Pirate

by Duncan Falconer

  Andy stepped over with a conspiratorial grin. ‘No, but he’s a wanker anyway. And SAS-man needs it more than ’e does.’

  ‘Nice one,’ Spike said, chuckling.

  ‘What’s he gonna do? Kick the SAS out of bed?’

  The two men laughed heartily as they descended.

  Stratton looked in on the coffin-sized shower room and turned on the water. Within seconds steam filled the room. He pulled off all of his damp clothes and immersed himself in the hot water. The wound on his back stung a little. Several minutes later he pulled on a clean pair of overalls he had found in the cupboard.

  He looked down on the bed. On the one hand he wanted to fall on to it. On the other he felt like he should be doing something to speed up the next phase of the operation. Someone had to go back into Somalia and sort out those missiles. Bombing them was his first thought. But it wouldn’t be clinical enough. They had to be sure the weapons got destroyed.

  He felt his eyes growing heavy. He lay down on the bed. Within seconds of closing his eyes, he fell into a deep sleep.

  16

  He walked in a dark and distant place, wandering through black, cold-looking hills but finding sanctuary among the gloom. Rain had soaked his straggly hair, his unshaven face. He pulled the thick coat he wore about him. He could hear a distant banging. It just kept on and on. Reached right into his subconscious. It began to irritate him and he looked back over his shoulder at the clouds rolling towards him. He stopped and turned to face them, certain he could see a figure hidden within their broiling plumes. Stratton controlled his fear, as always, and turned it into aggressive calculation. He took his hands from the deep pockets of the trench coat and squared up to the oncoming mystery.

  As the cloud came on, a figure inside revealed itself. It was black, from head to toe, a man, his shiny skin taut, his head bald, his limbs and torso powerful. In his raised hand a whip several metres long. Lotto the pirate commander bore down on the operative, menace in his eyes. The whip lashed in the air. Stratton stood his ground, clenched his fists and teeth, eyes darting in search of an advantage. He could see none to hand.

  He took a step forward. Lotto, who was twice as tall as him now, reached out a powerful hand to grab him and lifted the whip to strike him. As the commander’s large hand touched Stratton, he awoke and sat bolt upright in his bed, his face sweating, his eyes wide.

  ‘Sorry, mate.’ It was Andy, the security guard. He had shaken Stratton and then jumped back as the operative reacted. ‘I was banging at the door for ages but you didn’t answer.’

  Stratton stared at him as he came out of the dream, breathing harder than a waking man should.

  ‘There’s someone here to see you,’ Andy said.

  Stratton put the dream out of his mind, dropped his feet to the floor and ran his fingers through his hair as he got up.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked, seeing the daylight through the porthole and wondering how long he had been asleep.

  ‘It’s just gone four. In the afternoon. You were dead to the world. You must’ve been knackered.’

  Stratton still felt exhausted. A sound permeated the cotton wool that seemed to fill his head. ‘Is that a chopper?’ he said, looking to the porthole but not seeing anything but ocean.

  ‘Yeah. Royal Navy. They’ve come for you.’

  Stratton understood. He needed to get going. Still in a bit of a daze, he looked around like he knew he had something to put on but he wasn’t sure what.

  ‘Did you want any of those clothes back you had? They were pretty manky.’

  Stratton shook his head and looked down at his bare feet. That’s what was missing.

  ‘You want some sandals?’ Andy said, indicating a new leather pair beside the bed. ‘The first officer won’t mind. He said you could ’elp yourself to anything. He’s a good lad.’

  Stratton tried on the sandals. They were a perfect fit.

  He went to the door and into the corridor. Andy stepped out behind him. ‘They’re waiting for you in the galley,’ he said.

  ‘Has the girl surfaced?’ Stratton asked as he reached the stairs.

  ‘She left a few hours ago.’

  Stratton stopped and looked at the guard, wearing a puzzled expression. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She took a lifeboat.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Andy stood there.

  ‘You dropped her off back in the middle of the Gulf of Aden?’

