by Chris Ryan
‘Cover me.’
Caitlin stepped towards the door, ready to open it. Tony positioned himself behind Danny, ready to fire if necessary as Danny crossed the threshold. Danny nodded at Caitlin and she swung the door open.
A blast of hot air from inside the ship slammed into Danny’s face. No personnel. Four metres beyond the door, a spiral steel staircase, much like the one they’d used in the frigate. Danny stepped towards it. Checked up. Down. No sign of the crew. He spoke into the radio. ‘Stairwell clear. Team One advance.’
It took fifteen seconds for Team One to leapfrog the others and arrive at the stairwell, by which time Tony and Caitlin were inside the bridge tower. Without waiting for any further instruction, Team One headed down the stairs towards the engine room, which it was their role to secure.
Danny felt his jugular pumping. A minute passed. Ominous creaks and groans echoed from the body of the cargo ship. It sounded as if it was going to break up any second, but Danny knew that there was movement and give in these old vessels, especially in rough seas. He kept his attention focused on the stairwell, ready to drop anyone who appeared from the top of the bridge tower.
A radio communication burst into his earpiece. ‘This is Team One leader,’ said an Australian voice. ‘We have the engine room secured. Three crew members down.’ And before Danny could ask the question, he added: ‘No Chinese. But one of them managed to put a Mayday through to the bridge. They’ll be expecting you up there.’
Shit, Danny breathed. Then, louder, into his radio: ‘Can you kill the lights on the bridge tower?’
‘Give me thirty seconds.’
They waited. The ship creaked and groaned.
The lights died.
Danny immediately clipped down the NV goggles on his helmet. The world turned hazy green. ‘Team Two, go,’ he instructed into his radio.
Fifteen seconds later, Team Two were moving into the bridge tower. Danny, Tony and Caitlin kept their weapons trained on the stairwell as their three Aussie colleagues, who also had their NV engaged, advanced up to the first floor. Once more, they remained in position, listening to nothing but the storm outside and the creaking of the ship.
This time it was a full two minutes before they had a communication. ‘Team two leader. First floor clear. No personnel.’
‘Roger that. Team Three moving to the bridge now.’
Danny nodded at Tony and Caitlin. It was time to move up.
Tony went first, weapon and NV engaged. Eight steps before he reached a winder on the metal stairwell. He stopped and covered the next flight while Danny and Caitlin advanced. Danny grew warier with each step. Whoever was on the bridge, they knew someone was coming. There would be resistance. Probably armed.
They passed the main entrance on to the first-floor crew quarters, then continued single file up the stairs, Danny following Tony’s grainy green figure, his finger resting lightly on the trigger of his HK.
They found themselves on a metal landing, a single door leading off it. Danny knew from his study of the ship’s plans that this was the entrance to the bridge. He could make out rivets in the door which told him it was made of sturdy steel. If there were shooters behind it, it would act as a shield, of sorts.
Tony had taken up position by the door, lowered his gun and removed a flashbang from his ops waistcoat. He squeezed the lever, then pulled the pin. Danny and Caitlin stood three metres from the door, covering it with their assault rifles. Danny raised three fingers.
Two fingers.
One.
Go.
EIGHTEEN
Tony kicked open the door, just a couple of inches. Danny immediately heard two sounds.
The first was the ocean. Even though they were indoors, the sound of waves was loud.
The second was gunshot.
There was a burst of fire from the bridge. Danny estimated four weapons. There was a tinny sound as the rounds ricocheted off the metal door, immediately followed by a deafening crack as Tony chucked in the flashbang and stood clear as it exploded. Danny closed his eyes momentarily to stop himself being blinded by the flash, but opened them as soon as he heard the noise, and started to advance.
The grenade had killed the gunfire. Now Danny could hear nothing but panicked shouting. Tony kicked the door open.
