Predator

by Wilbur Smith

  “As close as you can get to the OIM,” Cross told him. “Barth likes to throw his weight around, but I seriously doubt his ability to stay calm under fire. You’ll have to nursemaid him. So find him. Try his office first. Make sure he doesn’t make too many stupid decisions. Try to stop him panicking. And keep me up to speed.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “One other thing . . . These terrorists, rebels or whatever the hell they call themselves, are either going to blow the rig, or take everyone aboard hostage, or both. If you get taken, you won’t be able to talk. So take out your earpiece and try to leave it as close as you can to whoever’s in charge. The more we can hear, the more we’ll know what’s going on and what we can do about it. Got that?”

  “Yes, boss . . . Wait . . .”

  There was something that sounded like a crackle of static in Cross’s ear, then Sharman’s voice: “The shooting’s started. Can’t tell exactly where it’s coming from. I’ll try to find out. Meanwhile, I’m off to deal with that pillock Barth. Hope they do him first.”

  Cross moved back into the bridge, wiping the water off his forehead and hair as he came through the door. He was greeted by the sound of a frantic, desperate voice emanating from a speaker positioned on the wall. “We’re under attack! Can you hear me? It’s an attack! Oh God, I can’t believe this, they’re firing guns! This is impossible! Mayday! Mayday! For God’s sake, someone help us!”

  “As you can hear,” said Bromberg drily, “the Offshore Installation Manager is not responding well to the crisis. I thought it best to put this on speaker. Saves the radio op having to repeat everything.”

  Sharman’s deeper, much calmer voice could now be heard saying, “It’s all right, sir, don’t you worry. The security people know what’s happening. Just relax, and let the professionals take care of everything. Why don’t you sit down over here, sir?”

  “Get your hands off me!” Barth yelled and then, “Abandon ship! Abandon ship! This is not a drill! We are under armed attack . . .”

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  Cross could hear the sound of some kind of impact, a grunt and then the thump of a heavy object hitting the ground.

  “I’ve given Mr. Barth a sedative, boss,” Sharman said. “Christ, there are people running everywhere, they’re heading to their muster stations, hang on . . . Oh no . . .”

  Cross heard the sound of gunfire in the distance and then Sharman’s voice commanding, “Stay where you are! For your own safety do not, repeat not attempt to abandon ship. Remain indoors and stay still.”

  Over the next few minutes Sharman gave a running commentary on what was evidently a well-planned, efficiently executed operation, as more Bannock workers died and more and more of those who were still living were herded toward the canteen: the largest internal space on the platform. Then he very calmly said, “I can hear people coming; they’re at the door. Uh-oh . . .”

  Seconds later there were voices jabbering in what sounded to Cross like French, though he knew that the European language spoken in Angola, including the province of Cabinda, was Portuguese. Sharman’s steady, measured tones cut in, “I understand, comprendo: me go with you. Look, hands up, see? I surrender. Whoa! No need to point that at me. I’m coming . . . No fight, OK? . . . I’m coming . . .”

  The voice on the tannoy died away as Sharman was led away, out of the range of the radio mike. But Cross still had the feed from Sharman’s earpiece as he and Barth were led to join the others in the canteen.

  It was time Cross talked to Houston. He walked back into his command post. Dave Imbiss was already sitting there, tapping away at a computer keyboard linked to a large screen.

  Cross sat down opposite his own laptop and was about to put a Skype call through to John Bigelow when he heard Imbiss call out, “Hector, quick, you’ve gotta look! This is streaming live, right now.”

  Cross spun his chair so that he could see Imbiss’s screen. An impossibly young African face appeared. With his headphones around his neck, he could have been any street kid in any city from Los Angeles to Lagos. “This action is being carried out on behalf of the oppressed people of Cabinda,” he began, speaking English in a heavy French–African accent. “We demand the independence of Cabinda. We demand recognition by the United Nations and all the permanent members of the Security Council. We demand the return of Cabinda’s natural assets to the Cabindan people. We will negotiate only with the President of the United States. Until our demands are met we will kill one person every five minutes. We are completely serious. Regardez!”