  ‘It wasn’t quite like that,’ Andy countered. ‘She was pretty knackered, more so than you were. She asked about you and we said you’d got your head down. I offered her a room but she said she wanted to look about the ship. The outside part. Then she asked about the lifeboats and how they were launched. Then we ’ad something to eat. She was quite hungry. Then she went for a walk on deck. She must’ve spent a bit of time loading the boat up with food and water. Next thing we realised, the boat was gone and so was she.’

  ‘She lowered a lifeboat on her own without you knowing about it?’

  Andy looked like he had been cornered. ‘Not quite. You said she was Chinese government. We took it she was working with our side, because of you. So we let her pretty much do what she wanted. Plus she was very nice.’

  ‘How’d she lower the boat on her own and cast off?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t exactly on her own. I ’elped her,’ Andy said, looking embarrassed. ‘Are you saying we shouldn’t have ’elped her?’

  Stratton wondered if he was being serious. ‘Where was she going?’

  ‘I asked her that. She said she was going to RV with a Chinese ship. I asked her how she was going to RV with it without any comms. She didn’t have a radio or anything. She then looked me in the eye, a bit fearsome like, and said she had unfinished business. I was in an awkward situation. I couldn’t come and get you. She’d’ve been gone by then anyway. So I thought, Bollocks, she’s a government operative, even though Chinese, and working with our side. So there you ’ave it. I ’elped her lower the boat.’

  Stratton thought hard about the information, his immediate concern whether she could compromise his side’s intentions, based on their respective goals. As far as he had understood her goals, he could see no real issues, no massive ones anyway. The two governments might clash on how they would handle the situation. The Chinese would be less concerned about human rights and international protocols. The UK might be sensitive to China’s embarrassment at letting the weapons slip through their hands in the first place. Ultimately the two countries wanted the same thing, which was to put a stop to the use of the missiles. The two countries would go about that in different ways, but Stratton couldn’t see anything to panic about.

  The fact was she was gone and he could do nothing about it. He wondered where she was headed. If she’d loaded up with food and water, it wouldn’t be to RV with any nearby Chinese naval vessel. And if she wanted to get to somewhere in the West, her best bet would have been to stay with the bulker, especially since she had no money and no identification.

  So maybe she had gone back to Somalia. The comment about unfinished business could suggest that much.

  The girl was without doubt ballsy. Stratton could only wonder what was driving her. Whatever, it was far beyond the call of duty, particularly after what she had been through. Maybe she wanted revenge. It seemed extreme to him, but he wasn’t a woman. ‘Did she have enough fuel to cover a hundred and fifty miles?’

  ‘No,’ the guard replied. ‘But the boat’s got a good sail system.’

  She could get back to the Somali coast. But she would have to make her way to the village without being challenged. ‘Did she take a weapon?’

  ‘No,’ Andy said with confidence. ‘We’ve only got the five AKs on board and she wouldn’t get her hands on one of them even if she took a turn for the lads.’ Andy smiled at the crude quip but lost it when Stratton did not respond.

  Despite the girl’s motives, her actions didn’t seem sensible ones to Stratton. And she ne
ver came across as stupid. The only other motive for her leaving the ship that he could think of was fear. But of what, he had no idea. Fear of failure perhaps. Fear of returning to her bosses without having completed her mission, whatever that was. He thought she’d done enough to be given a medal. Perhaps it was the fear of being questioned by the British. That might not go down well with her leaders. The Chinese Secret Service was clearly a strict outfit.

  Stratton wished he’d had a moment to say farewell to her. He had grown to like her. He certainly respected her. She weighed nothing and was as hard as some of the toughest men he had known. He wished her well, whatever she was doing. He trotted down the steps to the main deck level. Through the open door he glimpsed a navy helicopter thundering by, a sleek, grey Lynx, the fastest chopper in the world and it looked like the pilot was putting it through its paces.

  Stratton stepped into the galley.

  Two young, intelligent-looking men in smartly pressed camouflaged fatigues stood talking. Stratton didn’t know either of them. They stopped talking and faced the operative. They looked at him respectfully.

