The Hijack

by Duncan Falconer

  ‘Hold,’ shouted Abed, his order echoed by Ibrahim.

  The tanker’s bow lights began to reveal more details of the ship.The anchors fixed either side could plainly be seen, and beneath them the tapered scars of grease and rust which ran down the sides to the water. Individual windows and portholes in the superstructure could be made out, some lit, some with blinds half closed, others in darkness, and then the rails that lined the deck became clear.

  ‘Keep the line tight,’ Ibrahim shouted to the coxswain who touched the revs just enough to pull the boat back and maintain the line on the surface.

  The superstructure started to disappear from the point of view of Abed’s boat as the massive bows loomed above to block it out. The side of the tanker became the predominant view, cutting through the water like a vast screen of steel that seemed to have no end, and the name came into full view: Orion Star. It was the final confirmation this was their boat.

  Abed picked out various points of interest on the tanker: the black silhouette of the crane against the back glow of lights halfway along the deck, the boarding ramp secured at rail level and hanging over the side and the vast network of pipes that grew out of the pump house immediately forward of the superstructure and ran the length of the deck to the bows.

  Another few seconds and they would be exposed under the arc of the bow lights. If any of the crew happened to be looking over the side they might see one of the boats, but the chance of that at this time of night was slim. Most of the crew would be tucked up in bed or watching a movie in the entertainment quarters. The engine room might already be empty and running on automatic alarm systems. There would be no more than three men on the bridge, two officers and a watch keeper, and the captain would be in his quarters or watching a movie with the rest of the officers in their own mess. That was normal routine at least, and hopefully there was nothing unusual happening aboard this night.

  The verticle edge of the bows sliced easily through the water between the two small wooden boats and the deep hum of the enormous engine began to filter through the noise of the wind and the engine of Abed’s boat. The snag was seconds away. There was no danger of the line slipping under the tanker because of the depth of the snub-nosed bow breaker beneath the water that extended several metres ahead of the furthest visible point of the bows above water. The coxswains kept the nose of the boats pointing towards the front of the tanker so that when the line was snagged they would move forwards and not jerk to the side.

  Everyone crouched and held on, waiting for the sudden acceleration. Abed kept a firm hold of the console, all the time searching the deck of the tanker and bridge wings for any sign of life. He could make out a figure moving on the bridge but nothing on deck or on the external stairways of the superstructure. All seemed well.

  The line suddenly snapped taut as a violin string as it whipped out of the water and the ring in the bows creaked under the strain, but the boat did not immediately move. During one such training exercise, the line snapped and whipped back with such force it took one of the men’s ears clean off. This line was stronger, but there would always be doubt until they were under way.The bolt suddenly clunked as it moved into another position in the ring, almost giving the man directly behind it heart failure, then as the line reached its full stretch the boat lurched forward as if it had harpooned a thunderous whale. They matched the speed of the tanker within seconds, moving at an angle to it and drawing closer to the side.

  A hundred metres of line brought them alongside the tanker just less than a third of the way down from the bows. The boat thumped against the side of the vast steel wall that went up to the heavens and the men quickly unfastened four fibreglass poles secured in the bottom of the deck. Using a technique they had practised endlessly, the ends of two poles were connected with bayonet fittings and then fed back so that the next one could be attached to the end. As the pole got longer, it became a more difficult task to perform. Abed’s boat was four metres long but since the pole had to be eleven metres in length it meant that most of it was allowed to extend over the stern and into the water while the last sections were attached. The final piece of equipment was a hook slotted into the end of the pole which had a large coil of lightweight caving ladder fixed to it. The idea for the device was taken from Indonesian pirates. Once the pole was constructed, the end with the hook was raised into the vertical position against the boat as the ladder unfolded and pushed up, the aim being to place the hook on to the edge of the deck or rails. The combination of gusting wind, rain and swell made it difficult to control the flexible pole and stop it from swinging about. This was where the endless training paid off. When the teams first practised the technique on dry land in perfect conditions they had many failures such as losing control of the pole completely or the hook and ladder falling off the end. When they progressed to doing it at sea in a rocking boat many thought they would never ever be able to manage it first attempt, as Abed had demanded. But in time they became proficient and confidence soared. They only brought one set of ladder and poles per boat for this mission and therefore failure to hook on meant the failure of the entire operation.After several minutes of extreme effort, and one very close call where they almost lost control of the pole completely, a supreme push to keep it vertical saw the hook snag on to the edge of the deck and the pole was pulled down and allowed to fall into the sea.

  ‘Abed,’ Ibrahim called out, waiting for the order.

  ‘Go,’Abed said, and Ibrahim was first up the ladder, his scimitar dangling from his back. When he was halfway up the next man followed. Abed went next and quickly pulled himself up the rungs, his arms and legs working in tandem. Eleven metres is a long climb on a caving ladder, especially when the climber is being blown about and banged against the side of a steel wall, but they had done it so many times they ran up like gibbons.

