Brute Force ns-11

by Andy McNab

  'We calling Vauxhall Cross?'

  'Fuck Vauxhall Cross.'

  A few seconds later a couple of paninis appeared, along with glasses of chopped-up carrot and celery.

  I asked for a cappuccino.

  60

  The phone rang six times.

  I cut straight in when I heard her voice. 'Just phoning to say thanks for the ginger cake; it was lovely – as always.'

  But she didn't screech with delight as she usually did at the sound of my voice, or launch into intimate details of her latest bingo adventure.

  She was in shit state.

  'Something terrible . . . I . . . It's . . .' She gulped in air.

  'What's happened, Leena? Is it Brendan?'

  There was a long silence.

  The phone clattered to the floor.

  Traffic raced up and down the coast road and I pressed my ear hard against the receiver.

  'Leena?'

  I heard a rustle as the phone was retrieved. I could hear her breathing.

  'Leena?'

  'They mugged him . . . right outside Costcutter . . . they killed him . . . He was only going to get his HobNobs.'

  I wanted to commiserate with her, but there was no time. I needed information out of her before she dissolved. 'Who did it?'

  'The police don't know yet. It's so awful. So many strange things today.'

  'Strange things?'

  There was another long silence.

  'Talk to me, Leena. This is important.'

  'Well . . . just this morning, he had some people from the old country turn up . . . and then this . . . I told him I'd go later, but he wouldn't hear of it. Said I had enough to do . . . and now . . .'

  I heard her distressed breathing retreat as she replaced the receiver.

  I redialled and got the engaged tone. She'd taken it off the hook.

  The street lights had come on without me noticing. I walked fast to the café.

  Lynn had waited for me to return before starting on his panini.

  I took a bite and leant towards him. 'We're fucked.'

  His eyes widened. 'What, more than we were ten minutes ago?'

  'I'll explain later. We've got to take the passports as compromised. We've got to get to an ATM. I'll draw out as much as I can then I'll bin the card. Then it's straight to the flat.'

  Within an hour we were back in the middle of a bus, this time heading north. My ripped-up card was buried in a couple of Chiavari bins.

  Lynn's eyelids drooped and he kept rubbing his face. His stubble rustled under his fingers.

  'It's going to get worse than this, believe me. We've tried it your way. There's only one place we can go now.'

  'Where's that?'

  'Libya.'

  PART SIX

  61

  The warm breeze carried the smell of the sea and the sound of raised voices. Then I heard the rev of engines, the blast of a horn, more shouting and the squeal of tyres.

  I opened my eyes. Lynn was sitting in his chair by the window that opened onto the Juliet balcony. He was staring out across the harbour. I wondered how long he'd been there.

  I swung my legs off the bed, hauled myself into the kitchen and started going through the cupboards, but all I could find was some decaf. I heaped two big spoonfuls into a cup, waited for the kettle to boil and poured myself a small measure of water. I tried to kid myself that the dark black stuff was the real McCoy, but it wasn't working, so I dragged a chair from the dining table and plonked myself next to Lynn. He had his binos stuck to his face and was tracking a large yacht as it made its way out to sea.

  'Spotted him yet?'

  He lowered the binos. 'Who?'

  'Mansour.'

  It didn't raise a smile.

  'I hope you're right about this.'

  'And our alternative is what, exactly? Apart from you and me, Mansour is the only man on the planet who knows the significance of the name Leptis – a nickname he coined for you. He's also one of very few who knew Ben Lesser was on board the Bahiti. Lesser's dead. Duff's dead. You're supposed to be dead, and I'm assuming I am too. In the whole equation, the only man left standing is Mansour. Either he's pulling the strings here, or he must know who is.'

  Lynn pulled a face. 'Bomb-making wasn't part of his repertoire.'

  'I told you last night, that's nit-picking. Training and supplying PIRA, the relationship with Lesser, the Bahiti shipment . . . they were all handled by Mansour. I don't give a shit whether it's the Firm or the Tellytubbies who are trying to kill me. Mansour will know what all this is about, and if not, maybe he'll know a man who does. We're going to find these fuckers and get them before they get us.'

  We'd debated it long enough. He knew I was right.

  He shrugged and handed me the binoculars. 'Magnificent, isn't she, don't you think?'

  I lifted them to my face. The yacht was now under sail. 'How do you drive one of those things anyway? Does it operate like a car?'

  Lynn scowled. 'Not "it", "she". If you insist on calling her "it" you will bring us bad luck.'

  Like ours could get any worse.

  62

  Lynn had gone off on one last night about the sort of vessel we'd need for the trip. Even he had to confess we'd need something with more bollocks than a sailing yacht to get to Tripoli if we wanted to get there before the end of the year.

  I was scanning the harbour for the kind of thing I thought might be up to the job – not that I had a clue what we were really looking for. But you didn't have to be an expert to appreciate some of the seriously Gucci kit that was out there. In amongst the fishing boats, the speed boats and the yachts were an array of gin palaces that told me certain people were riding out the recession just fine, thank you very much.

