Marine F SBS

by Robin James

  Major Fernandez was justifiably proud of his disguised gunboat. It was manned by a team of SBS operatives from the Royal Marine Commandos who had been working undercover for several weeks, dressed in the civvies of the typical private yacht owner and guests or in crew whites. Operation Bosom was about to come to its conclusion. On the very afternoon of the kidnapping of Carolyn Parker-Reed the Gremlin was all set to arrest a Guernsey-registered private yacht which had been making frequent trips between the UK and France, and whose owner and crew, Fernandez was now certain, were smuggling drugs in a big way. The major was fairly confident that there would be a massive load of hashish aboard – possibly as much as a thousand kilos.

  It was therefore with extreme irritation, just as he was closing in on his quarry as she moved out of French territorial waters, that he received orders from Colonel Sir Peter Inge to abort the mission, set the Gremlin full speed ahead to La Coruña and get himself by helicopter to the Mirabelle.

  With great interest, two and a half hours later, El Asesino observed a Wessex Mk 3 helicopter descend on to the landing pad of the Mirabelle. The yacht, though big, had only space enough on her decks for one chopper; the tender helicopter had taken off to park temporarily at La Coruña airport in order to make room for the Wessex.

  Somebody important was getting into the act, mused Arsenio as, through his binoculars, he watched Fernandez descend from the helicopter. The major was dressed in cream slacks and a white, open-necked shirt, but something about his bearing suggested authority, even though he appeared as little more than ant-sized at that distance. Had he not been so far away, Arsenio would surely have recognized him.

  As soon as he had been put completely in the picture, Fernandez put a question nobody had thought of to the princes.

  ‘Bubbles?’ he asked. ‘Did either of you see any bubbles?’

  ‘Not me,’ replied the boy who was second in line to succeed to the throne of England.

  Neither had Harry, and this, together with the fact that there had been no other boat close by at the time of Carolyn’s disappearance, led the major to a wrong conclusion.

  ‘It has to be a submarine,’ he said to Parker-Reed. ‘She must have been dragged into a sub. There were no bubbles, ergo no frogmen or scuba divers. But one or two men with large lung capacities could go through the airlock of a sub and haul the girl inside within a couple of minutes. A sub it has to be.’

  ‘That seems utterly incredible,’ observed the Home Secretary.

  ‘But she’s gone. And she’s alive. You tell me, sir. If they were, as it seems, really after the Princess of Wales, they would have gone to incredible extremes, would they not?’

  ‘I hate to say this . . . it really hurts me. But we’ve no proof that she is alive, Stephen,’ pointed out Travers Bonnington. ‘We had a call from a woman, that’s all.’

  ‘She’s alive,’ said Parker-Reed, not even daring to consider the alternative. ‘A hoax call is out of the question. Nobody knew of Carolyn’s apparent death except for people aboard this boat and my personal secretary.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Fernandez. ‘From all you’ve told me she was a very fit young woman and a powerful swimmer. She didn’t drown and she was not eaten by sharks. Half the crew went in after her, as did the princess herself. They would have been attacked were there sharks about. There would have been blood. She’s been kidnapped all right.’ Shaking his head and looking out to sea, where the sky was starting to turn orange at the horizon as the sun began to set, he added, ‘They must have used a sub.’

  The phone rang. It was Kirsty. She would speak to no one but the Home Secretary.

  ‘You should leave. This evening,’ she told him. ‘Return to England and start to organise the money. Used, untraceable fifty-pound notes. We shall want them delivered in batches of one million pounds. I shall let you know tomorrow when and how for the first million.’

  ‘All right,’ said Parker-Reed, lips set in a tight, thin line. ‘But I have no proof that Carolyn is alive and well. I have to talk to her. I’m not handing over millions of pounds until I’ve talked to her.’

  ‘She’s not with me. I can’t do that.’

