by Wilbur Smith
‘As you know, my wife has suffered the murder and horrible mutilation of both her mother and her only daughter. Tariq has also lost his wife Daliyah and their son at the hands of Adam’s thugs. Adam has placed a price on the heads of my wife and myself and sworn an oath before Allah that he will have us killed, just as he killed the other innocent members of our families. We seek retribution for the dead, and we seek safety for ourselves and for all other law-abiding men and women who ply the oceans. We have been lulled into a false sense of security, believing that we were protected by distance from his little empire in Puntland, and protected also by the law enforcement of this land in which we live. Adam has shown us that he has the power to strike at us wherever we may be. He has left us no alternative but to kill him before he kills us.’ They all made sounds of agreement.
‘After much discussion it has been decided that we should not mount an expedition against Adam in his stronghold at the Oasis of the Miracle. We have tried that once already and we lost most of our good men, including Ronnie Wells. Tariq was lucky to survive the experience.’ Hector smiled at him. ‘How has your wound healed?’
‘Very pretty scar,’ Tariq said grimly. He no longer smiled readily.
‘If we go into Puntland there will be too many imponderables. We have to get Adam and his lieutenant Uthmann Waddah to come into the open. We have to set a baited trap for the two of them.’ Even Paddy who had sat in on the earlier discussions was intrigued by hearing it all set out in such orderly detail. He was nodding his agreement with the others around the table. ‘We have considered what form of bait Adam will not be able to resist. My wife has suggested that we use the Golden Goose.’ Dave and Tariq both looked mystified. Paddy spoke for them.
‘I think you have got Dave and Tariq flummoxed, Heck. I know what you’re talking about. Security in the Osaka shipyard is my responsibility, but you will have to explain it to them.’
Hector turned to Hazel. ‘The Goose is your baby. Do you want to tell us about it, please, Hazel.’
‘Okay, let me explain,’ she said eagerly. ‘It’s quite simple, really. Bannock Oil is in the process of building one of the largest and most valuable vessels ever to sail the seas. It is a supertanker for the transport of natural gas. It has already been launched and has been moved to Taiwan for the final fitting of its equipment. So far we have managed to keep the project under wraps, which is why even you are in the dark. The ship has been named the Golden Goose. She has an insurance value in excess of a billion dollars.’ Even Paddy looked deeply impressed. It was the first time he had been told the figures. ‘Now Hector will tell you the rest of our plans.’
‘Once the Golden Goose is ready for her maiden voyage we will arrange massive publicity, including coverage on Al Jazeera Arabic TV which must go straight to Adam. The first voyage of the tanker will be to France from the new gas fields in Abu Zara. The Golden Goose is far too large to negotiate the Suez Canal so it cannot take the route through the Gulf of Aden under Adam’s nose. However, we have already discussed Adam’s use of mother ships for his attack boats and search helicopters, so we know he has the capacity to operate his attack boats as far as twelve hundred nautical miles off the Great Horn of Africa. The route the Golden Goose must take to reach the Cape of Good Hope from the mouth of the Persian Gulf will bring her as close as three hundred nautical miles from his base at Gandanga Bay. We will make sure that Adam knows when and where the Golden Goose will sail past his stronghold. He will know the value of the ship, and who the owners are. The opportunity will be irresistible. He must strike, and we will be ready for him.’ They considered the enormity of the plot in silence. Then Tariq spoke softly.
‘Adam will not come. Men say that he has grown cautious with wealth and power. He will not place himself in danger. He is a cowardly swine who delights in the torture and killing of women and children, but he no longer takes any risks himself.’
‘You think that he will not attack the Golden Goose?’ Hazel asked.
‘No, he will not. Because he is a coward. Neither will Uthmann Waddah because as Hector knows well Uthmann is afraid of the sea. Adam will send his uncle Kamal Tippoo Tip, who is the commander of his attack flotilla. But Adam will not come himself to the seizing of the Golden Goose. He will remain safely at Gandanga Bay until they bring the prize to him. Only then will he go aboard to take possession of it.’ The men sat back in their chairs uneasily, and Paddy and David exchanged glances. Hazel went to the window and stood looking down at the park. There were children frolicking on the lawns watched over by their doting parents and a marching band practising on the playing field. It all looked so peaceful and commonplace; so different from the savage reality they had been discussing. Hazel felt the sorrow of her bereavement welling up inside her once again, but she forced it down and turned back to face the men at the table.
