Exile

by James Swallow

  Along with Guhaad, Lucy had counted only four men on board. She guessed that he wanted to keep his side deal with her as secret as he could, the better to avoid cutting in others for shares of his payday in order to buy their silence. All of them were armed with AKMs, pistols or machetes and without a gun of her own, Lucy felt positively underdressed.

  She drank tepid water from a plastic bottle and used the action to hide a survey of the machine room. Tools and mechanical spares for the boat lay scattered around on a nearby workbench, and she mentally evaluated what would be the best choice for an improvised weapon.

  The hatch slid open and Guhaad entered with another armed guard, holding a satellite phone in his hand. Lucy heard the faint burble of a voice on the other end over the grumble of the dhow’s engine. ‘It is time,’ he demanded. ‘Give him the password for the money.’

  She shook her head and jerked her thumb at the rig in the distance. ‘We’re not there yet.’

  ‘Yarisow has to do this now,’ Guhaad insisted. ‘You pay the rest of the money or I will feed you to the sharks!’

  ‘My gut says not to trust you,’ she retorted.

  ‘And yet . . .’ Guhaad showed Lucy an ugly grin and he rested his free hand on the butt of a .45 semi-automatic stuffed in his waistband.

  ‘Fine.’ She reached out and snatched the phone from him. ‘I know the script for this. Done it more than once.’ Lucy raised the handset to her ear. ‘You listening, mack? Write this down.’ From memory, she quoted a six-digit numerical sequence that would allow Guhaad’s uncle back in New York to unlock the remainder of his fee and close their deal. As he read it back to her, in the background Lucy heard the sound of an FDNY fire truck racing past and the noise gave her a strange, sudden pang of homesickness. She grimaced and tossed the phone back to Guhaad.

  Lucy turned away, putting her hands flat on the workbench. She started silently counting down from ten.

  Guhaad said something she didn’t catch and ended the call. He barked out an order to the other guard and the man left her alone with Guhaad and the mutterer. She heard shouting from the deck above and immediately, the boat lurched into a hard turn. Out of the porthole, the derelict rig drifted from sight as the dhow turned away toward the open ocean.

  Lucy had counted down to three before they made their move. Predictable. She turned on Guhaad, becoming angry. ‘What the hell?’

  The pirate thug glanced at the other man and grinned. Without even looking at Lucy, he hit her with a vicious backhand slap that knocked her against the workbench. He couldn’t have telegraphed it more, but she took the hit and let it stagger her.

  Guhaad pulled the .45 from his belt. It was an old World War II-era Colt, the barrel a dark tunnel aiming at her face. ‘You should have trusted your gut,’ he told her, enjoying the taste of his double-cross.

  She knew the script all right. He was going to beat her, assault her, and then with her throat cut Lucy would go over the side to feed the fishes. The only variable would be if Guhaad decided to let his men come in and get their fill before they finally ended her.

  He waved the gun at her. ‘Take it off.’

  Lucy lowered her gaze to the floor and let the tears come. ‘Wh-what are you going to do?’ Her voice became plaintive and wavering.

  Guhaad liked that. It emboldened him. ‘Take it off!’ he shouted, and with his free hand he grabbed at her collar and pulled. The material ripped, revealing part of her bare shoulder beneath. She staggered away, toward the wall.

  Across the room, the mutterer was watching the drama play out, fingering the grip of his rifle. He shifted from foot to foot, and Lucy knew he was wondering about when he would get his turn.

  For a moment, she became ‘Lula’ again, drawing on the meek and timid mask. ‘Don’t hurt me . . .’

  They were the magic words. Guhaad put the gun down on the workbench and started to unbuckle his belt. Almost as an afterthought, he shot the guard a hard look and yelled at him. ‘Wait outside. I don’t want you staring at me, idiot!’

  Muttering irritably, the other man accepted the order with a nod and slid through the door, latching it shut behind him.

  Guhaad chuckled and turned back to Lucy, still working at his belt. He walked straight into her attack.

  Lucy put the head of the short claw hammer she had secreted in her right hand directly into Guhaad’s cheek, and she did it with enough force to shatter his malar bone. As he fell, she had to flip the hammer to dislodge it, and it took her another two hard strikes about his temple to put the thug down for good. He was just an obstacle now, something to be removed from the world.

