Marine C SBS

by David Monnery

  Marker walked forward into the bow and stood there for a few moments staring out into space. The sea stretched away, empty of other shipping, with only a few small and scattered cays to break the flat line of the horizon. The nearly full moon was almost overhead, and the Milky Way seemed to stream from its sides, north-west towards Florida, south-east towards Cuba. On nights like this Marker knew why men created gods.

  It was time to go.

  The four men synchronized their watches, and Cafell and Dubery clambered down through the hatch and into the submarine. Marker and Finn slung the cling-film-wrapped MP5s across their chests and lowered themselves on to the submarine’s curving back, where they sat splay-legged and facing each other on either side of the protruding hatch, their hands grasping the loop of rope which had been thrown around it.

  Inside the sub, Dubery started up the engine. The Russian craft was more uncomfortable than their own, and defiantly devoid of any cosmetic trimmings. But the controls were simple, it was wonderfully responsive, and its capacity for speed was almost unbelievable. Cafell thought he knew a bit about engineering, but he had no idea how the Russians had done it. If the sub survived this particular night the research lads back at Poole would be thinking Christmas was early this year.

  Dubery steered them towards the north-east, aiming the submarine towards the easternmost of the three flat humps which made up the Muertos Cays. Assuming that the Tiburón Blanco had not shifted position during the last week, such a course should keep the cay between them and the enemy, blinding the latter’s radar.

  Perched on the submarine’s back Marker was remembering the giant worm riders from Dune, one of his favourite books as a teenager. Dubery was keeping the sub to about fifteen knots, but the surface was calm, and they weren’t in any danger of being thrown off. It was exhilarating, like one of those rides at seaside amusement parks. Whatever his childhood might have lacked, Marker thought, it hadn’t been excitement.

  The cay grew steadily nearer, the moonlit ocean floor visible beneath them. Dubery brought the submarine to a halt, and the two men on its back slid down into the water. While Finn untied the electric torpedo Marker and Cafell checked their watches again through the window.

  They were now only a mile or so away from the Tiburón Blanco. Since their means of locomotion was considerably slower, Marker and Finn left earlier. The former steered them in an easterly direction for a couple of hundred yards, and then left Finn with the electric torpedo while he went up to the surface for a look through the small hand periscope. And there the boat was, exactly where they had left it ten days before.

  He went back down, gave Finn a thumbs up, and they resumed their journey. The water was clear, and very shallow until they had left the cay far behind them. There seemed to be few fish, and Marker wondered whether the long presence of the Tiburón Blanco nearby had scared them away. If so, he was not sorry. The last thing they needed now was a run-in with an irritable barracuda.

  None appeared, tetchy or otherwise. About fifteen minutes after leaving the sub they found themselves under the thick black square of the floating helipad, and Marker cut the electric torpedo’s motor. After they had tethered the machine to one of the helipad’s anchor lines the two men swam deeper before coming back up directly underneath the hull of the enemy’s boat. Marker checked his watch. They had two minutes to spare before the sub arrived.

  They hung there in the water, watching the bubbles bounce off the hull, Marker cursing the fact that he hadn’t thought to wait under the helipad.

  The seconds dragged by, but no divers came plunging through the surface. The submarine finally swam into view, and Marker could see the concentration on Dubery’s face as the young Scot guided the craft into position just off the cabin cruiser’s starboard side. He caught a glimpse of a thumbs up from Cafell as the submarine started rising towards the surface.

  He and Finn moved to the other side, waited until the sub was no longer visible beyond the keel, and brought their heads up into the night air.

  On the boat above them people were talking excitedly in Spanish. Cafell was presumably following the script and pretending to have trouble with the hatch.

  Marker used the rungs on the boat’s side to lift himself out of the water, and laboriously removed the cling film from the MP5 with his other hand. Then he advanced another two rungs and hung there while Finn followed the same procedure beneath him.

  A tap on his foot told Marker the younger man was ready. He pushed his head up over the side of the boat, saw no one, and climbed over the rail and on to the deck. The voices on the other side of the boat were louder now, and more threatening. There seemed to be no one on the bridge.

