PULAU MATI

by John L. Evans

  Late in the afternoon when they had completed the circle and seen nothing suspicious, Haatim approached the island through a break in the mine screen although the draft of the Zaafir when it was so lightly loaded was sure to clear them. They dropped anchor outside the bay at the island’s northwest corner. Fadi and two of Dawoud’s men took the motorboat to the island to retrieve the two watchers. When the watchers were aboard the yacht and standing before Haatim, they said nothing suspicious had come near the island or flown over it. Both said they had heard what they thought were explosions coming from the direction of the pirate island. They did not think them single claps of thunder because the sky had been cloudless. The pirates could have been testing a weapon, Haatim thought. Overall, he was pleased. The island had not been compromised and was still usable.

  Over the next few days they planned to retrieve the anti-shipping mines and store them on the island. Haatim had debated leaving them in the water but if a ship should sink from one of the mines, it would draw unwelcome attention to the island. If Allah willed it they would find another pilot they could extort and eventually capture an aircraft suitable for their purposes. Haatim believed Allah was testing him and if he remained faithful and patient, all would be revealed and he would succeed.

  In the morning Gray and his companions pulled in and emptied the crab traps, gathered some fruit and some of the foodstuffs the pirates had moved to the island, gathered the blankets from flight A402 and loaded everything into the Zodiac. They left the Claymore mines in the hut but brought along the rifles, still fearful that trouble could find them. Shinobu blew the horn when the rafts reached the ship. After removing the outboard engine from the bamboo raft, Keegan set the raft adrift. As soon as he and Dayah had winched up the engine and the Zodiac, Shinobu weighed anchor and set sail for Darwin. Keegan and Dayah resumed the work of repairing the pirates’ motorboat.

  Before turning onto a direct course for the Australian port, Shinobu turned the ship around to the north. He steered the ship north by north west of the island to clear reefs showing on the charts. They could have headed on a more direct route to Darwin, saving an hour, but Gray had asked Shinobu if they could go north around the island they were leaving so he might get a closer look at what he suspected had been the hijacker’s destination. That island was on the flight path of the Emirates 797 before it turned toward the pirates’ island where it crashed. The distance was also correct as no other island on the same heading appeared close enough on the charts. From atop the peak of the pirates’ island, Gray had estimated the distance to the other island as fifty or more miles but by the charts it was half that. He laid blame for the missed estimate to inexperience estimating distances over water and to the island being long and flat.

  The shallow water over the reef showed clearly from the bridge of the Kesempatan and Shinobu continued on the heading that would take them around it, all the while sailing nearer to the other island. Carrying a pair of very good binoculars found on the ship, Gray climbed to a platform twenty feet above the bridge that Shinobu called a monkey bridge. After getting his body attuned to the motion of the ship so he could use the glasses, Gray studied the island as it grew nearer.

  Anna climbed up beside him and asked, “Do you think that island was the hijacker’s destination?”

  Gray did not answer her question but handed over the binoculars. “Tell me what you see.”

  Anna required the same adjustment to the ship’s motion before she was able to use the binoculars. When she could keep the image in her field of view, she swept the glasses from one end of the island to the other. “Deserted as far as I can tell but there is a flat line that I can see between the trees that runs across the island. It that a runway?”

  “That is the word I was looking for. I can Google earth it in Darwin and see the island from a birds eye view to confirm that. I’m thinking the international community may like to know about this island and especially Australia, after losing Lleyton and Roland.”

  Anna did not comment but held the glasses on a single area and adjusted them more carefully. “Oh, meine Gott, there is a ship,” she said, pointing at the west edge of the island. She handed the binoculars back to Gray.

  The front part of the upper deck and superstructure of a very sleek and modern appearing yacht lay abeam to them maybe ten miles away. Much like the yacht they had seen yesterday. The Kesempatan’s progress on its present heading was bringing the yacht fully into view. Gray turned and scrambled down the ladder to the bridge, Anna following.