  When Abed reached the deck, he swung over the rail and joined Ibrahim and the other man lying flat on their bellies by a thick pipe, taking a moment to rest their exhausted arms while at the same time scanning the area. As the fourth man arrived, Abed and Ibrahim got to their feet and made their way down the deck to the halfway point where a workshop was located a few metres inboard close to a heli-pad.Abed moved to the corner of the workshop from where he could get a look at the superstructure fifty metres away. There was no sign of life other than on the bridge and judging by the relaxed movement of those inside, the crew were unaware of the intruders.

  Within a few minutes the rest of the men were gathered against the wall of the workshop which was large enough to hide all nine of them comfortably. The coxswain remained with the boat, which he kept tight alongside.

  Abed personally checked his men were all accounted for then signalled them to move. They followed him at the crouch across the open deck towards the spine where the vast collection of pipes some ten feet high ran the entire length of the centre of the ship. With cover from view from the superstructure, they made their way along the pipes towards it.

  They arrived at the pump house just in front of the superstructure and stopped, waiting for the other team which should have been mirroring Abed’s on the other side of the tanker, but there was no sign of them. Ibrahim crouched to look under the wall of pipes, hoping to see feet moving on the other side. The contingency plan if the other team failed to make it was to complete the mission, even though nine against twenty-seven increased the chance of failure.

  ‘Ha! They come,’ Ibrahim whispered excitedly but not without some relief.

  Shadows moved towards them on the other side of the pipes and the team leader looked around the corner and gave Abed a solid thumbs up indicating all his men were with him.

  Abed gave the signal and the two groups moved off in opposite directions,Abed’s team heading around to the starboard side of the superstructure while the other went to port.

  He paused at the corner of the superstructure, checking once more that it was clear, before making his way to the main deck entrance that faced starboard. Hi
s men gathered in a line against the bulkhead while he studied the heavy steel entrance door which was closed. The door was evenly surrounded by six dogs - heavy clips - all in the unlocked position except one, the centre dog opposite the hinges. He carefully pulled the lever down, unlocking it, and jerked the heavy door open just enough to look inside. The entrance was a weather-lock, a small chamber with another door a few feet away, but that was fully open and the broad corridor beyond was brightly lit, immaculately clean and empty. This was the first real indication that the ship was at security level one, its lowest level, and the security officer was expecting nothing in the way of danger.

  Abed checked his watch. It was 2 a.m. He expected the task to be complete and the teams heading back to the boats by 3 a.m.

  ‘Allah is great,’ Ibrahim said to Abed as a way of wishing them luck. ‘And so is Jesus too,’ he added as an afterthought, remembering Abed was a Christian.

  Abed checked the faces of his men who crouched watching him, waiting anxiously for the word.

  Abed opened the door fully, stepped inside, stood in the weather-lock and looked down the corridor to the door at the far end some thirty metres away. It opened and the leader of the other team stepped inside to face him.

  Abed then did something the men were not expecting: he stood for what seemed a long time in the doorway as if locked in a trance. Ibrahim at first thought Abed had heard or seen something, but there was nothing.

  ‘Abed?’ Ibrahim whispered. ‘What is it . . .Abed?’

  Abed did not respond. Ibrahim stepped through the door, reached out and took Abed’s shoulder. ‘Abed,’ he said again.

  Abed turned to look Ibrahim in the eyes. For a moment, Ibrahim thought he saw fear in his face. He had always believed Abed did not know the meaning of the word and was suddenly filled with concern. His own orders, privately conveyed from the sheiks, was that if anything happened to Abed, he was to take charge of the mission, and if any member of the team had a change of heart, for whatever reason, he was to be instantly killed. They had never said as much but that would include Abed.

  Ibrahim’s hand tightened on his scimitar and slowly started to draw it from its scabbard. But whatever was going through Abed’s mind seemed to pass and he lowered his eyes and faced the corridor again.

  He drew his scimitar, adjusted his grip around the haft and stepped from the darkness of the weather-lock into the brightness of the ship, followed by Ibrahim and the others.

  Chapter 2

  Stratton stood in the arched entrance of a grand Elizabethan country house set in ten acres of manicured gardens, looking down on to a spacious, groomed lawn where a hundred well-heeled guests were enjoying an official morning garden party: VIPs, the titled, ambassadors, statesmen and ministers of various levels. He had arrived with his four-man team at dawn to carry out preliminary security checks, search the grounds and scan the extra staff, caterers and valets as they arrived.The guests had started trickling in around 10 a.m. and an hour later everyone of importance had arrived.

  It was a fresh, sunny day and Stratton was dressed in a smart jacket and tie, his dark hair shorter than it had been in many years, and he was bored as hell. This was not his usual employment by a long shot but he knew why he was here. His bosses in the Special Boat Service thought they knew, but they did not. The mandarins in Whitehall, far above his superiors at the SBS headquarters in Poole, had retired him, thrown him out and back into ‘normal life’, a relative term for life in Special Forces could never be described as normal. It was not a punishment though, far from it. In their eyes, they had done him a favour.

