Timebomb (Paul Richter)

by James Barrington

  The instant his fingers clamped around the rope, it felt like his arm was being pulled out of its socket. The strain on his muscles was immense, and he knew he would have to get on board as quickly as possible. With his other hand, he reached down to his feet and released the fins, because they would be of no more use to him, then dropped his mask. Holding firmly onto the fender rope with his right hand, he reached up with his left and seized one of the safety rail stanchions. Twice his fingers, numb with cold, slipped off the stainless steel, and all the time the strain on his right arm increased horrendously. He tried once again and this time managed to get a firm grip on the rail. He released the rope, reached up and grabbed another stanchion. Then he began to ease himself on board, under the lowest guard rail, keeping absolutely flat on the foredeck.

  For a few seconds, Richter lay still, recovering his breath. Then he moved.

  SAR Sea King helicopter, callsign ‘Rescue 24’

  ‘Boss, he’s on the boat now. On the foredeck, starboard side, as planned.’

  ‘Roger that,’ the pilot replied. ‘Time for our little show.’

  He pulled the Sea King up into a hard turn, heading directly towards the boat, then continued to turn away, passing within about twenty yards of the vessel before opening to the south.

  Rochester, Kent

  Hagen stopped in mid-stride and half-turned away, but Morschel shook his head in warning and carried on walking. Half-way along the pontoon was a bench seat, and the two Germans stopped beside it. Morschel unzipped the bag he was carrying and reached inside it. Keeping his hands hidden in the bag, he checked that the two MP5s were resting on top of the ammunition and other stuff, then nodded to Hagen.

  ‘Only if we have to,’ he muttered, and then they walked on.

  Medway, Kent

  With the various manoeuvres the helicopter had been performing, Badri would have been less than human if he hadn’t turned round in the cockpit to watch it depart from the area. But as he turned back to the control panel a movement caught his eye, one that didn’t make immediate sense.

  Then he realized exactly what was happening, grabbed the Heckler & Koch from the bag beside him and swung it up. How the black-clad figure had managed to get on board he had no idea, but it would take him just seconds to eliminate the problem.

  Richter had briefly considered simply shooting the man with his Browning, but decided against it on the slim chance that he’d picked the wrong boat and the occupant of the cockpit was an innocent holiday-maker. So, instead, he’d decided to tackle him face-to-face. But the moment he pulled himself over the top of the cabin and dropped into the cockpit, he realized that was a mistake. The man reacted immediately, grabbing for something hidden in the open bag lying at his feet.

  Richter threw himself across the cockpit and slammed his left shoulder into the other man’s chest just as he raised the weapon, which Richter immediately recognized as a Heckler & Koch sub-machine gun. That told him all he needed to know about the man he was now facing, and he also knew he had to get the gun away from him. At that close range, one burst from the MP5 would turn Richter into chopped liver.

  The force of his impact had forced Badri back against the stern rail, but he managed to keep his grip on the MP5. He swung the weapon round in a vicious arc that connected with the side of Richter’s head.

  For a second or two, he saw stars. Badri was big and strong and, if it hadn’t been for the thick neoprene hood Richter was wearing, that might have been the end of the fight. He shook his head to clear it, dashed aside Badri’s right arm with his left and slammed his right fist into the man’s solar plexus. Badri grunted and then swung his head sharply forward, aiming to smash his forehead directly into Richter’s face. But the Englishman drew back just in time.

  As he moved away, Badri swung again with the Heckler & Koch, and the butt of the weapon connected sharply with Richter’s ribs. He ignored the sudden pain and delivered another punch to his opponent’s torso, then saw the Arab turning the MP5’s barrel towards him.

