Hijack

by Chris Ryan

  His lungs burned through lack of oxygen. The shock was turning to panic. Surely he should have reached the surface by now. What if he was swimming the wrong way? The currents were strong and confusing. Had they deceived him? Was he going to drown?

  He felt his grip on the rope loosening. He had to force himself to hold on tighter as he continued to kick.

  And suddenly, without warning, he broke the surface.

  It was no longer silent. The sound of the wind and rain crashed all around him. The swell was immense. He inhaled deeply in relief. He couldn’t see the trawler, the other cadets or their RIB – just mountains of water, shape-shifting all around him. Salt water gushed into his mouth as he breathed. He choked it out. As the swell lowered, he caught sight of the trawler, which was already a good distance away. Desperately treading water to keep above the surface, he wrapped the rope several times around his forearm to avoid losing hold of it. Because if that happened, he was dead: no question.

  He started to haul himself along the rope. It was perhaps the hardest thing he’d ever done. His heavy, saturated clothes threatened to drag him down. He was expending as much energy simply keeping afloat as he was following the line of the rope. He could feel his muscles seizing up from the cold. But he knew he couldn’t stop. Every now and then the rope came under tension, pulling him in an unexpected direction. He thought about his friends. Were they okay? Were they still holding the rope? Had they reached the RIB? Were they in trouble?

  That thought gave him a surge of energy. He powered breathlessly through the water, occasionally going under but always breaking the surface again as he pulled himself along the rope. He had no idea how much time had passed. All he could do was keep moving, waterlogged, blinded and half drowned …

  And then he saw it: the RIB, perhaps twenty metres away, suddenly appearing above the ocean swell. There were figures on board. He only saw them for a second before the RIB disappeared again. But the sight had lit a fire in Max’s chest. He had more strength. More focus. He pulled himself along the rope with every ounce of vigour he had, until, a minute later, the RIB reappeared, almost close enough to touch, and he could hear his friends shouting at him …

  Sudden silence. He’d been dragged under. He kicked himself up again, breaking the surface with another great inhalation of air. He felt hands grabbing his wet coat. Looking up, he saw Lukas and Sami’s faces, fierce and determined. They were leaning over the edge of the RIB, hauling him up.

  And then he was in the vessel, lying on his back, gasping for air, the others looking down at him as the boat rocked in the waves. He sat up groggily, his body shaking badly. Before he knew what was happening, Abby had thrown herself at him and was kissing him frantically – his lips, his forehead, even his eyelids.

  ‘If we could just drag you two apart?’ Lili shouted above the elements, her eyes fiery.

  ‘Right!’ Abby shouted. ‘Mind on the job. We need to make that distress call …’

  ‘We can’t!’ Lukas bellowed. He was at the RIB’s small radio station. ‘The battery’s down. I can’t get the radio to work.’ He slammed the unit with his fist in frustration.

  Max staggered to his feet. ‘We need to do something to stop the real attack,’ he yelled.

  ‘Maybe we can find HMS Stirling,’ Abby suggested.

  Max shook his head. ‘We’ve no idea where it is. Even if we did, we can’t risk approaching it in case they mistake us for an enemy vessel …’

  A wave caught the side of the RIB and a cloud of spray covered them. Max gripped the side of the boat as it listed heavily. Once it was on an even keel, he heard Lili shouting.

  ‘We only have one option! We have to head to the location of the real invasion. Maybe once we’re there we can do something to stop it!’

  The cadets stared at her. What she’d said sounded crazy. If there was a full invasion force heading unopposed towards the Falklands, what could they do about it?

  On the other hand, what else could they do? Nothing? Could they just let the invasion happen?

  ‘Sami!’ Max shouted. ‘Do you still have the chart?’

  Sami nodded. He undid his wetsuit and pulled out the chart he’d stolen from the bridge of the trawler. It was damp. The arrows marked in red and blue pen were smudged. But it was legible, just.

  ‘We don’t have any GPS,’ Lukas shouted.

