SCOTT MARIANI
Star of Africa

Copyright

Published by Avon

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2016

Copyright © Scott Mariani 2016

Cover design © Henry Steadman 2016 Photography: Man © Roy Bishop / Arcangel; Ship © Benoit Stichelbaut / Nature Picture Library; Lightning sky © John Lund / GalleryStock; Waves foreground © Todd Gipstein / Getty Images; Dakota Plane © Graham Bloomfield / Shutterstock.com

Scott Mariani asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007486205

Ebook Edition © May 2016 ISBN: 9780007486397

Version: 2019-12-07

Join the army of fans who LOVE Scott Mariani’s Ben Hope series …

‘Deadly conspiracies, bone-crunching action and a tormented hero with a heart … Scott Mariani packs a real punch’

Andy McDermott, bestselling author of The Revelation Code

‘Slick, serpentine, sharp, and very very entertaining. If you’ve got a pulse, you’ll love Scott Mariani; if you haven’t, then maybe you crossed Ben Hope’

Simon Toyne, bestselling author of the Sanctus series

‘Scott Mariani’s latest page-turning rollercoaster of a thriller takes the sort of conspiracy theory that made Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code an international hit, and gives it an injection of steroids … [Mariani] is a master of edge-of-the-seat suspense. A genuinely gripping thriller that holds the attention of its readers from the first page to the last’

Shots Magazine

‘You know you are rooting for the guy when he does something so cool you do a mental fist punch in the air and have to bite the inside of your mouth not to shout out ‘YES!’ in case you get arrested on the train. Awesome thrilling stuff’

My Favourite Books

‘If you like Dan Brown you will like all of Scott Mariani’s work – but you will like it better. This guy knows exactly how to bait his hook, cast his line and reel you in, nice and slow. The heart-stopping pace and clever, cunning, joyfully serpentine tale will have you frantic to reach the end, but reluctant to finish such a blindingly good read’

The Bookbag

‘[The Cassandra Sanction] is a wonderful action-loaded thriller with a witty and lovely lead in Ben Hope … I am well and truly hooked!’

Northern Crime Reviews

‘Mariani is tipped for the top’

The Bookseller

‘Authentic settings, non-stop action, backstabbing villains and rough justice – this book delivers. It’s a romp of a read, each page like a tasty treat. Enjoy!’

Steve Berry, New York Times bestselling author

‘I love the adrenalin rush that you get when reading a Ben Hope story … The Martyr’s Curse is an action-packed read, relentless in its pace. Scott Mariani goes from strength to strength!’

Book Addict Shaun

‘Scott Mariani seems to be like a fine red wine that gets better with maturity!’

Bestselling Crime Thrillers.com

‘Mariani’s novels have consistently delivered on fast-paced action and The Armada Legacy is no different. Short chapters and never-ending twists mean that you can’t put the book down, and the high stakes of the plot make it as brilliant to read as all the previous novels in the series’

Female First

‘Scott Mariani is an awesome writer’

Chris Kuzneski, bestselling author of The Hunters

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Join the Army of Fans Who Love Scott Mariani’s Ben Hope Series …

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

The Ben Hope series

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

Prologue

Salalah, Oman

Hussein Al Bu Said stood at one of the tall, broad living room windows of his palatial residence and gazed out towards the sea front. The sunset was a mosaic of reds and purples and golds, cloaking its rich colours over the extended lawns and terraces of his property, reflecting gently off the surface of the pool behind the house, silhouetting the palm trees against the horizon. Beyond the landscaped gardens he could see the private marina where his yacht was moored, its sleek whiteness touched by the crimson of the setting sun.

Ice clinked in his crystal glass as he sipped from it. Pineapple juice, freshly pressed that day. Hussein was a loyal and devout Muslim who had never touched alcohol in his forty-four years. In other ways, he knew, he had not always proved himself to be such a virtuous man. But he tried. God knew he tried. Insha’Allah, he would always do the best thing for his family.

He smiled to himself as he listened to the sounds of his children playing in another room. Chakir had just turned twelve, his little sister Salma excitedly looking forward to her eighth birthday. He loved nothing more than to hear their happy voices echoing through the big house. They were his life, and he gave them everything that he had been blessed with.

‘You look as if you’re very deep in thought,’ said another voice behind him. Hussein turned to see his wife Najila’s smiling face.

‘And you look very beautiful, my love,’ Hussein said as she came to join him at the window. Najila was wearing a long white dress and her black hair was loose around her shoulders. She put her arms around his neck, and they spent a few moments watching the darkening colours wash over the ocean.

Nobody had to tell Najila she was beautiful. She was his treasure, soulmate, best friend. Hussein was a dozen years older, but he kept in good shape for her and was still as lean and fit as the day he’d spotted her and decided she was the one to share his life with. They’d been married just weeks later. Hussein was also about twice as wealthy as he’d been then, even though he’d already been high up in Oman’s top twenty. Their home was filled with the exquisite things he loved to collect, but Najila was by far the most wonderful and precious.

Hussein set down his glass and held her tight. He kissed her. She laughed and squirmed gently out of his arms. ‘Not in the window,’ she said, glancing through the ten-foot pane in the direction of the cluster of buildings that were the staff residence where the security team lived. ‘The men will be watching us.’

‘I gave them the night off, remember?’ Hussein said. ‘It’s Jermar’s birthday. The three of them went into town to celebrate.’

‘You’re too nice to them. What’s the point of having security men if you let them go off partying all the time?’

Hussein smiled. ‘All the more privacy for us.’ He drew her in and kissed her again.

With typical timing, their embrace was interrupted by the twelve-year-old whirlwind that was Chakir blowing into the room, his sister tagging along in his wake. Chakir was clutching the handset for the remote controlled Ferrari, his favourite of the many toys he’d had as recent birthday presents. ‘When can I get a real one, like yours?’ he was always asking, to which his father always patiently replied, ‘One day, Chakir, one day.’

‘Please may we watch TV?’ Chakir said.

Hussein knew Chakir was angling to see the latest Batman film on the Movie Channel. ‘It’s nearly time for dinner,’ he replied. ‘You can maybe watch it later, after your sister has gone to bed.’

Chakir looked disappointed. Salma pulled a face, too, and it was obvious that her brother had got her all worked up about seeing the movie.

Najila bent down and clasped both her daughter’s hands. ‘Why don’t you go and look at that nice picture book your father bought you?’

‘I can’t find it,’ Salma said. She had the same beautiful big dark eyes as her mother, and the same irresistible smile – when she wasn’t pouting about not being allowed to watch TV.

Najila stroked her little heart-shaped face and was about to reply when a loud noise startled them all. It had come from inside the house.

Najila turned to Hussein with a frown. ‘What was that?’

Hussein shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Did something fall over?’

Hussein thought that maybe a picture or a mirror had dropped off the wall in one of the house’s many other rooms. He didn’t understand how that could happen. He started towards the living room door that opened through to the long passage leading the whole length of the house to the grand marble-floored entrance hall.

Then he stopped. And froze.

The door burst open. Three men he’d never seen before walked into the room. Europeans, from the look of them, or Americans. What was happening?

Najila let out a gasp. Her children ran to her, wide-eyed with sudden fear. She wrapped her arms protectively around them. Little Salma buried her face in her mother’s side.

Without a word, the three intruders walked deeper into the living room. Hussein stepped forward to place himself squarely between them and his family. ‘Who are you?’ he challenged them furiously, in English. ‘What are you doing in our home? Get out, before I call the police. You hear me?’

The oldest of the three men was the one in the middle, solid, muscular, not tall, in crisp jeans and a US-Air-Force-style jacket over a dark T-shirt. His hair was cut very short, and greying. Probably prematurely. He probably wasn’t much older than Hussein, but he had a lot of mileage on him. His features were rough and pockmarked and his nose had been broken more than once in the past. A very tough, very collected individual. He was giving Hussein a dead-eyed stare, unimpressed by all the angry bluster. He reached inside the jacket and his hand came out with a gun. The men either side of him did the same thing.

Najila screamed and hugged her terrified children close to her. Hussein stared at the guns.

‘Now, Mister Al Bu Said, this doesn’t have to be hard,’ said the greying-haired man. ‘So let’s take it easy and do it right, and we’ll be out of here before you know it.’ He had an American accent. He was very clearly the boss out of the three.

‘I … What do you want?’ Hussein stammered.

‘I want item 227586,’ the man said calmly.

Hussein’s mind wheeled and whirled. How could these men even know about that? Then his eyes narrowed as it hit him. Fiedelholz and Goldstein. This was an inside job. Had to be. He should never have trusted those dirty Swiss dogs with his business. Now that he’d changed his mind about selling, the bastards were betraying him. It was unbelievable.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

The man sighed. ‘Sure you don’t. Oh well, I guess some people have to be difficult.’ And he shot Hussein in the left leg, just above the knee.

The blast of the pistol shot sounded like a bomb exploding. Najila screamed again as she watched her husband fall writhing to the floor, clutching his leg. Blood pumped from the wound onto the white wool carpet.

The other two men stepped over Hussein. One of them put a pistol to Najila’s head and the other grabbed hold of twelve-year-old Chakir and ripped him away from his mother. The boy kicked and struggled in the man’s grip, until a gun muzzle pressed hard against his cheek and he went rigid with terror.

‘Now, like I said,’ the older man went on casually, gazing down at the injured and bleeding Hussein, ‘this doesn’t have to be any harder than it needs to be. You got a safe, right? Course you do. Then I guess that’s where you’d be keeping it, huh?’ He reached down and grasped Hussein by the hair. ‘On your feet, Twinkletoes. Lead the way.’

‘Take what you want,’ Hussein gasped through clenched teeth as he struggled to his feet. The agony of his shattered leg had him in a cold sweat and his heart felt as if it was going to explode. ‘But please don’t hurt my family.’

‘The safe,’ the man said.

‘Tell this bitch to quit howling,’ said the one with the gun to Najila’s head. ‘Or I’m going to put one in her eye.’

Hussein looked at his wife. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ he assured her. ‘Just do as they say.’ Najila’s cries fell to a whimper. She closed her eyes, tears streaming down her face, and clutched her trembling daughter even more tightly to her.

Hussein limped and staggered across the room, leaving a thick blood trail over the carpet. The safe was concealed behind a $250,000 copy of a Jacques-Louis David oil painting on the living room wall, The Death of Socrates. It was a big wall, and it was a big painting, and it was a big safe too. Sweat was pouring into Hussein’s eyes and he thought he was going to faint from the pain, but he managed to press the hidden catch that allowed the gilt frame to hinge away from the wall, revealing the steel door and digital keypad panel behind it. With a bloody finger he stabbed out the twelve-digit code and pressed ENTER, and the locks popped with a click. He swung the safe door open.

‘Please,’ he implored the leader of the three men. ‘Take what’s in there and leave us alone.’

‘Oh, I’m going to take it, all right. Out of the way.’ The grey-haired man shoved Hussein aside and Hussein fell back to the floor with a cry of pain as the man started searching the shelves of the safe. Stacks of cash and gold watches, business documents and contracts, he wasn’t interested in. Just the one item he was being paid to obtain.

He found it inside a leather-covered, velvet-lined box on the upper shelf. When he flipped the lid of the box and saw what was inside, his dead-eyed expression became one of amazement. You had to see it to believe it.

‘Bingo,’ he said. He took it out and weighed it in his hand for a second, keeping his back to the other two men so they couldn’t see what he was holding. He slipped it into the leather pouch he’d brought with him, then slipped the pouch into his pocket. It would be transferred to the locked briefcase later that night, before they got the hell out of Oman, never to return.

‘Now you have it, go,’ Hussein gasped. The agony was burning him up. He was losing blood so fast that he felt dizzy. The bullet must have clipped the artery. The white carpet all around where he lay was turning bright red.

The man stood over him, the gun dangling loose from his right hand. ‘Pleasure doing business with you, Mister Al Bu Said. We’ll be out of here in just a moment. One thing, before we go. I need to ask – you wouldn’t even dream of calling the cops and telling them all about this, now would you?’

‘No! Never! Please! Just go! I promise, no police.’

The man nodded to himself, and a thin little smile creased his lips. ‘Guess what? I don’t believe you.’

The gunshot drowned Najila’s scream of horror. Hussein Al Bu Said’s head dropped lifelessly to the blood-soaked floor with a bullet hole in the centre of his forehead.

Then the living room of the palatial family home resonated to another gunshot. Then two more. Then silence.

The men left the bodies where they lay, and made their exit into the falling night.

Chapter 1

Paris

It should have been a simple affair. But in his world, things that started out simple often didn’t end up that way. That was how it had always been for him, and he’d long ago stopped questioning why. Some people had a talent for music, others for business. Ben Hope had a talent for trouble. Both attracting it, and fixing it.

Which was the reason he was sitting here now on this chilly, damp November afternoon, parked under a grey sky on this unusually empty street in the middle of this bustling city he both loved and hated, at the wheel of an Alpina BMW twin-turbo coupé that had seen better days, smoking his way through a fresh pack of Gauloises, watching the world go by and the pigeons strutting over the Parisian pavements and the entrance of the little grocery shop across the road, and counting down the minutes before trouble was inevitably about to walk back into his life.

He wouldn’t have to wait much longer. It was thirteen minutes past three o’clock, which meant the deadline for Abdel’s phone call had been and gone exactly thirteen minutes ago. Precisely as Ben had instructed Abdel to allow to happen. If the Romanians anywhere near lived up to the image that was being painted of them, then such an act of open defiance would not be tolerated. They’d be here soon, ready to do business. And Ben would be ready to put the first phase of his plan into action. It might go smoothly, or then again it might not. That all depended entirely on how Dracul decided to play it. Either way, it wasn’t exactly how Ben had planned on spending this brief return visit to Paris.

Naturally, things just couldn’t be that simple.

When Abdel’s broken deadline was twenty-one minutes old and Ben was two-thirds of the way through his next cigarette, the silver Mercedes-Benz turned sharply in out of the traffic and squealed up at the kerb outside the grocery shop, right across the street from where Ben was sitting. Both front doors opened at once. Two men got out, slammed their doors and converged on the pavement, glancing left and right.

Ben followed them with a watchful eye, and knew immediately that he was looking at the Romanians. They were both in their late twenties or early thirties. One was darker in hair and skin, with sharper features that hinted at gypsy ancestry. The other had more Slavic blood, or maybe Hungarian, with a long face and fairer hair. Ethnic variations aside, they could have been clones: big, heavy, hand-picked from the pages of the rent-a-thug catalogue, dressed to intimidate in leather jackets and big stompy boots and putting on a theatrical air of menace as they walked up to the shop entrance and pushed their way inside.

Dracul’s enforcers, come to deliver on their promise of violence, bloodshed and broken bones. They looked more than up to the job. Little wonder they had Abdel and the rest of the neighbourhood spooked.

