Those in Peril

by Wilbur Smith

  Nastiya jack-knifed her body again but this time each of her legs hooked around the necks of the two men holding her shoulders down. Using her own momentum and the strength of those long athletic legs she swung forward again and hurled the men across the cabin as though they were stones from a catapult. They too crashed into the bulkhead. One of them went into it head-first and the front of his skull was stoved in. The other managed to throw up one arm to protect his face, but his elbow bore the brunt of the impact and the joint splintered. He rolled on the deck whimpering, and calling on his God for mercy.

  Nastiya jack-knifed yet again and flipped forward onto her feet in perfect balance. She stooped over the body of the dead man and still with her wrists tied together she drew the dagger from the belt of the sprawling corpse and whirled around to face the charge of the other guards. She slashed the first of them across the belly and when he doubled over to try and prevent his innards bulging out of the long wound, she used the silver and rhinoceros-horn hilt of the dagger like a hammer into the base of his skull. He was dead before he sprawled on the deck. One of the other guards had come up behind her, urged on by Kamal’s roars of rage. Nastiya did not turn to face him, but she shot out a backward mule kick that caught him under the chin and snapped his head back so violently that the vertebrae in his neck were crushed and he flopped down onto the deck like a discarded shirt. His comrades jammed in the doorway in their eagerness to escape from the suite.

  With the dagger still clutched in her tied hands, Nastiya leapt over the first corpse and went for Kamal. He saw her coming and he sprang out of the chair, turned around and ran. He was the last man through the door. As he reached it Nastiya stabbed the point of the dagger through his tight jump-suit pants into his buttocks. With another howl of pain and rage he hurled himself through the open doorway and one of his men slammed the door shut behind him. Nastiya slid the lock on the door across, then came back into the salon, stepping daintily over the corpses, and perched on the edge of the table. She wedged the dagger between her knees, slipped the point of the blade under the cable tie and with one quick upward jerk of her bound wrists cut through the tough nylon. When her bonds fell away she massaged the welts around her wrists and then stood up and came towards where she knew the camera was placed. She stood before it stark naked and unashamed and she looked up at the watchers in the situation room in the depths of the ship. Her expression was calm and unfathomable. Then she drooped one eyelid in a conspiratorial wink before she smiled. The smile was angelic and serene as though she were totally uninvolved with the dead men scattered around the cabin deck like cuttings from a flowerbed made by a demented gardener.

  Through all this the watchers in the situation room sat in astounded silence. At last Hazel found her voice.

  ‘What is she doing now?’ she asked as Nastiya turned her attention to the air-conditioning control panel on the bulkhead beside the door.

  ‘She’s turning down the temperature as far as it will go,’ Paddy explained.

  ‘Why would she do that?’ Hazel was puzzled.

  ‘She is very fastidious,’ Paddy said in tones of high approbation. ‘I expect she doesn’t want the corpses to start stinking, not if she has to share the suite with them.’

  ‘And I was fretting myself into a nervous breakdown over her safety!’ Hazel laughed, almost hysterical with relief. ‘She is unique!’

  ‘Isn’t she just perfect,’ Paddy agreed. ‘I was hesitating, but after that little performance I am seriously going to ask her to be my wife.’

  Nastiya turned away from the air-conditioning controls and sauntered through to the bedroom of the suite, her buttocks oscillating like a pair of silk bags full of live serpents.

  ‘God! She is just so cute,’ Dave Imbiss said in tones of near-religious awe.

  ‘Much too cute for you, my lad,’ Paddy asserted. ‘In future when you look at her, kindly keep your eyes firmly closed.’

