by Wilbur Smith
The Mother Goose met her chicks at the assigned rendezvous. The crew’s training proved to be worthwhile because both submersibles were recovered, despite the waves that were already being whipped up by the wind. Radio communication with the subs had been impossible when they were underwater and Congo was desperate to know if they’d been able to carry out their mission as planned.
“Take it easy, bro,” Torres told him. “The timer’s set, the package is in position A and the target ain’t going nowhere. You wanna know if there could be any kinda snafu? Yeah, sure there could. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong and all that shit. But we checked everything, then we rechecked it, then we checked again, just for the hell of it. And it was all good.”
Babacar Matemba selected the fifteen men who had performed best in training for the attack on Bannock Oil and brought them to a landing strip just a few kilometers from the Cabindan coast to await their pick-up by the Angolan helicopters. Not wanting to find himself trapped on a rig if things went wrong, he delegated command of the raid to one of his most ambitious subordinates, a tough, merciless killer called Théophile Bembo who had spent fifteen of his twenty-two years on the planet carrying a gun in the service of one warlord or another before settling on permanent employment with Matemba’s private army. Té-Bo, as he preferred to be called, thinking the name was “beacoup plus gangsta” than the one he’d been christened with, was built like an ebony Adonis, with the heavily muscled physique characteristic of West African men. When not under fire he went everywhere with a pair of bright red Beats by Dr. Dre headphones clamped to his shaven head, nodding to the pounding rap rhythms slamming through his brain and stopping from time to time to bust some moves in front of his admiring comrades and any good-looking women who might be passing.
He was still wearing the phones and listening to Kanye West as he led seven of his men on to one of the Hinds, both of which had now been topped up so that their fuel tanks were filled to overflowing. Neither Matemba nor any of his men were remotely bothered by Té-Bo’s apparently lackadaisical attitude. They knew that when the bullets started flying, the Beats would come off, Té-Bo would snap into warrior mode and their enemies would fly before him like seed husks in the wind.
On the Glenallen, Hector Cross finished the bedtime story he read every evening, via Skype, to his beloved Catherine Cayla, then headed up to the bridge, bracing himself as he went against the movement of the boat. The sea was becoming distinctly rough and for the first time since they’d arrived in African waters the wind and rain were making their presence felt.
“Anything I need to know about?” Cross asked the skipper, a Swede called Magnus Bromberg who’d learned his trade in the chilly waters of the Baltic and the North Sea.
“A bit of weather coming through,” he said casually. “It’ll blow a gale, force eight, gusting nine maybe, enough to make some of your boys seasick, I think. It’s OK, my ship and my crew survived the storm of the century unscathed, so this is nothing to worry about, I can promise you that.”
“I’ll be sure to issue Kwells for anyone who needs them,” Cross said drily. “Oh, and speaking of violent sickness, what’s the cook knocking up for dinner tonight?”
“Veal Milanese with pasta and tomato sauce,” Bromberg replied, smacking his lips. “One of his best dishes, I would say, but it could get a little messy on a night like this. Hard to keep the plate still!”
Cross laughed, thinking of baby Catherine and her astonishing ability to cover every surface for miles around in bits of flying pasta and wondering if he and his men were going to be any tidier tonight. He still had a few duties to complete before he could relax over an evening meal. Though forbidden from conducting exercises on the Bannock A or the rig, he had at least obtained permission to have one of his men, unarmed, on watch at all times, both to report any suspicious circumstance and to remain with the vessels’ crews if anything did go wrong.
All the vessels on the Magna Grande field could communicate via conventional ship-to-ship radio and for most practical purposes—such as Cross’s conversation with Cy Stamford, for example—this was still the simplest way to talk. In addition, however, the oil platform, the FPSO and the tug were all equipped with VSATs, or very small aperture terminals, which were in turn linked to overhead satellites. This meant that not only did they all have high-speed onboard Wi-Fi, but they could all communicate online, in real time with one another, and Bannock HQ in Houston.
Cross had taken advantage of this by giving miniature earpieces to his sentries on duty on the platform or the Bannock A through which they could talk to the command post on the Glenallen and receive messages in return. His reasoning was very simple. The only time the sentries would really matter would be if any or all of the vessels were attacked. And if that happened, then the ability to communicate without the enemy’s knowledge would be essential.
As a matter of operational protocol, all communications with the sentries were handled via their earpieces, which was how Cross, who could receive their messages via his phone, now checked with the men at both locations. He was told by both not to worry. There were no signs of trouble anywhere. “You’d have to be a bloody stupid terrorist to set to sea in this,” the man on the Magna Grande platform, an ex-Greenjacket called Frank Sharman, joked.
“Well, a lot of terrorists are bloody stupid, that’s why they’re terrorists,” Cross pointed out.
“Yeah, true, boss, but there are limits!”
“Fair enough,” Cross said, but he couldn’t help but feel that Sharman had a point. With any luck they’d have nothing worse to worry about than keeping their veal Milanese on their plates. But in Cross’s experience, Lady Luck had a way of slapping a man in the face if he ever took her for granted. And then there was the Beast to think about. He could practically feel its fetid breath on the back of his neck. It was close now, he knew it, and it was getting ready to strike.