  From the bridge only the superstructure of the yacht was visible over the horizon. “Shinobu, thirty degrees off the right side!” he said, handing the old man the binoculars.

  “Starboard!” Shinobu said, grinning but taking the glasses and scanning in the direction Gray indicated. After only a moment, he said, “We are nearly at the end of the reef. Do we turn or try to contact the ship?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You believe that island was the destination of the hijacker?”

  Gray nodded. “We are thinking along similar lines. Anna and I both think we see a runway on the island.” He had not taken his eyes from the yacht and he suddenly realized it was underway and turning toward them. Before he could bring it to Shinobu’s attention, a rending explosion shook the bridge and a great geyser of water and smoke obscured the bow of the ship. The ship slowed noticeably even before Shinobu pulled back the throttles. He gave the horn a blast which was the call for everyone to the bridge.

  “A mine?” Gray asked.

  Shinobu considered a moment before replying. “I can believe no other possibility. I believe we are holed badly from the way the ship slowed.”

  Dayah and Keegan came running onto the bridge.

  “Is the launch seaworthy?” Shinobu asked them.

  “Aye, but not tested.”

  “Winch it over the side. And the Zodiac too,” the old man said.

  “Where is Melanie?” Gray asked.

  “In the quarters. I’ll get her,” Anna said.

  Gray said, “Dayah, help Keegan. I’ll get the food, water and weapons.”

  When everyone but Gray and Shinobu had left the bridge, Gray asked, “How long will we stay afloat?”

  The old man did not reply. He had the glasses on the yacht. “We have plenty of time to get off the ship. The bigger question is whether we wait for the yacht. It will be here long before this ship sinks.”

  “It turned for us before we hit the mine. I think it was going to intercept us.”

  “Suspicious but not conclusive.”

  “Can we tell what nationality it is?”

  “Your eyes are sharper than mine.” He handed the glasses to Gray.

  “It looks like a black flag with white lettering or symbols. The flag’s nearly head on and not still enough for me to tell what the lettering says... although it does not look like the English alphabet anyway.”

  Shinobu nodded gravely. “I can think of no nation that uses that combination. The Abu Sayyaf flies a black flag with Arabic lettering in white, sometimes a red flag with a sword and crescent.”

  “Have you had experience with them?”

  “Fortunately, not directly. I have lived in South Asia for much of the last fifty years and have heard much of them. It is my belief we should not wait for the yacht.”

  “We agree then. Can you turn the ship abeam of them to hide our departure?”

  “I am doing so.”

  “Bring those good binoculars!” Gray hollered as he ran from the bridge. In the galley he bagged all the water bottles that remained and all the easily portable food. During their exploration of the ship they had found more weapons and each now had a rifle although the cartridge chambering was still mixed. Six rifles, the bandoliers and two food and water bags were too much to carry. He carried the food and water to the motorboat which Keegan had raised from the deck with the winch. Anna came on deck with Melanie, and Keegan said to put her in the boat now so she did not have t
o climb down the ladder. When Melanie was aboard and wrapped in blankets, Anna went with Gray to the quarters to get the rifles and ammunition. The deck of the ship was listing with both the bow and port side down, fortunate because it shielded the motorboat and winch from view of the yacht.

  Shinobu joined them on deck and they swung the motorboat out over the side and lowered it to the water. The ladder pivoted at the top so the list caused it to swing out from the ship which made it awkward to descend although it could have been worse. If it had not pivoted, then one would have had to climb down using only their arms. Gray went down first and did a cursory examination for leaks and unhooked the winch. He yelled up to Shinobu, “Shinobu, the Zodiac will just slow us down. Do you think it necessary?”

  The old man shook his head. “No time for that. We need all the head start we can get. That is a fast yacht.”

  The others climbed down and Keegan started the engine. Gray started to ask if it had enough fuel to reach the pirates’ island but the young Irishman said, “I fueled it already.”

  “Steer a heading of one hundred fifty degrees,” Shinobu told Keegan. “It will keep the Kesempatan between us and the yacht for as long as possible. And we will be going back over the same water that we came up on.”

