They had to make their plan work.
In low light conditions it is essential for one person to keep his eyes fixed on a floating object, because if you lose sight of it even for a few seconds, it may be impossible to ever find it again. Inevitably, in the fading light both men had lost sight of the floating container they’d deposited minutes earlier, but in this case that wasn’t too big a problem. Groves steered the skiff south-east, towards the shore, and in less than two minutes the bow had snagged on the floating rope that linked the two explosive devices.
‘Do we start again?’ he asked as he turned the vessel west again to follow the rope. ‘Pull out the detonators and dump them, then reposition it?’
‘Yes, as long as we do it real fast.’
Groves kept the outboard motor running, but at low revs as they followed the floating rope west, and in about a minute Whelan raised his hand to tell him to stop. Together, they hauled the floating container and the explosive device below it out of the water and into the skiff.
Whelan reached into the plastic bucket holding the C4 charge, his fingers searching for the end of the pencil detonator.
‘Got it,’ he said, pulling out and holding it so that Groves could see it – a basic rule in dealing with military explosives of all types. You always let your partner see exactly what you’re doing. One man does, the second man checks. Simple, basic and infallible as long as you do it right.
Whelan lifted his arm to drop the detonator over the side of the skiff, but as he did so Groves grabbed his arm.
‘What?’
‘It’s not going to work,’ Groves said urgently. ‘That’s a fifteen-minute fuse and by my watch you armed it six minutes ago so it’ll go bang in nine minutes. That’s not enough time to get to the other end of the floating rope and disarm the other weapon before that fucking ship is right on top of us. Stick the detonator back in. We’ll just drag the thing into the right location.’
Whelan looped the rope around one of the seats. When it was secure he gave a thumbs up. Groves opened the throttle on the outboard and the skiff began tracking west, moving slowly because of the dragging effect of the rope and the other IED.
Whelan was watching the steadily approaching cargo ship and raised his hand again when he reckoned they were in about the right spot.
The skiff stopped almost immediately. Together, they manhandled the device over the side. Both men looked back at the freighter, assessing its speed, and more importantly its heading. They obviously couldn’t see the far end of the floating rope, but knew it had to be directly astern of them.
‘That should do it,’ Groves said. ‘You happy with that?’
‘I’ll be a fuck sight happier when we’re somewhere else,’ Whelan replied, ‘but I think that’s a good line-up. Those fuses are running, so let’s get the hell out of here.’
Groves nodded, opened the throttle and steered the boat towards the distant western shore of the Red Sea. Both men had seen the effects of a blast of C4 explosive before and didn’t want to be anywhere nearby when either of the devices blew.
‘Maybe four or five minutes to go now, maximum,’ Whelan said, looking at the dial of his watch as Groves kept the speed of the skiff at around twenty-five knots, bouncing and crashing over the waves. They wanted to put at least a couple of miles between them and the freighter.
Whelan looked back, using his NVGs to study the ship.
‘Should be getting close to the rope right about now,’ he said.
Two minutes later, as Groves swung the skiff in a wide circle to head back towards the Muttrah, the relative silence of the dark waters was broken by the sudden bark of an explosion, only slightly muffled by the underwater detonation.
‘That’s number one,’ Whelan said, and then they waited.
But there was no second detonation.
‘Maybe the fuse got knocked out of the plastic when it hit the side of the ship,’ Groves suggested, keeping the speed up.
Before Whelan could reply, they both heard a second explosion, but this one was clearly some way behind the target ship. Through their NVGs both men could see the spray of water perhaps a couple of hundred yards astern of the vessel.
‘Makes sense,’ Groves said. ‘When the first charge blew, that would have released most of the pressure on the rope, and maybe the drag of the other charge pulled the rope around the bow and behind the ship.’
‘Maybe,’ Whelan agreed. ‘So let’s hope one was enough.’
