Ivory (4 page)

Bellowing like a wounded buffalo, the man reeled backwards and Alex had to writhe, snakelike, to avoid the falling wrench.

Alex wiped the bloody knife quickly on the leg of his flight suit and sheathed it. He swung the Steyr around from his back to cover the wounded man. Behind him, Mitch clambered over the rail – just in time. He unzipped the pack on Alex's back, took the rolled climbing ladder, fastened it to the rails with stout carabiners and hurled it overboard. The two others from his boat, Heinrich and Henri, were soon on board, making faster time on the ladder than Alex and Mitch had on the punishing rope climb.

‘Bring him with us,' Alex said, motioning to the scowling engineer as Henri climbed over the rail. The Frenchman and ex-Foreign Legionnaire nodded and rammed the barrel of a Glock pistol under the chin of their prisoner. ‘
Alive
,' Alex reminded him.

Alex checked left and right as he burst through the watertight door the engineer had conveniently left open. If the man had obeyed his captain and locked himself in, he might have bought his shipmates more time.

He was inside the ship's accommodation area, with its familiar smell of disinfectant, cooking and cigarette smoke. His rubber-soled boots squeaked on the nonslip linoleum floor as he passed the lounge. The crew, mostly Filipinos, were crouching in the mess. Alex raised his Steyr carbine and fired a burst of three rounds over their heads. The
men dropped to their bellies. Behind him, Henri bustled the wounded engineer into the room with his comrades. ‘Stay here and guard them,' Alex said, and Henri nodded. One heavily-armed man was enough to keep the crew covered as none possessed the foolhardy courage of the wounded engineer.

Alex ran along the corridor separating the lines of crew cabins and past the offices allocated to the captain and his senior officers. Ahead of him was the door leading to the bridge. He knew it would be locked. Alex opened a nylon pouch on his vest and drew out the small hunk of plastic explosive, already fitted with a detonator. He slapped it next to the lock and primed it. ‘Back! Fire in the hole!' he called to the others behind him. He used the three seconds of relative peace remaining to unclip the stun grenade and pull out the pin.

The hearing protectors and tinted lenses worn by Alex and his men muted the explosion to an uncomfortable bang and buffeting, but the ship's senior officers who had mustered inside the bridge had their senses assaulted by the blinding flash of light and gut-thumping bang that erupted from the stun grenade.

Alex stormed through the doorway into the smoke-filled bridge just as another blast signalled the breaching of the door leading to the port bridge wing. The other assault team, Novak, Kevin and Kufa, would be waiting outside on the port wing in order to round up any crewmen who escaped. If they entered they ran the risk of walking into crossfire if the bullets started flying.

The narrow, high-intensity beam of the torch attached beneath the Steyr's shortened barrel picked out a man huddling in a foetal position on the deck below the helm, another staggering towards the far opening.

Alex heard a bang and a whoosh, and raised his left arm and staggered back a pace just in time to miss an incandescent red ball that screamed past his face. Smoke and flame seemed to fill the bridge as the hand-launched distress flare bounced off the rear wall of the bridge, then ricocheted off the thick windows, glanced off the carpet and finally sailed out the open port door.

‘
Holy fuck!
' Alex heard Novak yell in his earpiece. ‘That was bloody close, man.' Ship's officers were coughing and crawling around the deck at his feet. Alex saw a red-bearded man at his feet holding the smoking tubular flare launcher and staring up at him with defiant rage.

Alex centred the beam of light from his rifle on the man's chest. Blood pounded in his ears, but he checked the rage he felt at the man's stupidity. Alex covered the two metres between them in a bound, leaping over the curled-up man at his feet, and swung the Steyr's plastic butt down into the side of the idiot's head. The man crumpled to the floor.

‘
Clear this side
,' Novak said into his earpiece.

‘Bridge secure. Get all the doors open. Clear the smoke,' Alex added.

Alex scanned the control panel in front of him and found the engine controls. He knocked them out of reverse and into neutral. The ship shuddered and slowed.

The red-bearded man at his feet groaned and rolled over. Wiping blood from a split lip he looked up at Alex. ‘Get off my ship, you bastard.'

Alex looked down at the captain, the barrel of his rifle pointing at the man. ‘This is
my
ship for the time being. Don't do anything stupid and you can have it back soon.'