  Richter grabbed his opponent’s arm just above the wrist, stopping the upward movement of the submachine gun, took a step forward and instantly turned so as to place his back to Badri’s chest. He altered his grip on the Arab’s right arm and pulled it forwards and downwards, simultaneously bending at the waist. The man flew over Richter’s bent back and crashed down onto the floor of the cockpit, driving the breath from his body. As he landed, Richter stepped forward and kicked out hard, catching Badri’s right arm about midway between wrist and elbow. With a howl of pain, the big man dropped the MP5 and clutched at his forearm. Richter jumped over him, scooped up the weapon and quickly reversed it to aim at the recumbent figure.

  ‘The game’s over,’ Richter snapped.

  ‘It’s not a game,’ Badri panted, ‘and it’s not over.’

  He staggered to his feet, glanced across the cockpit at Richter and then made a dash for the control panel.

  ‘It is now,’ Richter said grimly. He fired a three-round burst that tore into the Arab’s chest and smashed his body against the side of the cockpit. Then, for good measure, he fired a second burst into him.

  He put the weapon down on one of the seats, dragged Badri’s body over to one side and stepped across to the control panel. As he’d guessed, there was a GPS unit attached to the top of it, linked to an automatic pilot. That should be simple enough to deal with, but what worried him was what else he could see. It looked to him as if the cabin door was fitted with an anti-handling device, and there was a veritable maze of wires running around the cockpit, some vanishing through holes into the cabin itself.

  Given time, he could probably have worked out which wires did what, and disarmed or disabled the explosive charges, but time was one thing he hadn’t got. Richter peered over the cabin roof and in the distance he could already see the tops of the masts of the Richard Montgomery. As if to reinforce the fact of this proximity, the wheel suddenly turned as the autopilot made its final heading correction and the bow of the boat swung round to point directly towards the masts.

  Richter studied the GPS unit. The distance still to go registered as a little over a mile and a half, and he was by no means convinced that the people who had wired this boat so comprehensively would have entrusted the detonation solely to the man now lying dead on the floor. There might well be a manual switch somewhere, but the primary ignition system would definitely use some kind of an automated trigger, probably based on the GPS.

  But there was no time to find it. The boat was travelling at around eight knots, he estimated, which meant that it would cover the remaining distance in about six minutes, maybe less if whoever had programmed the GPS hadn’t got the wreck’s position absolutely right.

  Somehow, he had to slow down the craft while he figured out the wiring. Richter instinctively reached out to grab the throttle but immediately changed his mind. That, like all the other controls, was clearly protected by an explosive charge. If he tried to alter the setting, he would no doubt lose his hands. And he simply hadn’t anything like enough time to start dismantling the anti-handling devices. So that was a non-starter.

  He checked the GPS again. Just over a mile – and maybe five minutes – to go. If he couldn’t slow the vessel, the only alternative was somehow to steer it away from the wreck. But he couldn’t turn the wheel because it, too, was wired with explosive charges. Richter was standing helplessly in a boat full of Semtex, a boat that he could neither turn nor slow down, and that was fitted with an electronic trigger which might detonate the plastic explosive at almost any moment.

  Rochester, Kent

  Hagen and Morschel had just reached the end of the pontoon and were heading over towards the car park when the office door swung open. A tall, thin man wearing dark blue trousers and a blue sweater stepped out, the two police officers following him. He pointed down towards the pontoon while he explained something.

  The two Germans ignored the three men, not even giving them a glance, and continued
walking. But then they heard a shout from behind.

  Morschel looked back to see the two policemen jogging towards them and, he noted immediately that each man was carrying not only a holstered pistol at his hip, but a Heckler & Koch MP5 slung across his chest, his right hand already cradling the pistol grip. Clearly the British authorities had managed to find out something of their intentions and had successfully tracked them down.

  Morschel dodged quickly behind the first vehicle in the car park, dropped the bag and grabbed for one of the weapons it contained. Beside him, Hagen did exactly the same. The two men spun round, using the line of cars as cover, brought their sub-machine guns up to waist height and opened fire.

  The two police officers were highly trained in the use of firearms, had excellent scores on the training ranges and could field-strip and rebuild any of the weapons they were qualified to use well within the specified time. Unfortunately, the one area in which they’d never received any instruction was in street-fighting, whereas Morschel and Hagen, in contrast, were experts.

