by Tony Park
‘Ready the missiles. Guns, target the engine room unless otherwise ordered.’
The shock wave from the second grenade caught Alex’s cockpit hatch from underneath and blew it open. A torrent of seawater flooded the chopper immediately. Alex’s left side was scorched by the explosion and he felt tiny pieces of crimped wire – the grenade’s shrapnel within its casing – pepper his arm. He was exposed as his head started to go under, and bullets sent up geysers of water around him.
The Rooivalk sank and Alex undid his last restraint strap and swam clear. He held his position, two metres below the surface, and watched the nose of the helicopter point downwards. He could see Jane pushing and punching the cockpit glass from within. He dived and kicked his legs, following the sinking chopper.
His ears started to pop. He saw Jane’s mouth pressed against the top of her hatch, sucking in the last of the air. Alex touched the glass and kicked hard, pushing himself down faster than the sinking machine. He hooked his hands under the open lip of the hatch and turned. He kicked for the surface, in the opposite direction to which the gunship was slowly falling.
Jane pushed from inside, holding her breath as the water filled the cockpit. The hatch slowly started to budge and as the last of the air inside was expelled by water she felt it move. It came open with a burst of bubbles and Jane kicked free. Alex pointed towards the stern of the ship and they swam. The Rooivalk disappeared into the gloom far below.
Behind them, another grenade exploded beneath the water’s surface and the shock felt to Alex as though he’d been kicked from behind by some invisible sea monster. It made him gasp and he automatically drew in some seawater. His reserves of air were gone. Jane looked back at him, but he pointed for her to continue swimming towards the aft of the Penfold Son.
Alex headed for the surface.
When his head broke the waters he retched and sucked in a lungful of warm air. He heard a shout above and behind him and then the rattle of gunfire.
‘That bloody frigate’s almost on top of us,’ Van Zyl said to George, who had just come from the bridge.
‘The Rooivalk’s cannon killed the helmsman and buggered the radios. Can’t hear a thing, or transmit. I don’t know what the navy will make of this, but we’ll tell them pirates came aboard and killed the helicopter crew. We’ll say we turned on them and they jumped ship.’ He paused to draw his breath.
Van Zyl looked out at the approaching warship and nodded at what George had just said. ‘We need to kill Tremain and the woman now, though. We don’t want them being picked up and interviewed by the navy.’
‘Agreed. Where are they now?’
‘Heading aft, underwater. We just saw the woman break surface and just missed her. I’ve positioned my men all around.’
‘They’ll be trying to take shelter under the overhang of the stern,’ George said. ‘I’m going back to the bridge to start the engine. That should flush them out.’
Van Zyl nodded. ‘What about the Talana?’
George looked back at the menacing grey lines of the frigate. ‘He’s hardly going to fire on a merchant ship, is he, even if a few rockets did go off in his general direction.’
Alex surfaced just after Jane and swam to her, near the Penfold Son’s massive rudder. ‘Hear that?’ she said. ‘Look! It’s a boat.’
He looked where she was pointing. Even from afar he recognised the clean lines of the Fair Lady. ‘That’s who I could hear on the radio. Kevin, putting on an appalling British accent.’ He laughed. It was good to know at least one of his men was still alive, and on his way.
‘I heard him, too, just before we went under, trying to impersonate George. Do you think he got away with it?’
A blast of automatic gunfire from above raked the water around them, telling them that whatever the navy thought of Kevin’s charade, George Penfold was still very much in control above.
Something splashed in the water nearby. ‘Grenade!’
They duck-dived under the surface and swam away from the slowly sinking orb. The water slowed the shrapnel, so that it didn’t reach them, but the shock wave pummelled their chests and tortured their ears. They swam back to their position, under water.
‘I hope they hurry,’ Jane said. ‘I don’t know how long we can last down here.’
Alex heard shouting above them and then three weapons opened fire on the approaching luxury motor cruiser. He watched the tracer fall short and heard Van Zyl’s command to cease fire and save ammunition. He knew that Kevin and whoever else was on board would have come armed. There would be a fight, but at least it wouldn’t be as one-sided as it had been so far. All they needed to do was hang on for a few more minutes.
