Pirate

by Duncan Falconer

  Downs started laughing and Stratton joined him.

  ‘Is it my imagination or do you suddenly look more chilled?’ Stratton shrugged and looked out to sea.

  ‘What happened back there in the town when I left you?’ Downs said.

  ‘I told you. I tied up a few loose ends.’

  Downs knew he wasn’t going to get anything more out of his friend and he shut up and looked out to sea alongside him.

  By late morning the last of the Somali pirates had been cleared from the ships and the crews allowed back on to their respective vessels. Two of HMS Ocean’s launches had arrived to provide food and water and medical aid for the lads and the freed crews. All of the captured Somali pirates were stripped of their weapons and allowed to leave. The British were keen to avoid the complex legal hassle and publicity that would accompany the abduction of a Somali citizen from his own country even though they had proof of the crimes. A couple of hours after that the anchors were weighed and the ships turned out to sea.

  The two glider crews that had gone down before the bomb run turned up at the beach as the sun was getting higher. Downs knew they were inbound because their trackers were still working perfectly and HMS Ocean could monitor their progress. Both pilots’ radios had broken in the crash and their move to the beach rendezvous point had been slow because one of them suffered a broken leg. His partner had carried him over nine kilometres.

  They couldn’t resolve one minor issue. Shortly before the bulkers’ anchors were retrieved, one of the SBS lads looking out through a porthole high in the superstructure of the East Asian carrier saw a figure climb through a stern anchor chain hole and dart along the deck and out of sight. Whoever it was had obviously swum to the anchor chain and climbed it to the top.

  The SBS lad immediately assumed that a Somali was attempting to stow away. He organised a search but they could find no one. The operative who reported the sighting said he didn’t think it was a local. In fact, unless his eyes had deceived him, the person’s face hadn’t been brown and they had looked very much like a woman.

  The squadron arrived back in Poole within three days and after a short debrief they were disbanded to go on leave.

  Matt didn’t apologise to Stratton but neither did he try to denigrate him further. His final word on the subject, to anyone who cared to listen, was that Stratton had still tried to kill Hopper but the fact was he had missed. That was a dig Stratton could live with. Most of the service members who had been on the fence about Stratton’s choice admitted they would rather have been shot through the head by him than have it cut off by those bastards.

  Stratton left for his home in Lytchett Matravers to be alone and unwind, but within hours Downs called him to report that he knew of a pub in the Wareham Forest with a particularly tenacious barkeep. They spent an evening putting the world to rights, mostly Downs naturally, and ended with a few choice Irish Republican rebel songs that both men knew well. Unfortunately for posterity, they were so trashed by the end of it that the details of the conversation were forgotten and thus those invaluable global solutions were lost to mankind for ever.

  A week later a service was held for Hopper, and Stratton met his wife Helen and their two children. Downs urged Stratton not to mention his guilt about leaving Hopper in the prison while he went alone to the ship, not that Stratton had any intention of doing so. Downs felt that the subject belonged to the finer debate of strategy and should be left to those who dealt in that trade. Helen hugged Stratton and thanked him for being her husband’s friend. Stratton said he was sorry but didn’t explain what he really meant by that. And she didn’t read anything else into it.

  Epilogue

  Dinaal Yusef and the six members of his team drove in a van along a deserted country lane, its full-beam headlights cutting into the night. The Colombian driver turned the van off the stone-crushed road into a narrower lane and immediately came to a halt beneath a stand of mature trees. Two men jumped out and ran off the road into the bushes as lookouts.

  The headlights of the van went out and the Colombian switched off the engine. A heavy silence descended.

  Dinaal climbed out of the front passenger seat on to the hard ground and looked in every direction across flat, agricultural country. He saw the handful of small farmhouses spread about in the distance. Some of them had lights on inside.

  He looked at the night sky. It had been raining but the clouds had moved on and the stars now shone brightly.

  He went to the back of the van and opened the doors. The two Saudis and the Indonesian climbed out carrying a long green wooden box between them. It had Chinese characters stamped down its sides.

  Dinaal led the way across the wider track to a fence. One of the Saudis hurried ahead and climbed over to receive an end of the box. The team made its way through the stile and carried on down the side of a freshly ploughed, gently sloping field to the bottom, eighty metres or so from the track. They could see a large patch of marshy water beyond the scrub that grew along the bottom of the field.

  Dinaal’s men placed the box on the soft, damp soil and opened it. They could all see the Chinese HN ground-to-air missile within.

  Dinaal turned to look skywards, past a vast array of bright lights aimed upwards on the ends of long poles. Beyond them, the other side of a tall mesh fence, he could see the beginning of a long, broad runway. Lights spaced out on either side of it continued into the distance for ever, it seemed.

