Jock held the VSV’s engines at full power and headed towards the beach half a mile away as if he intended to drive up it. Stratton stepped into the cabin, past the shattered people seated in the neat rows of plastic chairs and into the cockpit.
‘Well, Jock?’ he asked.
‘Only one option,’ Jock shouted as he gradually turned the wheel and the VSV leaned steadily over. The frightened people in the cabin held on to the boat and to each other, aware that they were far from out of danger.
‘I think the trick will be not to hit it too fast,’ Jock said. ‘Our problem isn’t going in, it’s getting out the other end before we sink. Get everyone to hold on. We might tip so be ready to get the fuck out.’
The VSV turned around smoothly until it was facing the wave. ‘Come on, you bitch,’ Jock shouted as he held the power steady and they closed on it. Stratton wasn’t sure if he was talking to the boat or the wave. ‘Have some of this, why don’t you,’ he added.
‘Hold on!’ Stratton shouted to the civilians.
Scouse grabbed the hysterical woman who was weak with shock and clamped her between his body and the side. Jab helped a father hold his son fast to the deck. Stratton remained standing in the doorway of the cockpit, looking out of the front window which was filled with nothing but a wall of water running vertically.
Jock throttled back allowing the boat to ride up the slope a little instead of going straight into it, which might put them too deep underwater. As the nose of the VSV started to rise, he opened up the engines again and cut deep into the wall. As they disappeared inside everything went instantly dark. The sea engulfed the back and thumped hard against the rubber flap, bending it inwards in an effort to get inside where, if it did, it would flood the boat. The flap was nothing more than a sheet of reinforced rubber designed to fall back against the opening to create a seal in the event the VSV went underwater, but that was envisaged to last no more than a few seconds, and at no great depth. As the VSV penetrated the mountain of water the pressure soared and the flap was barely holding, and way beyond its spec.
Stratton looked around at Jock who was standing doing nothing but looking out of the window and praying for daylight. ‘Jock?’
‘This isn’t a submarine,’ Jock shouted. ‘It’s not meant to be anyway. I can make it go left and right but I can’t make it go up!’
To make matters worse the boat started to tilt.The civilians were horrified enough and might have been more so if they knew it was not meant to happen quite this way.
Scouse was staring at the flap that creaked gradually inwards. Water started to leak through one side of the seal and he turned to Stratton. An ounce more of pressure and it was going to break. Seconds later they would flood and sink.
Suddenly the water around the front of the cockpit was not as dark as the sides and then daylight flooded in through the windows as the boat punched its way out of the sea and skyward with the grace and power of a killer whale. For an instant it was airborne and the propellers speeded up, the engines roaring without the resistance to stop them. Jock remained standing, holding on to the wheel and throttle like a rodeo rider. As the VSV came back down, slightly on its side, Jock throttled back, and as the stern dropped into the water he turned the wheel hard over and applied full power once more. The belly of the boat flopped heavily to level out and as it continued its roll, Jock powered into a tight turn. The VSV responded and Jock then turned the wheel in the opposite direction until the boat straightened up. He immediately throttled back, put the engines into neutral, and the boat slowed until it gently bobbed on the calm surface.
Jock looked back at Stratton with an exasperated expression. Stratton nodded a compliment and turned his attention back the way they had come.
Jock followed Stratton, Scouse and Jab out on deck where they could get a better view of the wave as it pressed on towards the Torquay coastline.
The focal point of the wave once the left flank had passed the harbour, was the coast road where people had already seen it and raised the alarm.Those on foot ran away from the beach to higher ground. Several elderly people shuffled away as fast as they could, some fortunate enough to get help. People stepped from shops to investigate the commotion only to take immediate flight.
The wave rolled in relentlessly, sweeping moored boats along with it. As it hit the beach and rolled up it, it gushed over the sea wall bringing several of the boats with it. The wall took much of the force but there was still power enough to roll cars parked or driving along the sea road. The last vestiges of thrust were spent slamming into buildings across the road where several shop fronts were shattered, and then, suddenly, it had expended its energy and the threat disappeared.
