by Peter Tonkin
‘We have to help ourselves first,’ answered Anastasia sharply. ‘And there’s no going back. Not for the moment at least. Mind you,’ she added, ‘when I do go back I want to go in there, as the Americans say, like gangbusters!’
‘We can help them,’ insisted Ado. ‘We can pray for them!’
That idea seemed to calm Celine a little, and she and Ado began to pray quietly together. In the meantime, the less spiritual Anastasia set about checking over the outboard, all too well aware that they were going to need more than the power of prayer. And pretty soon, too. For it seemed to her that the river was gathering pace, with a strong current running over to the left, at the foot of those red mud cliffs. And that current was sucking the rowing boat faster and faster over towards the high-walled southern bank. But the engine was no AK and she had had no experience at all in making them work. ‘Look,’ she said at last. ‘Does either of you know anything about outboards? Or anything about motors at all?’
‘I do,’ answered Esan unexpectedly. ‘I have worked with Captain Ojogo. He is in charge of transport for the army. He has trained me in all sorts of matters to do with engines.’
Anastasia looked at the other two. Celine frowned, hesitating, but Anastasia had no idea whether that was because she didn’t trust the soldier or because her brain was slowed by shock and fever. Ado nodded decisively. And that was what made the difference.
It took longer to untie Esan from the oars, loosen his hands – though not his feet – and help him along the length of the boat – all the while keeping the AK trained on him – than it did for him to get the motor started. Then, as he sat back down in the bottom of the little craft, balancing Celine, with his shoulders at the bow, Anastasia tried to take them in a smooth arc away from the relentlessly approaching shore.
But what seemed like a big step forward proved very nearly disastrous. Anastasia had never handled an outboard before and she couldn’t get used to the counter-intuitive way it seemed to work. To go right, she had to push the handle left, and vice-versa. All too swiftly she found that her attempts to break out of the current were simply pushing them more firmly into its rapidly tightening grip. The red cliffs of the shore seemed to exercise some kind of magical attraction for the little vessel. The persistent beating of the late-morning sun on her unprotected head simply added to the gathering feeling that things were slipping out of control.
She had not panicked last night because she had felt confident with the AK-47; because she was focussed on rescuing Celine. She came close to panic now because she did not understand the boat or feel that she was really in control of it. But this time she was completely responsible for Celine and her continued welfare. Not to mention Ado and this strange boy-soldier. And it occurred to her now at the worst possible moment that if the boat went over, the tied-up boy would drown at once and Celine would not even be able to swim for safety with her shoulder in the state it was.
So when a tongue of the shore suddenly appeared, stuck out in a low, curving hook that seemed little more than a sandbar just above the racing surface immediately ahead of them, she pulled the outboard’s rudder-arm firmly in to her side without a moment’s hesitation and ran the boat hard up on to it.
EIGHT
War-game
Richard ran up the gangplank on to Captain Caleb Maina’s command with almost boyish excitement. Unable to stop himself, he trailed his fingers along the sleek vessel’s side as he moved, making a deep and personal contact. The neat, spare ship reminded him vividly of Heritage Mariner’s Poseidon, for she was also basically a corvette. The immediate difference was that, as he reached the top of the companionway and turned to step aboard, he could see that on Otobo’s foredeck there was a 125mm naval gun in its grey-white pillbox housing instead of the bright yellow deep-sea exploration vessel Neptune.
A glance upward past this showed Richard enclosed bridge wings and the blank one-step design of the bridge-house front was pretty similar to Poseidon’s too. He had time to look around, for as he stepped down on to the weather deck at the head of the companionway, he was met by a small armed guard led by the man who was clearly the ship’s security officer – who handed him a plastic-coated ID badge complete with photo to pin on his lapel before allowing him to proceed. While he did all this, the captain waited courteously a few steps ahead. Then they were off.