The storm was coming in, whipping the rain against the helicopters flying just a few meters above the foaming ocean, daring the waves to hit them. They’d skimmed between passing ships and oil rigs, using them as cover, and maintained strict radio silence for the entire flight. Perhaps that’s why the radar operators on duty aboard the Bannock Oil installations didn’t detect the approaching aircraft until they were barely twenty kilometers away from their target. Only then was Cy Stamford informed that there were two unidentified aircraft, almost certainly helicopters, approaching on a bearing that would take them directly over his ship and the rig.
“Find out who they are and what the hell they think they’re doing,” he ordered.
Seconds later, the pilot of the lead Hind was telling Té-Bo: “One of the Bannock ships wants to know our identity and what we are doing in their area. What do you want me to say?”
He received no reply. Té-Bo had eschewed the helicopter’s earphones for his trusty Beats and was still getting in the groove. It took frantic gestures by the Hind’s crew and a shake of the shoulder from one of his men before he was alerted to the need to respond. He swapped cans, listened as the pilot repeated his question and then just said, “Nothing.”
Stamford ordered the request to be resent and the pilot passed it on to Té-Bo for a third time. This time the young guerrilla leader said, “Tell him that you are National Air Force, because that is the truth. Then say that you are on a regular training flight.”
“At night? In a storm?” the pilot protested. “That is not regular! No one will believe it.”
Té-Bo pursed his lips, almost pouting as he thought. “Then say that you are training to carry out a rescue mission in bad weather, at night, because emergencies are more likely to happen on a stormy night—no?—than on a fine day when the sea is calm.”
The pilot did as he was told and was happy to be able to tell this moody brat who for some reason seemed to be in charge that the men on the Bannock A seemed satisfied by his story.
Cy Stamford, however, was far from convinced. He called Hector Cross. “Yo
u aware that there are two helicopters claiming to be from the Angolan National Air Force heading in our direction?”
“Yes, Bromberg’s just told me about them. I’m up on the bridge now, keeping tabs on the situation.”
“They say they’re practising their emergency response in extreme weather conditions. I guess it’s possible, but we weren’t informed in advance and they didn’t exactly volunteer the information willingly.”
“Sounds dodgy to me. I’m putting both my patrol boats in the water. If they do turn out to be hostiles, we’ll be waiting for them.”
“OK,” Stamford replied. “But here’s some advice from an old sea dog: think real hard about what you’re going to do next.”
As Cross put his handset down he was doing precisely what Stamford had just told him: thinking. And, as the veteran captain had implied, he wasn’t finding it easy to come to a satisfactory conclusion. His problem was not that he lacked the means to defend the rig or the Bannock A. His two patrol boats were both armed to the full military specification. At the bow, each carried a Browning M2 .50-caliber heavy machine gun, mounted on a retractable Kongsberg Sea Protector weapons platform and firing control system, complete with smoke-grenade launchers. Aft of the cockpit, they each had a Thales Lightweight Multi-Role Missile launcher, capable of attacking both ships and aircraft. So once they put to sea they’d be capable of destroying the two helicopters at will. The question was: What would they be destroying?
Suppose the two birds really were conducting a training exercise for the Angolan Air Force, and, what was more, an exercise preparing them to come to the aid of offshore oil projects? If an oil company boat blew them and their crews out of the air, the political consequences would be catastrophic and no one would blame the Angolan government if it demanded massive compensation and withdrew Bannock Oil’s right to drill in its waters. Even if the men on board were terrorists, how would he ever be able to prove it once they and their helicopters were sitting on the seabed, half a mile beneath the ocean waves?
So he couldn’t fire until he had absolute proof that the helicopters were hostile. But the only way he’d get that proof was if they actually mounted an attack on the rig, and at that point he couldn’t order sea-to-air rockets to be fired at them for the simple reason that only a madman or a blithering idiot causes a massive explosion directly above an oil rig. That meant that Cross’s only course of action was the one he most despised: do nothing. It wasn’t even worth launching the patrol boats just yet because if there really were Cabindan terrorists about to mount a raid on the rig, there was no point showing them precisely what he had to fight back with.
In fact the less they could see, the better. Cross turned to Bromberg: “I want to watch those helicopters, but I don’t want them watching us, so we need to go dark. No external lights. All windows covered. No lights on up here, either, if you can still handle the ship that way.”
“All the controls are illuminated. If I can keep them lit, we can do it,” Bromberg replied.
“Then do it.”
“What about the men preparing your patrol boats for launching?”
“They can stand down for the time being. But they’ve got to be ready to move fast when I tell them.”
A lesser man might have protested, or asked for clarification, or questioned Cross’s authority. Bromberg just took in what had been said, gave the information a moment’s thought, nodded and said, “You’ve got it.”
“One more thing,” Cross added. “I need to get a sight of the helicopters as soon as possible, but as long as the rig’s between us and them, with all its lights blazing, that’s impossible. Can you get me a better angle?”
“Sure.”
