Cold Blood

by Andy McNab

  Rune looked at the man in yellow as if he was an experiment that had gone badly wrong for no discernible reason. He’d stopped leaking tears; now his expression was unreadable.

  ‘Rune, get outside!’

  He pushed his way past me and I followed. I used my back to close the door and slammed down one of the levers on the outside of the bulkhead with my elbow.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Fuck what happened. We need to find the team.’

  But first I needed to find something that would get us out of the plasticuffs.

  66

  The vessel gave another massive shudder.

  I sprinted down the narrow passageway, retracing the route we’d taken on the way in. Rune was somewhere behind me. I didn’t bother checking. He had all his arms and legs, he could get on with it. The team couldn’t.

  I came to a junction and heard shouts around the corner. The passageway filled with a flurry of commands and running feet.

  ‘The cable locker. He’s in there with two of them. Go!’

  I waited to take them on.

  ‘Roger that.’

  Day sack. Miss Kentucky.

  I stayed where I was and waited for her to take a pace around the corner towards us and be in dead ground from the rest of them. I was fresh out of options.

  The moment she appeared, I closed my eyes and slammed the top of my skull hard into her face. I didn’t know where it landed, but there were starbursts behind my eyes.

  She went down. I stayed standing, just about, screwing up my face in pain. My eyes streamed and my nose filled with snot. If you were going to head-butt somebody, you really had to go for it. Male or female. No half measures. The downside was, it hurt.

  The boat’s Tannoy kept right on going, with its looped sequence of monotone pre-recorded instructions. Everything was under control. The red lights glowed. It could have been happening in my head, for all I knew. But it wasn’t.

  I turned to Rune, my eyes still smarting. ‘Kick her coat open – fucking get on with it!’

  She was starting to move. Her legs flexed then straightened, trying to regain some form of control.

  I knelt down, my shin planted across her neck.

  ‘Rune, feel down her belt – maybe her trouser pocket … We need a knife. Get on with it …’

  You were only as sharp as your knife. This lot were very sharp indeed, except when they ran around blind corners, and in environments like this they would all carry something like a Leatherman. Something that could grip and twist and cut would be part of who they were.

  Rune was on his knees, on the deck, leaning back, hands scrabbling awkwardly inside her duvet.

  ‘Try her pockets.’

  And there it was, clipped in her right-hand pocket, an all-steel, military-looking Gerber Paraframe.

  Rune was still feeling his way. ‘That’s it, Rune – that’s a knife.’

  His fingers fumbled until it opened, and he grasped it in his hand. The blade made short work of the tough plastic.

  I felt movement under my shin as Rune cut me free. She was starting to recover.

  ‘Get her back to the bow.’

  He grabbed hold of her legs and started to drag her down the way we’d come. As he did so, her duvet rose up towards her chest to expose a 9mm SIG in a black matt polymer holster too, and two spare mags.

  She was about a head taller and probably a third heavier than Rune. The ship lurched again and we were all thrown against the bulkhead. It didn’t help that he was still in panic mode. I snatched the weapon and tucked it into my duvet jacket with the spare magazines.

  ‘Drop her. Leave her. Go and wait at the door.’

  I started dragging her myself. I wanted to get her inside the cable-locker room before she recovered enough to fight or raise the alarm. The Tannoy kept feeding calm, collected instructions about what kit went where.

  It was all geeky. ‘The G-Set 104, the D minus-6 kit …’

  We got to the door. I dropped her legs and she groaned.

  I bore down on her. ‘My team. Where are they?’ I gave her a kick, mostly to remind her of who was top dog now.

  Whatever, I wasn’t getting answers.

  I couldn’t tell if it was down to pain or resistance. Either way, it didn’t really matter. We were well out of time. I got up, threw the latch, pushed open the door and stepped back. Inside, Munnelly was still bleeding, still on his knees.

  I stabbed a finger at him. ‘You, move back. Into the room.’

  Then I gave her another kick. ‘You, inside. Get inside.’

