Marine G SBS

by David Monnery

  They investigated the warehouses, and found both almost empty. One contained two boxes of computer software, the other a consignment of silk shirts and scarves. Hong Kong produce, Marker guessed. Brought out on the speedboats which took the illegals in, and probably destined for the mainland. Just a sideline.

  As Finn dutifully pressed the camcorder button, Marker stood listening by the closed door, feeling profoundly disappointed. All they had was proof of illegals being transhipped by non-uniformed Chinese. There was nothing to connect anything to the authorities. The port facilities would be explained away as economic development for the future, and all knowledge of the rest denied.

  They had seventeen minutes before the two men in the adjoining building set out on another meaningless patrol. Marker eased the door open, MP5 at the ready, and slipped out to one side. Finn followed him towards the narrow passage between warehouses, and the two men walked swiftly down towards the rear, with the intention of circling round behind the old settlement and climbing back up the hill.

  The sudden shout put an end to all that.

  The two men froze. The shout had seemed to come from above them, from somewhere up on the sugar loaf, but the first sign of movement came from the rear of the lighted building to their right. Another shout was followed by gunfire, the bullets zipping into the plastic roof of the warehouse like a storm of hailstones.

  With enemies in front and to the right, and a wide empty space behind them at the other end of the passage, it wasn’t hard to pick a direction. Marker led the way at a fast jog towards the main jetty. More bullets ricocheted off the warehouse, and several raised voices were now competing with each other in what was presumably Cantonese.

  As they raced out on to the short section of the T-shaped main jetty the whole structure was suddenly illuminated, and for a ludicrous second Marker wondered if the pressure of their running feet had tripped a touch-sensitive switch. More shouts were audible behind them, and a few seconds later another, deeper-throated gun opened up.

  Marker swung right on to the longer arm of the four-hundred-yard jetty and put on an extra burst of speed to reach the cover offered by the huge wheels of the mobile gantry crane. Finn did the same and both men laid a line of silent fire across the water at the entrance to the jetty, toppling one man and forcing several others to think twice about a further advance.

  He glanced up at the headland and wondered if Cafell and Dubery were enjoying the show. ‘Have you got the camcorder stowed away?’ he shouted to Finn.

  ‘All dry and snug,’ the Londoner replied, just as several guns seemed to open up at once, sending bullets whining off the steel crane.

  ‘Leap-frog,’ Marker yelled, and as he fired a long burst from the MP5 Finn moved down past him from the first wheel of the crane to the third. A burst from the younger man, and Marker moved from the second to the fourth. A few seconds later they were both racing past the eighth and down the open jetty like Olympic sprinters hungry for gold. As the breath rasped in his lungs Marker counted off the seconds – five, six . . . ten, eleven . . . eighteen, nineteen . . . The gunfire sounded far behind them, almost a world away, and then they were sailing out into space off the end of the concrete pier, landing with twin splashes in the warm waters of the bay.

  A couple of minutes later, as they eased themselves up on to the beach which Cafell and Finn had reached three nights before, they could see men peering down from the jetty, and a figure with a powerful torch hurrying past the crane. One gun opened up and then another, though what they were aiming at was impossible to say. The sea was apparently unharmed.

  Marker and Finn quickly struck out inland, determined to be well away from the beach before anyone thought to send a search party. The journey across the centre of the island proved harder than expected, and it was almost two hours before they reached the other side, where Cafell and Dubery were waiting anxiously, crouched in the undergrowth close to the hidden Kleppers.

  ‘Any sign of the enemy?’ Marker asked.

  ‘The sampan sailed past twenty minutes ago, heading south. It doesn’t look like they have anything else until the speedboats get back.’

  ‘With any luck, they won’t be.’ Marker glanced at his watch. ‘Looks like we’ll be in time for our lift,’ he said. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’

  11

  It was twenty past three on the Tuesday morning when the weary SBS team arrived back at the Stonecutters’ Island naval base. Marker sent the other three to their bunks and headed for the CO’s telephone. Once ensconced in the office, he sat in the swivel chair and tried to organize his thoughts.