  ‘I want to talk to her tomorrow morning,’ he insisted firmly. ‘I shall be in my London office.’ He gave Kirsty the number of his private line.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said Kirsty, from the Barcelona exchange.

  ‘What time will she call?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The line went dead.

  ‘I’d have the police set about putting a trace on your London phone right away, sir, if I were you,’ said Fernandez, glancing at the stateroom telephone. ‘Out here, at sea, poses a certain amount of problems.’

  ‘Yes. Of course. I’ll call New Scotland Yard right away. Do you mind, Travers?’

  The American looked stunned by this second polite request to use his phone from a man whose daughter had been kidnapped from the Mirabelle. ‘For Christ’s sake!’ he exploded.

  As the sun, a huge ball of fire, began to sink below the horizon, the far-distant fishing boats appeared as a coal-black collection of miniature toys against a brilliant-orange background. Watching the sunset, but his agile mind on other, equally dramatic things, Fernandez suddenly thought of something.

  ‘Those drifters,’ he asked Bonnington. ‘Were they that far away this morning, when this happened?’

  ‘No. They were much closer, now you come to mention it,’ the American told him. ‘About half as far. And one was much nearer to us than the rest, as I recall.’

  ‘Was it now? That could be interesting.’

  ‘Hell, they’re just poor fishermen. In any case it was far too far away to swim to. Anyway, someone would have spotted the movement for sure.’

  ‘Probably, yes. Well, we’ll just check them out tomorrow morning, in any case. When my Gremlin gets here.’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘My Patrol Gunboat. She’s heading down from France right now.’

  As he said this the thought occurred to Fernandez that scuba divers need not necessarily leave a trail of bubbles. He had forgotten about the specially designed oxygen tanks which retained carbon dioxide. They were available to armed forces personnel only – but the kidnappers might somehow have got hold of some. In any case, an astute man who wanted to cover his tracks might well collect those bubbles in something. A plastic bag, for example. Which would make the task of getting his victim into a submarine that much easier. Or even into a not too far distant fishing boat.

  13

  Scared, bored, utterly miserable, Carolyn awoke stiff and cramped after a fitful night’s sleep. Arsenio had tried to make her as comfortable as possible, rustling up some old fishing nets to put under her blanket, and she had been offered food and drink the evening before. He had even let her out of her prison to use the boat’s primitive toilet facilities. But she had not been able to eat – her nervous stomach would not allow it; she had only managed to slake her thirst. During the night the nets kept bunching into uncomfortable lumps beneath her, and when she did snatch moments of sleep they were disturbed by awful dreams.

  Now, with the drifter rolling in an increasing swell, she felt queasy again – a condition which was not helped by the smell of her stale vomit which filtered through the fishy stink of the hold.

  The hatch above her head opened and she was momentarily blinded by the bright light which flooded in. It was nine a.m., but as far as she was concerned it might have been afternoon. Felix Springer let himself down, then closed the hatch almost snug so that there was just enough light slipping through to see by. He had been sent down on a mission which Arsenio personally had little stomach for. He had with him the portable telephone, and a note whose contents Carolyn was to read to Kirsty in Barcelona and which Kirsty was to tape-record. Arsenio needed Carolyn to sound terrified when she read the note – enough to be sobbing uncontrollably. That way her father, when he heard the recording over his London telephone, might be persuaded to com
e up with the ransom without any attempts at playing for time.

  ‘Well, my pretty one,’ said Springer, ogling Carolyn in the dim light. ‘You are having the most nicest tits, is this not so?’ Rape was not what El Asesino had had in mind when he told the German to ‘scare the shit out of her, but don’t actually do her any physical damage’. Springer had other ideas. The chick was their prisoner, she was fair game.

  Carolyn’s bright-blue eyes went very wide. She had sat up as Springer came into the hold, and now she stood and backed away from him, folding her arms protectively over the thin, pale-green sweater which had been meant for the Princess of Wales. ‘What do you . . . you want?’ she stuttered. ‘You just stay away from me, you hear? Keep away.’

