Timebomb (Paul Richter)

by James Barrington

  At least, Badri reflected, his torment would be over within a few minutes. The fact of the sea getting rougher meant the boat was leaving the shelter of the river, and that must mean the wreck should be almost in sight. That was his hope, at least, but right then he felt too ill to stand up and take a look out of the cockpit to check.

  For some time he’d been aware of the noise of an aircraft. A large yellow-painted helicopter had been flying around the area, obviously searching for something, but Badri hadn’t been able to pay it much attention. But now he noticed it descending close to sea level, approaching a small powerboat about half a mile in front of him. Perhaps somebody on board was ill and the chopper had been sent to rescue them.

  Despite his nausea, Badri stood up and staggered to the control panel, seizing one of the grab-bars beside the wheel – Morschel had strongly warned him against touching the wheel itself – so he could get a better view.

  Whatever was happening, he soon realized it wasn’t a rescue, simply because the aircraft wasn’t getting close enough to the powerboat to winch anybody off. Even as he watched, he saw the helicopter lift away from the hover and begin to accelerate.

  But then he saw the aircraft repeat this action, descending to a hover close to another vessel, and there was only one conclusion he could draw. They were systematically checking the boats, looking for something – or perhaps for someone. For a few seconds Badri just stood there, his seasickness rapidly diminishing in importance as he guessed exactly what the men in the helicopter were searching for. He bent down, picked up the MP5 and first made sure that the magazine was firmly home and then checked that the other magazines were fully loaded and ready to hand.

  There was a good chance that he’d be able to get pretty close to the wreck before the search team in the helicopter realized he was their quarry. And, even if they did close up on his boat to check him out, the Heckler & Koch should be all he needed to persuade them to back off. One of the things Badri had always found baffling about both the British police and their security services was that, although battling criminals who carried arms as a matter of course, their own personnel were almost invariably unarmed. Whoever was in the helicopter, he guessed they might have a couple of pistols between them at most.

  He now remained standing by the wheel, watching the helicopter’s activities carefully. The search routine its crew was employing seemed simple enough, and fortunately the aircraft seemed to be gradually moving further away from him. Badri checked the display on the GPS unit and noted with satisfaction that he only had about another three miles to go. Within a matter of minutes, neither the searching helicopter nor anything else was going to matter.

  SAR Sea King helicopter, callsign ‘Rescue 24’

  ‘Talk about finding a needle in a sodding haystack,’ Richter muttered, standing by the open side door of the Sea King and staring at yet another blue and white powerboat hammering through the waves a safe fifty metres away. The couple in the cockpit stood waving and grinning like idiots.

  ‘I’ve got a suggestion,’ the pilot said.

  ‘I’ll listen to anything constructive.’

  ‘If you’re right, and somewhere among this lot is a boat with a bomb on board, finding it this way is a bit hit-and-miss. Almost any of the boats heading out of the Medway could be the one we’re looking for, and just because there are several people in the cockpit waving at us doesn’t mean they aren’t the bombers.’

  ‘Agreed, though I think that’s less likely. So?’

  ‘If this plan is going to work, the vessel’s going to have to get pretty close to the wreck before the perpetrators fire the IED. So instead of chasing round here looking at boats in the Medway, why don’t we wait out in the estuary itself, near the wreck, and intercept any vessel trying to get anywhere near it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Richter said, ‘that sounds more sensible than poncing about here. Let’s do one more quick sweep round the Medway, just in case we spot anything interesting, then head out to the Richard Montgomery. You’re still watching the site on radar?’

  ‘Yes. There are no vessels within about half a mile of the exclusion zone, and no sign of anything heading towards it.’

  Medway, Kent

  Something had changed, Badri realized. The helicopter had climbed out of the hover, but instead of again descending to sea level, it had continued up to about 500 feet and then swung right in a long sweeping turn. Perhaps it was leaving the area altogether, Badri wondered, still watching it carefully. But his hopes were dashed when the pilot continued the turn until the aircraft was heading in more or less the same direction as he was, and out into the estuary.

  And then he saw it start descending, apparently aiming for a position somewhere near his boat.

  SAR Sea King helicopter, callsign ‘Rescue 24’

  ‘Take us down,’ Richter said, peering through his binoculars. ‘The blue and white boat that’s almost dead ahead.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Just one thing – there’s a lone male in the cockpit, but it looks to me as if he’s holding onto a grab handle, not the wheel.’

  ‘He could be using an autopilot.’

  ‘Exactly, but why? In these choppy conditions, every other skipper we’ve seen has been driving the boat himself, trying to minimize the effect of the waves. And why would he need to use an autopilot here, virtually at the mouth of the Medway, where he’d have to keep making course changes to avoid other boats and keep clear of navigation hazards?’

  ‘Granted. And there’s something else. The other boats have all been avoiding the exclusion zone by a significant distance, yet this guy’s just altered course slightly so he’s now heading straight for the edge of the zone.’

  ‘Right, that’s got to be him, then.’

  As the Sea King began to lose height, Richter picked up the MP5 and checked it once again, an automatic reaction.