Ben took a last draw on his Gauloise, crushed the stub into the crowded dashboard ashtray, picked up his bag from the passenger seat and got out of the car.

‘Here we go again,’ he muttered to himself. Then he crossed the street and walked into the shop after them.

It was Ben’s first visit to Paris in well over a year. He hadn’t been planning on coming back any time soon – not out of any kind of deliberate avoidance, but because he had few plans of any kind at all. For some time now, for reasons that he preferred not to dwell on, his had been a rootless, meandering existence that took him wherever chance and circumstance led him: he’d wandered aimlessly around Europe, never lingering long in one place, never quite sure why he’d come or where he was going next. He wasn’t a tourist, being fluent in the core European languages and conversant in most of the others, but he wasn’t a native either, and there seemed to be no place he could settle and feel at home. Sometimes he stayed a day here and there in cheap hotels; sometimes he roughed it in the kinds of solitary wild places he’d always liked to spend time, away from the complexities of life, away from hustle and bustle – most of all, away from trouble.

At least, that was the idea.

Jeff Dekker, Ben’s old friend and former partner, still ran the business they’d built together in Normandy, and still thought that Ben had lost his mind. Back in the day, Jeff had done his stint in the Special Boat Service, the Royal Navy’s equivalent of Ben’s old regiment, 22 SAS. Years later, after Ben had gone to live at the former farm near Valognes, a place called Le Val, he and Jeff had teamed up to carve out a prestigious niche for themselves teaching their specialised skills to military, security, law enforcement and anti-terrorist operatives from across the globe. They’d reached the point in their careers where they could enjoy the fruits of all those years of extreme risk and back-breaking hardship.

That was how it worked in their world. Special Forces was like some kind of super-university where the learning curves were tough, the lifestyle tougher, the possibility of sudden violent death never far away, and the pay on a par with a schoolteacher’s salary. But those who survived the experience ultimately emerged from it as life members of the most exclusive club in the world, with their real careers still ahead of them. Former SAS and SBS guys were in high demand for plum jobs as senior security advisors in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, with earning potential running into hundreds of thousands a year, tax-free, for a fraction of the workload they were used to, and virtually zero risk. Others did what Ben had done for several years after quitting the military, go freelance as what he’d termed a ‘crisis response consultant’, before Le Val had entered his life.

In short, for men of their qualifications it was a world of opportunity. Le Val certainly had paid off on everyone’s expectations. So as far as Jeff was concerned, to have put yourself through the living hell they had, come through it alive and then invested all that hard-won knowledge and experience into the best private tactical training facility in Europe, just to abandon it and go wandering off into the sunset like some kind of half-arsed nomad, was completely nuts. It was an opinion he’d frequently expressed to Ben, in increasingly strong terms as it became increasingly apparent that Ben wasn’t coming back.

Ben respected his old friend’s point of view, and had always felt bad for having left Jeff holding the baby. But he felt he’d had no choice but to walk away from Le Val. Only Ben understood the deep inner restlessness that troubled his soul and drove him to do the things he did.

Lately, though, a growing shadow of doubt had been hanging over him and Jeff’s words were often in his mind. The trouble with walking away from a lucrative little enterprise like Le Val, with no other employment on the horizon, was that unless you were a millionaire it was no kind of an effective long-term financial proposition. And the Lord knew Ben Hope was no millionaire – never had been, never would be, never wanted to be. Technically speaking, he remained part-owner and a sleeping partner in the business, and could therefore be drawing an income from it if he’d so desired. But to Ben’s mind, if he wasn’t doing the work he didn’t deserve to benefit from the profits, and had insisted on not receiving a penny from Le Val since the day he’d quit, choosing instead to support himself independently from his savings. He’d known, of course, that they wouldn’t last forever, and he’d been careful. But the laws of simple economics couldn’t be cheated, and slowly, slowly, his funds had dwindled away until worryingly little remained, leaving him to face some key decisions.

The first of those decisions was that he needed to sell his place in Paris. He’d occasionally toyed with the idea in the past, but now the time had finally come to put it on the market. The one-bedroom apartment had been a gift from a former client, years ago, and for a long time had served Ben as a base while travelling in Europe. He’d called it his safehouse, because it was so tucked away among a cluster of backstreet buildings that you’d never find it if you didn’t know it was there. On more than one occasion, it had lived up to its name when he’d needed a place to lie low. But now it was nothing more than a pointless luxury, and a financial asset he could no longer afford to hang onto. Ben had reckoned he could get it all fixed up himself, without having to spend a fortune. A patch-up repair here, a lick of paint there, and he was confident it could make an ideal pad for a single guy or gal, perhaps even a young couple looking to get into the property market.

And so, with some regret, Ben had come to Paris to do the necessary.

And that was when the trouble had started.

Chapter 2

The first thing Ben had noticed on his return was how rundown the whole neighbourhood looked. Shop fronts that had been scrubbed and spotless last time he’d seen them were now covered in graffiti. A striking number of windows were boarded up where they’d been broken and never repaired, as if the local business community had fallen into some kind of collective apathy. The secondhand bookstore he’d often spent hours browsing in, just up the street from the apartment, was closed down. So was the great little patisserie where he’d always bought his morning croissants. Once bustling with life, the streets seemed weirdly empty. The few people Ben did pass looked furtive and anxious.

The area had never been the most prime location in Paris, by any stretch of the imagination – it wasn’t Avenue Montaigne or the Champs Élysées. But something was different. Not just visibly, but tangibly. Like something in the air, a chill or a shadow, the dropping of a barometer needle signalling a change in pressure and things set to turn stormy. He could sense it like a bad smell. It was the oddest thing, but he put it out of his mind as he made his way from the underground car parking space and up the steps to the familiar old apartment entrance.

Ben had been away from the safehouse long enough to find everything inside covered in a fine layer of dust. Still, it felt like part of him, like a comfortable old shoe, and he hated thinking he’d soon have to part with it. He fired up the heating to get some warmth into the place. Rooting in the kitchen cupboard he found an unopened pack of ground espresso not too far past its sell-by date, brewed up a mug of coffee, strong and black, the way he liked it, and then said to himself, ‘Right. Let’s get to work.’

He’d spent the rest of that first day cleaning up and surveying each room in turn with a critical eye, trying to see it from the perspective of a potential buyer, and making mental lists of what needed doing to bring the place up to scratch. It was fairly spartan and he’d never done much to try to furnish it beyond the absolute basics, but it wasn’t in terrible shape. The most obvious first step was a general freshening-up of the decor, so the morning after his arrival, Ben had gone out to pick up the necessary supplies.

After paying a visit to the local hardware store for some decorating sundries, he’d headed for Abdel’s grocery shop just around the corner from the safehouse to buy in some food provisions for the few days he expected to be around. Ben had known Abdel for years, and liked him a lot. They’d long ago got into the habit of conversing in the Algerian’s native Arabic, which Ben spoke almost as well as he did French. Abdel was a good-natured guy, invariably cheerful, grinning a mile wide and ever ready with a funny anecdote.

Not today. The moment Ben had walked into the shop, he’d sensed the same change he’d been sensing everywhere.

And when he’d quizzed Abdel about what was wrong, it soon began to make sense. At first nervous and reluctant to talk, Abdel told Ben about the Romanian criminal gang who had steadily been taking over the neighbourhood during the last year.

‘I have nothing against immigrants,’ Abdel said. ‘Why should I? My parents came here in ’65. But these people are like animals. They have come here only to take and destroy. They are greedy for anything they can get. Stealing from tourists isn’t enough for them any more.’ He explained how the Romanians’ enterprise had swelled and their confidence grown at such an alarming rate that within a matter of months they’d started leaning on local businesses and extorting protection money out of them, using the threat of vandalism as their incentive. Now Ben understood why he’d been seeing so many broken windows everywhere. The nearby hardware store he’d visited that morning had been no exception. An assistant had been sweeping glass off the floor as Ben had walked in.

Abdel explained how the Romanians had now started stepping up the pressure, bringing in their heavies to enforce the extortion racket with threats of broken legs, beatings and arson. Meanwhile, they were flooding the neighbourhood with cheap drugs and getting deeper into allied rackets like car theft, burglary and prostitution.

‘Everyone is terrified of them. We are hardworking, decent people. We don’t deserve this. Look what’s happening out there. The streets are empty. People are afraid to go out. Hardly anyone comes into my shop any more, because they’re scared of what might happen if the Romanians turned up.’

‘What about the police?’ Ben asked.

Abdel shrugged. ‘What about them? Some of us got together and made an official complaint. We even told them the address where the gang are all living together like a bunch of bandits, making disgusting films and selling women and drugs. We told them the name of the leader, too.’

‘Which is what?’ Ben asked.

‘He calls himself Dracul.’

Dracul. Ben shook his head. How trite. ‘It means “devil” in Romanian,’ he said.

‘Why would he call himself by such a name?’ Abdel asked, frowning.

‘Probably because he thinks it sounds scary,’ Ben said.

‘He is scary. A big, big man, with long black hair and a scar on his face. He’s easy to recognise. We gave the description to the police. They made us fill out a form and said they would be in touch. Nothing happened. Nobody gives a damn about us little guys.’

Ben sighed. You turned your back for a year, and this was the result of it. The neighbourhood falling into the control of a violent criminal gang wasn’t going to do his chances of selling the apartment any favours, either.

There was more. Abdel told Ben that the Romanians wanted two thousand euros from him, a new monthly payment demand Dracul called ‘respect tax’. They’d given Abdel a number to phone to say he was agreeing to cough up the money. If he didn’t call by three o’clock that afternoon, they’d told him they were going to come and break one arm and one leg. That was so he could still work. Generous. He’d still have to pay, of course. Then if the following month’s payment was late, it would be the other arm and the other leg. The next time after that, they’d promised, Dracul was personally going to have his fun with Abdel’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Faridah, before handing her over to the boys to be gang-raped and beaten to a pulp. Or maybe they’d drug her up and make her the starlet in one of the hardcore movie productions they were selling on the side.

Ben was very unhappy to hear that. It made his fists tighten.

‘What am I going to do?’ Abdel said desperately. ‘I have no money to pay them. I can’t protect my own family from these people.’

‘Do nothing,’ Ben said. ‘Don’t call them. Wait for them to come to you.’

‘But I told you what they’ll do.’

‘Everything will be fine,’ Ben assured him.

After which Ben had gone back to the apartment, started stripping wallpaper, smoked some cigarettes and drunk some coffee, eaten a tin of cassoulet for lunch and bided his time until the afternoon.

Just before three, he’d left the apartment again and walked to his car, taking with him a few hardware store items he’d tossed inside his bag. He’d made the short drive and parked across the street from Abdel’s shop to wait for the Romanians to turn up.

And now here they were, bang on schedule.

Chapter 3

As Ben stepped inside the shop, the two big guys were already standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the counter, glaring at Abdel. There wasn’t a customer in the place. The Algerian looked pale. He became even paler when Ben walked in.

At the sound of the tinkling door chime, the Romanians turned in unison to give Ben the dead-eyed warning look that said, ‘Stay out of this if you know what’s good for you.’

And for a second the pair must have thought it had done the trick, because Ben turned around and walked straight back to the door. Except he didn’t walk out of it. Instead, he popped the latch closed and flipped the sign around to say FERMÉ.

Then he turned back around to face them. He smiled. They were giving him their full attention now, arms folded and brows creased with impatience. Ben said in Arabic to Abdel, ‘These two won’t trouble you any more.’

‘Who the fuck are you?’ said the Slavic-looking one.

‘My name’s Ben,’ Ben replied, switching to French. ‘What’s yours?’

‘This is your last chance to get the fuck out of here, fuckhead.’ Cheap gangsters didn’t generally require a very wide vocabulary.

‘You should be careful how you talk to me,’ Ben said.

The Romanians exchanged glances. The darker one was grinning and shaking his head in amused disbelief at the impudence of this guy. The Slavic one didn’t seem quite so confident. Evidently the smarter of the two. ‘Yeah? Why’s that?’ he asked.

‘Because I have a gun,’ Ben said. He unslung his bag from his shoulder and took out the staple gun he’d bought that morning. A pressed-steel box with a spring-loaded squeeze mechanism. Handy for all kinds of jobs around the home. And outside it.

The Romanians stared at him. Ben aimed the stapler at the Slavic one, squeezed the handle with a clack, and the tiny steel staple went pinging through the air to bounce off his big chest.

That was all the provocation the Romanians needed. They both went for him at once.

Four seconds later, both were stretched out side by side on the floor. The dark one was still conscious, but Ben fixed that with a tap to the head with the toecap of his boot.

‘Ya ilahi,’ Abdel gasped, staring down at the inert bodies and wringing his hands. ‘Look what you did.’

Next, Ben took out the big roll of tape, then the scissors, followed by a thick black marker pen. He cut off lengths of tape and used them to bind the Romanians’ wrists, ankles and knees together. When they were securely trussed up and gagged with more tape over their mouths, he asked Abdel for a sheet of paper.

Abdel tore a blank page from a cash book. Ben scissored it into two halves. Using the marker pen he wrote on one half of the paper the greeting SALUT, in big blocky capital letters. On the other he wrote the Romanian gang leader’s name.

Hello, Dracul. A clear enough message, sufficiently simple for even the lowliest kind of thug to comprehend, and opening the way to the next phase of Ben’s plan. The bodies had to be correctly arranged left to right for it to read properly, but that wouldn’t be a problem.

Then Ben used the staple gun to tack each half of the paper in turn to each of the men’s foreheads. The hardened steel staples punched out with enough force to drive into wood or plaster, and had no problem biting into bone. They’d need to be prised out with a screwdriver.

Clack. Clack.

Abdel could hardly look. ‘You can’t do this,’ he said.

‘I just did,’ Ben replied.

‘They’ll come back. It’ll be worse than ever.’

‘Trust me, a bunch of miserable cowards like this will leave you alone after today.’

Ben let himself out of the shop, telling Abdel to lock up after him and go and open up the back. Two minutes later, Ben had driven round to the shop’s rear entrance, reversing up the narrow alleyway where delivery vans did their drop-offs, and found Abdel standing nervously by the back door. Ben went inside, grabbed one of the unconscious thugs by the ankles and dragged him like a sack of potatoes out to the back, then hefted him into the boot of the Alpina. Then he did the same with the other, and slammed the lid shut on them.

‘Now, give me that address and number,’ he said to Abdel.

Five minutes later, he turned down the dingy backstreet, past litter bins overflowing with garbage and crumbling walls daubed with obscene slogans and gang marks, and pulled up outside the two-storey corner building in which Abdel had said Dracul and his crooks were holed up. It certainly looked like their kind of place. The ground floor was a disused copy shop with boards for windows, plastered with flyers advertising the services of call girls. The upper windows were grimy and curtained and there was no sign of movement up there, but someone was home. A black Mercedes was parked at the kerbside below, and behind it a white Range Rover. No matter what kind of scummy ratholes gangsters seemed content to live in, they always kept their cars spick and span.