Seconds after the water subsided, the front was strangely quiet and void of life. It was absurdly surreal; a clear, sunny day, the seagulls cawing above and little evidence of the weapon which had struck the mighty blow, other than soaked streets and the carnage it had caused. Upturned and shattered hulks of boats lay on the road, one almost inside a building. Not everyone escaped with their lives. A handful of bodies lay unmoving, twisted amongst the debris.
People began gradually to surface, tentatively at first, unsure, then quickly to help the injured and search for those who might still be alive.
‘Poor bastards,’ Scouse muttered.
‘Hey, over there,’ Jab shouted, pointing towards some wreckage, all that was left of the tour boat. Someone was in the water, hanging on to a piece of deck, waving weakly. Jock hurried inside and hit the throttle, shunting the VSV forward. It was the tour boat pilot and somehow he had survived. He was as surprised to see them as they were him.
As they headed back to the tanker, a Sea King flew past, circled and came in to hover over the tanker’s heli-deck in preparation for landing.
‘That’ll be the nuke and bio-chem specialists,’ Scouse said.
Half an hour later Stratton and Scouse were back on board the tanker. Several tugs were on their way to pull it off the sand bar as soon as the incoming tide allowed and if that didn’t work then some of the crude would have to be pumped off. But there was a lot of speculation the tanker might have broken its back already, and if not would probably do so when they tried to pull it off. So far there was no sign of an oil leakage but no one was calling this a success yet. Stratton had doubted the wisdom of his action as soon as he had done it. He had caused the deaths of those fishermen and God knows who else in the town. It was an on-the-spot decision, and it was always luck if those ever turned out to be faultless. He hadn’t known the depth of the sea here, and what damage and loss of life might have occurred had the tanker carried on into town. He pushed it out of his mind.
Another Sea King had landed on the tanker, which was now crawling with various specialists, forensics and bomb-disposal experts scouring every nook and cranny.
The operatives had done their job and were hanging around as security while they waited for a Royal Navy frigate to arrive and take over.
Stratton was carrying out his own inspection of the boat, more out of curiosity than for any other reason. He had never seen anything quite like this before. So far there was no sign of any devices of any kind. It was a well-carried-out assault, execution of the crew, a successful withdrawal and then the tanker itself was turned into a weapon. There was no evidence of the perpetrators, but the scale, organisation and target all suggested a powerful anti-West terrorist group was behind it.
After seeing the dead officers and crew in the superstructure, he headed along the length of the deck to his last stop, the bosun’s locker in the extreme bows. He stepped in through the narrow doorway between the massive winches that raised and lowered the enormous anchors, and walked inside to the end of the short balcony at the top of the stairwell from where he could see to the bottom of the ship. The cargo holds on a tanker end some ten metres short of the pointed bows and the remaining area is used as a store for things like ropes, chains, cables and rat-guards. A hundred feet below Stratton could see t
wo operatives chatting beside what looked like a couple of bodies.
He made his way down, his feet echoing on the metal steps inside the white and brightly lit steel cavern. As he reached the last bend in the stairs before the bottom he could see the two bodies in blue overalls were the Philippine engine-room workers. They were lying where they had been found and would be removed when the forensic officers had inspected them. When the initial reports of the dead came in, the number totalled twenty-four, which left three unaccounted for. Because of its distance from the superstructure the locker was the last place searched and when the tanker looked like it was going to run aground the front of the boat, especially below the waterline, was not a place anyone wanted to be. It was Jacko, leader of team Alpha, who had reported finding the last three crewmembers.
The two operatives glanced up at Stratton and one of them pointed to a far corner the other side of the stairwell. Stratton looked to see Jacko staring up at a man lying across several pipes above him.
Stratton stepped down on to the lowest point of the ship and walked over to him.
‘Stratton,’ Jacko said, greeting him.They both stood and looked up at the body a few feet above them, all evidence suggesting it had fallen from some height. The man, a Caucasian, was wearing white overalls indicating he was an officer. He looked tall, more than six feet anyway.