‘What’s that rumbling, Alex?’
He felt the vibrations emanating out from the steel-hulled monster. Ominous, shaking growls filled their ears and he was aware of movement below them. ‘Shit! They’re starting the engine. We’ll be washed out into the open. We’ll be sitting ducks.’
‘What do we do?’ Jane said, wiping plastered hair from her eyes as she clung to the rudder with her free hand.
He wrapped his arms around her. ‘Pray.’
*
‘Keep watch. We’ll see them soon,’ Van Zyl said to his men. ‘Once we get them, we’ll give those bastards in the cruiser a welcome they’ll never forget.’
‘What about the navy?’ one of the men asked, gesturing over his shoulder with a thumb.
Van Zyl spat into the Indian Ocean. ‘Fuck them.’
‘Fire,’ said Captain Gert Fourie.
34
The Exocet’s solid fuel jet engine propelled it at three hundred and fifteen metres per second, skimming two metres above the ocean’s surface.
Weighing more than six hundred kilograms, it punched a hole three metres by four amidships of the Penfold Son, just above the waterline. The missile had travelled only a fraction of its one hundred and eighty kilometre range, so when the warhead detonated, the fireball it created was fuelled and expanded by unburned fuel. Aided by the impact of round after round from the Talana’s main gun, the Penfold Son’s fuel ignited and an explosion ripped through the ship.
After the second Exocet added to the inferno, the Penfold Son began to sink.
Alex and Jane were pushed aft, away from the stricken ship, on a bow wave caused by the force of the blast.
Several of the ship’s crew and Van Zyl’s men, Billy and Tyrone, were vaporised by the fireball.
Van Zyl jumped overboard as the freighter bent like a banana, the stern rising high as the ship started to fall in on itself. The screw, which had not yet started turning, was lifted clear of the water. Shipping containers, freed from their restraints by the explosion, cascaded into the water like a steel waterfall. Enrico screamed as he watched a six-metre box block out the sun before it crushed him.
On the bridge, the force of the explosion knocked George Penfold off his feet. On the way down to the deck he cracked his head against a control console and lost consciousness. The warm translucent waters of the Indian Ocean revived him and he came to, finding himself floating, on his back, his face inches from the deck head of the bridge.
‘Help!’ he screamed. Water was gushing in through the window that had been blasted out by the Rooivalk’s cannon fire. As he swam he found the water around him was stained with the blood from his head wound.
Around him the light was fading, but there was still a pocket of air and he flailed his arms and legs in order to keep his mouth and nose clear of the water. Floating next to him, just a few centimetres from his chin, was a soggy brown envelope. He recognised it immediately. It was the one his men had intercepted – the tape of him killing the prostitute. It had all been for this. He started to weep.
George composed himself, took a deep breath and duck-dived. He groped his way towards one of the shattered windows and managed to squeeze out. The stern of his ship slid deeper into the blackness. George’s ears hurt from the pressure but he forced himself to exhale slowly as he
floated towards the surface. When he broke free he greedily gulped in air before taking stock of his surroundings. The grey-hulled frigate was in sight and he could hear a motorboat somewhere close. The body of a Filipino mess steward floated by, face down. None of them had even had time to find their lifejackets. He touched his aching head and saw he was still bleeding.
Something brushed against his foot and he screamed.
He ducked his head underwater and saw the sleek, menacing shape glide by. It turned and headed back for him.
‘No!’
The shark began by taking his right leg, just below the knee.
*
Valiant Chan had been monitoring the radio transmissions between the Penfold Son and the Talana from his position several nautical miles away.
He was smiling. He might only have half the ivory, but it was still worth a small fortune. The sports bag he had given to the pirate, Tremain, had been mostly filled with bundles of newspaper. It was a shame not knowing for sure if Penfold had killed him, but if he was still alive it would not be for long.
