Hellfire (29 page)

Twenty metres.

Thirty.

Forty.

The ship yawed dramatically as they came to the end of the storage containers. Danny and his Aussie colleague pressed their backs up against the wall formed by the final container. Danny shuffled up to the corner of the storage container and peered round.

He took in everything in an instant.

The fore deck was more than twice the size of the aft deck. At the far end was a small crane, about twenty feet high. On either side of it were fixed steel scaffolds, each one about ten metres high. And on top of each scaffold, fixed to a ramp slanting down towards the sea, was a bright-orange closed lifeboat.

And at the foot of the crane, twenty-five metres from Danny’s position, were two figures. One was on his knees. The other was behind him, holding a gun to his head. It was almost an action replay of the scene that had played out in front of Danny’s eyes on the outskirts of Chikunda.

With one difference. The gunman was African. And the guy on his knees was Mr Chiu.

Neither the African militant nor Mr Chiu had seen Danny. They were screaming at each other in English – clearly their only mutual language.

‘
Put gun down, idiot!
’ Chiu was shouting. ‘
What you think you doing? My orders come from Caliph himself!
’

‘
So do mine! Climb up and get into the lifeboat!
’ shouted the African militant.

As he spoke, he happened to look in Danny’s direction.

Their eyes met.

Danny wanted Chiu alive. He lined up the sights of his rifle with the broad target of the militant’s chest.

He prepared to take the shot.

‘This is
Golden Coral
, do you copy?’

Caitlin stared furiously at the orange handheld VHF radio. It emitted nothing but white noise. She cursed under her breath. Something was wrong with the comms. She couldn’t make contact with the frigate.

She strode across the bridge to the ship’s VHF radio unit. She assumed the
Golden Coral
would have a decent-sized antenna, and she adjusted the frequency to channel 15.

‘This is
Golden Coral
, do you copy?’

A five-second pause.

‘
Go ahead,
Golden Coral
.
’

‘We have control of the bridge. Six targets down.’

‘
Do you have Chiu?
’

‘That’s negative, over.’

‘
Roger that, over.
’

The radio fell silent. As the ship lurched, so did Caitlin’s stomach. She headed away from the instrument panel to look at the sea state through the broken window. Her night-vision goggles picked out the foam of a curling wave battering the rear of the ship. She suppressed a shiver, and it wasn’t just because her clothes were saturated. She hadn’t told the others how much she hated the water. It would have made them think less of her.

She felt something sticky under her wet boot. She looked down. Blood, seeping from the chest of one of the men they’d put down. Her eyes moved to the corpse. The dead face – African – seemed very calm.

But something wasn’t right.

The dead man’s head seemed somehow too small for his body. Or was it that his torso was too big? Caitlin bent down immediately and ripped open the buttons of his camouflage top.

She blinked. The entry wound was directly in the centre of the man’s clavicle. But that wasn’t what attracted her attention. There were four black straps surrounding his otherwise naked torso, and each strap had four pouches, about the size of cigarette packets, each one with a wire protruding. The wires met at his left armpit, where a thicker cable ran down his arm. Caitlin looked at his left hand. The dead limb was clutching a small detonating button.

Her mouth went dry. She spoke urgently into her radio. ‘
All teams, this is Caitlin at the bridge. Our targets are wearing suicide vests. Handheld detonators. Repeat, our targets are wearing suicide vests . . .
’

Caitlin’s panicked voice burst into Danny’s earpiece. ‘
Our targets are wearing suicide vests! Handheld detonators! Repeat, our targets are wearing suicide vests!
’

Time slowed down.

Danny’s eyes flickered to the free hand of the militant who had Chiu at gunpoint. It was twitching.

He had to take him out. But not a chest shot – it could detonate a vest.

He moved his rifle to the man’s head, and that fraction of second’s hesitation meant he was too late.

The explosion was immense. It came from the very front of the ship where the militant was standing. There was an intense flash of bright green light in Danny’s NV goggles. A shock wave knocked him several metres back along the side deck. At the same time, the noise of the explosion split the air and echoed deafeningly off the metal sides of the storage containers, drowning out – for a few seconds – even the roar of the ocean.

Winded from his fall, Danny had to force himself to his feet. His Aussie colleague had been knocked back too, but was also painfully trying to stand. ‘What the
fuck
?’ he shouted at Danny.

Danny lurched back along the side deck, clutching his weapon, gasping for air. Having staggered the five or six metres he’d been knocked back, he stared at the devastation of the fore deck.

There was no sign of Chiu or the militant. The explosion had clearly taken them out. But right now they had bigger problems than that. The explosion had also ripped the crane from its footings, and it now hung precariously over the edge of the ship. Both orange-covered lifeboats had clearly tumbled into the water, and only a twisted fraction of the scaffolds that held them still remained. The railings that surrounded the deck had been blown away, and a chunk of the deck itself, a good ten metres deep, was twisted and torn. A sinister stench of burning hung in the air, and Danny saw a brief flicker of flames lick up from down under the deck. He looked left. Tony was running towards him.

‘What the fuck happened?’ he screamed.

‘Suicide vest,’ Danny shouted. ‘Chiu’s dead.’

A sneer of anger crossed Tony’s face. ‘There was a smear of blood on the handle of one of the doors leading below decks. I reckon whoever was bleeding went down below, towards the engine room. I’ll take a couple of guys and follow . . .’

Even as he spoke, the sound of two more explosions hit them in quick succession. Danny could tell that they came from deep inside the ship’s hull – the echo was low and muffled, but it went on for a full ten seconds, and seemed to make the whole vessel vibrate.