  A bright haze on the far side of the great expanse of flat ground surrounded a collection of buildings, the offices, arrival and departure terminals of Bogota International Airport.

  Dinaal turned his back to the runway and looked skywards again. In the distance, among the millions of stars, he saw another white light brighter than the others. It was coming on fast.

  ‘Quickly,’ he said.

  His men had become a slick, well-trained crew who had carried out this procedure twice without live ammunition since the first rehearsal two months before. But this time it would be very different. This time it would be for real. Each of the men could feel a palpable tension among the group.

  The Saudi weapon preparer lifted the rocket from the box. He handed it to the Indonesian. The Indonesian hoisted it on to his shoulder and positioned it comfortably, as he had done a dozen or so times back in their basement HQ since the weapon had arrived a few days before. His number two gripped him around the body to steady him and he aimed the pointed nose of the missile into the air in the direction of the runway.

  Dinaal watched the progress of the aircraft, his back to his men. The plane had to be less than a minute away. He felt nervous but at the same time relieved that they were finally going into action. There had been times when he felt like it would never happen. It was only when the missile, disguised as farming machinery, finally arrived by truck, having been collected from the sea port of Cartagena, that he realised the operation would go ahead. This was it. His moment of glory. He had waited years for such an opportunity to prove himself. Each phase of the long, meticulous plan had finally come together. He felt masterful.

  The engines of the A340 Airbus grew louder as it approached. It quickly took shape, its bulbous body outlined by its navigation lights like a constellation drawing.

  The firing team could hear the craft approaching behind them and composed themselves as they maintained their aim. The Indonesian knew that in just a few more seconds he would release the rocket into the cold night air and its sophisticated electronic sensors would detect the heat pouring from the back of the airliner’s engines and redirect the missile towards one of them. The missile would probably impact on the exhaust. Then it would detonate. The explosion would rip into the fuel tanks inside the wing and tear it apart. The huge jet would twist on to its side as its wing fell away and then it would crash down on to the runway, where it would break up into thousands of flaming pieces. Fire would engulf everything. Everyone on board would die.

  Dinaal Yusef could see it all before it happened.
It was going to be truly glorious.

  Three figures in black stepped from the bushes that led down to the marsh. Each carried a silenced sub-machine gun. Dinaal caught their movement out of the corner of his eye. He saw their semi-crouched stances, the weapons in their hands, and for the fraction of a second of life he had left he knew he had failed.

  Several brass-coated rounds slapped into his head and the life went out of him before he struck the ground. As the massive aircraft screamed overhead, the operatives put a dozen rounds each into the two Saudis, the Colombian and the Indonesian, the automatic weapons spitting death, the clicking of the mechanisms inaudible. The ground-to-air missile hit the soggy ground with a muffled clatter, swallowed up by the roar of the aircraft passing overhead.

  The three assassins quickly moved forward to check the jihadists were dead. One of the operatives wore a recording device strapped to his head and ensured that he got everything.

  They dragged the bodies by their feet through the bushes and into the marsh, ensuring each of them was fully under the water.

  They returned to pick up the rocket launcher, place it inside its box, close the lid and secure it.

  ‘Is that everything?’ the team leader asked in an east London accent.

  ‘All good,’ the recorder said in a Lancashire brogue.

  ‘Let’s go,’ the leader said, and they set off up the side of the field to the fence by the lane. They climbed over with the box and headed along the narrow track past Dinaal’s van and into a field, which they trudged across. Past the point where they had shot and hidden the two lookouts.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ the recorder said, stopping to take the device from his head to inspect it. The leader and the other operative, who were carrying the box, slowed as they looked back at their colleague.

  ‘What is it?’ the leader asked, coming to a stop.

  ‘I’m not sure I had it turned on.’

  ‘You what? You were supposed to make sure it worked before we went on the ground.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘When’s the last time you checked it?’

  ‘I checked it in Hereford.’

  ‘Hereford?’ exclaimed the leader.

  ‘I mean, I did a diagnostics check in Hereford before I left and I checked it here in the embassy this afternoon.’ He fiddled with the device.

  ‘We can’t go back and do it again,’ the other operative said in a Welsh accent.

  The team leader glanced at the Welshman with an irritated frown.

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ the recorder decided, walking on. ‘I thought it was off but it wasn’t. We’re good.’

  The others set off after him.

  ‘You positive?’ the leader asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  The leader gave him a sideward look. ‘How long you been in the Regiment?’

  ‘Three years. Why?’

  ‘You were RAF before you did selection, weren’t you?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ the recorder asked defensively.

  ‘Everything. Come on. I want to be home before the pubs shut tomorrow.’

  The three men trudged off into the night towards a waiting van.