Bromberg gave his orders and the Glenallen picked up speed, taking up a new course that sent it to the east of the rig, moving with the wind. Cross went outside, on to one of the small, open weather decks that flanked the bridge, ignoring the driving rain and bracing himself against the bucking and diving of the tug as she rode the increasingly high, foam-capped waves. He was carrying a thermal imager and as he put it to his eye he turned to the northeast, from where the helicopters were coming. Slowly, painstakingly, he tracked from side to side, slightly shifting the vertical angle of his imager to track at different heights, and avoiding the dazzling blaze of light that surrounded the rig as he searched for the faint heat-glow that would signal the presence of an aircraft. His hair was plastered to his head, his clothes were soaked through and he had to stop every few seconds to shake away the rainwater puddling on the thermal-imaging unit. One minute became two.
They had to be really close now. Why couldn’t he see them?
And then as he panned once more across the sky, there they were, coming in at such a low altitude that they might almost be stones skimming across the water. They were close enough that Cross could get a clear picture of the shape of their fuselages. To anyone with any military experience it was unmistakable.
“They’re Hinds,” Cross said to himself.
He’d heard of one Hind that was owned and operated by a South African mercenary, but if they were flying in a pair they had to be military. Angola had its own take on the Communist hammer and sickle on its national flag and had always bought the bulk of its military kit from the Russians. So the evidence was overwhelming: these had to be Angolan Air Force helicopters, and that meant it really might be a training exercise after all.
But what if it wasn’t? Cross spoke to Frank Sharman on the rig: “Two helicopters, Hinds by the looks of them, are approaching your location. Keep an eye on them. They claim to be on a training mission. If they are, fine. If they show any sign of hostile action, keep me informed of exactly what’s happening and await further instructions.”
“You got it, boss.”
Cross could feel a tightening in his guts and around his throat. It was the first sign of the tension that gripped him in the moments before combat and he knew precisely what it meant. As much as his mind had come up with a perfectly good, rational argument for accepting these helicopters at face value, his instincts had marked them down as threats. He raised his eyes briefly to the waterlogged heavens and prayed that his instincts were wrong, for once.
Té-Bo’s boyhood hero was Usain Bolt, and as he grew older one of the things he came to admire most about his idol was the way that Bolt could be fooling around on the track just seconds before the start of an Olympic final, yet when the starting gun fired, he was right into the zone, focused on nothing but his race, instantly ready to run faster than any other human who had ever lived. In the same way, Té-Bo prided himself that he could snap into his own zone, as a warrior and leader, at a moment’s notice. So it was that he was now firing orders at the men in his lead helicopter and the one behind, making sure that everyone knew their assignments, and that all of them were as ready as he to wreak havoc on their target and its inhabitants.
One of the Hind’s crew pulled open the fuselage door, letting in a blast of rain-soaked air. Many of the men shouted at the sudden drenching, but Té-Bo barely noticed it. So far as he was concerned, the bad weather was his friend, for looking down at the platform he could see that its helipad was deserted. No one would be expecting an incoming flight on a night like this. Now, as its companion took up a station immediately over the derrick, the first Hind came in to land. The second its wheels hit the pad, Té-Bo was jumping down on to the surface of the platform, waving his men down after him and dispatching them to their assigned destinations around the rig. The helicopter rose back up into the air, adding its downdraught to the gale-force wind, and the second bird came in to land.
There was no response from the crew of the platform. How could there be? They had no weapons, so all that they could do was to call for help and then try to find somewhere to hide away until help arrived. But there would be no one to answer their call. Té-Bo’s leader, Babacar Matemba, and the other man—the one who called himself Tumbo—had assured him that the Angolan Navy was a joke and there were no
Americans for 1,000 kilometers in any direction. They told Té-Bo not to worry. He would seize the Magna Grande rig, do what had to be done and be back on the helicopters, flying back to the biggest pay check he had ever received—enough to buy the love of any girl in the Congo—long before anyone was close enough to stop them. Matemba had always told Té-Bo the truth, so why should he disbelieve him now?
The Hinds had been flying so low that for a short time they were actually out of sight behind the oil platform, but the moment the first of them gained altitude, came into view and darted toward the helipad, Cross knew that while the aircraft belonged to the Angolan Air Force—he was certain of that—they were not on any kind of training mission. Seconds later the lead aircraft touched down on the helipad and men were dropping down from it on to the platform.
At this distance, in atrocious visibility, the new arrivals were little more than blurred outlines. But Cross could see at once that they knew their business. There was no panic, no rushing around, none of the “spray and pray” that he had seen among some Middle Eastern and North African insurgents, who liked to blaze away just for show without the slightest idea of how to hit a target. Instead they moved off the helipad swiftly and with purpose and the reason for their discipline wasn’t hard to find. The first man off the Hind had taken up a stationary position on the platform, guiding everyone else toward their individual targets and remaining where he was as his helicopter took off, the other replaced it and another squad disembarked.
Cross heard Sharman’s voice coming through his iPhone’s earpieces. “First off, boss, the helicopters are definitely Air Force, or ex-Air Force. Someone’s tried to paint over the markings, but they missed.”