Hellfire

by Chris Ryan

  ‘We’ve just had a communication from London,’ the ops officer said without introducing himself. ‘They’ve received imagery from an American satellite. You need to look at this.’

  The ops officer spread the paperwork out on a table in the centre of the room. Danny, Tony, Caitlin and the six Aussie SAS guys gathered round.

  ‘We’re after a man of Chinese appearance who we believe to be heading to a ship in this vicinity,’ the ops officer announced. ‘The analysts in London think that this CIA image shows us what we’re looking for.’ He pointed at a dot in the middle of the image. ‘We think this is an RIB, possibly a Rigid Raider, heading west-south-westerly at about 07.00 this morning. We also think this corresponds to the time our target would be heading out to sea.’ The ops officer rolled up that image and unrolled another. ‘The next piece in the jigsaw,’ he said. ‘On that trajectory at that time, the RIB was heading into the vicinity of this vessel here.’ He pointed to another satellite smudge on the ocean. ‘That’s the MV Golden Coral, about fifty nautical miles from the coast, which would put it within range of the RIB. It’s now twenty nautical miles west of our position.’

  ‘Registered in?’ Danny asked.

  ‘Panama. Currently transporting cargo from Ivory Coast to Singapore.’

  ‘Any Chinese links?’

  ‘None that London can find.’

  ‘It’s pretty fucking thin,’ Tony said.

  ‘It’s all we’ve got,’ the ops officer said with an irritated glance at Tony. ‘We have a copy of the ship’s manifest. It lists five crew members, which is about standard for a cargo vessel. But you need to be prepared for there being more – your Chinese national at the very least, since there’s nobody of that description listed on the manifest. We’ve got two options: a waterborne assault or an aerial assault. I’ve got to tell you guys, the sea state is pretty high. I know which one I’d want to go for.’

  Danny addressed the assembled company. ‘Okay guys, listen up. We’ve reason to believe that the Chinese target is in possession of a bioweapon. We don’t know if it’ll be ready for him to deploy, but we suspect it will be and we’ll have to assume that’s the case. If we go for an aerial assault, there’s a much higher chance they’ll see us coming. I know it’s rough out there, but my vote goes for the waterborne option. Anyone disagree?’

  There were no dissenters.

  ‘That’s your call,’ the ops officer said. He walked to the other side of the room, and spoke into an intercom. ‘Prepare the raiders,’ he said.

  A crackly ‘Aye sir’ came back over the intercom.

  ‘Do you need hazmat gear?’ the ops officer asked.

  Danny shook his head. ‘Impractical,’ he said. ‘Anyone got a problem with that?’

  No one did.

  ‘Good. Our primary objective is to secure the ship and locate the Chinese target. We need him alive: I think he’ll have intel about who’s behind a bio-attack, potentially on the UK, and we need that information. But if you get any hint that he’s going to deploy a bioweapon, drop him. Trust me, you don’t want what he’s dishing out.’

  ‘What about the remaining crew?’ one of the Aussies asked.

  ‘Do what you need to do,’ Danny told him. ‘Once the target’s secured, we’ll get our Porton Down guys on board. Our secondary objective is to isolate any bioweapons there might be on that ship.’ He turned to the ops officer. ‘What are our timings?’

  ‘We’re on course now. Current coordinates of the target vessel: 4.27221 north, 3.26328 east. That puts us in a position to have a visual on the Golden Coral at approximately 22.00 hours.’ He checked his watch. ‘That’s in about forty-five minutes. We’re going to kill the frigate lights so they don’t see us approaching over the horizon, and hold off when we’re about a nautical mile from its position. You’ve got three RIBs at your disposal. The high sea state will at least reduce the chance of them seeing you approach – those cargo ships get pretty wonky in these kind of conditions, so my guess is they’ll have cleared the decks. But you’ll need to take extra care boarding. Once you’ve secured the ship, we’ll draw up alongside and transfer whatever personnel you need.’

  ‘Do we have a plan of the cargo ship?’ Caitlin asked.

