The Rybinsk Deception (20 page)

Made worse by the impossibly high temperature, the smell of hot engine oil, cigarette smoke and cooking was as overpowering as the fumes coming from puddles of spilled fuel, while scattered around everywhere were empty drums of diesel, wet clothes, water containers and boxes of canned food, milk powder and toilet rolls.

‘Over here.’ Hari had found a bulb to screw into one of the overhead sockets. ‘Now you can see.’

Packed in individual foam-lined crates and jammed between some halogen lights and parts of the
Selina
’s disassembled machine-gun, the mines were of a type Coburn was familiar with, squat black pancakes already secured to their attachment magnets and equipped with electronic triggers and aerials to receive the radio signals that would detonate them.

What he hadn’t seen before were football-sized air bladders that had been fitted to the bases of the magnets.

‘You are looking at a new development,’ Hari said. ‘Tomorrow night, to guard against Ali and Susilo being detected by radar, first they will use wooden oars and a rubber dinghy to transport the mines. Then, when they are close to the patrol boat they will swim underwater and tow the mines behind them. But the mines are very heavy, so for that to be possible a flotation aid must be provided. Now you will understand the reason for the bladders, I think, but they also serve another purpose.’

‘What?’ Coburn couldn’t think of one.

‘When such powerful magnets are offered up to the side of a steel hull, they will jump from your hands and by making a loud clang when they first make contact they can alert the crew.’

‘But that won’t happen with these,’ Coburn said. ‘Because the bladders will act as cushions.’

‘To begin with, but there is another feature.’ Hari pointed to a small plug on the side of a bladder. ‘When that is removed, the air will escape allowing the magnets to attach themselves slowly and in silence.’

The idea was fairly ingenious, Coburn thought, perhaps not so much a technological breakthrough as an example of Hari’s ability to foresee risks that needed to be addressed, and why, maybe for the first time, Yegorov was going to be up against someone trickier than he was.

But would that be enough, he wondered? When the end game was more likely to be played out months from now in the corridors of Washington rather than on the night after next in the Yellow Sea, would Ritchie’s testimony be a match for the reputation of a brigadier general whose life appeared to have been dedicated to the preservation of American ideals?

Knowing it was senseless trying to predict the outcome of an inquiry over which he would have no influence, he put the whole business out of his mind, and instead decided this would be as good an opportunity as any to bring Hari properly up to date.

He started by explaining the reason for O’Halloran’s presence on the
Sandpiper
then, while Hari smoked his way through countless cigarettes, went on to describe how the explosion of the Canyon City munitions store had allowed them to access Shriver’s records, and how that in turn had revealed the FAL plan to stage what would look like an unjustified and unprovoked attack on a US warship by the North Korean Navy.

At midnight, too wide awake to contemplate sleeping, and unwilling to go below, he decided to stay on deck, hoping that by this time tomorrow his confidence would have received a boost, because by then he’d know for certain whether the mines were in place awaiting the signal that twelve hours later would finally bring his part of the mission to an end.

S
INCE HIS TRANSFER
from the
Sandpiper
last night, Coburn had grown more accustomed to the
Selina
’s primitive conditions, and having spent the latter part of this afternoon getting to know Ali and Susilo, he was beginning to feel less of an outsider in the company of Hari’s crew.

The two divers had been slow to overcome their shyness – in part because of their rudimentary English – but once Coburn had shown an interest in the pearl business, they’d gradually lost their reservations, and with Hari on hand to act as an interpreter, they’d soon been more willing to talk about the job they’d come to do.

Hari himself had spent a frustrating day. While the
Selina
had slowly headed north, for much of the time he’d been at the wheel, maintaining his distance ahead of the meandering minehunter which had been easy to identify on his radar, but struggling to separate the echo of the Korean patrol boat from those of other vessels that were travelling up through the islands on similar courses.

Not until this evening when they’d dropped anchor at the co-ordinates on Ritchie’s chart had his mood improved, and then only because of an unscheduled call Coburn had received from O’Halloran.

The American had been in touch to say, that now the
Selina
was in position, the
Sandpiper
would be passing them shortly on the port side, and that accordingly, before Ritchie dropped his own anchor, it shouldn’t be long before they had their first visual sighting of the Osa.

