by Peter Tonkin
Richard switched off his head torch as he joined Ahmed and the pair of them looked up, catching their breath with their regulators hanging on their chests and their face masks up. They were joined in mild frustration. Richard had half-remembered seeing a series of wooden hand- and foot-holds running up the sheer wall of the dhow’s transom. But for once, his prodigious memory had let him down. What looked like footholds were just patterns in the timbers of the vessel’s high stern. There was a pair of windows immediately above the two divers, but they were far out of reach. Richard had hoped to sneak aboard and create more mayhem, but the only place where the ship’s side dipped near enough to the water was mid-ships – and it would be suicidal madness to try and board her from there.
But then good fortune took a hand. A hand that Richard might almost have planned for had he thought things through in sufficient detail. A rope ladder was dropped from the poop rail immediately above their heads. Its bottom rungs splashed into the water just beside them, and one of the dhow’s crew came swarming down it to try and discover what was wrong with the steering gear. One of the tools he had brought with which to work on the gear in question was a screwdriver the better part of eighteen inches long with a heavy wooden handle. It made an excellent cosh. The dhow’s crewman never knew what hit him. They left him hanging just above water level, tangled safely in the bottom rungs as they slipped off their flippers and climbed halfway up the sheer stern, then forced open the wide windows to the deserted cabin below the command bridge and silently climbed aboard. Their compressed air tanks hampered them, so they slipped them off and laid them gently on the carpeted deck, slipping their regulators over their heads and removing their face masks. Richard also took off his head torch. Then they opened the last section of the waterproof bundle, took out their guns and padded forwards. Richard opened the door a crack and looked forward on to the main deck. Everyone seemed to be up at the prow, fighting the fire there. But a quick glance established that the desperate fire fighters seemed to be winning, so time was limited. They turned sideways, therefore, and stepped on to the internal companionway that seemed to be full of flickering shadows, silent on their rubber-soled dive boots, almost as invisible in their black and blue-panelled wetsuits.
Richard was armed with Sabet’s nine-millimetre Halewan. Ahmed was carrying an old army issue Webley & Scott break-top .455 revolver that Husan and Saiid had produced from heaven knew where. There was a bag of ammunition to go with it, just as Richard had a couple of extra clips for Sabet’s automatic. Not that they were here to start a fire fight like a couple of desperadoes from the Wild Bunch. Their aim was to help get the prisoners free when the final elements of the plan came to fruition. Or to save as many as they could if everything went to hell in a handcart.
Five steps down led to the wide opening into the main hold. Richard, in the lead, squashed himself into the angle between the wall and the doorframe. He didn’t need to look in – not that he would have risked putting his head round the doorway in any case. He could feel the heat of the close-packed, terrified bodies, hear the murmuring of their desperation; smell the fear. One of the impatient smugglers guarding them snarled something Richard could not understand and cocked his semi-automatic – a metallic double click that he understood all too clearly. He gestured with his chin – let’s go back up. He wanted to be out on the main deck, hidden in a choke point where the action was likely to be most intense when the final sections of his plan all came together. Now that he knew where the prisoners were, he needed to know where the leader of the traffickers was. The pirate captain, he assumed, would still be on the bridge, trying to steer and power his vessel out of danger. Power was likely to be returned to him at any moment – the one imponderable in the equation being how quickly the Spurs cutters would clear the tangle of netting round the propeller. The helm was in Richard’s control after Ahmed’s sterling work on the rudder cables.
Richard eased the door on to the main deck open and sank to his knees. The shadows were darkest down here. He fell forward on his belly and oozed on to the main deck, invisible in the shade like an oil slick spreading over tar. Ahmed followed immediately behind him. To right and left, immediately in front of the bridge house, stood the two lifeboats designed to take the dhow’s crew in a crisis such as this. They sat on the deck, supported by wooden rests – there were no davits designed to lift them overboard. They were open, uncovered. Each of them was twelve feet long and the better part of six feet wide. Beneath their elegantly curving sides were pools of even deeper shadow from which it was possible to watch what was happening along the entire length of the deck. Richard took the boat on the starboard, Ahmed took the one on the port. They squeezed beneath their inner sides and began to look around. The only things limiting their worm’s eye view were the series of raised hatchways down the centre of the deck that were obviously designed to open into the main hold on those occasions when legitimate, non-human cargo needed to be lowered aboard because it could not walk. They could see well enough what was going on. The fire on the forecastle was all but out now. But the crew were taking nothing for granted. They were pumping water on to the forecastle as fast as they could.