  The ops officer frowned. Danny sensed he had woman trouble. But he turned to one of the laptops and brought up some rough schematics. ‘It’s about seven hundred feet in length. The bridge and living quarters are directly above the engine room approximately a hundred feet from aft. The bridge structure has three levels above deck: two for living quarters, the top for navigation. Engine room down below.’

  Danny pointed out three of the Aussie SAS guys. ‘Team one,’ he said. ‘Secure the engine room.’ He pointed out the remaining three. ‘Team two, secure the living quarters.’ He indicated Tony, Caitlin and himself. ‘Team three,’ he said. ‘We’ll secure the bridge.’

  ‘What is this,’ one of the Aussies said, ‘the invasion of the Brits?’

  ‘What’s your name?’ Danny said.

  ‘Goldie.’

  ‘Our target’s most likely to be on the bridge. We’re the only ones who can ID him. Got a problem with that, Goldie?’

  Goldie fell silent and shook his head.

  ‘Good man. Any other questions?’

  There were none.

  ‘They’re getting ready to winch the RIBs into place now,’ the ops officer said, ‘and we’ve got three coxswains on line to transport you. We’ll monitor you on VHF channel 15 so you can let us know when you’ve secured the ship. We need to get your personal radios synced up, sort you out with NV, then you’re good to go.’

  ‘Okay,’ Danny said curtly. He checked his watch. 22.00 hrs exactly. ‘I want us ready to get in the water at 22.15. Let’s move.’

  22.10 hrs

  It was very busy on deck. The air was filled with shouts and the humming of machinery. Thirty metres from Danny’s position, over on the landing deck, two engineers were folding back the rotors of the Black Hawk while a third was fitting a motorised towing vehicle, about the size of a golf cart, to its front. They were clearly preparing to tow that aircraft into the ship’s dedicated hangar, where no doubt another heli was waiting, more suited to the task of ferrying the Porton Down team on to the cargo ship once it was secure. Danny expected a Sea King of some description, but so far that was still under wraps.

  It was good to have the Aussie SAS involved. They had close ties with the Regiment, who would often send a couple of guys to them on a two-year attachment. The Aussies would return the favour by sending a couple of their lads to Hereford. The Australian SAS were easily as good as the Regiment, and in recent years they’d been putting rounds down in Afghanistan alongside the boys from 22. In short: they knew their stuff. If you needed soldiers to support you, you couldn’t ask for better.

  The Aussie SAS guys had provided all the gear they needed. Carabiner, loop line, even a digital camera in case they needed to take photos of whatever they found. He double-checked that the bright-orange rubberised portable VHF unit they’d given him to contact the frigate was securely in his ops waistcoat. Then he slung his life vest over his neck and rolled it down over his webbing. It would automatically inflate if he found himself in the water. If that happened, he’d be in for a long evening: the frigate would mark the point where he went overboard, but the mission would have to continue. It could be hours before anyone came back to find him. He had clipped a set of night-vision goggles to his helmet. Fully waterproof, they’d be crucial during the boarding process. He lowered them to check they were working properly. The world turned to a grainy green haze, and he found he could make out each individual wave in the ocean. He raised the goggles again for now, and double-checked his personal weapon.

  Danny was standing in the shadow of the huge mechanical arm of the winch that would deposit the three Rigid Raiders into the ocean. The Raiders themselves were in a row, the first one ten metres to Danny’s right. Each boat was just shy of seven metres in length. Small cra
ft, but mobile and speedy – they’d get up to at least thirty knots in calm seas, which would give them the edge on a container ship like the Golden Coral. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to catch up with it over the distance of a nautical mile. Three members of the frigate’s Aussie navy crew were checking them over – these would be the coxswains that would be transporting them to the Golden Coral, and a couple of the guys from Team One were loading rolled-up caving ladders and telescopic poles into each of the RIBs.

  Suddenly, a voice echoed over the ship’s tannoy system. ‘This is the captain. We’re cutting power to all non-essential lighting systems in ten seconds. Repeat, cutting power to all non-essential lighting systems . . .’

  Instinctively, Danny closed his eyes and engaged his NV. When he opened them again, the frigate had been plunged into darkness, but his goggles meant he could see everything clearly. Tony was approaching, and Danny could tell from the grin on his face that he was seething with excitement for the job ahead. ‘To think we were expecting months of babysitting diplomats!’ he shouted over the noise of waves booming against the hull of the frigate. ‘This op’s turning out better than we thought.’