‘Chief engineer, I think,’ Jacko said. ‘Him and the other two must’ve made a run for it and tried to hide in here . . . At a guess I’d say the bastards threw him off there,’ he said, indicating a midway stairs landing. ‘They’ve all been razored. Throats slit. I don’t think any of ’em ’av been shot. The two Filipinos look like they put up a bit of a fight. They’ve got slashes and stab wounds all over ’em.’
Stratton looked around, trying to picture what had happened. He saw a wallet on the floor directly below the man on the pipes and picked it up. Inside were some US dollars, an identification card and two photographs. One was of a woman and two children and the other was the dead man with another man, slightly broader and harder looking, but very likely his brother, perhaps even his twin. The engineer’s name was Vladimir Zhilev, a Russian from Riga, Latvia, and he was the chief engineer as Jacko had said.
‘Any clues as to who did it?’ Stratton asked.
‘Nothing so far. Got to be Al Qaeda or one of those lot. Who else would do this?’
Stratton took a plastic evidence bag from a pouch and was about to drop the wallet in it when he noticed a piece of paper stuffed into its side. He pulled it out and opened it up. There was something scrawled on it and a red stain. The writing looked Arabic and on closer inspection the red stain was a thumb print in blood.
‘Where’s this shit gonna end?’ Jacko said.
‘It’s only just started,’ Stratton said as he folded the paper, replaced it in the wallet and dropped it into the evidence bag.
‘Give this to forensics when they get down here. It’s his,’ Stratton said, indicating the engineer and handing the bag to Jacko. ‘Navy’ll be here in twenty minutes. I’ll see you up on deck.’
Chapter 3
A grey, ten-year-old Saab Estate covered in a couple of weeks of dirt and grime drove slowly along a residential street on the outskirts of Riga, Latvia, cutting through several days’ old, grey slush. The suburb was two miles across the river from the old city and this part of it was not as unpleasant on the eye as others built during the Russian occupation. More brick and wood than concrete had been used to construct the buildings in this street, most of which were houses and bungalows. The grey, soulless, depressing apartment blocks the Russians were famous for building throughout its former empire were at the other end of the housing estate and practically out of sight from this street. The winter snows did much to hide the ugliness but the sun was now shining brightly through a patchy sky to shrink back the heavy downfall that had fallen a week before.
The car pulled up alongside the kerb, stopped and the engine was switched off. It was a quiet neighbourhood, the houses comfortably spaced with street-parking guaranteed.
Mikhail Zhilev climbed out of the vehicle and registered pain on his granite, Slav face, which was covered in a two-week-old beard, as he stretched his six-foot-three, fifty-year-old body until his spine cracked. He had been determined to finish the last eight-hour leg of his two-day drive without a stop but his stubbornness had not come without a price. The old twinge in his neck which had plagued him for the past twelve years had throbbed continuously since leaving the mountain road and in the last hour or so had become almost unbearable. When anyone ever asked him about his discomfort he always explained it away as the result of thirty-five years of Sambo wrestling, a Russian self-defence discipline, in particular the last few weeks of those years when he pushed himself hard in the hope of finally winning the heavyweight division of the Russian Army Championship, a hope dashed in the semi-finals when a bad fall almost left him with a broken neck. But the few people who truly knew him, all old comrades in arms except for his brother, knew the real culprits were the Russian scientists and their damned experiments, and also the OMRP (Detachment of Marine Reconnaissance Point - Naval Intelligence) and their bosses in the GRU (General Intelligence Department) who allowed the ridiculous practice of using the military’s finest as medical guinea pigs.
Zhilev let his head fall gradually forward and then, with a grimace, forced his chin the last few inches on to his chest until the vertebrae in his neck also cracked. It gave him a little relief although he knew from experience it would not last long. He thought of the bottle of Temgesic tablets he always kept in his pocket, heavy-duty painkillers, but only for a second before dismissing the notion. He carried them for much the same reason some former smokers keep a packet of cigarettes, as a constant test of resolve and willpower. Soon he would be sitting back in his armchair, his feet up, a towel rolled behind his neck, relaxing and taking the weight off his shoulders, the only sure way to relieve the pain. In his philosophy, painkillers were for the weak, and no one who knew him had ever described him as being weak. One glance at his tall, slightly stooped demeanour, his rock of a head and determined eyes, his powerful shoulders, long arms, gnarled fingers and oaken bones bound in old iron muscles and there was no doubt that this man had spent his entire life in physical hardship. His career may have prematurely aged him but only a blind fool could fail to sense he still had a great capacity for physical destruction.
