41
Anna wanted to be left alone, so we helped her into the back seat of the car, then stood by the bonnet while Eleni drew powerfully on a cigarette.
‘We could fight our way through,’ I said, ‘you and I.’
‘Too much risk. I should have shot out their tyres.’
‘You could not fire on a carload of children in darkness.’
‘In darkness, yes. Darkness too deep to reach into. You saw those men. . . Poor Katya.’ She held out the Sauer. ‘You want this back?’
‘Keep it,’ I said. ‘I’m yet to win a prize for shooting straight.’
We buried the two pistols deep in the torn upholstery and drove back to the main road, then turned south to the main border crossing. The tracker on the Mitsubishi reported in and Eleni plotted their course. The gap between us had become tangible for those shocking moments at the Lake Dojran border post – across it, faces could be seen, screams could be heard, bullets could be fired. Now it was just a set of points on a map again, a diagram of our impending failure to rescue Katarina from her captors.
They didn’t like the look of us at the border: an Englishman with hollowed-out eyes and his ear clotted with blood who had no obvious reason for being there and a curiously grand and very bossy Kosovar woman with her catatonic companion – all packed into a cheap old car of the kind driven by people who are of no account. We were pulled into a separate queue and I thought the game was up – they were certain to find the two handguns. Failing that, my passport would not pass muster – I couldn’t even remember my fake name and had to check: Anthony Skinner. Eleni, however, was perfectly composed. She asked me to check where the convoy of Haclan’s men had got to.
‘They’ve stopped, a little way from the coast, maybe twenty-five kilometres east of Thessaloniki.’
‘I think they will be meeting a boat,’ Eleni announced. ‘Then we won’t be able to follow.’
‘We don’t know that,’ I said quickly. ‘They could just be resting.’
‘Suppose the boat’s already arrived?’ said Anna. ‘They may be taking Katya down to the coast on foot.’
No one spoke. Eleni pursed her lips and debouched from the Fiat to smoke another cigarette, leaving behind her a large void full of pessimistic speculations.
A young border official marched over, inspected our passports and started to circle the Fiat. Eleni regaled him with a stream of voluble Greek, her voice so full of indignation and admonishment that I thought she might start wagging her finger at him. Whether it was her lecture or the disarray inside the car, he seemed to lose heart and, after rifling through a sheaf of essays and inspecting the fetid interior of a Yankee Doodle Diner ice-cream tub, he waved us through.
‘What did you say to him?’ I asked.
‘I spoke to him like his mother. Men generally do what their mothers tell them, especially Greek men.’
It was five-fifteen when we got over the border into Greece and headed east along the coast road. The pre-dawn darkness had a hollow, ominous weight that suggested daybreak had been postponed. The tracker was stationary, or dead. The Fiat developed a bony clunk from its rear suspension and I felt obliged to steer round every pothole in the heavily potholed road. Anna and Eleni jolted and swayed in their seats. We reached a coastline of shattered rock; beyond it, a leaden sea hemmed at shore-break by a fringe of dirty froth.
‘Look for boats moored out there,’ I said.
There were a few lights nodding from the horizon, but nothing closer in. Less than fifteen kilometres to go.
‘When we get there,’ said Anna, ‘I’m going to stay with Katarina. Whatever else, that’s what I’ll do. You mustn’t try and stop me. You don’t have to come with me, but if you do, don’t try and stop me.’
‘There’s no need to decide that now,’ said Eleni. ‘No need at all.’
‘Once we see how things lie, we’ll act quickly,’ I said.
‘I would so like to feel optimistic about it,’ said Anna. ‘But I can’t.’
Six kilometres. The road ducked inland over a stubby promontory that formed one cocked arm of the bay beyond. We crested the ridge. Everything happened quickly, then. We didn’t have to decide how to act. The ship was there: an unlit cargo vessel anchored in the bay, a smut of black on the dull water. Anna cried, Eleni wrapped her arms around her friend’s shoulders. I killed the lights and the engine and we coasted fast down a shallow, ramp-like road to the shore.