  ‘Nein. I want to see your tits. Is OK, no?’

  She staggered as the boat rolled, and then he was on her, clamping her wrists together behind her back in a huge, meaty hand, forcing her on to her knees on the blanket and fishing nets, ripping her sweater up to her shoulders, greedily fumbling her breasts.

  Gasping, she fought to free her hands, but he was a powerful man, and she had no chance. Instead, she leant into him and sank her teeth into his black-T-shirted shoulder. He grunted, stopped mauling her breasts, and shoved her face off him.

  ‘So – you are wanting to play games, is it?’ He grinned, crinkling a scar in his artificially bronzed cheek. ‘Then, OK, is good. We play games. I fuck you, girl. OK?’

  His hand clamped over her mouth, he forced her on to her back and fell on top of her, his solid fifteen-stone weight pressing her into the nets, squashing her as he unzipped her jeans and ripped them down and off one leg, then did the same with the bikini bottom. As he released her mouth to fumble undone his own jeans she let rip a piercing scream which penetrated the entire boat.

  Within seconds, as Springer handled himself out and prepared to enter her, the hatch was dragged fully open and the hold flooded with light.

  ‘Cut it out, Felix,’ said Arsenio, coldly. ‘That’s not what I . . .’

  Springer looked over his shoulder and up. ‘But you told me to . . .’ he cut in, and was himself interrupted.

  ‘I didn’t tell you to rape her, lunkhead. Get off her.’

  But the German was far gone in his lust. He was determined to have his way. ‘You get me off her,’ he growled, at the same time pulling down his jeans enough to present Arsenio with a view of his huge, hairy buttocks. He forced Carolyn’s wildly kicking legs wide.

  Arsenio sighed. He needed this like he needed the proverbial head hole. He pulled out the Smith & Wesson from its holster beneath his shirt.

  ‘Felix,’ he shouted, crouching down and pointing the gun into the hold. The sound of the safety-catch clicking off was sharp and unnaturally loud in the echoing emptiness.

  The German recognized that noise. He turned his head once more, eyes blazing.

  ‘I’ll use it. You know I will. Now turn it in.’

  Rolling off Carolyn, Springer pulled up his jeans. ‘OK. OK,’ he muttered, anger seething within him to override his lust. ‘But still I cannot see why . . .’ His eyes were raking the young woman’s nakedness as she struggled to cover herself.

  ‘Get on with it. What you’re supposed to be doing, for Christ’s sake. I’ll be watching. I’ll put some lead in your arse if you try that again.’ Closing the hatch three-quarters of the way, Arsenio remained above it, with his gun ready, observing.

  ‘When I am getting my chance,’ muttered the frustrated German to Carolyn, ‘I shall be doing it to you real good. In every sort of way. You will see. Just you wait.’

  She was sitting up, panting, warily staring at him. ‘What, what is it you’re supposed to be doing to me?’ she whispered. She glanced up at Arsenio. ‘What’s he supposed to be doing to me, for God’s sake?’

  His face stony, Arsenio merely shrugged. He was not enjoying this one little bit.

  Springer pulled a large penknife from the back pocket of his jeans. He opened it. The blade, kept lovingly sharp, gleamed. Grabbing Carolyn’s hand, he forced it flat on to the wooden hull, doubling her over in the process. ‘I have to cut off a finger. To send to your papa,’ he hissed.

  ‘Noooo,’ Carolyn wailed. ‘No! Please, please.’ Her shoulders began heaving, she started to blubber.

  ‘But that is for the next time. When he does not pay us quickly enough. This time is just some hair.’ Grabbing hold of her short, blonde hair, he twisted a bunch of it viciously and hacked it off close to the roots. Then, with his horrified victim quaking with fright and moaning and blubbering, he picked up the portable telephone from where he had left it before his attempted rape, and punched the keys. When he was through to Kirsty, he pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and thrust it in front of Carolyn’s tear-filled eyes. ‘Read,’ he said. ‘Dry the eyes and read. Now. Or the finger, it does come off.’