He swung the helm, changing course, and pushed the engine into full ahead.

‘You're heading straight towards the coast,' the captain said.

Alex ignored him. ‘Keep a close eye on the depth as we get closer,' he said to Kevin, the Australian member of his band. ‘Take the helm.'

‘Right-o, boss.'

Alex undid a Velcro-flapped pouch on his vest and pulled out a portable GPS unit. He hit the go-to button and selected a pre-entered coordinate. He confirmed the ship was on the right heading and cross-checked their speed and time of arrival. He didn't use the ship's navigation system in case the captain, who now sat with his back against the wall of the bridge, saw their destination point and memorised the latitude and longitude.

‘Should we send him back to the mess with the rest?' Kevin asked.

Alex shook his head. ‘We might need his technical advice when we get closer. Also, if he was with the rest of the crew he might try something foolish.'

‘What makes you think I'm going to help you?' the Norwegian asked in accented English. ‘You could threaten to kill me and I wouldn't assist you.'

‘I thought that's what you'd say.' Alex kept his eye on the horizon, not deigning to face the captain. ‘No, if I want you to do something against your will, I'll bring your crew up one at a time and keep shooting them until you obey.'

Berentsen swore in his own language.

‘Speed: fifteen knots,' Kevin said.

‘Keep her steady,' Alex said to the Australian. He turned his attention to the ship's radio, changing the frequency. He picked up the handset and pressed the ‘transmit' switch. ‘Mermaid One, Mermaid One, Mermaid One, this is Shark, over.'

He paused for a few seconds then repeated the call.

‘
Shark, this is Mermaid One. Have you in sight now
,' said a female voice, the accent bearing a harsh trace of Belfast.

‘All set?' Alex asked into the microphone.

‘
No problem here. Mermaid Two's on the other side of the dunes. She says it's a car park there, but she's in control.
'

Too much information, Alex thought to himself, mindful that their prisoner could hear Danielle's voice over the loudspeaker. ‘Roger, Mermaid One. See you soon, and let's stick to the facts, I've got company here.'

‘
Sorry
,' Danielle Reilly said to him.

‘Don't be sorry, just be good,' Alex said, smiling.

‘I'm always good. As you very well know.'

Alex shook his head, returning his mind to the job at hand, which was about to get tricky. He put down the microphone and raised his binoculars. ‘There's the beach. Dead stop,' he said to Kevin.

He could see the colours of the Indian Ocean changing closer to shore, indicating the steeply shelving seabed below. Alex and Kevin, a
former member of the Australian Navy's elite clearance diver team, had dived the area and made a detailed survey of water depths at high and low tide along this deserted stretch of coastline.

The South Africans called it the Wild Coast for good reason. The sparsely populated fringes of the beach they had chosen were out of sight of any villages and accessible only by sandy tracks suitable for donkeys and four-wheel drives. They'd discounted a dozen more sites due to the strict criteria they'd imposed on themselves for this operation.

‘This is madness,' said the ship's captain.

‘Enough from you.'

Alex walked out onto the port bridge wing. Behind the narrow strip of flat white beach were dunes that surrendered to a rising landscape of rocky outcrops and hills. Through his binoculars he saw the bright orange nylon sun shelter on the beach. Danielle stepped into view from its paltry shade. She had on her blue bikini top and a brightly printed kikoi wrapped around her waist as a skirt. The hem ended halfway up her thighs, showing off her perfect pale legs.

She waved at him.

He transferred his attention to the rocky reef beside him, the top of which was only visible when a wave broke against it and receded. Alex strode back inside and walked through the bridge, past the snarling captain, out onto the starboard wing. He looked over the edge and far below saw the dark outline of the reef, not ten metres from the hull on this side.

As well as finding an ideal beach they needed perfect weather conditions to pull this job off. Someone was smiling down on him because the sun was shining, there wasn't a breath of wind and the sea was as calm as a lake. There might be ten metres clearance on either side of the ship's thirty-two metre beam, but even a slight swell or a stiff breeze would have made it impossible to pass safely through the gap in the reef without tugs and slow, careful manoeuvring with the ship's bow thruster.