  As Nastiya entered the bedroom the next camera picked up her image again. She locked the door behind her and went to the vanity. She seated herself in front of the mirror and with one of Hazel’s brushes she rearranged the hair style that Kamal had disturbed. When she was satisfied with her hair she powdered over her facial bruises, and helped herself to Hazel’s Chanel lipstick and perfume. She was playing up to her hidden audience, fully aware that all their eyes were upon her. She stood up and went through into the walk-in wardrobe at the far end of the cabin. Unhurriedly she browsed through the trays of Hazel’s underwear, and at last decided on a matching set of Janet Reger panties and bra in oyster silk and Venetian lace. She held the panties across her lower body and looked up at the camera with her golden head cocked on one side, obviously seeking approval of her choice. They could not break silence to applaud her, but Dave put two fingers in his mouth and gave an almost inaudible wolf whistle.

  ‘Perfect! I couldn’t have made a better choice myself,’ Hazel murmured softly. Almost as though she were able to hear them, Nastiya smiled again.

  One of the units in the electronic navigation array on top of the mast above the Golden Goose’s bridge contained a link to the situation room in the covert area. The operator in the bowels of the ship was able to monitor the radar and Global Positioning System. In the situation room they were as well advised of the ship’s progress as were the men on the bridge.

  An air of tension pervaded the entire covert area. The men spoke hardly at all and when they did it was in stage whispers. Mostly they passed the time checking and preparing their equipment: honing the edges on their trench knives, unloading the ammunition clips then polishing and lubricating each separate round to feed smoothly into the breach, cleaning the rifle bores until they gleamed and adjusting the trigger release until it was sweet and light as a maiden’s sigh. Hector and his officers maintained their rapt attention in the situation room, monitoring the navigation displays and the CCTV screens.

  Vincent Woodward was still locked in one of the smaller cabins on the same level as the owner’s suite. His wrists were pinioned with cable ties and two heavily armed guards sat on the narrow bunk and covered him with their AK-47s. Another three guards were posted outside the cabin door. Twice during the day Kamal came down from the bridge to vent his choler on Vincent. He started by spitting on him and calling down the wrath of Allah on his filthy pagan head for having assassinated his father and his brothers, then he put the boot into him again, aiming for his belly and crotch. Vincent doubled himself into a ball to guard his vitals and he kept rolling to ride the main force of the blows. When at last Kamal tired he grabbed an AK from one of the guards who were delightedly following the performance, and finished the beating with two or three cracks with the steel-shod butt of the rifle aimed at Vincent’s head. However, Kamal’s damaged hand was so painful that the blows lacked real power. Vincent easily managed to deflect their main impact.

  ‘Vincent is earning his ten thousand dollars,’ David commented.

  ‘I shall have to add a bonus to his pay cheque for services far beyond the call of duty,’ said Hazel, shaken by the savagery of Kamal’s temper.

  ‘Nonsense!’ Paddy demurred. ‘For Vic a little tickle up like that’s no more onerous than a kiss from an ugly wench.’ He thought about it for a moment, then added, ‘He would probably prefer the beating to the ugly girl.’

  There were another five men guarding the door to Nastiya’s cabin. None of them had dared to enter the salon where the corpses of their comrades still lay. They had dead-locked the door and piled heavy furniture against it to protect themselves. Their trepidation was undisguised. They kept as far back from the barricaded door as the bounds of the cabin allowed and never took their eyes off it. With fingers on triggers, they were poised to repel another sudden whirlwind of kicks, blows and snapping teeth.

  Kamal emerged from the opposite cabin where he had been beating up Vincent and now he turned on his own men, haranguing them furiously.

  ‘Have you left the bodies of your valiant comrades in the
re with that she-devil? Have you no respect for custom and law? They must be buried or committed to the sea before nightfall. Bring them out at once!’ None of them seemed in any hurry to lead another foray into the master suite, but at last they garnered sufficient courage cautiously to remove the barricade and open the door a crack. When they peered in cautiously and found that Nastiya was not lying in wait for them they rushed in together, seized the corpses and dragged them out by their heels. Then they hastily relocked the door and piled the furniture back against it.

  Meanwhile, in the inner cabin Nastiya lounged in one of the black calf-skin leather chairs, eating chocolates from the box she had found in the refrigerator of the kitchenette, and idly turning the pages of one of the fashion magazines from the stack on the coffee table. She hardly looked up when she heard the Arabs in the next cabin retrieving their dead. Nastiya was wearing a pair of pale green trousers, beautifully tailored in pure new wool, and over them a vivid Emilio Pucci top from Hazel’s wardrobe.

