by Wilbur Smith
HRH’s eyes twinkled but he kept his expression nonchalant as he waved his hand dismissively. “I imagine you are speaking of the Interceptor? It is kind of you to remark on such a trivial acquisition, hardly worth mentioning, of course. But I thought it might be an amusing toy for my elder sons to play with when they return from Oxford University at the end of term. I had to buy four of them so as to prevent the boys squabbling over them.”
“A wise decision, I am sure. I would fight to the death over such a beautiful machine if I were given the chance.”
HRH smiled at Cross’s confession, and then went on to extol the virtues of the craft in loving detail. “The hull, you know, is composed of Kevlar and carbon-fiber, making it immensely strong, yet also very light. The diesel engines produce around sixteen hundred horsepower, which is almost twice as much as the current generation of Formula One cars, although they are little more than battery-powered toys these days.” He paused and chuckled contentedly. “But please forgive me, my revered friend, I do not wish to bore you with such a trivial subject.”
“You are certainly not boring me, Prince Abdul. On the contrary I am utterly fascinated.”
“Then perhaps after we have eaten the midday snack that my chefs have prepared for us, you will allow me to take you for a short trip around the bay?” the Prince suggested eagerly.
“I can think of nothing that would give me greater pleasure, Your Royal Highness.”
All of them hurried through the luncheon, paying scant respect to the magnificent banquet that was served to them by more uniformed staff and chefs in high hats. Then they were conducted down to the private dock by the Emir in person, where moored against the jetty with its engines idling was one of the midnight-black machines. Sinister. Forbidding, and absolutely thrilling in its coat of non-reflective paint, it seemed poised to charge into action.
The Emir ushered his guests into the marina building where they changed into lifejackets and crash helmets, and were given a safety briefing. Then they were on board the Interceptor. The Emir dismissed the ship’s captain from the controls and took his place in the throne-like driver’s seat. Cross buckled himself into the co-pilot’s seat alongside him. Zhenia’s laughter and light chatter slowly faded into an anxious silence as they were led to their seats. She seized her big sister’s hand and clung to it as they were strapped in.
“Will we be in danger?” she whispered anxiously, and Nastiya made calming sounds and shook her head.
Finally a worker on the jetty cast off the mooring lines. Prince Abdul eased open the throttles. The engines murmured and the Interceptor moved sedately out through the entrance to the yacht basin and into the open water of the Gulf.
As the engines produced more power the Interceptor rose higher out of the water, and the sandy golden beaches began to flow past them sedately at first, but gathering speed swiftly.
“Brace yourselves!” the Prince sang out, and suddenly the boat seemed to have wings. Nastiya retained her calm expression, but she clung on to her seat with both hands, while Zhenia screamed like a teenager on her first ride on the roller coaster at Coney Island Fair, and flung both her arms around her big sister’s neck.
The shoreline flew past the windows, blurring with the speed of their passage. The other craft they passed seemed to be frozen in the water. Nearing her top speed the Interceptor leaped from the tops of the waves, taking flight like a gull to cover prodigious distances with a single bound, passing over the three or four intervening crests without touching them, then crashing down on top of the subsequent wave and raising a glittering tower of spume. Every person aboard was thrown forward violently against their safety harness, but almost immediately the mighty engines drove the hull on once more and they were thrown back against their heavily padded seat. Every head nodded vigorously in unison.
“One hundred miles an hour!” Prince Abdul sang out in English at the top of his voice. Cross let out a cowboy yell, and Zhenia cried almost as loudly in Russian:
“Please God! I know I have been a bad girl. Just let me live and I swear I will never do it again.”
“Include me in that, O Lord!” Nastiya muttered grimly. “Whatever it was my baby sister did.”
An hour later the Interceptor returned to the private dock and the minute she touched the quay and HRH cut the engines Zhenia threw off her safety harness and leaped from the seat. With both hands covering her mouth she raced for the toilet at the back of the cabin. She made it just in time, but the sounds of her distress carried clearly through the flimsy door to an interested audience.