  ‘How do you want to play this?’ the pilot asked.

  ‘By ear, I suppose.’

  ‘You were once a pilot, so I don’t need to remind you that a helicopter is a delicate piece of kit. If bullets start flying around, we’re out of here.’

  Richter looked through his binoculars again at the boat, now probably only a couple of hundred yards in front of the Sea King. He was increasingly certain that the man in the cockpit was simply standing by the controls, touching none of them, yet the wheel was moving back and forth to maintain the correct heading, so obviously some kind of autopilot was in use. His gut feeling was that they’d found the right boat, but what the pilot had just said was true – helicopters were fragile machines – and Richter was concerned that the man in the boat might well open up with a Kalashnikov or some other automatic weapon. If the boat was stuffed with Semtex, he’d be very surprised if there weren’t one or two assault rifles on board as well. If their suspect got lucky and hit something vital on the King, that might be the end of the matter.

  There had to be another way.

  Richter carefully studied the layout of the boat through his binoculars. The open cockpit was positioned at the stern, and directly in front was the small cabin. Beyond that, at the bow, was a small area of flat decking surrounded by a low guard rail. As far as he could see, the foredeck was invisible from the cockpit unless the skipper leant out on one side or the other and peered around the structure of the cabin. That had to be the optimum approach, therefore, and from the starboard side of the boat, too, as the controls in the cockpit were located on the port side, where the man was now standing.

  Richter glanced around the rear of the helicopter and spotted what he needed lying at the back. ‘Change of plan,’ he said quickly. ‘Ignore the boat. Just fly past it and come to a hover about a quarter of a mile in front, over open water.’

  ‘What are you intending to do?’

  ‘I’m going to try and sneak up on him,’ Richter said, then explained exactly what he had in mind.

  ‘That’s madness,’ the pilot protested.

  ‘Not nece
ssarily, and the only alternative is to end up with a shooting match out here on the Medway, with bullets flying in all directions. Anyway, it has to be my decision, so let’s do it. Just remember to pick me up afterwards.’

  With the help of the aircrewman, Richter swiftly pulled off the immersion suit and stripped down to his underwear, then pulled on the wetsuit he’d noticed at the rear. It was a little tight, but that wouldn’t matter, and there was a waterproof pouch attached to the back of the weight-belt which was just big enough to hold the Browning. The shotgun and MP5 were useless for what he planned, and would stay in the helicopter. Fins, mask and diving knife completed the outfit.

  ‘You ready back there?’ the pilot asked.

  But Richter was already off intercom, waiting by the door and staring at the uninviting grey sea below.

  The aircrewman tapped him on the shoulder, and received a thumbs-up in return. ‘We’re ready,’ he announced.

  ‘Roger. We have to get the timing right, so make sure Richter’s ready the moment I give the word.’

  The Sea King descended to a low hover, turned so that its port side faced the suspect boat, still some 500 yards away, then dipped even lower, holding a mere four or five feet above the surface, and began moving forward slowly, the left-hand-seat man watching the boat very carefully.

  The downwash from the massive rotors churned the surface of the water and, more importantly for Richter, it was also throwing up a fine mist of spray that surrounded the aircraft and the sea directly below it. It was a mist almost impossible to see through.

  ‘Nearly there. Fifty yards . . . Thirty . . . Twenty.’

  ‘Ten seconds. Get ready there in the back, Dave.’

  ‘On the bow now, now, now.’

  ‘Dave, go.’

  In the rear compartment, the aircrewman slapped Richter on the back, and he instantly stepped out of the starboard-side door, his legs held together, and plummeted straight down into the water.

  ‘He’s gone, boss,’ the aircrewman reported.

  ‘Roger,’ the pilot acknowledged, and he immediately broke the aircraft out of the low hover and climbed away.

  Medway, Kent

  Badri was now beginning to breathe a little easier. The helicopter had shot past him, the crew clearly taking no interest in him whatsoever. The chopper had merely dropped down almost to the surface about 500 yards ahead, and then climbed away almost immediately. Maybe the crew weren’t searching for him, and were perhaps on some kind of training exercise.

  As the aircraft circled round to the east of his vessel, Badri continued to watch it because there was nothing much else to watch. There were no other boats near him, now that he was well clear of the coast. The Sea King flew almost a complete circle around him, and then came to a hover a couple of hundred yards off his port beam. As he watched, an orange harness was lowered slowly towards the water on a winch cable, then equally slowly raised. The helicopter moved forward about fifty yards and the manoeuvre was repeated. Quite clearly the crew were just carrying out some very basic rescue exercises, and the route his boat was taking simply gave him a ringside view.

  And that was actually the intention. The winching exercises were being performed for one purpose only: to keep his attention on the helicopter and avoid him looking directly ahead. And the reason for that was now in the dark water only a hundred yards or so in front of him.

  As Richter hit the water, the cold made him gasp in shock, but the wetsuit trapped a thin layer of water that his body heat would quickly warm up, so he knew his discomfort was only going to be temporary.

