In Cold Blood (4 page)

“You can make a shot like that?”

“Don’t worry, Captain,” he said. “I’m the best. That’s why I’m so expensive.”

JOE CALLED down to the engine room and told them they were going to need to squeeze every last rev out of the engines. That would be a delicate balancing act. Too slow, and it would be easy for the skiffs to reel them in. Too fast, and he would blow the gaskets and they would be helpless.

He looked down at the radar. The closest skiff was less than a nautical mile away. They were travelling at seventeen knots. The skiffs were doing twenty.

“Sound the intruder alarm.”

The third mate sounded the ship’s whistle and then went over and activated the alarm. If anyone was still asleep, they wouldn’t be for long. They needed every man at his post.

“Turn on the pumps.”

The
Carolina
had powerful pumps positioned all around it. They kicked in and started to send powerful streams of seawater in forty-foot gushes. The pressure was significant, enough to buffet a boat off course or fill it and submerge it, if the flow hit it head-on.

“Get the crew to the safe rooms. Lock the engine room.”

“Aye, sir.”

Joe had been in the Merchant Navy all his life. He never had reason to fire a gun, and nor could he remember ever seeing anyone else fire one in his presence. Nevertheless, he recognised the chatter of an automatic rifle as the guard on the port rail fired a warning volley into the sea ahead of the skiff.

The boat did not stop.

It kept coming.

JOYCE WATCHED as the skiff ignored the warning shots. It was his funeral. He raised his glasses and studied the boat coming in towards them from the port side. The
Carolina
was casting out a series of furrowed waves from the bow, but the skiff was able to address them from an angle and bounced across from one to the other. He counted five men aboard and it looked like they were well-used to the sea. They absorbed the impacts as their boat leapt up and slammed back down again, rocking to and fro, without needing to anchor themselves.

He watched with the glasses as the man in the front of the boat raised a rifle and aimed forwards. He heard the crack of return fire, bullets ricocheting off the superstructure. The boat was still a good quarter mile away, but if there had been any doubt that they were serious, that had now been allayed. Rounds crashed against the metal housing and another rang off the smokestack high above his head. The others aimed and started to fire, too. It looked like they had AKs. Not surprising.

“Joyce to Squad,” he said into his portable handset. “Shots fired. Repeat, shots fired. Tangos armed with automatics. Weapons free. Weapons free.”

The flying bridge was the open space directly above the main bridge. It was one of the highest points on the ship and was a good spot to settle in with a sniper rifle. The M107CQ had been designed for situations where the firepower of a .50 caliber rifle was required, but the bulk of the M82 or M107 series was impractical. CQ stood for ‘Close Quarters’ and it was ideally suited for use in helicopters and watercraft. This big ship, steady and unwavering, would offer a pretty solid platform to shoot from.

Joyce brought the rifle around and rested the bi-pod against the safety rail that prevented the drop to the deck below. He pressed the stock into the groove between his shoulder and neck and sighted down the Leupold Mark 4 telescopic sight. He swept the sea until he had the skiff in the sight and then aimed at the man in the bow. Hitting him would be a potent demonstration for the men behind him. He squared the man’s head in the reticule, took a deep breath and slowly released it, exhaling to a natural stopping point. He waited until his muscles were calm and he didn’t need to inhale and then he squeezed the trigger with a good, crisp pull.

The .50 caliber round closed the distance to the man before he had even heard the deep report of the gun. One moment he was living, the next moment he was not. Joyce absorbed the recoil against his shoulder and kept sighting the target. The round was designed to stop materiel. It made a very big mess of flesh and bone. Snipers called it ‘pink mist.’

He had expected the boat to check its pace, but it did not. The men ducked down a little and the firing paused, but they did not reduce speed. He put the glasses to his eyes again and watched as another of the men crawled to the bow and hauled the body of the headless pirate over the gunwale, tossing him into the wash. The body floated for a moment, spun in the waves, and then sank from sight.

They started firing again.

“They’re fucking tenacious,” radioed Joyce’s number two, Paddy McGuinnes. He was a gruff Ulsterman and it took a lot to fluster him.

“Keep firing.”