  ‘Jasper Howel,’ the shorter, blond-haired man said, holding out a hand with a smile. ‘Lieutenant,’ he added, without sounding superior.

  ‘Hi,’ Stratton replied, shaking his hand.

  ‘Lieutenant Blythe,’ the other man said.

  Stratton shook his hand too.

  ‘We’ve come to take you to HMS Ocean,’ Howel said.

  Just as Stratton had expected.

  ‘You ready to go?’ Blythe asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Stratton said.

  Blythe put a radio to his mouth and pressed the send button. ‘Sierra, this is hard stand. We’re ready to depart.’

  ‘Sierra, roger,’ a voice boomed back.

  Stratton followed Howel out of the galley and on to the main deck. The sun glowed low above the horizon and the wind had picked up.

  Bob and the rest of his security retinue had gathered on deck. He stepped forward and offered his hand. ‘It was good to meet you, Mr Stratton.’

  Stratton looked him in the eye. ‘Thanks for everything,’ he said, shaking Bob’s hand firmly. The look he gave Bob was a sincere appreciation for taking on the pirates. Bob, his men and the ship had saved Stratton’s life and the operative didn’t take that lightly.

  Bob nodded, more than proud of his actions that day. He would dine out on the story, no doubt for the rest of his life. He had seen action, and he had rescued a British SAS man to boot.

  ‘I sometimes go through Hereford. Perhaps we’ll bump into each other one day and have a pint,’ Bob ventured with a wink.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Stratton said. ‘You take care,’ he added.

  The Lynx came into a hover by the side of the bulker and held its position alongside. Blythe hurried along the deck to meet it.

  The security guards held out their hands for Stratton as he passed. He shook each one of them before heading for the helicopter.

  ‘You’d have more chance meeting him for a pint in Poole than Hereford,’ Howel said to Bob in a low voice, before following Stratton.

  ‘Bloody ’ell,’ Bob said. ‘Of course.’

  ‘What’s that?’ one of the guys asked a vexed-looking Bob.

  ‘Poole. He’s not SAS. He’s SBS,’ Bob said. ‘Bollocks. I should’ve known. The SAS can’t swim.’

  Stratton climbed the rails and stepped across into the thudding chopper. Howel followed close behind and as the men took their seats inside the cabin it peeled off and headed away low over the water.

  Bob and the crew watched it disappear into the sunset. Stratton was living most of their fantasies.

  ‘I suppose you’ve been on board the Ocean before?’ Howel asked Stratton loudly over the noise of the engines. ‘The SBS have used it a lot over the years as an operations platform.’

  ‘I’ve been on board a few times before,’ Stratton said. He hadn’t been aboard it for several years, the last time off the coast of West Africa when he spent almost a week on it before a land operation.

  The flight took less than half an hour but in that time the sun dropped beyond the horizon. The Ocean looked very much like a traditional aircraft carrier but it was a quarter of the size of the American supercarriers. Its island tower superstructure sat in the centre shoved over to one side to allow as much flat runway space as possible. A strobe light near the back end of the flight deck signalled the helicopter’s landing point. Stratton could make out half a dozen large helicopters in a line along the deck.

  He stared at the carrier through the window. Memories of his time spent on board it flooded back. They hadn’t been particularly interesting ones. Life on a navy ship could be staid, especially when there were adventures to be had elsewhere in the world. He remembered the time the squadron had been waiting for some low-life criminals deep in the jungle along the Sierra Leone–Liberia border to negotiate the release of some British aid workers they had kidnapped. For some reason the kidnappers hadn’t made contact on the satellite phone they’d been given. A couple of less experienced members of the operations HQ supposed the criminals would be conscious of having their positions vectored as soon as they turned on the phone. Others, like Stratton, put their money on the idiots not being able to figure out how to use it. It turned out he was right but for the wrong reasons. Whoever had organised the phone hadn’t activated the pay-as-you-go sim card before sending it to the kidnappers. The card had been included in the package but the gangsters didn’t know its relevance. And so the operation dragged on for another week before Stratton and his team were allowed to swim ashore one night and move upriver until they found a position to lie up. They spent the following day watching the riverbank, where fresh human tracks came down to the water’s edge. Sure enough, a couple of gang members eventually turned up to collect water.