  ‘Compass?’ Max said.

  Lukas nodded and pointed to the compass fixed in front of the steering wheel.

  ‘Do we know our approximate position?’

  ‘We know roughly where the trawler was when we left the Stirling,’ Lili said. ‘We can do a dead reckoning. It won’t be completely accurate, but we can use it to work out a rough bearing.’

  Max and his friends were dripping wet, bedraggled, shivering and exhausted. But right now, they were the only people who had any chance of preventing a major military invasion.

  Quite how they were going to manage that, Max didn’t know.

  But they had to try.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ he said.

  20

  Flare

  Lili had the helm. Concentration was etched on her face as the RIB sliced through the dark waves. The other cadets gripped the sides, especially Max and Lukas, who had no life jackets to keep them afloat if they went over. The RIB felt tiny amid the immense swell of the ocean. Spray stung their faces and blinded them. The motor was barely audible above the vicious howling of the wind.

  They had calculated that they needed to travel in a south-westerly direction. It was a gamble. Their calculations could be wrong. It would hardly be a surprise if their estimated position was way off. There were no landmarks here in the open sea from which to take bearings. They were motoring blind and there was every chance that they were heading not back to the Falklands but out to open sea.

  Max banished those thoughts. They’d made their call and Lili was doing what she could to keep a steady course in fierce seas. He kept a keen lookout. If they had a man overboard, it would be sudden and silent. Vigilance was crucial. And he kept glancing ahead, desperately scanning the night sky in the hope of spotting land.

  So far – nothing.

  He was shivering. The cold bit his skin. His extremities were numb. He had to force himself to stay sharp. It was a great effort. Time was dragging and a dull sensation of panic was rising in his gut …

  ‘Land!’

  It was Sami who shouted. Max wiped salt from his eyes. He could just see a dark outline of land against the horizon. It disappeared as the sea swelled. When it reappeared seconds later, it was clearer, more obvious. The sight seemed to warm Max from his core. He thought he could see relief in the others’ faces. They had only been at sea for a few hours, but it felt like a lifetime.

  Lili kept her course. The land grew nearer. Max tried to estimate its distance, but it was difficult over stormy water and at night. A couple of miles, maybe?

  ‘Are there binoculars?’ he shouted.

  Abby pointed to the storage unit. He found them and put them to his eyes, gripping the side of the RIB with his free hand. The rocking of the boat made it difficult to focus on the land. It jumped in and out of sight, a rocky headland appearing then disappearing.

  And then …

  ‘Stop!’ Max shouted. ‘Stop the boat! I’ve just seen something!’

  Lili pulled back on the throttle. The boat slowed and she turned it into the wind. Max stood up and looked through the binoculars again, checking that he hadn’t been mistaken.

  It was there, quite clear despite the darkness. Between the RIB and the headland, no more than five hundred metres away, he guessed, was the unmistakable outline of a submarine’s conning tower. He spun around, panning along the horizon with the binoculars. He saw two other conning towers: one off to starboard, the other to stern.

  ‘Subs!’ he shouted. ‘Big ones! I think we’re in the middle of the attack force!’

  As he spoke, one of the conning towers started to submerge.

&nb
sp; ‘Do you think they saw us?’ Lili yelled.

  ‘I don’t know. We need to get to land as fast as we can.’

  Lili nodded. ‘Hold on!’

  Max crouched as she increased the throttle and the RIB surged forward. He kept scanning the surrounding area through the binoculars. There was suddenly no sign of the conning towers. He felt a flash of panic at the thought that there could be a submarine directly beneath them, ready to surface. If that happened, and it hit the RIB, it would be game over.

  Distance to land: three hundred metres. Max checked the shoreline. There was a wide shingle beach. It sloped down at a shallow gradient, which he knew would continue into the water. Not that it mattered. Max knew from bitter experience how close a fleet of minisubs could get to the shore.

