by Andrew Grant
I slowly started my ascent, letting my bubble trail race away above me. I joined Tan who was hovering at eighty feet and did my calculations. We’d go to fifty and hold that for seven minutes as we swam slowly eastwards. Being rushed off with the bends to the nearest decompression chamber, which was probably down at Patong Beach, didn’t figure big in my plans.
When we surfaced ten minutes later, Tan and I were the best part of a hundred yards away from Odorama, thanks to the currents near the surface. We didn’t have to swim for it, however, because an inflatable from the gunship was heading towards us. When the Zodiac came alongside, Tan and I simply clung to the rope handles on each side of the rubber duck and let ourselves be towed back to the dive boat.
Back on Odorama, one look at the faces of the crew told the story. Billy and Suwat were grinning from ear to ear. They’d surfaced quite a while before us, but not before they had been into the second hold. ‘It is there,’ said Suwat. ‘Just like in the picture. It was once in a wooden crate but that has turned to mud. It is so beautiful,’ he added, shaking his head in wonder.
‘I think we can lift it with air bags.’ Billy, the second of the former navy divers, was already planning the salvage operation. ‘If we can inflate them outside the hold to take some of the weight, then we can move the buddha into position and blow up another bag to get it through the hatch to the surface.’
‘It weighs more than a thousand pounds,’ I said as I started to get out of my wetsuit. ‘That’s a lot of dead weight out of the water.’ I’d already done the figures based on what Bernard had given me. ‘Three of the smaller bags to move it out of the hold with your help, then add one of the big ones to get it to the surface. The net winches can lift it on board.’
‘Let’s go and do it,’ Suwat was saying. Billy was nodding eagerly. I shook my head.
‘Not yet! We have a break and get the equipment organised. Top up the bottles, Tan. Billy, get the air bags and harness organised. Suwat, we need an air hose from the compressor to the freighter’s hold. You’re linking hoses.’ Instructions delivered, I left them to it as I lit a cigarette and went into the mess.
I got a coffee and sat. I was having a problem with priorities. Part of me was screaming, ‘Go and get the damned box!’ The other side of my brain was calmly whispering to me, ‘The buddha. It is good. Return it to the people. What is in the box must surely be bad.’ I was damned if that voice didn’t sound like Geezer, or an old priest I’d once known who had tried hard to be my conscience at one time. Both of them had liked their grog but each had been, or in Geezer’s case was, a wise man. Father Leonard, however, was a dead man of God. He’d been blown up by a car bomb in Armagh.
‘Tri says a Myanmar patrol boat is coming,’ Niran was calling from the bridge.
‘Shit!’ I leapt up the steep companionway. Niran pushed a pair of binoculars into my hands and pointed to the east. The gunboat was just a grey smudge on the near horizon. It appeared to be about the size of a MTB. There was a single gun mounted on the bow. It wasn’t moving as quickly as it quite obviously could. Rather, it was just cruising. Probably just a routine patrol to see who and what was in its waters.
‘Okay.’ My mind was working overtime. I grabbed the Motorola hand-held that was our direct link to our escort. I was just hoping Tri would take orders without argument because this was the first time I would try giving him one. He answered almost before I let go of the send button.
‘Yes?’
‘Get the Zodiac to cut away the two buoys we set, then you sail back to the anchorage and wait for us there,’ I said.
‘Okay!’ he replied. Logic ruled. No argument from Tri. Thank buddha for that. The Zodiac was moving less than thirty seconds later. There were two men in it: one perched in the bow, the other at the outboard. A knife blade flashed twice in the sunlight and they had the buoys in the bottom of the boat within another minute. Our trawler was soon moving back towards the Loughborough Passage with the inflatable in tow. I turned to Niran.