  Keegan pushed the throttle forward and the engine sounded strong. The boat came up on plane and bumped across the shallow waves. Gray wondered if the bolts and plugs Keegan and Dayah had put in the hull would stay tight with the constant pounding.

  “What do you think we are doing speed wise?” he asked Shinobu.

  “It is a big engine and we are lightly loaded. Maybe fifteen, eighteen knots.”

  “What about the yacht?”

  “Maybe twenty five, or more.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Watch for the bow of the yacht to peek around the Kesempatan and turn the opposite direction. Their lookouts will be on the bridge. Maybe we will see the bow first and can use the cover of our ship to the fullest advantage. Other than that, hope this boat stays together.”

  They did both. When the lower part of the Kesempatan’s hull was obscured by the horizon, they saw just the upper part of the yacht’s bow around the west end. Gray instructed Keegan to bear left ten degrees. The yacht’s bow soon disappeared behind the ship. Gray guessed they had sped south from the Kesempatan for twenty five to thirty minutes when the superstructure of the yacht came into view. It moved very slowly past the sinking ship, maybe to avoid other mines but it was soon gaining on them.

  Since their prayers at daybreak, Haatim’s crew had retrieved a dozen of the anti-shipping mines forming the arc around the bay. He and the rest of the crew had feared the task but it had proved easier and less nerve wracking than laying the mines. Wearing a mask and fins and traveling between the mines by hanging onto the back of the motorboat, Fadi dived underwater the two and one half meters to the mines and disarmed them with a twist of the fuse. He and one of Dawoud’s men relieved each other of the diving every ten mines. They completed disarming the entire arc and headed back to the yacht which was coming much more slowly along the string of mines and using the winch to hoist them out of the water.

  Fadi came aboard and was pulling the fuses of the recovered mines and rinsing them with fresh water when one of Dawoud’s men shouted, pointing to the south. The top most parts of a ship were peeking above the horizon.

  Haatim grabbed the binoculars, ran up the stairs to the flying bridge and glassed the ship. There was little doubt it was the infidel pirate’s ship as he could just make out the red letters on the rust streaked port side even if they were not distinct enough to see they spelled Kesempatan. Was the man insane? He knows the channel there is mined. He was told only a few weeks ago.

  Making all of its probable top speed of 10 knots, the ship continued up the channel well out from the reef that extended north from the pirate’s island. Haatim considered firing the cannon across its bow but the distance was too great. The ship was on a course to hit the string of mines well before it was in range of the cannon. Although Haatim had no love for the pirates, given a choice he would have tried to warn them.

  Haatim had some very powerful binoculars on the bridge but they were not very useful on the ship because of the rolling motion. He had however attained some proficiency at using them by getting his body into a rhythm with the yacht’s movements. He called for one of the men to bring the binoculars up to him. With the more powerful glasses, Haatim could make out details of the ship’s superstructure. Two people were on the monkey bridge of the Kesempatan. Their proportions were not quite what he had expected and their skin color was lighter than he had expected. He rested his eyes a moment but when he put the glasses back on the ship, the monkey bridge was deserted.

  Haatim yelled at Fadi to finish the mine they were on and then winch the motorboat onboard and tell him when it was done. When Fadi yelled all clear, Haatim asked Dawoud to raise the Abu Sayyaf flag. Seeing the flag going up brought a cheer from the men as Haatim pushed the throttle forward and started the yacht turning onto a direct heading for the ship, not to rescue those aboard but to kill them. They could not risk survivors telling the world their ship was sunk by a mine.

  A great gout of water rose twice the height of the Kesempatan’s deck when the mine detonated near its bow. It took more than half a minute for the sound to reach Haatim’s ears.

  Chapter XIII The Yacht

  “We will make it to the island a few kilometers ahead of them if we continue at this rate,” Shinobu stated. No sooner had he said that than Dayah screeched and lifted her bare feet from the inch of water that had accumulated in the bottom of the boat.