  Guhaad twitched as he started to die, making wet gasping sounds and moans that were more animal than human. Lucy smothered his face with an oily rag and started a performance of her own, faking little cries of pain every couple of seconds and punctuating them with occasional sobs.

  ‘You actually fell for that,’ she whispered to the dying man. ‘I mean, you knew I was capable, right? And still you reckoned you could smack me around.’ Guhaad tried to grab at her, but his hand flapped at nothing. ‘You’re gonna die as poor as ever . . . That cash I promised you will evaporate by nightfall.’

  He let out a low hiss, but she kept up the pressure. The bank code Lucy had provided to Yarisow was the digital equivalent of fairy gold. Rubicon’s financial servers would retroactively nullify the money transfer within twelve hours, and along the way embedded tracer software would be able to map the route of blind accounts the crooked hawala broker used to launder pirate income. That data would anonymously appear in an email to a contact at the FBI shortly thereafter. Although he didn’t know it right now, old Uncle Yarisow had less than a day before men in blue windcheaters would come around to kick in his front door.

  When her would-be killer was still, Lucy left him where he had fallen and grabbed Guhaad’s pistol, checking the magazine and making sure there was a bullet in the chamber. She searched him, finding some more ammo, the thug’s sat phone and a familiar needle-like dagger. She pocketed Saito’s weapon and scowled. The stitches in her gut pulled as she moved and Lucy winced. Her pain meds were wearing off.

  She was slow, dehydrated and outmatched four to one. Guhaad had let his dick do the thinking for him and paid the price, but that play wouldn’t work again. I need to do this cold and quiet, Lucy told herself.

  Working quickly, she took the empty water bottle and stuffed it with a long tail of fine wire wool from a box on the workbench. Packing the bottle until it was full, she kept up her breathless gasps. A shadow at the bottom of the door told her that the mutterer was right outside, listening in to the show.

  The mouth of the makeshift bottle-silencer fit loosely over the muzzle of the Colt. It wasn’t an ideal match, but with the steady rumble of the dhow’s engines it would be enough to smother the sound of a shot.

  Lucy took a position by the door and gave out a final long, strangled moan. She started counting down from ten again.

  At four, the hatch slid open and the mutterer peeked in. He stepped into the room and she put a bullet through the man’s neck. The reek of burned plastic and hot metal curdled in the air as he dropped to his knees, clutching at the spurting wound. She sent a second shot into his right eye.

  Lucy put the man’s AKM over her shoulder and cat-footed out onto the mid-deck. The three other gunmen were at the back of the boat, clustered around the helm and smoking cigarettes. She crouched at the foot of the stairs and listened for a couple of minutes, keeping her breathing silent, mentally mapping the positions of the remaining thugs and waiting for the ideal moment.

  One of the men came forward, his bare feet slapping on the deck as he approached the stairwell. Lucy shifted position, putting herself in the deepest part of the shadows.

  When he was almost on top of her, Lucy gave a low whistle and she heard him react. A head appeared in the open hatch with the muzzle of a rifle alongside it.

  Lucy grabbed the gun barrel and yanked it hard,
hissing in pain as the motion made her stitches stiffen again. The rifleman overbalanced and fell down the stairwell, causing a burst of laughter from his pals on the weather deck. He landed in a heap on the lower level and she fired twice at point-blank range.

  The improvised suppressor fell apart as the wire wool melted and fizzed. Lucy grimaced and tossed it away. She thought about going for the AKM but she could already hear the laughter turning into concern. Now there were footfalls as the last two men left the helm and came across the deck, calling out to their comrade.

  She started counting down again, this time marking off the steps to the stairwell. On the mark of three, Lucy bobbed up out of the open hatch and twisted like a gun turret, pivoting from target to target. She took down one man with a shot in the thigh and the stomach, but the last member of Guhaad’s crew only got a glancing hit across his shin.

