by Andy McNab
I bent low and crossed the track into another patch of wasteland. Trees and spiky bushes gave me cover three-quarters of the distance to my target. The noise gave me the opportunity to move in closer. I got down on my belt buckle and crawled the rest of the way, pumping with my knees and elbows in the cover of the rough meadow grass and rampant weeds. Thank fuck it hadn’t rained there in a while. I had some dust to contend with, but no mud.
The yard was surrounded by a breezeblock wall that had been whitewashed sometime in the previous century. It was about chest high and topped off with a rusty metal railing. As I drew nearer, the pitch of the engine changed and a small mobile crane rumbled out of the barn and came to a standstill with a hiss of air brakes.
The lad in the cab extended and contracted its hoist, rotated it one-eighty, then repeated the whole performance. He wasn’t wearing L plates, so he must have been testing the machine as much as his own skills.
Elvis and his mate on the ground clapped their hands. They seemed to be enjoying the show. And neither of the others looked remotely like George Michael.
The driver reversed back under the wriggly-tin roof and everything shut down.
I heard voices again. Banter. Even a laugh or two.
Elvis came out of the yard and began to retrace his steps down the track. The other two stayed inside with the vehicle. I lay flat by the base of the wall until he had passed. Then I ran at a crouch to the rear of the barn, paralleling him as far as the turning, and followed him back the way we had come.
This time Elvis hung a left before the railway. I stayed on the opposite side of the road as he skirted a massive walled area, part sunken olive grove, part lemon orchard.
The shadows were lengthening. The sky was darkening. Streetlights flickered on. But I didn’t plan to lift him. Not yet, anyway. You don’t snatch the monkey when you’re hoping he’ll lead you to the organ-grinder.
He took a right past a building site, which I realized was the back of Monopoli Hospital, and disappeared into a pedestrian tunnel beneath the track in front of it.
When I got there, it was empty, except for faded splashes of graffiti and three low-wattage lamps. I broke into a run and sweat soon stuck my jeans to my legs like it was trying to stop me moving. I caught a glimpse of Elvis as I climbed out on the far side. He was heading towards the factory chimneys, but before he got to them he quickened his pace and hung a right.
I followed him into a street with a bunch of small-time marine workshops on one side and the boatyard I’d seen from the fortress straight ahead. The gates were shut and there were no lights visible inside. I hung back while he brought some keys out of his skinny jeans, opened it and locked up behind him. He melted into the darkness.
Staying in the shadows, I moved closer to the iron bars. There was a fair amount of ambient light reflecting across the surface of the harbour. I could see a two-storey admin building immediately to my left, firmly shut, and a ribbon of clear concrete curving around behind it.
The rest of the hard standing was filled with a fuck of a lot of boats on stilts, in the process of having their hulls cleaned or their propellers serviced or whatever you do when you lift these things out of the water. Every centimetre of space beneath them was covered with engine parts, chunks of timber and bits of rope. Health and Safety would have loved this place.
I didn’t think you could get to the main cargo quay from there, but you’d be able to keep it under close observation, for sure. Was this Dijani’s forward operating base, or just a vantage-point?
Keeping close to the wall, I stopped, opened my mouth and did the listening trick. All I could hear was the lapping of waves and the metallic clink of whatever boats have in their rigging. I gripped a vertical bar of the gate with each hand and wedged the toe of my boot on the central rail. Then I pulled myself up high enough to be able to grab a couple of the spikes on top and managed to haul myself over them without spearing my bollocks or making it creak or clang.
I dropped almost silently to the ground, listened again, and scanned the area ahead of me for the shape, shine, shadow, silhouette, spacing and movement that indicated the presence of a body in a world of inanimate objects.
Nothing.
I edged across to the first of the boats on stilts, three metres to my half-right, and ducked under it. Keeping low and steering clear of the shit that littered the ground beneath my feet, I worked my way towards the centre of the yard.
After five or six paces I spotted a nice heavy wrench that had been left beside a bunch of dismantled engine parts. I stooped and picked it up, getting a waft of diesel fuel at the same time. I gripped its handle and moved on.
An open-fronted workshop to my left.
The cranes on the cargo quay to my right, like dinosaur skeletons, reaching into the night sky.
Just one vessel tied up between them now. The lamps on the stone wall behind it cast a weak, sulphur-yellow glow, but even at this distance it was enough to backlight the masts and keels and oil drums and a couple of abandoned fridges that separated me from the harbour.
And the big-wheeled gantry that they obviously used to heave all this shit in and out of the water.
And the body standing next to it, stock still, binos glued to his eyes, focused on the open sea.
14
Elvis’s all-black kit blended in nicely with the surrounding stanchions and metalwork, but his polished head stood out like a white Belisha beacon. I took two steps closer and heard his voice. A low murmur.
At first I thought he was talking to a mate I hadn’t seen. The lad in denim on the rowing boat, maybe.
Then I realized he had a mobile or a two-way stuck to his ear, and was communicating with someone off-site. Hidden away in the centre of town, maybe? Or on a container ship that I couldn’t yet see?