  Finn joined him, and the two men moved off at a brisk walk in the direction of the stern deck. They were only a few steps away when a cavalcade of noises – the clang of a hatch, the ping of bullet on metal, the reverberation of the shot – erupted from the other side of the boat.

  Marker rounded the corner just as the man with the gun turned away from the rail in disgust. His brain registered the gun pointing loosely down, the empty hands of the other two men. ‘Freeze,’ he heard himself say, his finger poised to squeeze the trigger and send all three men backwards over the rail.

  The gunman’s hand twitched involuntarily, and then suddenly went limp by his side. The automatic hit the deck with a thud. Finn went forward, picked it up, and tossed it overboard.

  Marker was wondering where the other submarine crew was. If they were on board the shot should have brought them out on deck. ‘Look after this lot,’ he told Finn, and made his way back along the deck to the lounge door. He slipped inside and held still for several seconds, listening for any sounds.

  Then it suddenly occurred to him – there had been no submarine tethered beneath the boat. He went swiftly through the rest of the cabins, and came up as empty as he had expected. Back on deck he found Cafell and Dubery trussing up the new prisoners while Finn kept them covered. At this rate, Marker thought, they should go into business as bounty-hunters.

  ‘Take them inside,’ he told Finn, and then waited until they were out of earshot before whispering new instructions to Cafell and Dubery. Both men smiled.

  While Cafell disappeared down the deck, Marker and Dubery followed the others inside. ‘Where is the second submarine?’ he asked the man in the captain’s cap.

  The man said nothing.

  ‘Your name is Angel Socarras,’ Marker told him. ‘You work for Fidel Arcilla as a treasure hunter and a smuggler of human spare parts. I will happily feed you to the sharks.’

  Socarras shrugged. ‘Do what you wish,’ he said.

  Marker looked at him, sighed, and nodded to Dubery and Finn. The latter looked surprised, but joined Dubery in taking hold of one of the captain’s arms. ‘Off the stern,’ Marker added, and the two SBS men bundled the man out into the night. A few seconds later the men in the cabin heard the beginnings of a struggle, as it belatedly dawned on Socarras that Marker wasn’t bluffing. A few more seconds, and there was a loud splash.

  ‘Where is the other submarine?’ Marker asked the man who had held the gun.

  The man’s mouth was gaping open. ‘It is gone to Florida,’ he said quickly.

  ‘With another shipment?’

  ‘Yes, they go every night now. Because the Americans invade Haiti,’ he added unnecessarily.

  It was even worse than Marker had feared – Arcilla’s man in Haiti was upping production to make the most of the little time he had left. He thought about the cargo that was now heading towards Anhinga Lodge – kidneys probably. They had been taken from someone, but the chances of their finding a new home were distinctly remote. And when the submarine arrived at the lodge the shit would hit the fan . . .

  The crew would have to be intercepted. He would have to radio the American authorities.

  Every night now, the man had said. ‘The helicopter, what time does it arrive?’ Marker asked.

  The man shrugged. ‘Around elev
en.’

  ‘See what you can make of their radio,’ Marker told Cafell. ‘We need to call the Yanks and the Argyll.’

  Dubery arrived back in the doorway.

  ‘How’s the captain?’ Marker asked.

  ‘Still out old.’

  ‘What did you throw overboard?’

  ‘A chest full of fishing tackle.’

  The gunman’s mouth was gaping again.

  ‘The oldest tricks are always the best,’ Marker told him.

  The following twenty hours were much like the previous twenty. The four men slept in shifts, and devoted their waking hours to the jobs that needed doing. Dubery and Finn went off in the Russian submarine to collect the Slipstream Queen, which they then used for transferring the new prisoners to the Argyll. The frigate, on station some fifty miles to the east, came to meet them, but the captain failed to show his face.

  ‘Fucking brass,’ Finn said. ‘They spend weeks sailing their little ships round in circles, and when someone asks them to do something useful they get pissed off.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t join the navy to be a prison governor,’ Dubery observed.