‘Very well. We must let Kamal capture the Golden Goose and take her into Gandanga Bay.’ They went silent and still, staring at her in blank astonishment. She began to smile, and suddenly Hector burst out laughing.
‘So! Hector’s warhorse, Lampos, becomes the Trojan Horse! You are going to send Adam a little bit more than just a billion-dollar ship and a million cubic metres of natural gas.’ At this Paddy slapped the table top and laughed out loud.
‘Lovely! Only you could have dreamed that up, Mrs Cross. You are going to have to watch this lady wife of yours, Hector. Duplicity thy name is woman!’
Then Dave Imbiss saw what was happening, and he laughed along with Paddy. ‘You are going to hide our men somewhere in the ship until Adam comes on board, then we all jump out shouting “Surprise! Surprise!”’ he chortled. ‘Once we have captured Adam we can launch a landing party. They will destroy all the pirate mother ships, the helicopters and the flotilla of attack boats. They will free all the captured foreign seamen from the stockades. We will put them on board their own ships, and we will cover them while they escape out to sea.’
But Tariq looked dubious.
‘We will need a hundred or more men to do all these things that you are planning. Is there space on your ship to hide so many?’
‘Tariq, this is probably the largest cargo ship ever built,’ Hector explained. ‘Wait until you see her! We could hide an army on board her.’
‘By God! That gives me an idea. We can arm her with a concealed battery of artillery, just like the old Q-ships of the Second World War.’ Paddy was exultant. ‘We can bombard the town and sink any other vessels that try to resist or run from us.’
‘No!’ Hazel said sharply. ‘No bombardment of the town. There are hundreds of women and children living there in makeshift houses. It would be a massacre. It would make us worse than Adam. However, I agree that we will have to send a landing party ashore to free the captive foreign seamen.’
‘How much water will the Golden Goose draw when she is fully loaded?’ Hector asked, and answered his own question. ‘Probably more than a hundred feet. The pirates will not be able to bring the Goose within a mile of the beach. We can’t send small boats in from that distance. They would be exposed to fire from the shore all the way in. It would be suicidal.’
‘If the ship is that big, we could conceal a couple of AAVs in her holds,’ David Imbiss said thoughtfully.
‘AAVs?’ Hazel asked. ‘What are they?’
‘Amphibious Assault Vehicles is the official designation. They are the new generation of the swimming tanks, like those that reinforced the Allied Forces when they went ashore on the Normandy beaches in 1944.’
‘Is it possible to launch them from a high-sided ship?’ Hazel persisted.
‘Absolutely. They can make a splash entry from a height of thirty feet,’ Dave assured her.
‘Even fully laden the freeboard of the Goose will be greater than that. And then how would we recover them again?’ Hazel wanted to know.
‘We will equip the ship with hydraulic cranes on travelling gantries that lie inconspicuously flat on the cargo deck until they are deployed out o
ver the ship’s side. The AAVs can leave the Goose and return to her by this arrangement,’ Hector said without looking up from the sketch of the idea he was drawing on his notepad.
‘Right on!’ Dave agreed. ‘You wouldn’t want to abandon the AAVs when we pull out of Gandanga Bay. They will cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars each.’
‘Describe one of these toys to me,’ Hazel said.
‘It looks very much like a conventional battle tank with tracks and a turret, except it has much taller sides. The type we need is the personnel carrier, which can carry twenty-five fully equipped infantrymen, plus the crew of three. Its turret is armed with ring-mounted .50-calibre heavy machine guns and a grenade launcher. Its armour is proof to rifle and heavy machine gunfire. On land it has a speed of twenty-five miles an hour and on the water it is capable of almost ten mph.’
‘Can you get a few of these machines for us, Dave?’ Hazel wondered.