Aware of Robin, almost equally excitedly striding along at his shoulder, also securing her ID, Richard followed Captain Caleb along the familiar weather deck and in through the bulkhead door into the dark coolness of the air-conditioned bridge house. The captain swung round at the foot of the companionway, his long eyes crinkling into a smile. ‘I believe I may rely on you to know your way around,’ he said. ‘Now that you have your IDs, please feel free to proceed up to the command bridge while I return to the companionway and see to the greeting and disposition of the other, less shipshape, guests. This is A Deck, of course. The command bridge is on D. My watch officer, First Lieutenant Sanda, is waiting to show you around. Mr Asov will join you immediately, I’m sure, and I will be up in a moment.’
Richard needed no further bidding and went leaping up the stairway with Robin close behind. As Caleb Maina guessed, their experiences aboard a range of vessels made the layout of this one almost second nature to them. They pounded up three decks, therefore, then on up the final short flight to the command bridge itself.
The bridge was busy, if not actually crowded yet, thought Richard. There were perhaps a dozen stations in an angular horseshoe, most of them facing forward so that their occupants could look over the flat computer screens and through the angled clearview along the foredeck. A quick scan showed him all that he had expected to see, as they grouped astride the central ship’s handling system – the one that replaced the binnacle, helm and engine room telegraph handles on older vessels. He leaned over and half whispered to Robin, ‘Computer-enhanced navigation systems, pilot and electronic chart systems, collision alarms, weather monitors, ship’s system monitors, engine room slave monitors, sonar, several weapons control systems, echo sounder, GPS . . . Most of them 3D by the looks of things, like the Doppler radar.’
‘I see it all,’ she answered. ‘And that must be communications away to the port. Speed and engine monitors on the starboard. It looks like a modern, integrated, top-of-the line system to me.’
As Richard nodded, a wiry young man with ‘SANDA’ embroidered on a badge sewn to his white shirt pocket turned from his position at the helmsman’s shoulder and smiled welcomingly. ‘She’s pretty impressive, don’t you think?’
‘She is indeed,’ boomed Max Asov, as he bounded up the steps behind Robin. ‘But she doesn’t stand a chance against my Zubr!’ He held up a Benincom cellphone. ‘Just tell me when to unleash the dogs of war. Though sharks would be more appropriate, I think. You reckon Shakespeare would approve? Sharks of war?’
‘I beg to differ, sir,’ riposted Sanda easily, disregarding all the Shakespeare stuff. ‘She stands a very good chance against your hovercraft. You have not taken into account the twin caterpillar 3616 diesels or the variable pitch propellers . . .’
‘Delivering, what, twenty-five knots? Thirty? My craft tops fifty. Even with a T80U main battle tank in her cargo hold. She’ll run rings round you!’ He nudged Richard knowingly. Richard realized right from the start that Max’s war-game had started as soon as he stepped aboard. Phase one was psyching out the opponent.
‘Perhaps,’ allowed the Lieutenant, losing just a little of his bonhomie. ‘But only because this is a game, sir. In a real encounter, I assure you our 125 millimetre gun and the RIM 116 missile system—’
‘Got several of those and then some. Or would have if this was for real!’ exulted the Russian, cheerfully turning this into a game of ‘Mine is bigger than yours’ as phase one of his war-game evolved into phase two. ‘And four missile defence systems to go with them. Your 125 millimetre gun is pretty impressive, though, especially in the face of my poor little 30 millimetre Gatli
ngs. It is the same size as the gun on my T80 Tank, in fact. But I have several Gatlings, though I see you have one of them yourself mounted at the rear beside your helipad. Very useful when you turn tail and run for cover! My Ogons are 140 millimetre, though. And I have minelayers too. Guns are just so old-fashioned, aren’t they? Even guns with a twenty kilometre range. And I still say that speed and manoeuvrability will have the edge . . .’
‘We’ll see,’ concluded Captain Caleb, as he came up on to the bridge himself. ‘We’ll see.’
Twenty minutes later, all necessary formalities complete and the dockside rapidly diminishing behind them, Caleb ordered, ‘Full ahead both, please, Mister Sanda. You know the heading.’ The lieutenant, back at the helmsman’s shoulder, nodded and repeated the order, which the helmsman echoed in turn. And the corvette Otobo surged towards thirty knots. Richard was bouncing on the balls of his feet with excitement and Robin grudgingly felt his contagious enthusiasm beginning to infect her too.