Keeping the gantry upright between us, I moved forward again. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but I could feel the electricity in the exchange. When I glanced through the harbour mouth, I saw why. A set of ship’s lights glinted just this side of the horizon. There’d been nothing out there an hour ago, so it was heading this way.
Elvis banged the off button and rammed the phone into his back pocket, then raised his binos again.
I knelt slowly and took a good look around beneath the hulls. The gantry was surrounded by boats on stilts. A couple of parked cars occupied the space it would reverse into whenever it swung into action. I plotted a route round to the far side of it, which would give me cover until I was almost within reach of him. He still wasn’t moving.
I couldn’t see anyone else.
Smacking the wrench between his shoulder blades would take him down. If he didn’t know where Anna and the baby were, he’d know where I could find Dijani.
I stepped out from under the hulls as soon as the nearest wagon was between him and me. Still bent at the knees and waist, I remained beneath the roofline as I skirted round the back of them. I was now directly behind Elvis.
I straightened.
The lapping of the waves was louder there, and the metallic rattling in the breeze. Loud enough to camouflage the sound of my approach.
I steadied my breathing as the lights of the boat got closer.
Keeping my weight on the balls of my feet and my eyes between his shoulders, I stole along his side of the dock.
Elvis was shorter than me, trimmer and more toned than Hesco had been. When I was two paces away from him, close enough to smell his aftershave, the wrench raised, a sixth sense alerted him to my presence.
He dropped his binos, swivelled, dipped and took a sideways step towards me. He drove his left shoulder into my chest as I brought down the wrench, only catching him a glancing blow.
He swayed back, eyes flashing, then dipped his right hand into his jeans and brought out a stiletto. At the press of a button, out slid a six-inch blade.
He came at me, left elbow raised, arm bent, knife at the ready. I swung the wrench again, aiming at his wrist. He stepped away, stoop
ed and gathered a small boat anchor on a broken chain and swung it at me, like he was on the set of Gladiator. He connected with the peak of my baseball cap, sweeping it off, and nearly taking my head with it.
I charged into him, aiming the wrench at his knife hand, but he swept the anchor round and knocked it across the hard standing.
I scrambled across the concrete, my eyes focused on the wrench, not worried about what was behind me. I just wanted the weapon.
I could hear him closing in as I gripped the shaft with both hands and heaved the fucking thing in a circle behind me.
As I turned I saw the jaws make contact with his leg and heard the crunch of metal on bone. He screamed and let go of the chain. The anchor crashed into one of the boats and he collapsed on top of me. Fuck knew where his knife was.
All I could do was wrap my left arm around the back of his neck and force his face against my chest, my right hand searching frantically for my UZI.
He was still screaming, but it wasn’t just pain. I could feel the force of his anger rattling my chest. His hands came into view. And the blade. I turned to the left, trying to get on top of him, trying to take control. Then his free hand grabbed a fistful of my hair and I knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to hold his target still while he plunged in the stiletto.
I gripped the pen and slammed the point of it down on to his head.
At first it sounded like I was trying to puncture a table top. I felt the third blow fracture his skull. And the fifth penetrate the bone plate.
As soon as I’d buried the bit I wasn’t holding in his cerebral cavity, I gave it a couple of twists and turns and his body went limp.
I rolled him off me, sat up and took long, deep breaths.
Fuck, I’d wanted him alive.
I removed his mobile from the back pocket of his skinny jeans and his keys from the right-hand front one. I let him keep his ring.
I found a bit of frayed cord, tied it around his neck and fastened it to the chunk of metal he’d tried to finish me with. Then I wrenched the UZI out of his head and wiped it on his shirt. As blood started to leak from the hole, I heaved the whole package over the edge of the dock. The bottom half of his left calf bobbed along the concrete as if it was only attached with string.
I picked up my baseball cap and the stiletto, retracting the blade while I checked he was now out of sight.
I could see the lights of the ship getting closer. And the glow from the bridge – faint, but strong enough and high enough to show that it wasn’t carrying a full load.
More importantly, I could see its silhouette. It was the same as the one on the blueprint.
15
The third key I tried unlocked the boatyard gate. I didn’t go straight to the cargo quay. Minerva was still some distance out to sea, and I wanted to make sure everything and everyone was in place before I gained entry.
When I’d put some distance between me and Elvis, I powered up his phone. Of course the fucking thing was locked. It didn’t matter. I now knew for sure where I’d find Dijani. That fucker was going to live just long enough to tell me where Anna and the baby were.
I walked round to the slipway beside the stretch of water where the fishing boats were parked, past the pontoon I’d spotted Elvis on before the sun went down. The only light filtered from the windows of the apartments and houses at the edge of that part of the harbour, which made it a great place for couples to walk hand in hand and teenagers to sit cross-legged on the paving stones, roll their own cigarettes and pass round cans of beer.
Minerva’s lights glistened across the water as I passed the rowing boats and lobbed his phone into the harbour.