‘It would be very difficult to get our hands on one straight off the factory floor. But I’m sure I could find a couple of them that have been in service for a few years, but which have been well maintained and are in good running order. South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and a number of other countries in the Far East all have them in use. I should be able to cut a deal with one of them.’
Hazel looked at Hector and Paddy. ‘How many do we need?’ she asked.
‘If we can achieve complete surprise, and get fifty men ashore, we can take and hold the town for at least a day until the enemy are able to regroup,’ Hector replied. ‘Two AAVs should do it.’
‘That leaves no latitude for mistake or accident,’ Paddy demurred. ‘Three vehicles and seventy-five men would cover all possible eventualities.’
‘Paddy often pisses iced water.’ Hector apologized for him.
‘It’s chilly on the willy, but at least it keeps me alive.’ Paddy grinned back at him.
‘Dave, please find Paddy his third AAV. We want him to go on staying alive.’ Hazel laughed with them.
I am so proud of her strength and resilience, Hector thought with delight, she has come alive again. She can laugh. The hurting has been thrust aside to make way for constructive thought. It will never go away completely, but now she has it under control. If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same; old Rudyard could have written that with her in mind.
Then he grew serious again. ‘I think we have reached the stage when we need to call in a team of the Chinese design engineers from the Taipei shipyard, so we can reconfigure the Goose’s hull,’ he said.
The three engineers arrived five days later bringing with them all the working drawings of the Golden Goose in a number of large black plastic tubes. Once the client’s requirements were made clear to them, Hazel gave them a suite of rooms on the floor below hers and they set to work on the drawings with enormous single-minded energy. On the tenth day they re-emerged to present their new designs for consideration.
The empty gas cargo tank nearest to the high superstructure in the ship’s stern was as cavernous as a large aircraft hangar. The designers had partitioned this off from the rest of the ship to form a covert area. Then they had divided this space laterally into three separate levels. The uppermost level was allocated to the storage of military supplies including munitions and firearms that would need to be unloaded swiftly. They had included a single smaller cabin, twelve feet square, in which were two narrow bunks one above the other, and a toilet and shower cabinet beyond a connecting doorway. This cabin was for use by Hazel and Hector. Next door to this was the open parking space for the three AAVs. Directly overhead the shuttered roof opened to allow the vehicles to be lifted to the deck above on a hydraulic hoist. This hoist was mounted on a travelling gantry which could carry the AAVs one at a time to the ship’s side and lower them to the surface of the sea. Within fifteen minutes of opening the overhead hatch all three AAVs could be on the water and heading for the beach at ten miles an hour, carrying seventy-five heavily armed men to the attack.
The second level of the covert area of the hull comprised the men’s living and sleeping quarters, the mess and the ablutions, the toilets and the air-conditioning units to maintain a constant supply of fresh air to all areas. Also on this level was the assembly area from which the men would disperse to their action stations. The bottom level would house the kitchens and refrigerated storage for foodstuffs. But most of the space on this level was taken up by the operational situation room and the electronic equipment. In every part of the ship above them concealed CCTV cameras and listening microphones would be installed. There was not a corner of the entire ship, from the bridge to the bilges, which could not be monitored from this position. One of the cameras would be sited on the stubby radio mast on top of the bridge. It would afford the men in the situation room far below a panoramic view of the ship’s surroundings and her horizon.
Radiating out from the assembly area on the second tier was a network of hidden tunnels and ladders. They would be cunningly built in behind the bulkheads. By means of these tunnels combat-ready men could swiftly reach every part of the vessel without exposing themselves until they burst out of the disguised hatches to take the unsuspecting enemy off guard.