‘Just say when you want the war-games to begin,’ said Max, at Richard’s shoulder, his eyes fixed on the warship’s battle displays – in which the Zubr featured sizeably and centrally, as it wallowed apparently powerlessly beside the Sevmash freighter which had brought it here. ‘You just need to say the word,’ he emphasized, pressing his cellphone to his ear. ‘I can call Captain Zhukov any time you want . . .’
‘Very well.’ Caleb turned. ‘Gentlemen,’ he announced formally in English to the bridge. ‘We are at war.’
What Max said to Captain Zhukov was lost in the clamour of the emergency stations alarm that Sanda set off on his captain’s word, but the effect on the huge Zubr hovercraft was electrifying. It simply vanished from the displays.
Richard looked up, hardly able to believe his eyes. Away ahead, the Sevmash freighter sat solidly, as though painted against the hard blue sky. But the Zubr was no longer anywhere near her. Clearly Captain Zhukov had not merely readied his toothless weapon systems, he had inflated the hovercraft’s skirt and put the massive fans on idle. And on Max’s word he had gone to full astern. Without any water resistance to drag at a keel that hardly broke the surface, he had gone from dead stop to fifty knots in a heartbeat. Fifty knots in the opposite direction to the one he was expected to be heading in. It was simply astonishing.
‘Incoming!’ called one of the men stationed in front.
‘Hard left,’ ordered Caleb and Otobo heeled into a screaming turn towards the distant delta. Running across the incoming swell, she started to pitch and roll as the one motor pushed her hard forward while the other pulled her hard back. She had an impressively tight turning circle, but inevitably she was fighting the physics of being half submerged in a way the hovercraft would never have to do. ‘Deploy countermeasures,’ Captain Caleb concluded his order. ‘Gun. Do you have him?’
‘The tracking is too slow, Captain,’ answered the gunnery officer. ‘We latch on to him but he slips away before we can engage . . .’
‘Press the fire mechanism as soon as you engage,’ ordered the captain. ‘The system will register a hit without actually firing the gun.’
‘Really?’ answered Asov. ‘You put my mind at rest of course. But where’s the fun?’
The last comment seemed to bypass Captain Caleb, who was already issuing his next command. ‘The 30 millimetre Gatling may fire as it engages. Its system is nimbler than the big gun’s, you see, Mr Asov. And I must observe that we are not running for cover.’
As he spoke, a lone missile exploded harmlessly in the air high above them, its powder-filled warhead sending a puff of blue smoke drifting down the wind.
‘Countermeasures effective, Captain . . .’
‘But it wasn’t a real missile,’ teased Max. ‘It was just a little rocket. A toy. Like on May Day in Moscow, you know?’
‘Thank you. Now, please engage the Gatling.’
‘Engaged,’ sang out the assistant gunnery officer. ‘No . . .’
Richard crossed behind the engine monitoring station and looked out of the starboard bridge-wing window. The huge hovercraft was speeding full ahead now, skipping across the water like a skimmed stone. It was on a parallel course to the corvette, but running at least twice as fast.
‘But then,’ needled Max’s voice from behind him, ‘if you can engage your one little Gatling then I can engage all of mine! Though I observe that Captain Zhukov is keeping just out of range – just on the two point five kilometre mark, I see. And what else is he doing? Oh yes! He’s running rings round you!’
Otobo completed her turn and ran straight ahead. As she steadied and came level, Richard stepped back to look over the top of the Doppler radar station, out over the hump of the gun, dead ahead. It was a dangerous but impressive manoeuvre because the Zubr was sitting exactly between the corvette and the grey-green hulk of the delta, its shoreline a little less than ten kilometres ahead according to the radar. Sideways on, the hovercraft presented an excellent target with a profile sixty metres long and fifteen metres high to the top of its radar mast. The three six metre fans on the stern gave out a tempting heat signal. ‘Gun?’ demanded Captain Caleb.
‘Any minute now, Captain . . .’
‘Armaments, ready the RIM missiles. They’re heat-seeking . . .’
