Marine G SBS

by David Monnery

  ‘It’s not on the map,’ Cafell announced.

  ‘It’s probably just a supply road for the base,’ Marker said. ‘Or maybe just a by-product of putting in the telephone.’

  ‘If we get into the base, can I call my mum?’ Finn asked.

  ‘Why spoil her day?’ Cafell murmured.

  ‘Come on,’ Marker said, standing up. ‘At this rate we won’t get there until Christmas.’

  They walked cautiously up the slowly climbing road for a hundred yards or so, stopped and listened to the relentless cacophony all around them, then off again. After four such advances a distant low humming noise had added itself to the hubbub of nature. It sounded like a generator.

  They resumed their journey, taking care to keep within the shadows on the left side of the road. The sun was now occasionally visible through the trees, the sky above them blue and cloudless. Both temperature and humidity seemed to be rising exponentially.

  The long uphill stretch was coming to an end, and Finn was sent forward to reconnoitre. He edged the last few yards to the crest on his stomach, and found himself only twenty yards from the ruins of some sort of temple. Beyond this the forested land fell steeply away towards the sea channel, where the container ship rode at anchor in mid-stream. Beyond it another thickly vegetated slope rose towards the sun. The jetty and barrack-type buildings below were hidden from view by the trees, but the gleaming sides of oil tanks and a water-tower were visible.

  A few yards beyond the ruin their road took a sharp turn to the right, angling down the slope towards a probable hairpin, leaving the telegraph poles to take the more direct route to the shore, plunging down through the trees.

  Finn’s attention was caught by the activity on the container ship.

  ‘They’re giving it a complete face-lift,’ he explained on rejoining the others. ‘The name on the stern is Ocean Carousel but the local Rolf Harris is busy painting something else beginning with "BO" on the starboard bow. And there are about twenty men with brushes hard at work changing the colour of the funnel from red to green.’ He rummaged in his bergen for the camera. ‘Back in a minute,’ he added, and was gone again.

  A few minutes later he returned. ‘Rolf’s adding a "T",’ he said. ‘My money’s on "Botulism".’

  ‘You got some pictures?’ Marker asked.

  ‘Yeah, but nothing with the patrol boat. If it’s still there it’s out of sight behind the ruin.’

  ‘What ruin?’

  ‘There’s a kind of temple just over the top.’

  ‘It was probably a mosque,’ Cafell said. ‘This used to be an important part of the world – there were lots of wealthy sultanates on these islands. And bits of Ming pottery are still being washed up on the beaches from Chinese trading junks wrecked hundreds of years ago. I bet you lot didn’t know Marco Polo came to Bintan.’

  ‘The inventor of the mint?’ Finn murmured.

  Marker sighed. ‘What’s the best way down?’ he asked Finn.

  ‘Good question.’ The younger man explained about the telegraph poles. ‘That would be the most direct route, but it would take us right into the base, which won’t be much use when it comes to taking photos that tie everything together. We could head straight through the jungle and end up fifty yards or so to the north, but I reckon the best bet would be to carry on down the road to where it turns and take to the jungle then. It looks like there’s a small headland about a hundred and fifty yards south of the jetty which would be perfect for getting pictures.’

  ‘Sounds a bit on the visible side,’ Cafell said.

  ‘Maybe,’ Finn agreed. ‘It’s impossible to tell from up here.’

  ‘Let’s give it a try,’ Marker decided. ‘But just in case . . .’ He looked from man to man. ‘Our main aim is to get in and out with no one the wiser. Our second best is simply to get out and away. If we run into trouble don’t hesitate to use whatever force is necessary – these are not nice people. If we get split up we’ll use Rob’s mosque as the first fall-back position, and the boat as the second. Clear?’

  The others nodded.