The doorway framed a picture of chaos. In the green haze of his NV, Danny saw three figures – ten metres from his position, at the far side of the bridge, backs up against the window that surrounded it. It was clearly pitch black for them, here in the middle of the ocean with no light to see by: they were staring at different angles across the room, obviously totally disorientated by the blinding flash and deafening crack of the flashbang. They all had weapons, though – pistols – and were waving them around wildly, evidently wanting to fire but not knowing in which direction to aim.
They couldn’t see the Regiment unit, but the Regiment unit could see them. From his brief glance, Danny didn’t think any of them were Mr Chiu. But they could start shooting any second, so they needed to be put down in any case.
Danny and Caitlin had clear shots. Two from Danny, one from Caitlin. The targets were on the floor less than a second after the door was opened.
As soon as the three targets were down, Danny saw why the noise of the ocean was so loud. Someone had smashed the reinforced window opposite the entrance to the bridge. Impossible to do without a sturdy tool, and sure enough Danny saw a fire axe lying on the floor just in front of it. Someone must have escaped.
He stepped over the threshold of the bridge. The needed to move fast while any further occupants were still disorientated. A metre into the room he scanned left, then right. He quickly picked out the one remaining person there: a figure crouching down to his two o’clock by a panel of instruments.
It wasn’t Chiu. A single shot from Danny’s HK and he was neutralised. Danny ran to the broken window and looked out. It was a drop of seven or eight metres to the deck – doable, with a lucky landing. And luck had been on the side of whoever had jumped from the bridge. The aft deck was an open space of about fifty square metres, leading up to a high railing that overlooked the water. Danny could make out shattered glass on the deck. But no sign of anyone.
He spoke immediately into his radio. ‘All units, the bridge is clear. We have personnel on deck, most likely armed. We need a full sweep of the deck, from aft forward. Go!’
He turned to Caitlin and slung her the orange portable VHF radio. ‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘Make contact with the ops room. Update them. Tony, with me.’
Caitlin caught the radio with one hand as Danny and Tony hurried back through the darkness of the bridge tower. Danny tried to tread as lightly as he could so that his feet didn’t clatter down the metal staircase.
On the ground floor, they pushed through the heavy door and manoeuvred themselves on to the aft deck. The six Aussie SF guys were waiting for them there, evenly spaced across the open deck, weapons engaged. A quick examination of the broken glass from the bridge window revealed a puddle of blood. Someone had injured themselves jumping out. As there was no sign of enemy targets here, they needed to check all points on the vessel forward of this position. ‘We sweep the top deck first,’ Danny said, ‘then we move down. Remember, we need Chiu alive. If you see him, hold your fire and apprehend him.’
Danny ran to the starboard side of the vessel, while Tony stayed port. Since the central part of the vessel’s top deck was taken up by storage units, to sweep the ship they would need to move forward in two groups, one along the deck on either side.
They did this with quiet, clinical efficiency. Danny and his three Aussie colleagues moved four abreast, the butts of their weapons pressed sharply into their shoulders, safety switches on semi-automatic. Danny’s ears roared with the noise of the ship’s engines, and with the sea crashing against the hull. But he kept his focus laser-sharp on the deck in front of him, sensitive to any unexpected movement that would give him a split warning of an incoming threat.
They moved forward twenty metres. To their left, a three-metre-wide gap in the storage containers. Danny made a gesture with his left hand and one of his team headed silently down this corridor. The remaining three kept moving forward.
Tony’s voice. ‘There’s a trail of blood on the deck. Someone came this way.’
‘Keep following it,’ Danny instructed.
Another twenty metres. They were about halfway along the vessel. A second corridor to the left. Another member of the team – Goldie this time – peeled off to secure it. Danny and his remaining colleague moved forward.
Twenty metres.
Thirty.
Forty.
The ship yawed dramatically as they came to the end of the storage containers. Danny and his Aussie colleague pressed their backs up against the wall formed by the final container. Danny shuffled up to the corner of the storage container and peered round.
He took in everything in an instant.
The fore deck was more than twice the size of the aft deck. At the far end was a small crane, about twenty feet high. On either side of it were fixed steel scaffolds, each one about ten metres high. And on top of each scaffold, fixed to a ramp slanting down towards the sea, was a bright-orange closed lifeboat.
