In recent minutes he’d given up looking for it altogether and had been spending his time in the focsle watching radar echoes crawl across Hari’s screen.
‘How far do you reckon Ritchie’s ahead of Yegorov?’ Coburn asked.
‘Perhaps a kilometre – a half of one mile if you prefer.’
‘And how far south of Yegorov are we?’
‘Closer than that.’ Hari measured off the distance. ‘We are within five or six hundred metres of the Osa.’ He grinned at Coburn. ‘If you are concerned about the range of the transmitter you are holding, you should not be. It can send its signal from here to China.’
Coburn was more worried about how effective the mines were going to be. He’d been thinking about it on and off for the last hour, endeavouring to maintain his balance on the heaving deck, in one hand gripping the radio transmitter that would bring them to life, and in the other hand holding the satellite phone he was using to communicate with O’Halloran.
‘Although it is still early I think it best if we get ready,’ Hari said.
‘We are ready.’
‘No, no. I mean with our lights and our ammunition belts.’
‘I’ve told you,’ Coburn said. ‘If there’s going to be a fight, leave it to the Sandpiper. O’Halloran says Ritchie’s already manning both his guns.’
‘Which, if the mines misfire, he will have no opportunity to use.’ Hari lit a cigarette. ‘You have heard whether Ritchie is making certain that at all times his position is known to the authorities?’
‘He’s got coverage from two satellites, the South Korean Navy are tracking his ship and the US have asked China to keep an eye on him as well. O’Halloran’s pretty sure the Chinese would be doing that anyway.’
‘I see. And the commander is also set up to record all radio messages he receives?’
Coburn nodded.
‘Then I shall leave you to make any necessary course corrections and keep watch while I go to organize my crew. I shall be absent for a few minutes only.’
Because the sat phone link had been open while Hari had been talking, O’Halloran had overheard the conversation. ‘If that was your pirate friend, he sounds a pretty switched-on character,’ he said.
‘In his line of business you don’t last long if you’re not.’ Coburn repositioned himself in front of the radar display. ‘Do me a favour, will you?’ he said. ‘Ask Ritchie if he’s going to carry on following the Demarkation Line.’
‘He’s already said he is. What else can he do?’
‘I don’t know.’ Now Coburn was alone, he was more conscious of being on edge. The longer he watched the dots on the screen the drier his mouth was getting, and whenever he relaxed his grip on the transmitter his fingers began to cramp.
When, he wondered? How long before Yegorov decided to make contact with the Sandpiper? And when he did, would Ritchie hold off long enough for the mines to do their job?
His thoughts were interrupted by a crackle on his phone.
‘What was that?’ O’Halloran’s voice sounded forced.
‘Lightning,’ Coburn said. ‘The weather’s getting worse.’
‘What if Osas can’t launch missiles in big seas?’
Coburn had no idea. Instead of answering the question he focused his attention on the screen, doubting his ability to maintain this level of concentration for much more than another half an hour, but telling himself he didn’t have to because it would be the radio message that would sound the alert.
‘Are you still there?’ O’Halloran wasn’t sounding any better.
‘Yeah. I’m here. How far are you off the coast of that island behind you?’
‘Who knows? I can’t see it. Do you want me to ask Ritchie?’
‘No. Just say that the further west he goes, the more we’re getting tipped about here.’ Coburn could see no point in the patrol boat being led out into seas so rough that Yegorov could call things off.
‘OK. I’ll see what he thinks. Don’t go anywhere.’
What Ritchie’s reply might have been Coburn would never know.
As a squall of rain swept across the deck of the Selina, everything started happening at once.
No sooner had Hari returned to the focsle than the trailing dot on the screen began to accelerate, and at the same time over the phone, an urgent message from O’Halloran was drowned out by the voice of someone on the Sandpiper’s bridge yelling the word ‘closing’.
Elbowing Coburn out of the way, Hari took over the wheel. ‘The man Yegorov makes his run, I think,’ he said. ‘In your haste to press the button, do not be too quick.’
