Number 4 showed New England apparently at anchor.
Number 5 showed the lower cargo drawbridge down and resting on a little cliff top.
“They’re discharging the cargo!” said Richard.
“Not just discharging,” answered Merrideth. He shuffled through the pictures until he reached Number 9 which showed the ship backed up to a different eminence, with a truck driving into it. Numbers 10 through to 15 showed a series of trucks going in and out of the cavernous lower hold. “They’re loading stuff as well.”
“Any idea what?”
“Semtex. Hundreds of pounds of it. Old PIRA stock.”
Richard shook his head, beyond words now.
“We can’t judge or even guess much beyond that,” said Merrideth. “We can’t judge the weight through displacement because they’re loading on a rising tide.”
“You couldn’t judge even a thousand pounds by external observation of displacement in a hull that size anyway,” said Richard with crisp authority, prompting a narrow-eyed glare from Merrideth.
“We might be able to compute something if we could get accurate measurements and precise lading and displacement figures from the Jet-Ship people,” he said, “but an approach to them is out of the question at the moment. We’re keeping a tight lid on this, and that’s how it must stay.”
“I see,” said Richard. “What do you think this is all about?”
“We don’t have enough intelligence to think anything very much. But we do have this.”
Number 16 showed the bridge of New England in close-up. It was a crystal-clear shot taken from a prime location with a telephoto lens. Two tiny figures could just be seen and they had been framed in broad green felt lines. Number 17 showed the framed area, enlarged and enhanced. It was possible to see that one of the figures was wearing whites and that the other was in some kind of green. The figure in green had a dark face and was pointing at the figure in white. The figure in green was framed in felt tip. Number 18, the last in the pile, showed an enlarged picture of the figure in green. The black face was a balaclava. The pointing arm was a gun.
“Are you familiar with long weaponry, Captain Mariner?” asked Merrideth quietly.
“I’m familiar with that type. That’s a Russian AK74 assault rifle,” said Richard.
Abruptly a personal phone buzzed. Merrideth reached into his pocket and pulled his out. “I’ve got to go,” he said, having listened for a few moments. “Bull, can you finish this as we agreed?”
*
“How long is it since Prometheus II was taken by terrorists? Ten years?” mused Bull quietly.
Merrideth had re-packed his briefcase and gone, no doubt returning to SAS Headquarters at Hereford, and they were having a late, light dinner while Bull slowly came to the point.
“This is very different, though, isn’t it?” speculated Richard.
“Plus ça change…” said Bull, unconvinced. “It’ll still be wheels within wheels. It depends what they’re actually up to. We’ll just have to wait and watch.” Bull abruptly fell silent, looking down at his plate where part of a trout lay like an incomplete postmortem.
Richard frowned, certain that there was something more. Something neither Bull nor Merrideth had told him yet.
“You probably guessed Merrideth is not just a simple soldier. I understand he’s part of the CRW command. Counter revolutionary warfare.”
“He looks the part, certainly.”
“He tells me he’s officer commanding the current Sabre Squadron on twenty-four-hour alert for a terrorist incident. As such, he’ll be in close liaison with his superiors in the Kremlin down at Stirling Lines and, I dare say, with the relevant officers liaising with the Cabinet Office. But on the ground he’s his own man. He has his teams to deploy and he has the say-so about how they go in.”
“I see.”
“Normally, they don’t get much warning but with this he’s got a unique situation as well as a bit of extra time to deal with it.” Bull looked up. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m beating about the bush. It’s a long time since I did anything like this. Look, when Pagoda Troop went into the Iranian Embassy twenty years ago, there was no chance of the building heading off across town at one hundred miles an hour. But if Merrideth has to go onto the New England, it might do just that.”
“Yes, it might.”
“If the ship moves at that speed, he could find himself in trouble. He can’t get aboard off helicopters, or Harriers. He can’t parachute — ”
“They can’t even stand on the deck if she comes to full speed.”
“You see the problem. The Americans have some Pegasus-class hydrofoils which are pretty nippy and the Italians have something similar which is at least on the right side of the pond. But they’re still too far away. And probably too slow in any case.”
“You want something quick enough to catch New England if she goes to full speed? Is that it?” Richard leaned forward. “You want to borrow one of my super-cats.”
“Merrideth says there is nothing else that can get his squadron there, and I must say I agree with him. And he asked me to ask you.”
“What’s the plan?”
“Get as ready as you can. Prepare to leave on his word. Pick up at his rendezvous. Go after New England like a bat out of hell the moment he finds out where she’s headed for. The assumption being,” said Bull quietly, “that New England’s crew and passengers are all still aboard and will serve as hostages if the going gets rough.”
“I see.”
“And that the players aboard may be mercenaries in the employ of some mysterious person or people; that they may even be associated with the IRA, from whom they are bartering or buying arms and explosives.”
“Indeed.”
“So that New England is being turned into a floating fortress or a floating bomb which could be moved almost anywhere in the world at extreme speed.”
“You don’t have to spell it out.”