Groves closed the throttle, allowing the skiff to come to a stop, though it was far from stationary, bobbing and rolling in the waves. Both men stared at the ship, which appeared to be steaming forward at about the same speed as previously. That wasn’t necessarily significant: any ship is a big and heavy chunk of metal and machinery, and the momentum would keep it going forward for some distance even if the hull had been holed or the engines had stopped.
‘Okay,’ Groves said. ‘We’ve done our bit. Let’s get out of here and see what the score really is.’
‘Hotel Bravo, this is Golf Whisky,’ Whelan said into his radio. ‘We’re Romeo Tango Bravo. Out.’
They might have been Romeo Tango Bravo – RTB or return to base – but both men knew what they’d done was only the first step of the operation. The dangerous bit was about to start.
Chapter 57
MV Muttrah, Red Sea off Yanbu, Saudi Arabia
Tuesday
The Muttrah had been about four miles behind the freighter when the explosive charge blew.
Richter was on the bridge with John Moloch, where he’d been ever since the skiff had hit the water, watching and waiting – and hoping – for the explosion that would confirm that their cobbled-together plan had actually worked. Both men had been keeping their binoculars focused on the dark shape in the water ahead of them. Then they both saw a massive wave ride up the side of the ship, somewhere near the stern, and seconds later heard a deep muffled thump.
‘There,’ Moloch said.
‘I see it,’ Richter replied.
Perhaps thirty seconds after that they both heard and saw the second detonation, the spray of white foam clearly visible some distance behind the target.
‘Let’s hope one out of two is enough,’ Richter said, then turned to the captain. ‘Are you happy with what we’re going to do?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think that “happy” is exactly the right word, Paul,’ he replied, ‘but I know, and all the members of my crew know, what you are expecting to happen next and what they are supposed to do. If that’s what you mean.’
‘Good.’
Moloch nodded at Richter.
‘I need to get moving,’ he said. ‘Can you stay here and watch the radar and that ship, and shout down what it’s doing as we get closer to it?’
‘You got it.’
Down on the deck, the crane operator was just lifting the jib of his crane, the quick-release hook attached to two rings at the end of a pair of lifting straps, the other ends of the straps secured to a fixed hook at the end of the cable. The straps were fitted around the hull of one of the two remaining skiffs and, as Moloch stepped onto the deck, the operator increased the tension and lifted the skiff up and over the side of the ship, on the starboard side. He lowered it straight down to the water, and the moment the hull touched the sea he released the hook, the ends of the straps fell away and he hoisted the jib again, straps swinging. The skiff bounced away behind the ship and out of sight.
A couple of minutes later he repeated the operation with the other skiff. At almost the same time, Groves and Whelan approached the ship from the port quarter in their skiff, aiming for the side of the vessel, more or less amidships, where a rope ladder had already been rigged in preparation. Groves brought the skiff alongside and held it in position while Whelan stepped onto the lowest rung of the ladder and swiftly climbed up it.
Once his fellow SEAL was on board, Groves increased the throttle setting slightly until the bottom of the rope ladder was adjacent to the st
ern of the skiff, then reached out, grabbed the ladder firmly and, at the same time, shut down the outboard engine. Then he seized the ladder with both hands and started climbing up it as the skiff started moving backwards from underneath him.
On deck, two of the SEALs had picked up the box that had contained the grappling hooks and other equipment and carried it over to the gunwale. As Moloch watched they tossed it overboard. At the same time, two other SEALs were doing the same thing with the package that contained the scaling ladders. He and Richter had been very specific: it was essential that there was nothing on the deck of the Muttrah that wouldn’t normally be found on a cargo ship of that type. Skiffs, grappling irons and scaling ladders would shout ‘Pirate’ to anyone with half a brain, and the last thing they wanted was for there to be any connection between the Muttrah and the explosion that had, he hoped, crippled the target ship.
