Marine C SBS

by David Monnery

  And then two legs suddenly disappeared, and the planks above his head shook with the feet walking away down the dock. Ten seconds, he thought, inching forward towards the still-hanging feet. Another two to get the dick out. And three more to reach mid-piss.

  With both hands he grasped one of the offered ankles and pulled with all his might. A shriek split the night, and the man came crashing down on to the beach in front of him, landing head first in the sand. As Russell dived for the fallen gun another shout came from the far end of the dock, swiftly followed by the sound of running feet.

  Russell’s finger found the trigger and he turned, still on one knee, as the running man’s silhouette loomed into view on the dock above. Both guns seemed to open fire at the same moment, but only Russell had a clear view of what he was aiming at. The Haitian was lifted into the air, and seemed to hang there for a moment, like a man bungling a backward somersault, before he crashed down with a sound of splintering wood into one of the small boats parked on the far side of the dock.

  The other man, Russell discovered, had been knocked unconscious by the fall.

  In the village a couple of lights had appeared, but no one ventured out to investigate, and within a few minutes the lights had been extinguished. Russell used his length of rope to tie up the unconscious man, and gagged him with one of his own socks. Then he walked quickly down the dock to the boat he had chosen, slipped its mooring, jumped aboard, and picked up the oars.

  He had more than five hours of darkness left, which should give him all the time he needed. Soon the dock was disappearing from view, swallowed up in the larger silhouette of the hills behind the village.

  Half an hour went by, and though the mainland hardly seemed to grow any nearer, Russell felt happy with his progress. With the moon shining down on the sea, the heavens filled with stars, it was possible to forget for a moment what might be waiting on the farther shore, and what he had left behind in the compound on Tortuga.

  It was through this precarious sense of well-being that the first shouts of distress reached his ears, and for a moment he thought it was his conscience playing tricks with him.

  But it was a boat, a small boat drifting towards him, sitting unusually low in the water. At least two of its occupants seemed to be shouting at him.

  He rowed towards the other boat, and soon came alongside. It wasn’t much bigger than the Dolores, but it was carrying a load more suited to a boat three times the size. A huge mound of belongings filled its centre, and seven people were wedged around its edges. One, a middle-aged woman, was holding a baby in her lap. The other five – two adults and three children all under twelve – were baling for all they were worth.

  In vain. The boat was already knee deep in water, the tops of its sides only a few inches above the level of the sea. It was sinking.

  ‘America!’ the woman with the baby shouted at him, as if she thought he was waiting for a password.

  Other eyes looked imploringly in his direction.

  This was what they called instant karma, Russell thought. Someone up there was trying to tell him something.

  He manoeuvred his boat alongside and gestured for the Haitian family to come aboard. The woman came first, and the baby was passed over to her. The children were next, and then the mother. With each new arrival Russell’s boat let out a creak of alarm and sank lower into the sea.

  The father was now beginning to transfer the pile of belongings from the sinking boat.

  ‘No,’ Russell told him, shaking his head for emphasis. The man gave him a look which seemed to say: Don’t you understand, these things are our life?

  Russell shook his head again. Already it was obvious that they wouldn’t make it across the strait. He mimed to the Haitian that he could try towing the belongings, and at this the man’s eyes lit up. He stepped nimbly into the stern of Russell’s boat and reached out an arm for the bow of his own.

  Russell turned the Dolores back towards Tortuga and begun rowing, conscious of the children’s eyes staring up at him. The baby began to cry, and the mother started singing a soft Creole lullaby. Halfway to the shore he heard a despairing sigh behind him and knew that the other boat had taken the family’s belongings to the bottom.

  The child’s wail seemed to grow stronger as they neared the beach, but it didn’t matter. Russell’s eyes had already picked out the men waiting on the dock.