‘Cover the dive gear with nets. Pretend to have problems with a winch or something. No weapons in sight! I’ll need to hide below.’ The patrol boat was definitely heading towards us. We had about five minutes to become a simple prawn boat again. I headed below as Niran started rapidly firing off orders. A European on board a working boat full of Thais was going to arouse suspicion. I needed to be out of sight and pray that Odorama wasn’t searched. I opened the engine-room hatch and gathered our weaponry from the temporary rack against the rear bulkhead. Then, juggling a pair of AK47s and our single M16 along with a big bag of loaded magazines for both, I went down into the engine room.
Room was a misnomer in this case. The ‘engine room’ was a dark, narrow stinking hole dominated by an ancient Cummins diesel engine. I knew it was a Cummins because the first time I’d been down there I’d slipped and jammed my right forearm against a very hot manifold cover that bore that name. Light came from a single, dull, greasy light bulb set on the bulkhead beside the steps. It gave just enough of a glow for me to see what I had to.
I lifted a section of dirty deck grating. It was an old smuggler’s hidy-hole. The normal bilge hatch was plainly identified by its cut-out handgrips and, when opened, showed oily bilge water slopping about below. This hatch opened into an open-topped aluminium tank installed for moments such as this. I lowered the carbines and the ammunition into the metal trough, then went back up the three steps and pulled down the table hatch. Someone was waiting to scatter some dishes and cards on it the moment it was closed.
I contemplated the metal coffin set in the deck. There really was no point in getting into it and pulling the section of deck down to hide me. If the Burmese searched the boat, they would find the dive gear and know something was up. There was too much sophisticated high-priced kit up there for a simple prawn boat to have on board. That being the case, I didn’t want to get into the bilge hidy-hole because the game would be up long before that. I thought of the Walther that was hidden in my bedding. Damn! There was nothing to do but hope and pray. I pulled the section of deck back in place to cover the guns, then sat on the bottom step of the ladder. I flicked the light switch off, letting the stinking blackness claim me.
The stench of diesel and oil was overwhelming. Now, more than ever before, I needed to settle my rebellious gut. The ball was well and truly in Niran’s court. If the Burmese were on a social call, no problem. If not, we were totally and absolutely fucked, as the actress said to the bishop!
10
I heard the arrival of the patrol boat. It would have been difficult to miss. There was the sound of powerful diesel engines approaching then fading into an idle rumbling. ‘Twin screws,’ my brain told me. It was useless information, but the brain did things like that in moments of stress. One such time was when I was returning fire against a bunch of Laotian bandits in tiger country. Outnumbered and outgunned, we were fighting for our lives, but I couldn’t help but notice the beautiful display of orchids that grew from the rotting log I was lying behind. Crazy, huh? We won the firefight and I’d never really looked at an orchid since. Such was the way of things.
There was what, to me, sounded like a good-natured conversation shouted between Niran and someone on board the other vessel. Down where I was, I could only guess what the hell was going on. If another vessel had come alongside and hit the tyre bumpers that hung along both sides of the Odorama, there would have ben a sudden lurch or thump. I hadn’t felt it. So unless they had sent a dinghy over—which would have been totally unnecessary given the size of both vessels—we hadn’t been boarded.
Shit, the smell of the diesel was getting to me. My head was thickening and my gut was starting to churn. A few minutes more and I would be hanging my head down into the bilges, chucking my heart out again. I tried to fill my lungs by breathing through my mouth. It didn’t make any difference. I tried to think of the plus side of things. For a start, the engine wasn’t on. That was a definite bonus for me. Secondly, the sea was calm and third
ly—thirdly the patrol boat had finally engaged its props and was moving away. I could hear Niran wishing them a jovial farewell.
I waited twenty seconds—that was all I could manage—then I went up the steps and pushed the hatch open. I could hear plates and cutlery hitting the deck. I didn’t care as I stood there, supporting the damned hatch as I filled my lungs with what passed as fresh air. For the first time the fact the air was dominated by the pong of rotten fish didn’t even register. Niran came in through the starboard door.