Ben parked the Alpina on the corner, killed the engine and got out, taking his bag. The only person in sight was a junkie stumbling along at the end of the street. Thudding music was coming from the crummy apartment block opposite, pulsing like a headache. A dog was barking somewhere. The wail of a baby, the angry yells of a man and woman arguing. Those weren’t the only things Ben could hear. By now, the two thugs inside the boot of his car were awake, their muffled yells and struggles plainly audible from a couple of metres away. Which was exactly what Ben had intended.

Ben walked away from the car, leaving it unlocked, and crossed the street to the apartment block’s entrance. He stepped inside just far enough to be half hidden behind the doorway, then leaned against the wall, took out his phone and dialled up the number the Romanians had given Abdel.

The voice that answered after just two rings was deep and gruff. ‘Yeah?’

Ben said, ‘You don’t know who I am, but I know who you are. Take a peep out of your window. I left a present for you outside.’

Chapter 4

Ben cut the call off before the voice could say more. He lit a Gauloise and watched the windows opposite. The flicker of a curtain caught his eye. Behind the dirty pane, a face briefly appeared, scanning the street below. Someone was at home, all right. It wouldn’t be long before they came out.

When they did, Ben knew that what would happen next was going to cause heat for him. He wasn’t planning on being too gentle with these guys, because that was a language they wouldn’t understand. Assuming they could still hold a telephone by the time he was done with them, or get someone else to do it on their behalf, he fully expected them to call the police and start crying victim. And, things being what they were, it was perfectly likely that the grievances of such upstanding citizens could potentially land Ben in more trouble for what he’d done than these guys ever would be for the crimes they were committing every day against the community. It could be a good time to get out of town for a few days. The safehouse was a little too close to the heat. Ben didn’t want the expense of checking into a hotel; but there was another place he could stay until the heat died down.

Still watching the building across the street, Ben dialled the number for Le Val. After two rings, a voice Ben had never heard before replied. Last time he and Jeff had spoken, Jeff had said something about hiring a new guy to man the office. Ben thought he spoke with a slight Jamaican lilt to his accent, but he wasn’t sure.

For brevity’s sake, and because Ben didn’t like having to explain himself on the phone to strangers, and also because even speaking to a stranger in what used to be his home felt odd and uncomfortable to him, he didn’t say who was calling.

‘Jeff there?’

‘He’s on the range with Jude,’ the new guy said casually, obviously assuming from Ben’s tone that he wasn’t a client. ‘Take a message?’

‘That’s okay, I’ll call back,’ Ben said. As he put the phone away, he was frowning. On the range with Jude? What was Jude doing at Le Val? Ben was thrown by the news for a second, wondering what the hell that was all about.

Ben felt suddenly bad that he hadn’t even thought about Jude lately. He knew the young guy was at something of a loose end these days, having decided after a year and a half that a degree in Marine Biology from Portsmouth University was not for him, and jacking in his studies. Ben had no idea what he’d been up to since then.

But he didn’t have long to think about it. At that moment, a door opened across the street and two men stepped out of the building and started walking towards the parked Alpina. One of them was Dracul.

Abdel’s description had been on the understated side. Even from a distance, Ben could see the spectacular scar that looked as if it had been made with a hot poker and stretched from the Romanian’s puckered brow to the corner of his mouth, distorting his left eye. For such an ugly guy, he evidently took good care of his thick mane of curly black locks, which hung over his broad shoulders. He was at least six-three, probably two-fifty. He was clutching a stainless steel Taurus nine-millimetre in his right fist, carrying it in plain view as he and his henchman strode towards Ben’s car. So much for law and order.

Ben retreated a step further back inside the apartment block doorway, where he could peer around the wall without being seen. As he watched, Dracul and his man stopped near the car. Seeing it was empty, they glanced up and down the street. Then, right on cue, they turned back to stare at the car, and Ben knew they must have heard the muffled noise from the boot.

Dracul signalled to his guy to open it while he covered it with the pistol. The boot lid popped open. The two gangsters stared at what was inside, long enough for the hello message stapled to the captives’ foreheads to register.

By that time, Ben had emerged unseen from his doorway and walked up behind them, drawing the shiny new rubber-handled claw hammer from his bag. He didn’t waste time introducing himself. First rule, the man with the gun goes down first. Ben clubbed Dracul in the side of the head. It had to be a well-judged blow, because a claw hammer could too easily kill a man with a single hit, and Ben didn’t want to kill anyone. Not today.

Dracul went down like a felled tree trunk. His henchman was half-turned towards Ben when the hammer caught him across the cheekbone and his knees folded under him. Two for two. They lay slumped on the pavement.

‘Face it, boys,’ Ben said. ‘You just haven’t got the hardware.’

Spectators were starting to appear at the apartment block windows overlooking the street. Ben ignored them. He relieved Dracul of the Taurus, clicked the safety on and slipped it in his belt. It wasn’t that he wanted a gun, but he couldn’t responsibly leave the thing lying around in the street for some kid to pick up and start playing about with. Next he used the hammer to knock out the two men in the boot again, then hauled each one out in turn and dumped them on the pavement next to their boss.

Once that was done, Ben grabbed Dracul’s jacket collar and yanked him into a sitting position against the copy shop wall, and slapped his scarred face a few times until the Romanian’s eyes fluttered open. Dracul blinked and tried to shake his head into focus. He seemed about to say something, then let out a sharp cry as Ben’s boot toecap landed hard and square in his testicles.

‘Consider yourself lucky you get to keep them,’ Ben told him. ‘Normally, depraved losers who want to molest innocent young girls should have them sliced off. But I don’t like to get my hands all blooded up.’ He knelt beside the groaning Dracul. ‘Now listen to me carefully, because you’ll hear it only once. Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to disband your merry men and wrap up your operation, lock, stock and barrel, effective as of today. Then you’re going to return all the money you took, with interest. Then you’ll apologise in person to the people you hurt, begging for their forgiveness. After that, you’re going to get yourself into a better line of work and never bother anyone again. If I hear you didn’t do any of that and decided to play sillybuggers behind my back instead, you won’t see me coming, because you’ll already be dead. Now, what did I just say?’

Dracul grimaced in pain and groggily repeated back what Ben had told him.

‘Excellent,’ Ben said. ‘Now you’re going to go sleepy-byes for a while. Your new life begins from the moment you wake up.’ He whacked Dracul over the head with the flat of the hammer. The Romanian’s eyes rolled back in their sockets and he went limp.

Taking the scissors from his bag, Ben grabbed a handful of Dracul’s thick black hair and sheared it roughly off, close to the scalp. He kept scissoring away until the pavement looked like the floor of a dog grooming parlour and the gang leader resembled Samson in the Old Testament story, after Delilah had chopped off his hair and robbed him of his superhuman power. For quite some time to come, whenever Dracul looked in the mirror, he’d be reminded of the promise he’d just made.

Ben left the piles of black curls lying around next to him to find when he came to. More people were staring from the apartment block. A couple of people cheered. Others might not be so happy to see their local dealers being put out of business.

Ben was nearly done. Just a couple more finishing touches, and he’d be gone before the police turned up. Lining up the unconscious bodies in a row, he used the heel of his boot to break all their wrists and ankles. Snap, snap, snap, snap, four times over. Sixteen fractures, with about ten years’ worth of healing between them. That seemed a reasonable amount of punishment. The final icing on the cake wasn’t going to hurt them, at least not physically. Ben reached into his bag for the half-litre tin of buttercup-yellow paint he’d bought to refresh his kitchen door with. The kitchen door would just have to wait. He levered the lid off with the claw of the hammer, tossed it away, upturned the pot and poured the paint all over Dracul and his men. Yellow, the universal colour of cowardly little bullies, extortionists and rapists.

‘That should do the trick,’ Ben said to himself, standing back to survey the final humiliation. Then he walked back to the car, climbed in, fired it up and took off with a squeal of tyres.

Chapter 5

It was dark by the time the Alpina bumped down the track to the security gate that barred public entry to the complex at Le Val, three hours and twenty-two minutes later. Ben still had a pass card, and fed it into the scanner to open the gate and drive on through.

The November drizzle had been thickening steadily since nightfall. A cold mist swirled around the beams of his headlights as Ben drove into the main yard of what had once been his home. It seemed weird to be back after such a prolonged absence.

The dogs were the first to notice his arrival. The four German shepherds that freely roamed the twenty-acre compound like a pack of wolves would have been enough to petrify any unauthorised visitor, but the sight of them charging towards him out of the mist as he stepped from the car brought a wide smile to Ben’s face.

‘Storm! Mauser! Luger! Solo!’ He greeted them warmly in turn, crouching down to give each a hug as they swarmed happily around him, slapping him with their big hairy tails and panting their hot doggy breath all over him and slathering his face and hands with their lolling tongues. Storm was the pack leader out of the four, and had always been Ben’s particular favourite, often accompanying him on long runs and rambles through the Normandy countryside. Ben hadn’t seen him in such a long time that he hadn’t been certain if the dog would even recognise him. Storm’s delight at his master’s return almost brought a tear to Ben’s eye – not that he’d ever have admitted as much to Jeff.

The fifth dog to come bowling out of the darkness to meet him was less of a customary sight at Le Val. It was Scruffy, the wiry-haired terrier of indeterminate breed and independent spirit who, if he could be said to be anyone’s property, belonged to Jude Arundel and lived with him in the English country vicarage where he’d grown up. Ben patted the terrier affectionately. ‘Hey, Scruff. What the hell are you doing here?’ Then what the new guy had told Ben on the phone had to be true. ‘Where’s Jude?’ Ben asked the dog, but Scruffy wasn’t telling.

Just then, floodlights on masts burst into life and illuminated the whole inner compound and buildings: the big stone farmhouse and annexe, the training yard, the residential huts, the killing house and storerooms. Ben gazed around him, filled with all kinds of memories.

‘Ben?’ yelled a familiar voice. Ben turned to see Jeff Dekker running down the steps from the house. Jeff was wearing his usual winter attire, old-pattern DPM combat trousers and a submariner-style jumper. His eyes were huge with surprise, and a grin wider than the radiator grille on a ’58 Chevy Impala was spreading over his face. ‘Christ, it is you. Welcome, stranger.’

‘Hello, Jeff.’

‘Well, fuck me sideways. You’re about the last person I’d expected to turn up out of the blue.’

‘Lucky you,’ Ben said. ‘I did try to call to say I was coming.’

‘Are you staying? Or running off again?’

‘I just popped over to check you haven’t totally destroyed the place in my absence.’

‘Oh, I think we’re scraping by okay,’ Jeff said, grinning even more widely. ‘Come inside. I just opened a bottle.’

‘Scotch?’

‘’Fraid we don’t carry much of a stock of the hard stuff since you buggered off and left us. Make do with wine?’

‘Good enough,’ Ben said.

Jeff had moved out of his quarters in the annexe after Ben’s departure, and taken up residence in the farmhouse. He led Ben into the familiar old stone-floored rustic kitchen. Gazing around him, Ben saw that nothing had changed. The solid fuel range was lit and filling the kitchen with a rosy glow of warmth.

‘Cold tonight,’ Ben said.

‘Colder than a witch’s tit in a brass bra,’ Jeff said. Jeff had always had that way with words. He grabbed an extra wineglass from the side and set about filling it up from the open bottle of Côtes du Rhône. They sat at the table where the two of them had spent many an evening drinking, playing chess, and sharing ideas about how they were going to make Le Val a success. Jeff slid Ben’s glass to him over the worn pine table.

They clinked. ‘Cheers,’ Jeff said. ‘To old times.’

‘Old times.’

‘And future ones, maybe,’ Jeff said.

‘We’ll have to see about that.’

‘So, dare I ask to what we owe the pleasure of your company?’

Ben savoured a gulp of the wine. ‘You can ask,’ he said. ‘Let’s just say I’m staying away from town for a few days.’ Dracul’s Taurus was still in his belt. He slipped it out, ejected the mag, locked back the slide to make the weapon safe and laid it on the table. ‘Might want to stick that in the armoury when you get a moment. Its owner won’t be needing it any more.’

Jeff gazed pensively at the gun. ‘On second thoughts, mate, I’m not sure I want to know.’

They spent a few minutes catching up. Ben had little to report on his activities since they’d last seen each other, even though there was enough there to fill volumes. He especially had nothing to report on the love life front. He wasn’t hiding anything on that score.

For his own part, Jeff revealed with a coy grin that he’d recently met a woman he liked. Her name was Chantal and she was a primary school teacher in the nearby village. It sounded serious, which was a departure for Jeff, whose long string of part-time, on-off, short-term girlfriends had been scattered across most of Lower Normandy and had seldom ever been brought home to Le Val – partly because he’d never met one he wanted to get too permanent with, and partly due to the sensitive nature of the business that went on there.

‘How is business?’ Ben asked, reaching for his cigarettes and Zippo lighter.

‘Oh, you know, booming.’ Jeff spent a few more minutes updating him on all the latest developments at Le Val, while Ben smoked and helped himself to more wine. Final touches were being put to the extended rifle range and the new classroom facilities, and they had contracts coming in from all over the place with a five-month waiting list because they couldn’t cram it all in.

‘If things keep up at this crazy pace, we’re going to outgrow this place and need to start up another, just to meet demand,’ Jeff said. Just when things had been getting ridiculously busy, Paul Bonnard, who had been with the team since the beginning, had left to take a job at the renowned Gunsite tactical training academy in Paulden, Arizona. Jeff had employed two new staff members to fill the gap left by his departure. One was Ludivine Tournoy, a sixty-year-old former bank manager’s secretary from the nearby village who was now coming in part-time as an office assistant.

The other was a young British ex-infantryman who went by the name of Tuesday Fletcher. He was twenty-four, had done three years with the Royal Fusiliers and seen some warm action in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. His ambition, though, had been to become the first British Jamaican ever to qualify for 22 SAS. An ambition he might have achieved, if he hadn’t taken a bad fall during the endurance phase of selection testing in the Brecon Beacons. Tumbling down a rocky hillside with fifty kilos of gear on his back, Tuesday had broken four ribs, his left wrist, his left femur and his tibia in two places. When he’d bounced back two months later, still temporarily on crutches after complications and surgery, his military career was over.

‘He got a shitty deal from them, if you ask me,’ Jeff said. ‘But that’s the army for you. Won’t be long before they’ve got more Health and Safety officers than they have combatants.’

‘What’s he doing here?’ Ben asked.

‘Sniper trainer,’ Jeff said. ‘He’s got some skill with the rifle, I tell you. Better than anyone I’ve ever seen. Better than you, even.’

‘No, I mean, what brought him here?’

Jeff smiled. ‘He wanted to work with you, Ben. I had to tell him your absence was just temporary, or he wouldn’t have taken the job. Said they still talk about you in the Sass. Said you’re his idol. Said—’

‘I get the message,’ Ben said irritably.