  ‘Tell that to Ripley,’ Danny said.

  Tony shrugged. ‘Could have been any of us, mucker,’ he said. He checked the time. ‘22.13. Let’s load up.’

  Within two minutes, each member of the unit was settled in their Rigid Raider – two fore, one aft, with the coxswain in a central position by the steering wheel and a screen displaying GPS and radar information. The outboard motor of each boat was hinged up, but the engines were already turning over. Danny could hardly hear them over the waves crashing against the hull of the frigate. The huge winch groaned and creaked in the darkness as it moved slowly over the top of the first Rigid Raider. The coxswain attached the grappling hook to four strong points on the hull – two fore, two aft. The winch lifted the boat, its crew and its buzzing motor ten metres off the deck, and then lowered it into the water. Danny’s unit was the last to have their boat winched. As they rose into the air, he looked to the south-west. His eyes picked out the twinkling lights of a ship in the distance.

  ‘Is that our target?’ Caitlin asked.

  Danny nodded. It was good to clap eyes on the thing. They’d be navigating towards it largely by eye.

  There was a booming thump as the Rigid Raider’s hull hit the water. Danny clutched the edge of the boat fiercely as they made impact, then he and Caitlin unclipped the front quick-release fasteners from the winch as Tony and the coxswain unclipped the rear two. The second they were free, the coxswain knocked the outboard down into the rough sea. They immediately jolted forward, and within seconds they were curving away from the frigate.

  They’d barely travelled fifteen metres when Danny wondered if they’d made the wrong call, going for a waterborne rather than an airborne assault. A wave crashed over the side of the boat. Instantly soaked by the spray, Danny fell from one side of the Raider to the other. He blindly grabbed the edge of the boat and gasped for air as the wave subsided. One glance in Tony’s direction showed that his unit colleague had raised his NV goggles and had a fierce glint of enjoyment in his eye as the coxswain navigated the boat at speed through the choppy water.

  The Rigid Raider slammed into troughs and crested peaks – which appeared in various shades of green through the night-vision goggles – as they sped in a south-westerly direction. Danny only caught occasional glimpses of the other two boats when their positions at the crests of waves coincided. And occasionally, he saw the lights of the cargo ship, a little closer each time they came into view.

  Time to target, seven minutes. Only when they were about three hundred metres out did the MV Golden Coral come into constant view. The coxswain altered the trajectory of the Rigid Raider so that they were curving in from aft.

  Two hundred metres to target. The wake of the cargo ship was heavy and violent. The Raider juddered through it, foam and spray stinging and blinding the occupants. Danny scanned the deck, searching for lookouts. He saw none. The bad weather at least gave them that advantage.

  A hundred metres to target. The vast hull of the Golden Coral seemed to cast a shadow over them, even at this distance. They ploughed on through the wake, which grew more treacherous the closer they got. Danny was completely deafened now, by the roar of the ocean and the boom of the cargo ship’s engines. The stench of fumes overpowered the tang of sea salt, and his soaked clothes clung icily to him.

  Thirty seconds later, they were alongside the vessel. The three Rigid Raiders were about ten metres apart. As the coxswain lowered his speed to match that of the Golden Coral, Danny grabbed the rolled-up caving ladder with soaked hands, double-checked the grappling hook at its leading end, and then picked up the telescopic pole. In his periphery vision he saw that one guy in each of the other boats was doing the same. He clipped the end of the telescopic pole to the leading edge of the caving ladder and started to extend it length by length. As the pole grew longer, the caving ladder unfurled. It was made of sturdy wire uprights, and wire rungs surrounded by narrow metal tubing that were no more than eight inches wide. Danny raised it five metres. Ten metres. Keeping the telescopic pole stable in these rough seas was a challenge. It rocked and scraped against the hull of the ship as Danny extended it to a full twenty metres, and the caving ladder flapped crazily with the movement of the vessels and the sea. His muscles burned as, his feet planted on the unstable deck of the Rigid Raider, he held the ladder up and tried to get purchase on the railings of the cargo ship with the grappling hook. It took a long twenty seconds to achieve. Danny grabbed at one of the metal-tubing rungs of the caving ladder and tugged hard to satisfy himself that it was properly attached. Then, with a nod at Tony and Caitlin, he prepared to climb it.