  While waiting in ambush at the clearing for the last two pirates, they had witnessed what happened to the motorboat’s speed when it was nearly swamped. If their boat slowed even moderately, the yacht would catch up and Gray had figured out that whoever was on that yacht meant to kill them. They did not want anyone from a ship sunk by one of their mines to make it to civilization and tell the story. If the yacht closed with the motorboat, Gray and his companions were sitting ducks. If the leaks worsened, the men on the yacht might simply wait for the motorboat to sink. There wasn’t a single life jacket on the boat.

  Keegan turned the wheel over to Shinobu and checked the bilge pump outlet. It was shooting out a strong stream of water. He dropped to hands and knees and crawled from repair to repair.

  “This is one,” he hollered and hand tightened the nut before taking a wrench to it.

  Dayah went to her knees and crawled under the overhang of the helm. “Here one,” she yelled.

  Keegan scurried over and reached an arm under and felt around blindly. Dayah guided his hand to the nut. When he had tightened that nut with a wrench, they both crawled from repair to repair but found no more loose nuts.

  The water did not recede. Rather it looked like it had risen an additional inch, which meant the hull rode another inch lower. Keegan pounded his forehead trying to remember where they had made other repairs. He looked at Dayah just as she pointed to a bullet hole in the cover over the engine compartment. “Ahhhhg,” he groaned and pulled off the cover. “that one weh repaired from the bottom of the boat.”

  Gray eyed the location of the bullet hole in the cover and leaned over and estimated its path through the engine compartment. The bullet had just missed the end of the exhaust manifold and some other plumbing and passed through a two inch diameter relief hole in a sheet of metal between the engine and the actual hull of the boat. The water was coming up through a half inch hole like a drinking fountain.

  Keegan held up a rubber plug with a bolt through it. “I cannot get me hand in there.”

  “I do it,” Dayah said, snatching the plug from his hand.

  Gray grabbed her arm. “Dayah, that manifold will boil your flesh!”

  “I not touch it.” She moved around to the end of the engine compartment closest to the leak and slid her arm around the plumbing and between the compartment’
s wall and the manifold. The motorboat bounced over a larger wave. The hiss of burnt flesh came from the compartment. Dayah screeched and yanked her arm from the compartment. Gray splashed water from the boat’s bottom over the raw sear mark on her arm.

  “I lost plug. You got more?” she asked, gritting her teeth.

  Keegan eyed her a moment and reached into the tool box for another. Gray said, “Keegan, hold her body firmly against the compartment so she moves with the boat. I’ll hold a shield between her arm and the manifold.” He looked around the boat for something flat and strong and small enough to fit into the cramped space but big enough for him to hold on to without burning his hands. A panel covering a map compartment at the helm caught his eye. He opened the panel and yanked it off its hinges. He knelt on the opposite side of the engine from Dayah and dropped the panel close to the manifold but not touching it. His hands immediately felt the heat. “Anna, pour water over my hands!”

  Dayah already had her arm through the space. Using a plastic bottle Anna dribbled water over Gray’s hands and the panel, careful not to pour it onto the manifold. When the boat made a larger movement Dayah moved and her arm hit the panel but it did not burn her. After a moment she said, “It in. Not tight.”

  Keegan handed her a socket wrench with a small ratchet. “Can yer get this en there?”

  “I afraid plug go out.”

  “You can’t hold your arm in there until we reach the island,” Gray said. “Keegan, how many of those plugs you got?”

  “One more o’ that size.”

  “Dayah, tighten it as well as you can. And then get the wrench on it as quickly as possible. Anna, more water!”

  The young Malay grimaced with the effort to finger tighten the nut. After a moment she took the ratchet and socket into her other hand, took a deep breath like she was going to dive under water and lifted her hand from the plug only long enough to transfer the wrench. She stared into the sky as she worked the socket onto the bolt by feel. A smile came to her face and she shifted position slightly to work the ratchet. They could hear the clicks as the bolt tightened, expanding the plug.