI6 would have to re-evaluate everything. It would be interesting to see how they would handle the ransom. Getting the men back would be a high priority because of the level of the task. They would want the men to be debriefed. They wouldn’t want anyone knowing about the snatch on the Saudi. They would have to explain it to the Americans. The SBS might be sent in to try a grab. Stratton guessed that would be the first plan on the board.
But that would all take time. And there was a significant obstacle that remained, one that could destroy all other plans and bring a sudden end to any hopes Stratton and Hopper might have of getting home.
Sabarak.
Stratton looked over at the man. He was resting his head against the wall and his eyes were shut like he was asleep.
A dark thought crept into Stratton’s head, and not for the first time in the last twenty-four hours.
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