Suddenly the door through which Richard and Ahmed had just crawled slammed wide. The leader of the smugglers strode forward, with a couple of his men in tow. The tall, commanding Bedouin was carrying an SA 24 Igla MANPAD. The two men running behind him were carrying another. Of course they would be wasted shooting at a boat thought Richard – but these men had used the anti-aircraft system to total a Land Rover, so they weren’t going to be too picky. The leader shouted something Richard did not immediately understand, but the reaction of the crew made it clear he was demanding whether the forecastle was going to be safe to shoot from. Richard tensed himself for action as the tall, white-clad figure walked purposefully on to the still-steaming forecastle. Nothing the matter with his nerve, he thought with grudging admiration.
But just as the three men reached the point of the prow, even as the characteristically generous thought entered Richard’s head, the next section of his plan kicked in. The Spurs system cleared the propeller of the cordage he had wrapped so carefully around it. The dhow’s captain was holding the throttles on full ahead, trying to compensate for the loss of power. But now, suddenly and unexpectedly, it was fully restored. The freed propeller bit into the water and threw the dhow forward. Or it would have done so had Ahmed not sabotaged the steering gear. As it was, the dhow lurched forcefully to starboard, and with all the strength of her newly liberated propulsion system behind it, the massive diesel motor ran her up on to the reef.
The dhow rose up as she grounded, then crashed down as the keel beneath the forecastle was torn open by the claws of coral. Miraculously, the masts did not go by the board but the sails came roaring down. They smashed open the tops of the hatches, spilling sailcloth, splinters and cordage into the hold, from whence erupted a deafening cacophony of howls and screams, which Richard fervently hoped came from sudden shock rather than serious injury. Fortunately, the lifeboats stayed firmly in their place, so that neither Richard nor Ahmed was crushed. However, a good number of the crew, still fighting the fire, were incapacitated beneath the heavy spars, the nets of rigging and the sheer weight of the sails. The leader’s acolytes went overboard, tumbling helplessly and probably fatally from forecastle to coral, taking the second shoulder-fired missile with them. But the leader remained standing. His howl of outrage was so loud that Richard actually heard it over the Armageddon on the deck.
Richard reckoned he would probably be safe enough to get moving. In mayhem like this he could have dressed up as a gorilla and still gone unobserved. He rolled out from under the lifeboat and sprang erect, then he began to run down the length of the deck towards the back of the leader who had put the Igla to his shoulder and clearly had every intention of firing it as soon as he had acquired a target. And the target was Katerina. As Richard ran, he glanced down into the hold through the openings of the smashed h
atches. It was difficult to be certain, but it looked as though the smugglers had lost control – or maybe just given up and tried to run. There seemed to be no one in charge down there, and there were no guns in evidence. But all he had was a fleeting glance, for his main objective was dead ahead, standing on the steaming forecastle, snuggling the long green tube of the Igla into the crook between his shoulder and his neck.
And Richard realized he wasn’t going to get to the smuggler in time. He had been able to run this far pretty quickly and nimbly – even given that the dhow was still settling on to the reef. But in front of him was a maze of sails, spars and rigging. He came to a halt, raised Sabet’s pistol and shouted. Shouted the only name he knew for his foe – Tsibekti’s nickname for her brutal captor, Al-Ayn.
Amir the smuggler swung round as he heard the nickname he had so hated as a child. He was stunned that anyone should know what his contemporaries had called him in his youth. Contemporaries he had loathed, using a name he hated. Such was his outrage that he momentarily forgot that he still had the Igla on his shoulder.
There in front of him stood a tall man in a black, blue-panelled diving suit. He hardly registered the gun that was pointed at him. ‘Put the rocket down or I will shoot,’ Richard commanded. But he spoke in English and the Bedouin did not understand. The words of gibberish made him pause, however. And that pause made him remember that he still had the Igla on his shoulder and a target at his mercy. He swung back, traversing the lethal missile system towards the bright-lit yacht which sat so helplessly at point-blank range.
And, seeing the movement, Kareem, still kneeling on Katerina’s transom, at last had a clear shot at the man armed with the deadly missile as he stood on the dhow’s forecastle high above. He was already breathing out in that carefully controlled manner. He squeezed the trigger at once. The rifle spat as it kicked back into his shoulder. He saw his target stagger and thought job well done.
The bullet took Amir in the left shoulder. It was the same heavy load that had dropped a machine-gunner in a nest at the better part of half a mile. At this range it was enough to spin Amir round. Richard’s shot also hit him high in the torso, but on the other side of his chest, completing the job that Kareem’s rifle bullet had started. So that, when Amir’s fist closed convulsively on the trigger, he was facing in exactly the opposite direction he had been facing a moment before. The missile, therefore, streaked back along the dhow’s deck. It sped just above the wreckage of the sails. It went just west of the masts because Amir had staggered sideways when the dhow struck the reef. But it hit the solid front of the bridge house with all the force it possessed and it blew the entire structure into atoms. Richard, who had automatically flinched away as the missile streaked past him, was thrown headlong on to the deck by the blast. And he was by no means all that was felled by the force of the explosion.
