"This is the crew service lift, which is big enough to hold all seven of us of u at least, that is me, you two Carlo and Aldo, and four of the deck crew. You will have your pistols, I will have an AK47 which I stole from the hijackers. We will also have tear gas grenades, four of them for us to throw.
"So, we go down to the crew deck from here in the bows of the ship, on level three, and werun along the main corridor to the reception area service lift. When the doors on the service lift open on level five I throw a couple of grenades, and we come out fast, firing."
He paused for breath, and looked round at the men. "We will have goggles, and two full gasmasks, I don't know who will wear them yet. Also we have two security people, who the hijackers don't know about. They will come down the staircases, one here and one there," he pointed to the sketch. When they hear the lift doors opening, they will each throw a gas grenade into the lobby, and then go back up the stairs, their job will be done. The effect should give the terrorists the impression that they are being attacked by a large force.
The hijackers are wearing white shirts, with a red armband, and light brown chinos, so they should stand out, shoot to kill."
Aldo said: "How many hijackers will there be?"
"The maximum number is eleven, since one is already dead. They will have guards on watch, certainly, but most of them are probably asleep at that time, maybe in the bar, to be in easy reach, if they are needed as backup. Oh, I forgot, there will be two men on the bridge, so that means only nine on level five. It should make it easy, but on the other hand they've all got AK47s. Remember that they are not a trained fighting force, at least I don't think so. If we can, one of our tasks will be to capture as many of their rifles as possible.
"Also, on our side is the weather, we will be in the storm by morning, so up to a third of the hi-jackers could be suffering from sea sickness. If either of you," McBride eyed the bodyguards, "Suffer from it, tell me now and someone else can use your pistols."
Luciano Benventa said: "I can speak for both of them. For years we have been cruising together, and we have been in bad medicanes. There will be no illness. Also, I to tell you that I want to take part in the raid. I, too, am armed, and you will find that I am a good shot. It is how I am still alive after all the years in what you call the Mafia."
MacBride looked at him, and nodded. "Glad to have you along. Now we are mustering at 5 o'clock in the morning in the command centre. One of the deck crew will collect you from your cabin."
He stood up, and the captain followed suit. The butler appeared as if by magic, to escort them from the suite.
While the captain and McBride made their way back to the command centre, McBride said: "That is yet another smuggled gun. If we come out of this alive, you should tighten up security, Captain." The captain smiled, and strode on.
When they entered the command centre, the scrambler phone was ringing, and there was no one there to answer it. The captain got to it first, and picked it up. "Yes. Yes he is, just a moment, I'll put him on. It's Colonel Blair for you."
McBride took the phone and sat at the desk. "Hello there, Jim."
"Hello John. How are things going? I was hoping to have some men over by now, but the government is still dithering."
"Well, put them out of their misery. We're due to be in the middle of a hurricane, in about twelve hours, it's coming up fast. You would never get anyone on to this ship for at least twenty four hours, maybe more, and the hijacker's deadline is tomorrow afternoon, but we will deal with it, trust me. I'll phone you later tomorrow, hopefully with some good news."
"I sincerely hope so – good luck." And he was gone, the master of the quick telephone exit.
" We will never get any assistance from the UK government, captain. It is not going to happen, so it really is up to us. And we are doing something."
"I always thought that was the way it would turn out," mused the captain.
Chapter 31
McBride opened his eyes. It was dark in his cabin, but something had woken him.
As a precaution, when he went to bed, he put the pillow and bolster under the bedclothes, to look like a sleeping person. Meanwhile, McBride lay on the floor, with a cushion for his head. He had a hunch that Bourne might come looking for his rifle.
McBride looked toward the doorway, but the bed shielded his view. He heard the door creak as it opened, and a shaft of light enter from the corridor.
He could see the intruder now he was in the room. Could be Bourne, short figure, must be Bourne. Suddenly there came a salvo of bullets which hit the bed, throwing the bedclothes up in the air. There was a silence. McBride was watching as the figure sprang for the bathroom.
McBride was up and across the room in two leaps, slamming the door after Bourne. There was a muffled shout from inside, with a slight hint of panic.
"Come out with your hands up," said McBride, "and I won't shoot." McBride thought can't shoot, haven't got a gun.
"Who is it?" asked Bourne. "McBride's dead. I just shot him."
"It's the ghost of McBride, come to avenge him."
"No," a note of panic. "It can't be. Don't harm me, it was an accident."
Some accident thought McBride. And Bourne was terrified. Amazing!
"Lay down your rifle, come out with your hands up, and I won't kill you. Go straight out of the cabin door," said McBride, grabbing a sheet off the bed, and draping it over himself. As Bourne came out, he glanced at McBride's sheeted figure, and with a cry of terror, was out of the door and down the corridor. McBride bolted the door after him, and wedged a chair under the knob. He threw the sheet aside, and switched the bathroom light on, and picked up Bourne's rifle from the floor. He pulled back the sheets on the furthest bed, and climbed in, and was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.