  The dark mangroves slid slowly by on either side, as the Slipstream Queen made its unhurried way up Lostman’s River. The moon had risen an hour before, and was playing hide-and-seek with the fleet of clouds that were moving across the star-laden sky. One moment the waters of the river would offer a shimmering carpet, the next a black mirror.

  Dubery was at the wheel, Cafell reading the chart. Finn was sitting on the bow with the nightscope, looking out for any uncharted obstructions. Marker was in the lounge, checking through their equipment one last time.

  They had been on the move for three hours now, since receiving Franklin’s confirmatory message. This time they had secured advanced clearance for their passage through US territorial waters from the authorities in Key West, and had rashly promised a return on their American hosts’ hospitality before the night was out. The US Customs Service Air Division at Homestead had been alerted to expect an incoming call sometime around dawn.

  It was almost two o’clock now, and they were nearing the spot where they had anchored the cabin cruiser the previous week. As they passed it Cafell showed Dubery where the crocodile had lain, jaws at the ready. He didn’t mention that they were passing over the spot where they had sunk the dead gunman.

  In the lounge Marker heard both comment and omission, and decided that this team of four had gelled as smoothly as he could have hoped. He wasn’t sure he had much in common with either of the two newcomers – Dubery was a bit on the earnest side, Finn still young enough to think the world revolved around him – but then Cafell wasn’t exactly his idea of a soul mate either. The important thing was that they all felt confident enough in each other’s abilities to make full use of their own, and after three days together Marker was pretty sure they did.

  Any lingering doubts about team chemistry had been removed the previous evening. Emerging from his sleep shift Marker had come upon the other three practising cabrioles on the stern deck. Not that he knew them by that name. Finn’s pocket encyclopaedia, it turned out, contained diagrams of the eight basic ballet steps, and his SBS comrades were practising number eight, leaping into the air with one arm outstretched, and two legs fluttering against the other. And laughing fit to burst.

  Marker smiled at the memory and went forward to join the other two on the bridge. Hell’s Lake was not much more than a mile ahead, and it was time to decide whether or not to douse the boat’s lights. They were not intending to bring the vessel within three miles of the Anhinga Lodge, but it was always difficult to judge how far sound travelled across water. If the bad guys heard the boat, then it would be better if they could see it too.

  ‘If we leave the lights on,’ he suggested to Cafell and Dubery, ‘then as far as they’re concerned we’ll just be one more boat cutting across the southern end of the lake on our way to the Everglades Waterway. There must be several boats a day doing just that.’

  ‘In the daytime, yes,’ Cafell said, ‘but not in the middle of the night.’

  ‘I don’t think the noise will carry,’ Dubery said quietly.

  ‘Actually neither do I,’ Cafell said.

  Marker sighed. The engines seemed awfully loud to him, but maybe that was because he was listening to them. And it would be better not to raise any questions at all in the minds of the enemy. ‘OK,’ he said eventually, ‘let’s go for broke. But do your best to keep the engine noise down.’

  ‘You got it,’ Cafell said in a mock-American accent.

  The entrance to the lake came into view, and a few minutes later the Slipstream Queen was venturing out on to the wide waters. Cafell kept them close to the southern shore, where
, unless the enemy had acquired state-of-the-art thermal imaging since Marker’s previous visit, they would be hidden in the dark line of mangroves.

  Lights were already visible across the lake. With the aid of the nightscope Marker could make out two illuminated windows in the lodge, and what was probably a kerosene lamp burning on the end of the jetty.

  The Slipstream Queen was now far enough away from the course the submarine would take. Marker gave Dubery the cutthroat gesture, and the Scot turned off the engines. In the bow Finn gently lowered the anchor into the lake.

  The four men gathered in the lounge, and all but Dubery pulled on their wetsuit hoods. Using the pools of moonlight offered by the windows they applied the dark camouflage cream to the exposed parts of their faces and checked their equipment.