  The Sea King climbed out of the hover with an increased roar from the jet engines and a thudding sound as the massive rotor blades clawed the air, the downwash churning the water into a maelstrom all around him. In seconds, the helicopter was moving away, and Richter looked cautiously back towards the boat he’d identified shortly before. There were no other vessels particularly close, and he could see it quite clearly, the white ‘dog’s bone’ of the bow-wave getting more obvious as it headed straight towards him.

  The strategy he’d decided on was risky, without question, and one-shot. If this failed, the only alternative was to get back into the Sea King and then try to take out the boat’s skipper using the Heckler & Koch. He had no illusions about how difficult that might be, firing a submachine gun from an unstable airborne platform against a small boat bouncing around in a choppy sea. Add the ever-present risk of a stray slug detonating whatever explosives were stashed on the boat, and the near-certainty that the man onboard would be firing back at him with an automatic weapon, and that definitely made it the less attractive of the two options.

  Not that his present plan was risk-free – far from it. If the boat changed course more than a few degrees, or even accelerated significantly, he’d never be able to catch up with it. Success or failure hinged on the fact that, if the boat’s route out towards the wreck of the Richard Montgomery had been programmed into the automatic pilot, it would probably consist of a series of straight lines linking way-points. They’d already noticed a slight course change from the helicopter, and Richter was gambling on the likelihood that the next alteration would be the final one, and thereafter the boat would head straight for the wreck from the edge of the exclusion zone. Until that point, he hoped, the boat would continue directly towards him.

  Despite the wetsuit, the water was biting cold, and already his fingers were feeling numb. Treading water, and keeping his head as low as possible to avoid being seen, he began flexing them to restore the blood flow. But all the time he kept his eyes fixed firmly on the approaching craft.

  Richter’s assumption was right. Morschel had indeed programmed the automatic pilot to follow a series of way-points linked by straight lines, but he’d included more way-points than he needed, so as to keep the boat moving in the right direction, but not holding any single course for too long. Most small-boat skippers were not that competent, and so, for the sake of appearances, having a five- or ten-degree change of course every now and again seemed a good idea.

  The GPS unit interrogated eleven satellites to confirm the unit’s precise position on the surface of the globe and then noted that it had just reached another way-point. Accordingly, it immediately sent a new instruction to the autopilot, which responded by turning the wheel anticlockwise. Within a few seconds, the boat’s course had veered about five degrees to port.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Monday

  Rochester, Kent

  Hans Morschel steered the stolen powerboat back through the marina entrance, and both men scanned the pontoons, looking for trouble, but saw nothing to give them cause for concern. A couple of men were standing on their boats, tinkering with various bits of equipment, and another two were busy cleaning the decks of other vessels. Nothing in the marina looked out of place.

  ‘OK, Ernst, I think we’re clear. Get ready with the ropes.’

  Hagen climbed out of the cockpit, stepped forward to the bow, picked up a rope and stood waiting.

  Morschel brought the boat alongside the pontoon opposite its original berth, turned it through 180 degrees and used the engine and rudder to expertly manoeuvre the vessel. A couple of minutes later, Hagen stepped onto the pontoon, looped the mooring rope over a small bollard, then jogged towards the stern of the boat and repeated the operation.

  Morschel removed the wires from the inspection hatch on the side of the control panel and the engine spluttered into silence. He replaced the metal plate, handed Hagen the zipped bag holding their personal weapons, quickly checked that they’d left nothing behind in the cockpit and then himself climbed out of the cockpit. Together, Hagen and Morschel replaced the cover on the boat, then headed swiftly back towards the car park where they’d left the Mercedes.

  They were still walking along the pontoon when a Kent Police car swung through the gates of the marina and braked to a stop in front of its small office building. Two uniformed officers emerged from the vehicle, their heavy black wais
tcoats festooned with equipment. They glanced briefly around them, then knocked on the office door and entered.

  Medway, Kent

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Richter muttered, as he saw the bow of the target vessel moving gently away from him. Immediately, he started swimming as hard as he could, digging the fins powerfully into the water, ignoring the increasing pain from his injured thigh and tracking through the waves at right angles to the course the boat was taking.

  He was on the starboard side of the vessel, which at least made him virtually invisible to the man in the cockpit, and was probably seventy yards away from it when he started swimming. The fact that he was comparatively close to the boat meant he didn’t have to cover much distance to again position himself on its course, but even swimming the thirty yards that was necessary proved very hard work. In the calm of a swimming pool it would have been an easy task, but it was a different story in the open sea. When he finally stopped, he was panting from the effort.

  He spun round in the water to face the approaching craft. Fortunately, he seemed to be more or less right in front of its bow again.

  When he estimated his distance from the boat was around twenty-five yards, Richter again turned round in the water and began swimming in the same direction the craft was heading, matching its course and picking the optimum method of getting on board. There were fenders along both sides, but no mooring ropes were visible, so the fenders would just have to do.

  The boat was now close enough for the noise of its engine to be clearly audible, and its course appeared unaltered. Richter speeded up and then, as the bow passed him, reached up and grabbed one of the fenders, wrapping his fingers around the rope that secured it to the deck cleat.