He awoke to the sound of the alarm that he had set. It seemed to him that no sleep had intervened between Bourne leaving and the alarm ringing. Wearily, he climbed out of bed, walked in and out of the shower, dried himself and slipped on a tee shirt and chinos and his deck shoes. Five minutes out of bed, and he was stepping along the corridor swinging Bourne's AK47 in one hand, the other trying to keep himself upright, as the ship lurched violently. It was heeling as though it might capsize, but McBride knew that it was probably only going over at fifteen degrees, and he also imagined that it would get a lot worse.
The captain was in the command room already with Annabel, and four deck crew all of who were showing no signs of sea sickness. Even in the confines of the command room, he could hear the whine of the wind.
The captain told him that had a sleepless night, because the ship had been holed by a rogue forty foot container that had washed off the container ship protecting them. In fact, a total of three containers were in the water, and they had moved position to avoid being struck again. The good news was that the ship had been repaired so that she was waterproof. The engineers had been working all night on the problem. He had sent for the Italians, and expected them momentarily. He hadn't explained to the deck crew exactly what the plan was, only that it was dangerous, so McBride took the time to fill them in on what they were going to do adding "Because you are not armed, you will be looking for opportunities to grab any weapons that might be lying about, and in regard of the injured, confiscating their weapons. However, I did collect this AK47 overnight, so I will give it to the person who has used one before; nobody?" McBride looked at the crew. "Well, has anyone fired an old Lee Enfield, the three-o-three?" The oldest member nodded, and held out his hand to grasp the AK47. He grinned. "My old man nicked one from the army before he came home from Germany, and we used to hit tin cans with it on the common, until the ammo ran out. Then he flogged it to an Irish guy he knew. That wasn't the best of his ideas."
"This is a dangerous operation, and if you doesn't want to join us I won't blame you. Anyone want to opt out?" Everyone shook their heads.
The Italians came in laughing and joking, as if it were going to a party.
&nb
sp; McBride said: "I just need to have a look at the bridge, and I'll take Aldo and Carlo. The rest of you wait here for us." McBride picked up the AK47, which was where he had left it in the corner of the command room.
The three of them lurched down the corridor, and with difficulty went down the short flight to the bridge. Such was the pitching of the ship, the stairs were often coming up as they went down, so it seemed that McBride that they were climbing the descending flight. They stumbled along the short corridor, (strictly no admittance it said in red letters) and looked through the glass panel in the door to the bridge, which McBride guessed was there courtesy of Health and Safety.
McBride could see in one corner, a man in hi-jack uniform bent over a bucket, his AK47 in the corner. Looking over to the other side of the bridge was not possible from here, and in any case the window was suddenly obscured by the body of a man opening the door. Fortunately, it was one of the deck officers. McBride held up his hand.
"Just before we come in , I see that one of the guards is sea sick. How about the other? Don't look round, just describe where he is, and how fit he is."
"He hasn't turned up," said the officer. They were due on shift three hours ago, but only one came. I was wondering whether to take him out myself."
"Let's make it a group effort, come on." It was so easy McBride could hardly believe it. The man wasn't interested in his rifle, merely in his bucket, which he grasped as though his life depended on it. He was dry retching, as he probably had been for most of the night.
The two Italians grasped an arm each, McBride grabbed the AK47. He turned to the officer.
"Do you think you could rustle up a couple of men to take this guy down to the brig. If you can do it now, we'll hang on to this chap for a couple of minutes, but we should be down on level five, so we'll be too busy to help you."
McBride looked across and out of the window. It was getting light now, or at least grey: dark clouds rushing by, the horizon moving up and down, waves wind lashed into large patches of white foam. Rain beat against the windows, covering the view and then streaming away. The floor of the bridge trembled and thrummed with the power of the storm. McBride had to wedge himself in the corner to avoid careering across the deck.
Chapter 32
It was eleven o'clock in west London, on a Saturday morning, the duty officer at his desk. The cruise company was manned every day. There were occasions when the captains of their ships needed to contact the head office. This was one such time.
The special line, with a number only available to the senior ship staff, rang.
The duty officer picked it up. "Thompson speaking."
"Geoffrey Moore, here, on the Helena. We have been hijacked, half an hour ago it happened. The chairman was aware of the impending situation. We need to speak with him. Well, the hijackers want to make a demand. I pointed out that it was Saturday, and he would be at home. I told them it would take a few hours to track him down. Do you think you could speak to him, send a car for him. You might be able to raise a few of the other directors. I think they should shelve any plans they might have for the rest of the weekend."
"Okay, leave it to me. Are they shooting anybody yet?'
"No not yet, not until they have spoken to the chairman."
It took Thompson some time to speak to the chairman. He phoned his house, and his wife told him that her husband was on the golf course. She gave him the number of the clubhouse. Thompson spoke to the secretary, who happened to be there, and he sent a member on to the course to track him down.
Cecil had just played a blinder of a drive on the sixth hole, not a hole in one, but on to the green, the first time ever, in the sixteen years he had been a member. His three companions had given him an ironic round of applause, and with much laughter they set off from the tee. A shout was heard, and they all turned round to look. One of the members was running hard in their direction, waving his arms.