  She started a semi-crawl, taking her time.

  ‘Rune, fucking get her in there. Push her. Stay this side of the door.’

  I focused on Munnelly as Rune bent down in front of me and tried to force her in.

  ‘Where’s everyone else? Where’s the team?’

  The dead eyes were back. He looked at me like he had on the plane and shook his head. ‘Haven’t you done enough damage?’

  The ship lurched another few degrees and a yell echoed down the passageway. I lost my balance and hit a bulkhead. Munnelly thrust his hand down onto the floor to brace himself. He wasn’t so groggy now. He was a picture of defiance. He wasn’t going to give me anything.

  And neither was she.

  Fuck it. I shoved Rune out of the way, grabbed her belt and the scruff of her duvet and launched her bodily over the dwarf bulkhead. Then I slammed the door and spun the deadlocks back into position.

  67

  They had to be at the front of the boat like we had been, but in the bridge tower or one of the admin levels below it. The holds that would have been full of rotting cod or dead whales in the old days were too big to keep prisoners securely. And the ISO containers on the main deck were more to do with work than containment.

  I checked the junction again where I’d dropped Miss Kentucky. There was movement, way down the passageway, near the bottom of the steel stairway we’d descended from the deck. Activity, but no shouting: people had control and were getting on with it. They would have rehearsed abandon-ship drills almost every day of their lives.

  The Tannoy continued to dole out its bland monotone instructions. Then, above it, I heard a command: everyone move up to the top deck.

  Rune and I pulled open doors and more doors.

  ‘Will! Stedman! Jules!’

  No reply.

  The red emergency lights gave us cover, made us just another bunch of bodies rushing around. Then, behind us, I heard, ‘Oi – oi!’

  I spun round. Gabriel and Rio were at the junction. I ran back, feeling the world’s biggest grin spread across my face. ‘Thank fuck we found you!’

  ‘Nah, mate. We found you.’

  The rest of them barrelled round the corner. Jules was beaming too. ‘Found you! We’ve been looking everywhere. What happened?’

  ‘Don’t know. And I’m not staying long enough to ask. We need to get off this thing.’

  I turned left again, heading for the main stairway. I didn’t need to check they were behind me. They’d get there. I had my reasons. I hoped that by the time everyone caught up I’d have had an idea.

  I ran up the steps and lay on the gantry at the top, next to the open door. Normally it would have been closed, like on any ship, let alone something out there. I stuck my head out and looked left down to the deck. I saw maybe twenty bodies, hustling to launch the two orange lifeboat capsules this side of the icebreaker. Three bodies ran out of an ISO container carrying kit. One was clutching a thin aluminium box, maybe a metre long.

  I could feel the ship listing.

  The helicopter was back on the landing pad, still free of the supporting struts that would secure its rotors and hold it to the deck when it wasn’t in use. It must have been prepared to take off again after its last sortie.

  I legged it back down to the rest of the team. ‘They’re abandoning ship.’ I didn’t waste time registering their reactions: they’d probably worked it out for themselves.

>   I caught Will’s eye. ‘Mate, the heli. Can you fly an Enstrom? Stupid question. Course you can …’

  But his face fell. It was like I’d asked him to fire up an Apollo space rocket. I didn’t get an answer.

  ‘You can sort it, can’t you?’ I knew he could physically, but his challenge was mental.

  ‘… well, I suppose …’

  ‘Not good enough. The answer has to be yes. I need you to get this lot off safely.’ I grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘Here’s how it is. Remember when your Puma brewed up, and the other lads didn’t make it? Remember what that did to you, how badly it hurt when you could no longer do a fucking thing about it? Well, here’s your second chance. This one is in your hands. So get switched on. Do your stuff, yeah?’

  His face remained blank.

  I kept staring at him, in laser mode, excluding everybody else, but kept my voice low. ‘Mate, they need you to get that thing airborne. You can take care of everybody. I can’t do it. Only you can.’