When Zhenia re-emerged she curtseyed to the Prince and asked to be excused from the rest of the visit to the palace, so Cross sent both sisters back to Seascape Mansions with Paddy and Dave Imbiss to take care of them. He felt sorry for Zhenia, but the opportunity to be alone with the Prince was too good to pass up.
As soon as they had left HRH invited Cross up to his gunroom, ostensibly to show him the matching pair of Holland & Holland 12-bore Royal Deluxe Sidelock shotguns that had been delivered to him by the makers the previous week. The true reason became apparent, however, as soon as they were alone and the Prince had locked the gunroom door.
“Now I am sure that a nice glass of iced tea would refresh us both?” he said, and without waiting for a reply from Cross he keyed open one of the steel gun safes and reverently brought forth a bottle of fifty-year-old Glenfiddich Scotch whisky and two crystal tumblers. He half filled the tumblers and as he carried one of them to Cross he dropped his voice: “Glenfiddich only releases fifty bottles a year!”
“Say no more!” Cross followed his example and whispered back. They clinked glasses and drank. After a long, companionable silence Prince Abdul sighed with pleasure and set his glass aside.
“Now, my old friend, you can tell me what really happened to the Bannock Oil Company that reduced it from one of the giants of the industry to a pygmy struggling for its very existence. This is of pressing concern to both of us. You must have suffered as cruelly as my family and I have done.”
Cross blinked at the idea of his financial status being compared to that of the Oil Sheik of Abu Zara, but he recovered swiftly and nodded.
“Indeed, Your Highness, the past few years have been the most tragic period of my life. First Hazel’s murder, and then the ruin of her company . . .” He paused, drew a deep breath and went on: “Forget what they’re saying in the media. The men who’ve been jailed aren’t the real perpetrators here.”
“I know that Congo was one of the men who murdered Hazel,” Prince Abdul said, and Cross nodded again.
“Yes, him and Carl Bannock,” Cross answered him. “Her own son-in-law.”
“Ah, yes! I remember now!” HRH said. “Of course I remember how you captured Congo and handed him over to the U.S. marshals here in Abu Zara. But I don’t know what happened to Carl Bannock. He seems to have disappeared . . . ?” HRH made it sound like a question.
“Carl Bannock is dead, but his corpse will never be found,” Cross answered. “But Congo’s still alive. He put together the Magna Grande attack with a self-proclaimed African freedom fighter called Mateus da Cunha . . .”
“The name sounds familiar . . .”
“I’m sure it does. He’s not shy of publicity, when it suits him. If you want to know why Bannock Oil is now virtually worthless, don’t look any further than them.”
“Tell me what happened,” said Prince Abdul. “Not the media story, but the truth.”
The Prince remained silent but his expression was intense as Cross recounted what had happened. “What chance do Congo and da Cunha have of taking control of Cabinda?” he asked, when the story was done.
“Well, the Feds seized all of Bendick’s funds when he was indicted, so Congo lost all the money he was hoping to make by short-selling Bannock Oil. But the fact remains, they got to the rig and the Bannock A and that’s put the wind up all the other oil companies in the region, and it’s made Cabinda even more vulnerable. My guess is
that a lot of people were thrilled by the sight of Africans humbling a mighty U.S. oil company. It won’t take much to get them on the streets, demanding independence.”
“I can believe that,” the Prince agreed. “But aren’t Congo and da Cunha worried that they might be betrayed? Weiss was Congo’s attorney, Bendick knew him by his Juan Tumbo alias. Surely it would be in their interest to co-operate with the authorities.”
Cross shook his head. “They’ve been pleading the fifth for months and frankly I don’t blame them. Congo can reach into the U.S. prison system like a kid reaching into a sweetie jar. They’d be dead the moment they opened their mouths.”
“So now they want to get their hands on Cabinda. Well, in a way I do not blame them. I of all people understand the value of oil. But a plan like theirs, to create a war of independence, costs money. A great deal of money. Where are Congo and Mateus getting theirs?”