‘It’s okay.’ He grinned down at me. ‘They are just on routine patrol. Once a week they come around here. Said a big storm is coming and to take shelter. They are going to Kawthaung.’
‘Okay. Let’s make tracks,’ I said, feigning a degree of composure I didn’t feel as I climbed up onto the mess deck and closed the hatch table. ‘How long will the storm go on for?’
‘Who knows?’ Niran shrugged. ‘Maybe two or three days.’
‘Just my bleedin’ luck,’ I muttered to myself. Problem was, once the storm had passed through the seas could stay rough for a couple of days. A big two-day blow might mean four days without diving. I wanted to get the business done and get the hell out of there. I checked on the position of the Burmese patrol boat. The long, low, grey vessel was a quarter of a mile away ahead of us, heading into the Loughborough Passage. I could see our escort trawler almost at the point of the island we had moored behind the previous night. I was praying that Tri had cut away to the anchorage point, letting the Burmese carry on. I thought of the big Brownings on the bridge wings and cursed silently. I hoped like hell he had taken the damn things off their mounts and hidden them. Thing was, if it came to a shoot-out between Tri and his thugs and the Burmese, the chances were the patrol boat would lose. Despite its deck gun, a couple of Tri’s rockets would blow it out of the water before it could fire a shot.
There was a rumble from below us and Niran’s guys started bringing up our anchor. I went up to the bridge and adjusted the co-ordinates on the GPS. Next time we came calling, we would anchor between the wrecks. My stomach had settled again so I risked lighting a cigarette and sat on one of two stools in the tiny glass-fronted cab. Niran stood at the wheel, his right hand on the throttle. As the anchor was lifted into its holding cleats, he pushed the throttle open and eased the wheel into a slow turn to track the passage of the patrol boat.
Our first dive was over. We had found what we had been looking for. Now it was a matter of collecting it but God knows when we would get back there again. The divers who had first discovered the buddha hadn’t been able to return to the wrecks, not that it had been their job to do anything much more than verify identities of the ship and sub. Perhaps they had been after the box but had been thwarted by the arrival of the Burmese. If I had had to put money on it, I would have guessed that at least one of the divers probably had the recovery of the box on his dance card. Who would ever know and who would ever tell? Bernard sure as hell hadn’t told me.
Would we be back or would another team have to follow us in to complete the job? There were so many factors at work. How long would it be before some recreational divers found the wrecks? The Burmese hadn’t really encouraged tourism in that region so far. However, it seemed that they were warming up to the idea of getting foreign currency into the kitty. Money bought tanks, guns and all those things that military regimes liked to have on hand to maintain their status quo. Already there were some dolphin-watching expeditions out of Kawthaung, and other Thai–Burmese ventures into the archipelago were getting the green light. It was ultimately just a matter of time before someone decided to run a major commercial dive operation in the area. So, in reality, time was one commodity that we were possibly going to run out of if the coming storm really hammered us.
Tri had moored further into the bay than the previous night. The Burmese patrol boat hadn’t deviated on its run for Kawthaung, for which I gave a sigh of relief. Several Moken craft with dugouts trailing behind were heading that way as well. A large white cruiser had appeared away to our left, coming around the edge of the island that defined the north side of the passage. The white boat was also making a beeline for Kawthaung or Ranong.
‘Dolphin boat,’ said Niran. ‘They take tourists to see the dolphins. I can take them to see the dolphins,’ he added, laughing. I laughed as well. I couldn’t imagine any tourists paying to ride on board the Odorama under any pretext, dolphins or not.
Niran eased us towards the shore, going past Tri’s boat and getting as close into the lee of the razor-backed island as possible. There would be no rafting up the two craft with a big blow on its way. The anchor was dropped and Niran reversed us hard some twenty or so feet to set the hook deep. It didn’t matter if he embedded the tines into solid coral because we had divers aplenty to free them when the storm eventually blew itself out. The last thing we needed was to drag our anchor and end up out in the passage.