And at the foot of the crane, twenty-five metres from Danny’s position, were two figures. One was on his knees. The other was behind him, holding a gun to his head. It was almost an action replay of the scene that had played out in front of Danny’s eyes on the outskirts of Chikunda.
With one difference. The gunman was African. And the guy on his knees was Mr Chiu.
Neither the African militant nor Mr Chiu had seen Danny. They were screaming at each other in English – clearly their only mutual language.
‘Put gun down, idiot!’ Chiu was shouting. ‘What you think you doing? My orders come from Caliph himself!’
‘So do mine! Climb up and get into the lifeboat!’ shouted the African militant.
As he spoke, he happened to look in Danny’s direction.
Their eyes met.
Danny wanted Chiu alive. He lined up the sights of his rifle with the broad target of the militant’s chest.
He prepared to take the shot.
‘This is Golden Coral, do you copy?’
Caitlin stared furiously at the orange handheld VHF radio. It emitted nothing but white noise. She cursed under her breath. Something was wrong with the comms. She couldn’t make contact with the frigate.
She strode across the bridge to the ship’s VHF radio unit. She assumed the Golden Coral would have a decent-sized antenna, and she adjusted the frequency to channel 15.
‘This is Golden Coral, do you copy?’
A five-second pause.
‘Go ahead, Golden Coral.’
‘We have control of the bridge. Six targets down.’
‘Do you have Chiu?’
‘That’s negative, over.’
‘Roger that, over.’
The radio fell silent. As the ship lurched, so did Caitlin’s stomach. She headed away from the instrument panel to look at the sea state through the broken window. Her night-vision goggles picked out the foam of a curling wave battering the rear of the ship. She suppressed a shiver, and it wasn’t just because her clothes were saturated. She hadn’t told the others how much she hated the water. It would have made them think less of her.
She felt something sticky under her wet boot. She looked down. Blood, seeping from the chest of one of the men they’d put down. Her eyes moved to the corpse. The dead face – African – seemed very calm.
But something wasn’t right.
The dead man’s head seemed somehow too small for his body. Or was it that his torso was too big? Caitlin bent down immediately and ripped open the buttons of his camouflage top.
She blinked. The entry wound was directly in the centre of the man’s clavicle. But that wasn’t what attracted her attention. There were four black straps surrounding his otherwise naked torso, and each strap had four pouches, about the size of cigarette packets, each one with a wire protruding. The wires met at his left armpit, where a thicker cable ran down his arm. Caitlin looked at his left hand. The dead limb was clutching a small detonating button.
Her mouth went dry. She spoke urgently into her radio. ‘All teams, this is Caitlin at the bridge. Our targets are wearing suicide vests. Handheld detonators. Repeat, our targets are wearing suicide vests . . .’
Caitlin’s panicked voice burst into Danny’s earpiece. ‘Our targets are wearing suicide vests! Handheld detonators! Repeat, our targets are wearing suicide vests!’
Time slowed down.
Danny’s eyes flickered to the free hand of the militant who had Chiu at gunpoint. It was twitching.
He had to take him out. But not a chest shot – it could detonate a vest.
He moved his rifle to the man’s head, and that fraction of second’s hesitation meant he was too late.
The explosion was immense. It came from the very front of the ship where the militant was standing. There was an intense flash of bright green light in Danny’s NV goggles. A shock wave knocked him several metres back along the side deck. At the same time, the noise of the explosion split the air and echoed deafeningly off the metal sides of the storage containers, drowning out – for a few seconds – even the roar of the ocean.
Winded from his fall, Danny had to force himself to his feet. His Aussie colleague had been knocked back too, but was also painfully trying to stand. ‘What the fuck?’ he shouted at Danny.
Danny lurched back along the side deck, clutching his weapon, gasping for air. Having staggered the five or six metres he’d been knocked back, he stared at the devastation of the fore deck.