Jeff smiled wider. ‘You never did take compliments well. Tough shit, ’cause I’ve got another one for you. I suppose you must’ve heard the news about old man Kaprisky?’

Auguste Kaprisky was an eighty-one-year-old Swiss-French billionaire with a château and estate near Le Mans, who couldn’t spend enough on personal security. While still at Le Val, Ben had provided advanced VIP protection training to his small army of bodyguards.

‘No, what about him?’ Ben asked.

‘It was all over the TV for a while. You must have been, um, busy.’

‘You know I don’t watch TV.’

‘Papers?’

‘You know I don’t read those either.’

‘How can you know what goes on in the world if you don’t follow the news?’

‘Because the less you follow the news,’ Ben said, ‘the more you know what goes on.’

‘You’re weird, you know that?’ Jeff shrugged. ‘Anyway, couple months back, a business rival of his went crazy over some lost deal or other that cost them a packet, got hold of an Uzi from somewhere and took a pop at the old boy.’

‘Is he dead?’

Jeff shook his head. ‘About a thousand holes in his house, but the ninjas took the bad guy down in short order. Nice job, too. Kaprisky swears he wouldn’t have survived it if we hadn’t trained up his team so well. You got a very nice letter of thanks, which I took the liberty of opening in your absence. Usual kind of thing, “Ben Hope saved my life; Ben Hope kicks arse; Ben Hope walks on water”, etc., etc., blah, blah, and there’s nothing he won’t do for us in return. He’s also recommended us to a bunch of his rich pals, three of whom have already been in touch wanting to make bookings.’

Ben disliked the spotlight, but he was pleased to hear things were going well. So far, though, he noticed, Jeff hadn’t said anything about Jude being there. Which Ben thought was a little odd, so he decided to raise the subject himself.

‘I gather you have a visitor?’ he said. ‘Someone I might know?’

Jeff’s hesitation in replying gave away what Ben already suspected. ‘He told you not to tell me, didn’t he? Why? Where is he?’

‘He’s not here,’ Jeff said.

‘Don’t fuck about with me, Jeff.’

‘I’m not. He was here, for the last seven weeks. But you missed him. He’s gone.’

‘What was he doing here?’ Ben asked. ‘Seven weeks?’

‘He wanted to do some training. That’s what we do here, isn’t it?’

‘Training for what?’ Ben said suspiciously.

Jeff looked at him. ‘What is it with you two? First he’s all cagey about you finding out he was here. Now you’re firing questions at me, like it’s such a big deal. Why get so het up about what Jude wants to do? He’s over twenty-one, isn’t he?’

‘Just.’

‘So what? I know you were close with his folks, but—’

‘Training for what, Jeff?’

‘Navy,’ Jeff said with a sigh. ‘Why he asked me not to tell you, it beats me. But now I have, so do me a favour and keep it to yourself, okay?’

Ben set his wineglass down. ‘He wants to join the navy?’

‘That’s what I said. He’s serious, too. Got the initial interview lined up in February, then the medical and PJFT two weeks later.’ Jeff was talking about the Royal Navy’s strenuous pre-joining fitness test, which all recruits had to pass before they could even commence the ordeal of basic training. ‘So when he called me and said he wanted to get in shape and talk to me about what navy life was like, I said no problem, come over.’

‘I see,’ Ben said, tapping his glass with a fingertip.

‘He’s a natural,’ Jeff said. ‘Always saying how much he loves the sea, so I took him up to the Pointe de Barfleur to watch him swim. He’s like a bloody fish in the water. Then we did weapons training, physio, technical knowledge, the works. He won’t have a problem getting past the tests. In fact I’ll eat my boots if he doesn’t come top of the class in all of them. Where he gets it from, vicar’s son and all that, who knows?’

Ben frowned.

Jeff went on, ‘So, yeah, he hung around for a few weeks, helping out around the place to earn his keep. I enjoyed having him here, and he had a good time too, even if I worked him like a bastard. Like I said, you just missed him. He left for Africa this morning.’

Chapter 6

Ben blinked and thought for a second that he must have misheard. ‘Africa?’

‘Strictly speaking, he left here for Oman,’ Jeff said. ‘And he won’t be in Africa unless he goes ashore when they touch at port, he’ll be off Africa. South from the Port of Salalah, around the horn and down the east coast to Mombasa. He’s got himself a crewman gig on the MV Svalgaard Andromeda.’

‘A merchant vessel?’

Jeff nodded. ‘Big Yank container ship, one of the Svalgaard Line. It’s a good way for him to get the feel of things, learn about life at sea before he goes in at the deep end, so to speak. Wants to put a bit of money under his belt, too.’

‘And I suppose it was you who set this up for him?’ Ben asked.

Jeff nodded again. ‘I know a guy who knows a guy, the usual thing. All it took was a couple of calls. Where’s the bloody harm?’

Ben felt his rising frustration reddening into anger. ‘Jude doesn’t need to take a job like that to earn money. He has plenty already. He inherited everything from his parents when they died.’ It still upset Ben to think about his old friends, and the car smash that had claimed both their lives that terrible December night, just a few miles from their village in rural Oxfordshire.

‘Not what he told me,’ Jeff said. ‘He said he’s skint. Doesn’t have the nails to scratch himself with. All he has is the house, and he doesn’t want to sell it. They didn’t leave him much else. I don’t think vicars earn a heck of a lot.’

‘Anyway, that’s not the point,’ Ben said irritably. ‘I don’t want him joining the navy. Or the army, or the RAF, or anything else.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘It’s just not the kind of life I see for him,’ Ben said.

‘The kind of life you see for him? What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You heard me,’ Ben said. Their voices were rising. ‘I’m not happy about this, Jeff. You should have cleared it with me first.’

‘Oh, right. Like I needed your permission to show him a few things and help him on his way doing something he’s got his mind set on?’

‘That’s the whole point,’ Ben said. ‘He’s stubborn, and he’s wilful, and he’ll throw himself into any risky situation that comes his way without a second thought. And you went and encouraged him, behind my back.’

‘What are you getting so uptight about anyway? Jesus Christ, you talk as if he was your bloody son.’

Ben was silent a beat.

Then said, ‘Jeff, he is my son.’

Jeff sat back in his chair, stunned. ‘Are you kidding me? How can that be?’

‘It just is,’ Ben said.

Jeff stared at Ben, scrutinising his face as if he was seeing him for the first time. ‘It’s obvious, really, when you think about it.’

‘Fancy that.’

‘He’s got your eyes. And your chin. Hair colour too.’

‘If that was all he had of mine, it wouldn’t be a problem.’

‘But now I’m confused. Only a minute ago, you said his parents left him money when they died.’

‘That’s just what Jude thought.’

Jeff frowned, even more confused. ‘So … his father wasn’t a vicar at all.’

‘That’s the whole point, isn’t it?’ Ben said. ‘I wish he had been. Simeon was a good man. A better one than me, that’s for sure.’

‘Then … what about his mother?’

‘His mother was his mother. Michaela Arundel.’

‘Then you and she—’

‘You’re the last guy I’d imagine believing in Immaculate Conception,’ Ben said. ‘Obviously, yes.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘Uh, at a rough guess, I’d say Jude’s age plus nine months ago,’ Ben said. ‘It was when we were all students together, long before she and Simeon were married. Simeon knew all about it. She never tried to pretend that it was anything other than it was.’

Jeff was staring at him in amazement. ‘And what about Jude, does he know?’

‘It was agreed to keep it secret from him. He only found out the truth by chance, after they died. It was a bit rocky at first, but he accepts it.’ Which wasn’t strictly accurate, but it was the best Ben could do to describe their faltering relationship without getting into the painful details. The reality was that they hadn’t spoken in well over a year, and Ben could easily imagine more years going by before they spoke again, if ever. The last words his son had said to him still resonated in his mind.

‘Oh, just fuck off, Dad.’

Jeff was still stunned. ‘Who else knows about this? Does Brooke know?’

Ben nodded.

‘And Boonzie?’

‘Him too,’ Ben said.

‘Then how come you never told me?’

‘You were there when I told Boonzie.’

‘When?’

‘Right after the thing in the Gulf of Finland. Can I help it if you weren’t paying attention?’

‘I’d just taken a bloody rifle bullet in the leg,’ Jeff said.

‘It hardly touched you.’

‘I was unconscious, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Then you should have woken up. I can’t be repeating myself all the time.’

‘It’s not fair. How come I’m always the last to know these things? How come the others never told me either?’

‘Maybe they thought you lacked the emotional maturity to be able to handle it,’ Ben said. ‘So now you know. And that’s why I don’t want him joining the damn services. The last thing I need is Jude following in my footsteps. Next thing he’ll be wanting to do something even more stupid, like get it into his head to try out for Special Forces.’

Back in Ben and Jeff’s day, SAS and SBS recruits had undergone separate selection processes; nowadays it was all run together under the joint auspices of UKSF. The few who survived the ninety percent failure rate were then streamed into their different divisions. In addition to the torture of hill marching, jungle combat, parachute, survival, evasion and resistance to interrogation training, Special Boat Service candidates were put through battle swimming and progressive dive tests in order to qualify as Swimmer Canoeists, before ultimately going on to join an operational squadron.

Jeff went quiet.

Ben narrowed his eyes. ‘He didn’t. Did he?’

‘He did. I’m sorry. He went on about it quite a bit.’

‘And of course, you didn’t try to talk him out of it. Did you, Jeff?’

‘Give me a break. He wanted to know what it’s like in the SBS. How to apply to get in, what the training involves, what it takes to get badged, the kind of life it is, and all that sort of stuff. What was I supposed to do, refuse to tell him? He could’ve found most of it out online anyway. All I did was add in a few details. The kind of stuff you’d only know about if you’d been there and done it. I had to give him a proper idea, didn’t I? I mean, he asked me, for fuck’s sake.’

‘Jesus, Jeff.’

But Ben knew there was little point in arguing. Jude was gone, and as usual, Ben hadn’t been there for him. It was the story of their whole relationship, from day one.

‘He’s got a fire in the belly, Ben. Just like we had at his age. You can’t stop him, if that’s what he wants to do. Maybe it’s in the blood.’

‘Yeah. I know,’ Ben said. ‘That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.’

Chapter 7

Port of Salalah, Oman

Two days later

When he climbed out of the taxi, still lagged from the long flight, and followed the directions he’d been given through the thirty-degree heat and clamour of the bustling port to where the Svalgaard Andromeda lay moored at the dockside, Jude’s first impression was of the ship’s sheer enormity. He’d expected it to be large, but checking out images on Google and seeing it for real were two completely different things.

For a few moments, planted on the dock clutching his backpack and surrounded by busy workers running here and there, forklift trucks zapping to and fro and the general noisy activity of the largest commercial seaport in Oman, all Jude could do was boggle at the overwhelming vastness of what was to be his home and workplace for the next little while.

It looked more like a floating city than a boat. Stretching over nine hundred feet from end to end, it was longer than the Trump World Tower in New York laid on its side. The black, rust-streaked sides of its hull towered over the dock with SVALGAARD LINE, the name of America’s fifth-largest shipping company, painted in white letters twenty feet high. Most of the vessel was deck, which by the time Jude arrived at port was already in the final stages of being stacked high with cargo by the ship’s on-board forty-foot cranes. As he already knew from his web browsing, Andromeda had been built in 2007 and was listed as a Panamax-class vessel rated at 4,000 TEU capacity, which meant simply that she could accommodate four thousand twenty-foot-equivalent units of intermodal shipping containers. As he would later learn, the mixed cargo on this voyage consisted of vast quantities of electrical goods, generators, building supplies, agricultural equipment, tyres, and a million other items due for delivery to the various ports they would be visiting as they cruised southwards across the Indian Ocean on what was known as the East Africa run: stopping off at Djibouti, the Kenyan port of Mombasa and, finally, Dar es Salaam.

‘Well, here I am,’ Jude muttered to himself. This was it. There was no turning back now. The slight nervousness he’d felt ever since Jeff Dekker had lined him up with this job was intermingled with excitement at the prospect of going to sea for the first time as a real mariner, one of the ABs, short for able-bodied seamen, who crewed the ship along with the engine room team, the mates and the captain himself.

As he walked up the gangway he was met by a ruddy-faced, sandy-haired American wearing an open-necked khaki shirt and a look of harassed urgency, who briskly welcomed him aboard and introduced himself as Jack Skinner, ship’s bosun.

‘No time to give you the guided tour right now,’ Skinner explained. ‘Just do what you’re told and try not to get in the way, okay?’ Which was fine by Jude, even if the guy’s manner was a little short. Jude figured he’d have to get used to that kind of thing if he wanted to join the Royal Navy. Skinner quickly handed him over to an older AB called Mitch, whom Jude guessed to be from one of the southern US states – not that he was an expert on accents, but the Confederate flag T-shirt was something of a giveaway. Mitch seemed happy to get a few moments’ break from his duties to grab a quick smoke and lead the new recruit to his quarters on C Deck. C Deck was the second floor of the looming seven-storey superstructure towards the rear of the ship – Jude had made a mental note to try to use nautical terms like ‘stern’ – that was known as ‘the house’. Jude had seen smaller apartment buildings.

‘You a Limey, right?’ Mitch asked with a gap-toothed grin. ‘I sailed with Polaks, Krauts, Gooks, Jappos, Eye-ties, all sorts. Never sailed with a Limey before.’

Welcome to the United Nations. ‘Got a problem with it?’ Jude said.

Mitch shrugged. ‘So what’s your story? You don’t look like no sailor to me. More like a college boy. Daddy’s a lawyer, right? Or a doctor. Wants you to join the family firm and this is your way of telling’m to go screw himself.’

‘I’m not a college boy,’ Jude said firmly. ‘I’m anything but that.’

Mitch grinned again and punched him in the arm. ‘Hey, just fucking with you, man. Lighten up. Betcha I’m right, though, huh? The daddy thing?’

Jude felt like telling him to keep his nose out of his business, but that didn’t feel like the best start to a happy working relationship with his fellow crewmen.

‘My father’s dead,’ he said after a beat, and then repeated it, as if somehow he had to make it doubly true. To have lost one father, only to discover another you didn’t want to know – that had been a difficult and confusing time and he wanted to put it behind him. Closure was the best way. ‘My father’s dead. So’s my mother. There is no family firm. No family at all. Just me.’

‘Shit, man, sorry to hear it.’

‘Yeah, whatever,’ Jude said, looking around at his new quarters. There wasn’t a lot to see. Being the most junior of the crew, he had been lodged in what he suspected to be – and later discovered was – the smallest and most cramped of the cabins allocated to the ABs. He had no problem with that, however. He intended to enjoy every minute of this adventure to the full. After stowing his backpack in the locker next to his berth, he followed Mitch back down onto the cargo deck and was immediately plunged into the hectic activity of helping to load the rest of the containers on board prior to shipping out.