‘They’re still here,’ said Anna. ‘Look!’
The Mercedes had pulled off the road alongside a stretch of rough pebble beach. I stopped the Fiat behind it, threw open the door and was out and running, driving through the clutter of stones, handgun out.
They’d driven the Mitsubishi along the beach – its rear end was canted over at an odd angle two hundred yards away. People at the shoreline. Two rigid inflatables in the water, heaving around a few yards from the shore. Children being herded towards them.
They’d seen us. . . They couldn’t beach the RIBs with the outboards still running and now there wasn’t time to bring them ashore. Haclan’s men started shoving the girls into the water, forcing them to wade out to the boats through the hard, slapping waves. The RIBs bounced and snapped at their painters, the men at their helms bellowing to those on shore. One of the boats kept yawing round, the man at its helm unable to get it to lie up. They were loading the children into the other, but none of them would step willingly into the stinging cold sea.
A girl of Katarina’s age stumbled and went under. The man next to her had to reach in and fish her out while the others waited. I could see their handlers’ impatience harden into fury. Four of them occupied, which left just one to keep us off. He’d got behind the Mitsubishi, and from his gun came a fat capsule of orange flame. The round clattered in the rocks to my right. We kept on, Anna panting at my side. Another bullet spat off a boulder ahead of us and whined away into the murky sky.
Sixty yards to go. Eleni tracked up the beach and lay prone. I drew us down to the shoreline to give her a clear shot. She fired four times at precise intervals. The driver of the empty RIB went down on the third. His boat drifted away from the shore. All but two of the children were in the other RIB now.
The gunman from behind the Mitsubishi was hobbling down the beach towards the boat, firing at me as he went. I stopped, aimed, felt a gust of cool wind blow the hair from my forehead. I shot him in the chest and he staggered under the weight of the slug, then bowed his head and knelt. The men by the boat turned away.
We couldn’t shoot at the bucking RIB, not with six children on board, and they knew it. Anna ran on past me, screaming in despair as the last man swung up onto the bow. Then she caught her foot in something and went down hard. I got to the boat, had the painter just for a split second before the sodden rope snaked from my grasp and the rear end of the RIB spun inshore. The man at the helm straightened up the outboard, opened the throttle. I felt the water churn at my knees and stepped backwards to escape the whirring prop. A flat roar from the engine and the overloaded RIB sank back on its haunches, surged out to sea between the rolling furrows of its wake.
I turned to look for the other RIB. It had drifted fifty or sixty yards out. I stripped off and swam after it. The waves weren’t big, but steep and jumbled so it was hard to get any rhythm, and the water that slopped into my nose stank of oil and rotting seaweed. The RIB leapt up the slope of a wave, then dropped into the trough, then bobbed into view again. Every time it reappeared, the distance I still had to swim seemed to have lengthened, but at last I was hauling myself aboard. The driver was lolling over the outboard. He didn’t seem to notice when I tipped him into the sea. I throttled up and headed inshore, where Anna was standing waist-deep in the sea. She’d got the Sauer from Eleni and had both handguns, spare clips and my clothes held above her head. I helped her into the RIB.
‘Did you see Katarina?’
‘I saw her. Just for a moment, until I fell. Quickly, James.’
I sp
un the RIB round, got her up onto a plane, and we scudded out across the bay. Anna took the tiller while I grappled into my wet clothes. It was just about dawn, though the only evidence of the new day was a brown tinge to the relentless slate-grey of the sea and the arrival of a flock of gulls to squabble over a patch of refuse discarded from the stern of the cargo ship. She was an old-fashioned vessel, low-slung deck fitted with a small crane between a high prow and a superstructure of bridge and cabins at the stern. The other RIB disappeared round the far side of her hull. How long would it take to get everyone off? The sea got steadily heavier and less predictable as we headed out, the rubber bows bouncing off the faces of the waves and the outboard racing as the propeller lifted clear of the water. Anna asked me to take over and I dropped speed. We had another problem: the gauge on the fuel tank read less than a quarter full.