A very shiny white powerboat was tied up further along the quay. Unless they’d decided to shut every hatch and suffocate themselves in the heat, no one was aboard. The lettering on its back end told me it belonged to a charter company, so the guys who’d hired it might have been enjoying a nice dinner somewhere in town before coming back to get their heads down. A bunch of people were sitting, drinking, eating and fucking about on the boats at each end of it.
The mini-lighthouse was dark. Maybe it was no longer needed. Maybe it just couldn’t be arsed. I circled the bunker beyond it: four-metre-wide, domed structure, with thick, blast-proof walls and four horizontal apertures that provided a one-eighty-degree view of the sea, Minerva and the cargo quay.
A couple was getting to know each other better on one of the huge breakwater cubes on the far side of it. Fuck ’em, they could get on with whatever they wanted. I was staying where I was.
The woman saw the pervert in the shadows first. She pushed the guy off so they could straighten their clothes and head back the way I’d just come. There was no one else around.
I brought out my binos. They hadn’t enjoyed their collision with the boatyard concrete, but they still did what they were supposed to do.
The Suunto told me it was after midnight. I reckoned Minerva was forty-five minutes to an hour away. Once I’d adjusted the focus I could see a big white ‘N’ illuminated by the lights on its hull.
I tapped out Luca’s number on the Nokia and waited while the call was transferred.
I kept it crisp. ‘It’s on its way now.’
He did too. ‘So am I.’
But neither of us cut the line. We both knew the question I had to ask next, even though his silence had already given me the answer.
‘Anna?’
He sounded less like a strangling victim now, but I could still hear his pain. ‘Not yet. But Pasha is in Vinnitsa. He’ll call me as soon as …’
I put the phone down on the concrete bench beside me and continued to watch Minerva, checking that the thing was still getting bigger and brighter.
The whole place didn’t exactly spring to life as the boat drew nearer, but a row of overhead lights sparked up so I could see some signs of activity. The mobile crane moved into position at the seaward end of the quay. An empty minibus stopped right next to it, I assumed to lift off the crew.
A second set of headlamps swept towards the entrance and the gates swung open again. A three-ton truck with a canvas cover over the load space joined the party. I couldn’t immediately ID make or colour. I guessed Fiat and blue.
The driver nosy-parked, jumped down from the cab and opened up the back. Then he found a bollard to sit on and started to smoke his way through a pack of cigarettes. He must have left his mate at the barn. He didn’t show the slightest interest in the minibus.
A tug appeared from the direction of the boatyard and steered into the waves. The one remaining cargo vessel was moored with its pointy end facing the exit, and the one that had left earlier had been too, so I expected to see Minerva towed in and put through a one-eighty-degree turn before parking up. Particularly if it was planning a quick getaway.
An hour later it was in position, ‘NETTUNO’ emblazoned across its flank, Minerva on its tail. There were no containers visible at deck level. The three-tonner was now completely obscured by the ship’s hull, but I could see about ten crew members being ferried away in the minibus, and a gleaming BMW SUV taking its place. The SUV’s windows were tinted, but there was no mistaking the George Michael lookalike who swung open the passenger door. Unless it really was George Michael.
And, judging by the beard and the burn on his neck, Rexho Uran had been doing the driving.
16
I pocketed the Pentax and filled my lungs as I walked back past the still unoccupied powerboat. Most of the others had closed down for the night as well. The Nokia went into the water between them with hardly a splash.
I didn’t continue round the inner harbour this time; it was pretty much deserted. I went left through the archway by the fortress and right along the street where I’d tried to intercept Elvis. It made no sense drawing attention to myself any earlier than I had to. After a couple more rights and a left I was on course for the road that took me past the chimneys.
Up close, I could see that the apartment blocks opposite the
entrance to the cargo quay were still under construction. I went left again so that I could circle around the back of the development and climb on to the breakwater via the beach without having to go anywhere near the gates. I’d avoid most of the streetlamps too.
As soon as I was in the shadow of the shell of the third building, I flicked on my torch, unfolded the blueprint of Minerva and fixed the boat’s external and internal layout in my head.
It took me the best part of an hour to reach my target and clamber over the piles of totally randomly spaced and angled cubes. There was enough ambient light to allow me to spot the difference between the concrete platforms and the crevices between them, but it was still slow going.
I stayed as close as possible to the seaward side of the wall until I reached the far end of it, then moved down closer to the water. That way I could use the cubes at the top of the pile as cover. Once I’d rounded the tip I went down on my belly and manoeuvred myself into a vertical space that afforded a view of the quay without the need to raise my head above the parapet.
The overhead lights had been switched off. The mobile crane was now parked about five metres away and the three-tonner had disappeared, so whatever Dijani had taken so much trouble to bring in had obviously been hoisted out of Minerva and gone with it.
The BMW hadn’t moved, and a slightly battered Land Cruiser sat alongside it.
I reckoned that meant Dijani would have at least a four-man back-up. More if there were still crew aboard. I couldn’t see anybody on the quay, the gangway, or on stag on the deck, so I crept along the back wall and took up position in the shadow of the crane. I had a better view of each of the possible areas of compromise now, and they were still all clear. Maybe they were too busy doing sailor stuff to pay any attention to me.