Brute Force

by Andy McNab

  A strong smell of fuel rose to greet me as the hatch came open.

  I passed the torch beam around the engine room. The upper casings of the Predator's powerful twin diesels were about four feet below me. I slid down the ladder.

  Before moving to the back of the boat, I'd closed off the cocks that fed seawater into the cooling system.

  Standing between the power packs, hunched so my head didn't hit the roof, I swung the torch around till I found what I was looking for: a four-inch-diameter hose that led from the hull into the engine casing. I shouted for Lynn. His face appeared above me a moment later. This was the boaty stuff I did know about.

  'You ready?'

  He nodded, then handed me a spanner. I gave him the torch. A large jubilee clip connected the hose to the engine casing. It took me about a minute to loosen it; another second or two to pull it free. The hose flapped uselessly and a trickle of brown, oily water dribbled onto the floor.

  Lynn shone the torch across the floor until it came to rest on a lever next to the engine mounting.

  I leant forward, wrapped my fingers around it and yanked back, hard. The hose straightened then writhed like a snake as water gushed in under pressure. I scrambled up the ladder and hauled myself back onto the deck.

  Lynn played the torch around the compartment. The floor rapidly became submerged under several inches of water.

  A minute later, I couldn't see the base of the diesels.

  Within five minutes, half the compartment was flooded.

  The boat began to list to stern.

  We went back into the deck saloon and retrieved the plastic bags that contained our possessions – money, credit cards, passports, towels, rucksacks and a change of clothes.

  I told Lynn to tie his bag firmly to his belt, checked it was secure, then did the same myself. I took a last look around, allowing the torch to play across the leather sofas and armchairs. The only light on the boat was coming from the instruments at the helm station.

  As we made our way towards the stern, water was already coursing over the top of the engine hatch.

  Lynn jumped into the tender and I followed. As he readied the outboard, I leant over, untied the ropes and we drifted away as the Predator's arse end began to slip below the waves.

  I liked destroying things that cost lots of money. It gave me the same satisfaction as firing, say, a Stinger that cost over a hundred thousand dollars. But over three million pounds? This was a good day out.

  After a couple of minutes, I lost sight of the boat, then, when we were about fifty metres away, the clouds parted, giving us a momentary glimpse of the boat, up-ended, her bow pointing towards the stars.

  With a rush of air and a gurgling sound, it suddenly slid beneath the water.

  Lynn tugged the starter-cord and the outboard coughed into life.

  78

  I checked my watch. With the sun rising a little after six, we needed to make landfall within the next forty minutes to make maximum use of the darkness. The spray came hard in our faces and water made its way into every orifice, but we maintained a steady lick in the direction of the main harbour. After twenty minutes two sets of navigation beacons reared up either side of its large, natural entrance.

  I tapped Lynn on the shoulder and pointed to the right. Without my having to say anything, he adjusted course.

  Fifteen minutes later, we were close enough to the shore for me to be able to make out the headland west of the harbour that I'd used as the marker for our run-in. The lights of the city twinkled through the salt-spray crashing up from the bow. I could make out the headlights of cars moving along the coast road.

  A minute later, I spotted the big, T-shaped hotel and brought it to Lynn's attention by tapping him on the shoulder again. He gave me a thumbs-up and chopped the throttle.

  As we slowed, the engine ticking over to mask our approach, I clocked the lights of a ship approaching the harbour to the east – nothing for us to worry about, but a reminder that there were vessels in the vicinity. Behind us, the horizon was black and empty. Only in front, just above the bow of the tender, was there any kind of definition – a skyline dotted with lights, rising and falling gently in the swell.

  Beneath and to the right of the hotel, I could see a long dark expanse – an area devoid of lights that I knew must be the beach.

  When we were around 500 metres from the shore, I told Lynn to kill the engine altogether.

  There were two paddles in the side compartment of the tender. The headland masked the worst of the incoming swell, but as we came within a hundred metres of the shoreline, I could hear the steady crash of surf on shingle. I paddled from the front and Lynn from the rear. We worked hard to keep the dinghy steady as the water got choppier and the waves and the back-pull more pronounced.

  A large wave hit us amidships and I thought we were going to tip over. We both leant hard to our right and the tender steadied.

  A second or two later, I felt the propeller scrape some rocks. I jumped over the side, grabbed the rope and pulled us onto the shingle.

  PART SEVEN

  79

  I yanked Lynn into a squat beside me and looked left and right along the beach. Fifty metres or so above us, at the top of the cliff, I could just make out the red neon sign on the roof of the hotel.