Conscious of the cramp in his fingers, Coburn was more concerned about not being able to press the damn thing at all. Assuring O’Halloran that he was aware of what was taking place, he opened the focsle hatch and glanced outside.
The squall had been short-lived, already over and leaving behind it clearer air. The lights on the island were twinkling again, and now in the distance the Sandpiper’s lights were easily visible as well. What he couldn’t see was the Osa.
O’Halloran seemed happy to rely entirely on the Sandpiper’s radar. ‘Ritchie wants to know if you’re set to go,’ he said.
‘Tell him it’s a stupid fucking question.’ Coburn steadied himself against a bulkhead. ‘I can hear what’s going on your end, so if you want to hold up your phone when Yegorov makes contact, it’ll give me an idea of how long I’ll have. Is he still coming?’
Rather than waiting for O’Halloran to check, Hari answered the question. ‘He has increased his speed, but moving to the north,’ he said. ‘By doing so he will attack from the side where he will have a larger target. Please prepare yourself.’
Coburn didn’t think he could be more prepared than he was already. Doing his best to stay calm, he tried to filter out the muffled voices from the Sandpiper’s bridge while he strained to hear the first few words of a message that would set everything in motion.
They weren’t long coming. A second after he heard O’Halloran telling him to standby, he was listening to a statement that had been so over-rehearsed its effect was somehow made more chilling.
‘This is DPRK patrol boat S19 calling US warship Sandpiper. You are north of the 38th parallel and in violation of the 1953 Panmunjom Agreement defining the maritime boundary of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. If you fail to change course and do not at once return to the waters of South Korea, military action will be taken against you. You will receive no further warning of this transgression.’
Coburn didn’t hesitate. He pressed the button and held it down, staring out to sea, searching for a flash that would tell him where the Osa was.
There was no flash – no burst of light, no indication of any kind that the mines had detonated.
Hari hadn’t bothered to look. He’d gone to the door, shielding his face from the wind and only relaxing when the windows of the focsle were rattled by the deep thud of an explosion.
O’Halloran had heard it too. ‘Hole in one,’ he said. ‘What can you see from where you are?’
Coburn was about to say he couldn’t see anything when to the north, where the sea had suddenly started to glow red, a brilliant spear of horizontal flame shot out into the night.
Realizing that somehow Yegorov had managed to launch a Styx, Coburn shouted a warning over the phone, watching despairingly as the missile streaked out towards the Sandpiper.
It was unstable. On full boost, but with its guidance system compromised, and discharged from a burning hangar on a badly listing boat, it narrowly avoided hitting the water before soaring skywards, climbing higher and higher in a series of increasingly wild spirals until it tore itself to pieces in a starburst of incandescent debris.
O’Halloran took his time to come back on the line. ‘Holy shit,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever do that to me again.’
Coburn had yet to take a breath, not just wondering how in God’s name they’d ever got away with it, but not quite able to believe how incred
ibly lucky the Sandpiper’s crew had been, and equally amazed that Ritchie had held his fire.
‘You’d better tell the commander to get his boats in the water,’ he said. ‘From here on, it’s up to him.’
‘No, no.’ Hari was shaking his head. ‘We ourselves have more to do.’ Having watched the flight of the missile through binoculars he seemed to have decided something wasn’t right. He handed the glasses to Coburn. ‘If you will look at the Osa, you can see our work tonight is not yet finished.’
The crew were abandoning their stricken vessel and beginning to swim away from it, but at the stern, illuminated in flames billowing from the hangars, a figure was clambering down into a small motor-driven runabout.
Coburn didn’t need binoculars to know who it was. Hari, too, had guessed. He’d already opened the Selina’s throttles and was calling for the halogens to be switched on, but Coburn knew he was being optimistic.
With the island only a few short miles away, in easy reach and surrounded by enormous banks of silt on which, even at high tide, the Selina would quickly run aground, Yegorov stood every chance of making it to land. And once he did that, Coburn realized, neither Ritchie nor anyone else would have a hope in hell of finding him.