  He was getting back up as Lucy scrambled out of the hatch. She ran straight into him and shouldered the man against the guide rail. He clawed at her face and pulled the trigger of his assault rifle, but the AKM was pointing at the deck and it only succeeded in ripping splinters out of the wooden planking. Lucy gave him a savage headbutt and he cried out. She shoved the man back again, and this time his feet slipped on the deck. He tumbled over the rail and fell headfirst into the sea. The dhow chugged on regardless, leaving him to flail and yell as he drifted off, falling further and further behind the boat.

  Lucy got to the helm and turned the wheel until the bow was aiming roughly in the direction of the derelict rig, visible on the horizon as a black blob. The pain in her belly was a constant gnawing ache now, and when she peeled back her shirt, the bandage beneath was spotted with blood.

  ‘Secure and regroup,’ she said aloud, giving herself the order. Lucy used a rope to lash the helm in place, and then left it unmanned as she made a quick pass through the dhow from stem to stern. With her injury it was hard work hauling the dead men up to the deck, stripping them and rolling them overboard, but she managed it. Lucy found more ammo, some water and a bottle of painkillers, all of which were welcome.

  As the rig grew before her, she used the satellite phone that had belonged to Guhaad to make a coded call to a dead-drop message box monitored by Rubicon. Her situation report was clipped and to the point; the mission was incomplete, the situation unfavourable, the directive unchanged. Find Ramaas and stop him.

  Sitting in the shade of the weather deck, Lucy used the contents of an expired first-aid kit to re-dress her wounds and then sat silently, watching the rig approach and figuring out a plan.

  She tossed her jumpsuit over the side and cobbled together a new outfit from the least soiled clothes she could find – cargo trousers, threadbare Nike trainers, a baggy soccer shirt and her bloodstained tactical webbing. The rest of the first-aid kit bandages she used to wrap around her chest, and the oversized shirt did the rest to disguise her gender. Lucy rubbed dirt into her face and found a bandanna for her head. The AKM on her shoulder completed the disguise, and she studied herself.

  Not my best look, she thought. But it’ll sell.

  She brought the dhow in at the far end of the floating dock beneath the derelict rig and cut the engines. No-one challenged her; they knew this was Guhaad’s boat, and Ramaas’s right-hand thug could go wherever he wanted. A khat-chewing guard threw her a spaced, disinterested wave as she dropped down to put a rope over a mooring cleat, and Lucy returned it. He looked away, already forgetting about the new arrival.

  She started up one of the rig’s service ladders, rising carefully hand over hand toward the upper decks of the wind-blown platform.

  *

  Mayer had died quietly, succumbing to his injuries during the night. Marc watched Saito zip the corpse into a body bag alongside the other dead Combine mercenaries and saw nothing resembling emotion on the other man’s face. If anything, Mayer’s passing was a minor inconvenience to him, like a tool breaking. Ruiz ignored the whole process, camped out on the drop ramp at the rear of the Osprey’s cargo bay with his gun across his lap and a constant scowl on his face. The two Combine operatives had elected to spend the night on board the parked tiltrotor, watching the clock as the hours ticked down toward the time for the auction, and that had prevented Marc from getting access to the cockpit and the V-22’s radio.

  Marc’s thoughts were churning and he hadn’t been able to catch any more than an hour or two of sleep. Unspent energy rolled around in him, and he tried to walk it off around the perimeter of the gas rig’s giant landing pad.

  Below his feet on the lower decks, Ramaas’s brigand army were stirring. There was tension in the air, a strong sense of violence being held barely in check. After their arrival, Marc had glimpsed groups of other invitees from the warlord’s list of the wealthy and the dangerous. He caught sight of two Americans whose hushed conversation died when he came close. They had the tight-lipped, vigilant look of covert operatives, and Marc briefly considered opening up to them, trying recruit them as allies – but he had no way to make the Americans trust him

  Marc found an isolated corner of the gantry around the helipad and propped himself up on the safety rail. A line of bright orange sunlight glistened at the horizon, turning the ocean into a sheet of beaten copper, and he leaned into the strong breeze off the water, as if it could give him the answer he was grasping for.

  The rusted decking of the gantry creaked and Marc glanced in the direction of the sound. Under a shadowed section of the platform, a skinny figure emerged from the gloom and aimed an assault rifle in his direction. Marc backed away, raising his hands.

