The Ocean Dove

by Carlos Luxul

  THE OCEAN DOVE

  Carlos Luxul

  www.carlosluxul.com

  Copyright © 2020 Carlos Luxul

  KINDLE Edition

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Epilogue

  One

  ‘You must help me, Captain! There’s a dhow in the water. It’s been drifting. I don’t know how long. They’re fishermen, I think. Some men, a woman and child. They’re so weak. I’ve got medicines but I need more – bandages, antibiotics, other things. And saline, do you have saline? Over.’

  The voice on the radio was anxious, speaking quickly. Captain Pedersen looked up through the bridge windscreen and pressed reply.

  ‘We wondered why you’d stopped. Okay, there’s plenty of stuff on board and we’ll be with you in twenty minutes. Over.’

  ‘Thank you, Captain. Thank you. I’ll send the mate to you. Over and out.’

  The Ocean Dove was four miles ahead; it was a ship Captain Pedersen knew. He had been behind it, following the same course for the past week. Now it was turning, swinging round to face him. A small boat lay in the shadow of its hull but he was still too far away to pick out any detail. He reached for his binoculars and stepped out to the observation wings, steadying his elbows on the guard rail and glancing up at the sun as the hot steel began to sting.

  It was 16.10, Saturday 5 December, four hundred miles north of Madagascar, summer in the Indian Ocean. The temperature was forty degrees. Pedersen was hot, tired and behind schedule. And these men in the water? They were only fishermen, but they were still fellow seamen and they needed his help. Captain Mubarak of the Ocean Dove had not hesitated and he knew he must do the same. It was the code of the sea.

  He told the ship’s mate to gather what he could from the medical station and to rouse the crew. There were just eight on board. The Danske Prince was a small ship plying a specialised trade.

  ‘Okay, guys,’ Pedersen said when the last of the men arrived on the bridge. ‘We do what we can and then we get going again. We can’t afford the time,’ he added, conscious of the delays suffered on the voyage already.

  ‘Take a look,’ he said, handing his binoculars to the chief engineer.

  They were now within a quarter of a mile of the Ocean Dove. Its port side faced them, lit by the sun low in the west. The ship was similar to their own but larger, five thousand tonnes, a hundred and fifteen metres long. On the funnel were the shipowner’s colours: a blue bird silhouetted against a yellow shield.

  At the waterline was the sleek outline of what appeared to be a typical Indian Ocean dhow. There was no sign of masts or sails. Yellow hard-hats moved about in the dhow. A crewman in yellow overalls climbed a scaling net. On the deck, more yellow overalls stared down from the ship’s rail, gesticulating, walkie-talkies held to ears.

  ‘What do you think?’ Captain Pedersen said.

  The engineer sucked in a breath and shook his head. ‘Looks a fucking mess.’

  The Danske Prince stopped seventy metres from the Ocean Dove in dead flat water. Flags hung limply. Funnel smoke eddied blackly in the heat shimmer. Pedersen trained the binoculars back on the dhow. He could hear shouting, see shadowy figures stretched out, Ocean Dove crewmen crouched over them. The fishermen looked in bad shape, their clothes in tatters, makeshift bandages. One raised a hand limply before it fell back. Another spluttered when a bottle was put to cracked lips.

  ‘For Christ’s sake …’ Pedersen sighed as a child’s head bobbed up behind a pile of nets and a voice rang out across the water.

  ‘Captain, Captain!’

  Pedersen recognised the voice. ‘I’m here!’ he shouted back, raising his arm.

  ‘I’m sending the mate in the small boat!’

  A dinghy swung over the Ocean Dove’s side. Two figures in yellow and one in white started down the ladder, rucksacks on their backs. The yellows took an oar each. The white sat at the back.

  Minutes later the man in white and one of the yellows were climbing up to the Danske Prince’s rail. Hands reached out to pull them on board. First on deck with an agile spring was a tall, rangy crewman in yellow, followed by the mate, in white.

  Pedersen met a pair of clear, alert eyes and shook a hard-skinned hand. The guy before him was around thirty, powerfully built, a shade over six feet.

  ‘I’m Choukri,’ the mate said, turning and gesturing to his own ship and the dhow languishing at its side. ‘My God …’

  ‘This way,’ Pedersen said. ‘We’ve got some things ready. Just tell me what you need.’

  He led them along the walkway, his own mate and chief engineer behind him, climbing the stairs from the main deck to the bridge and stepping through the open door. On the far side, the chart table was piled with pharmacy bottles, packs of bandages and cases of drinking water.

  When he reached the table, Pedersen heard two dull thuds behind him, followed a split second later by two more. They registered in his subconscious as distantly familiar but out of context. A gasp, a scuff of a boot and he was still unable to make the connection. In the corner of his eye he saw the Danske Prince’s mate stumble. Instinctively he thrust an arm out but was too far away to catch his crumpling friend. The last thing he saw was his chief engineer pitching to the floor, bewilderment etched in his face.