  Some of them were huge, with double funnel stacks, tenders as big as Lynn's apartment and more radars than Heathrow airport. One of them even had a helicopter on the back.

  Lynn picked himself up from his seat and wandered into the apartment. I heard him clattering around in the kitchen. 'We're going to need a boat that's fast and has range. How far is it to Tripoli, anyway?'

  'No idea.' I carried on scanning the harbour. It was another world out there. How did these people make so much fucking money?

  Then, in amongst the kitchen noises, I heard the sound of Bill Gates' welcoming Windows ditty.

  Lynn was hunched over the laptop, still surfing off his neigh-bour's signal. A few moments later his printer whirred and the first of the Google Earth maps of Tripoli landed on the table. I'd been impressed with his work this morning. With nothing to go on except seriously out-of-date information, he'd pulled up the Libyan Yellow Pages online and started burning through his Skype credit, giving it hubba-hubba to all and sundry.

  Fuck knows who he was calling, but he managed to get some kind of confirmation that Mansour was still alive and living in Tripoli. I had to trust him on the Skype front. Whatever the risks, they were less than him showing his face on the way to a public phone – which the Italians would probably have been monitoring anyway.

  I went back to studying the harbour. Lynn had pointed out the little dinghy he pottered about in. I tracked on down the line of boats on the far side of the marina. The bigger the boat, the closer it was to the open sea. By the time I'd panned down to the end of the sea-wall, adjusting the focus as I went, I half expected to see Roman Abramovich waving at me.

  The really big numbers were crawling with crew. Hulls were being scrubbed down, decks swept and paint applied to metalwork.

  My binos swept past them and headed out towards the open water.

  More boats bobbed up and down just beyond the marina, a mixed bag, all of which still cost more than your average house – on second thoughts, make that ten average houses. I tried to work out whether there was any significance to them being out there, and decided that their owners were too tight to pay harbour fees.

  I kept panning, then stopped. Something sleek and dangerous slipped into the field of view – not as bi
g as anything I'd seen on Abramovich Row, but probably no less damaging to the bank account.

  It had a matt black hull and a shiny grey upper deck. Antennae sprouted from the roof. A radar revolved on a beam just above and behind the main cabin. The thing looked like an ocean-going Ferrari. And to top it all, there was a really good-looking woman sunning herself on the front deck. I adjusted the focus again. She looked Chinese or Japanese; it was hard to tell at this distance. Oriental, anyway. Her eyes were closed and her face angled towards the weak, wintry sun.

  A guy suddenly appeared on deck. I followed him as he edged round the cabin, crept up on her and dropped something down her sweater. Even though the boat was 500 metres away, I heard her squeal.

  She jumped up, pretending to be cross, and threw it back at him. Ice-cube attack. The guy ducked and it splashed into the sea. Too bad he didn't follow it. Now that would have been funny. He was neither young nor beautiful. But then with a boat like his he didn't have to be. I narrowed my eyes and peered at him. Well fed, comfortable, tanned and pushing fifty. Lucky fucker.

  'What did you say?' Lynn was back, standing beside me, holding two cups of coffee.

  I hadn't realized I'd spoken aloud.

  I took one and sniffed it. It didn't smell any better than the last cup. 'What's that black and grey Batship out there?'

  He peered out to sea.

  I pointed.

  'That thing?' He made it sound like we were looking at the boating equivalent of a Ford Fiesta. 'It's a Predator 95-100.' His lip curled. 'A Sunseeker.'

  All of a sudden it was an it, not a she. 'How fast does it go?' I kept my eyes on the deck. The girl was running after Fatman, arms and legs flailing like windmills. I watched as the two of them disappeared below deck. A moment or two later somebody drew the curtains on a porthole just above the waterline.

  'Fast. Probably in excess of thirty knots – forty mph to you, Nick. Why do you ask?'

  63

  'The confidence and power of this craft is simply awe-inspiring. Performance levels can be adjusted depending on your preference of engine and drive systems. Accommodation is as generous as it is comfortable, whilst an immense upper deck saloon is fitted with a stylish bar and galley. On deck, ample sunbathing space and a retractable bimini top over a huge cockpit area make for effortless entertainment.'

  Lynn had pulled the blurb for a Sunseeker Predator 95-100 off the web and read from it as he paced the room. We'd already established he was wrong about one thing. The Predator had a top speed of fifty knots. In excess of sixty-five mph. We could almost be in Tripoli tonight, if we wanted.

  Lynn read on. Its vital statistics were awesome: length overall – 28.77 metres; fuel – diesel; propulsion – direct gear drive through triple Arneson surface drives, or submerged twin-props in semi-tunnels. I wasn't sure what it all meant, but I was impressed.

  Next came the important bit. It had a fuel capacity of 8500 litres or 1870 gallons. If we hammered it at roughly thirty knots – forty mph – Lynn calculated that we'd be able to go around 350–400 miles on a full tank. As Libya was 700 miles away, we were looking at one refuelling stop, possibly two; and a total journey time of around twenty hours.