  ‘The lady has eccentric taste,’ David Imbiss observed.

  ‘She certainly does,’ Hector agreed. ‘She has paired up with Paddy, hasn’t she? That makes eccentric seem mundane.’

  There was one more significant incident that they were able to follow on the CCTV screens in the situation room. After his casualties had been dropped overboard with brief ceremony, Kamal was still restless. He took to leaving the bridge at odd times during the day and night. One of his lieutenants stood guard over Cyril Stamford while Kamal prowled around the rest of the ship examining the bulkheads between the compartments and the different tiers. Kamal seemed to have a nagging feeling that he had overlooked something important.

  When he took to tapping sections of the hull with his dagger and listening intently to the echo, Hector gradually became alarmed. The tier below the bridge that had been converted to house the Bushmaster cannon came under Kamal’s close scrutiny. He examined it carefully, even descending to the cargo deck to peer up at the blank outer bulkhead which hid the gun deck. When Kamal returned to the bridge Hector overheard a conversation between Kamal and Cyril Stamford about this section. As usual Cyril had a plausible but totally fictional explanation. He described how this area housed delicate machinery that managed the pumps in the depths of the ship. The pumps controlled the temperature and distribution of the gas in the cargo tanks. Over a certain temperature the gas became so volatile that it could spontaneously explode and destroy the entire ship. Cyril explained to Kamal that the machinery was controlled remotely by satellite from the Bannock Corporation’s technical headquarters in the United States. Even he as ship’s captain was unable to enter the sensitive area while the ship was at sea.

  ‘So these people will be able to read our change of course?’ Kamal asked.

  ‘Does that worry you, Captain?’ Cyril asked.

  ‘Not at all.’ Kamal smiled and shook his head. ‘Within a few hours we will be safely in territorial waters. There is nothing they can do about it.’

  However, his explorations continued, and he poked and pried into every odd corner. One afternoon he discovered the hatch that led down into the service tunnels which connected the separate gas holds, and housed the huge pumps which circulated and cooled the cargo of gas, transferring it from one tank to another to balance and trim the ship as necessary.

  In Taiwan when the hull had been reconfigured to make room for the covert area, it had been necessary to move this access hatch from amidships to the port side of the stern tower. It was an awkward and unsatisfactory compromise that would attract the attention of a seaman of Kamal’s calibre. Kamal opened the hatch and found his way down into the labyrinth of tunnels below the gas storage tanks, and he explored these exhaustively. The observers in the situation room just above his head followed his progress anxiously on the infrared sensors. At one stage Kamal tapped with the handle of his dagger on one of the gas pipes and the sound of his blows carried so clearly that it sounded as if he were in the room with them. They held their breaths until, much to their relief, it seemed that Kamal had at last decided that there was nothing sinister contained in this area of the Golden Goose. They heard his footfalls on the steel rungs of the ladder as he climbed back past the situation room to the cargo deck.

  The Goose trod down the miles of glittering tropical waters under her gigantic bows and every hour brought them closer to the African mainland.

  ‘Do we have an estimate of when we will reach Gandanga Bay?’ Hazel asked as they sat at the mess table.

  ‘The GPS gives an ETA of 0900 hours Thursday the fourteenth, that is in three days’ time,’ David answered her. They were eating Canadian bison fillets and potato chips with ketchup. Only Hector favoured the fiery jalapeño snake juice. Although this rustic meal was served on plastic plates and cutlery, the polystyrene cups were filled with a vintage Malconsorts Burgundy wine. Hazel had been keeping it for a very special occasion, and she had decided this was it. Hector tasted the wine reverently.

  ‘One of the rarest and most heavenly wines on this earth,’ he said sadly, ‘drunk in the most insalubrious conditions on this same earth.’