‘It’s definitely slowing down,’ Zebari said, looking at the radar plot in front of him. ‘Its speed is now down to below six knots according to this and dropping further. But we’ve heard no distress calls on the radio, which is surprising.’
‘They’ve probably got their hands full trying to contain the flooding, if the charge ruptured the hull,’ Richter suggested. ‘At least, I hope they’ve got their hands full. And don’t forget with the Titanic it took the captain more than three quarters of an hour before he got around to ordering his radio operator to send a distress message, even though he had known for certain within minutes of the collision that the ship was going to sink. Maybe the captain of that ship is also taking his time. Or perhaps,’ he added, ‘he’s got no intention of sending a message because of what he’s doing and the cargo he’s carrying. Maybe the last thing he needs right now is a coastguard cutter or something pitching up beside him, and the crew then boarding the ship and asking awkward questions, like why has he got a bunch of heavily-armed Iranian soldiers on board.’
‘Do you know that for sure?’ Zebari asked.
Richter shook his head.
‘Not for certain, no,’ he admitted, ‘but that is what we believe to be the case, based upon one of our intelligence sources.’
Richter went out onto the bridge wing, identified Moloch and shouted down to him.
‘Its speed has dropped to about five knots,’ he called. ‘We’ll be alongside in around ten minutes, give or take.’
‘Roger.’
‘Time for me to go, Karim,’ Richter said.
Zebari waved a hand at him as Richter walked over to one of the doors at the rear of the bridge, but didn’t respond.
Twelve minutes later the Muttrah, which had been steadily reducing speed, approached within hailing distance of the other vessel, a ship that was very slightly smaller, and visually in much poorer condition. It had stopped completely.
‘Do you require assistance?’ Zebari asked, using a loudhailer and speaking Arabic.
There was no response for about a minute, and then a man replied in the same language.
‘Yes, please. We think we hit an old mine. It’s badly damaged our rudder and propeller, and we’re taking in water. The bilge pumps are working but the level is still rising.’
It did look to Zebari, staring at the other ship with the experienced eye of a seafarer, as if the ship was slightly down at the stern.
‘Are you abandoning ship?’
‘Not yet, but we may have to.’
The normal procedure for assisting the crew of a vessel in distress would be to stand off and use the vessel’s lifeboats to rescue the crew, but most merchant ships no longer have lifeboats that can be lowered into the water and later recovered. Instead, they are fitted with a bright-red single-use lifeboat at the stern, big enough for the entire crew and that relies upon nothing more exotic than gravity to be launched. Once it’s gone, that’s it. There’s no way of getting it back on board at sea.
Old and battered though the other vessel was, that was exactly what it was carrying. As was the Muttrah, in fact.
‘We have another problem,’ the voice continued. ‘We have a deck cargo that has to be delivered on time to an Eastern Mediterranean port. It is very urgent. We are willing to pay you a fee of ten thousand dollars American if you can complete the delivery. If you agree, we can come alongside and trans-ship it to your vessel. Could you do that?’
Zebari didn’t reply immediately. Coming alongside another vessel was a potentially dangerous manoeuvre, and Zebari knew that the other captain – assuming that was who he was talking to – would know that. And the other man would know that the fee was suspiciously large, transporting goods by sea being comparatively inexpensive, and he would probably be gambling on Zebari being a greedy man who would both see and seize the chance of making a quick under-the-counter profit for a relatively simple operation.
So he decided to act the part.
‘Twenty thousand American,’ he replied.
‘Fifteen.’
‘Agreed,’ Zebari said. ‘I would also need compensation for any damage to my ship, and a guarantee of payment.’
‘That would not be a problem. If you come alongside, we can begin the operation.’
‘Very well,’ Zebari replied.
So far, it was going more or less the way that Richter and Moloch, the Englishman and the American, had predicted it would.