  The gunman’s face was hidden behind a red scarf, and he made the universal gesture for begging a cigarette. ‘Sorry, mate,’ Marc replied, shaking his head. ‘Don’t smoke.’

  ‘Good,’ said the gunman. ‘It’s a nasty habit, Dane.’ The scarf came down and a dark, familiar face was looking back at him.

  Marc experienced a moment of brief mental dislocation. ‘Lucy?’ He took a step toward her, then halted. His head darted around, looking to see if anyone was watching them. ‘Holy shit, how did you get out here? Are you okay? How . . .’ He forced himself to stop and take a breath. ‘I’m glad you’re alive.’ A sudden weight of guilt dropped on him. ‘I wanted to go back for you, but Saito –’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Lucy kept to the shadows, watching all the angles she could. ‘You had to make a hard call. If you’d come after me, I would have smacked you upside the head.’

  ‘Yeah, well . . .’ He frowned. ‘I still feel like shit about it.’

  ‘Good.’ She shouldered her AKM rifle and pulled a pistol from a pocket. ‘Here, take this. Reckon you’re gonna need it before the day is out.’

  Marc considered the gun, then handed it back to her. ‘As much as I agree with you, better not. If Saito sees it, I’m not going to be able to explain it away.’

  She shrugged. ‘Your call.’

  He met her gaze. ‘I was afraid . . . he’d killed you.’ A shadow of that bleak possibility washed over him.

  ‘I’m built tough,’ she replied, but there was an edge in her voice. Lucy was in pain, and she moved stiffly. ‘Just running a little slow now, is all.’

  He listened intently as Lucy explained how she had got out to the rig and survived Saito’s attack. In turn, Marc gave her his side of events.

  ‘We need to figure out what to do next,’ Lucy concluded. ‘If we have to, could you get the Osprey out of here quickly?’

  He nodded. ‘Two minutes from a cold start, maybe, yeah. But what does that get us? We still don’t know where the Exile device is and Ramaas won’t volunteer that information. He’s holding all the cards here, Lucy.’

  She gave a humourless smile. ‘You’re more right about that than you know. I think he’s running a game, Marc. This is three-card monte, this is a scam. Except the stakes are a lot higher.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Everything she said had been echoed in Marc’s mind over the past few hours. ‘The Mercedes back in Dubai .
 . . When we shunted it, there were five cases in the boot. We know one got smashed, the other three we saw in the video demand.’

  ‘So where’s the last one? I’ve been wondering that myself.’

  Marc said what both of them were thinking. ‘Here? Everything I’ve seen of Ramaas makes me guess he’d have it close to him.’

  ‘I’d agree with that, if only he hadn’t faked us out at every damn step of the way through this whole thing. But short of searching this place from top to bottom with a particle detector, there’s no way we can be sure.’

  He looked out at the horizon. ‘You can bet that the Americans, the Russians and the Chinese are looking for any excuse to drop a rain of cruise missiles on this rig. If they believe the bomb is here, they’ll send this place to the bottom.’

  ‘But none of them want to take the risk that the case is on their turf.’ She sucked in a breath through her teeth. ‘Man, he’s one clever son-of-a-bitch. Ramaas has all of them chasing their tails while he sits back and laughs his ass off.’

  Marc nodded. ‘He’s got every gun in the world pointed at him, but he doesn’t give a toss about it.’

  Lucy’s lip curled. ‘And all those ordinary people back in Somalia trying to drag themselves out of the chaos, everyone Ramaas pretends to be fighting for, they just want to get back to something like a regular life. There’s no ending to this that works out good for them.’

  Marc gripped the rusted safety rail. ‘Then we have to change the game.’ His jaw stiffened as the frustration and anger he felt inside rose to the surface. ‘I’ve been behind the curve on this. Missing the chance, over and over.’ He shook his head. ‘Not this time, Lucy. We have to end this before it’s too late. Once Ramaas strikes that match . . . Nothing we can do will put out the fire.’

  She gave a grim nod. ‘You better get back to Saito. He’ll get suspicious if you’re not around.’ Lucy pulled her disguise into place and moved toward the shadows.