Mitch, the amiable bigot who liked to poke into people’s personal lives, quickly turned out to be not such a bad guy at all, to Jude’s relief. ‘Don’t you mind Skinner,’ Mitch advised him as he showed him how to lash down a container to prevent it from slipping in heavy weather. ‘He’s one mean, tough, hard-assed sonofabitch and a hell of a screamer, but do your job, keep your head down and your nose clean and he won’t give you too much shit.’ Which was good to know.

‘What about the other officers?’ Jude asked.

‘We don’t call ’em officers in the merchant marine. You got Frank Wilson, the chief mate. We just say “the mate”. He’s okay, I guess. Between you and me, he likes a drink. Starts every trip with a full case of Jim Beam. Catch’m on a good day, you wouldn’t know it, but …’ Mitch rolled his eyes knowingly. ‘Then you got Diesel, he’s what we call the chief. Chief engineer,’ he explained for Jude’s benefit. ‘He’s only about a million years old, knows every nut, bolt and rivet of this ol’ tub like you wouldn’t believe. Guzman, second mate, he’s a slob, eats like a hog and he’s so full of lard he can’t hardly move. The boys call’m the Guzzler, but not to his face, okay? Then you got Ricky Marshall, the third mate. Real straight-up guy. You ask me, he oughta be captain.’

‘Got it,’ Jude said, making mental notes of it all. ‘And what about the captain? What’s he like?’

Mitch gave a noncommittal shrug. ‘I sailed with Cappy O’Keefe a bunch of times, been loop the loop around the damn world together twice, three times, maybe more. He’s comin’ up for retirement. Ain’t the guy he used to be. Spends most of his time in his cabin, writing long emails to his wife back home in Indiana, while he leaves it to Wilson and Skinner to do all the hard work. Then Wilson and Skinner pass it all down to the rest of us. That’s pretty much the system here, kid. Better get used to it. You’ll earn your money on board this ship, believe me.’

Jude was unafraid of hard work, which was just as well, because Mitch hadn’t been joking. By the time the Andromeda was finally loaded up and ready to set off, Jude was drenched with sweat and fit to drop from exhaustion – and his first day on board had barely even begun. He watched from the deck as, to the deep throb of the diesel engines, they made their way out of the port and through the lesser shipping towards open sea. It was a heady feeling for Jude, and tired as he was, he couldn’t keep the grin off his face. Before long, the land sank out of sight and they were alone under the vast empty bowl of the sky, with nothing but the deep blue-green waters of the Indian Ocean from horizon to horizon.

The voyage had begun.

And if Jude had known then how it was going to end, he would have dived straight into the sea and started swimming back to shore.

Chapter 8

Before now, Jude had never been on any kind of boat for longer than a few hours at a time, and he’d wondered about things like ocean sickness. But the Indian Ocean was as smooth as an endless sheet of blue glass, and after a couple of days he’d found his sea legs and the gentle movement of the ship felt as natural as being on land.

It might take him a little longer to get used to the heat, which was oppressive and humid everywhere except on the outer deck, where it was just scorching. And the three hours’ sleep a night, four if you were lucky, took some adapting to as well. No time in the merchant navy to lounge on deck with a gin and tonic in your hand, admiring the view and counting dolphins. That was for sure.

He was getting to know his way around a little better, as well as getting to know his fellow crewmen. The mess and canteen were situated down on A Deck, two floors down from his quarters, where a lot of tired and hungry sailors would gather to recuperate from their shifts, to eat, smoke, gulp gallons of coffee and shoot the breeze. There were fourteen ABs aboard including himself – although, as far as he could see, some of them didn’t really seem to be that able-bodied at all after so many years at sea. A number of the sailors were in their sixties, work-hardened and leathery as hell but beginning to show the strains of a lifetime of physical hardship. For many of them, this was the only life they’d ever known, and Jude quickly learned that it was one that seemed to attract some very colourful characters. The casual, totally non-uniform dress code among the ABs wasn’t exactly what he could later expect to find aboard a Royal Navy ship, either. Tatty sweatshirts, faded jeans, military surplus gear, anything went. Steve Maisky, an ageing hippy who for reasons best known to himself insisted on being known as ‘Condor’ and claimed to have been hopping ships ever since dodging the draft for Vietnam in 1972, jangled with beads and bangles and had grey hair in a ratty ponytail that hung halfway down the back of his Grateful Dead T-shirt. He was benevolently disapproved of by Lou Gerber, a white-bearded ex-US Marine five years his senior, who strutted about in khakis and combat boots with a shapeless fatigue hat jammed on his balding pate to protect him from the sun.

Jude had developed a liking for Mitch and thought he could learn a lot from him. During work and breaks, the older man regaled him with all manner of colourful and sometimes improbable tales from his twenty-odd years in the merchant navy. Mitch had seen the world, all of it. There was, he claimed, not a bar or gambling den or whorehouse in any port town on the face of the planet that he hadn’t frequented and in some way left his mark on. He’d been thrown out of many, barred from several. He’d been carried back comatose to his ship on a wheelbarrow more than once or twice. He’d been knifed in the ribs over a card game in Sri Lanka and shot at by a disgruntled pimp in Hong Kong. He’d won more bare-knuckle fights and arm-wrestling bouts than he’d lost, made a ton of money on them, too. He’d had more women, and probably fathered more children, than he could count or remember. It had been, he told Jude with a contented grin, one hell of a crazy run and it wasn’t nearly over yet.

‘What the hell for?’ he asked when Jude told him of his own ambitions to join the Royal Navy. ‘Do yourself a favour, partner. You don’t wanna get in with that bunch of tight-assed dipshits. You wanna sail the world, Jude, then this is the way to do it. There is,’ he added grandly, ‘no better life for a free man than this one right here.’

‘A free man?’

‘You ain’t got no wife back home, do you? Not at your age, right?’

Jude shook his head. ‘Girlfriend. Nothing that serious.’ The truth was, he was pretty certain his thing with Helen, who’d been a year below him at university, was dead and buried now that he’d dropped out of his studies. Her parents disapproved of his ‘dissolute ways’ and were a little too much of an influence on their daughter. He still wore the little bracelet she’d given him, a string of beads that spelled her name. He hadn’t had the heart to throw it away.

‘I’m not one to go givin’ advice,’ Mitch said, happy to go on dispensing it freely. ‘But don’t go gettin’ yourself saddled. I finally had the good sense to walk away after number four. Lord knows there ain’t no ocean as cold nor no mountain on this earth as hard as a woman’s heart. These days I keep the bitches strictly on a payin’ basis, if you get my drift.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Jude said, with a smile.

For all that he was making friends and feeling more comfortable by the hour in his new environment, Jude wasn’t so sure about all his fellow crewmen. In particular, a chisel-faced, greasy-haired ex-biker called Scagnetti, who wore a grimy wife-beater T-shirt to show off his muscles and tattoos, and whose moods fluctuated between being silent and sullen, then argumentative and prone to lash out at the slightest provocation. He had been a Harley mechanic somewhere down in New Mexico before he’d gravitated to stealing choppers, nearly got caught and fled to sea. Everyone had a story, it seemed.

Mitch had already warned Jude not to get too close to Scagnetti. ‘Dude’s a decent enough mariner but there’s something ain’t quite right up here’ – tapping a finger to his head. ‘Watch’m, is all I’m sayin’.’

Another crew member Jude quickly warmed to was Hercules, the ship’s cook, a larger-than-life black man with a laugh that could vibrate the hull from stem to stern, and who always wore the same frayed old army jacket that was spattered with a thousand grease stains. Hercules’s constant companion in the galley, the mess, and everywhere else, perched on his shoulder, was an evil harpy of an African grey parrot that went by the name of Murphy and possessed an even more scatological vocabulary than most of the sailors. Not everyone appreciated the bird, especially after being screeched at repeatedly and at maximum volume to get the fuck out of here! – its favourite expression.

‘If that vulture of yours shits in my plate, I’m going to chew its goddamned head off and spit out the beak,’ complained Gerber, absolutely serious. Which, Hercules later confessed to Jude with a grin, earned Gerber a dollop of green parrot excreta mixed in with his gravy. Gerber either didn’t notice, or thought it was an improvement on the usual slop the galley served up. Jude had to secretly agree that, whatever else Hercules might be, he certainly was no chef.

Strangely, Murphy never swore at Jude. On the third day of the voyage, the bird even flapped off its master’s shoulder to swoop across the mess and perch on Jude’s. ‘First time he’s ever done that,’ Hercules said, mightily impressed, while Jude sat very still and hoped the thing wasn’t about to rip his earlobe off with its nutcracker beak.

‘Murph has real good taste in people,’ Hercules chuckled while pouring Jude a mug of stewed coffee later that day. ‘If he don’t take kindly to a guy, that’s how I know they’s an asshole. He’s like my early warnin’ system.’

‘Everyone seems okay to me,’ Jude said, playing the diplomatic newbie. ‘Mostly, anyway.’

‘Ain’t such a bad bunch crew on this run,’ Hercules said. ‘Just that lousy prick Scagnetti and the three a-holes up on D Deck.’

D Deck was where the engineers and mates had their slightly more comfortable quarters than the common crewmen, and for a moment Jude thought Hercules must be referring to some of them.

‘Nah, man. Talking about our esteemed fuckin’ passengers. Bird don’t think too much of them neither, believe me.’

This was the first Jude had heard of passengers on board. No mention of it had been made by anyone until now, which struck him as being odd. ‘I didn’t realise merchant ships carried anybody but the working crew.’

Hercules sniffed. ‘That’s ’cause we don’t, not as a rule leastways. I been at sea twelve years and I ain’t never seen it. This ain’t no damn cruise liner. Ain’t no Sunday picnic neither. Like I don’t already got enough to be doin’ down here without I’ve got to carry up their meals twice a fuckin’ day. What, are their asses too high an’ mighty to chow down here with the rest of us? Ain’t no room for freeloaders in this here merchant marine. Everybody pulls their weight or they ain’t got no right bein’ here in the first place.’

‘What are they, friends of the captain?’

‘You bet I already asked the bosun the same question ’fore we shipped out.’

‘And what did he say?’ Jude asked, wondering whether maybe Jack Skinner wasn’t quite as unapproachable as Mitch had suggested.

Hercules grunted. ‘Didn’t say shit. Just gave me the look that says, don’t even fuckin’ ask.’

Chapter 9

As he went about his duties that day, Jude kept an eye open in case he might spot one of the mystery passengers. He saw no sign of them, and presumed they must be confining themselves to their quarters and choosing not to mix with the others on board. But what he did start to pick up more signs of were the grumbles of resentment among the crew against the unknown, nameless, faceless freeloaders up on D Deck. None of his business, he decided, reminding himself that he, too, was just passing through and only here thanks to some favour called in, some string or other pulled by one of Jeff Dekker’s connections in the maritime world. He wasn’t one of these guys. He was only here to gain knowledge and experience.

Which he was doing, every waking moment. Jude had always been a fast learner, effortlessly remaining top of his class at uni before he’d decided that Marine Biology was not what he wanted to spend his life doing. He was constantly full of questions for Mitch and the others, though careful not to overdo it. He soon filled in the gaps in his knowledge concerning the roles of the senior crewmen. The impressively named Henry Hainsworth O’Keefe was, as he’d supposed, the supreme authority aboard ship, directing things from his throne room up on the bridge. Frank Wilson, the chief mate, was responsible for overseeing the loading and unloading cargo, as well as handling security and the general day-to-day running of the ship. The chief engineer, Diesel, was a rare sight above decks, he and his assistants seldom emerging from their domain in the engine room down below. When not filling his already capacious belly, Guzman, second mate, was the so-called ‘paper mate’ in charge of navigation, charts and all the electronics up on the bridge. The third mate, Marshall, acted as an assistant. And as Jude had already inferred, the fearsome Skinner’s job as bosun was to mediate between the mates and the rest of the crew, as well as ensure discipline on board.

In addition to learning about the men he was sailing with, Jude was also getting to know the ship pretty well. His first impression of a floating city had been perfectly right: you could lose yourself for days in the bewildering, endless maze of passageways and storerooms both above and below decks. Maybe it was because he was the youngest and most fleet of foot out of the crew, or maybe it was just because he was the new meat; either way, Jude found himself running back and forth all day on gopher duty. Clattering up and down rusty iron steps. Fetching this, fetching that, passing messages here and there.

On his errands about ship he was constantly intrigued by the heavy steel-mesh gates that barred virtually every external walkway and ladder, coming up from the deck to the superstructure. Every time you passed through one of the gates, you had to close and lock it behind you. It meant you couldn’t go anywhere without first getting a set of keys from the bosun, and returning it afterwards. Unable to think what purpose the gates served, Jude quizzed the old salt Gerber on the matter.

‘Those are pirate cages,’ Gerber explained with a bristly scowl.

‘Pirate cages?’

On the flight to Oman, Jude had contemplated the possible dangers of a voyage down the east coast of Africa. Typhoons, reefs, sharks, heatstroke, getting arrested in port for unruly behaviour and ending up incarcerated in some African jail had all occurred to him. He hadn’t once thought about pirates. How could they even still exist, in this day and age? Terrorists, sure. But pirates? To him, the word conjured up images of snarling buccaneers with cutlasses and eye-patches, and the Jolly Roger flying at the masthead. Wasn’t that ancient history?

Gerber, however, seemed very certain of the risk. ‘Yup. That’s what those are, all right. So’s if we get boarded by the little darlings, they can’t get access to enough key points, the bridge especially, to take over the ship. Only way we can even try to keep those scumsucking bastards off our asses. That, or hose ’em with water as they come up our sides. Some ships pour oily foam on ’em, gunks ’em up good. Needless to say, we got jack shit except a bunch of flimsy wire mesh.’

To Jude’s amazement, Gerber explained how little shipping companies did to protect either their property, the cargo they carried or the men they paid to ferry it from the risk of violent armed pirate attacks that kept growing year on year in certain waters. Ships on the East Africa run, Gerber added bitterly, being one of the primary and most frequent prey, targeted by waterborne bandits operating mainly from the Somali coast.

‘That’s just how it is,’ he told Jude. ‘Personally, I’d like to see a whole damn locker of M16s on board. Been saying it for years, but who’d listen? Those corporate sonsofbitches would rather leave us out here like sitting ducks than trust us to defend ourselves.’

Jude hated to ask the inevitable question. ‘What happens if pirates manage to get past the cages and take over the ship?’

Gerber shrugged. ‘Best case, all they want is cash. Every vessel carries a few thousand bucks’ worth in reserve in the captain’s safe, for emergencies and such. If you get lucky, you might be able to just pay them off, and they’ll beat it back to shore to get rat-assed and whored up, and you can go on your way rejoicing. That’s how it used to be, more often than not, but it’s rare you get off so lightly now. See, when these shit-eaters first started showing up twenty years ago, you were dealing with a few rag-tag fishermen making six hundred dollars a year, who thought five, ten thousand was the haul of a lifetime. Didn’t take ’em long to figure out you could make a whole lot more by snapping up the whole ship and holding the cargo and crew for ransom.’