Zebari gave the helm and engine room orders necessary to slowly bring the starboard side of the Muttrah close to the port side of the other vessel, which he had noted was registered in Malta but had an Egyptian name. He ordered the deck crews to stand by with ropes and rudimentary fenders, old car tyres with ropes threaded through the treads, were lowered from the deck to provide a cushion between the two ships. In some of the smaller harbours the Muttrah visited they were essential to prevent damage to the hull.
It took almost ten minutes to get the two ships side-by-side, held in place by four mooring ropes, their tension controlled by capstans on the Muttrah. The trans-shipment of the cargo, the steel drums lashed to wooden pallets, started almost immediately, the cranes on both ships working together to speed the operation.
While that was going on, a tall man of Middle Eastern appearance – black hair, dark brown eyes and with a nose curved like the blade of a scimitar – but wearing Western-style clothing, stepped over the narrow gap between the two ships and went into the Muttrah’s aft accommodation section. A couple of minutes later, he knocked on the bridge door and stepped inside. Zebari was there by himself, having already dismissed the helmsman and the watch-keeping officer.
‘Are you the captain?’ Zebari asked in Arabic, walking over to him.
‘In a manner of speaking, I suppose I am,’ the newcomer said, replying in the same language. ‘You can call me Abdul.’
‘May I see your identification? And can you tell me how you propose to handle the payment arrangements?’
‘Of course,’ the man said, and reached inside the lightweight linen jacket he was wearing. But when his hand reappeared it wasn’t holding a passport or a cheque book or anything of that sort. Instead, he had pulled a semi-automatic pistol from a shoulder holster, a weapon he then aimed directly at Zebari.
‘I meant it when I said I was the captain,’ he continued, ‘but I meant I was now the captain of this ship. Thank you for agreeing to help us. If you do as you’re told, nobody will get hurt.’
Zebari raised his hands above his head.
‘This is an Omani vessel,’ he said bitterly, ‘and this is a blatant act of piracy.’
The newcomer shook his head.
‘Certainly not, Captain. What is your name?’
‘Zebari.’
‘Well, Captain Zebari, my men and I are not pirates, and we have no interest in this ship or its cargo. What the captain of that ship—’ he gestured dismissively towards the smaller ship alongside ‘—told you was absolutely true. All we want is for the cargo that’s now being loaded onto the deck below us to be delivered on time. Then we will disembark and you can continue your voyage as
you wish. You might even get paid for your trouble. But don’t even think about not doing what we tell you.’
The man calling himself Abdul walked across to the bridge windows and then gestured for Zebari to join him. When he did so, Abdul pointed downwards.
Zebari saw some eighteen or twenty men, all wearing Western-style civilian clothing, mainly jeans and white or light-coloured shirts, stepping across the gap between the two vessels, all of them carrying long bags, and all wearing belts with pistol holsters attached, and with Kalashnikov assault rifles slung over their shoulders.
‘This is a vitally important cargo, Captain Zebari, and it will be delivered. That’s what my men and I are here to ensure.’ Then a thought appeared to strike him. ‘Have you any weapons on this ship?’ he asked.
‘There’s a pistol in the safe in my cabin,’ Zebari replied.
‘Just make sure it stays there. I’m pleased you’re being honest.’
The trans-shipment took only twenty minutes to complete, and Zebari spent the entire period peering down through the bridge windows.
When it was complete, the operator on the Muttrah moved the jib into the parked position and shut down the crane, and then walked away and disappeared into the accommodation section. None of the new arrivals took any notice. They also didn’t take any notice when the two deck crewmen who had been operating the capstans and controlling the tension in the mooring ropes left their posts and followed the crane operator.
Zebari turned to Abdul.
‘What now?’ he asked, and pointed at the freighter that was still secured to the starboard side of the Muttrah. The stern was now very obviously deeper in the water than it had been when the two ships had first been linked. The capstan operators on the Muttrah had been adjusting the tension of the mooring ropes to compensate. ‘That ship is sinking. Do you want to embark the crew on my vessel?’
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