  Bodyguard work was the most boring job for anyone, let alone an SF operative. It meant long hours hanging around doing nothing but watching and waiting, in cars, restaurants and always at the whim of those they looked after. It was true that a lot of Special Forces work was also spent waiting and watching but, for Stratton at least, bodyguard work had some features that qualified it as the most loathsome of assignments in his business. He hated working for civilians, and the work felt like nothing more than glorified servitude.

  Civilians and soldiers mixed like oil and water in their working modes: there was no mystery about being a civilian since all soldiers had been one, but few civilians could truly understand the life of a soldier. There was an even bigger chasm between civvies and Special Forces; a civilian might scratch the surface of understanding life in SF by reading every book available on the subject, but they could never begin to fathom the mentality of an operative. There were civilian parallels - sportsmen, firemen and police armed-response teams for instance - which touched on aspects such as the team ethos, but the lifestyles and working conditions did not begin to compare with those who fought side by side in a war and weathered the dangers of operating alone on undercover operations. The job created bonds for life.

  Within this microcosm, Stratton was an anomaly; he was highly respected for similar reasons to those of civilians who respected SF: they did not know what he did. He was a regular SF operative, but he was also a favoured agent for military intelligence and had often been called upon to carry out assignments independent of his parent unit, the SBS.

  His unusual relationship with MI5 and MI6 began in Northern Ireland many years before while working against the IRA. Like many others, he had first been noticed as an intelligence gatherer with the Northern Ireland undercover detachments. It became evident to his masters in London that his Special Forces combat skills, intelligence and aptitude for working alone made him a versatile tool that could be utilised to a far greater degree. Before long he was brought into the inner sanctum of military intelligence and exposed to the more deadly undercover front-line fight, beyond the awareness of most senior military officers and ministers, let alone the general public. Even his own bosses in the SBS did not know where he went or what he did when the request came to ‘borrow’ Stratton.

  Initially, Stratton had embraced this new side of specialist military work. It suited him perfectly. He preferred to work alone and revelled in the dangers and high degree of autonomy. He never questioned the assignments at first even though there were occasions when his conscience warned him he was moving into a darkness in which he might one day lose his way. His first assassination had been justified as far as he was concerned, as indeed they all appeared to be at the time, but he gradually began to feel like an executioner, an image he did not like. His work was not all killing though, and he felt he could control his conscience with some practice. But Stratton was living in denial which came at a price, one he was not aware he was paying until greatly in debt. Like a cancer creeping through his body, Stratton realised something ugly was happening to him when it was almost too late. In a few short years he was no longer the young man who had enthusiastically joined the military in search of excitement and adventure. The hubris was gone. He was weathered and dented and the shine had disappeared from his eyes.

  This change had not gone unnoticed by the man who gave him his assignments; the voice on the phone that beckoned him to London to receive orders for his next piece of work. Stratton had come to loathe that voice, but, like a drug addict, or someone hypnotised, he always trotted off to do his master’s bidding.

  Then one day the calls stopped. It took many months of silence before Stratton began to accept he had been beached, and a year had now passed since Sumners had made his last contact. He should have felt relieved, but the disturbing truth was that deep down he was not. Perhaps he had not yet learned to live without his fix, or perhaps it was something else; he didn’t know. It didn’t matter any more though; he would have to learn to move on. Perhaps it was the sense of failure that hurt him most, for that was the only reason he could think of why they did not call. He was no longer good enough for them.

  Jobs like this one did not help. They gave him far too much time to examine himself. He watched the people on the lawn chatting politely, nibbling their cakes and sandwiches, the women in their bright hats and dresses, the men in their expensi
ve suits, the car park beyond filled with Bentleys, limousines and other such cars. Rich trappings did not touch Stratton though. He had no interest in the lifestyles of these people who appeared dull and mundane to him.

  Morgan, a large black guy with a distinct blend of African and European features, wandered over to Stratton. His father was Jamaican and his mother Antiguan, and he described his looks as Caribbean with a bit of whitey thrown in. He was in his early thirties and his broad, heavy-boned and powerful body was not designed for formal dress. He looked plainly uncomfortable in his borrowed jacket, shirt and tie, and kept sticking his fingers inside his collar in futile attempts to stretch it to stop it digging into his neck.

  ‘Can’t wait to get this bleedin’ gear off,’ Morgan said, pulling up the sleeves that ended at his knuckles. ‘Didn’t realise Foster’s arms were so bleedin’ long,’ he said, referring to the SBS lad who had loaned him the clothing at such short notice.‘Never seen so many toffs together in one place before. ’Ow the ’ell did we get cobbled into this job?’

  ‘I happened to walk by the RSM’s office just as he was looking for someone to palm it off on. Sorry.’

  ‘I thought the cops usually did this bollocks.’

  ‘They do, but apparently someone in MoD especially asked for Special Forces. There’s a lot of high-powered people here.’

  ‘Lotta wankers too.’

  An attractive woman who looked to be in her late teens walked from the lawn and up the steps towards Morgan and Stratton who parted to let her through. She was wearing a pink frilly outfit with a low-cut neckline that was on the side of brazen for such an occasion.

  She smiled coquettishly as she approached the two men and let her eyes linger on Stratton’s just a little too long as she squeezed between them to enter the building.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.