CHAPTER 22
QUICK THOUGH THE Selina had been to gather speed, it was proving to be no match for the runabout, which had all but vanished before Indiri’s husband was able to turn on the halogens.
To escape from the light, Yegorov was throwing the runabout into a series of sharp turns, still heading for the island, but adopting a zigzag course that was slowing him down and putting him at risk.
Twice when the runabout was side-on to the increasingly high waves it looked as though he would capsize, and twice he managed to recover, pulling steadily away from the Selina on his way to land.
O’Halloran had seen what was happening and was already on the phone. ‘Those are your floodlights, right?’ he said.
‘Right.’ Anticipating what the American was going to say next, Coburn said it for him. ‘Yeah I know it’s Yegorov, and yeah, I know we’re not going to catch him.’
Hari didn’t agree. Handing over the wheel to the Somalian he instructed him to keep watching the depth finder, then propelled Coburn from the focsle. ‘All is not lost,’ he said. ‘If you would be good enough to remove the lashings from the Zodiac, I shall fetch Ali and Susilo to help us.’
Coburn had forgotten about the Zodiac. It wouldn’t be fast enough to overhaul the runabout, he thought, but it might give them a chance of keeping up.
Conditions on the afterdeck were unpleasant. Crouched behind the halogens, Indiri’s husband was being drenched in spray, and already the Zodiac had several inches of water sloshing around in the bottom of it.
With Coburn’s fingers still suffering from the after-effects of his cramp, he found the wet ropes difficult to unfasten. Each time the lightweight boat was raised by the wind the lashings tightened, and it wasn’t until Hari and the two divers came to offer their assistance that he was able to untie the last of the knots.
‘Not for much longer can we continue like this,’ Hari shouted. ‘Before we reach the shallows we will secure the Zodiac to the Selina with a rope and throw it over the side. That means it will be necessary for you and I to jump in after it. You are happy to do this?’
‘Sure.’ Coburn had some doubts about which way up the Zodiac was going to hit the water. ‘Say when you’re ready.’
‘Very well.’ Hari waved to the Somalian to get him to ease back on the throttles. ‘We shall go when we are moving a little slower.’
The runabout had stopped zigzagging. Yegorov had given up trying to evade the lights and was attempting to regain his lead by making a straight run for the island.
Rather than watching the runabout, Hari had been observing the white caps, waiting for a lull in the wind.
It came too early. The Selina had barely started to lose speed when Hari gave the instruction to launch.
For a second the Zodiac became airborne, lifting several feet off the deck before the weight of its outboard motor came into play.
Slamming into the water stern first, it swung round, and but for the rope would have quickly drifted out of reach.
Coburn was the first to jump. Keeping well clear of the Selina’s propellers he swam over to it and steadied it in the wind until Hari joined him and they were able to slither into it together.
Looking like a walrus with his hair plastered across his face, Hari was taking his time to get them underway. ‘We are lucky the sea is warm,’ he said.
‘Never mind how warm the sea is.’ Coburn cast off the rope. ‘Get the goddamn motor going.’
‘You should learn to be more patient.’ Hari started the outboard. ‘Yegorov will not escape so easily. If we do not run him down before he beaches his boat, we shall capture him on the island before he goes too far.’
Away to the east, the lights of what Coburn had supposed were cottages had long since disappeared. To the north, though, where another rain squall was beginning to obscure the flames from the Osa, he could see the Sandpiper’s boats at work.
How many of the Osa’s survivors would be North Koreans, he wondered, sailors who’d been forced at gunpoint to fire the Styx? And if Yegorov was to get away, would their testimony alone be sufficient to implicate the FAL?
Hari had other things to think about. He was ignoring the waves, and instead of reducing speed when Coburn thought it would be wiser for him to do so, he was going faster and faster, hanging on to the transom as the Zodiac bounced from the crest of one wave to another.