The dhow’s main mast, weakened by the grounding, began to topple forward, and it collided with the foremast so that both of them came crashing down. Amir the trafficker, frozen with the shock of the damage to his shoulders and the mayhem wrought by the Igla, hardly even registered that the masts were falling inexorably towards him until the foremast smashed down, hurling him overboard to go crashing on to the reef beside his two most trusted men. Who were also, by this stage, dead.
Richard pulled himself erect and ran across the deck to the gaping hatch-tops. No sooner had he reached the nearest, than the first of the prisoners pulled himself up out on to the deck and stood, looking around, stunned by his freedom. It was Nahom. Richard went over to him and thrust out his hand. ‘Hi, Nahom,’ he said cheerfully, just as though they were friends meeting by chance on a familiar city street. ‘I have someone over on Katerina who wants to talk to you. But I think she’s going to give you an even bigger telling-off than Robin’s going to give me!’
The main terminal at Sharm el-Sheikh airport, aptly enough, is designed to look like a series of Bedouin tents. It sits, almost ethereally, seeming to waver in the desert heat, hard up against geometric red mountains that, from a distance, look exactly like pyramids. Richard and Robin were sitting comfortably in the first-class lounge three weeks later with all their paperwork done and all their luggage handed in, waiting for the London flight. The lounge was cool, quiet, and almost empty. Those few who were there, tourists for the most part, were, like the Mariners, dressed in holiday gear. Shorts and T-shirts, light skirts and blouses. All of them colourful, fragrant, diaphanous.
So that when Major Ibrahim and Sergeant Sabet entered, they stood out immediately. Richard watched the pair of them in their smart white uniforms marching across the marble floor towards him. He nudged Robin who looked up from her book. Then they stood, side by side, and waited for the police officers to join them.
‘We have come to say goodbye,’ said Ibrahim, holding out his hand.
‘And good riddance, I should think,’ answered Richard cheerfully, returning the major’s cool, dry clasp.
‘Not at all,’ the moustache twitched and the wrinkles at the outer edges of his eyes deepened. It was as close as Ibrahim came to smiling. ‘Because of your involvement—’
‘—Interference, I think you mean.’
‘Involvement, this case has come to a most satisfactory conclusion. When I came out from Dahab aboard my police cutter, as you had arranged, and found what was left on the reef there, I was able to clear up an entire smuggling ring and settle a large number of accounts. It is only a pity that the ring-leader Amir Oualed Saied was taken to the morgue rather than to my jail on El Benouk, but one cannot have everything.’
‘El Benouk is quite full enough with Amir’s surviving co-conspirators,’ added Sabet quietly. ‘As most of them are Bedouin like their leader, we wait for a ruling from Cairo as to whether they will come to our courts or be judged in the Bedouin system El-’Orf. It may take some time.’
‘But in the meantime, you and your command are the golden boys and girls of the Egyptian police force,’ observed Robin. ‘And quite right too.’
‘Our notoriety has been useful,’ Ibrahim agreed. ‘It has allowed me to facilitate the repatriation of the Selassie twins, who are safely back with their family. Poorer, I’m afraid, but wiser.’
‘And lucky to be alive,’ added Sabet in her forthright manner.
‘British Airways announce the departure of Flight BA589 to London. Would all passengers for Flight BA589 please proceed to departure gate six … ’
‘That’s us, I’m afraid,’ said Richard. ‘As if you didn’t already know. Well, it’s been a pleasure meeting you.’
‘And for us,’ replied Ibrahim, courteous to the last. ‘It has been a pleasure to work alongside you both. And your associates.’
‘Please,’ said Robin, ‘do try to keep them out of prison for as long as possible – especially Saiid and Captain Husan.’
There was a moment of silence, then Ibrahim observed, ‘Ah. The famous British sense of humour. Yes, indeed, I will endeavour to keep your associates at liberty for as long as I reasonably can …’ The moustache twitched, the crow’s feet deepened. Major Ibrahim saluted. Sabet grinned, almost conspiratorially.
And so they parted.
As Richard and Robin strolled towards their departure gate, she observed, ‘I don’t think Ibrahim will remain at liberty for very much longer. Did you see the way Sabet was looking at him?’
‘Not the way your average sergeant looks at a commanding officer,’ agreed Richard.
Robin gave a choke of laughter. ‘So,’ she said. ‘Nahom and Tsibekti are back home. Safe and sound. But poorer and wiser. That’s what he said, isn’t it?’
‘That’s what he said,’ agreed Richard.
But the tone of his voice alerted her. ‘What?’
‘Well,’ he explained as they walked through the departure gate to board the air-conditioned bus bound for their aeroplane, ‘apparently Heritage Mariner has a bit of a stake in a company called Red Sea Trading. It’s based in Asmara, Eritrea, and I have it on good au
thority that right now Red Sea Trading is on the look-out for smart young people with lots of get-up-and-go. Especially if they have any experience of the Red Sea that the company is named after …’