We got to within a couple of hundred yards and I saw three men with automatic rifles lined up along the rail beneath the bridge. Santa Cristina, she was called, out of Piraeus. We weren’t an easy target, even from a stable deck, but all they had to do was keep us at a distance while they got under way. One of the men raised his rifle. I didn’t see where the bullets went, but three cracks came veering through the air. Then one of them got lucky – a round slapped off the cylinder of rubber that formed the port side of the RIB and it was a miracle it didn’t burst. I’d seen enough. I turned away and accelerated past the cargo ship.
‘What are you doing?’ Anna shouted. ‘We have to go on board.’
‘We can’t.’
‘Then what?’
Then what? I didn’t know. A scrap of black smoke guffed from the cargo ship’s funnel and the sea bulged into a pattern of glassy pools at her stern. The big, ugly vessel with its consignment of kidnapped girls got under way, and was soon ploughing through the turn that would bring her on course to sail straight out of the bay.
Stay with it, I told myself. Think of something.
We passed through the neck of the bay and although the waves grew higher again, they were smoother and less tightly packed and I was able to settle the RIB on a fast, even trajectory that quickly drew us further ahead of the larger vessel. The needle on the fuel gauge edged towards zero. As we raced out into open sea, I noticed a couple of fishing boats near the horizon. I headed for the nearer of the two, trying to work out what to do next. The Santa Cristina must not leave Greek waters. And we needed noise, something that the sleepiest coastguard could not miss. The boat carrying Haclan’s prized assets was slow and had no place to hide, I told myself. And it was likely that her crew were hired hands who, if it came to a choice between fighting alongside Haclan’s men or saving their own skins, would certainly opt for the latter. In such ways, I allowed myself to conclude that there was no better arena in which to take them on. I raised my fist and gave Anna a thumbs-up, accompanied by what I thought was a smile, though it may have been more like a snarl. Anna got the message, and I saw in her face that she was grateful for the show of optimism.
For seven or eight minutes we rode the battering waves, a canopy of numbing spray rattling over the gunwales and bubbling on the duckboards beneath our feet. The sky paled and the horizon came clear, slanting away to the west. We arrived within hailing distance of the fishing boat. A man of my age on deck, oilskins up to his armpits; probably his father up in the wheelhouse. Neither of them pleased to see us. The boat was lying up while they worked on the gear, rocking sharply in the chop. Two swathes of net like huge hornets’ nests hung from a low gantry across her stern. I took the RIB round to the seaward side in hope that the Santa Cristina would not see what we were doing.
‘Tell them we’re nearly out of gas. Ask if we can come aboard.’
Anna spoke to them in Greek. They scowled at her. The man on deck grabbed a boathook and held it like a spear. She spoke again and the two men conducted a terse conversation. In the end, the father gave the order. I brought the RIB alongside and caught the line his son flung down at me.
‘What did you say to them?’
‘That they could have the boat.’
I helped the son winch their prize on board, then followed Anna up to the wheelhouse. She was imploring the captain to help us, but he kept raising his arm and barking at her. I didn’t want to hurt the old guy, but we didn’t have time for a complicated negotiation, either, so I waited for his son to lumber out of sight with the outboard from the RIB in his arms and then came up behind the father and slugged him with the butt of the Sauer. I left Anna at the wheel and ran down to deal with the son, who was climbing back up a gangway. I pointed the Sauer at his teeth and motioned him to the hatch in the centre of the deck. He was too stupefied to resist. Once I had him in the hold, I hauled up the ladder and secured the hatch-cover, then went back up to the wheelhouse with a length of cord to tie up the captain.
The captain came to and attempted to spit at me. I lashed him to a handrail by the door and stood to watch Anna manoeuvre the boat. She’d already swung round so we were heading back towards the Santa Cristina, which was slowly approaching the horns of the bay. The fishing boat was handy enough, responding to the helm and holding her course when set. The waves were coming at us on the bow-quarter, and she was easing the wheel over to compensate.
‘You’ve done this before?’
‘My father loves boats. He showed me a bit.’