  They resumed their journey, working their way round the back of the half-overgrown ruin to avoid the open crest and rejoining the dirt track on its descent. The noises of human activity grew louder: the clatter of something being closed or dropped, a distant shout, laughter in reply. An outboard motor started up, swelled in volume, then faded into the south. They reached the expected hairpin and took what seemed a suspiciously easy route through the jungle towards the unseen shoreline. The glitter of an abandoned gum wrapper offered unwelcome evidence that the path had been recently used.

  They approached the headland with great care, but, for the moment at least, it seemed devoid of human occupancy. On the far side, facing away from the invisible base, there was a small, sandy beach, but the rest of the shoreline was rocky, with trees and bushes jostling each other for room right down to the edge of the water. Once ensconced inside the mass of tightly woven vegetation, the four men had the advantages of both shade and concealment. They also had as good a view of the base and channel as they could have hoped for.

  Marker divided up the hours of daylight into shifts, and took the first watch with Finn while Cafell and Dubery got some sleep. In the channel the container ship’s face-lift was proceeding apace, with the funnel now showing more green than red, and the new name Botany Bay glistening on the starboard bow. Halfway through the morning the Liberian flag in the stern was taken down and a Panamanian flag hoisted in its place. Finn kept himself busy capturing on film this and other facets of the transformation.

  Marker wondered whether a ship of this class and name already existed or whether the pirates had simply thought up a fictional identity. Probably the former, he decided – it was much easier to forge existing documents than start from scratch. At some point in the next few months the owners of the original Botany Bay would receive an anxious call from a shipping agent, enquiring about the non-arrival of a valuable cargo.

  The hours dragged by, the temperature continued to rise. The sky grew increasingly overcast, taking the humidity towards Turkish-bath levels. Not for the first time, Marker wondered how people coped with living their whole lives in such a climate. He decided he would rather live in Greenland than at equatorial sea level.

  He smiled to himself. Ten days ago he had been overjoyed to hear that he was heading out East once more. Since the job in Florida and the succeeding period of leave he had tried to settle, with less than complete success, back into the well-worn routines of an SBS instructor. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy the job – he did – and he didn’t think he was still suffering fall-out from his failed marriage. Penny was gone and that was that. He had to accept it, had to carry whatever it was he had managed to learn from the whole episode into his next relationship – always assuming there would be one.

  No, the restlessness which seemed to be afflicting him had only one source – himself. He wondered whether it could be in his genes, since his mother and father, both professional actors, had spent their lives moving from rep to rep, and until he was fourteen he had had no permanent home. Boarding-school terms were followed by summer seasons at a seaside resort or Christmas seasons in whichever provincial town the pantomime was playing. His stay in the house in Highgate, which finally became a home when TV replaced the theatre as his parents’ primary source of income, lasted only four years. The Marines and SBS had been a sort of emotional home since he turned eighteen – too much so in the end as far as his marriage was concerned. Penny had demanded he choose between that home and the one he shared with her, and he had tried to convince himself that no such choice had to be made. Ironically, now that she was gone, the work seemed less emotionally fulfilling than it had when she was still there.

  At the same time, he was damned if he knew what else he could do with his life. The sea was where he had always wanted to work, and the sea took you away from other homes.

  Marker sighed, resisted the temptation to wipe
his camouflaged brow with his camouflaged forearm, and turned the Nikon’s zoom lens on the container ship. It was impossible to tell whether the men swarming over it were navy or civilian – they were certainly not wearing uniforms. He wondered where the ship’s crew were. Perhaps still on board, or perhaps in the buildings facing the jetty. Only one man had come out of these since their observation had begun, and he had been in uniform. Not a naval one, though. Not unless sailors wore khaki in this corner of the world.

  He had definitely been Chinese, but then so were eighty per cent of the population of Singapore.

  The patrol boat was still rocking gently at anchor between the jetty and the container ship, apparently bereft of a crew. They had to be the men painting the funnel, Marker decided. Why import civilians, after all? He wondered what sort of percentage this naval unit was receiving for its work. A mere twelve hours’ worth probably: the ship would sail as soon as it got dark. The evening breeze would even help to dry the paint.