  ‘Lights!’ Sami shouted. He pointed to stern and slightly to starboard. Sure enough, there were lights on the horizon: another ship, or maybe the one they’d just escaped. It didn’t matter either way. As he raised his binoculars again, he saw – fleetingly – a flotilla of RIBs. They were loads of them – perhaps forty, or even more – and they were speeding towards the shore that was the cadets’ destination.

  ‘RIBs incoming!’ he screamed. ‘Lili, does this thing go any faster?’

  But the throttle lever was fully forward. They could do nothing but keep travelling in a straight line to the shore and hope that the attack RIBs were no faster than theirs.

  A hundred metres to the shore.

  Fifty.

  Max’s skin prickled. He looked back towards the attack force of RIBs. They were definitely approaching the same location. As the cadets came within ten metres of the shore, Lukas raised the outboard motor. The vessel’s momentum pushed it towards the shingle. As they beached, Lili spun the steering wheel so they turned 90 degrees to starboard. There was the grinding sound of the boat on shingle. Max had a profound urge to hurl himself off the boat – he’d seen enough of the ocean for a lifetime. First, however, he opened up the storage cabinet and withdrew the three emergency flares. Then, with his friends, he jumped onto the beach and sprinted inland.

  Their feet sank in the shingle, slowing them down. Max could see the RIBs approaching shore. They were no more than a hundred metres out – but he could see something else too. Even closer to the beach, he saw the outline of minisubs, too numerous to count. He went cold all over as he remembered his horrific experience earlier that night. He forced himself to focus on their current situation. If each RIB and each minisub held six men, there had to be several hundred enemy soldiers about to attack the island, and the British had no idea of what was happening.

  The beach became scrubland – easier to run on. They sprinted another hundred metres up to the brow of the hill, then threw themselves to the ground on its far side, breathing heavily, hiding themselves from view.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Abby gasped.

  ‘We’ve got to warn someone,’ Lili said. ‘Anyone.’

  ‘How, though?’ Lukas asked. ‘We’ve got no comms, and the British think the attack is happening over there.’ He pointed to the south-east, in the direction of the cove they had first been assigned to watch.

  ‘We could sprint there and tell them,’ Sami said. ‘I reckon it’ll take us, what, half an hour …’

  ‘That’ll be too late,’ Lukas said. ‘The attack force will have made land already, and who knows what kind of weaponry they’ve cached here?’

  ‘We can’t just watch it happen,’ Abby said. ‘They’re not here for a picnic. People are going to die.’

  ‘Not if I’ve got anything to do with it,’ Max said quietly.

  The other cadets stared at him.

  ‘He’s got that look in his eye,’ Abby said. ‘You know, the one when he’s about to do something clever.’

  ‘Not really,’ Max said. ‘It’s just the only option we have.’ He held up the flares he’d taken from the RIB. ‘We need to set these off,’ he said. ‘Right now. They’ll be seen for miles around. It’ll bring the attention of the British to this exact location. They’ll work out what it means.’

  ‘Er, Max,’ Abby said, frowning. ‘You realise that if we do that, we’ll give away our precise position to hundreds of soldiers who’d quite like – and I’m just guessing here – to kill us immediately?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Max said. ‘Actually, I do.’

  ‘Got any clever suggestions what we do about that?’

  ‘Just one.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘Run,’ Max said. ‘Like, really fast. As soon as they’re on land, they’re an infantry force. They’re no faster than us. If we can outrun them, we stay safe.’

  ‘Not that safe,’ Lukas said. ‘They’ll be armed.’

  ‘And I feel like I’ve done enough running for a lifetime,’ Lili said.

  Max inclined his head to concede the points. ‘Any better ideas? Now’s the time to speak up.’

  Nobody spoke. Max took their silence as approval.

  There were three flares. Max knew that they would be seen from land, from sea and from the sky, if it came to that. Each one would send a red flare about three hundred metres into the sky, where it would burn for approximately forty seconds. If they launched all three at the same time, it would be quite a display. He handed one to Lili and one to Lukas. Then he peered over the hill.