‘We’re going to lose the ship!’ Danny shouted. He activated his radio. ‘All units return to the bridge. The ship’s going down, lifeboats compromised . . .’

Another explosion from down below. Even deeper and more sinister. The ship yawed dramatically. ‘The fuel tank’s gone!’ Tony shouted.

A reply in the earpiece. It sounded like Goldie. Urgent. Maybe even a bit frightened. ‘
There’s something here you need to take a look at, mate.
’

Danny turned to Tony. ‘Get to the bridge,’ he said. ‘Make sure Caitlin’s contacted the frigate. They need to airlift us off.’ A huge, mechanical groan rose up from the belly of the vessel. ‘
Go!
’ Danny shouted.

Tony ran along the starboard deck, two of their Aussie colleagues alongside him. Danny followed, but when, after twenty metres, he came to the corridor in the storage containers that Goldie had followed, he turned into it. His stomach went as the ship took a downward lurch, and there was an ominous creak from the containers that surrounded him.

Ten metres in, there was a right-angle turn to the left. Danny followed it. Then he stopped.

He estimated that he was pretty much in the centre of the deck. Ten metres from his position, blocking the corridor, was an open storage container, end on. Goldie was standing five metres from it, shining a very bright torch in to the interior. Danny flicked up his NV goggles, then hurried up to Goldie’s side.

‘What is it?’ he breathed.

‘You tell me,’ Goldie said.

Danny peered at the contents of the container. They immediately reminded him of the field lab the Porton Down guys had set up in Chikunda: modular steel shelving along the sides, a table bolted to the floor, and fitted to the table, some kind of mechanical apparatus Danny couldn’t recognise. Littering the floor were cardboard boxes, about ten, half of them opened, half of them still sealed. He could just make out the lettering on some of them.
Gillette.
Lynx
.
Right Guard
.

‘What are they doing with boxes of fucking deodorant?’ Goldie asked.

Danny didn’t immediately reply. He was remembering something Dr Phillips from the Porton Down team had said about spreading the plague virus, while they were watching Ripley die.

Aerosol dispersal would be effective . . .

He scanned the storage container for a couple more seconds. His eyes focused on one of the open boxes. He could make out the canisters of deodorant inside. They were small. Just three inches high.

‘See those?’ He pointed them out to Goldie. ‘Who buys miniature deodorants?’

Goldie stared at him. ‘People getting on airplanes,’ he said.

Danny nodded. He took his digital camera from his ops waistcoat and quickly fired off a few pictures. Then he grabbed Goldie’s arm and pulled him away from the storage container.

‘We need to get off this ship,’ he said.

All nine members of the unit had congregated on the bridge. Goldie, who had announced himself to be a demolitions expert, was moving around the corpses of the dead militants, carefully cutting the wires of their suicide vests. There was an acrid smell and a burning sound in the air that told Danny there was a major fire down below.

Tony was shouting into the ship’s radio. ‘We’ve got a Mayday, repeat, we’ve got a Mayday. The
Golden Coral
is scuttled, requesting immediate pick-up.’

There was a crackly pause, then a mild Australian voice came over the radio. ‘
What the hell have you boys been doing?
’

‘Just get us a fucking chopper!’ Tony shouted down the phone.

‘
Winds are high. ETA, ten minutes.
’

‘
GET IT HERE NOW!
’

Even though his clothes were still damp, Danny was sweating badly. It had been approximately three minutes since the blast, and the ship was already hovering around a five-degree angle. The more water entered the hull, the quicker the ship would sink. Two of the corpses rolled down the sloping floor of the bridge. It was hard for the living to remain upright. He doubted they had more than fifteen minutes.

‘We need to get on to the aft deck!’ he shouted at his team mates. ‘That’ll be the last to go down. Let’s move out there now.’

Tony led the way, and the rest of the team filed out behind him. Danny prepared to take up the rear, holding on to the edge of the instrument panel to stop himself falling. A high-pitched grinding sound was coming from the ship’s engines. It didn’t sound good.

Something caught his eye. It looked like a shoulder bag, and it had slid across the floor and come to rest alongside the two bodies, no more than four metres from Danny’s position. He staggered across the incline of the floor to grab it. It was made of soft leather, sticky with blood and very light. As Caitlin left the bridge, Danny opened it up. There was a piece of A4 paper inside, folded together three ways and slightly crumpled.

Danny peered at the piece of paper in the darkness, and frowned. It seemed to be an airline e-ticket confirmation: British Airways, Lagos to Paris Charles de Gaulle, departing 23.55 hrs.

Danny was alone on the bridge now. Alone and staring at the e-ticket in his hand. He checked the time. 23.49 hrs.

A suicide cell could turn themselves into human vectors.

The cargo ship juddered alarmingly. Its incline in the water steepened. Danny’s earpiece exploded into life. ‘
Where the hell are you, Danny?
’ Tony demanded.

He hurled himself across the room towards the radio. ‘This is
Golden Coral
, do you copy?’

Silence.

‘
THIS IS
GOLDEN CORAL
, DO YOU COPY?
’

No reply. The radio was dead. But he had to try and get his message through. ‘There’s an aircraft leaving Lagos in the next fifteen minutes, BA to Paris. Ground that flight and isolate all passengers. Repeat, ground the flight and isolate the passengers. DO YOU COPY?’

Nothing.

Shit.

He changed the frequency to channel 16, the international calling and distress channel, and repeated his message.

Nothing.

Another loud groan from the bowels of the ship.