  The first bullets were screaming towards the two officers before they’d even properly aimed their weapons, and before either one of them had opened his mouth to issue the official challenge that the rule book required them to utter before opening fire.

  The MP5 is an assault weapon, and on all such arms speed of fire and reliability count for more than accuracy, but at that range – less than thirty yards – even the most incompetent of shooters can expect to hit a man-sized target. And Morschel and Hagen were far from incompetent. They fired off tightly aimed bursts of three rounds, and almost half their bullets found their mark.

  The two police officers staggered to a halt as the 9-millimetre slugs tore into them, then they fell backwards almost simultaneously. Their Kevlar jackets protected their torsos, but one took a round in the shoulder and the other was hit twice in the thigh. It was all over in less than three seconds.

  As their weapons fell silent, Morschel and Hagen stood upright, looking across at the two fallen men, and then jogged the rest of the way to the Mercedes. Hagen tossed the weapons and the bag on the back seat as Morschel started the engine, and with a sudden spurt of gravel the car powered out of the marina.

  Behind them, the silence was broken by the moans of pain of the two wounded men, then a series of high-pitched screams erupted from the office as one of the female secretaries rushed to the window to peer out.

  Medway, Kent

  For several seconds, Richter stood motionless in the cockpit, staring with increasing desperation at the rigged controls. As far as he could see, about his only option was to blow one of the anti-handling devices. With any luck, that would disrupt the firing circuit and prevent the main explosive charge from blowing. Or maybe it would blow the main charge, but still far enough away from the wreck that the half-century old munitions wouldn’t detonate. Unfortunately, in either case, he himself would be unlikely to survive.

  He was actually on the point of touching the charge fixed on the autopilot when he happened to glance again at the GPS. That was it, he suddenly realized. That was the only weak point in the system – the only component that Morschel hadn’t been able to safeguard with explosives. The Semtex that he was certain was somewhere in the boat itself would blow when the vessel’s location matched the coordinates stored in the GPS program. All he had to do was change that program, add a way-point that would force the autopilot to take the boat a long way round. A very long way round indeed.

  ‘Got you, you bastard,’ Richter muttered.

  He pressed the GPS menu button and a list of choices popped up on the screen. The third one was ‘Add way-point’. He tapped the screen and in that instant realized that Hans Morschel was both smarter and more thorough than he’d expected. As the screen cleared, a new dialogue box had appeared. In English, the text read: ‘Route protected. To alter destination or set a new way-point, insert password.’ Below that was a password-entry box, four blank spaces waiting to be filled.

  But Richter hadn’t got the slightest idea what the password might be.

  SAR Sea King helicopter, callsign ‘Rescue 24’

  After overflying the target boat, the pilot had taken the helicopter up to about a thousand feet and begun to follow it at a distance, the crew watching intently what happened below.

  ‘Why the hell doesn’t he turn the boat round, or slow it down?’ the pilot muttered. ‘The fucking thing’s nearly on top of the wreck.’

  ‘Maybe he can’t. Maybe the controls are locked, or something.’

  ‘If it’s going to blow, we need to get out of here, or at least grab some height. Take us up to two and a half, and then move over Sheppey itself.’

  Medway, Kent

  For a couple of seconds, Richter just stared at the screen of the GPS unit.

  ‘Fuck,’ he murmured, and stepped back from the control panel, rapidly assessing his options. He couldn’t slow the boat down or turn it. He couldn’t alter any of the controls, and even obvious weak points like the fuel supply and the engine mounts themselves had been protected by explosive charges. And the boat was getting closer to the wreck of the Richard Montgomery with every second that passed. He reckoned he now had maybe two minutes to do something before the main charge blew.

  Then a thought struck him. He couldn’t stop or turn the boat, but maybe he could sink it. Or at least slow it down.