  His mouth went dry as he saw what was approaching.

  It looked as if a full army was emerging from the sea. Hundreds of men, seawater cascading from their helmets and their camouflage gear, weapons slung across their chests. The ocean was dotted with RIBs, and the military force was already advancing up the beach towards the cadets.

  Max threw himself back to the ground. He lay on his back and pointed his flare towards the sky. ‘They’re coming,’ he hissed. ‘Hundreds of them. We have to fire the flares!’

  Lili and Lukas adopted the same position. They each held the body of their flare with one hand, the other hand untwisting the cap at the bottom and clutching the firing tab.

  ‘NOW!’ Max shouted. They pulled the tabs, releasing the flares in unison. There was a sudden whoosh as the charges forced the handheld fireworks high into the sky. A moment of silence. And then – bang. The three flares illuminated in quick succession, so bright that they hurt Max’s eyes. Even though the flares were in the air, they bathed the cadets in a dusky red light. Max was glad they were on the ground, because otherwise they would be lit up on the hill: easy targets for the soldiers barely a hundred metres away.

  ‘We have to run!’ Lili hissed. The other cadets nodded fervently.

  ‘Which direction?’ Lukas demanded.

  ‘I’m thinking, as far away as possible,’ Abby said. ‘Let’s just get out of here.’

  She started to scramble away from the shoreline, keeping low to avoid being seen by the incoming force. The others followed. Except Max. They’d only gone a few metres when Abby looked back over her shoulder and saw that he hadn’t moved.

  ‘Come on!’ she urged.

  He shook his head. ‘I have to do something else.’

  The cadets stared at him. ‘What?’ Sami said.

  ‘It’s not just an infantry attack,’ Max said. ‘It’s an airborne attack too. We know that because of the transponder at the listening station. It’s got to be destroyed, otherwise the island’s vulnerable to an air strike.’

  Sami shook his head. ‘You can’t,’ he said, eyes wide. ‘The attack is under way. They could launch a strike on the listening station at any moment. If you’re in the vicinity …’

  Max gave him a half-smile. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t want to do anything dangerous, huh?’

  Sami wasn’t amused. ‘You’ll be killed, Max. You have to stay with us.’

  Max narrowed his eyes. ‘Not going to happen, Sami.’ He glanced in the direction of the oncoming force. ‘You guys don’t get away scot-free though. You need to make sure nobody’s following me. You get what I’m saying?’

  ‘You want us to act as a decoy?’ Lili
said.

  ‘Right. Can you do it?’

  Grim-faced, Lili, Sami and Lukas nodded. Abby, though, shook her head. ‘I’m coming with you,’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t argue, Max. We set off three flares. It’ll make sense to the invaders if they see three of us. More than that, they’ll start wondering if there are others.’

  Max started to disagree, but Abby wasn’t having it. ‘We have to go,’ she urged, pointing back towards the shore. ‘They’ll be on us any second.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Lukas, frowning. ‘If we’re going to do this, we have to do it now.’ He turned to Max and Abby. ‘Go,’ he said.

  Max hesitated, but before he knew what was happening, Abby had grabbed his wrist. They hurtled off together over the scrubland, keeping low as they ran up a shallow incline in what Max thought was an easterly direction. He reckoned they were two miles from the listening station. He could only pray that they got there in time.

  They’d been running for a minute when they stopped to look back. They could just see the beach, covered with the sinister shadow of the invading force. And they could see the other cadets – Lukas, Lili and Sami – still crouching. They had been waiting there to give their friends the chance to get away. But now, as Max and Abby watched, the others suddenly stood up and started sprinting to the south.

  When their heads became visible above the brow of the hill, the shooting started.

  21

  Zigzag

  Lukas knew they’d left it too late.

  They’d given Max and Abby a full minute to get away, and now they were paying the price. The first bullet passed over his head the moment they stood up and started running away from the beach. He didn’t dare stop to check how close the soldiers were. Anything that slowed them down, even for a second, could be fatal.