  Stratton and his team tracked them back to their camp where it all ended bloodily for the rest of the gang, but that had been the intention of the message – we don’t pay ransoms but that doesn’t mean we don’t play the game. Stratton hadn’t gone back to the ship but took a helicopter to Sierra Leone and a flight back to the UK.

  He’d hoped he might not see the Ocean again but it looked like he was destined to spend a little more time on it after all.

  The helicopter approached the rear of the flight deck like it was a fixed-wing aircraft, the narrow superstructure ahead and to the right, lit up like a dull Christmas tree, red, white and green. The wind had picked up even more after the sun went down and the little craft buffeted as it came into the hover above the deck. It landed with a heavy bump, the ship coming up to meet it. As soon as they touched down the engine pitch changed and figures headed out of the shadows towards it. One of them pulled open the door.

  Howel stepped out and waited for Stratton to follow him. ‘We’re to go straight to the operations room,’ the young lieutenant said.

  On deck a tall, thin, hawkish-looking officer in a camouflaged windproof eyed Stratton with a level of curiosity that bordered on suspicion.

  ‘Lieutenant Winslow,’ Howel said by way of introduction.

  Winslow nodded, keeping his hands behind his back.

  Stratton didn’t dwell on it, used to the negative attitude from some members of the military. He knew all about how being special forces polarised opinion. People either held you in extremely high regard – more than you generally deserved – or considered you overrated.

  Howel led the way through an open steel door into a red-lit corridor and up a flight of steps. Winslow followed. At the top another secure door that required a code-entry to unlock. Jasper tapped in the pass code and led them into a dimly lit operations room filled with a variety of humming electronic communications and technological equipment operated by several sailors. None of them took much notice of Stratton save a glance as he walked through in his boiler suit and sandals.

  Winslow went ahead and opened a door into a small, gloomy communications shack packed with equipment like a comp
ressed sound studio. A Wren, wearing a pair of headphones, sat concentrating on a complex-looking switchboard. When she saw the officer and the dishevelled man in the boiler suit, she got to her feet like she had been expecting them. She smiled politely and handed Winslow her headset and left the room.

  ‘Your operations officer is on the other end of that,’ Winslow said.

  Stratton put on the headset and adjusted the microphone in front of his lips. Winslow stood in the doorway and Stratton took the opportunity to return the man’s cold glare. ‘Close the door behind you,’ Stratton said, deliberately omitting the words ‘please’ and ‘sir’.

  Winslow wasn’t used to any level of insubordination and had it been any other subordinate in Her Majesty’s armed forces he would have reminded them of their respective ranks. But at that particular moment he knew it was a conflict he would not win. He might have contempt for the man but the Royal Navy did not. He clenched his teeth and closed the door.

  Stratton spent almost an hour inside the room talking to the SBS operations team in Poole over the secure communications system. He explained everything that had happened, in the finest of detail, leaving nothing out. As he had expected, they didn’t react to his description of Hopper’s death. He tried to be as clinical as possible, and if he had been describing someone else who had killed Hopper, he might have managed it. But the hints of his culpability and responsibility for what had happened seeped into the report. The ops team remained coldly automatic with their questions.

  When Stratton finally put down his headset and opened the door into the operations room, the occupants spared him a glance or two, as though in his absence they had been told who he was. To him it looked like they had all heard his story, or, more to the point, his confession. That was impossible of course. No one on the planet but him and the ops team had been privy to that conversation. They were merely curious about the individual who had arrived on the boat from out of nowhere.

  Stratton walked from the operations room back down the steps and outside for some fresh air. He’d forgotten how stale the ship’s filtered air could taste in confined places like the operations room with all its heated circuitry and sweaty personnel.