There was no sign of Chiu or the militant. The explosion had clearly taken them out. But right now they had bigger problems than that. The explosion had also ripped the crane from its footings, and it now hung precariously over the edge of the ship. Both orange-covered lifeboats had clearly tumbled into the water, and only a twisted fraction of the scaffolds that held them still remained. The railings that surrounded the deck had been blown away, and a chunk of the deck itself, a good ten metres deep, was twisted and torn. A sinister stench of burning hung in the air, and Danny saw a brief flicker of flames lick up from down under the deck. He looked left. Tony was running towards him.
‘What the fuck happened?’ he screamed.
‘Suicide vest,’ Danny shouted. ‘Chiu’s dead.’
A sneer of anger crossed Tony’s face. ‘There was a smear of blood on the handle of one of the doors leading below decks. I reckon whoever was bleeding went down below, towards the engine room. I’ll take a couple of guys and follow . . .’
Even as he spoke, the sound of two more explosions hit them in quick succession. Danny could tell that they came from deep inside the ship’s hull – the echo was low and muffled, but it went on for a full ten seconds, and seemed to make the whole vessel vibrate.
‘We’re going to lose the ship!’ Danny shouted. He activated his radio. ‘All units return to the bridge. The ship’s going down, lifeboats compromised . . .’
Another explosion from down below. Even deeper and more sinister. The ship yawed dramatically. ‘The fuel tank’s gone!’ Tony shouted.
A reply in the earpiece. It sounded like Goldie. Urgent. Maybe even a bit frightened. ‘There’s something here you need to take a look at, mate.’
Danny turned to Tony. ‘Get to the bridge,’ he said. ‘Make sure Caitlin’s contacted the frigate. They need to airlift us off.’ A huge, mechanical groan rose up from the belly of the vessel. ‘Go!’ Danny shouted.
Tony ran along the starboard deck, two of their Aussie colleagues alongside him. Danny followed, but when, after twenty metres, he came to the corridor in the storage containers that Goldie had followed, he turned into it. His stomach went as the ship took a downward lurch, and there was an ominous creak from the containers that surrounded him.
Ten metres in, there was a rig
ht-angle turn to the left. Danny followed it. Then he stopped.
He estimated that he was pretty much in the centre of the deck. Ten metres from his position, blocking the corridor, was an open storage container, end on. Goldie was standing five metres from it, shining a very bright torch in to the interior. Danny flicked up his NV goggles, then hurried up to Goldie’s side.
‘What is it?’ he breathed.
‘You tell me,’ Goldie said.
Danny peered at the contents of the container. They immediately reminded him of the field lab the Porton Down guys had set up in Chikunda: modular steel shelving along the sides, a table bolted to the floor, and fitted to the table, some kind of mechanical apparatus Danny couldn’t recognise. Littering the floor were cardboard boxes, about ten, half of them opened, half of them still sealed. He could just make out the lettering on some of them. Gillette. Lynx. Right Guard.
‘What are they doing with boxes of fucking deodorant?’ Goldie asked.
Danny didn’t immediately reply. He was remembering something Dr Phillips from the Porton Down team had said about spreading the plague virus, while they were watching Ripley die.
Aerosol dispersal would be effective . . .
He scanned the storage container for a couple more seconds. His eyes focused on one of the open boxes. He could make out the canisters of deodorant inside. They were small. Just three inches high.
‘See those?’ He pointed them out to Goldie. ‘Who buys miniature deodorants?’
Goldie stared at him. ‘People getting on airplanes,’ he said.
Danny nodded. He took his digital camera from his ops waistcoat and quickly fired off a few pictures. Then he grabbed Goldie’s arm and pulled him away from the storage container.
‘We need to get off this ship,’ he said.
All nine members of the unit had congregated on the bridge. Goldie, who had announced himself to be a demolitions expert, was moving around the corpses of the dead militants, carefully cutting the wires of their suicide vests. There was an acrid smell and a burning sound in the air that told Danny there was a major fire down below.