  The ship gave another lurch, and we all gripped whatever we could. ‘Will, the answer’s got to be yes, and it’s got to be now. You know you can do it.’

  Jules stepped in. Put her hand on his shoulder. ‘He can do it.’ She had eye-to-eye with her husband. For a moment, they were in their own little world.

  I let them get on with it and turned to the others. ‘Right, here’s the deal. Will’s going to fly. Jules goes up front with him. Gabriel, Rio and Rune in the back.’

  Rio sparked up. ‘Hold up, mate, what about you lot? We’re a team, right, stick together?’

  I shook my head. ‘We’ve got to be sensible about this. Room for five, right? You’ve both got kids. These two fuckers,’ I jabbed a finger at Jack and Stedman, ‘they’ve got each other, and me, I’ve got fuck-all. It’s simple maths, mate. Get in the aircraft and fuck off.’

  I pointed at Rune. ‘And you’re going, because you know the whole story. You need to tell the people who matter what’s happened, and why. Do you understand?’

  The rest of the team looked confused. ‘Later on. Rune, do you understand?’

  He’d gone white as the sheet ice that surrounded us. ‘Nick, surely they will have sent an SOS? Help will be coming, right?’

  ‘Don’t count on it. You were in that room a minute ago with Munnelly. Do not assume anything. That goes for all of us. Do not assume anything. Just take the aircraft, get out of the area and get on the radio. There’ll be emergency kit on board. Try and get to Barneo – anywhere, as long as it’s not here. Go!’

  Gabriel wasn’t happy. ‘Yeah, but we’ve got to get past—’

  ‘That’s your job.’ I pulled out the SIG and the two mags, and gave them to him. ‘The doorways to the ISO containers – as you look at the helicopter, they’re to the right. Get round the left-hand side. Get Will in the aircraft, get the thing started and get going.’

  He took the pistol, and started to take command. ‘Rio, get Will and Jules upstairs. Let’s go.’

  I was expecting a wisecrack, but Rio swung straight into action. He shepherded Will and Jules ahead of him.

  Jules stopped, turned three steps up and caught my eye, but I shook my head. ‘There’s no time for that. It doesn’t matter. You can do all that shit over coffee and sticky buns. Just get him on that aircraft – get him flying.’

  I watched them reach the top of the stairway and turn right, round the front of the bridge tower, to avoid anyone working the ISO containers and the boats.

  Then I turned to Jack and Stedman. ‘OK, let’s get off this fucking thing.’

  68

  When your options were zero, it was always easy to decide what to do.

  ‘Listen in. This side is going under first. We have to go round to the other safety capsules. If they’re loading them, we need to grab anything we can use to get off this thing. Or we just sit here and wait to drown. Or get wet and cold and then drown.’

  They grinned, as you do when everything’s turned to rat-shit and you’ve got a few bits missing.

  ‘We’ve got to stay clear of those ISO containers. Fuck knows how those guys are going to react.’

  I raced up to the main deck, stopped just short of the exit and cocked an ear. The Tannoy fell silent and I could hear the bulkheads creak and complain, the shouts of the bodies pouring out of the containers laden with gizmos. I had no idea what they were carrying, but it had to be very important for them to risk their own lives to save it.

  I turned back. The other two were negotiating the steps as fast as they could. Stedman had a grip on Jack and was hauling him up.

  ‘Lads, give me two minutes. If I’m not back in two, crack on.’

  I didn’t wait for a reply. I pushed past them and ran along the passageway. There was no way I was going to leave those two in the cable locker. They deserved a fighting chance, same as the rest of us. Navies that were kicking the shit out of each other one minute would pick up survivors the next. We weren’t at war just yet.

  I reached the bulkhead door and slammed the latch over. Even though the whole superstructure was moaning and groaning like it was in its death throes, they couldn’t have missed the clunk. They were cautious opening up, but this was their choice. I wasn’t going to do it and risk losing a fight.

  I turned and ran again, sweat gathering under my duvet. Jack and Stedman were still at the top of the stairway, looking out and down.