  The young man’s face disappeared from view to reveal Rod Barth being held by a man in green combat fatigues while a second pointed a gun at him and a third tied a blindfold around his head. Sharman was nowhere to be seen. Now Barth was being forced down on to his knees, begging for mercy: “No, no! Please, don’t do it . . . I can get you anything you want . . . Let me talk to someone . . . please!”

  “My God, that’s Barth, the Installation Manager,” Cross said.

  The young man now reappeared in the shot, several feet from the camera, to which he turned once again. “I repeat, we are completely serious. Our demands must be met. Or else, in five more minutes, you will see this.” There was a holster on the young man’s belt. He unclipped it, pulled out a Sig Sauer pistol, raised the gun-barrel to Barth’s temple and fired, blasting an eruption of blood, brain and bone from the far side of his skull.

  Cross could hear the sound of the shot in his earpiece, just out of synch with the internet feed, and Sharman groaning, “Oh no . . .” and then shouting out, “No! Don’t be daft!” as a confused babble of protests and barked orders was followed by a burst of gunfire, the screams of a wounded man, another couple of shots and then a terrible silence.

  On the screen, the kid with the headphones leered into the camera again. “Now you know what we do to people who make resistance. And remember: cinq minutes.” Then the screen went dead.

  Cross didn’t need to call John Bigelow. The President of Bannock Oil was on his laptop screen within seconds of the terrorist webcast ending. “Did you see that? They blew Rod Barth away! One of our most senior employees! For God’s sake, Cross, how could you let a thing like this happen?”

  “The attack was mounted using Angolan Air Force helicopters,” Cross replied, determined to ignore the eagerness with which Bigelow was rushing to put the blame on him. “I could not fire on them without risking a major international incident.”

  “But that’s impossible! You just heard the guy. They want freedom for Cabinda, from Angola.”

  “I know, sir. But the fact remains, those are Angolan aircraft with their markings painted over. So either someone’s hijacked them—”

  “We’d have heard about that if they had,” Bigelow interrupted.

  “I agree. So either they’ve been bought by someone, but again, why would Angola sell to rebels? Or they’ve been obtained by other means, such as bribery. Or someone in the Angolan regime is in league with the rebels. With the money there is to be made in Cabinda, anything’s possible.”

  “So now what are we going to do?”

  “Well, the best people to sort this out are the U.S. military. So we need to get on to the Pentagon, immediately, and find out what assets they have anywhere near here. But they’d better be bloody close. The next shooting’s due in less than three minutes.”

  “Leave this to me,” Bigelow said, and the screen went dead.

  Cross got out his iPhone and wrote a text: “CP now.” He sent it to the O’Quinns and Donnie McGrain. Less than sixty seconds later all three were in the room. “We need to start putting an operation together,” Cross said. But before he could elaborate Imbiss was saying, “They’re back online.”

  Beats Boy, as Cross now thought of him, repeated his demands. Then he killed another man, in a blue boiler suit this time. Then he said, “Five minutes.”

  There was a ringing from Cross’s laptop: another Skype call from Bigelow, but this time he was sharing th
e screen with the image of a uniformed man sitting at a desk with a Stars and Stripes just visible behind him. “Heck, this is Vice Admiral Theo Scholz of the U.S. Fleet Forces Command, he’s going to put you in the picture.”

  “Good evening, Mr. Cross, let me get right to it. I’m afraid I’ve got nothing but bad news for you. We have forces currently deployed in the North Atlantic, Caribbean and South Atlantic; also the Eastern Mediterranean, Red Sea; but there aren’t any surface vessels closer than four days from your current position and a sub would be no damn use to you. The best option would be SEALs. We currently have units in Bahrain, as well as right here in Little Creek. The problem is getting them to you. We have no forward air bases in West Africa. We can try to persuade the Angolans to help us, but even then . . . God, it’s a logistical nightmare, you’re looking at twelve hours at absolute minimum, probably twenty-four. I guess what I’m saying is—”

  “We’re on our own.”