  The excursion to Chuntao had achieved next to nothing. The Marines who had provided their lift home had been full of the news that three speedboats loaded with illegals had been successfully intercepted, but as far as Marker was concerned this was extremely small beer. At the rate the pirate organization was making profits the boats could be replaced out of petty cash.

  On the plus side, there were unlikely to be any repercussions from the Chinese. He and Finn had been fired on, and maybe even identified as Europeans, but they had left no evidence behind. And in any case he doubted whether the villains would want to draw that much attention to themselves. Beijing would probably not even be informed of the incursion.

  It was like a 0–0 draw, Marker thought. Defences had been dominant.

  He picked up the phone and punched out Colhoun’s home number. It would be twenty to eight in England, and he hoped Colhoun wasn’t a Coronation Street fan.

  Judging by the speed with which the telephone was answered, he wasn’t.

  ‘We’re back,’ Marker told his CO. ‘No problems, but not much joy either.’ He took Colhoun through the events of the previous thirty-six hours. ‘Chuntao’s obviously just a transhipment point,’ he concluded. ‘Another time we might have been luckier, and come back with some real dirt, but I’m not sure how much good it would do us. We really need to get some dirt on the people who matter.’

  ‘And they’re on the mainland,’ Colhoun said resignedly.

  ‘Probably right next door in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone.’ He gave the CO a thumbnail sketch of the connections Rosalie had been trying to unravel.

  Colhoun’s long sigh was eloquent.

  ‘I thought we might take a look at the Shenzhen coast later today,’ Marker added. ‘From our side of the border of course.’

  ‘Of course. Be careful.’

  Marker hung up and sat looking at the phone. Rosalie had told him she wanted to know the moment they got back, but he was tempted to let her sleep. Then, remembering how angry Penny used to get when he second-guessed her, he punched out the number of the apartment. Listening to her voice on the answerphone provided him with ridiculous pleasure, but it quickly gave way to anxiety when she failed to pick up at the sound of his voice.

  He shook away a mental picture of her lying dead on the floor of the flat and called the OSCG number. Neither she, Li nor Ormond was there, and the man who answered refused to give him Li’s home number. But he already had Ormond’s – the Scot had given it to him only a couple of days before.

  It took only one ring for the Chief Inspector’s irritated voice to answer.

  Marker explained that he couldn’t get through to Rosalie. ‘After what happened the other night . . . ’

  ‘I’ll get back to you,’ Ormond interrupted him.

  Marker sat in the Marine CO’s chair and waited, trying not to imagine the worst. It wasn’t easy, and as the minutes went by he felt himself trying to build mental defences against the inevitable blow.

  It was more than half an hour later when Ormond called back. ‘The locals took a look – the flat’s empty,’ he began. ‘So I got hold of Li. He didn’t know anything, but he called their answerphone at the OSCG, which both of them use to leave messages for each other. She called from a hotel in Shenzhen at around ten, saying she’d be back by tomorrow afternoon.’

  The sense of relief, though enormous, soo
n wore off. ‘What’s she doing in Shenzhen?’

  ‘A good question,’ Ormond said drily. ‘And it’s probably no accident that she didn’t say. In the People’s Republic there’s no such thing as a private phone call. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow . . . or rather later today.’

  ‘I appreciate the help,’ Marker said. After hanging up he sat there in the darkened room, looking out at the night breeze whipping up the waters of the bay, feeling scared by how much he needed her.

  Rosalie woke at her usual seven o’clock, showered again, and went down to the hotel dining room in search of breakfast. The dim sum trolleys were doing their rounds, much to the dismay of an American couple who wanted waffles. She loaded her plate with sweet coconut balls, water-chestnut cake and mango pudding, and then spoiled the impression by demanding coffee instead of tea. Over the resulting cup of instant sludge she considered her two options – return or further investigation – and decided that the latter required more research. The hotel reception provided her with a tourist map of the Zone, and from this she was able to work out that Lin Chun’s dock was less than two miles from the road which connected Shenzhen City to the port of Shekou. And from the latter there was a regular hover-ferry service to Hong Kong.