  In Barcelona, Kirsty pressed the microphone of a sensitive tape recorder tight on the telephone receiver.

  Considering it had been taped over a telephone line, then the tape played over another line, Carolyn’s voice was remarkably clear – and her acute distress most painfully obvious.

  ‘Hello, Papa, it’s me, Carolyn,’ she said between great sobs. ‘I’m all right. I don’t know where I am. I’m in a house somewhere. I’m being kept locked up in the dark and I am being treated quite badly, but I have been fed. It’s horrible. They have cut off some of my hair and they have told me that they mean to cut . . . ‘ – here she broke down, unable to do anything else but blubber for several seconds – ‘to, to cut other bits off me, starting with, with . . . a finger and to send them to you if you don’t pay what they are asking. Oh, Papa, it’s quite, quite ghastly. Do please pay them and get me out of here as soon as you can.’

  That was the end of the pathetic message. The Home Secretary had to make a supreme effort to pull himself together in order to pay attention to what Kirsty was now telling him.

  ‘Do you have the first million?’ she asked him.

  ‘How can you treat her like that? Scare her like that? I am going to pay you,’ said Parker-Reed, failing to control the shake in his voice.

  ‘I’m just a go-between,’ Kirsty told him. She was – perhaps unjustifiably – convinced that her lover would let no real harm come to the girl, that the words he had put into her mouth were merely bluff. ‘What about the money?’

  ‘I’m not the bloody Bank of England.’

  ‘So you really want a grisly little jet-service parcel? They’re prepared to lop off her pinkie at any moment.’ Again, El Asesino’s words.

  ‘Christ. I’m organizing the money. It’ll be together late this afternoon. Don’t hurt her, for pity’s sake.’

  ‘All right. I’ll call you at five.’ The line went dead. Distraught, the Home Secretary stared at it for long, silent, fear-filled seconds. Then he punched buttons and got through directly to the governor of Lloyd’s Bank, a personal friend of his who was sorting out the money angle.

  As for trying to locate Carolyn, everything humanly possible had been put into operation. Interpol were aware of the situation, and the Spanish Guardia Civil were already doing what they could in and around Barcelona. There was a police technician working in Parker-Reed’s secretary’s office, trying to trace the kidnappers’ calls, and even now he was homing in, thanks to the miracle of computerized technology, on the Barcelona telephone exchange which Kirsty had used earlier. And, down in the south of the Bay of Biscay – which was beginning to cut up rough – the Gremlin had just arrived at the snatch scene and was making fast to the Mirabelle.

  As soon as Captain Douglas Derby – a muscular man dressed in white cut-off jeans and a blue-denim shirt, a highly experienced officer whom Fernandez would trust with his life – was aboard the Mirabelle, the SBS major explained the situation to him, and how he wanted it handled.

  ‘. . . and so, we keep our cover as a private yacht, OK?’ he finished. ‘Except that once we’re among the drifters and looking around, the fish
erman are going to assume we’re fishery inspectors and possibly start getting a bit hostile. Well, let them. Let’s go.’

  When they were both on the Gremlin and she cast off, the first thing Fernandez ordered was the two submersibles manned and launched to search the seabed for a possible submarine. Then he set a leisurely course towards the fishing boats, all of which had in the past hour, as if they were one fleet and not a whole collection of independent operators, started their engines and begun to move back towards the Mirabelle, because they had drifted to the edge of the fishing ground. Even so, the nearest boat – no longer La Señorita Juanita, which had got in among the thick of them – was still about five kilometres distant.

  The SBS Patrol Gunboat reached the motley fleet in twenty minutes. Once there, her engines were cut so that she was moving no faster than a rowing boat. The drifters were in many cases quite close together as far as their sides were concerned, with no more than fifty metres separating them. But great distances were between the stern of one ragged line and the prow of the second so that they did not interfere with one another’s nets.