Marine G SBS

by David Monnery

  The conversations in and around the lorries had stopped. Then a lone voice uttered something in Cantonese which Marker would have bet money meant ‘what the fuck?’, and footsteps sounded on the road.

  They could not allow the guards to disperse. Marker gestured Finn and Cafell to take one end of the container, and Dubery to join him at the other. Then, without preamble, the four men stepped out into the open, their eyes taking in the scene, their minds calculating angles, their fingers ready on the triggers of their MP5s. Marker thought about shouting a warning, but decided that the guards would understand the levelled guns a lot better than his English.

  And for a moment he thought it had worked. The four men standing together by the nearest lorry still had their Kalashnikovs slung across their backs, and they knew at once that there was no contest. The other four, who had just started off down the road to investigate the hammering noise, had pulled their guns round into a cradling position, and one of them took an impulsive decision to fight it out. His gun was still swivelling when the silenced MP5s opened up, throwing both him and the man next to him back across the road. It was as if a sudden gust of wind had suddenly plucked the men from their feet and thrown them down violently.

  Having seen death pass so swiftly between them, the other two threw up their hands, leaving the Kalashnikovs to hang loose across their stomachs. The group of four by the lorry looked like they were auditioning for Madame Tussaud’s, mouths hanging open, all the better to display their golden teeth. All six men were disarmed, persuaded to sit in a group on the grass, and watched over by Finn.

  Marker closed the dead men’s eyes, sighed, and walked over to the back of the first lorry. Several curious faces stared out of the gloom at him. ‘Does anyone here speak English?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I speak,’ a voice said from the back. A few moments later a young woman was standing beside Marker, listening to him explain the situation. She didn’t think any of her fellow prisoners would object to a life in Hong Kong.

  While she passed on the good news to the others Marker rapped out orders. ‘Rob, you and Ian get this lot on board, the guards first and then the prisoners. The ex-prisoners,’ he corrected himself. ‘And then see if you can work out how to get the ship underway. If you have to get help from the captain or first mate you can use the girl as an interpreter. And get one of the women to check on the babies. And stop that fucking drumming,’ he added, staring in the direction of the ship. ‘Shoot one of the bastards in the foot if you have to.’ He turned to Finn. ‘You and I are going to take a look round.’

  * * *

  Wang had ushered her towards the bathroom, pulled back the plastic curtain to reveal a separate shower stall, and spent several seconds adjusting the water temperature. Satisfied, he stepped aside and gestured to her to step in. She did so, and for a split second the pleasurable sensation of the water on her skin almost blocked out the sense of terror which was throbbing in her brain.

  Then he was rubbing her with the bar of soap, lathering it across her breasts and stomach, down her back, and up between her legs. She could hear a voice screaming inside her head, but only a whimper came out of her mouth, and deep down inside, almost too far away for her to hear, another voice was saying: ‘Your fear will make him stronger.’

  She closed her eyes and let his hands have her physical self. She remembered the biology teacher at school telling the class how human skin was continually being sloughed off. The skin he was touching would be dust in a few days. She felt the water on her face and remembered the joy of making love with Marker. She felt the tears well up in her eyes, and knew from the look in his eyes that he had seen them, even through the streaming water.

  He pulled her from the shower, reached for a towel, and then seemed to think better of the idea, bending to lick a drop of water from her right nipple with his tongue. She shuddered, which he took as an invitation to do the same with the left nipple.

  Then, with her body still dripping water, her hair a wet curtain across her face, she was pushed out of the bathroom, across a passage and into a room she hadn’t yet seen. A large bed occupied most of the space, and he shoved her roughly across it. She instinctively curled up like a foetus, but he was already on his way out of the door. She lifted her head and frantically looked round for something to help her – a way out, a weapon of some sort.

  There was nothing.

  Marker and Finn started with the nearest warehouse, which proved as empty as those on Chuntao had been. The next one was more than half full, the third crammed from floor to ceiling – these had received the cargo unloaded that evening from the short-sea trader. A fourth warehouse was as empty as the first, leaving only the low, sprawling building which housed the office and social accommodation. Marker tackled the office room while Finn went through the rest, and the first thing which caught his attention was a computer terminal.

  He turned it on, and watched the monitor spring into life.

  ‘This is no time for computer games, boss,’ Finn said behind him.

  They both stared at the first screen. ‘Is there any way we can get at what’s stored in this?’ Marker asked.

  ‘Why don’t we just take the whole thing with us?’ Finn asked. ‘If there’s anything on the hard disk we can read it in Hong Kong.’

  Marker looked at him with admiration. ‘I’d never have thought of that,’ he said. ‘And I guess the same goes for these records,’ he added, scooping up an armful of papers and looking for something to carry them in. On the desk there was a wooden in-tray which probably dated back to the Ming dynasty.

  He was reaching for it when the burst of gunfire erupted.

  When Wang came back he was wearing nothing but a loincloth. It was probably the ritual uniform of some esoteric martial arts group, but it looked like a giant nappy, and Rosalie felt her spirits boosted by the sight. He had a small glass in one hand, which he sipped at carefully as he looked at her.