“Those two young ladies you took for a ride on your Interceptor this afternoon have found Russian investors willing to finance the seizure of Cabinda.”
“I take it your people cannot be assisting this plot . . . ?”
“Congo and da Cunha think they are, which is what matters to me,” Cross explained. “But don’t worry. I’ve not gone rogue.”
“I’m very glad to hear it, old friend. So, do you know where the two conspirators are now?”
“Yes and no. Their precise location is currently unknown. But da Cunha has a large and very comfortable yacht, the Faucon d’Or, at his disposal, and wherever it is, I’m betting he’s on it, and Congo with him. I believe that they’ll use the ship as a command post for their operations inside Cabinda. Da Cunha’s invited the Voronova sisters to join him, officially so that they can report back to his Russian investors. Unofficially, I’m sure he has other ideas.”
“Quite,” said the Prince, understanding precisely the reason powerful men invite beautiful women onto very large, expensive yachts.
Cross got back to business. “We’ll be tracking the women via their smartphones. Once they’re on board Faucon d’Or they can guide us to where it is cruising.”
“Then you will arrest them and hand them over to the U.S. authorities, yes?”
Cross looked right into the Prince’s eyes, his jaw set, his expression unflinching. “In my experience, arresting Johnny Congo is a total waste of time. Next time I am going to save everybody a great deal of trouble, simply by killing him out of hand.”
The Prince frowned, gave his head a short, vigorous shake and then put a fnger in one ear as if to clear it. “You know, it is the strangest thing, but sometimes I am a little hard of hearing. Perhaps I go shooting too often. They say that loud gunfire can damage one’s eardrums.” He paused for a moment, and then nodded. “So, we understand one another . . . Now, tell me, how are you planning to effect the capture of da Cunha’s yacht while it is at large upon the ocean?”
“We’re going to go hunting, with the Faucon as our prey. We should have no trouble catching up with it, seeing that we will be travelling at almost a hundred mph.”
Prince Abdul stared at him in blank incomprehension for a few moments and then what Cross had said sank in and his voice rose. “You don’t really expect me to give you the use of one of my beautiful new XSMG Interceptor attack boats, do you?”
“Why ever not?” Cross asked with wide-eyed innocence, and the Emir threw his head back and guffawed with laughter.
Through his mirth he grunted, “I have always said that the English are the most arrogant people in the world. You are the living testimony to the truth of that statement.”
The good news is that HRH has given us the unrestricted use of one of his Interceptors,” Cross announced to a meeting of the top brass of Cross Bow Security a few hours later. Dave Imbiss pumped his fist with a shout of, “Yes!” as Paddy O’Quinn slapped him on the back, Nastiya said, “Oh, well done, Hector,” and Zhenia blew him a discreet little kiss.
“The bad news, however, is that we don’t know precisely where we should deploy it.” The excitement in the room suddenly abated as they all came back down to earth. “Also, the Prince bought his boats for pleasure, not warfare, so they are entirely unarmed. And the Interceptor has a range of two hundred and fifty miles at a steady cruise, but the miles per gallon go way, way down once you put the pedal to the metal.”
Now his team were looking positively glum. “Don’t despair, children,” Cross chided them. “All is not lost. We have a pretty good idea of da Cunha and Congo’s likely whereabouts, so if we aim for the waters off Cabinda—which we all know far too well—we won’t be far off. And it really doesn’t matter if there aren’t any machineguns or missiles on board because we can hardly strafe the ship let alone sink it if we have two of our people aboard. And thanks to there being no weapons, the Interceptor weighs next to nothing—barely ten tons, in fact—which makes it light enough and small enough to fit in the belly of a C-130 transport. And you all know what that means.”
“Hello again, Bernie and Nella,” Paddy piped up.
“You’ve got it,” said Cross. “Mr. and Mrs. Vosloo are back on the payroll.”
The couple were part of a small group of pilots for hire who specialized in flying people and cargoes in and out of dangerous places across the African continent, frequently under fire. They operated a battered old Lockheed C-130 Hercules that looked as though it was only held together by the power of prayer. But they’d got Cross and his team in and out of more tight spots than he could count and the plane, its pilots and their passengers were all still more-or-less in one piece.