As things had turned out, unlike the much larger minehunter which had been easy to see, the Osa hadn’t been.

In Yegorov’s pursuit of his target, he’d been keeping further to the west where the combination of the setting sun and fading light had made it all but impossible for Coburn to pick out the Korean patrol boat even with binoculars.

That had been ten minutes ago – a somewhat tense ten minutes during which Hari had finally located the Osa on his radar, while everyone else on the
Selina
had been waiting patiently for the announcement that would mean Ali and Susilo could begin their preparations.

‘Ah. You see.’ Hari pointed to a dot on his screen.

With each rotation of the
Selina
’s radar dish, the dot was glowing more brightly, but Coburn couldn’t tell whether it was continuing to move or not.

Hari could. ‘Now that Ritchie has stopped his ship, the Osa, too, is stopping,’ he said. ‘It is not as close to us as we could have wished, but close enough, I think.’

‘How close?’ Coburn asked.

‘Less than two kilometres – not so far for our divers to take the mines. When it is darker, and while we wait for the crew of the Osa to settle for the night we will inflate the dinghy and bring our halogens and machine-gun up on deck.’

‘What the hell do you want lights and the gun for?’ Coburn couldn’t think of a single reason.

‘It is a precaution. I do not wish us to be without defence if Ali and Susilo are watched on their way back here to the
Selina
.’

‘If that happens, a fucking machine-gun isn’t going to be any help, is it? You’re not up against an unarmed freighter, for Christ’s sake. You’re talking about taking on a full-blown missile attack boat.’

Hari shrugged. ‘It is my decision. When the man you call Yegorov has more important business to which he must attend tomorrow, he will not risk advertising his presence tonight by launching a missile at us. But he could choose to use his guns.’

Knowing better than to argue, and hoping Hari had decided this was an easy way to demonstrate his deep concern for the safety of his crew, Coburn kept his mouth shut, and for the next few hours, while Hari and the Somalian checked the detonators and bladders on the
mines, kept himself busy by helping Indiri’s husband assemble and install the lights and the gun.

By midnight the divers were ready, the mines were ready and the dinghy was ready. Hari wasn’t, checking his watch every few minutes, chain-smoking and watching clouds scud across the moon as though waiting for some divine indication that the time was right for him to give the go ahead.

At 12.30, sensing a certain restlessness on deck, he launched the dinghy himself, lowering it over the stern on ropes and then assisting Ali and Susilo to load the mines one at a time until all four were on board and temporarily lashed in place.

Unlike the Zodiac which was still taking up space on the afterdeck, the dinghy was designed for use only in an emergency. It was small and difficult to manoeuvre, but because of its low profile and the black wetsuits of its occupants, it had the virtue of being almost invisible once the divers began to row away.

‘Let us hope they see the patrol boat early,’ Hari said. ‘They navigate by compass, but their job will be harder when they have sight of their target and must start to swim.’

‘How long do you figure it’ll take them?’ Coburn glanced at his own watch.

‘I think we give them two hours to get there and back again, and a quarter of one hour for them to attach the mines. Not until after that should we become concerned.’

It was easy to say, but hard to do.

Three weeks ago in Singapore, after Coburn had set the timer for the Semtex in his fridge, and two weeks ago while he’d been waiting for O’Halloran after the explosion of the munitions store, he’d been aware of how slowly time could pass. But on both of these occasions he’d been counting down minutes – tonight he was faced not with minutes but with hours.

Hari proved better at waiting for the dinghy’s return than he had been at despatching it, but after an hour and a half he went below and returned with a pair of night vision goggles which, when he wasn’t smoking or pacing up and down the deck, he used in a vain attempt to penetrate the darkness.

After two hours he gave up looking and abandoned the goggles in favour of listening for the splash of oars, an equally futile exercise on which he was still engaged when the dinghy suddenly appeared.

Coburn was the first to see it – or thought he had.

Approaching the bow of the
Selina
at an angle on the port side, it had emerged silently from nowhere and was within hailing distance before the Somalian too caught sight of it.

A minute later, leaving Indiri’s husband to retrieve it, the divers were back on board answering Hari’s questions while they stripped off their wetsuits.