  She suddenly remembered the film Marker had taken her to three years before. She couldn’t remember its name, or even the crucial scene in detail – only that the mother had unintentionally killed her son with a wine glass. She had tried to hit him, the glass had got in the way, and his throat had been cut.

  ‘Can I have some water?’ she asked, and was pleasantly surprised to find her voice was steady.

  ‘No,’ he said instinctively, and then his lipless mouth broke into a grin. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘It won’t be in anyone’s interest for you to have a dry mouth.’

  He left his own glass on the floor and went out again.

  She stared at it, knowing she would only have one chance, her mind running through all the possibilities and finding that most of them ended in failure.

  Marker’s orders had been simple enough, but it soon became apparent that carrying them out was easier said than done. Cafell and Dubery had six new prisoners and more than twenty ex-prisoners to look after, and getting both groups on to the freighter in an orderly fashion was likely to be about as simple as boarding English football fans on their way home from the latest Continental skirmish.

  This was also obvious to the lone English-speaker. ‘We help?’ she asked.

  Cafell couldn’t see how. ‘Just wait a few minutes and then get your people on the ship,’ he said, and then noticed that two of them had already picked up discarded Kalashnikovs. It occurred to the SBS man that for all he and the others knew, these people were murderers and child molesters, and not political prisoners at all. But they didn’t seem so, and Cafell didn’t think that was because they were better at looking inscrutable. As far as he could tell, they seemed genuinely grateful, and eager to help.

  ‘Just these two,’ he told the woman, pointing at the men who had picked up the guns. ‘No more.’

  She spoke quickly to the others, some of whom were still emerging from the back of the lorries. No one else reached down to pick a weapon from the pile of Kalashnikovs. Cafell breathed a sigh of relief, and gestured to one of the two armed
men to join Dubery at the head of the guard detail, the other himself at the rear.

  They set off on the two-hundred-yard walk to the ship, their pace slowed by the obvious reluctance of their prisoners. The ex-prisoners, who had started off in the rear, were soon walking a parallel path, leaving the width of the road between the two columns. This worked fine until they were on the jetty, when the need to take the gangplank caused the gap between the two groups to shrink. Realizing what was happening, Cafell looked desperately round for the English-speaking woman.

  He couldn’t see her. ‘Stop,’ he yelled, hoping that she would hear and translate, but it was already too late. The armed prisoner who had accompanied Dubery, and who had been walking backwards to keep the guards under his gun, suddenly tripped on the end of the gangplank, and dropped the Kalashnikov as he fell.

  The nearest prisoner took what he thought was his chance, grabbing for the gun and half falling into the line of his previous charges.

  Cafell’s finger waited on the trigger for a clear target.

  The Kalashnikov opened up, the sound of its fire mingling with screams and the hailstone effect of bullets hitting the side of the ship.

  And suddenly the gunman was rising as those around him sank to the ground, and Cafell took his chance, firing a triple tap through the man’s upper trunk. The Kalashnikov flew up in the air and the man fell backwards with a rattle in his throat, down into the narrow gap between freighter and quay, crashing into the water with a splash which seemed to echo in the sudden silence.

  Cafell walked forward and kicked the gun off the quay, keeping his eye on the five surviving prisoners. A single glance to his left took in the two men spread-eagled on the gangplank – one of the Chinese prisoners and Dubery. The former had half his head blown away, the latter blood steadily seeping from a hole in his chest.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Cafell murmured, his attention back on the still prone prisoners.

  Running feet on the jetty told him the other two were on their way.

  Marker bent down to look at Dubery’s wound, his mind racing with the choices still to be made. The youngster’s eyes seemed locked in surprise – as well they might be. His chances of survival would be better than even if there was a hospital next door, but as it was . . .

  He looked round for the English-speaking woman, and found her at his shoulder. ‘Is there a doctor here?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  Marker stood up. ‘Get these bastards below,’ he told Finn and Cafell, ‘and bring up our medical kit from the galley.’ He asked the woman to get him help to carry Dubery aboard; she spoke, several arms reached out, and the young Scot was carried along to a cabin on the boat deck. Marker walked alongside, ears and eyes straining for sounds of trouble. Had the sound of the Kalashnikov burst carried? And if it had would anyone come to investigate, or would they just assume one of their forced labourers had been cut down trying to escape?

  He looked at his watch. Almost twenty minutes had passed since the car had vanished round the headland.

  Finn arrived with the medical kit and a bowl of water. ‘Rob’s seeing about getting the boat underway,’ he said.

  Marker carefully washed and disinfected the entry wound, then told Finn to turn Dubery around and followed the same procedure with the exit wound. The bleeding had almost stopped.

  There was nothing else he could do but put on a bandage.

  ‘I do bandage,’ the woman said, as if she could hear the seconds ticking away in Marker’s head.

  ‘Is everything secure down below?’ he asked Finn.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Then go and get the computer and papers.’

  Finn went out through the door as Cafell came in. Marker took his second in command back out on to the deck. ‘Can you get this lot back to Hong Kong?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ Cafell said.