The sky was darkening by the second and lightning flashed away to the north. The rumble of distant thunder reached us several seconds later. Niran was giving orders and everything that could be latched shut was being tied down. Our dive gear had been taken below. Hatch covers were being secured. I decided it was Singha time and went into the mess. There was the smell of something spicy being cooked. Noy, the designated chef, was working over a giant wok on one of the galley’s two gas rings. While we’d been on the move he’d rigged a trolling line and caught a big mackerel. Steaks were now being fried and a second, smaller wok full of spicy noodles and shredded vegetables was waiting to one side.
‘The condemned men,’ I muttered to myself.
Noy gave me a big grin. ‘What you say?’
I realised I’d spoken in English. ‘Smells good,’ I said in Thai.
‘Very good,’ he agreed with an even bigger grin. And yes, the meal was very good. Very damned good indeed. We ate and washed the food down with Singha and about the time we’d finished, the storm hit. The rain came down in a curtain. Night had fallen, yet it was only three in the afternoon. The sound of the rain on the deck became a roar. Then the wind came howling down on us like a million demented banshees.
11
Stir crazy! It’s more than just an evocative phrase, believe me. After three days stuck in the close confines of SS Odorama, with the smell of dead fish and fishy bodies and the sound of the shrieking fucking wind howling above me, I was ready to kill someone, anyone, myself included.
‘Tomorrow,’ promised Niran. ‘Tomorrow we can go. The sea will be calmer.’ Odorama’s skipper and I were on the bridge. The wind had finally dropped. There was no rain and the white caps both behind us and away to our right were starting to fall away. It was late afternoon and the sun had just managed to burn away the cloud cover. Our gunboat was still in the same position it had been throughout the blow. I could see its crewmembers out on deck, enjoying the fresh air. Some of them, like our guys, had fishing lines down. There would no doubt be something fresh and finned for dinner.
Over the past few days and long nights I had taxed my brain in an effort to maintain whatever sanity I still possessed. I had repeatedly gone over the whole scenario of the box and everything I had to do the moment we hit the water on our next dive. I would retrieve the damned thing and stay long enough to help get the Ruby Buddha on board Odorama. Then I would insist we run for Ranong.
I had a built-in radar for things—some called it a bullshit detector—and in the hours of brain-time I’d had over the past few days, I’d come to a few conclusions and raised more questions than answers. I knew Bernard hadn’t told me more than he felt I needed to know about this whole deal. That box and its contents were absolute dynamite, political dynamite. That was obvious. But why had our lot been co-opted to get the bloody thing? Why not a submarine full of marine salvage experts and Special Boat Service people? They could mount a hit-and-run, and there would be no way the Burmese navy, such as it was, could detect them or catch them.
So, lying in my bunk listening to th
e snores, burps and farts of my fellow divers, I concocted my list of answerless questions and questionable conclusions, all of which led back to the former. It was like playing mental rounders.
First amongst my concerns was always the why. Why had we, The Firm, been chosen to pull this damned thing off? Did they want us to attempt it in our usual skin-of-the-fucking-teeth and highly unorthodox fashion, because maybe we weren’t meant to succeed? It was a fact that, because of our business and the way it was conducted, we didn’t always manage to successfully complete the mission we’d been assigned. A bunch of Special Boat Squadron types, the waterborne SAS and a submarine. That was the obvious option to ensure success.
So if the big boys weren’t coming and yes, we were meant to succeed, the next question was why weren’t they coming? Was it a matter of detection? The Burmese didn’t have technology beyond basic sonar and radar, which were short-range methods at best. The Russian and Western spy satellites zipping around with their sophisticated detection devices knew where most submarines were most of the time. The Russians, the US, our lot and the French were the only main players in this game. But since the great break-up of the Union, the Russians weren’t paying that much attention to distant sub-plotting and the like. The French, well, who the hell knew what the bloody French military and naval intelligence outfits were monitoring? But even their satellite access was minimal compared to ours, and especially when compared to that of the US.