Their smiles told Coburn what he wanted to know – which meant their job at least was done, he thought, and that none of the things that could’ve gone wrong had gone wrong.

Before conveying the news to O’Halloran he checked with Hari who was happy to confirm that from now on at a push of a button, Yegorov’s trip to Korea could be brought to a suitably violent and unpleasant end.

Coburn’s call to the
Sandpiper
was answered so promptly, O’Halloran couldn’t have been asleep.

‘Thought you’d be tucked up in your bunk,’ Coburn said.

‘I should be so lucky. Ritchie said he wanted to hear from me as soon as I heard from you. What do I tell him?’

‘Tell him that seeing as how it’s already the 9th of August, any time he wants I can blow four holes in the Osa right underneath each of its missile hangars. If that doesn’t slow it down, nothing will. All I need is for you to give me the word.’

‘OK. Ritchie’s aiming to have us up close to the Demarkation Line by 1700 hours. He thinks it’s best if we let Yegorov carry on shadowing the
Sandpiper
, and you hang back a bit so he doesn’t get suspicious.’

Rather than wasting his breath explaining that, even with the
Selina
’s tarpaulin-covered halogen lights and gun it was probably the least suspicious-looking vessel off the coast of the entire peninsula, Coburn changed the subject before he said goodbye, suggesting that, until they reopened communications later, O’Halloran might as well catch up on his sleep.

All in all, it had been a pretty good night’s work, Coburn decided.
But he knew it was more than that – more than the planting of explosive charges that would see the patrol boat destroyed, and more than a prelude to an event that would provide evidence to destroy the FAL. Tonight’s preparations had served a more immediate purpose, he thought, not just helping to bring Shriver to account, but a means of saving the lives of forty-six men and women on board a US warship who otherwise, in a few hours’ time, would have perished without knowing they’d been used as pawns in a deadly game they could have never won.

A
T DAWN THE
weather changed – an unwanted development that neither Hari nor Coburn had expected.

By late afternoon, in place of a flat sea and the cloudless skies they’d enjoyed for the last nine days, the wind had started whipping up white caps, and the sky had become quite threatening.

On this the last day of the
Selina
’s journey north to the Demarkation Line, the boat had been handling the conditions well, occasionally wallowing in swell when they weren’t in the lee of one of the many islands off the coast, but for the most part making good headway, and not once losing contact with either the
Sandpiper
or the patrol boat they were following.

Before dark, the most noticeable consequence of the weather had been the increasing murkiness of the sea – a sure sign of rain, according to Hari, an indication that somewhere on the peninsula or the Chinese mainland, coloured sediment that gave the Yellow Sea its name was being washed out of one of the silt-laden rivers along its shores.

Hari said he didn’t know how long it would take the rain to reach them. Nor was he willing to say whether he believed poor visibility would make things more difficult for Yegorov.

When Coburn had last communicated with the
Sandpiper
, he’d asked O’Halloran to find out if Ritchie had an opinion about the deteriorating weather. So far there had been no reply – because Ritchie had enough on his plate, Coburn had decided, the reason for his silence, and why once the
Sandpiper
had reached a position two miles south of the Demarkation Line, he hadn’t bothered to inform O’Halloran of his
decision to turn west, nor explain why since then he’d elected to keep travelling into the wind at an uncomfortably slow speed.

Like Hari, what Ritchie had done was track every move of the patrol boat on his radar, following its progress along the S-shaped Demarkation Line and making certain that O’Halloran notified Coburn of any sudden change in its behaviour.

For the moment, the minehunter was a stone’s throw off the western tip of Baengnyeongdo, South Korea’s northernmost island that was supposed to resemble a crested ibis taking flight – another piece of valueless information Hari had gleaned from a brochure he’d obtained from somewhere.

Of more interest were the lights Coburn could see. There were only a few – less than half a dozen coming from what he imagined were fishermen’s houses on one of the island’s western beaches, or maybe from dwellings perched on the cliff top above it.

With the
Selina
continuing to pitch, and with so much spray being thrown up from the bow, he found it hard to be sure where anything was, including the island itself which was little more than a dark patch against an even darker background.