  Lynn leant forward and whispered in my ear. 'Al Funduq Al Bahr Al Magrib. It means the Hotel of the Western Sea. Definitely wasn't here in my day.'

  We'd had to leave the tender on the beach; there had been no other options. There was nothing to link it to the Predator, and I was counting on it getting nicked long before it was reported. We crept forward to the base of the cliff. I told Lynn to swap his wet clothes for the dry set in his bag while I recce'd for one of the pathways I'd spotted on the Google map.

  It didn't take me long to find a flight of steps that led up to the hotel car park. Lynn had changed and was ready to go. It took me a couple of minutes to do the same. I removed the day sack from the plastic bag, opened it up and shoved everything inside – waterproofs, wet clothes, plastic bag, the lot. Lynn did the same.

  I glanced at my watch. It was almost a quarter to six – first light in half an hour, perhaps less. I motioned at Lynn to follow me.

  The steps had been dug into the cliff face and reinforced with concrete. The safety rail was so corroded that it had parted company in places with its stanchions. I told Lynn to stay as far away from it as possible and to watch his step.

  At the top I dropped behind a wall and scanned the car park for any sign of activity. Ten or twelve vehicles stood in line, slick with rainwater. The red neon sign reflected off the puddles left by the storm.

  The main entrance to the hotel – about forty metres away – was protected from the elements by a flat, overhanging roof. A doorman sheltered beneath it, smoking a cigarette. A policeman stood next to him holding a clipboard. Garish lights shone through the glass doors from the lobby behind them. There were people moving around inside.

  I scanned left and found what I was looking for: a side exit leading from a ground-floor corridor into the car park.

  I tugged at Lynn's sweater and pulled him close. 'Remember, you have to convince yourself . . .'

  I headed for the door with Lynn close behind. I knew it was too dark for anyone in the bright lights of the lobby or the entranceway to notice us, but I checked over my shoulder just to make sure. No one, as far as I could tell, was behind us. It was going to be a different story in daylight.

  The doorman and the policeman were too busy waffling to each other to pay any attention to us.

  I still had one of the kitchen knives with me in case we had a drama. I thought I might need it to work the catch, but the side door was open. I pulled it back and pushed Lynn inside.

  Lynn strode down the corridor as if he owned the place, and kept going until he reached the lobby. He manoeuvred between the guests and the bags and nodded imperiously to a concierge at the reception as he made his way to the main entrance. He p
ushed open the double doors and stepped outside, sniffing the morning air appreciatively. I kept a few steps behind him, hoping we looked like everybody else – a couple of tourists with backpacks setting off for a day's sightseeing.

  The doorman dropped his cigarette and the policeman straightened.

  'Sabah al-kheer.' Lynn's voice echoed in the still air.

  The doorman touched his cap and bowed. 'Sabah al-noor, ya rayis.' He whistled and a white Peugeot pulled away from the rank to our left. It drew up alongside us, brakes squealing.

  The doorman did his thing, opening the door and bowing several times as Lynn and I climbed in the back.

  Libya's answer to Tom Jones, backed by an orchestra comprised entirely of reedy, high-pitched wind instruments, blasted from a couple of speakers sitting on the rear parcel shelf. Lynn slipped a dollar into the doorman's outstretched hand. It disappeared into his pocket with the fluidity of a conjuring trick. The door slammed. Lynn spoke to the driver and I waited for the taxi to go, but it just sat there, engine idling.

  I glanced up. The policeman was standing next to the window, clipboard at the ready. He tapped the window with the end of his biro.

  Lynn wound it down and examined the man's aggressive bloodshot eyes.

  'Taruh fein?' A waft of onion breath filled the back of the car. The policeman's teeth looked as if he'd been chewing tar.

  Lynn held the stare, smiled and gave him a bit of hubba-hubba.

  The policeman glared back, eyes narrowing into slits.

  I moved my hand onto the door handle, ready to do a runner back down to the beach and hope the tender was still there. If it wasn't, I'd just keep running.

  'Taruh fein?' the policeman asked again.

  Lynn jabbered a bit more then reached into his pocket, produced a five-dollar bill and nodded as Abraham Lincoln disappeared under the top sheet of the policeman's clipboard.

  'Shukran, ya effendi.' He banged the roof of the cab and we set off in the direction of the Medina, just as the sun began to rise over Tripoli's myriad roofs and minarets.

  'He wanted to know about our "tourist guide". I said we'd arranged to meet him at the Medina.'

  'He believed you?'