The podgy Captain Wu looked no thinner as a result of his captivity on the Ilha dos Sonhos. He was on watch, staring blankly out through the glass of the wheelhouse.
An alarm sounded.
‘Captain!’ a breathless able seaman burst into the bridge, but Chan and Wu could already see the smoke curling from chinks in the poorly sealed timber covering the main cargo hold.
As well as the ivory the hold contained boxes of explosives and grenades that Chan had ordered removed from the boatshed on the pirates’ island. He’d reckoned he could turn a nice profit from those military stores in some tinpot African dictatorship or another.
By the time Wu’s crew had their fire hose connected and the pump working, it was too late. The ivory was burning with such intensity that the seamen could barely get close enough to hit it with the hose.
The wooden boxes containing the C4 explosives and grenades smouldered at first, then caught fire.
Chan was decapitated by a flying sheet of metal after the first explosion.
Captain Wu was blinded by shattered glass and was crawling, in agony, on the bridge of his ship as the cluster of four thermite grenades burned their way through the hold and dropped, still glowing, in the waters of the Indian Ocean. Secondary explosions were still going off and the ship was ablaze as it sank.
The Fair Lady coasted up to Jane and Alex and willing hands reached over the back of the swimming platform and hauled them aboard.
‘My God, I’ve never been so glad to see a bunch of pirates.’ Jane took the towel handed to her by Heinrich and rubbed herself dry.
Alex saw that Kevin was at the helm and the Australian waved down to him. ‘Lucky we got here when we did – we just passed the biggest great white I’ve seen in my life.’
‘Go Kevin. Don’t spare the horses. The navy will be here any second.’
‘You got it, Skipper.’ The Fair Lady leapt away like a thoroughbred leaving the gates.
Novak handed Alex a towel. ‘We ditched to fool the Rooivalk, but Kobus was able to restart the one good engine and take off again after the gunship left us. That oke’s a lekker pilot. We left the Oryx on a remote beach on the mainland. The air force will get it back, more or less intact. Henri’s hit bad, but he’ll live. He’s in the hospital at Vilanculos and Captain Alfredo’s keeping an eye on him. It’s not all good news, though.’
Alex looked around at the faces of his men and saw there were no smiles. ‘Where’s Jose?’
‘Van Zyl and the others must have hit the island. He put up a good fight, Alex. Two of the Chinese seamen were dead. Jose had run out of ammo at the end, by the look of it. We found him with a knife in his hand and a single round through his forehead.’
‘They executed him.’
Jane moved to his side and took his hand. ‘I remember him. He wanted to be a barman, not a fighter.’
Alex nodded. ‘Or a pirate. He was my brother.’ Alex looked away from his men and swallowed hard. He felt the tears pricking at his eyes. Jane squeezed his hand harder, then wrapped an arm around his waist and drew him closer. He drew a breath. There would be time to grieve later, but it wasn’t over yet. ‘Has anyone seen Mitch? Jane says he was in on the whole thing.’
‘No sign of him,’ Novak said. ‘He must have got away.’
Alex simply nodded again.
‘There’s a survivor up ahead!’ Kevin called from the bridge.
Alex and Novak went forward and each picked up a pair of binoculars. ‘Ease off, Kevin. Let’s check him out.’
They moved to the starboard side, along with the others, and Jane joined Alex again, standing by him.
The man was white, though his face was blackened by burns or spilled oil. He was waving to them. As Kevin put the engines into neutral, and then reverse, to further slow the cruiser, they got a better look at him.
‘Well, this is ironic,’ Piet van Zyl called out.
Alex looked at Novak and then at Jane. ‘He tried to murder your wife, twice, and kidnapped Jane so that Penfold could rape and kill her. Plus, he tried to kill us today – several times. What do you think?’
‘Come on, man, take me aboard,’ Van Zyl called. He was grinning. ‘I’ll come join you okes if you like. I’m sure you could use another crewman.’
Alex called back, ‘Why, because you killed Jose, on the island?’