  There were other things to see on this road: ‘Splendid China’, which boasted models of famous areas and buildings, and ‘China Folk Culture Villages’, showing off the country’s ethnic diversity through the re-creation of peoples and their homes. So there would be nothing suspicious about her going this way – the only problems would arise when she left the beaten tourist track.

  A taxi probably wouldn’t take her, she thought. And even if she found one that would, she could hardly ask the driver to wait while she investigated a closed military area.

  She sounded out reception, and found that the fates were on her side, for further down Jianshe Road the country’s first car-hire firm for tourists had recently opened for business. Back in her room she thought about leaving another telephone message, but could think of no way of conveying anything useful which didn’t also betray her intentions. After checking out of the hotel she walked down the street to Shaolin Cars, picked out a shiny black Fiat Uno, and arranged, at an exorbitant extra cost, to leave the car at the ferry terminal in Shekou.

  She was waiting at a traffic light on the wide Shennan Zonglu when she first noticed the black Renault some three cars behind her. There were two men in the front seat, and without really knowing why she knew they were from the PSB.

  She drove out through the landscape of vast building sites which clung to the city’s outskirts and followed the road west through several miles of flat countryside before passing under the new Canton to Hong Kong motorway. A mile further on the waters of Shenzhen Bay came into view, deep aquamarine beneath the clear blue sky.

  The Renault was still fifty yards behind her.

  The sign for ‘Splendid China’ hove into view, and without a second thought she turned the Fiat into the approach road. The Renault followed, and as she bought her entrance ticket she glanced back to catch the two men leaning against the bonnet of their car, lighting cigarettes.

  She dutifully went round the exhibits, admiring shrunken versions of Guilin, the Great Wall, the Forbidden Palace in Beijing – just about everywhere a tourist might wish to tread. She stopped by the model of Lhasa’s Potala Palace, listened to an English group lamenting the fate of Tibet, and restrained herself from pointing out that the Chinese had behaved no worse in that country than their own ancestors had done in Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

  What was she going to do? There really didn’t seem to be any choice – if the PSB men were still waiting she would have to go home.

  But there was no sign of either them or their car in the parking lot. She strolled from one end to the other, checking behind the tourist buses and minibuses to make sure, and then climbed back into the rented car. Two miles down the road, approaching the crucial turn-off, she checked the rear-view mirror for one last time, took a deep breath, and aimed the Fiat into the unknown.

  The road, freed of the need to impress foreigners, rapidly deteriorated. It passed through one oversize village, dipped to cross an area of flooded rice fields on a low embankment, and then climbed again to enter the small town of Nantou. Here the faces turned towards the car were full of curiosity, but when she stopped to ask for directions to Shekou her presence was satisfactorily explained – she was just another stupid foreigner lost in the immensity of the Middle Kingdom.

  Not far outside the town the road crossed Lin Chun’s river, but the view downstream was limited to little more than a hundred yards by a bend in the waterway. On the far side of the bridge a recently built side road forked off alongside the river, running through high gates and past an occupied gatehouse. Beyond the junction a high wire fence restricted all access to the area west of the main road, and the lie of the land ensured that the view through its mesh was limited to rocky slopes and blue sky. After several hundred yards of this she pulled the car over and climbed out, her sense of frustration winning out over her caution.

  There was a hole at the bottom of the fence. In fact there were several of them: over the years erosion had washed away the top layers of soil, exposing the uneven rock in which the fence posts had been concreted. She would have no difficulty in crawling through.

  Could she leave the car like this on an open road? The ridge line seemed no more than fifty yards away, and from there she should have a view of the estuary. She hadn’t seen another vehicle since she left the tourists’ beaten track. And it would only take five minutes.