He let the glasses fall on their strap and sighted with the optics again. The boat was two hundred feet away and darted around to make itself more difficult to hit. Joyce changed tack. He sighted the bow and aimed backward, down the boat, until he had a shot at the glossy black outboard motor. He relaxed his shoulders into the shot, breathed in, and fired.

The fifty-caliber bullet streaked out and crashed into the engine, pulverising the casing and ripping a tunnel through the machinery. The boat was near enough for Joyce to hear the engine splutter and then fade out and, as he looked, the boat lost speed and drifted away.

He thumbed the portable radio. “One boat disabled,” he reported. “I took one of them out. Had no effect. Go for the outboards.”

JOE AND the Third Mate, Barry Miller, sat on the floor, beneath the metal wainscotting that reached up four feet above them. Bullets rang against the metal, bouncing around, ricocheting. Joe figured that they were safe unless there was a crazy rebound, but that didn’t make it any less terrifying. The skiff to port had drifted away without its engine and was out of the fight. He crossed the bridge to starboard and looked down. The pirates were a hundred feet away and eating up the distance between them. One of the security men sent a barrage of fire down at them, but he missed, the surface of the water interrupted by a series of small plumes, the boat racing through the spray regardless.

The radio crackled again.

“Captain, you must surrender ship. We have RPGs. If you do not allow us to board, we will fire. We will destroy you, captain.”

Joe toggled the radio. “Joyce. They’re saying they’ve got RPGs. Is that true?”

There was a pause.

“Affirmative.”

It was Joe’s turn to pause.

Joyce came back again. “Captain? What’s your opinion?”

“What range do they have?”

“They’re in range now.”

Shit, shit, shit. He concentrated on keeping a calm and decisive exterior, but he was floundering. “If they get a grenade into a tank, or on the bridge, we’re done for. We’ll end up drifting, at best. At worst… Good God, it doesn’t bear thinking about what could happen. We’ve got to surrender.”

“Negative, captain. That’s not what you’re paying us for.”

Joe ducked down beneath the wainscotting as the Somalis loosed a barrage at the bridge. A line of bullets studded the superstructure.

“Fifteen degrees left and then fifteen degrees right,” Joe called out and the AB yanked the wheel, turning them away from the skiff. It was a delaying tactic, at best.

“Captain,” the Somali said over the radio. “Do not resist. We have you.”

Joe heard the curse over the radio and then, loud and strident, Joyce barked out, “Incoming! RPG fired, port side.”

A projectile arced up from beneath the obstruction of the superstructure and fell in a graceful parabola that ended on the deck. The grenade detonated between two containers, a beautifully contained little explosion that still sent a barrage of shrapnel against the superstructure.

“Incoming!” one of the other guards yelled.

Two more hits, this time at the body of the ship, and the sudden blooms of black smoke unfurled and rolled up the side and across the bridge.

“Captain!” Vasquez yelled. “We’re on fire to port.”

Joe could see the thick cloud of smoke stretching up over the gunwale and onto the deck.

“Thomas to Joyce,” Joe said firmly into the radio. “Stand down. Repeat: stand down. We haven’t got a choice. We surrender.”

THE END of the battle had been quick and bloodless. The pirates had boarded the
Carolina
without difficulty, once the shooting had stopped. Each skiff had a long thirty-foot ladder with hooks at one end and they had simply raised them up so that the hooks fastened down over the six-inch fishguard. They had scaled the ladders and swarmed aboard. Joe had counted twenty of them and a man had been left in each of the three skiffs that were still operational. The fourth skiff, with the wrecked outboard, had drifted away. The trawler had picked it up once the hijacking had been completed.

Joe opened the channel on the portable radio. “We’ve been boarded. Repeat: pirates aboard.”

He moved quickly. He radioed the first engineer in the engine room and ordered him to take the steering. The men down there would lock themselves inside. It would take hours, perhaps even days, to find them and break through.

The cages did not appear to have detained them for very long. After ten minutes, a thin man, young and with catlike, cunning eyes, entered the bridge. He was armed with an AK-47. Two others came with him. Both of them had semiautomatic pistols. They aimed them at the officers on the bridge.