“That’s all well and good, Heck,” said Paddy, more seriously now, “but that Interceptor’s not built to be at sea for extended periods. It’s going to need refuelling and servicing. I don’t see us pitching up in a yacht basin, even assuming there is such a thing in that part of the world. That boat would attract more attention than a Ferrari in a supermarket car park.”
“I agree,” nodded Cross. “But we don’t need a marina. Our old friend the Glenallen has been sitting in a dock in Luanda, Angola, waiting for someone to buy her as part of the Bannock Oil everything-must-go sale. The current dismal state of the oil industry, particularly offshore, means that there aren’t many takers. So the broker is happy to charter her out to us at a very reasonable rate. She’ll be crewed, fuelled and ready to go in a matter of days.”
“Go where, though?” Imbiss asked.
“Libreville, Gabon. It’s just up the coast from Cabinda and Gabon is as peaceful and democratic as one can expect in that part of the world, as well as being one of the richest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, which means that people are a lot more reasonable. Being naturally concerned that his precious boat doesn’t fall into the wrong hands—an over-attentive customs man, for example—Prince Abdul has agreed to declare it official diplomatic cargo, bound for his consul in Libreville.”
“Does he have a consul in Libreville?”
“He will by the time we get there. So Dave, I need you to stay here with a couple of guys—I need two with naval experience—to supervise the loading and transport of the Interceptor and then to crew it at the far end.”
“What about a mechanic?”
“It comes with its own engineer, like a horse with its groom. HRH insists. I need that boat in the air within the next forty-eight hours at the absolute maximum. Thirty-six would be better. Twenty-four would be best.”
“Got it.”
“Meanwhile, Paddy, you and I are going to go ahead to Libreville. I’m envisaging an assault on the Faucon d’Or with two teams of three men. That’s you and me, with two men each.”
“Will that be enough?”
“I reckon so. There won’t be many hostiles on board the yacht. Those things are only built to take a maximum twelve passengers, plus crew. Any more than that and they count as commercial passenger vessels and all sorts of additional rules and reg’s apply.”
“I can’t see Johnny Congo worrying too much about health a
nd safety,” Paddy observed.
“True, but I can see Master Mateus caring very much about his own comfort and about putting on a show for the ladies. He won’t want armed men crammed into every nook and cranny. Besides, Paddy, there’s something very, very wrong with the world when six well-armed, highly experienced men with Special Forces training can’t take down a floating gin-palace like the Faucon.”
“Good point, boss.”
“Then it’s agreed. We’ll take a spare man for each team, just in case, and we’ll fly commercial from Dubai to Libreville. There’s an Air Ethiopia flight via Addis Ababa that gets us there in under ten hours, and a Turkish one that’s a lot longer. If we stagger our arrivals over three flights and book every ticket individually, none seated together, that should avoid setting off any alarm bells anywhere. Dave, can you be responsible for bringing all our gear in the Herky-bird? If it goes with you we can get it covered by diplomatic privilege, along with the boat. Everybody clear so far?”
There were nods of assent all around.
“Good,” said Cross. “With a fair wind and a bit of luck we should be able to get everyone in place by the time Nastiya and Zhenia are taken aboard the Faucon d’Or. It’s an absolute priority, so far as I’m concerned, that you two women spend as little time as humanly possible onboard. You’re going to be in very grave danger, and if your cover’s blown, then God help you. So you two matter more than anything. It’s far more important to me to see you both alive than to see Congo dead.”
“To see both would be best,” said Nastiya.
“Quite so. But you don’t have to go through with this.”
“Don’t worry about me, I’ve been in much worse situations, you know that. But Zhenia, you have not been trained as I have. You don’t have my experience.”
“She’s right,” Hector said gently, looking at Zhenia. “Nastiya can do this alone if she has to. She can say that you’re ill or make some other excuse. No one will think any the worse of you.”