  She squeezed through and started clambering up the slope, her heart pounding. Two ridge lines later she was looking out and down at what she had come to see.

  The land fell away across empty fields to the shoreline of the wide Pearl River estuary, and a faint line on the horizon marked the opposite coast some thirty miles into the distance. Almost directly in front of her, Lin Chun’s river, now more than two hundred yards wide, flowed lazily into the Pearl. And a few hundred yards upstream, hidden from the estuary by a long bend and a tree-covered headland, a clutch of low buildings marked the small roadstead. A couple of short-sea traders were anchored in mid-river, and a third, which stood close behind the buildings, was presumably tied up at the invisible dock. Two container lorries were visible through the trees on the near side of the river.

  It occurred to her that with binoculars she could have identified the ships.

  But it didn’t really matter – this was the place. The babies were sent south from here, the pirated cargoes unloaded and taken by lorry to other ports for their second sale.

  And there was nothing more she needed to know.

  She was halfway back to the fence when she heard the approaching cars, with no chance of making it forward to the road or back to the dubious safety of the ridge. Five PSB men climbed out in leisurely fashion, and watched as she scrambled back through the hole in the fence. They seemed more amused than anything else.

  She smiled at them. ‘I just went up to see the view,’ she said apologetically.

  Two arms grabbed hers and rammed her against the side of the Fiat. Hands roughly probed her body for any concealed weapons. Once the searcher was satisfied she was bundled into the back of a familiar-looking Renault, where she was immediately sandwiched by two men. As the driver turned the car she saw one of the other men climbing into her rented Fiat.

  At the bottom of the hill they turned left through the now-open gates and on to the road which ran along beside the swiftly widening river. After a mile or so she could see the ships in mid-stream, and shortly after that the structures gathered behind the dock.

  The first building looked neglected, and it was towards this that she was half led, half pulled by two of the PSB men. Once through the entrance she had a momentary glimpse of several doorways before she was pushed into an empty room. She looked up to see two lines of rusted hooks suspended from the ceiling – her new home
had once been a cold store. And then the door slammed behind her, flooding the room with darkness.

  She leant against a wall and let her weight take her down on her haunches, wondering how she would be rewarded for her stupidity.

  * * *

  It was noon when the SBS team reassembled for brunch in the Stonecutters’ Island canteen, and after each of them had made up for lost cholesterol Marker outlined his plan for the day. ‘Everything points to Shenzhen,’ he said, spreading a large-scale map of the area out across the cleared table. ‘By my reckoning the Zone has about thirty-five miles of coastline – ten around Mirs Bay in the east, and about twenty-five in the west around Deep Bay and along the Pearl estuary. And with the exception of the seven or so miles along the Pearl, it’s all viewable from British waters. So Rob, you and Ian take Mirs Bay. Finn and I will take the west. The first things we’re looking for are the two short-sea traders Rob and Finn saw on Chuntao – I’m sure we’ve all committed the Chinese characters to memory by this time . . .’

  The others groaned.

  ‘And the second thing is a likely port. It won’t be that big, or there wouldn’t have been any need to tranship cargoes, but it has to have enough water to take fully laden short-sea traders.’

  ‘There’s always a chance they’re using several small ports,’ Cafell said gloomily.

  ‘Maybe, but if I were the Big Cheese I’d want more control than that.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ Cafell agreed.

  The four men scattered to collect the necessary gear, and Marker took the time to phone the OSCG office. She hadn’t yet returned, her partner said. But there was no reason to worry, Li added, sounding less than convinced by his own words.

  Ten minutes later Marker was watching Stonecutters’ Island and the towers of Kowloon fall away behind them as Finn steered the Rigid Raider at a steady thirty knots towards the Kap Shui Mun channel. The sea had never yet failed Marker, but on this particular afternoon the uplift he always felt in its swaying grip had a hard time competing with the sinking feeling which the conversation with Li had left in his stomach.