  'He believed President Lincoln – and that's all that matters.'

  80

  The taxi pulled up beneath the thick defensive walls of a castle.

  'The old citadel.' Lynn looked up at it like a kid admiring a Christmas tree. 'Tripoli's most famous landmark. Riddled inside with a maze of alleyways.' He tapped the driver on the shoulder and gave him a burst of hubba-hubba.

  The driver's face registered some alarm until Lynn dug a small wad of dollars out of his pocket. He held them under the driver's nose before slapping a ten-dollar bill down on the front seat. The driver picked it up, held it to his eye and appeared to sniff it. He nodded, satisfied, and we stepped out onto the cracked and crumbling pavement.

  Traffic hurtled in every direction. Vast portraits of Colonel Gaddafi, inscrutable behind his Aviators, stared down at us from every corner. The Great Leader was represented in a variety of roles and poses: in military uniform, in tribal robes, and even in a blue nylon suit with lapels you could land a plane on.

  Lynn gestured around us. 'This used to be Martyrs' Square until Gaddafi cleared it so his people could hold mass rallies in praise of his genius.' He pointed to a gap in the walls. 'We're headed in there, into the Medina. Most of the buildings are sixteenth to eighteenth century, the heyday of Libya's Turkish occupation, but a lot pre-date . . .'

  This was scarcely the time for a history lesson, but I let Lynn ramble on. Anyone watching us, and there seemed to be plenty of them, would think we were doing the guided tour.

  I told him to lead on.

  We entered the Medina through a tall stone archway. It was still fairly dark and our warm breath swirled in the flickering street lights. It didn't take long for the noise of traffic from the square to recede. A hundred metres in, all I could hear of the outside world was the occasional car horn.

  Ahead of us was a long, straight cobbled street with shops on each side and a minaret at the end. The puddles would have to wait until midday before the sun would reach in and dry them out.

  The wail of a bloke calling the faithful to prayer sounded up somewhere close by, and was immediately answered by rallying cries from tinny, crackling speakers all around us. The dawn chorus gradually gave way to the clatter of shutters being thrown open for the day and shopkeepers gobbing onto the pavement as we passed.

  Lynn went back into tour-guide mode. There were a number of souks in this part of the Medina. We were currently passing through the copper market. The gold, silver, jewellery, carpet, shoe, and even grocery emporiums were close by. You could buy anything you wanted here, as long as you didn't mind too much if it worked. 'The Gaddafi watch was all the rage in my day; they never managed to tell the right time.'

  Lynn stopped, and I took the chance to scan behind me. The only people who were out and about looked like they really did have a valid reason for being here, but there was only one way to be sure.

  'Take a left.'

  We headed down an alleyway that was too narrow for cars. An old man in a long gelabaya wobbled alongside us on a

  pushbike then peeled away at the next turning. We passed three houses with big, thick wooden doors and heavy, ornate iron knockers. One door was open. I saw a courtyard with a dried-up fountain in the middle. A young boy sat on its edge playing with a toy. A woman hung washing on a line stretched between two wrought-iron balconies. She stopped what she was doing to stare down at us. As soon as our eyes met she retreated into the shadows.

  We moved on. Lynn pointed out items of interest: the whitewashed walls, the tiles around the windows. He knew what he was doing: he pointed at stuff behind us occasionally, so I was able to do a scan. The only person who grabbed my attention was a guy with a load of cloth balanced on his head. I'd clocked him hanging around the main entrance to the Medina, seen him again on the main street, and now he was here.

  Lynn pressed on. Copper-workers hammered plates into shape near the entrance to a mosque. I kept expecting to be pursued, as I'd been in every other Arab country I'd ever been to, by a small army of the curious and the persistent – kids, usually, tugging at your shirt and asking for baksheesh – but all we got here was the odd sidelong glance and the occasional stare.

  We came to a crossroads. I nodded left down another narrow street, filled this time with shops and stalls.

  We wove our way between food, shoe and CD stalls until we eventually reached another crossroads.

  We took another left: the third side of the square. If the guy with the bundle of cloth on his head was still behind us, it was no accident.

  He was nowhere to be seen.

  81

  We hit a wall of noise. Cars stretched nose to bumper down the main street, their exhausts belching thick, badly refined Libyan diesel. Horns blared. Pedestrians jostled past us and each other: office-workers in suits; old men in white robes; women in long dresses and headscarves.

  Lynn glanced up and down the street, getting his bearings. 'Sharia Hara Kebir. The teahouse isn't far.'

  'Mansour's local?'