The technique was working. But it wasn’t working well enough. Although the Zodiac was gaining on the runabout, Coburn could see that Yegorov was going to arrive at the island ahead of them.
Hari had reached the same conclusion. ‘Do not worry,’ he shouted. ‘We can still pursue him. In the meantime you should not look back at the Selina. The halogens will hurt your eyes.’
It was good advice. The intensity of the light flooding out over the white caps told Coburn that the Selina was still on the move, still coming and not yet in danger of running aground.
For the next few minutes as the squall approached, he too was forced to hang on, shifting his weight forwards to stop wind gusts from lifting the bow while he tried to estimate how much further Yegorov had to go.
Even though the first of the rain drops had begun to hit them, by now the island was clearly visible, no longer a dark shape, but a forbidding chunk of land, bordered not by the beaches Coburn had expected to see, but ringed with surf pounding against boulders and rocks that had been dislodged from surrounding cliffs.
In one place only was there a gap in the surf – a river mouth, he decided, or maybe where wind and tidal currents were creating a break between two banks of sediment.
Aided by the Selina’s lights, Yegorov headed straight for it, accelerating once he was in calmer water in the hope of beaching his runabout at a small bay he could see ahead of him.
The beaching was successful. The decision that had led him to it was not.
The bay was so tiny it was hardly a bay at all. Little more than a hundred feet wide, it was a narrow strip of sand that over the years had built up at the foot of a large waterfall that was cascading out of a cleft in the lichen-covered cliff behind it.
Boxed in with nowhere to go, Yegorov had but one option.
Clutching what looked like some kind of waterproof satchel he hurried to the base of the waterfall and started to climb, searching for footholds that weren’t there, and doing his best now the rain had begun in earnest, but being driven back with each step by the torrent of water pouring down on top of him.
Hari was careful how he approached the beach, conscious of the rocks and of the Zodiac’s comparatively fragile hull, making sure it wasn’t washed up on the sand too far.
‘So, this ends well for us,’ he said. ‘He has trapped himself. Before we go to speak with him, I should like to know if on
board the Sandpiper the medical facilities are good.’
Given the circumstances the question was bizarre, so much so that Coburn couldn’t imagine the reason for it. But that was before he saw the gun. Hari was holding a Colt automatic, shaking it to clear the water from the muzzle and ejecting a round to ensure the action was operating smoothly.
‘Give that to me.’ Coburn held out his hand. ‘Now. Don’t tell me it’s a precaution.’
‘No. I have no wish to end my days in a place like this. You should be paying more attention to someone who can harm you.’
Yegorov had abandoned his attempt to climb the cliff face. He’d emerged from beneath the waterfall and was limping towards them, appearing to be unarmed, but still holding his satchel and with one hand concealed inside it.
‘He comes to offer us a deal, perhaps.’ Hari stuck the automatic into his waistband. ‘We must listen to him carefully.’
Despite being soaked to the skin and dazzled by the Selina’s lights, Yegorov’s attitude was not that of a beaten man.
Without giving Hari a glance he approached Coburn and spat out a mouthful of water. ‘Lucky for you you’re not back at that nice village of yours,’ he said. ‘This time tomorrow it won’t be there.’
Coburn waited.
Yegorov raised the satchel. ‘C4,’ he said. ‘Two blocks, one detonator and a dead-man’s trigger. Your call. You can trade your Zodiac for my boat, or you and your long-haired friend here can try rushing me, and we can all go out in a bang together.’
Hari had decided to take over. ‘The Koran does not teach you this,’ he said. ‘A good Muslim should act, or hold his silence. By making such a threat you betray your faith in Allah.’
The remark unsettled Yegorov. ‘Do I look like a fucking Muslim to you?’ he said.
‘No.’ Hari shook his head. ‘No, you do not.’
Coburn was too slow. Before he could do anything, Hari had drawn the Colt and fired.
The Rybinsk Deception Page 22