I put the Excam in the drawer of a cabinet where she could reach it easily, then explained what I had in mind.
‘It’s dangerous, Anna, but I can’t think of any other way.’
‘We must try. Let’s see how much speed we have.’
Once we came to close quarters, a miscalculation could result in several different kinds of catastrophe; but at least Anna would be well protected up here – the glass in front of her was a good inch thick and built to withstand a hammering at sea. She rolled the throttle lever forward and the engine emitted an indignant bellow that set a biro clattering on a formica-topped chart table beside the wheel. There was plenty of power on tap, but like most elderly diesels, this one had long since settled on a comfortable rate of knots and didn’t take kindly to being poked.
‘How quickly does she stop?’
Anna cut the engine to idle and the boat pitched forward and started to slew sideways. Once we’d lost a bit of way, she hit reverse. The transmission gave a heavy jolt, then the bows drifted to starboard as the propeller dragged the stern off true.
‘The prop won’t drive straight in reverse, the curves in the blades give it a bias—’
‘James, do I look like I need a lecture on marine engineering?’
‘Sorry. The boat may handle differently when we’re alongside.’
‘Thank goodness it has a rudder.’ She looked up at me to check I knew she was only kidding. ‘Now, make yourself useful, huh? Go scrub the deck.’
Anna, Anna. . . How did you find the courage to fill this lull before everything was decided with a little light mockery? I was the powerful one, with my broad shoulders and my gun and my murderous eye, but it was you who had the strength to make light of the obstacles in our path, even as the Santa Cristina sailed south with your daughter on board.
I put my arm around her slim shoulders and smiled. . . No, I grinned. Nothing like a snarl this time.
Make yourself useful, huh? It was cold on deck after the fug of the wheelhouse, and I had to keep reaching for handholds because my legs weren’t used to the corkscrew motion of the boat as she rode the lumpy waves. I moved among the cables, cords, hawsers, shackles, blocks and winches that festooned the business area of the deck, trying to understand how it all worked. You swung the nets away from the stern on two rusty outriggers, mounted on the gantry and operated by steel cables forward of the rig; after release, the lines that held the nets were controlled by a pair of stout, long-handled winches. I’d get both nets down if I could. Knife. . . There, in a plastic holster screwed to the inside of the port rail – the blade long and dull but wafer sharp. Flares. In the emergency l
ocker bolted to the bulwark by the gangway, three battered cylinders that looked several decades past their use-by date.
Anna was now steering the boat in a broad U to bring us onto a course parallel with the Santa Cristina, but about five hundred yards ahead and two hundred to port. How long now – four, five minutes? Salt-scented air barrelled in from the east, the diesel jabbered. I loaded the Sauer with a fresh clip and zipped it into the pocket of Eleni’s uncle’s coat, then ran my hands over the winches and cleats once more. If I swung the nets out too early it might slow us down, so I just looked up at the wheelhouse and nodded to show I was ready.
Anna spun the wheel and the fishing boat angled neatly in towards the course of the ship behind. Men were assembling along the rails on her upper deck. We’d been rumbled now, so I fired the three flares one after the other, and every damn one of them worked – until the first incinerated its own parachute and tumbled down to the sea. Haclan’s men were pointing me out, then one of them waved. I didn’t wave back. He pointed his rifle and mimed a shot – what fun to be safely out at sea with this particular fool to aim at! We drew in closer, seventy or eighty yards off her starboard bow and maybe three times that distance ahead. Close enough to fire a few rounds, thought the shooters – two of them took aim and I heard the puny crack of their rifles carry past us on the air.
I cranked the outrigger out over the water, hinges screeching like banshees. The weight of the net dangling to port caused the little boat to list in towards the Santa Cristina. Anna had cut it too fine. . . Distinct from the clatter of our diesel, I could hear the dull throb of the Santa Cristina’s engines, the churr of her bow wave. All this time, the gunmen were taking desultory potshots at us; but the closer we tucked in under the Santa Cristina’s hull, the less of our deck area was exposed to their fire.
Say A Little Prayer (A James Palatine Novel Book 2) Page 29