by Tony Park
‘A pirate protecting my reputation? How nice.’
‘Ex pirate.’
He stood and she looked up at him, marvelling at his body and his complete lack of embarrassment. She could still feel him inside her and she wanted him again. She wanted him to never leave her. He reached down and pulled her effortlessly to her feet. Jane looked over her shoulder when she heard another raucous chorus of laughter coming from the bar, on the other side of the point.
‘It’s an odd way of showing their grief over Jose.’
Alex took her hand as they walked down to the sea. ‘It’s the way they are – we are. We’ve all lived with death too long. You know it can happen, and when it does you try and remember the good times. Jose called you my “new wife” when he first met you.’
They waded into the water. It was warm and clear and when she looked back at the shore the palm trees and sand made it look like paradise.
‘It was a joke,’ Alex added, filling the silence.
‘I get it,’ she said, but didn’t know what to say next. They embraced and she felt his cock stir against her. It was enough, Jane told herself, just to be with him for now. She put a finger on his lips and led him into the deeper water. He put his hands under her bum and lifted her, and she floated, like a mermaid, up and onto him.
‘I love you,’ she whispered into his ear as she wrapped her legs around him.
‘I gathered.’
Afterwards, as they followed their long shadows up the beach, he asked her if she was hungry.
‘Famished!’
They dried off and dressed and folded their towels, and he kissed her again, as greedy for her as she was for him. They walked back, hand in hand, across the spit of land on the track through the bush that brought them back to the main beachfront and the hotel. The other men waved to them from the beach bar.
‘I’ll go to the boatshed and get some firelighters for the braai,’ he said. ‘That’s South African, by the way, for a barbecue.’
‘Then I suppose it’s the woman’s work to make the salad?’
He shrugged, but she blew him a kiss and set off for the hotel.
Mitch stood in the shadows, holding his breath, in anticipation.
When the pirates, minus Alex, had returned to Ilha dos Sonhos in the helicopter and hurriedly departed again on the Fair Lady after finding Jose’s body, Mitch knew Van Zyl would not be coming to get him. He’d methodically made his preparations for revenge. The others hadn’t had time to conduct a thorough search of the island, and Mitch had watched them come and go.
Mitch had packed his kit and hidden it in the bush, then taken one of the two RHIBs out to sea and scuttled it. He’d then swum back and gone into hiding, waiting for the moment that was about to arrive. He was almost aroused at the thought of it. If Chan and Van Zyl and Penfold had failed to wipe out Alex and his men en masse, then that was OK. Mitch would do it one man at a time, and he’d save the woman until last. She’d be freaking out by the time her turn came. Maybe some of the men would beg him to spare their lives, in return for swearing their loyalty to him. Mitch liked the thought of that. He might be back in business sooner than he thought.
Alex stepped into the boatshed via the side entrance and paused for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dark. Mitch moved behind him, raised the pistol and brought it down hard on the back of Alex’s head.
Mitch dragged the unconscious Alex up and over the rubber gunwale of the inflatable boat. He sagged against the craft, breathing shallowly. He looked down at the crumpled form. The others wouldn’t dare follow him if they knew he had a live hostage, and later, out of sight of the island he would kill Tremain, slowly.
Mitch opened the double front doors of the boatshed, released the chock and pushed the RHIB so that it rolled down the twin rails to the water. Nothing could stop him now.
The men were still at the bar when Jane came out of the kitchen with a bowl of salad. She looked for Alex but couldn’t see him.
‘Where’s Alex?’
‘Probably still messing about in the boatshed,’ Heinrich said.
She set the bowl down on the bar and wandered, barefoot, along the beach to the shed. ‘Alex?’
The black bow of the RHIB rolled out into the sunlight. Jane saw Mitch at the helm and screamed. He fired a shot at her and she dived into the sand.
Jane was aware of shouting behind her, but she knew she had to get to her feet. She pulled herself up just as the boat was entering the water. Mitch was preoccupied with the starter as the twin engines were sputtering, failing to start.