  “Sure looks like it.”

  “Is there anything the President can do?”

  Bigelow butted in. “You must know, Heck, the President of the United States does not negotiate with terrorists.”

  “Yes, I understand that,” Cross replied. “But the most powerful man in the world doesn’t sit on his arse doing nothing while a bunch of gunmen led by a murdering psycho who doesn’t look old enough to shave kill the American workers of an American corporation. Not if he wants to get re-elected. So maybe someone can think of a way that he can do something, or say something that can stop—”

  A shot rang out from Imbiss’s screen. Bigelow and Scholz must have been watching, too, because they both looked horrified at what they had just witnessed.

  “It was a woman this time, Heck,” Imbiss said.

  “You’ve got to do something, Cross, before they kill them all,” Bigelow insisted.

  Scholz shook his head in despair. “This is terrible, just terrible. Good luck, Mr. Cross. And may God be with you.”

  Right, first things first,” Cross said as his key people formed a circle around him. “We have to get aboard that rig, despite the fact that we’ve never climbed it in the daytime, let alone at night, and we’ve never swum in rough seas or darkness, either. So, Donnie, how many of our people would you trust to jump off a patrol boat, swim a couple of hundred meters to that rig and arrive at the right place in one piece?”

  “Mah lot for sure,” McGrain replied, “and youse lot probably. No offense, Mrs. O’Quinn, I’m worried about you, being a wee scrap of a lassie in conditions like that, but I’m too bloody scared of what you’d do if I said no.”

  “You should be,” said Nastiya.

  “What about the rest of them?” Cross asked.

  McGrain shook his head ruefully. “Not many, if I’m being honest. See, you can forget about two hundred meters. If you want to approach unobserved, you’ll want to be four hundred away from the platform, minimum. If the boats just make a slow pass, lights off and nae stopping, maybe you can get everyone in the water without being spotted. But any closer than that ye’ve got nae chance.”

  “Four hundred meters is too far,” Cross said. “In these seas it could take ten or twelve minutes to swim it, even with the wind and waves behind us, and that’ll leave another two, maybe three hostages dead. No . . . the platform lights up the sea all around it. The boats will go in as close as they can to the edge of that pool of light and we’ll go in from there. So, Donnie, there’s you and your SBS lads, and me and my lot. Who are the best of the rest?”

  “The two lads who got their swimmer-canoeist badges—Flowers and King—for sure. There’s Schottenheimer who was a Navy SEAL. Of the others, you can only count on three: Keene, Thompson and Donovan. I can’t guarantee they’ll make it, but they’ve more chance than the rest of them.”

  “Good, then we’ll go into the water in pairs, connected by buddy lines. I’m not having anyone floating off into the wilds of the Atlantic. Donnie, you and me go first. How much time do you need to climb up to the spider deck and drop a line back down for the others to go up?”

  “Ah’m no’ bothering climbing, sir.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Well, the way Ah see it, there’s no way any of them terrorists have had the time to start booby-trapping ladders and gantries way down by the water-line. Am Ah right?”

  “I’ve not seen any sign of that,” Imbiss agreed.

  “On the other hand, the risk of someone getting killed or washed away into the wild blue yonder if we try any fancy stuff, rigging lines and playing at Spiderman, is somewhere between high and a bloody certainty. So Ah say, go up the rig’s ladders right up to the final ascent on to the main deck. At that point, yeah, mebbes we can be a wee bit more discreet.”

  “Are you willing to be first up the ladder?” Cross asked.

  “I’d be a bloody hypocrite if I wasn’t. So aye, Ah’ll put my money where my mouth is.”

  “How long will you need to get up to the spider deck and check that the way up is safe?”

  “Three minutes, max. And one more thing . . . You need tae make sure there’s always one of my lads at the bottom of the ladder. There’s nae way yon beginners’ll get up on to it without someone to catch the wee buggers and pull them up.”