  Jack had news when I reached them. ‘We heard two shots.’

  We lay on the landing with our heads stuck out over the threshold. Sweat was pouring down the side of my face. In seconds, it would have frozen.

  The heli started up. Stedman clapped a hand on my shoulder. ‘You hear that?’

  ‘I may be fucked, but I’m not deaf, and we gotta get moving too.’

  I checked quickly down below, to make sure Munnelly wasn’t about to launch himself on us, then stood up, slipped out of the door and right, towards the bow. I sensed rather than saw the increasing panic on the deck behind me.

  I didn’t need to check that the other two were with me. I could hear them curse as the ship yawed and tilted. We now had an uphill climb along the front of the bridge tower.

  I heard the roar of the heli’s rotors.

  The Enstrom flew past, then turned back on itself as Jules spotted us. Will kept the thing in a hover less than ten metres away. His face was a picture of absolute concentration. This was his life’s mission. This was his time.

  Jules was in the seat next to him. I could see her shouting, then gesticulating wildly towards the port side of the icebreaker, the side we were heading for.

  It had now lifted high enough to make the ice pack no longer visible. All I could see was sky.

  I waved back at her, trying to fuck them off. They’d done their bit. There was nothing else they could do. We were fucked if we went higher. The heli turned away, and we saw the other three in the back, faces to the window, expressionless, as the Enstrom headed south.

  ‘Let’s go. Up to the bridge!’

  Having one option was better than having none. They turned and followed.

  I retraced our journey around the base of the bridge tower. The crew had stopped saving their kit and started saving themselves. Bodies were clambering aboard the lifeboats. I saw Munnelly, standing between the water and the ISO containers, shouting orders to the last. There was no sign of the woman, but I was sure she was up on deck somewhere.

  Back inside the superstructure, I scrambled from one step to the next, heading what used to be upwards and was now quite a lot sideways. Behind me, Jack was flagging. His plastic leg seemed to have stopped obeying orders. Stedman braced himself against the bulkhead and held out his good arm, letting Jack grab it and lever himself up.

  I reached the top and had to stop. I’d been expecting drama but the bridge was empty. It was also warm. I could smell the coffee, because most of it was no longer in the pot.

  Radar screens glowed, and every other piece of machinery within reach was flashing or bl
eeping loudly, telling the icebreaker what it already knew: it was in the shit.

  The wipers kept scraping across the front and rear windows because nobody had told them not to. The last few bodies on the main deck had disappeared inside the lifeboats and hatches were being slammed shut. They knew it wasn’t going to take long.

  I headed left, through the door onto the bridge wing. I was moving downhill. This fucking thing was going to reach the point of no return very, very soon. I shouted back over my shoulder. ‘Come on, come on.’ As if that was going to help. As if they needed any incentive.

  Jack and Stedman clambered onto the bridge.

  They slid out onto the wing. The icepack was maybe twenty metres below us. The Lisandro heaved and rolled, and this time it didn’t stop. There was a deafening series of shrieks, cracks, bangs and groans. Any second now the vessel was going to come out with a white flag.

  I grabbed hold of Jack, the nearest body, and dragged him closer to me. ‘You ready?’

  There was no time for him to answer. The side of the bridge wing was almost a horizontal platform beneath our feet. There was a massive explosion somewhere below us and the platform plunged downwards like a broken lift.

  I kept a hand on Jack, and he had hold of Stedman. I could hear the water rushing up, and the ice rupturing and splintering and sending up a glittering but impenetrable cloud.

  We couldn’t see what we were about to jump into. We just jumped. The hand gripping didn’t last more than a second.

  69

  I was in freefall.

  Still no imagery below me. A blurred glimpse of a lifeboat in my peripheral vision, caught under the side of the breaker’s hull, in the process of being sucked into dark water.

  I braced myself for landing. I just didn’t know what I’d be landing in. I heard screams and yet more explosions of ice, one of which was right beneath my feet as I hit the ground.