  The cargo ship itself was rocking heavily in the waves, and the rungs of the caving ladder felt flimsy beneath his feet. Several times, Danny felt like he was in freefall, or as if the rungs had disappeared entirely. He gripped the ladder very firmly.

  He was a third of the way up when it happened. The air seemed to boom and there was a sudden downward lurch from the Golden Coral. Danny was losing height. For a moment he thought he’d fallen: his body was swinging away from the hull of the ship, and water was approaching fast from below. He had a fraction of a second to reassure himself that he was still clutching the ladder when his body slammed into the ocean and he found himself completely submerged.

  He had to suppress a moment of panic. If the grappling hook at the top of the ladder came loose, he was fucked. His life vest was inflating and his ears were full of the deadened grind of the ship’s engines. Hold on, he told himself. Just hold on . . .

  And then, just as suddenly, he was yanked back up out of the water as the cargo ship straightened up. He flew through the air and his body slammed hard against the side of the ship. All the wind was knocked from his lungs, but he forced himself to keep on climbing, his cold hands gripping the narrow tubing that formed the rungs for all they were worth, the metal digging hard into his hands.

  The ship yawed a second time, and the sea rose, but now he was high enough up the ladder that he only skimmed the surface of the water. He carried on climbing, and thirty seconds later he was clambering over the railings of the cargo ship.

  Danny was the first on deck, though he could see the grappling hooks of the other two ladders spaced at ten-metre intervals towards the front of the ship, and it only took a couple of seconds before he saw Goldie climb over the railings, dripping wet. The deck itself was wet and slippery, and the yawing of the vessel felt even more pronounced up here. He immediately checked up and down the bridge for hostiles – none, but he knew he wasn’t more than twenty or thirty metres from the bridge, so he remained hyper-alert – then unclipped a carabiner and loop line from his ops waistcoat and used them to clip the ladder more permanently to the vessel. Then he gave two flashes of his Surefire torch over the side to indicate to Caitlin and Tony that the next of them could boar
d.

  Goldie did the same, then crouched down in the firing position, his weapon pointing forward. Danny pulled off his wet, inflated life vest then crouched down and covered aft, his eyes picking out the main features of the vessel. It was heavily laden with storage containers. They were three units high, and the closest of them was just five metres from Danny’s position. The bridge tower – which Danny knew housed both the crew rooms and the engine room down below – loomed above them, the lights from inside glowing bright in the darkness. He raised his NV goggles, and took a moment to acclimatise and work out the geography of their position.

  To reach the bridge tower, they would have to move along the deck twenty metres from Danny’s position, then take a left where the line of storage containers ended. He tried to calculate the odds of there being any guards on deck. Minimal in a high sea state like this, but still a possibility. They would need to be very careful. At least, he thought to himself, the massive grind of the ship’s engines and the crashing of the sea would entirely camouflage any gunshot, if only while they were out on deck.

  He looked over his shoulder. All three teams were aboard. Danny raised one hand above his head and sharply jabbed his finger forward twice. Silently, Team One – led by Goldie – moved past him, their weapons engaged. When they reached the end of the cargo containers, one of them swung round the corner, then made a hand gesture to indicate the all-clear. Their movements were sharp and efficient. Danny could tell that the Aussies were good soldiers.

  At another hand gesture from Danny, Team Two moved carefully in the same direction. Covered by Team One, they turned the corner. Ten seconds later, Goldie raised one hand. It was time for Danny’s unit to move.

  With the butt of his rifle still pressed hard into his shoulder, Danny led Tony and Caitlin along the deck. They swung round the corner towards the bridge tower. Team Two were in the firing position ten metres along. The entrance to the bridge tower was fifteen metres beyond them: a grey steel door with a circular porthole window near the top. As they approached, Danny saw that the inside of the window was misted with condensation. Three metres out, he turned to Tony and Caitlin.