  Lynn stopped reading from the laptop and came and sat back down in his chair. 'Why don't we take something a little bigger – something with more range? That way we won't have to refuel.'

  I shook my head. I was still eyes-on the boat. Fatman and his oriental eye-candy remained below. They'd been down there for an hour.

  'The bigger the boat, the more people on board. Fewer people makes it easier to lift. By the way, can you drive one of these things?'

  'Of course.' He sounded indignant. I guessed piloting a Predator was like falling off a log if you happened to be a member of some posh yacht club on the north Norfolk coast. He frowned again.

  When he spoke, he kept his eyes on the sea. 'How are we going to refuel if the police – actually, more likely the Coast Guard – know that the boat's been stolen? That thing—' he waved an arm in the direction of the Predator – 'is two to three million pounds' worth of vessel, brimming with every bit of kit imaginable – radar, GPS, the whole lot. A Sunseeker is a floating computer. It's probably got a tracker device on it, too. They'll be onto us in hours – maybe minutes. Then what?'

  I thought he'd finished, but he was only just warming up.

  'Just how do you intend to get to Tripoli? I know the Colonel's back in the fold, but they don't just throw their doors open to foreigners, you know. I know the Libyans. This is a society that's been shut off for decades. Even if we evade the Italian authorities, we'll have the Libyan navy to contend with. After the Americans bombed Tripoli in '86, Gaddafi spent serious money beefing up their defences.'

  'I said lifted, not stolen. Anyone on board comes with us. We've just got to make sure everything appears completely normal, because they – the owners, whoever they are – are coming with us. Nobody's going to report the boat stolen if it isn't stolen, and that way we can get them to refuel. As for the Libyan navy, fuck 'em. The Colonel has got plenty on his plate already – a people-trafficking problem, for starters. My guess is the Libyan navy will be looking out, not in.'

  I wasn't an expert, but I remembered seeing something on the news a few years back – seventy migrants dying on one ship when they'd tried to reach Europe illegally from Libya. They'd died of hunger and thirst after the boat broke down and drifted for ten days before being spotted by an Italian steamer. The poor bastards had come from all over Africa – Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, you name it – and Libyan middlemen had promised them safe passage to a new life in Europe.

  Of course, there had been a catch – in this case, a shit boat that had broken down almost as soon as it had left Libyan waters. The Europeans had finally demanded action and Gaddafi, by now intent on greasing his way back into the international fold, promised to tighten things up. We'd be doing what the authorities least expected – going against the human tide. Besides, we were in a big sleek boat that meant cash coming into the country.

  Lynn drew breath to speak, but I cut him short. 'Listen, it's not a drama. I don't know yet what we're going to do with Candy Girl and Fatman. Unless, of course, you want to kill them . . .'

  'Christ, no.'

  'Then let me worry about them. If the nav systems give our position away, let's turn 'em all off. We'll buy a bog-standard GPS down the marina and do our own navigation – or get to work with a compass, if necessary. Can you do that?'

  'Of course.'

  'OK, now we're talking. I'll take first stag. We'll do one hour on, one hour off. We maintain eyes-on that Predator the whole day, to make sure it's just those two. If there's anybody else on board, I need to know. If they leave during the day, tough – it's back to square one.'

  I glanced at him to see if he'd got the message. A thin sheen of sweat glistened on his bare head.

  He got to his feet. A look of resignation passed across his face. 'What are we going to do with the Predator when we get to Libya?'

  I raised the binos. The curtains were still drawn. I could feel Lynn's gaze on the back of my neck. 'I may not know how to drive one of those things, but trust me, I know how to sink them.'

  64

  It looked as if the sun had brought all the beautiful people of Europe out to play, bang in front of Lynn's apartment. It was not yet dark, but the restaurants and bars around the marina were already starting to fill up. We had passed the day stagging, on and off – never a drama for me, but Lynn's boredom threshold was clearly a lot lower than mine. When he wasn't watching the boat, he slept, until I told him to go out and check what time the marina's fuel station closed and, while he was about it, to buy what we needed for a twenty-hour boat trip – food, drink and a cheap GPS.

  Lynn still puzzled me. He'd told me he'd spent years setting up the apartment, exactly for this kind of contingency – but I was sure he wasn't telling me the whole story. I knew he was getting a bit of a rush as we stayed one ste
p ahead of the bad guys, but he still wore his defeated look the rest of the time. There was a wedding photograph on the dressing table in front of the balcony window, and yet he hadn't even mentioned Mrs Lynn in passing since we'd left the mushroom farm.

  I was beginning to understand why Fatman had dropped anchor where he had. He and Candy Girl had stayed below deck the entire day. The good news was that nothing else had stirred on the Predator. According to the blurb, the 'Master Stateroom' boasted a double berth, a nineteen-inch flatscreen TV, CD/DVD/Radio surround-sound speaker system, air conditioning and a hand-held fire extinguisher. It looked as though the last two were going to come in very useful.