  But where would it be sailing to? He was hoping that there would be some clue to the destination in one of the buildings, but Finn’s remark about the notepad by the telephone had probably been depressingly apt.

  Of course, once they got back to Singapore – which they should do well before dawn – an international search would be set in motion. The trouble was, there were so many different routes the rechristened ship could take from here: south or east through the Indonesian archipelago towards Australia or the Philippines respectively, north towards Thailand, Vietnam or China. The bastards might even have the nerve to sail past Singapore and up the Malacca Strait towards the west. And the moment they found out a search was underway – as they were bound to – it would be another secluded cove, another coat of paint, another name.

  If only he’d had the forethought to bring one of those tracking devices they’d used in the Caribbean.

  He turned the glasses on the base buildings. There were only three: the whole set-up had either been constructed for a very specific and limited purpose – shore support for just the one patrol boat, perhaps – or it had been custom-built for piracy. There couldn’t be more than a dozen men permanently stationed ashore, and there would only be one admin office, maybe no more than a desk. A search shouldn’t take very long.

  ‘Boss,’ Finn said softly at his side. ‘I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘There’s no way we’re going to be able to track these bastards, is there?’

  ‘It doesn’t look like it.’

  Finn’s face split into a grin. ‘Well, I was just looking at those barrels on the jetty and, well, you remember Monkey Business? The Marx Brothers?’

  Marker raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you suggesting we try stowing away on the damn ship?’

  Finn tried to shrug in the confined space. ‘Yeah. Not all of us. Maybe one or two. Can’t think of a better way to find out where it’s going.’

  Marker let the idea sink in.

  ‘Rob will probably know the layout better than its captain,’ Finn added, ‘so we shouldn’t have any trouble finding somewhere to hide.’

  Maybe, Marker thought. But they wouldn’t be eating in the galley with the crew, and there was no knowing how long it would be before the ship put into another port. At least five days, he guessed, and the team was carrying about eight man-days’ worth of emergency rations. Still, there was no way he would consider sending just one man into such a situation. Two men might get hungrier, but they would be just as easy to hide, and they could offer each other both practical and emotional support. Not to mention the chance to sleep.

  ‘I’ve heard worse ideas,’ he told Finn. ‘We’ll talk it over when we wake up the others.’

  Another hour went by, during which time the men on the container ship completed the repainting of the funnel and the day grew even hotter. Marker resisted the temptation to consume more of their water supply – any stowaways would need it. At noon he woke the other two, and the four men huddled together in the confined space to consider Finn’s suggestion.

  Cafell and Dubery were both enthusiastic; almost too much so, Marker thought. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘I agree that a couple of us wouldn’t have much trouble getting aboard once it gets dark, and Rob thinks there are a thousand places to hide on the ship once we get there, so maybe the odds aren’t that bad. But I don’t want anyone thinking this is going to be a picnic. Whoever goes, they’re going to be out of contact with the rest of the world until the ship docks again, and they’ll probably go hungry in the process. And there’s always the chance something will go wrong and they’ll be discovered while the ship is at sea, in which case there’s a good chance they’ll walk the plank.’

  ‘We know all that, boss,’ Finn said. ‘So who gets to go?’

  ‘You and me,’ Marker said. The two single men, he thought.

  ‘No chance,’ Cafell said. ‘Neither of you has any idea what the inside of that ship looks like . . . ’

  ‘Can’t you make us a model this afternoon?’ Finn asked with a grin. Cafell’s obsession with mapping and model-making was almost legendary in the Royal Marine Corps.

  Marker had been afraid Cafell would put forward this argument, mostly because it was unanswerable. If Cafell went then Marker, as the other officer, would have to stay behind. Finn and Dubery might be resourceful young men, but he wasn’t about to leave them in such a situation, a long way from friendly territory and with the base offices still to be searched.