She sprinted for the shed. Mitch was drifting out further from shore as she ran inside the musty hut. She looked around. The racks that once bristled with assault rifles were now empty. There were no pistol belts hanging from hooks and even the boxes of grenades were at the bottom of the Mozambique Channel.
The RHIB’s outboard motors caught and Mitch revved them hard.
Through the shed door Jane could see the other members of Alex’s crew, all drunk, were trying to organise themselves. She felt helpless, and terrified for Alex’s safety. Mitch was a madman, bent on revenge. After all she and Alex had been through, she felt like screaming. She hadn’t endured all this to see him taken away from her and executed.
Jane looked out and saw Alex getting to his knees in the front of the boat. Mitch sent him sprawling face-first into the deck with a vicious kick in his back.
Jane saw one of the ALM line launchers lying on a workbench. It was the closest thing to a weapon still in the empty racks of what had once been the pirates’ armoury. A grappling hook was loaded in the barrel and a yellow compressed air container was attached.
Jane picked up the launcher and ran down to the water’s edge.
Mitch turned and saw her. He raised his pistol but didn’t fire. She stood her ground, aimed the launcher and pulled the trigger.
The grappling hook hissed from the barrel and sailed in a high arc, passing over Mitch’s head.
‘Ha! Missed me!’ he yelled.
He was turning to look at her as the line continued to shimmy and snap out of the plastic holder beneath the barrel.
Jane dug her feet into the sand and held tight as the last of the nylon rope drew taut.
The hook had landed in the boat and Alex rolled on his back and saw the rubber-coated grapnel. He grabbed it and aimed at Mitch, who was off balance with his pistol hand on the helm as he continued to look backwards.
With Jane holding firm on the other end of the line, and the boat accelerating furiously, the hook left Alex’s hand of its own accord and snapped viciously into Mitch’s face. One curved prong wrapped around his throat and he was yanked off his feet backwards. His back bounced against one of the outboards and his body slammed into the water.
Alex crawled back to the helm and knocked the throttles into dead slow. He turned the RHIB around and headed for shore. The force of the hook catching Mitch had pulled Jane off her feet, but she was standing now, waving to him.
Mitch floated face-down in the water and when Alex coasted up beside him it was clear immediately that his neck was broken.
Epilogue
One year later
Alex looked into the mirror, lifted his collar, and ran the black bow tie around the back of his neck. ‘We should get a new boat some time. I miss the Fair Lady.’
As much as it had pained him to do so, Alex had scuttled the Fair Lady a few nautical miles out to sea, the day after Jose’s funeral.
When the South African Air Force made some low-level passes over Ilha dos Sonhos, presumably looking for the vessel which had been spotted on radar near the sinking of the Penfold Son, he was pleased there was nothing in the bay for them to photograph.
The South African Navy’s board of inquiry had found that Captain Gert Fourie had acted properly, sinking the Penfold Son. Fourie confirmed, under oath, that Penfold had told him he had left the ship and was on a motor cruiser, which had never been seen or heard from again, and that the
Englishman had ordered him to sink his ship.
‘Well, you might not need to steal one this time. Here, let me,’ Jane said, moving behind Alex.
He smelled her perfume and took her slender forearm in his hand and kissed it as she encircled him. She pushed herself against his back and he found the sound of her silk dress rubbing against his dinner jacket almost as sexy as her.
‘Why are men rubbish at tying bow ties?’ She peeked over his shoulder, looking in the mirror of their suite as she tied it. ‘There, now you look more like a hotel owner and less like a cutthroat.’
‘Half-owner of a hotel,’ he corrected her.
‘Half is better than nothing,’ she reminded him. She kissed his cheek, then wiped the lipstick away with her thumb.
Two floors and forty-eight rooms of the hotel were finished – enough to declare it open. Alex poured them each a second glass of vintage French champagne.
‘Hey, go easy on that,’ Jane said. ‘You’ve got a speech to make.’
‘Dutch courage,’ he said, ‘and every pirate needs his grog.’
She frowned and he mouthed ‘Sorry’. He got down on one knee and reached into the pocket of his tuxedo.
‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’ She put a hand over her mouth as the realisation dawned on her.
‘Jane . . .’
‘No!’
‘What?’
‘I mean, yes, if this is what I think it is.’
‘I’ve lost a cufflink and I was just getting down here to look for it.’
She punched him on the shoulder and got down on her knees so she was eye to eye with him.
‘So, will you?’ he asked.
‘Help you find your cufflink?’
‘No, you know what I mean.’
‘Yes, and I will.’
Lesley Engels, the American widow Alex had met on the Pride of Africa en route to Cape Town, was waiting for them downstairs. The diamonds around her neck glittered with reflected candlelight. A string quartet played in the background and the hundred and fifty guests parted as Alex and Jane walked arm in arm along a red carpet.
‘Those two look like they’ve stepped off a bloody wedding cake,’ Kevin joked to Kobus as Alex and Jane passed them.
All of Alex’s men were there. Kufa, looking dapper in a white suit and black tie, chatted to a German travel journalist who laughed at something he said. Henri, now fully recovered from his injuries, was staring into the eyes of a South African Airways flight attendant whose dinner suit couldn’t hide a body builder’s physique. Heinrich drank beer instead of champagne and was discussing the merits of the AK-47 over the G3 with an American travel agent from Dallas. Mark and Lisa Novak danced slowly in front of the quartet, paying attention only to each other.
Alex made his way to Lesley and kissed her on the cheek. She was a stunningly beautiful woman, and the first, that he could remember, from whom he had ever turned down an offer of sex. He’d thought that he would never hear from her again, though she had seemed to understand why he declined her offer when he told her he was in love with another woman. It was the first time he’d realised how he truly felt about Jane.
In the days after the sinking of the Penfold Son, his initial elation at having survived had worn off when he realised they were all broke and living on an island with little food and no source of income. He, Jane and the others had worked the bars and backpacker joints of Vilanculos, trying to drum up business for fishing and diving trips, but they were competing with other, better established operators. The future looked grim, until one day when Alex checked his emails on the computer at Smugglers and saw the message from Lesley in the US.
The music ended and when the crowd eventually hushed itself Lesley began her speech.
‘When I came to Africa, on my last trip, I knew I wanted to invest some of my late husband’s money in a hotel property, preferably on a beach, but I had no idea where to start looking. I didn’t even know where Mozambique was.’ She paused until the polite laughter subsided. ‘And then, on a train, in the middle of the Karoo Desert, I met this gorgeous fellow, Alex Tremain.’
‘If she lays a finger on you, I’ll shoot her,’ Jane whispered in his ear.
Lesley held up her hands to drown out the wolf whistles from the men. ‘Alex told me about this beautiful hotel on this beautiful island in this beautiful country that I knew nothing about. When I looked into his eyes I saw that this was no conman trying to fleece me; this was a man who truly believed that he had paradise within his reach, but there was something keeping it from him, just beyond his grasp. I wanted to help him catch that dream and make it a reality.’
Alex looked at Jane and put his arm around her and squeezed her tight. She smiled at him. Whatever happened from here on with the hotel didn’t matter. He knew now that happiness wasn’t tied up in concrete and fine china, or in the sands of an island or the memories of a long-gone colonial era. He’d betrayed his honour and himself to fast-track his dream, but with Jane by his side he felt more complete than he had in a long time. With Lesley’s money and a great deal of hard work, he might just have the life he wanted, but he’d never steal or put the lives of those he loved at risk again.
‘Anyway,’ Lesley continued, ‘I say to this stranger on a train, Alex Tremain, “So what do you do for money, to finance your grand plans to reopen your hotel?” He kind of sighs, looks all world-weary, and says, “I’m a pirate”.’
The crowd laughed, egged on by Alex’s men, who were slapping each other, cheering and spilling drinks on each other and some of the perplexed-looking guests.
‘And I ask you, what girl can resist a pirate?’