The thin man spoke first. “Who is captain?” He turned to Vasquez. “You are captain?”

“No, I am,” Joe said. “I am the captain. This is my ship.”

“Very good.”

“We have money. We have a few thousand dollars on board. You can take it.”

“This is not about money, captain. We do not want it.”

The words didn’t process. Joe continued, following the script that he had prepared. “My employer will not pay a ransom.”

“You do not listen, captain. We do not want money.” He indicated with the AK that Joe should step away from the console. “My name is Farax. I am in charge here.” His broad gesture might have meant the other men, but it was not lost on Joe that it encompassed the bridge and the rest of the ship, too. “What is your name?”

“Name’s Joe Thomas.”

“You are American, Joe?”

“That’s right. Boston.”

“That is good. And how many men do you have on board, Joe?”

“Just ten of us,” he said.

Farax smiled. “I know you lie. A ship like this has twenty men. Perhaps thirty. But it does not matter. Ten is enough. You will tell them to come here.”

Joe still did not understand, although a dim, recessed part of his brain had started to stitch things together. He refused to acknowledge it, though. It was too horrible to consider.

“I can’t do that.”

“What do you mean?”

“The men are around the ship. They have important jobs to do. They cannot leave their stations.”

“You must call them, captain. I do not ask you again.”

Joe shrugged that he couldn’t help.

Farax raised the muzzle of the AK and pointed it Ray Vasquez’s chest. “I do not ask three times,” he said as he pulled the trigger.

The machine-gun was horribly loud in the confined space of the bridge. The rounds studded Vasquez in the chest and he staggered back against the console, a look of incomprehension on his face as he slowly slid down until he was resting on his backside.

“I am not a pirate, Joe. I do not want money. I am al Shabaab. Do you understand what I mean?”

Joe didn’t have the ability to speak. He nodded.

“Now. Please gather your crew. If you do not, we kill you all now.”

Joe looked at him and knew, immediately, that this was not a bluff. What he had done to Vasquez was evidence enough but, more than that, was the way he looked at him. There was no compassion in the dark orbs of his eyes, no empathy. If he said he would do something, then he would do it.

Joe picked up the radio and keyed it open. “This is the captain,” he said. “I’m going to need the officers to report to the bridge. All officers, to the bridge.”

They lined the men up against the wall. Joe stood between them and Farax. He didn’t know what he would be able to do. Perhaps he might be able to talk him down, reduce the temperature. The thing was, the thing that worried him more than anything else, was that Farax did not appear flustered or perturbed. He smiled at the other pirates, conversing with them in easy Arabic, and his posture was loose and relaxed. It was as if what he had just done was of no consequence to him whatsoever.

The other officers arrived. They were all scared. Joe was scared, too.

The soldiers were the last to arrive. Joyce wore a black expression but, like Farax, he moved with an easy step. Joe guessed that this was not the first time he had looked down the barrel of an AK-47. The other men—McGuinnes, Bloom and Anderton—had a similar demeanour.

“That’s all of us,” Joe said.

Farax looked them over. He walked over to Joyce. The difference in physique was striking: Joyce was tall and powerful and the Somali was slender.

“My name is Farax,” he said. “What is yours?”

“Joyce.”

“And what do you do on the ship, Joyce?”

“I’m the chef.”

“You do not look like a chef.”

Joyce shrugged. For a moment Joe wondered whether he was going to say something they might all regret, but he held his tongue. Farax had to look up a little to look into his eyes, but he did, and held his gaze. It was Joyce who looked away. The Somalis evidently found this amusing.

“You go to our ladder now,” Farax said. “We go for journey together.”

CAPTAIN MICHAEL POPE was standing at the raised wall, looking out over the city. He was a tall man, well built, and it wasn’t difficult to tell that he had a history in the armed forces. He was dressed conservatively, in beige chinos and a blue poplin shirt. Beatrix cleared her throat and he turned around to face her, removing the sunglasses and hooking them into his shirt pocket.

“Number One,” he said.

“No,” she said. “Not any more. Not for years.”

“Rose, then.”

“It’s alright. It’s Beatrix.”