  He really had no choice, but somehow that didn’t make the decision any easier. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Rob’s indispensable, and it was Finn’s idea. You’re both elected. But I want this clear – no heroics. You’ll find out where the ship’s going when you get there. I don’t want you searching the bridge for clues, looking for the original crew, or trying to take the boat back for its owners.’

  ‘Boss . . . ’ Cafell began, looking hurt.

  ‘Can we organize quizzes?’ Finn asked.

  Marker and Finn spent the afternoon hours napping uneasily in the heat, while Cafell and Dubery kept watch on the base and ship. As dusk approached, the traffic between the two increased and an air of expectancy seemed to enliven the men on the distant jetty, leaving the watchers increasingly afraid that the Botany Bay might sail so close to sundown as to make a surreptitious boarding impossible. But soon after five the noisy arrival of a previously unseen motor boat suggested another explanation for the Indonesians’ impatience. The fourteen passengers on this boat were all young women, and they didn’t have the appearance of a travelling choir.

  ‘Friday night,’ Cafell muttered to himself, as the women were escorted towards the buildings by their grinning hosts. He wondered what Ellen was doing back in Poole, and involuntarily found himself remembering their lovemaking the night before his departure. For the first time, he felt a slight shiver of apprehension about their plans for the evening.

  Half an hour later he woke Marker and Finn, and reported on what he and Dubery had seen.

  ‘Lucky dogs,’ Finn said.

  It would be dark in less than an hour. Marker told Cafell and Finn to get their gear together, and make sure everything was watertight for the swim ahead. Since there didn’t seem much chance of winning a pitched battle, they reluctantly decided to leave the MP5s behind, and rely on the Brownings for any localized crisis. They would take all the team’s food and water, and hope to eke it out for the week they would probably need.

  As the minutes crawled by, even the idler mosquitoes came out to bite, and darkness fell slowly across the channel. There was no sign of human presence forward of the superstructure on the container ship, and only a few lights showing from the bridge deck and the accommodation portholes far below. The navy patrol boat was in darkness, the jetty empty save for a man and woman who had emerged hand in hand a few minutes earlier, both naked to the waist. An occasional flaring light in the cabin of the motor boat suggested a cigarette smoker. The sounds of Western pop music came drifting across from the directio
n of the buildings.

  A slight breeze was now blowing, but the air still seemed almost unbearably sultry, and the dark channel looked more cool and inviting than at any time that day. Slightly before seven o’clock, Cafell and Finn shook hands with the other two and slipped into the water. The bow anchor chain was about two hundred yards away, and they swam slowly towards it, making no more than a ripple on the surface.

  Marker watched through the nightscope as the two heads bobbed into view beside the chain, and as Cafell, with an agility which belied his size, clambered monkey-like up towards the anchor stowage. There were no shouts from the other boats or the shore, only a sudden increase in the volume of the music as Finn followed his partner up the chain. Then the rope snaked up towards the rail, and the hook which Cafell had improvised from a twisted piece of root caught first time. Marker thought he heard the faintest of thuds as wood struck metal, but there was no sign that anyone else had. The two men shimmied up in quick succession, visible through the nightscope but not to the naked eye. As Finn disappeared over the rail Marker thought he caught a glimpse of a thumbs up flashed in their direction.

  ‘They’re on,’ he told Dubery, who had been concentrating his attention on the jetty area.

  ‘Just in time,’ Dubery said. ‘It looks like the crew have had their fun,’ he added in a faintly disapproving tone.

  Marker turned his own glasses in the same direction. About a dozen men were making their way down to the jetty, all but two of them ethnic Chinese. Several still had women in tow. As the first batch of men disappeared from view behind the jetty an outboard motor sprang into life, and a few seconds later one of the smaller boats curved out across the channel towards the bottom of the container ship’s steps. As the disembarkees climbed up towards the deck the boat returned for their comrades, leaving only a small group of women chatting to each other by the side of the water. A few seconds later a male voice from the direction of the buildings called out, causing one of the women to say something which made her friends laugh. An angrier shout followed, and the women started walking slowly back up the path.