  “Good point,” Cross agreed. “So, we’re looking at a three-​minute delay after the first pair. After that, we need three groups of four people—that’s two pairs at a time—each group two minutes apart. I’ll select and task each group at the briefing. And before anyone asks, yes, I know that four of us from London, five of Donnie’s SBS people and six of our Cross Bow guys makes a total of fifteen people, and I’ve just counted out fourteen swimmers, but Dave, I need you here. It’s no reflection whatever on your fighting abilities. You don’t need to prove them to me. But I need you to work your magic on that keyboard over there. Can you get into the rig’s CCTV system?”

  “If it’s controlled by a computer that’s linked to the internet, absolutely,” Imbiss agreed.

  “Good. Then get inside that computer, mess with the cameras. I don’t know if any of the bad guys are watching the monitors, but if they are, I don’t want them seeing anything that looks remotely like us lot getting on to the platform and walking around it. But get us the real feed. I need to know where the terrorists are and what they’re up to.”

  Imbiss nodded: “OK, that should be doable. What else?”

  “Just monitor all the comms in and out of the platform. If they get instructions from whoever’s behind all this; or they make any new demands; or they start killing more people, or fewer, I want to know. And if it ever gets critical and you get the feeling something big’s about to happen, I need to know that too.”

  “How do you want to communicate?” Imbiss asked.

  “We’ll use the earpieces. We don’t have enough for everyone, but we’ll divvy them up so that there’s at least one per pair.”

  “And if, by some blessed miracle, we actually swim as far as that bloody great beast of a platform, and climb up the bloody thing, and get to the top without so much as a scratch: what then?” asked Paddy O’Quinn.

  “Then all the hours we spent in London planning how to recapture an oil rig from a bunch of hooligans won’t have been wasted. McGrain, summon everyone, boat crews included, to the briefing room, on the double. The briefing starts in two minutes and anyone who isn’t there when I start talking is going to regret it,” Hector replied.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Paddy, give him a hand rounding up the troops,” Cross continued. “Dave, I need you to get the CCTV feed from the canteen so we can see what’s going on there, and find Sharman while you’re at it.”

  A grainy, monochrome image of the canteen appeared onscreen showing two of terrorists who’d helped kill Rod Barth cradling AK-47s. They had taken up a position by the door and the kid in the headphones was standing in front of them with a big grin on his face. Then Imbiss panned the camera and Cross could see what had cause the little bastard�
��s amusement. A terrorist was dragging a screaming woman through the crowd, accompanied by a mate who was using the club of his AK to beat anyone who tried to obstruct them.

  “That’s five terrorists so far, but there may be more where the camera can’t see them,” Imbiss said. “As for hostages, I reckon there’s at least seventy. Could be more of them, too. Now, where’s Sharman . . . ?”

  The camera panned to and fro before Imbiss muttered, “Gotcha!” and zoomed in on one section of the canteen.

  Cross saw Sharman’s face come into focus and said, “Sharman! This is Cross. I can see you on the security camera. Nod if you can hear me.”

  Sharman nodded.

  “Good,” Cross went on. “We count five terrorists. Is that correct?”

  There was a shake of the head.

  “So there are more. How many more?”

  Sharman raised his right hand up to his face and gazed intently as if inspecting his fingernails. His thumb, however, was bent and holding down his little finger. So there were three fingers showing.

  “I make that three more men making eight in total. Correct?”

  Another nod.

  That makes sense, Cross thought. Headphones has got well over half the platform crew in one place so he needs enough men to be sure he can pacify them.

  “Good work, Sharman,” he said. “Hang tight, we’re coming to get you.”

  Sharman gave a discreet thumbs-up.

  “Any sign of the other terrorists?” Cross asked.

  “I’ve got one guarding the helipad,” Imbiss told him. “I saw some heading toward the derrick, but for some reason the feed is really poor from the production side of the platform and the image keeps breaking up, so I can’t see what they’re doing. Other than that, I’m getting flashes of guys walking down passages in the general accommodation area.”

  “I imagine they’re rounding people up.”

  “Well, if they are, they’re killing them there and then because I’m not seeing any more people being taken up to the canteen.”