  Satisfied, they went out on deck. Once the Kleppers had been quietly let down into the water, Finn and Cafell slid down the rungs and clambered aboard. Marker lowered the waterproof bag containing the camcorder and PRC 319 into the empty seat beside Cafell, and then climbed down to join Finn in the other canoe. Both crews pulled the spray-deck sheet over their heads, clamped it in place, and pulled the paddles from their pockets in the outer skin. Then with a wave of the hand from Marker they turned silently out towards the centre of the lake.

  Standing on the deck, Dubery watched them go, frustrated at not being with them, but also remembering the day of his departure from Poole, and Helen telling him on the phone that she had no desire to be a widow at twenty-four.

  Some six hundred miles to the south-east, Russell was wondering why he was still alive. When he had been returned to the camp that morning Joutard had made it clear that he would have one more chance to use his surgical skills, and that then he would be given the opportunity to experience the process from the patient’s point of view.

  But the operations were over, the helicopter long since gone, and he was still in the land of the living. Maybe there had not been enough time for Calderón to harvest both him and the man he had killed on the dock the previous night, several of whose bones, and both of whose corneas, had gone with the helicopter.

  Maybe he had another week in hell, Russell thought. But at least he had saved that Haitian family, and he would be going out with a better opinion of himself than the one he had lately become used to. He had tried.

  The quality of Joutard’s hospitality had naturally dropped. Russell was back in the room where he had first seen Emelisse leaning over his face like an angel. And this time they had thought to board up the window from the outside, as well as lock the door.

  He had been given one chance and blown it. And he had the distinct feeling that one was all he was going to get.

  As the wilderness lodge grew nearer Marker left the paddling to Finn and devoted all his concentration to the nightscope. Before the angle became too obtuse he was able to pick out an occasional movement through one of the lighted windows, as if someone was walking across the room behind them. But there was no sign of enemy activity outside the lodge or on the jetty.

  The mysterious disappearance of a colleague the week before had obviously been attributed to accident. They had found the upturned canoe and made the logical deduction as to the whereabouts of its former occupant.

  In the lead Klepper Cafell veered away from the shoreline to pass an unusually ambitious root, and raised an arm to give the following canoe advanced warning. They had paddled about three miles now, on a course that hugged the lake’s western shore, and were now not much more than half a mile from their destination. They had gambled on finding a suitable landing spot on this side of the lodge – Marker knew from experience that there were none on the other.

  About a hundred yards from the boat-house they were forced to concede that there was none on this side either. At least they had no problem finding somewhere to tie up the canoes – there were about a thousand roots per square yard to choose from. The three men slipped quietly out into the waist-deep water and started wriggling and twisting their way towards dry land, passing the bag with the camcorder and satellite radio forward hand by hand in a leapfrogging sequence. All three men had experience of waterproof containers proving themselves otherwise.

  They reached dry ground later than Cafell and Finn hoped but sooner than Marker expected. He unzipped the bag and gave the radio to Cafell, the camcorder to Finn, and kept the bag for himself. Then in single file they started slowly forward in the direction of the lodge. Soon they had their first glimpse of the light on the end of the jetty, and another few minutes brought them to a position just inside the trees which ringed the helipad behind the lodge. The helicopter – an Enstrom 280 FXA Shark – had already arrived.

  Marker brought finger and thumb together in the prearranged signal for Finn to use the camcorder, and the corporal squirmed a couple of yards further forward to get a clear shot. Just in case, Marker also spent a few seconds memorizing the helicopter’s number.

  A raised voice suddenly disturbed the calm, causing all three men to freeze. The silence that followed lasted only a second, before a wail of laughter filled the air. It was only the men inside the lodge, having what sounded like a good time.

  ‘Party animals,’ Marker murmured to himself. And their party was about to get crashed.

  It was about seventy-five yards from where they crouched to the front of the lodge, and most of it was in shadow. It was worth the chance, Marker decided, if only to check on the strength of the opposition. ‘I’m going for a closer look,’ he whispered to Cafell and Finn, and before the former could start an argument he was gone, darting over the open ground, along the side of the outhouse, and across the gap which separated it from the lodge.