Jude was staring at him. ‘They kidnap the crews?’

‘This is all news to you, huh, sonny? Sure, these fuckers would kidnap their own mothers for a buck. They’re taking hundreds of millions a year now in ransoms. It’s big business. Instead of wooden skiffs they’re coming out in speedboats, tooled up to the nines with Kalashnikovs, high as kites on fuckin’ khat and ready to murder anyone who gets in their way. And they don’t just cover a few miles out from the coast like they used to. Not when they can use stolen vessels as mother ships and hunt over the whole ocean looking for a juicy tanker to knock off. It’s a whole other ball game now, and it’s about goddamn time someone did something about it.’

‘I had no idea it was so bad.’

Gerber pulled a disgusted face. ‘Well now you have. Bring ’em on, I say. They want a fight, they’ll get a fight like they won’t believe. I’d rather be dead than wind up a hostage in some Somali stinkpit, or sold as a fuckin’ slave to work in a damn copper mine.’

Jude’s head was still spinning from what Gerber had told him when he sat down to eat later with Mitch, Condor and another AB called Lang. ‘Hey, s’matter, English? You don’t think my jokes are funny any more?’ Mitch said in a mock-hurt voice after Jude failed to break up at some stupid crack. Jude admitted what was on his mind.

‘That old fart Gerber’s just looking to scare your Limey ass,’ Mitch said.

‘Can’t get it up no more, so he wants to play Platoon instead,’ laughed Condor. ‘Thinks he’s still in ’Nam. You know why they don’t issue weapons to merchant crews? So that trigger-happy dudes like Gerber can’t shoot the crap out of every bunch of poor schmuck fishermen that come within a thousand-yard range, and call it self-defence. Who’s gonna insure us for that?’

Jude wasn’t sure. It had sounded pretty plausible the way Gerber described it.

‘That’s right, man, don’t listen to his cranky bullshit,’ said Lang, munching loudly on a bacon sandwich and spitting bits out as he talked. ‘Sure, the pirates might hit a vessel now and then, but we’re talking small trawlers and private yachts mostly. Few years back, they took a pop at a German naval tanker thinking she was a merchant and those Krauts chewed their asses up something terrible. I’ll bet ol’ Gerber didn’t tell you what happened last time a pirate crew touched an American ship, did he?’ Lang dragged his forefinger across his throat and smiled wickedly, bits of bacon stuck between his teeth. ‘I got two words for you. Navy SEALs.’

‘What happened?’

‘Let’s just say, our boys went home. The bad guys wound up as fish bait.’

‘These waters are safe as houses,’ Mitch said, ramming home the point. ‘Hell, safer. Naval destroyers patrol up and down the coastline the whole time. Thank your fellow Limeys for that one. We even so much as smell a pirate, all Cappy O’Keefe has to do is dial up UKMTO on the sat phone, and the cavalry’ll be all over us before you can say Jack Robinson.’

‘Who the fuck was Jack Robinson, anyway?’ Condor asked.

‘Fuck should I know?’ Mitch shot back at him.

‘Always wondered about that,’ Condor said absently.

Jude already knew about United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, the clearing house that governed shipping security in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. But he still wasn’t entirely convinced.

‘Okay,’ he said, dubiously. ‘Then if we’re so safe and there’s no risk, then why do we keep the pirate cages locked all the time? And how come these attacks are still going on?’

Mitch waved it away. ‘Chill, dude. Ain’t gonna happen to us.’

Chapter 10

The young woman’s eyes were wide with terror and pleading as she tried to scream out from behind the tape that covered her mouth. Her bleached hair was all awry, her hands tied, her blue chequered shop assistant’s uniform ripped at the neck from the struggle with her attacker who, presumably, had already wiped out the rest of her colleagues in his murderous spree.

The hostage taker stood half-concealed behind her, using her body as a shield with one arm clamped tightly around her neck. Was he a terrorist, or just another crazy on the loose? It didn’t matter either way. He was the threat, and he had to be neutralised. He was wearing a black sweatshirt and his eyes were hidden by dark glasses that glinted in the morning sun. He was clutching a stubby pistol that was aimed over the woman’s shoulder and pointing at the hostage rescue team who had come to save her.

Milliseconds counted. At any instant, a desperate man like this, all out of options and wild with panic, might turn the gun on her at point-blank range and blow her brains out.

Brrrpp … Brrrpp. The ripping snort of two short bursts from the silenced submachine gun, punctuated by the clackclackclack of the weapon’s bolt and the tinkle of spent cartridge cases hitting the ground. The hostage’s left eye disappeared as the nine-millimetre bullets punched a jagged line from her throat up to her temple.

Then silence. The smell of cordite drifted on the cold morning air. A small trickle of smoke oozed from each of the bullet holes. The hostage taker’s pistol was still pointing at the assembled HRT operators fifteen metres away.

‘Cease fire,’ Jeff Dekker said. ‘Make your weapon safe.’

The shooter flicked on his safety catch and frowned at the woman he’d just killed.

‘Shit.’

‘Okay,’ Jeff said. ‘Your hostage is dead, and so are you, or maybe one of your teammates.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Tell that to her kids.’ Jeff stepped up to the firing line and took the smoking subgun out of the shooter’s hands. ‘Ben? You want to give us a demonstration?’

The shooter stepped aside, angry with himself and shaking his head. Without a word, Ben took the gun from Jeff, walked up to the line and waited for the buzzer. Jeff pressed the remote button. At the signal, almost too fast for the eye to follow, Ben had the weapon up to his shoulder and on target with a single burst.

Brrrpp.

The hostage taker’s sunglasses shattered into fragments. Shreds of high-density polyurethane foam flew from the back of his head and littered the grass like confetti. Less than three-quarters of a second from the buzzer, he wasn’t going to be harming any more innocents.

Ben lowered the gun, made it safe and handed it back to Jeff, keeping the muzzle pointed downrange. ‘Something like that,’ he said to the first shooter, who was still shaking his head and staring in amazement at the tight grouping of holes between the bad guy’s eyes.

It was just another morning at Le Val. The class were a group of twelve French police SWAT trainees who’d been sent out on a three-day instruction course in close-quarter shooting and hostage rescue tactics. The highly realistic, lifesize 3-D self-healing foam targets were a recent innovation Jeff had come up with, in conjunction with a Normandy plastic mouldings firm who couldn’t manufacture them fast enough to meet the demand from law enforcement and military training units all over Europe.

‘You want to break down for the group how you just did that?’ Jeff asked Ben.

‘We need to look beyond the accepted principles of combat shooting in order to become really fast and accurate,’ Ben told the class. ‘Forget what you’ve been taught about focusing on the sights of the weapon. And don’t think too much about it. When you’ve shot enough to develop the right reflexes, muscle memory will bring the firearm to alignment instantly and without conscious thought. Even at twenty-five metres we’ve found it’s possible to get good, solid hits in less time if you let the sights fuzz out and focus on the target instead. You’ll also have better peripheral vision awareness of hostage movement or additional threats. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ came the muttered replies from the group.

‘Let’s try it again,’ Jeff said.

‘Just like old times,’ Jeff said to Ben as the class broke up for lunch.

Ben said nothing, because he knew Jeff was angling for him to stay on permanently. He didn’t want to commit to anything. His plans were unchanged: to wait a couple more days to let things settle down in Paris, return there to finish doing up the apartment, and go looking for an estate agent.

But Ben privately couldn’t deny that, after a few days back at Le Val, it was beginning to feel like home again, almost as if he’d never left the place. Initially, he’d resisted Jeff’s invitation to get involved with the training side of things, and instead made himself useful elsewhere. He’d helped the decorators finish painting the new classroom building, driven into Valognes in the old Land Rover to fetch supplies, and mended part of the perimeter fence that had blown down. The rest of his time, he’d spent sitting by the fire in the farmhouse kitchen smoking cigarettes and reading with a glass of wine at his elbow, or revisiting his old running tracks through the wintry Normandy woodland with Storm trotting along at his heel. In the evenings, he and Jeff dined together and drank more wine and talked about everything except Ben’s coming back to work at Le Val.

Tuesday Fletcher, the new recruit, was a dynamic addition to the team. He had a quick wit, a lively manner and a ready smile that dazzled away the wintry cold and drumming Normandy rain. Ben liked him at once, and watching him spatter cherry tomatoes for fun at six hundred metres with an L96 sniper rifle, he had no problem conceding to the younger man’s superior marksmanship skills.

‘Sorry to hear what happened on your selection,’ Ben said to him as they were packing the gear away in the armoury room.

Tuesday shrugged. ‘Just one of those things. Would’ve been nice to have been the first black kid in the SAS.’

‘I always used to think it was wrong that we didn’t have any,’ Ben said.

‘Don’t know what they’re missing. We’re great for night ops. Nobody can see us coming in the dark,’ Tuesday joked.

‘Tuesday – is that a nickname?’

‘Nope. It’s what it says on my birth certificate.’

‘Seriously?’

Tuesday laughed and gave another of his patented room-brighteners. ‘I was born Tuesday, March third, 1992. Mum said they called me that so I’d have a birthday every week instead of just once a year like all the other kids. Truth is, she wanted to call me Troy and Dad wanted Sam. After I was born they fought over it for six weeks, until they were about to get fined for not registering me quick enough. So they both caved in and just called me after the day of the week I popped out. If that hadn’t happened they’d still be fighting over it now. Stubbornness runs in the family.’

Join the club, Ben thought.

That got Ben back to thinking about his own family. Jude was on his mind a lot over those days, as he reflected about the past and all the regrets he had about the way he’d handled things. If there was a league table for fathers, they’d have to invent a new bottom place just for Ben. The only thing he’d ever given Jude was the birthright of his own wild temperament. Hardly much of a legacy to pass down from father to son.

It was painful to contemplate all the ways he’d been such a letdown as a parent, just as it hurt to think about all the missing parts of their relationship. He’d never seen the boy grow up, never got to know him properly, or had the chance to do the things a father should do to bond with his child. He’d inherited Jude just as Jude had inherited him, two strangers brought together by a tragedy brutally foisted on them by the car crash that had ended the lives of Michaela and Simeon Arundel. Ben missed them both deeply, but he knew that Jude’s pain was deeper still and would never go away. Yet they’d barely ever talked about it. Ben regretted that too.

He wished Jude could be here now. He blamed himself for having missed him before his departure, and was trying not to blame Jeff for not having told him sooner that Jude was at Le Val, even if he understood Jeff’s reasons. Then, of course, there was the undeniable fact that Ben hadn’t exactly made himself easy to get in touch with. But seven whole weeks! If he’d only known, he’d have been here. They could have spent that time together. Maybe tried to start again.

Or maybe it would just have made things worse. He worried that it was too late to try and repair things between him and his son, just as it was probably too late for Ben to fix the profound rift between him and his ex-fiancée, Brooke Marcel. Ben already believed in his heart that Brooke would never speak to him again.

If Jude never wanted to either, then Ben would just have to accept that, too.

Chapter 11

On the morning of the fourth day since leaving Salalah, the Svalgaard Andromeda completed its south-westerly route down the Yemeni coast and arrived dead on schedule at the Port of Djibouti. Under the watchful eye of the bosun and a sun so searingly hot that the sky was burned almost white, Jude and the rest of the crew laboured and sweated for most of the day unloading cargo. When the gruelling toil was finally done, word came down from the captain that they were free to hit port for a few hours that evening before setting out again the following morning.

Condor and Mitch were first off the ship, in gleeful search of cheap beer and loose women – both of which, being old hands on the East Africa run, they knew exactly where to find in sufficient quantities to gorge themselves to the maximum. Even the dour-faced Scagnetti was smiling at the prospect of being let loose on land for a while.

Jude resisted all invitations to come ashore and have a good time with a polite smile and a ‘That’s okay, you go and have fun.’ He spent the evening instead in his cabin, relaxing with a book. The next morning, he was predictably one of the only crew members who wasn’t suffering a thudding headache and queasy stomach from a serious night on the town. Nobody had been stabbed, robbed, or detained by the port police. Scagnetti appeared to have managed to go the whole night without getting into any bar brawls.

The ship departed from Djibouti shortly after 9 a.m. and cruised back out into the infinite blue on a north-easterly bearing that would carry them around the Horn of Africa before turning south.

Mid-afternoon, the first of that day’s incidents occurred.

Jude was far forward on the cargo deck, one of a small party of mostly hungover and groaning ABs working to clear up after the previous day’s unloading, when he happened to glance over the rail at the expanse of ocean ahead, and thought he saw a dark, strangely angular shape bobbing on the surface of the water directly in the ship’s path. It was only visible for a fleeting moment; then it was gone. He blinked and went closer to the rail to take another look.

Jude hadn’t been imagining things. As it turned out, what he’d seen was a discarded forty-foot steel shipping container apparently lost from another vessel, so waterlogged that it was floating too low on the surface to be picked up by the radar. He quickly alerted Ricky Marshall, the third mate, who relayed the information to the bridge, and the ship changed course a few degrees to avoid the potential hazard.

Marshall was pleased with him, explaining that ships lost containers all the time, running into thousands a year worldwide, and often failed – illegally – to report them. While such floating debris posed no serious risk to the thick hulls of larger vessels like the Andromeda, it was always worth steering clear. ‘You’ve got good eyes,’ he said to Jude. ‘Like to take a tour of the bridge?’

‘Really?’ It would be the first time Jude had ever been up there, and he lit up at the offer.

Marshall smiled at his excitement, and explained that especially observant ABs were often posted up on the bridge, as an extra pair of eyes always came in handy. ‘Plus,’ he added, ‘I hear you’re thinking of a naval career. You might be interested in seeing what goes on up there.’

And so, novice able-bodied seaman Jude Arundel followed the third mate up the steps and walkways to pay his first visit to the real nerve-centre of the ship, where he was introduced in person to Captain O’Keefe. The captain was a large, bearded man with a red face and a disinterested manner, who thanked Jude vaguely for having spotted the floating container and didn’t seem to care one way or the other about Marshall showing him around. O’Keefe returned to the conversation he’d been having with Wilson, the chief mate, who had the wheel. Jude caught a whiff of a scent from Wilson that could have been cheap after-shave, but smelled more like bourbon.

The bridge was the very top floor of the ship’s superstructure, accessible from an outer door and an inner hatch that led through to the rest of D Deck. It was shielded from the elements by tall windows that gave a commanding view for miles in every direction. On its roof was a railed open-air platform called the flying bridge, and extending some eighteen feet either side of it jutted steel observation walkways that overhung the ship’s sides, used for fine steering adjustments while docking.

Inside the control room itself, Jude felt as if he was inside a giant greenhouse. The deck seemed very far below, and so narrow as to create the illusion that the ship must be dangerously top-heavy and about to keel over on its side.