  ~

  A blink of an eye: three men dead. The yellow-overalled crewman stood over the bodies, making doubly sure with a bullet in each of their heads. They were hollow-point shells, expanding on impact for greater shock and stopping power. After nine bullet wounds, blood pumped in uniform channels along the floor’s grooved rubber matting, shifting one way and then the other as the ship rocked gently.

  Choukri turned on his heels and sprang back to the doorway. He reached in his rucksack, swapped his silenced Glock pistol for another and reloaded the used gun, his practised fingers moving with speed as he changed the clips.

  ‘Five more,’ he said, his eyes darting around the bridge.

  Edging his head out of the door, he looked along the ship. The remaining crewmen were at the guard rail thirty metres away, absorbed in the activity on the dhow. One of them turned in his direction. Chouk
ri raised a hand, the gesture immediately returned with a friendly wave. It reassured him the crew of the Danske Prince had seen and heard nothing. Barely two minutes had passed. They would assume their captain and colleagues were sorting out supplies on the bridge with the guys from the Ocean Dove.

  Choukri turned back to the bridge, his eyes flaring at the sight of his motionless accomplice staring down, apparently fascinated with the shattered skulls on the floor.

  ‘Assam, get fucking real!’ he hissed, pointing to the far door. ‘Round the port side, now. And wait out of sight at the bow.’

  The ship’s hatch stretched away from the bridge, rectangular, forty metres long. On either side was a narrow walkway, the guard rail to the outside, the hatch covers and the top of the hold walls to the inside. If the crew got wind of what was happening and backed away towards the bows, they could only meet Assam.

  He watched Assam go down the stairs and along the walkway, the Danske Prince’s crew unaware, their backs to him on the other side of the hatch. When he turned the corner at the bow and disappeared from sight, Choukri slipped out through the opposite door. At the foot of the stairs he balanced his rucksack on his two guns as though he was carrying it in front of him, full of medical supplies.

  Three of the crew were shoulder to shoulder midway along the rail. With the Ocean Dove to the west and the sun dropping fast to the horizon, they were shielding their eyes from the glare and focusing on the dhow. One turned, saw Choukri and started towards him as if to offer help. At five paces Choukri let the rucksack drop and put two shots in the man’s chest, then one more as he stepped over his fallen body without breaking stride.

  The next two straightened and turned, without obvious alarm, as if to assist a colleague who had stumbled.

  Two rapid shots. The nearer crewman fell instantly, almost silently. He clearly weighed next to nothing, looked so young. Choukri strode on, his right boot stamping down on the boy’s fingers.

  The heavily built man next in line crumpled against the hold wall, bent double by two bullets from the gun in Choukri’s left hand. The pistol in his right whipped the slumped head aside, sending a lifeless arm flailing and shattering a watch glass.

  He bore down on the final pair. Only now were subliminal messages translating rapidly into stark, conscious terror. The crewman’s head jerked, his eyes staring at the two Glock pistols held chest high in extended arms. His mouth opened but no sound came out. Spinning round towards the bows, the only line of escape, he crashed into the back of his colleague, bringing them both down in a tangle. Neither had time to look up before bullets ripped into them

  Choukri gulped a breath. ‘Assam!’

  At the sight of a boot appearing around the side of the hatch, his shoulders dropped, the pistols hanging dead weight in his hands. Sweat ran down his forehead, stinging his eyes as he panned up and down the ship and across to the Ocean Dove. The activity to help the fishermen on the dhow was continuing unbroken. Exactly, he thought. The training was working.

  Assam ran along the walkway, vaulting the two corpses blocking his way with scarcely a glance. He gripped Choukri’s arm, his eyes excited.

  ‘Make sure,’ Choukri said, shaking him off.

  Blood was drying quickly on the walkway, vivid crimson turning dirty brown. A cheek, the back of a hand, the leg of the boy in shorts scorching on the hot steel, all past caring.

  Assam turned and stood over them, his Glocks held sideways, lowered close to their heads. He put a bullet in each, taking his time, working his way along the walkway, alternating between the two guns. The last victim he shot full in the face, straddling him, motionless, looking down with detached curiosity.

  Watching from the ship’s rail, Choukri stepped up silently behind him, the barrel of one of his Glocks in his hand. He waited a second, then a second more, before lashing out with the butt of the gun. Blunt metal rapped Assam’s skull, his neck compressing as he snapped from his reverie and spun round.

  ‘Concentrate!’ Choukri barked, peppering him with spittle.

  Satisfied with Assam’s head bending in submission, his angry eyes lowering to the deck, Choukri turned and stepped back to the rail. Holding his guns high, he stretched his head back and bellowed across to the Ocean Dove.

  Activity froze. Eyes lifted. Everyone leapt to their feet, including the injured fishermen, their fists pumping the air as Choukri’s triumphal roar echoed across the lifeless water between the ships. Yellow overalls sprang up scaling nets and ladders to the Ocean Dove’s deck. Fishermen in the dhow shouted up to the ship. Guide ropes were thrown to them. A motor coughed into life and the dhow slid across to the Danske Prince.