“Leaving the authorities in any place the ship shows up with little option other than to bargain or give in.”
“Unless they decide simply to blow her out of the water.”
“With Senator and Mrs Charleston aboard? And a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, not to mention the son of one of the most respected senators in the House? I think even Washington would hesitate over that one. So unless they’re going to attack Tripoli or Cuba, negotiation is going to be the preferred option.”
“Negotiation may be a painful process for the people in the middle.”
“This whole thing began for me with two such innocents. Shot in the back with Special Forces weapons, a Black Talon bullet from an ASP nine millimetre handgun. Very smart kit. But obviously all too easy to trace so the victims were disfigured and then shot at close range with shotguns just to cover some tracks. These are not soft people. They will stop at nothing to enforce their demands.”
“Which are?”
“What?”
“What are their demands? Neither Merrideth nor you have told me what these people want.”
“We have absolutely no idea. No one seems to know exactly who they are, where they came from or what their motivation is. Merrideth says Intelligence suggests that the first sign we’ll get is when they set off.”
“Which is when he wants to hit them if he can catch up with them in time. Which brings it back to me and my super-cats.”
“It does.”
There was silence as Richard thought about it.
Then Bull said, “It would just be a few of your best men and the faster of the cats. There would be no official sanction, no confirmation, no communication with anyone other than Merrideth and his men. There would be no fail-back. No insurance. Not for your life or your men or your hull. You can’t tell anyone, not even Robin or Bill, when he gets back from honeymoon. I know it’s all a bit James Bond but it’s the way it has to be done.”
“But there are no orders.”
“Only requests in the Regiment.”
*
“Yes?” he said into the handset, looking away along the river as he concentrated on what he would hear. His hearing was getting as weak as his sight nowadays.
“It’s Merrideth.”
“He’ll do it.”
“I need to be absolutely clear about this. If I call, then he’s up for it? No questions?”
“Yes. He needs almost no notice. He’ll go on your word. You give the “storm” code and the rendezvous, and he’ll be there. Guaranteed.”
“Thanks, I appreciate this.”
“Think nothing of it. Call it the old boys’ net and forget it.”
“Out, then.”
“Night.”
Sir Justin folded the fiddly mouthpiece of the phone into the closed position and pulled open his Crombie — worn in spite of the summer heat — to slip the little machine back into his inside pocket.
He heard the taxi’s diesel engine at the last moment, a slight scream as it swerved and the double bump as its tyres leaped up the kerb. He was in the act of turning, his hand still in his coat as though reaching for a gun, when the bumper and black grille took him full force down the side of his body. It cannot really be said that he felt anything except a massive shock and a mild surprise. He was hurled up and back, while the taxi’s wheels squealed again as it swerved back onto the road. Then the old man’s legs, insensible to any more feeling, struck the balustrade of the bridge and he flipped over.
He was dead before he hit the river’s silent surface.
The taxi, stolen earlier that night in Camden Town, was found burned out in Brixton next day. Bull’s body was swirled around Tower Steps in the wake of a Thames barge and was not recovered until the better part of a month later when the whole thing was over, bar the shouting.
And the knowledge which had haunted him for eighty years of sentient life proved in the end to be true: Justin Edward Charles Emmanuel Bulwer-Lytton was not born to die on land.
CHAPTER X
The code name was the first word Richard heard when Merrideth called him aboard Hero at 2 a.m. the next morning. “Storm here.”
“Yes.”
“We’re in business.”
“Right. We can leave in fifteen minutes. No notice, no pilot.”
“Good. Charts handy?”
“Here.”
“Portsmouth.”
“Yes…”
“Prison ship Alcatraz.”
“I have it marked out by Spitbank.”
“One hundred and fifty minutes.”
“We’ll have to break the speed limit.”
“Yes or no?” There was a sudden edge of tension in Merrideth’s distant voice.
“Yes.”
“Right. Our ID will be white light flashes, two short, one long. We will signal as soon as we see you.”
“You’ll be on the Alcatraz?”
“When you see the signal, heave to. We’ll come to you.” Richard’s mind was racing. The new prison ship was an inspired location for a pick-up point. They would upset the coastguards all along the coast and probably the Port Authorities here and at Portsmouth but they could get it done with no assistance. And, if Hero moved as fast as she was supposed to, they could get it done in time. Just.
And then the real chase would begin.
*
Captain Andrew Fawley and his skeleton crew came aboard fifteen minutes later. “We need to be at Portsmouth in two and a quarter hours,” Richard said in greeting.
Andrew automatically looked at his watch. “That’s pushing it,” he said. “I’ll warn the engineers. In the meantime — ”
“I’ve charted the optimum course, checked the coastguards and the weather service — we have flat calm and high pressure. No wind at all. Full moon setting at four. And I’ve told the harbourmaster’s office.”
“Let’s not hang about then.” The stocky, phlegmatic captain crossed to the ship’s tannoy. “Slip all shore lines,” he ordered.