  ‘Eat, drink and be merry,’ Paddy advised, ‘For tomorrow we—’

  ‘Do shut up, Paddy!’ David interjected quickly.

  ‘For tomorrow we flourish?’ Hazel suggested as she raised her cup. ‘Prosper? Thrive? Succeed?’

  ‘For tomorrow the bad guys die,’ Hector said and they all drank the toast with fitting solemnity. As they set down their cups, Tariq darted up the companionway from the situation room.

  ‘Hector! Paddy! Come quick!’

  ‘What is it, Tariq?’ Hector demanded as he sprang to his feet.

  ‘New radar contact. Strange ship closing with us. Smells like trouble.’ They abandoned the meal, even the Malconsorts wine, and trooped down the companionway to the lower deck, where they gathered in front of the display screens. The contact that showed on the repeater from the ship’s radar was bright and solid.

  ‘Big ship,’ said Dave. ‘Let me get her speed.’ He worked quickly with the ranger and then leaned back in his chair. ‘Forty-three point six knots. Merchantmen don’t burn gas like that. This is a warship.’ He checked his other instruments. ‘Cyril is holding a constant course and speed.’

  ‘You bet he is!’ Hector said grimly. ‘No way can he run away from a greyhound like that one. I just hope this isn’t the US cavalry charging in to rescue us, and trampling all over the roses.’ Anxiously they watched the images being transmitted from the camera on the top of the Goose’s communications mast. The strange ship came swiftly up over the horizon. She was grey and austere, functional as the blade of a battle axe.

  From the bridge of the Golden Goose the approaching ship was still below the horizon. Kamal did not have the same height advantage as the covert camera on the masthead, but he was studying the radar image avidly. When he was no longer in any doubt he turned to Cyril Stamford.

  ‘You are Yankee, yes?’ he demanded. Cyril was from south of the Mason-Dixon line but he did not think it wise to split hairs.

  ‘I am American, yes.’

  ‘The strange ship is going to intercept us. It is certainly an infidel warship; perhaps English or more likely American. You will speak to them.’ He seized Cyril’s shoulder and spun him around to glare into his face menacingly. ‘If they wish to board and search us you will stop them. I don’t care what or how, but you will tell them something to make them leave us. You understand, okay?’

  ‘I understand, okay,’ Cyril said quietly.

  ‘If a boarding party comes across to us, you will be dead before it arrives.’ Kamal drew his dagger and pricked Cyril’s throat. A drop of bright blood welled up from the tiny wound. ‘You understand that I am serious?’

  ‘I understand,’ Cyril agreed. He was standing very still but he swivelled his eyes and went on in the same quiet tone. ‘The strange ship is in sight already.’

  Kamal turned away quickly and stared over the starboard quarter.
The approaching vessel’s superstructure showed clearly above the horizon, and at that moment the marine frequency channel on 156.5 MHz crackled to life in the Goose’s radio room at the back of the bridge.

  ‘Bulk tanker on the port bow! This is Commander Robins aboard the United States Navy destroyer USS Manila Bay. What ship are you?’ Cyril glanced at Kamal.

  ‘You wish me to reply?’

  ‘Yes. But remember you will be the first to die if you make a mistake.’

  Cyril nodded. He crossed the deck to the radio room and unhooked the microphone. He took his time. He did not want to appear over-willing or efficient. The other captain would expect a certain amount of slovenliness from a merchantman.

  ‘Hi there! Manila Bay. This is the Golden Goose. Captain Stamford. En route Sidi el Razig in the Persian Gulf to Jedda in Saudi Arabia.’ There was a long silence, then Robins came back on the line.

  ‘Captain Stamford, sir! You wouldn’t happen to be an American citizen by any chance?’

  ‘Son of a gun! How d’you know that?’ Cyril exaggerated his accent slightly. ‘Darned right I’m an American. Cyril Stamford, late commanding the US Navy cruiser Reno. They put me out to grass for being too old and decrepit.’ He chuckled. From the destroyer there was a momentary silence.