‘This is the conning station,’ Marshall said, showing Jude the bank of electronic equipment at the centre of the bridge. The second mate, Guzman, was lurking nearby, munching on a sandwich and ignoring them as he pored over his charts. ‘All these electronics are what we use for steering, nav and comm,’ Marshall explained. ‘Here you’ve got your GMDSS, short for Global Maritime Distress and Safety System, which feeds continuous weather updates. And this here is the radar,’ he said, pointing at another screen, showing what looked like a greenish-hued circular clock face divided into quadrants, with a continually sweeping hand moving round the centre. ‘The data stream on the right tells you the speed of any vessels we get close to, and their CPA. That’s the Closest Point of Approach – basically how long before its path crosses ours. Keeps us out of trouble.’

Jude was running his eye over the screens, drinking everything in. ‘This would be our position?’ he asked, pointing at a set of coordinates displayed on a readout.

‘That’s right. Updated continually via GPS. So we don’t lose our way.’

‘And that?’

Marshall seemed happy to answer as many questions as this eager young sailor could fire his way. ‘That’s the EOT. Stands for Engine Order Telegraph. It’s how the bridge tells the engine room to alter our speed. The panel next to it, right there, is the watertight door indicator. Every time a hatch seal opens anywhere on board, it lights up, green for open, red for shut. Alerts us if anything’s open that shouldn’t be in heavy weather.’

Fascinated by the wealth of equipment on board, Jude was about to ask more questions when the radar started to blip, drawing the attention of the mates. Wilson broke off from his conversation with the captain. The Guzzler swallowed the last of his sandwich and dragged his bulk over to the radar to take a look.

‘Looks like a vessel coming right towards us, Cap,’ he said. ‘Three-point-six miles astern and closing fast. Moving it some.’

O’Keefe frowned and came over to peer at the screen, together with Ricky Marshall. Jude moved in behind, so he could peek between them at the display. Maybe he was being audacious, he thought, but everyone’s attention was too fixed on the radar to take any notice of him. Onscreen, he could see a green dot moving towards the centre of the circle. As they watched, two smaller dots broke off from it.

‘That’s what I hoped we wouldn’t see,’ Guzman muttered. ‘It can only mean one thing.’

‘We’re going to have company,’ the captain said.

Chapter 12

Jude stared at the radar, remembering what Gerber had told him – how pirates no longer limited themselves to short-range raids from the coastline and now used stolen vessels as mother ships to patrol the whole ocean. ‘Are we under attack?’ he asked, unable to help himself from speaking out.

Nobody replied. Ricky Marshall just glanced at him, his jaw clenched. A whole minute passed, then another. The little green dots kept on coming. The two smaller ones that had broken away seemed to be converging on the centre of the circle at a slightly faster rate.

‘Two-point-one miles, Cap,’ Guzman said, looking intently at O’Keefe.

With an effort, Jude detached himself from the huddle at the radar and stepped over to the window. A large pair of binoculars was lying on a table. He picked them up. Again, the others were too focused on the screen to even notice him.

Scanning the distant ocean through the powerful binocs, Jude could just about make out the incoming objects on the water. The larger of the three was still on the horizon and seemed to be a sizeable vessel, while the smaller two were coming in much faster, black dots against the blue with white water visible at their bows. The way they were bouncing over the waves told him they were speedboats, which must have launched from the mother ship.

‘They wouldn’t dare touch a US merchant vessel,’ Ricky Marshall said, but the expression on his face didn’t radiate confidence.

‘Course?’ grunted O’Keefe.

‘Two-twenty,’ Guzman said.

‘Take us one-seventy,’ O’Keefe said, without looking up from the screen. Wilson turned the wheel to alter course.

‘Further out to sea, Cap?’ Marshall said with a raised eyebrow, obviously cautious not to question the captain’s authority too directly.

O’Keefe ignored him. ‘Give me a hundred and twenty-five revs, Guzman.’

‘One-two-five,’ Guzman repeated, getting on the EOT to relay the speed increase down to the engine room.

Jude seemed to have been entirely forgotten for the moment. He couldn’t take his eyes from the binoculars. In what seemed a blindingly short time, the speedboats had closed the gap by at least a mile. He now could make out enough detail through the powerful lenses to see the tiny figures of men on board the approaching boats. There were at least six or eight men on each, all Africans. As they kept coming, Jude saw them alter course to follow the turning Andromeda. They were gaining.

Closer. Closer. Jude felt his mouth go dry as he realised the men on the boats were clutching automatic weapons. There was no longer any doubt. It was actually happening. The ship was under attack.

Jude’s heart began to pound, and his mind began to swim.

‘You want me to call up UKMTO, Cap?’ Marshall asked.

‘Too late for that,’ O’Keefe muttered. ‘They’re coming in so fast.’

Jude couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It seemed insane. Here they were, alone and vulnerable with an obvious pirate attack about to happen, and the captain didn’t want to radio for help? What about the international navy patrols that were supposed to be out there guarding them?

Marshall turned to look at Jude. His face was full of strain, and Jude could see in his eyes that he couldn’t understand the captain’s unwillingness to call for help, either. ‘You should get down there with the rest of the crew,’ was all he said.

Jude nodded. He reluctantly put down the binoculars. Unmagnified, the incoming speedboats were just small dots once more, but growing larger every second. Jude left the bridge by the outer door, the way he and Marshall had entered, and stepped out onto the steel walkway. He glanced down at the deck far below, then at the speedboats and mother ship in the distance, and was suddenly gripped with the desire to get an even better view.

Without pausing to dwell on the knowledge that he was disobeying orders by not returning directly below, he thought, What the hell, and clattered up the narrow metal ladder that connected the walkway with the flying bridge, the very highest point of the ship.

It was like being on the top of a mountain. The ocean wind was strong, fluttering his shirt and ripping at his hair. Jude lay flat on his belly and peered through the railing. He didn’t need binoculars any more for a clear view of the fast-approaching boats. He could hear their motors growing steadily louder over the thrum of the ship and the crash of the waves. He imagined he could almost hear the excited chatter of the pirates themselves as they got closer and closer to their prey. They couldn’t be more than six or seven hundred yards away now.

Jude’s heart was pounding faster than ever as he wondered what was going to happen. A voice inside his head was screaming at him that he shouldn’t be up here watching the terrifying spectacle. He should be down there with his fellow crewmen, Mitch and Condor and Hercules, Gerber and the rest of them! If they didn’t already know what was going on, he needed to warn everyone. Now!

Jude leapt to his feet, vaulted the rail and started tearing down the ladder. He could see O’Keefe, Guzman, Wilson and Marshall through the window, all with their backs to him. Thankfully, they hadn’t noticed him.

Then, suddenly, the captain and mates were no longer alone on the bridge. An inner door opened. Three men Jude had never seen before walked in.

The man in the middle was older, with receding silvery hair cropped short like a soldier’s. His body language was that of someone very much in charge. He was wearing a military-style combat jacket. In his left hand he was holding a small oblong aluminium flight case. Like the kind photographers carried cameras and lenses inside. Except he didn’t look like a photographer. The case’s handle was attached to his left wrist by a chain and steel cuff.

Who were they? Then Jude remembered what Hercules had told him.

The three a-holes on D Deck. Our esteemed passengers.

None of the three was smiling. The captain and mates didn’t seem very happy to see them, either. But that might have been because of the pistol that the man with the case was holding in his right hand. It was pointing right at them.

‘Carter? What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?’ Jude heard Captain O’Keefe demand in a loud voice full of outrage.

Jude whipped out of sight, scrambling back up the ladder and over the railing to the flying bridge. He froze there for a few instants, shaking and numb with shock at what he’d just seen. What was he supposed to do next? The rational part of him told him to remain hidden where nobody could see him.

To hell with rational. He had to keep watching.

He clutched the railing and let himself dangle head-first over the edge, terrified that the strong wind and the motion of the ship might cause him to slip and go plummeting to his death on the deck far below. Even more terrified that he might be spotted from inside the bridge.

Hanging upside down and clinging on for dear life, he peered through the glass.

The three mates were staring in bewilderment as the captain yelled at the man with the case. ‘Lower that weapon, Carter, you hear me? This wasn’t part of the deal.’

Those words hit Jude like a brick. The deal?

From the looks on the faces of Wilson, Guzman and Marshall, they had absolutely no idea what O’Keefe was talking about, either.

Jude hung on tight and kept watching.

The sound of the first gunshot almost made him let go.

The man called Carter showed not the smallest flicker of emotion as he shot the captain. O’Keefe clutched his chest and crumpled to the floor of the bridge. Then Carter turned the pistol on a stunned Frank Wilson and shot him in the head before he could react. Blood spattered the window.

Then the other two mystery passengers pulled out pistols of their own. Guzman took two bullets to the chest and one in the back as he tried to bolt for the outer exit. The last man standing, Ricky Marshall, made a valiant attempt to wrestle a weapon from one of the gunmen before he, too, was cut down and collapsed to the floor.

Paralysed with horror, still gaping through the bloody glass, Jude could barely breathe. As the speedboats kept getting nearer and nearer to the ship, he was realising that events much more complex and sinister than a simple pirate attack were unfolding. The Svalgaard Andromeda had just been hijacked from inside.

What happened next confused and bewildered him even more.

Chapter 13

The man sometimes known as Ty Carter, sometimes by other aliases as the sensitive nature of his work dictated, and rarely ever by his real name Lee Pender, walked calmly towards the bodies. Blood was already pooling thick on the bridge floor, spreading in rivulets this way and that with the motion of the ship. Carter disliked getting his shoes messy, and was careful to avoid the blood as he crouched over each body in turn and used his free hand to ensure none had a pulse. He had performed such checks many times before in his long career, and was as skilful as any surgeon.

Satisfied that all four were dead, he stood up and turned to his two accomplices with a nod. Their names were White and Brown, which amused him. They were mere hirelings, short-order trigger men paid to do exactly as he told them. So far, they’d proved perfectly capable at their job, and been equally good at taking his money without asking questions. To an operator like Pender, who trusted no one, secrecy was an essential part of life, and never more than now. Because if White and Brown had had any inkling whatsoever of what this was all about – the hit in Oman, the purpose of this sea voyage and, most of all, the nature of the item he was carrying inside the case attached to his left wrist – he was certain they would waste as little time killing him for it as he had in dispatching its former owner.

Which wasn’t a worry for Pender, because he intended to beat them to the punch. The plan was about to enter its next phase. White and Brown had fulfilled their purpose and their services would no longer be required. Aside from anything else, after several days cooped up in their company on this vile tub, Pender couldn’t stand them any longer.

‘Thank you for your help,’ he said to them. ‘You’re fired.’

He shot White first, because he’d observed that White was just a touch quicker on the uptake than Brown. The single bullet blew the back of White’s head off and spattered the control console with blood and brains. Pender instantly turned the gun on Brown and pulled the trigger again. Brown caught it in the throat and dropped his weapon as he went staggering backwards, then slumped against the wall and slid to the floor.

Pender shot each of them once more in the head, just to be sure. Then put away his pistol and walked to the window to watch the fun and games that were about to begin. The boats were fast approaching. Khosa’s men would soon be here, right on schedule.

Jude had witnessed the whole thing. Peering upside down through the window as the gunman opened fire on the second of his own accomplices, he decided he’d seen enough. He dropped down the ladder like a gymnast. For an instant he was certain he must surely have been spotted, and fully expected to hear more gunfire behind him: shattering glass and the shock of the bullet as he scrambled away.

But the killer was too busy slaughtering his own men to notice. Jude hit the deck at a sprint, his legs pumping faster and harder than he’d ever run in his life. No time to try to understand what he’d just seen, or what was happening. The angry buzz of the incoming speedboats was getting louder. It was all happening at once, and so fast. There was nothing Jude could do about the gunman who’d taken control of the bridge. Right now, all that mattered was keeping the attackers from getting on the ship. He had to find Mitch and the others, and alert them. What they could possibly do, he had no idea.

If the sound of pistol shots from the bridge hadn’t already raised the alarm, the sudden crackle of automatic rifles and the splat of gunfire rattling off the side of the ship certainly did. Jude ran to the edge of the deck and peeked downwards over the rail, and his blood froze at the surreal sight of the two boats down below, coming right up alongside the Andromeda’s hull, crowded with pirates.

There were about fourteen or fifteen of them, but it might as well have been an army a hundred strong. They were thin and ragged in dirty T-shirts and shorts, mean and aggressive and visibly psyched up for war. Every one of them was armed with an assault weapon that Jude recognised from their distinctive banana-shaped magazines as Kalashnikovs. The mother ship, some kind of trawler, was still some way behind, but closing in rapidly.

As Jude watched the unthinkable happening right there in front of him, he saw muzzle flash from one of the boats and ducked back just in time before bullets whanged and sparked off the rail where he’d been standing a second ago. He rolled away from the edge, then sprang to his feet and went racing along the deck, frantically searching for his fellow crewmen.

Then he saw them.

A group of five crewmen, Mitch, Condor, Gerber, Lang and another sailor called Trent, were at the station just forward of the superstructure where the main high-pressure hose was kept, frantically getting ready to deploy the water jet in an attempt to repel the boarding that everyone knew was going to begin at any moment. The gunfire was almost continuous now, with bullets pinging everywhere and slapping off metal. The pirates seemed to know exactly where to concentrate their fire, making it impossible to get the hose over the side without getting shot to pieces. Running hard with his head down, Jude saw his friends were hopelessly pinned down on the deck where the upwards angle of the gunfire couldn’t reach them.

‘Where the hell were you?’ Mitch yelled over the noise as Jude reached them. ‘I was looking all over for you, man.’ Mitch was clutching a bright red flare pistol, and his pockets were bulging with twelve-gauge flare cartridges. With his other hand he grabbed a fistful of Jude’s shirt and yanked him down into a crouch next to the huddled group. His nose was an inch from Jude’s and his eyes were wide. Gerber had a tight grip on the shaft of a fire axe and looked grim, with a ‘didn’t I tell you this would happen’ glint in his eye. Condor’s tanned face had gone white and he seemed ready to dissolve into panic.

‘The bridge,’ Jude yelled back. More flurries of automatic rifle fire burst from below, stitching the side of the house above their heads and ricocheting off the latticework of the number two cargo crane.

‘Where’s the Cap?’ Gerber yelled.

Only then did Jude realise the full implications of the hijacking. With the bridge fallen to enemy hands, it meant there was nobody left up there to issue a distress signal. It meant the remaining crew were completely helpless and alone in the middle of the ocean, with virtually nothing to fight back against their attackers with except their wits.

Jude was so horrified by the realisation that he couldn’t speak. At that instant, a movement caught his eye and he looked up to see something flying up over the side of the ship.

‘Oh, shit,’ Condor said, turning even whiter.

Twenty yards forward of where they were all huddled, the grappling hook dropped and hit the deck with a clang. Its steel claws raked backwards as the rope went taut, and then fastened themselves around the railing. It was quickly followed by another. The pirates only had to shinny up the sides. Within seconds they would be clambering aboard.