Alex walked back inside the bridge, stood next to Kevin and held his breath.

‘We're through!' The Australian turned and grinned at him, but Alex wasn't ready to celebrate just yet.

‘Engine full ahead, hard-a-port,' Alex said.

‘Aye,
Captain
. Engine full ahead, hard-a-port.'

‘Idiot!' the Norwegian captain railed. ‘You're going to beach us, you fool.'

‘I sincerely hope so.' Alex went back out to the starboard bridge wing.

The
Oslo Star
had slowly turned, so that its starboard side was almost parallel to the rapidly approaching coastline.

‘Five metres, three metres, two . . .' Kevin called from inside reading off the water's depth under the keel. Captain Berentsen looked down at the deck and shook his head.

The
Oslo Star
touched bottom. Alex looked down. The ship's massive screw churned in the water, trying to drive her closer to shore, but because of the angle at which they had beached the
Oslo Star
the dry sand still looked twenty metres or more away. He pressed the ‘transmit' switch on his throat microphone. ‘Shark Two, side ramp down, side ramp down.'

‘Yes sir,' Mitch said, sullen as usual. The American was in the ramp control station at the aft of the ship.

The
Oslo Star
had two ramps for disgorging her cargo of vehicles; one at the stern and one on the starboard side. Both ramps were designed for use with the ship alongside a quay. The stern ramp was angled, but reached only a little more than thirteen metres from the side of the ship, while the side ramp was twenty-five metres long. Alex knew the ramp could only be lowered twelve degrees from the horizontal. There were no guarantees they had beached the ship close enough to shore to begin unloading.

‘I'm going down to check on the ramp,' he told Kevin. ‘Take the captain back to the mess with the rest of his crew and relieve our man on guard duty, so he can help shift the vehicles. If anyone tries anything, shoot the captain first. That should put the wind up the rest of them.'

‘Roger,' Kevin said.

Alex left the bridge and walked to the rear of the accommodation deck, past the prisoners, and got into the lift that stopped at every second deck. Stepping out onto the car deck he saw a growing dazzle of light at the ship's starboard side. Ahead of him was row upon row of gleaming Hummers, the civilian version of the American military's workhorse tactical vehicle. These models had their garish yellow, blue and shiny black flanks plastered with sheets of white stick-on vinyl film to protect their panels from scratches.

With Henri guarding the prisoners and Kevin on the bridge, the job of unloading was left to Alex and three others. Mitch would join them once the ramp was fully down. Heinrich, the German, was walking along the rows of trucks releasing the nylon straps that held the Hummers down to the deck.

The hold was filling with exhaust smoke as vehicle engines were revved to life. The ramp was almost down. Alex strode between the vehicles, making for the opening in the side of the ship.

With the captain and crew safely under guard he removed his gasmask, savouring the breeze that cooled the sweat in his unkempt mop of raven hair as he walked down the ramp. It juddered to a halt beneath his feet. He looked up at the control booth, high above.

‘We're short,' Mitch said into his earpiece.

‘So I see.' They were close – the edge of the ramp was about a metre above the water and about four metres from the exposed sand of the beach. Alex undid his assault vest, took off his radio and pulled off his boots. He dived over the edge of the ramp into the water. Surfacing, he looked up at the towering beast above him. Its engine was stopped, but he could feel the vibrations of the ship's generator in his body. He tried to stand. The water was less than half a metre above his head.

Heinrich had jogged to the end of the ramp. He leaned over the edge and held out his hand, helping Alex back aboard.

Alex picked up his radio and earpiece. ‘Mermaid Two, Mermaid Two. We need you down here. Now!'

‘
Awesome
,' cried the high-pitched female voice in his ear.

Alex looked to the pass through two of the sandhills. The clatter of an old diesel engine and a cloud of black smoke told him Sarah was on her way. He pictured her, grinning madly behind the wheel of the old Series IIA Land Rover.

Sarah Hoyland was the daughter of a mechanic and she'd had a love affair with engines and cars all her life. She handled a four-by-four in loose sand better than any of them and there was air under all four wheels as Sarah crested a dune, not even bothering with the pass. They were a wild bunch, all right, but Alex loved every one of them – Sarah and Danielle more than the guys, of course. Even Mitch had his moments.