Van Zyl waved a hand in the air. ‘It wasn’t me, but there are plenty more of those munts where he came from, man.’
‘Give me your gun,’ Alex said to Novak.
‘No.’ Novak drew his nine-millimetre from his shoulder holster, cocked it, aimed and fired twice.
Alex turned to Jane and wrapped his arms around her as Van Zyl’s lifeless body slowly sank beneath the water’s surface. ‘Are you all right?’
‘If he hadn’t done it, I would have. Can we please go back to dry land now?’
Alex called a meeting of the crew after they landed at Ilha dos Sonhos and cleaned themselves up. ‘It ends now,’ he said. ‘There’s food and board and whatever I can afford to pay you, if you decide to stay here and work with me on the hotel, but the piracy stops today.’
‘I have to be with Lisa, always, from now on. I’m out, too,’ said Novak.
Kevin looked at Alex. ‘Wouldn’t be the same without you, mate. I’ll stay, for a bit, and give you a hand.’ Kufa and Heinrich had also agreed to lay down their arms, though Heinrich said he might look for more work in Iraq or Afghanistan. Kufa said he would stay, as there was little prospect of a job for him in Zimbabwe.
They buried Jose at sea that evening, in the deep waters out past the reef. Alex said a few words and the rest of the crew fired a five-gun salute as the sea claimed his body.
Alex looked at Jane, who was wiping a tear from her eyes. She smiled, though, when he picked up the M4 he had just fired over his friend’s body. He walked to the Fair Lady’s stern and tossed the weapon overboard. Next, he reached under his sports jacket and pulled the Glock from its holster. This, along with his spare magazines, he also dropped into the water.
One by one Kevin, Kufa, Novak and Heinrich all filed aft and tossed aside their own tools of a trade they had all agreed to forsake.
Jane respected Alex for his decision, but was still fearful about what might happen to him. She sipped a glass of chilled wine and Alex used a bottle of Dois M beer to take the cap off another. He clinked it against her drink and said, ‘Here’s to whatever may come.’
‘To the future.’
He laughed. ‘Do you really think we have one?’
‘As a group, I don’t know. Your men might still decide to leave the island, and –’
He took her free hand in his. ‘No, I mean you and me.’
Jane had given the matter some thought already. Her life had changed beyond all recognition since the rain-swept day she had boarded the Penfold Son at Southampton.
Here she was with a man who until five minutes ago had made
his living by terrorising innocent merchant sailors at the point of a gun. Yet he was willing to change, and to admit his mistakes and learn from them.
‘You could always leave Africa,’ she said.
‘I can’t. This is my home. It’s the only one I’ve ever known.’ He looked out over the sparkling ocean.
‘Well,’ she said, taking another sip to calm her nerves, ‘I don’t have a job to go back to in England. And whatever happens to you, you’re going to need a lawyer, either to keep you out of jail or to help you negotiate the Mozambican tax system.’
Jane lay on her back on the big beach towel and held Alex’s hand. She could feel the warmth of the white sand on her back, through the weave, and the afternoon sun blanketed the front of her naked body.
When she opened her eyes she saw he was up on one elbow, looking down at her and smiling.
‘What?’
‘What, nothing. I just like looking at you,’ he said.
‘Pervert.’
‘Guilty,’ he said. He lowered himself and kissed her and she felt the fire rekindled, as though he was blowing on hot coals.
There had been some whistles and laughter from the others when they had slipped away, on the pretext of going for a swim, but as yet they hadn’t made it to the water. Alex had told her that they wouldn’t be followed and she believed him. Of Mitch, they had found no sign. His gear and weapons were gone, as was one of the rigid-hulled inflatable boats. Although she was exposed, on a beach, and could occasionally hear the thump of music or a hoot of laughter from the wake at the beachside bar, she felt perfectly safe in Alex’s arms.
‘I love you,’ he said.
‘I gathered.’
He laughed. ‘We should go for that swim, otherwise the others might get suspicious if I come back covered in sand.’