  ‘I sent Finn for the records we found. When he comes back, get the ship underway as quickly as you can. I’m going after Rosalie. With any luck she’s in that villa, and the boat we saw at the dock will still be there. If so I’ll join you at sea. But don’t wait around. If I have to I can always go to ground and use one of the Kleppers once the fuss has died down.’

  Cafell nodded. It hardly seemed worth pointing out that this wasn’t a fuss which would die down very quickly. ‘Good luck,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks,’ Marker said. He picked up the MP5 and walked swiftly towards the gangplank, passing Finn groaning beneath the weight of the computer. ‘See you later,’ he told the surprised Londoner, and broke into a run as his feet hit the gangplank. As he sped along beside the darkened river the relief of a single purpose warred with the fear of what he might find at the end of the road.

  Wang came back, glass of water in hand, and pushed it against her mouth. She drank, not knowing what else to do. With her hands tied how could she . . . ?

  He took the glass away and stood up, let the loincloth fall to the floor, and took hold of his half-erect penis. For a moment she thought he was going to piss on her, but he didn’t. Instead he coaxed himself with one hand, and reached down with the other for the glass he had left on the floor.

  Without – or so it seemed – taking any conscious decision, she jerked violently backwards, uncurled her body and struck out with the two hobbled feet, all in the one explosive movement. The feet struck the glass in front of his mouth, and he was thrown backwards, his head striking the partition wall with a solid thump.

  She rolled off the bed, and knelt down beside him. There were cuts around his mouth, but none of them serious. He seemed to be unconscious, but for how long?

  His body twitched, as if to remind her he was still alive.

  She looked round and her eyes fell on the broken glass, just as a low groan escaped from his lips.

  There didn’t seem to be any other choice . . .

  She conjured up the picture of the infant bodies between the sampan’s decks, the baby tossed up and out into the speedboat’s slipstream . . .

  He groaned again.

  She twisted round to pick up the broken glass with one of the hands tied behind her back, knelt down on the carpet beside his upper body, and blindly reached back with her knuckles for the open throat. Finding it, she took a deep breath, grasped the jagged glass between her fingers and tried to slice the skin. The first time she cut only air, the second time flesh, and a wash of warm blood flowed between her fingers.

  She leaned forward, still kneeling, reluctant to turn and see what she had done. His flaccid penis lay across his leg and for one raging instant she wanted to cut that off too.

  For several moments she didn’t move, and then the raised voices suddenly reminded her of the two men outside. Cursing herself, she started sawing at the leather thong which bound her ankles.

  Nearing the villa, Marker had left the road for the bordering trees and reluctantly slowed his pace to a walk. He could see the car parked in the circle of gravel where the road ended, the motor launch bobbing in the water by the small dock, but the villa itself was still hidden in the trees to his left.

  Then the flare of a cigarette showed him the two men sitting on the steps, facing out to sea. They made him think of fathers waiting outside a hospital ward for their wives to give birth.

  The other man was alone with her, inside.

  He forced himself to look, to think, to plan. A few seconds were enough. There might be another way up through the trees to the villa, but a silent approach would take far too long.

  His mind made up, Marker slipped back down to the road and walked towards the two men, the MP5 up against his chest, hidden in the darkness of his silhouette. In his mind he went over the pronunciation she had taught him three years before, and at the moment it became clear that his approach had been noticed he lifted an arm and waved. ‘Nei ho ma,’ he shouted. ‘Hello.’

  One of the men returned the greeting as he got to his feet, and then added what sounded like a question.

  Marker offered
an exaggerated shrug. The distance had now shrunk to thirty yards, and even in this light . . . Half of him wanted them to buy his bluff, to let him reach the point at which their only choice was surrender, to take the burden of killing away from him, but the other half wanted blood, wanted vengeance for whatever it was they had done to her.

  The standing man reached for his belt, setting the avenger loose. Marker smoothly pulled the MP5 into the firing position, squeezed down on the trigger, and some twenty-five 9mm bullets did their silent work, shattering the skull of the sitting man and almost cutting his companion in half at the waist.

  Marker sped up the steps, scattering sparks from the posthumously discarded cigarettes. Lights were shining from all the villa windows, and the door stood slightly ajar, as if someone hadn’t bothered to close it properly. He paused only for an instant, then shouldered his way through, shouting ‘Rosalie’ at the top of his voice.

  No one answered.

  He looked in the first room, saw the pieces of cloth strewn across the floor, and knew they had once been her clothes. His stomach knotted in fear.

  He turned and there she was, standing in the doorway, naked, her hands and wrists red with blood.

  ‘Callum?’ she said, as if she couldn’t believe it.

  He found her a shirt and a pair of cotton trousers, dressed her, and carried her down to the small dock. There was no key in the ignition, but it took him only a few seconds to hot-wire the engine. She climbed aboard without help and sat beside him as he made sure of the controls.

  ‘We’re going to be OK,’ he told her.

  ‘I know,’ she said simply, and the ghost of a smile was in her eyes.

  The sound of another engine suddenly invaded his consciousness, coming from the other side of the headland. It had to be the freighter. Cafell and Finn had got it underway.