The
Sandpiper
wasn’t much easier to pick out. Unlike the patrol boat, which even with the benefit of Hari’s night vision goggles had proved to be invisible, the minehunter at least was running with lights that allowed Coburn to get the odd glimpse of it now and then.

In recent minutes he’d given up looking for it altogether and had been spending his time in the focsle watching radar echoes crawl across Hari’s screen.

‘How far do you reckon Ritchie’s ahead of Yegorov?’ Coburn asked.

‘Perhaps a kilometre – a half of one mile if you prefer.’

‘And how far south of Yegorov are we?’

‘Closer than that.’ Hari measured off the distance. ‘We are within five or six hundred metres of the Osa.’ He grinned at Coburn. ‘If you are concerned about the range of the transmitter you are holding, you should not be. It can send its signal from here to China.’

Coburn was more worried about how effective the mines were going to be. He’d been thinking about it on and off for the last hour, endeavouring to maintain his balance on the heaving deck, in one hand
gripping the radio transmitter that would bring them to life, and in the other hand holding the satellite phone he was using to communicate with O’Halloran.

‘Although it is still early I think it best if we get ready,’ Hari said.

‘We are ready.’

‘No, no. I mean with our lights and our ammunition belts.’

‘I’ve told you,’ Coburn said. ‘If there’s going to be a fight, leave it to the
Sandpiper
. O’Halloran says Ritchie’s already manning both his guns.’

‘Which, if the mines misfire, he will have no opportunity to use.’ Hari lit a cigarette. ‘You have heard whether Ritchie is making certain that at all times his position is known to the authorities?’

‘He’s got coverage from two satellites, the South Korean Navy are tracking his ship and the US have asked China to keep an eye on him as well. O’Halloran’s pretty sure the Chinese would be doing that anyway.’

‘I see. And the commander is also set up to record all radio messages he receives?’

Coburn nodded.

‘Then I shall leave you to make any necessary course corrections and keep watch while I go to organize my crew. I shall be absent for a few minutes only.’

Because the sat phone link had been open while Hari had been talking, O’Halloran had overheard the conversation. ‘If that was your pirate friend, he sounds a pretty switched-on character,’ he said.

‘In his line of business you don’t last long if you’re not.’ Coburn repositioned himself in front of the radar display. ‘Do me a favour, will you?’ he said. ‘Ask Ritchie if he’s going to carry on following the Demarkation Line.’

‘He’s already said he is. What else can he do?’

‘I don’t know.’ Now Coburn was alone, he was more conscious of being on edge. The longer he watched the dots on the screen the drier his mouth was getting, and whenever he relaxed his grip on the transmitter his fingers began to cramp.

When, he wondered? How long before Yegorov decided to make contact with the
Sandpiper
? And when he did, would Ritchie hold off long enough for the mines to do their job?

His thoughts were interrupted by a crackle on his phone.

‘What was that?’ O’Halloran’s voice sounded forced.

‘Lightning,’ Coburn said. ‘The weather’s getting worse.’

‘What if Osas can’t launch missiles in big seas?’

Coburn had no idea. Instead of answering the question he focused his attention on the screen, doubting his ability to maintain this level of concentration for much more than another half an hour, but telling himself he didn’t have to because it would be the radio message that would sound the alert.

‘Are you still there?’ O’Halloran wasn’t sounding any better.

‘Yeah. I’m here. How far are you off the coast of that island behind you?’

‘Who knows? I can’t see it. Do you want me to ask Ritchie?’

‘No. Just say that the further west he goes, the more we’re getting tipped about here.’ Coburn could see no point in the patrol boat being led out into seas so rough that Yegorov could call things off.

‘OK. I’ll see what he thinks. Don’t go anywhere.’

What Ritchie’s reply might have been Coburn would never know.

As a squall of rain swept across the deck of the
Selina
, everything started happening at once.

No sooner had Hari returned to the focsle than the trailing dot on the screen began to accelerate, and at the same time over the phone, an urgent message from O’Halloran was drowned out by the voice of someone on the
Sandpiper
’s bridge yelling the word ‘closing’.