  Back on the Tiburón Blanco, and now relieved of the need to guard their captives, Marker and Cafell contacted Poole via the satellite radio. According to Colhoun the American authorities had so far been successful in keeping the lid on their end of the operation. And Arcilla, who was being watched from a discreet distance, had displayed no awareness of anything being amiss. As far as the Turks and Caicos were concerned, two men from the Attorney-General’s office were en route from London with all the necessary powers. They would be there that evening.

  The sun went down, and Dubery was entrusted with the task of moving the Slipstream Queen a reasonable distance away from the Tiburón Blanco. The hours dragged by. At ten-thirty Cafell switched on the helipad’s perimeter lighting, and the three men sat out on the bow deck, ears cocked for the sound of an approaching helicopter.

  At one minute past eleven they heard it, and soon the dark shape was growing in the south-eastern sky. The pilot landed without difficulty on the barely moving helipad, cut the engine, and jumped down from the cockpit, shouting something in Spanish at the waiting SBS men. Marker advanced towards him in the captain’s hat, but the pilot was not so easily fooled. He stared for several seconds, then shouted out a question in Spanish, and finally lunged for the safety of his cockpit. Marker caught him by the legs, pulled him back out again, and showed him his Browning High Power.

  ‘Shit,’ the man said, but he seemed more surprised than upset.

  Behind him Cafell was examining the plastic boxes, and the organs suspended within them. ‘What are we going to do with these?’ he asked.

  ‘Feed them to the fish,’ Marker said.

  There was something in his voice which made Cafell reluctant to argue.

  They took the pilot aboard the Tiburón Blanco, and sat him down in the saloon cabin. He was not much older than twenty-five, good-looking, and with at least an air of intelligence. And he was certainly pleased with himself – even in these circumstances he had a hard job to keep from smiling.

  ‘Right,’ Marker said. ‘You understand English?’

  ‘Of course,’ the man replied indignantly.

  ‘Good. Your name?’

  ‘Felix Córdoba.’

  ‘OK, Felix. You have two choices. Cooperate with us for twenty-four hours and we’ll let you go. Refuse to cooperate, and we’ll hand you over to the authorities on Provo, and make damn sure you serve at least ten years in prison. So choose now.’

  The man looked at Marker, disbelief on his face. ‘Ten years? And you will really let me go?’

  ‘Yes,’ Marker said. ‘If you help us.’

  There was another long pause.

  ‘Felix . . .’

  ‘OK, OK, I cooperate. What do I lose?’

  ‘Not a lot.’

  Felix laughed, as if the misfortune belonged to someone else. ‘So what you want to know?’

  ‘First off, where do you fly from here?’

  ‘Back to Provo.’

  ‘OK, then that’s where we’re going.’

  ‘First we must refuel.’

  Marker turned to Cafell. ‘Tell Colhoun what’s happening, and ask him to contact the people Whitehall has sent out to Provo. We need to make sure the people at Arcilla’s villa are in custody before we get back.’

  ‘OK, boss.’

  ‘Let’s fill up the chopper,’ Marker told Finn and Felix.

  The helicopter came to rest on the tarmac at Provo’s tiny airport soon after four in the morning. To Marker’s relief the men from London were not there to meet them. Jet lag had presumably taken its toll, and the hapless Sergeant Oswald had been obliged to form the entire welcoming committee.

  There were rooms waiting for the SBS quartet at the Club Med-Turkoise, he said. Marker told him they needed the use of a room here in the airport building for the interrogation of their captive.

  Oswald found them one in the west wing, which was not used during the tourist low season. A windowless storeroom next door could be used as a detention room for their captive. Marker thanked the sergeant and gently shut the door on him.

  Felix asked if he could have a few hours’ sleep.

  ‘Not yet,’ Marker told him. ‘Questions first, and then you can have some sleep.’

  ‘OK,’ Felix agreed good-naturedly.

  ‘Where do you make the pick-up?’

  The pilot looked surprised that they didn’t know. ‘Tortuga,’ he said.

  ‘Where on Tortuga?’ Cafell asked, pushing a map in front of him.

  ‘Here,’ Felix said, pointing with his finger.