‘No way,’ Mitch yelled. ‘Not this ship, you motherfuckers!’ Before Jude could stop him, he was jumping to his feet and running like a crazy man towards the edge of the deck. Jude sprang up and chased after him, yelling at him to get back. Screaming in fury at the pirates, Mitch pointed the flare pistol down over the side and fired. Its boom was like a shotgun blast. The dazzling magnesium flare went off like a rocket and sailed downwards towards the boats, trailing green smoke. But Mitch’s aim was wild and the missile hit the water, fizzling out instantly. Still roaring at the pirates he dug in his pocket for another cartridge to load.

The pirates had seen him and were training their fire on him. Mitch seemed oblivious of the bullets flying past and splatting off the container stack behind him. Jude grabbed his arm, trying to haul him back to safety, but Mitch jerked free and managed to load a second flare into his pistol.

‘Mitch!’ Jude shouted. ‘Get b—’

Jude never finished. Mitch suddenly staggered and fell back towards him, nearly knocking Jude over. Jude felt something wet and warm slap across his face, and he tasted saltiness. He looked down and saw the blood spattered on his shirt, and for an instant he thought it was his own.

Mitch made a sound like ‘Urgghhh’, and collapsed at Jude’s feet. Jude could hear someone screaming Mitch’s name. He realised it was him. Mitch’s body gave a jerk and rolled over. The side of his head was blown away.

Chapter 14

For what seemed like minutes on end, as if in a dream, Jude stared numbly down at his friend’s body and the horrific red mess that had been his head. The gunfire rattling up the side of the ship; Condor’s frantic yells of ‘get down, get down!’ coming from behind; the third and fourth grappling hooks shooting up over the side and getting a purchase on the rail: everything faded into the background. He was only dimly aware of Gerber running up next to him, axe in hand, swinging furious blows that struck sparks from the deck and severed one of the lines the pirates were using to shinny up the side of the ship. The rope parted and two boarders fell back and splashed into the foaming sea between their boats.

Only then did Jude come to his senses, and along with them came a flood of rage. He bent down and snatched up the fallen flare pistol. It was sticky with Mitch’s blood. He didn’t know how it worked, but he’d seen Mitch load it and he guessed you only had to pull the trigger. Teeth gritted, he leaned right out over the rail, pointed the gun vertically down at the nearer of the two boats, and fired.

The flare whooshed down the side and burst against the back of the boat in a flash of white flame that ignited the jerrycans of spare fuel lashed to the stern next to the outboard motor. The boat exploded in a blast that lifted it out of the water and sent a fireball and a wave of searing heat rippling up the Andromeda’s hull. Jude and Gerber both ducked back from the edge. A pall of black smoke enveloped everything. Jude could hear the screams and splashes as pirates hurled themselves into the sea to escape the flames.

For a few moments, it seemed as if they’d succeeded in beating them off. But it was a short-lived victory. The second boat had managed to power away from the explosion. With unbelievable speed, and before Jude even realised what was happening, the pirates were swarming up the ropes and leaping nimbly over the smoke-blackened rail to pounce on deck with their weapons ready and firing.

Jude wanted to shoot back at them, but then felt a powerful hand grip his arm and drag him back towards the cover of the container stacks. Gerber was in full-on soldier mode now and shouting ‘Fall back, fall back!’ as if commanding his troops to retreat in the face of an enemy charge.

There was no choice. Jude glanced back one last time at Mitch’s body before he followed Gerber and the others at a run, down a narrow alley between container stacks and across a stretch of open deck towards the relative safety of the house. ‘This way, this way!’ Gerber was shouting over the crackle of gunfire, pointing towards the main hatchway leading inside.

One by one, they ducked through the entrance. Condor slammed the hatch shut behind them and spun the locking wheel. It was the same kind of heavy riveted iron door, streaked with rust, that were all over the ship. They were designed to seal tightly enough to keep out Force Ten storms. They could keep the pirates at bay – for now, at any rate.

From the other side of the thick metal they could hear running footsteps on the deck, clattering up the ladders, along the walkways. More gunshots, sporadic bursts of automatic fire coming from different points as the pirates rapidly spread all over. Jude edged closer to the door, pressed his ear to it and heard the raised voices and barked commands from the other side. He didn’t think they were speaking in Arabic. It was an African language he’d never heard before. Somali?

The voices were drowned out as a rifle shot cracked out just the other side of the door, mingled with the very loud percussive impact of a bullet hitting the metal. Jude flinched back and saw the dent, like a raised bump, right next to where his ear had been. Two more shots hammered the door before the pirates gave up and moved on.

‘They’re gonna be all over us in no time,’ Gerber muttered disgustedly. ‘Those stupid cages ain’t gonna hold ’em back more’n one minute.’

‘What the crap are we gonna do?’ said Trent.

Ignoring him, Gerber turned urgently to Jude. ‘You were up on the bridge. Did you see the captain? Did they radio for help?’

Jude’s mind was spinning so badly he thought he was going to throw up. He was the only one who knew just how bad their situation was. He had to break the news to the others.

‘The captain’s dead,’ he blurted out. ‘They shot him. And all three of the mates. They’re all dead.’

‘Steady on, son,’ Gerber said. ‘Slow down. Who shot them?’

‘The passengers.’

‘What?’ Condor exploded.

‘They’re hijackers,’ Jude said. ‘Their leader is called Carter. He killed the other two.’

‘Wait. You mean to say this guy Carter killed Cappy O’Keefe and our guys, then killed his own guys?’ Gerber said in disbelief.

‘He’s one of the pirates,’ Jude said, struggling to talk coherently. They could hear activity and voices everywhere as the pirates took over the whole ship above them. ‘It’s all been planned in advance.’ More questions were clotting his mind, one piling on top of another. What kind of deal did the captain do with the hijackers? Had O’Keefe deliberately failed to radio for help? What was in the case that Carter had cuffed to his wrist?

‘Oh, shit, oh shit oh shit,’ Condor kept repeating over and over. Gerber snapped at him to shut up.

‘What the crap are we gonna do?’ Trent said again, breathing hard.

‘Get the hell out of here, is what,’ said Lang.

Gerber nodded. ‘We gotta get below, right now. Only chance. Down there with the chief and the others.’ And Jude knew he was right. The pirates would quickly gain access to everything from A Deck upwards. But if their small group could beat them to the single stairway leading below decks to the engine room and holds, there was a hope that all the survivors might be able to seal themselves off down there together.

Gerber led the way, still clutching his axe, Jude right behind him, followed by Lang, Condor and Trent. At every turn through the twisting, constricted passageways, there was the terrifying prospect of running into a gang of armed pirates. Or maybe even worse, Jude was thinking, they might meet Carter. Either way, they wouldn’t stand a chance.

They were just steps from the gangway leading below when a connecting hatch suddenly burst open and a large dark figure came piling through it towards them. Gerber raised the axe, ready to strike.

‘Whoa, easy, easy!’ It was Hercules. His old army jacket was spotted with fresh bloodstains and he was clutching a wicked-looking carving knife, the largest one he’d managed to grab from the galley before escaping. As he breathlessly explained, the pirates had stormed in as he’d been in the middle of serving coffee to Jack Skinner, the bosun. ‘I don’t know where Murphy is, man,’ Hercules said in anguish, brandishing the knife. ‘Just know if I get close to one of those mothers, they’s gonna have a real bad day.’

Gerber had the good sense not to say, ‘Never mind the damn parrot.’ Pointing at the blood, he asked, ‘Are you hurt?’

Hercules shook his head. ‘It’s Charlie’s blood, man. They shot’m.’ Charlie was the AB who sometimes helped in the kitchen. ‘Skinner, too. Just opened fire. Sucker didn’t have a chance. Me, I just managed to slip out the back way.’

Anxious looks passed between the others. Jack Skinner might not have been universally liked, but nobody was going to deny he’d have been a useful presence in a situation like this.

‘Is he dead?’ Condor groaned.

‘I saw the man go down, homes. He’s dead, all right.’

Jude quickly broke the news of the deaths of the captain and mates to Hercules, who just shook his head.

‘They’re wiping us out, dude,’ Lang mumbled. ‘We’re fucked.’

‘No we’re not,’ Jude said. ‘We’re going to get out of this.’

‘Listen to the boy,’ Gerber said.

‘This ain’t happening,’ Condor said, on the verge of succumbing to panic. ‘Pirates don’t do this.’

‘Not unless they want to take the ship for themselves,’ Gerber said grimly.

‘A ship this size? What the hell for?’

‘You have any better ideas? Come on, let’s keep moving before the bastards cut us off.’

As Gerber urged, the group kept moving. Six men out of twenty, with at least seven dead that they knew of above decks.

They could only hope that Diesel and his engine room assistants, Peters and Cherry, were still unharmed and without unwanted company down there.

As it turned out, the engineer and his guys were still very much alive, but not alone. They’d already been joined below by four more crewmen: Allen, Lorenz, Park the Korean, and Scagnetti, who’d bolted from their posts above decks to retreat to safety the moment the shooting had begun. Thirteen men crammed into the engine room and locked the hatch down behind them, safe for now. The heat in the confined space was stifling, the metal walls streaming with condensation. The sharp odours of oil and fuel, sweat and fear were heavy in the air.

An urgent conference immediately started, with Gerber announcing to those who didn’t already know that the captain and mates had been shot to death, the vessel had fallen somehow into the hands of an unexplained coalition of hijackers and pirates, and there was no way to radio out for help. Diesel, a grizzled veteran of many trips under Henry O’Keefe, took the news grimly but silently.

Jude had never thought he’d be happy to see Scagnetti. Gerber didn’t seem so pleased, especially when Scagnetti failed to suppress a crooked little smile on hearing of the captain’s demise. ‘We could have done with a little more help up there,’ Gerber growled at him.

‘You want to make something of it, Pop?’ Scagnetti countered, instantly rising to the challenge.

‘Cool it, boys,’ said Diesel, thrusting a big arm between them before it came to blows. ‘Thirteen of us are still alive. It could’ve been a hell of a lot worse.’

‘You figure?’ Condor said. ‘It’s only a matter of time before they get to us down here.’

Diesel shook his head. ‘Let ’em try. That hatch was built to keep a million tons of ocean out. You’d need a rocket to make a dent in it.’

‘Then we’d best hope they ain’t got any rockets,’ Trent said.

‘Face it, boys, we’re screwed,’ Condor said. ‘No food or water, no weapons and no way to communicate jack shit to the outside world. Even if we could get to a radio, how many of us would even know what channel to use, or who to call?’

There was a murmur of anxious consent among some of the men. ‘He’s right,’ Trent said.

‘Buncha pussies,’ Scagnetti sneered at them. ‘Scared of a few raggedy-ass nigger pirates.’

Gerber gave him a hard look. ‘You want to go up there and take ’em on all by yourself, Scagnetti, please, be my guest. Funny, I didn’t see you up on deck when they were all comin’ up the side.’

Cherry, one of the assistant engineers, put out his hands to quell the rising tension. ‘Okay, look, we all know we can’t fight them. Forget that shit. But there’s gotta be something we can do. Maybe there’s some other way we can get out a distress call.’

‘We’ll figure something out,’ Diesel agreed. Though for the moment, nobody was offering any ideas.

Jude slumped down against the metal bulkhead wall, suddenly feeling completely drained. His hands were shaking. He closed his eyes, but however tightly he screwed them shut, he couldn’t close out the image of Mitch’s dead face, covered in blood and brains, or the vision of the burning boat hit by the flare that had been fired by his own hand. Men screaming, diving into the water. Jude had seen at least one of the pirates engulfed in flames. Could you survive that? Had he killed them?

Jude had never hurt a living soul in his life before. The remorse felt like a leaden weight in his stomach. He kept telling himself that he’d acted in defence of his friends. But did that justify it?

He thought about his father, his real father. Ben never talked about the people whose lives he’d taken. Jude knew there must have been many. But even though Ben had never said so, Jude always had the feeling that he lived with a private burden of remorse over the memory of each and every one of them, no matter how bad they’d been in life, no matter how little choice Ben might have had in killing them. To take away everything a person had, everything they would ever have. It was no easy thing. Now Jude understood that personally, and it was a weight he knew he would carry forever.

‘You okay, son?’ said a voice. Jude opened his eyes and tried to smile up at Gerber.

‘I’m fine,’ he said. It was a lie, but he swallowed hard and forced himself to make it true. He stood up and willed the trembling to stop.

‘We’ll get out of this, you’ll see,’ Gerber said. ‘There’ll be a way.’

That was when Jude suddenly remembered something Mitch had told him, while they were still in port in Salalah. It felt like a hundred years ago.

‘What about sending out an email?’ he said, speaking his thoughts out loud. Diesel and a couple of the others heard him, and turned.

‘You mean like a text, from a cellphone? We’re in the middle of the Indian Ocean, son. You tried getting any reception lately?’

‘I don’t mean a text,’ Jude said. ‘I mean a real email, from a laptop with satellite internet access.’

Diesel shrugged. ‘Well, sadly, I don’t seem to have one on me right now.’

‘But there’s one on board,’ Jude said. ‘In the captain’s cabin. Mitch told me O’Keefe was emailing his wife all the time.’

‘So?’

‘So,’ Jude said, ‘what if one of us was able to sneak up there?’

‘One of us?’

‘I was thinking of myself.’

‘Without getting caught and shot to pieces?’ said Condor, the eternal optimist. ‘You want to tell me exactly how you’re planning on managing that?’

‘Son, it might as well be on Mars,’ Gerber said. ‘You’d never make it.’

Jude rubbed his chin and thought hard for a few moments. An idea was growing in his mind, and the more it grew the more he believed it could work. ‘Diesel,’ he said. ‘This is the engine room, yes?’

‘Last time I looked,’ Diesel said, sweeping an arm back at the blue-painted mass of iron machinery, pipes and control equipment behind him.

‘So we have control over the ship’s power and they can’t override us from the bridge in any way?’

If the answer was no, Jude’s germ of a plan was dead before it was even born.

‘Sure, we can throw the master switches on everything right here. Engine power, electrics, hydraulics, air, emergency generator, the works,’ Diesel said, still staring at him, as were the others, apart from Scagnetti who had wandered off on his own to light a roll-up and pollute the unbreathable air of the engine room still further.

‘What about the radar?’ Jude asked.

‘Uh-huh,’ Diesel said, uncertain where Jude was going with this. ‘We can knock that out along with every other instrument in the conning station. So?’

Jude could feel a smile spreading over his face as his confidence in his plan grew stronger. ‘And if we cut the engines, the ship will stop moving and stay pretty much put?’

‘As long as the sea’s calm, sure,’ Diesel replied. ‘We’ll drift, but not by more than a few points, depending on the currents. Cut to the chase, kid. What the hell is this about?’

‘Listen,’ Jude said.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.