Elbowing Coburn out of the way, Hari took over the wheel. ‘The man Yegorov makes his run, I think,’ he said. ‘In your haste to press the button, do not be too quick.’

Conscious of the cramp in his fingers, Coburn was more concerned about not being able to press the damn thing at all. Assuring O’Halloran that he was aware of what was taking place, he opened the focsle hatch and glanced outside.

The squall had been short-lived, already over and leaving behind it clearer air. The lights on the island were twinkling again, and now in the distance the
Sandpiper
’s lights were easily visible as well. What he couldn’t see was the Osa.

O’Halloran seemed happy to rely entirely on the
Sandpiper
’s radar. ‘Ritchie wants to know if you’re set to go,’ he said.

‘Tell him it’s a stupid fucking question.’ Coburn steadied himself against a bulkhead. ‘I can hear what’s going on your end, so if you want to hold up your phone when Yegorov makes contact, it’ll give me an idea of how long I’ll have. Is he still coming?’

Rather than waiting for O’Halloran to check, Hari answered the question. ‘He has increased his speed, but moving to the north,’ he said. ‘By doing so he will attack from the side where he will have a larger target. Please prepare yourself.’

Coburn didn’t think he could be more prepared than he was already. Doing his best to stay calm, he tried to filter out the muffled voices from the
Sandpiper
’s bridge while he strained to hear the first few words of a message that would set everything in motion.

They weren’t long coming. A second after he heard O’Halloran telling him to standby, he was listening to a statement that had been so over-rehearsed its effect was somehow made more chilling.

‘This is DPRK patrol boat S19 calling US warship
Sandpiper
. You are north of the 38th parallel and in violation of the 1953 Panmunjom Agreement defining the maritime boundary of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. If you fail to change course and do not at once return to the waters of South Korea, military action will be taken against you. You will receive no further warning of this transgression.’

Coburn didn’t hesitate. He pressed the button and held it down, staring out to sea, searching for a flash that would tell him where the Osa was.

There was no flash – no burst of light, no indication of any kind that the mines had detonated.

Hari hadn’t bothered to look. He’d gone to the door, shielding his face from the wind and only relaxing when the windows of the focsle were rattled by the deep thud of an explosion.

O’Halloran had heard it too. ‘Hole in one,’ he said. ‘What can you see from where you are?’

Coburn was about to say he couldn’t see anything when to the north, where the sea had suddenly started to glow red, a brilliant spear of horizontal flame shot out into the night.

Realizing that somehow Yegorov had managed to launch a Styx,
Coburn shouted a warning over the phone, watching despairingly as the missile streaked out towards the
Sandpiper
.

It was unstable. On full boost, but with its guidance system compromised, and discharged from a burning hangar on a badly listing boat, it narrowly avoided hitting the water before soaring skywards, climbing higher and higher in a series of increasingly wild spirals until it tore itself to pieces in a starburst of incandescent debris.

O’Halloran took his time to come back on the line. ‘Holy shit,’ he said. ‘Don’t ever do that to me again.’

Coburn had yet to take a breath, not just wondering how in God’s name they’d ever got away with it, but not quite able to believe how incredibly lucky the
Sandpiper
’s crew had been, and equally amazed that Ritchie had held his fire.

‘You’d better tell the commander to get his boats in the water,’ he said. ‘From here on, it’s up to him.’

‘No, no.’ Hari was shaking his head. ‘We ourselves have more to do.’ Having watched the flight of the missile through binoculars he seemed to have decided something wasn’t right. He handed the glasses to Coburn. ‘If you will look at the Osa, you can see our work tonight is not yet finished.’

The crew were abandoning their stricken vessel and beginning to swim away from it, but at the stern, illuminated in flames billowing from the hangars, a figure was clambering down into a small motor-driven runabout.

Coburn didn’t need binoculars to know who it was. Hari, too, had guessed. He’d already opened the
Selina
’s throttles and was calling for the halogens to be switched on, but Coburn knew he was being optimistic.

With the island only a few short miles away, in easy reach and surrounded by enormous banks of silt on which, even at high tide, the
Selina
would quickly run aground, Yegorov stood every chance of making it to land. And once he did that, Coburn realized, neither Ritchie nor anyone else would have a hope in hell of finding him.