  ‘And what is it?’ Marker asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Is it a house like the one here on Provo?’

  ‘No, no. It is a camp, a soldiers’ camp, but with many civilians. It is Colonel Joutard’s camp.’

  ‘How many soldiers?’ Marker asked.

  ‘Hard to say. Ten, fifteen, maybe twenty even. They are not army, you understand. More like Ton-Ton. Private soldiers.’

  ‘Armed thugs,’ Cafell suggested.

  ‘Sí.’

  Marker stretched his back in the chair. ‘OK, Felix, now we want to know every single thing you can remember about this place – where everything is, where the soldiers are and the civilians are, where this Joutard will be.’ Marker grinned at him. ‘And the better your memory, the more future you’ll probably have, because this evening you’ll be taking us in there, and your chances of getting out again are probably going to depend on how well we do once we’re on the ground.’

  Felix murmured something unhappy in Spanish, but he didn’t bother to argue, and for the best part of an hour he answered the questions Marker and Cafell put to him. He knew there were doctors in the camp, but he had not seen them himself, and couldn’t confirm that one of them was English. He hadn’t been around the camp either, but he had seen it from the air, albeit always in darkness, each time he made a pick-up. And as Marker jogged the pilot’s memory with questions, Cafell’s diagram of the camp acquired more and more useful detail.

  Eventually the well of information ran dry.

  ‘Round up some cushions for our friend here,’ Marker told Dubery. ‘And you and Finn should get some sleep as well.’

  Once the pilot had been locked in the storeroom, Finn said he had a question.

  Marker gave him an enquiring look.

  ‘Are we going to get away with this? I mean, isn’t HMG going to jump on us from a great height when they find out we’ve been invading a foreign country?’

  ‘We’re going in after one of our own,’ Cafell retorted. ‘The CO will back us up. He . . .’

  ‘He will,’ Marker agreed, ‘but it’s still a good question.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘And I guess the only answer is – what choice do we have? The good news is that if we fuck up then we probably won’t be around to care, and if we don’t the most
we can expect is a rap on the wrist.’ He looked at Finn. ‘But if you feel you don’t want . . .’

  ‘Fuck, no,’ Finn said, looking offended. ‘I’m coming. I just like knowing exactly where, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Up shit creek,’ Cafell told him cheerily.

  ‘But with a paddle,’ Marker said. He got to his feet. ‘Thing that worries me is someone trying to stop us. Like these guys from the Attorney-General’s office or wherever it is they really come from. So before they come looking for our guide I think I’ll go looking for them. Take them our video, tell them about the prisoners on the Argyll. That should keep them happy for a couple of hours.’

  ‘You can tell them to go collect the Americans’ boat,’ Cafell suggested.

  Marker grinned. ‘You know, I’d completely forgotten about that.’

  ‘I expect the Argyll wants her submarine and Kleppers back too,’ Finn suggested.

  ‘You never saw James Bond going round collecting all the equipment he’d abandoned,’ Cafell said. ‘No wonder Q always looked pissed off.’

  Marker’s fears of interference from the new arrivals were soon laid to rest. Taking morning coffee with them on the terrace of their luxury hotel, he formed the strong impression that the less the two men from London had to do with him and his men the better they would like it.

  They would look at the video in due time, and planned to interview the prisoners on the Argyll, probably on the following day. In the meantime, they were waiting for a plenipotentiary from Miami. Nothing could be done, as one of them explained, until they had discussed the ramifications of the whole business with the Americans, and settled any ‘potential disputes over jurisdiction’. The man looked across at Marker as if wondering whether he needed to use words with fewer syllables.

  Marker left them drinking their coffee, gazing out across the turquoise sea, and probably discussing a convivial round of golf. Back at the airport he woke Dubery, and fell almost instantly asleep on the line of sequestered cushions.

  Soon after he and Tamara returned from church, at around ten on that Sunday morning, Fidel Arcilla received a call from a well-wisher in the Dade County Police Department. Two hours, and several phone calls later, he was able to gauge the full extent of the disaster which had befallen his operation.