The five of them – Hazel, Paddy, Dave Imbiss, Tariq and Hector – sat at the long boardroom table facing the three Chinese and debated the merits and demerits of the planned layout. One of the considerations that received their full attention was the soundproofing of the clandestine spaces. One hundred and twenty-five men living in confined metal compartments would make some noise even simply moving around. These sounds could alert the enemy to their presence on board. Ceilings, bulkheads and particularly the decks would have to be lined with thick tiles of sound-proofed polyurethane. Every moving part within the covert area, the doors of the microwave ovens and the refrigerators, even the water taps and the flushing mechanisms of the toilets, had to be completely muffled. The men would eat off paper plates and use plastic mugs and utensils, so there would be no clink of metal on china. They would wear only soft-soled boots. When the order for ‘Silent Ship’ was given they would speak only when absolutely necessary, and then in whispers. The electronic equipment would all be muted, and the operators would wear headphones to listen in on all sounds in the other parts of the ship. The gas circulation pumps in the neighbouring cargo tanks would be automatically set to operate in continuous relays, so that they would drown out any small noises from the covert area amidships. Once all had been done to assure quiet operation, they turned their attention to the fitting of armaments and observation equipment. The CCTV cameras had to be completely disguised or concealed, but placed where they were able to cover every part of the ship. The same considerations applied to positioning the listening microphones.
The ship’s bridge was at the very top of the stern tower almost one hundred feet above the cargo deck. It gave the captain, navigation officer and the helmsman a clear 360-degrees view all round. On the tier below the bridge was the captain’s accommodation, the communications and navigation room and the luxurious owner’s suite. On the tier immediately below that were the cabins of the junior officers and ship’s engineers, the ship’s kitchen and mess. The designers proposed building an additional tier on top of the existing bridge and converting this upper level to become the main bridge, leaving the deck below empty. This empty space was to be sealed off entirely. The only access to it would be via the ladder tunnel leading up from the covert area below the main deck. Behind the blank steel walls of this upper deck would be mounted a pair of MK44 Bushmaster 40mm automatic light cannon capable of a rate of fire of 200 rounds per minute. At the throw of a handle the concealing panels dropped down and the cannons were unmasked and ready to go into immediate action, bringing their devastating fire power to bear on any hostile target.
Once all the plans were approved the team dispersed. Dave Imbiss flew out to South Korea where within three weeks he had procured as ex-army stock three AAVs and the pa
ir of Bushmaster cannon. All this equipment was already en route to the port of Chi-Lun in Taiwan where it would be fitted into the covert areas of the Golden Goose. During the voyage from Taiwan to the Abu Zara gas field the drivers and crews selected to operate the AAV would be trained in the operation of these cumbersome-looking but extraordinarily effective machines. On the same leg of the voyage the gunners would be trained to serve the Bushmaster cannon.
All these men were to be selected from the force of 125 male personnel and one woman that Paddy was assembling at Sidi el Razig. Seventy of the men were flown in from the Cross Bow operations around the globe. The remainder were chosen from Paddy’s extensive list of mercenaries and freelance guns-for-hire who were ready to accept even the most hazardous assignments, for the thrills and for the money. The single female member of the force was also carefully selected not only for her martial arts skills but more importantly for her remarkable resemblance to Hazel. She was a Russian girl who had been trained by Spetsnaz. Her name was Anastasia Voronova, but she answered to Nastiya.
Tariq flew to Mecca and from there joined a party of Muslim pilgrims returning to Puntland. He crossed with them on the ferry to Mogadishu and then travelled by bus to Gandanga Bay. Once he was there he blended in with the local population, disguised as an itinerant job seeker. He lived rough amongst the other tramps and beggars. His instructions from Hector were to write nothing down, but swiftly he obtained a mental map of the layout of the town and the bay. He studied the exact position where each of the pirated vessels was anchored. He located the stockades in which the captured seamen were being held. He observed and mentally logged the movements of Adam’s mother ships and attack boats. One of his most important duties on this assignment was to observe the movements of his arch-enemy Uthmann Waddah. It was vital for Hector to know if Uthmann was ever aboard any of the pirate mother ships or attack boats when they left the Bay or returned from one of their raids. Hector’s plans hinged on this information, because Uthmann would be the only one among the pirates able to recognize Hazel if he ever saw her again. However, Hector was almost certain that Uthmann would never go to sea. The simple reason for this was, as Tariq had pointed out earlier, that Uthmann Waddah, the invincible warrior, was pathologically terrified of open water. A chronic sufferer from sea sickness, a few hours on the ocean waves would reduce him to a prostrated moaning and vomiting wreck, unable to lift his head let alone stand upright on his two feet. Seawater was his one weakness.