‘Incoming, Captain!’ warned the armaments officer again.
‘Ha! You see I have missiles too, Captain!’ exulted Max. ‘More than simple little May Day rockets!’
‘But are you supposed to have fired them?’ asked Robin, shaken.
Even Richard was taken aback. The Zubr was in motion again, streaking to Otobo’s port, running across the opening of River Gir itself. Richard glanced down at the Doppler radar and gasped. The monster was moving at sixty-five knots – more than seventy mph. He had never seen anything like it! In the air behind the quicksilver vessel, a series of black trails showed where the hovercraft had launched its missiles at them.
‘Chaff!’ spat Caleb. ‘Hard left. Full speed. Into the red! Are you mad, Mr Asov? Those things carry one and a half kilo warheads. You were forbidden to import them. If they hit . . .’
The corvette raced forward, wrenching herself left across the river mouth, in a vain attempt to keep the speeding hovercraft under her gun. But Richard saw at once that the manoeuvre was doomed. Quite apart from anything else, the river washed out great tongues of silt which formed shallows and sandbars that shifted unpredictably across the channel they were heading for. He realized, with something of a start, that these would mean less than nothing to the Zubr. Water or mud, deep sea or sandbar, she would skim across it all. Not so the corvette. She had a solid keel that sat four metres below the surface and that was that.
And even as Richard realized the implications the sonar station began to sound its alarm. ‘Sandbar,’ called the operator. Shelving to two metres dead ahead! My God! He’s dropped mines. Mines dead ahead!’
‘Come right! Come right!’ snarled Caleb.
The corvette did her level best to obey, but as she swung back, engines on full power, reversing her course in an instant, there was a BANG! like an explosion that seemed to echo throughout the ship and her wild turn slowed. ‘Stop all!’ ordered Caleb.
‘That sounded like one of your propeller shafts going pop,’ Max crowed. ‘That’s another thing Captain Zhukov doesn’t have to worry about, incidentally.’
The corvette settled and started to roll as the way came off her. Richard looked out of the starboard bridge windows, watching the Zubr reversing at full speed into the dangerous river mouth, its blunt wedge-bow facing them, all its armaments and weapons systems zeroed.
‘Game, set and match,’ he breathed to Robin.
But Robin didn’t answer. She was looking with nothing short of horror at the vapour trails of the three incoming missiles.
As the crippled vessel slowed, inevitably and helplessly, Captain Zhukov’s missiles arrived. They thumped relentlessly into her side. And, as Caleb had said, each of them carried a one and a half kilo warhead. But t
he high explosive had been replaced with paint. And as the ship shuddered three times, her port side was painted with huge humiliating blotches of red, yellow and black.
‘Your country’s national colours I believe,’ said Max. ‘Now what could be more fitting than that?’ And as he spoke, the first of the apparent mines bobbed up – nothing more than half-inflated beach balls, also coloured yellow, red and black. Max positively beamed. ‘And a present for your children into the bargain! It has been a pleasure playing with you, gentlemen.’ He put his cellphone to his ear. ‘Thank you, Captain Zhukov. A most impressive little game. But I’m afraid we’re going to need a chopper to take us home while the Captain arranges a tow . . .’
NINE
Truck
More by luck than judgement, Anastasia had beached right at the beginning of the low spit. The boat rode up the smooth flank of the sandbar, swinging inwards under a ragged overhang of bank, into a blessed pool of shadow. Then it came to a halt, grounded securely and leaning over towards its left side, as though still attracted by the shore. The propeller caught on the bed of the shallow behind and the outboard stalled at once. ‘Govno,’ she said, safe in the knowledge that of all the languages spoken in the boat only she understood Russian swear words. Then she switched to English. ‘Is everyone all right?’
‘Fine,’ said Ado intrepidly, though she sounded shaken.
‘Me too,’ added Esan. ‘Though I don’t want to do that again, so maybe I should steer in future.’
‘When we know that we can trust you,’ said Anastasia. ‘We’ll take it one step at a time. First we’ll untie you. Then we’ll see. But we won’t rush into that too quickly either. Celine? How are you?’