  He grabbed the Heckler & Koch, stepped across to the right-hand side of the cockpit and leant out as far as he could. Then he squeezed the trigger and sent a three-second burst of 9-millimetre shells smashing into the side of the fibreglass hull. That, he knew, wouldn’t be enough to actually sink it – boats of that type were stuffed full of buoyancy tanks and were virtually unsinkable – but if he could open up a hole in the side of the vessel it would start taking in water and veering to starboard.

  The fibreglass disintegrated under this sledgehammer assault and a ragged-edged gash, about a foot across, appeared in the hull of the boat right at the waterline. Grey-brown water began pouring in, and Richter could feel the boat start tipping slightly to starboard and lurching in the same direction under the increased drag from that side of the craft.

  He leant over the rail again and repeated the assault with the MP5, about a metre behind the first hole.

  He glanced back across the cockpit. The automatic pilot was already beginning to compensate, the wheel turning anti-clockwise to swing the boat back on course, but Richter could tell that the vessel had slowed perceptibly. Yet he also knew that he was only delaying the inevitable. The damage he’d inflicted on the hull of the craft had given it a pronounced list to starboard, and severely affected its ability to steer a straight course, but unless he could do more – a lot more – the autopilot would eventually succeed in manoeuvring the boat to its planned destination.

  He had to do something else, something a lot more dramatic. He pointed the Heckler & Koch straight down and pulled the trigger again, repeating the punishing treatment on the floor of the cockpit. Wood splinters flew in all directions as the 9-millimetre rounds smashed through the duckboards, and only moments later water began flooding in. But the boat still wasn’t going to sink, and Richter knew that.

  He had, he realized, only two options left. Either he blew one of the anti-tamper charges, which would probably disrupt the main explosive charges and wreck the boat – blowing him to pieces in the process – or find a way of sinking it and himself staying in one piece.

  And he could only think of one way to achieve that. He stood up and looked around, searching for the helicopter. As soon as he saw it, he began waving both arms frantically.

  SAR Sea King helicopter, callsign ‘Rescue 24’

  The Sea King was still holding over Sheppey, basically circling Sheerness at a couple of thousand feet, the eyes of the crew fixed on the silently unfolding drama being played out a mile and a half offshore from the town’s sea front.

  ‘It’s turning away from the wreck, but really slowly. Wait
one – he must have sorted it out. He’s waving for a pick-up.’

  ‘Right,’ the pilot said. ‘Dave, get ready with the winch.’

  The pilot eased the control column forward, turning onto an intercept course, and began to rapidly descend the aircraft back towards the sea.

  Medway, Kent

  Richter bent over the Arab’s body and searched it. He wasn’t surprised to find no wallet or any form of identification, but in one pocket of the man’s jacket he discovered a well-used copy of the Koran. That, also, was no surprise. He left the book where it was and looked around for the chopper.

  The helicopter was now about a mile behind the boat, but in a steep descent, so Richter guessed it should be above him in about thirty seconds. He just hoped that would be enough time. He checked the cleats and rails around the cockpit and on top of the cabin and then selected the grab-bar that ran along the port side of the cabin roof. That should be strong enough.

  The boat was heading broadly north-east, away from Sheppey and bouncing fairly violently in the waves. And, now that it was clear of the island and the sheltering effect of its landmass, the stiff breeze was very noticeable, the vessel was surrounded by white horses. The water it had already shipped, and the three holes blown through the hull, had markedly altered its handling characteristics, and the boat was lurching violently from side to side.

  The helicopter came to a hover just off the port side of the bouncing craft, the winch cable and lifting strap already dangling below it. In the back of the Sea King, Richter could see the aircrewman guiding the cable down towards him. The end of the cable dipped into the water and then skimmed across the surface towards him and, as soon as the lifting strap reached the side of the boat, he reached out and grabbed it.

  But instead of dropping the strap around his own body, Richter unclipped one end of it, slipped it under the cabin grab-bar and reattached it to the clip on the end of the winch cable.