Acknowledgements
This is a work of fiction – it is not a manual on how to hijack a car carrier or a container ship. For this reason, I have deliberately omitted or altered some security procedures that would take place on a merchant ship in the event of an attack by pirates.
Researching this book was no easy task, as maritime security has increased considerably in these terror-prone times we live in. It was only with considerable amounts of goodwill on the part of a number people that I was even able to set foot on a merchant ship.
Thanks to my very good friend Elizabeth Berrill, Group Media Manager, Wallem Group, and Simon Doughty, Managing Director of Wallem Shipping, Hong Kong, I was able to gain access to the Pure Car and Truck Carrier, the MV Hoegh Africa, when she was in port in Sydney unloading a consignment of Hummer H3s from South Africa.
Paul Nicolson and Hussein Chahine from Seaway shepherded me through security and on to the ship, and once on board I could not have asked for a more helpful, knowledgeable and patient host than the master of the ship himself, Captain Ivan Gospodinov.
Captain Gospodinov not only walked me over (virtually) every inch of his massive ship, but also read and corrected sections of the draft manuscript. To him, his crew and the good people at Wallem and Seaway, I say thank you.
On dry land (in fact, it was in Maun, in the middle of land-locked Botswana, about as dry as Africa gets), I was fortunate enough to meet another master mariner, Captain Stuart McAllister FNI. Stuart is a serving shipmaster with the Maersk shipping company of London, and part-time consultant on all matters maritime. When he found out I was writing a book about shipping and pirates, he bravely agreed to read the whole manuscript for me. Stuart made numerous corrections and even found time to comment on some of the ‘romantic’ scenes in the book. For his help with the shipping stuff (and the other stuff), I really can’t thank him enough.
Closer to home in Australia, Mike Davis and Ian McLachlan were able to organise a berth for me on the MV Island Trader, which plies the often lumpy seas between the north coast of New South Wales and Lord Howe Island. I’d never been to sea and wanted to at least get some feel of what it was like.
On board, Captain Peter, First Mate Andy and the rest of the crew, Brett, Wayne and Peter, all resisted the urge to pull their hair out and toss me overboard, and answered my c
easeless questions. Thanks to all of you (and to my good friend and fellow Pan Macmillan author, Peter Watt, who took me shopping prior to the trip for wet weather gear and seasick pills – neither of which I needed).
In my mind’s eye, when I started to write the scene in which the MV Oslo Star is boarded, I was picturing a device that fired a grappling hook and rope high into the sky. A quick internet search led me to Matt Scott, from Vertical Innovations, Mona Vale, distributors of the Assault Line Max line launcher. Thanks, Matt, for your time. I only wish I could have fired one!
Georgia Gowing put me in touch with a former South African military helicopter pilot who, at the time I contacted him, was flying aid missions for the UN in Sudan. He helped me with many questions about Oryx and Rooivalk helicopters, but asked not to be named. Thanks to you both.
My heartfelt thanks go to Petty Officer Bruce ‘Steeleman’ Steele of the South African Navy who gave me a comprehensive tour of one the navy’s new frigates, the SAS Amatola, in Simon’s Town Harbour near Cape Town. The SAS Talana featured in this book is fictional, but bears a close resemblance to the Amatola. Thank you, Sybil, for finding me Bruce.
I’ve made many friends through my books and was particularly fortunate that one of them, Jess, has a father who is an officer in the Royal Australian Navy. Captain Tony Aldred, CSC, RANR, checked and corrected my scenes on the bridge of the SAS Talana and I’m extremely grateful to him and his Land Rover-owning daughter.
The whole concept of elephant culling remains as controversial as ever as this book goes to print. I choose to remain firmly on the fence when it comes to culling, but I hope I’ve been able to fairly represent the basic arguments for and against.
In the Kruger National Park, Michele Hofmeyr was kind enough to share with me her experiences in Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park, for which I thank her.
My thanks, too, go to Doctor Ian Whyte for information on elephants and elephant migrations between Mozambique and South Africa. At the time of his retirement from the South African National Parks Service, Ian was the Kruger National Park’s number one authority on elephants.