  An oblique look through the nearest window showed there were no curtains, only a mosquito screen. Marker moved away from the lodge, heading for a position in the shadows from which he could get a better look inside the room. Having found one, he took a single quick glance inside and sank to his haunches, letting his mind retrieve the image.

  There were four men sitting around a table at one end of what looked like a games room. There was a table-tennis table behind them, and a pool table beyond that. Three of the men looked Hispanic, and none of them was older than thirty. The fourth man was sitting with his back to the window, but the hat and long hair looked more than familiar. It was the Indian he had seen on the creek.

  One more look, Marker decided. Like many men with Special Forces experience he was a firm believer in the sixth sense – if you stared at anyone for long enough they became aware that they were being observed. The trick was to keep the vision peripheral, and just take it all in like a camera.

  He rose slowly to his feet, took a second look, and sank back down. One of the Hispanics was wearing a shoulder holster, but there were no other weapons on display. If they had SMGs – and there was every reason to think they did – then they were probably leaning against the men’s chairs, or maybe out near the main door. There was no way of knowing.

  Satisfied he had seen all there was to safely see, Marker took the same route back to Cafell and Finn, and recounted in whispers what he had discovered.

  ‘Can I go and take their pictures now?’ Finn asked.

  Marker grinned at him and looked at his watch. ‘Time we were in position for phase two,’ he said.

  He collected the three MP5s, wrapped them in the bag which had carried the camcorder and radio, and rammed them into a convenient growth of ferns. Meanwhile, Cafell and Finn had both taken a ball of dark twine from their belts and tied one end around the trunk of the nearest tree. Marker and Finn then moved further back into the undergrowth and turned towards the lake, unrolling Finn’s ball behind them. A few minutes later they reached the shoreline close to the spot from which Marker had first seen inside the boat-house, and started looking for the best camera angle.

  Cafell had headed off in the opposite direction. According to the largest-scale map they had managed to find, the thick vegetation surrounding the lake rarely extended m
ore than a hundred yards inland, and he was hoping to find a suitably open space in which to use the radio. His hundred yards of twine was nearly exhausted when the light began to brighten, almost imperceptibly at first, but then with increasing speed, as if a bright grey sun was rising. Cafell found himself standing on the edge of a sea of grass which stretched away under the stars as far as the eye could see. He stepped forward on to this strange plain, and found himself up to his knees in water.

  He snorted at his own stupidity, and retreated to the dry ground of the hummock. After tying the end of the twine to a convenient tree he wedged the satellite set into a cleft between branches, and set off back through the trees, using the twine as a guide. At its end he transferred to Finn’s line, and followed that down to where the other two had set themselves up behind a particularly tangled web of roots, with the camcorder’s lens peeking out in the direction of the boat-house and jetty.

  It was just after four o’clock, and they probably had the better part of two hours to wait. They did so mostly in silence, occasionally stretching cramped limbs, and intermittently scanning the dark lake for a sight of the submarine. Finn found himself thinking about the boating club on the River Lea where he had first discovered that escape was possible from the oppressive world of Hackney’s high-rises. Crouching in a foot of water wondering where the water moccasins were wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind for a career, but he had no regrets. He might be halfway between the frying pan and the fire, but at least that meant he was out of the fucking frying pan. And who knew – he might land in a beautiful woman’s lap. Eventually.

  Cafell was thinking about his father, and what the old man would think to see him here. It wasn’t the sort of war he had fought in, that was certain. But the days of the big boats were over, whether on the surface or beneath it. His dad thought that was sad, but Cafell, for all his love of naval history, didn’t agree. In this sort of war, where canoes replaced battleships, the individual counted for more. Every man on this mission had real responsibility, whereas three-quarters of the men on his dad’s nuclear sub were just there to keep the damn thing running.