Besides, there was a much deeper truth behind his disdain for pills. Zhilev had a psychosomatic aversion to any form of drug, and for understandable reasons.
Zhilev opened the back of the car and pulled out an old canvas A-frame rucksack which had a military-style web-belt, pouches and a knife secured to the top. He pulled it heavily on to one shoulder, ignored the pain as he straightened up, steam shooting from his mouth and nostrils as he exhaled the frosty air, shut the boot and trudged up his garden path. He stepped on to his porch where snow remained against the house, sheltered from the direct sunlight, and pulled a bunch of keys out of his coat pocket. He unlocked the front door and stamped his boots on the wooden decking before stepping over the small drift that had moulded solid against the door and entered the house. A pile of mail littered the entrance and he crouched to pick it up before closing the door and walking down the sparse, creaking hallway and into the kitchen.
The house was clean, tidy and organised, the furnishings basic and austere, and noticeably void of a feminine touch.
He placed the letters on the wooden kitchen table, bare except for a half-burned candle in a saucer, dropped the rucksack on the clay-tiled floor, hung his coat on a hook on the wall and gave his neck a brief pressure massage.As he brought his head forward to stretch the vertebrae, he opened his eyes and they fell on a black-and-white framed photograph, twenty-five years old, on the wall by the door. It was of a dozen young, athletic men in black-rubber diving suits posing casually for the camera, some wearing unusual-looking diving sets which did not have air tanks. Some carried u
nderwater mines magnetised to metal sheets strapped on to their backs, others held small flotation boards with compasses and depth gauges attached. Behind the men, on a specially built trailer, was a black ‘Proton’ type underwater two-man tug, or miniature submarine, some twenty feet long from nose to rudder, a red hammer and sickle stencilled on the side. The men were smiling, some of them shyly as if unused to cameras, or perhaps caught unaware by the photographer. Beneath the photo was the badge of the Russian Combat Swimmer, a parachute with wings either side and a diver on an underwater tug across the base of a parachute.
Zhilev stared at the picture as his thoughts went back to those glorious days. He looked at himself in the photograph, the handsome youth in the centre, clean-shaven, straight-backed, short hair parted neatly at the side, a proud warrior of the highest order in the prime of his life. The nostalgia washed over him and he remembered the day the photograph was taken as if it were yesterday and, as always, found it hard to believe so much time had gone by so quickly.
Zhilev disconnected from the picture which always managed to fill him with despondency and loss rather than pride. He turned to the task of cleaning his kit, the first thing a good soldier did as soon as he returned from the field, and hung the belt with its attached pouches and knife on another hook beside his coat and opened the rucksack to empty it. Everything had an old army surplus look about it: no bright colours, earthy, sturdy and practical. The last items at the bottom were a sleeping bag and poncho. He pulled out the poncho and put it to one side, picked up the rucksack and carried it to a cupboard under the stairs. The small space was crammed with military equipment that looked more suited to a museum than any modern Western army. Hanging on hooks or placed neatly on a shelf were items such as compasses, maps, flashlights, a folding spade, knives and a pile of rations. There was also a variety of camouflage outfits, boots and cold and wet-weather gear. Several semi-automatic pistols were laid out neatly on a shelf with their magazines and boxes of cartridges beside them: a Tokarev, a more recent Makarov and a WW2 Luger, all in fine condition. He draped the sleeping bag over a line, hung the rucksack on a nail and closed the door. He put the poncho on a chair by the back door since it would need hosing down before it was put away.There was no tent. Zhilev preferred to sleep on the ground in the open no matter what the conditions and under a poncho only when it snowed or rained. In the field he liked to travel with the bare necessities and sleep with all-round visibility. It was a behaviour he had formed after years of operating in small intelligence-gathering teams, often in the most inhospitable weather and terrain.
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