While the four men, captain, chief engineer, first officer and owner, crowded tensely in the narrow room above and to the fore of the main areas, Hero picked her way easily and increasingly speedily across the busy port and out into the quieter roads. Andrew sat in the big seat which hissed down and in close to the console so that one man could control the craft. It was his steady hand that rested on the little wheel and his closed fist that pushed the levers controlling the engines forward into the red. The first officer stood stolidly beside the communications equipment, accepting or blocking the increasingly irate radio traffic. The waters across which they were speeding are the busiest in the world and even at this time of night, traffic was so dense that the one-way system was in full force. Richard’s course for Hero took her over to the innermost line of the down-Channel path and here she came up to full speed, streaking past the lumbering bulks of the tankers, freighters and carriers, slicing across the paths of the late-night ferries.
Richard was tense. Standing at Andrew Fawley’s side looking out at the unreeling night over the square captain’s steady shoulder, he went over again in his mind the conversation he had had with Bull less than six hours ago.
The facts were inescapable. New England had gone to Ireland instead of Southampton. Merrideth’s explanation of these facts, his pictures, maps, diagrams, faxes and print-outs, were utterly convincing. That Merrideth himself was the genuine article, Richard had little doubt. And then there was Bull. Bull was the linchpin. If Richard was convinced by Merrideth, he was compelled by Bull. Except for Sir William Heritage and his own father, there was no one capable of wielding such influence over Richard. The old man was just about the last of that generation who had been the giants he aspired to emulate as he grew to manhood.
As he stood, lost in thought, the south coast of England whirled past at speeds which would have been illegal on land. The Strait of Dover fell away behind the twin arcs of white water generated by Hero’s water jets. Hastings and Eastbourne sped by. Beachy Head gathered and curved away. Richard turned his eyes right then and looked across the moonlit distances to the white cliff where Ashenden stood. Had he the eyes of one of the sleepy gulls their passage was disturbing, he might have seen the moon’s reflection silvering the broad reach of his bedroom windows, French windows opening onto a long balcony where the sight of just such a jet-cat as this had given birth to Hero and Leander less than two years ago. Then Seaford Head, the lights of Brighton, Worthing and Bognor before the long dark reach of Selsey came southwards towards them, and Andrew Fawley’s firm hand on the wheel sent him scything north-westwards into the approaches to the Solent and Portsmouth itself.
The prison ship Alcatraz was one of the increasing number of such vessels anchored off the south coast. Its use as a drop-off point was exactly the sort of thing SAS planners would do, and it had that self-satisfied Cabinet Office Approved feeling of convenience and cheapness about it which reeked of Whitehall.
One hundred and fifty-four minutes after Merrideth broke contact, Hero came nosing almost silently across the water. The moon had set. Only the lights of Portsmouth, Gosport and Hayling served to outline the bulk of the silent floating gaol in the darkness before dawn. Her riding lights defined her position and status, but apart from that she was dark. Out on Hero’s forepeak, straining to see anything that looked like a signal in the dark, stood Richard.
There!
Almost at water level, halfway between Hero and Alcatraz, the white torch flashed in the agreed sequence. Richard spoke quietly into his radio link with Fawley on the bridge
. The supercat, already settled in the water and moving at hardly more than idle, came to a stop. With only her running lights and the scar of brightness on the bridge showing, she sat sinister and silent on the still water. And equally sinister, almost as silent, two big black Gemini inflatable boats moved barely visibly through the shadows to her side.
As the inflatables bumped silently against the sleek white side of the super-cat, a doorway just above water level swung open and the dim light of a dully-lit corridor spread like a stain on the water. The two inflatables moved into this and Richard, standing in the mouth of the opening, holding the heavy door wide, was suddenly almost overwhelmed by a rush of men and equipment. Among the first of the black-clad figures aboard was Merrideth himself and as soon as his thick-soled Danner boots touched the deck, the SAS commander took Richard by the arm. “My chaps will secure things here,” he said quietly, leading Richard back along the corridor. “I’d be grateful if you could show me where the kit can be stowed, then make yourself available for a briefing.” In his whispering black kit with assault vest and webbing bulked and laden with a range of arms and equipment, Merrideth was a disturbingly different figure from the tweedy officer who had briefed Richard at the Army and Navy Club. But any lingering unease he might have felt about the man’s credentials evaporated. And there was no mistaking the men who were silently and swiftly insinuating themselves aboard Hero. They, like their leader, were the genuine article. Richard had come across soldiers like these before, in the Gulf and elsewhere. They were unique, in his experience. Impossible to counterfeit.
The central passenger section of Hero’s accommodation was the obvious place for the SAS men’s equipment; the two lower areas, with their aircraft-style seats, were adequate to house the men themselves. In the rear of the starboard section was the little VIP conference area where Richard had been sleeping, and it was here that he led Merrideth to set up ops and briefing.
“Can you relay our requirements to the bridge or do I need to brief the captain?” Merrideth asked.
“Tell me what you need and I’ll make it happen.”
“Good. There’ll be no need for any of your crew to see any of us close to then.”
Hell Gate (Richard Mariner Series Book 9) Page 9