  Choukri’s narrowed eyes darted about with satisfaction as three fishermen in bandages and castaway rags climbed the Danske Prince’s ladder and heaved mooring lines up, hooking them over bollards. Winches turned on the Ocean Dove and the two ships edged towards each other.

  Fishermen dragged the bodies of Captain Pedersen, the mate and the chief engineer from the bridge, their heads bouncing on the stairs, their final expressions unchanging. They were dumped in a heap on the walkway with their crew and upended one by one over the rail into the water, where they were boat-hooked and hauled onto the dhow.

  Fenders were lowered as the ships inched together. A gangway was laid between the two decks and the Ocean Dove swung its cranes out over the Danske Prince. A crewman in yellow started the hatch motor. The screech of steel rollers cut through the air, the hatch panels inching along, rising in symmetry before hitting their stoppers with an echoing boom, revealing the Danske Prince’s hold below.

  Four wooden packing cases were stowed in a row, each about six metres long. Next to them were twelve shipping containers. The crew worked quickly with bolt cutters, slicing through the lashing straps holding the cases in place. A crewman above the hold looked down and guided the Ocean Dove’s crane operator by walkie-talkie. Slings were attached and the first case rose into the air. At the other end of the hold, the Ocean Dove’s second crane repeated the process.

  A packing case emerged from the Danske Prince into the sunlight, swinging over the ships’ rails before being lowered into the Ocean Dove. Choukri stepped across the gangway to the Ocean Dove, jumped to the deck and made his way down to the hold. The first of the packing cases and two containers were there already. Another was above him, the crane slewing it into place, throwing a shadow across the floor.

  He edged to the side and grabbed a crewman by the arm.

  The guy grinned, hopping from one foot to another as if about to break into dance.

  ‘You’ve done it!’ he gushed.

  ‘Not yet,’ Choukri snapped. ‘Tell Snoop to get the explosives.’

  ~

  Twenty-five minutes after Choukri first set his boots on the Danske Prince he took a swig of water, pouring the last of it over himself, closing his eyes as the coolness ran down the back of his neck. Shaking sweat and water from his head, he glanced along the walkway where Captain Mubarak’s crisp white shirt was bent over the rail.

  Throwing the bottle aside, Choukri strode up to his side and looked down. Below them at the waterline, the dhow was tied to the foot of the hull ladder.

  A crane boom swung out and lowered a wooden pallet. Fishermen heaved the Danske Prince’s crew onto it. Distinguishing one body from another or working out which tangled limb belonged to which twisted torso was impossible. Bloodstained clothes were darkening quickly in the sticky heat, shattered skulls lolling pathetically as the dead were manhandled and dumped in a heap without ceremony.

  Mubarak brought his hands together and looked to the sky as the corpses swung past and disappeared into the hold, where they were stuffed into a bright orange container.

  ‘It troubles you?’ Choukri said, his face set hard, suspecting Mubarak was unaware he was at his side.

  ‘Sometimes it does,’ Mubarak said without turning. ‘Not our destination, just some of the roads we take …’

  Choukri ran his eyes up a
nd down the captain’s profile for a moment before glancing at his watch and barking into his walkie-talkie.

  ‘Snoop, where are my explosives?’

  Without waiting for a reply, he made his way back down to the hold and crossed to the far side, stopping by the open doors of a container. Inside it, Snoop was crouched at a packing case lifting its lid, the gold chains around his neck swinging free and chinking against the hinges. In the case was a nested row resembling oversized shoeboxes, the writing on them a mix of Cyrillic and Arabic. Adjusting his grip, he braced his knees against the side, lifting carefully.

  ‘Easy …’ Choukri said, from behind.

  Snoop’s pockmarked face turned. He checked the floor of the container for obstacles before edging backwards. A personnel transfer basket sat by the container doors, its gate open and facing him. Placing the first package in it carefully, he turned and repeated the process. Moments later there were five identical mines in the basket, but there was still one more package, and it was quite different. Two transparent canisters were filled with a crystalline powder, woven together with tape, wires, a junction box and a timer – an improvised explosive device.

  The IED was too heavy for one man to lift. Choukri stepped up to the side of the case and took a firm handhold.

  ‘Ready?’ he said.

  Snoop nodded.

  High above the hold, the crane operator signalled from his cabin. The slings tightened, taking the weight of the mine-filled basket. Choukri watched it rise before beckoning to Snoop.

  ‘Get Assam, Faisel and Tariq and meet me on the Danske Prince.’

  Choukri went up to the deck and crossed the gangway between the ships, descending to the Danske Prince’s hold. Snoop and Assam came through the door first, followed by Faisel, the Ocean Dove’s second officer, efficiently kitted out in safety glasses, hard hat and gloves. Tariq trailed behind them, his face flushed from the heat and the extra pounds he carried on his waistline.