When he got to the players, he bent over double, and couldn't speak for half a minute, then recovered enough to tell Cecil that there had been a phone call, and would he contact his office urgently. Cecil knew what had happened, almost certainly. He told his fellow players that he wouldn't be able to complete the round, pulled a twenty pound note out of his pocket, and left it with one of the other players, for the winner. They always played for twenty pound stakes, on a Saturday.
The chairman got home and immediately picked up the phone, even before he had spoken to his wife. Thompson confirmed the chairman's fears and arranged for a car to be sent to his home. It would take about an hour.
Cecil used the hour to speak to several directors, those who were in, and told them he was convening an urgent board meeting. Next, he phoned Jon, the marketing manager, and told him to prepare to hold a press conference at two o'clock today, and every day that the crisis lasted. He would be speaking as a 'senior spokesman' and not as the marketing manager, stressed Cecil. At least he had the contacts to round up people from the major dailies and the TV. He told him to hold the conference in the boardroom. Cecil would probably stay in London, and attend the press meetings in case anybody needed a quote from him.
Next he phoned Mark, the operations manager, and requested his presence at the board meeting.
Once he had finished on the phone, he sought out his wife, who was in the garden, pruning flowers.
"I shall have to go into the office. I will stay up in town, because of the serious situation. Don't expect me back over the weekend. I will phone you this evening, and update you. If any media people get through here, give them the duty officer's number. I can take a call through that."
They walked into the kitchen together and had a coffee, whilst he explained what had happened. "Poor old Geoffrey, and on his last voyage, too," she said.
"Give him my love when you speak to him."
He heard a car horn at the front of the house. He kissed his wife, picked up his overnight bag, and his attaché case, and went out of the front door. The driver was already out of the car, and had the rear door open.
"Hello Mr Rhodes," said the driver, who had driven Cecil a few times.
They made good time to west London, since it was a Saturday morning, and within fifty minutes, Cecil was delivered to the office door. Thompson was waiting for him, sitting in an upholstered chair in the reception area.
"Good morning Thompson, can you get Geoffrey Moore back on the phone? I'm going straight up to my office. Oh, after that could you book me a room at my club for the next two nights? Thank you." And he made his way up the stairs, not the lift, in order to get some exercise that he had missed at the golf course.
As he entered his office the phone was ringing, he leaned over the desk and picked it up. "Can you put me through to the captain?'
There was the muffled sound of someone speaking whilst holding his hand over the mouthpiece and Geoffrey came on. "Hello Cecil, this is an unfortunate incident. The man Bourne wishes to speak to you. I'll put you on to him."
A man with a Yorkshire accent, west Yorkshire, thought Cecil. "This is Keith Bourne of the WCL. We have hijacked your ship, and we want twenty million pounds, otherwise we will start killing your passengers. We need it by twelve noon tomorrow, paid into our bank account."
"It is impossible that we could raise that sort of money, especially over the weekend. You can fax your bank details, if you wish, but to raise the cash will take at least a week or two."
"Okay, we will extend the deadline to Tuesday afternoon, and then we start shooting." And the phone went dead.
Cecil thought he wouldn't speak to the captain until after the board meeting, because he would have heard the extended deadline. He would probably be in the command centre set up for such eventualities, for the rest of the day.
He walked through to the duty officer's room. Thompson was back. "Can you leave me the number of the emergency command centre on the Helena. Just put a note on my desk. You will probably have gone off duty when I need it. I will be in the boardroom. There's
a meeting at one. There are quite a few directors I've contacted. Perhaps you could stick around in the lobby until then. We have a press meeting at two, so you will have to be ready to let people in for that."
Cecil, armed with a pad of A4, headed for the boardroom, sat down in his chair at the top of the table, and started to write notes.
At five to one, everybody on Cecil's list had arrived, most dressed in casual weekend clothes. The exception was Paul Carnaby, the finance director, dressed as always in a suit, and as usual with his cardboard file.
"Good Morning gentlemen," said the chairman. "This meeting has been called, because we have a serious situation which has arisen on the Helena, which is cruising in the Med. It was hijacked at nine-thirty this morning. This is just to bring everyone up to speed. A small meeting was called several days ago, that some of you attended. We had hoped that the chance of this happening had been averted. We have been working with MI5, and one of their operatives is on board the ship.
"Nevertheless, we have not been able to foil the hijackers by ensuring arms did not get on to the ship. An unfortunate series of mistakes, not by our organization, I hasten to add, foiled our plans, and those of MI5.
"I have just come from taking a telephone call by the head of the hijackers, a man called Bourne, of the White Christian League. You may have heard the name in connection with the fire-bombing of a mosque recently. They are a rabble of right wing extremists. Anyway, Mr Bourne is expecting us to pay twenty million pounds. It goes without saying, that we have not paid them anything. I managed to get them to delay the deadline until Tuesday afternoon, and it may be possible to extend it even further. However, by Tuesday I am expecting that we have resolution. I will take any questions you may have."
One of the non-execs said, "It has come as a complete shock to me. When you say it will be resolved, you think, by Tuesday, what do you mean? That the company will have paid the ransom? Have we that much cash?'
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