Kusanagi (6 page)

Brandon jumped up. The tip of his right flipper had been bitten clean off. The boat rose steeply as a giant wave washed under them and he was pitched forwards, looking down into the sea, about to fall in. He caught the side of the boat with his right hand, face angled down to the grey water. The hammerhead rose out of the water, its mouth agape. Brandon found himself staring into its red throat at the wicked white teeth. As the boat rose, tilting him ever forwards, he knew he was going to fall into those jaws.

Danny yanked him back. ‘Don't fucking feed the fish, man,' he said.

The boat slumped, a wall of water shooting up at its prow. Brandon jumped into the stern. He was laughing crazily. The engines were on and the anchor was on its way up. A great storm was rising.

‘About time,' shouted Reece, at no one in particular. ‘This is going to get very ugly real fast. Got to clear the cove damn quick or we'll be on the rocks in no time.'

The anchor locked in, and Reece set the engines. It rolled heavily as it got underway.

They took their tanks off quickly as the boat shook them about. Casey looked at Brandon's ripped flipper. ‘That's a keeper,' he shouted, above the noise of the gale.

‘Mighty windy,' said Danny. He picked up the duffel bag and put it on the table next to the helm, where on a calm day anglers might have a lazy beer and watch others fish or dive.

‘Want to open the bag?' said Danny to Brandon. ‘You found it.'

‘No,' said Brandon, his hands shaking under the table. ‘You go ahead.'

‘OK,' said Danny. He unzipped the duffel. The gold flashed like a torch's beam and they gasped. Reece glanced at them, then back at the mountainous seas ahead. Danny slid the slab out and turned it over.

‘Boy,' said Casey.

On the reverse there was a picture.

Danny whistled, ‘Holy cow.'

‘Let me see that,' said Brandon, forgetting his nerves. He took it from Danny. A giant golden sun was rising over a mountainous coastline. Engraved golden birds flew above an ancient boat, fishing by the golden shore. The sea glittered. He passed it to Casey, who marvelled at the scene.

‘What have we got?' called Reece, his eyes fixed on the horizon.

‘Some kind of crazy carved-gold slab,' said Danny. ‘You want to see?'

‘Later,' said Reece. ‘Let me fight this battle first. This boat wasn't built for a force nine. Not many are.'

Brandon took the slab back. It was heavy like only gold could be. It must weigh at least fifteen pounds, he marvelled. That was a lot of gold. ‘How much is gold an ounce?' he asked, transfixed by the carving.

‘Fifteen hundred dollars,' said Casey. ‘It was two thousand a while back.'

Brandon stared at him. ‘This is, like, two or three hundred ounces.'

‘Yep,' said Casey. ‘And even if it's nine carat that's a fairly large amount of money just in gold.'

‘Nine carat?' Danny laughed. ‘No way! That's pure twenty-four-carat gold.'

‘You sure?' said Brandon.

‘No,' said Danny, taking the slab, ‘but this is an artwork, not a freakin' ingot. That means it's worth multiples of any gold price. Sheesh! Look at it! Man, it's like the fashizzle.'

The boat jinked and slammed into a wave. They jolted in their seats.

‘Unbelievable,' said Reece. They were riding straight into a hurricane.

Brandon took the slab back into his hands. As he did so, he looked up and through the windscreen. They were riding up the face of a gigantic wave. Unconsciously he gripped the slab tighter.

Danny and Casey followed his gaze. They looked back at each other in silence, then at Reece.

‘Hold tight!' Reece howled – and the boat corkscrewed over the crest.

The doctor had a gleam in his eyes. He seemed to be enjoying his patient's predicament a little too much. ‘You see these?' he said. ‘I think they're screws.'

Jim nodded.

‘Well, I suggest they're holding a plate on – see this shadow?'

Jim nodded again.

‘I think I should take the plate out and remove what's inside, then screw it back on again.'

Jim was wondering how Stafford had known of Dr Eric. It certainly hadn't been Dr Eric's plastic surgery skills that had won him the introduction. He was a small, grey-haired man in a white coat, with an excitable, enthusiastic manner. He didn't show the shock or fear of the previous doctor. He seemed almost familiar with the idea of some guy having a GPS tracker embedded in his torso.

‘I can make an incision here and pull down the muscle and, without much disruption, get at the device. Your downtime will be minimal – a few aches and that'll be about it. I can do it now, if you like.'

Jim sat up. ‘Now?'

‘Certainly,' said Dr Eric, eagerly, his staring blue eyes drilling into him.

Jim fidgeted.

‘I can do it under a local, if you're up for it.'

‘Local?'

‘A local anaesthetic. It's not much of a procedure.' He held out his fingers about two inches. ‘It's a small cut and the whole thing should take no more than ten or fifteen minutes.'

‘Oh,' said Jim, surprised that things were developing so fast. He thought about the tracking device. He really hated the idea of it, ticking away or whatever it did, inside him. All he had to do was lie down for a few minutes, still conscious, and he would be free of it. That didn't seem so bad. ‘OK,' he said, ‘let's do it.'

‘Right you are.'

‘We're heading to Higashi harbour. Over,' shouted Reece, into the mouthpiece.

The noise blotted out the first words of the response. ‘… do you require assistance? Over.'

‘No assistance required. Over.' He repeated the message: ‘No assistance required.'

Casey stood, braced, by his side.

Reece shook his head. ‘Yet,' he said.

Casey had never been in such heavy seas – or not unless he was in the belly of a giant warship. A battleship could brave any seas and would barely notice a normal storm. But for them, the six miles to the nearest safe harbour would mean twenty miles of steaming because they could not travel across the giant waves. Instead they had to head into them or run with them and that meant they had to set out to sea first before they could come back to land.

They sailed into the storm, climbing up and down the mountainous rollers, blown with thick foam. It was a journey into the depths of hell.

Finally Reece shouted, ‘I'm going to turn her now and surf us into port.'

‘Let's go,' Casey agreed. He flicked the piece of gum he was chewing out of a gap in his teeth on the right side of his mouth. He was smiling to himself again. Even though they were nothing but a piece of floating crap adrift in the tempest, he didn't doubt they would make the harbour. They just would. That was how it was with the team. If you were going to navigate in a typhoon then Reece was about the only guy you'd want at the helm.

Down below, Danny and Brandon were sleeping, Brandon hugging the gold slab as if it was some kind of teddy bear. Giant waves rose and fell, the wind howling like some demonic monster, its maw slathered with froth. Yet Reece was going to use the fishing boat like a surfboard and carve his way to shore. Not even the towering grey face of the wave that loomed beside them as they turned made him doubt his colleague's ability to pull it off. The boat bucked, shook, fell and rose again.

They slid down the smooth back slope of the giant wave, the crest marbled with foam. Reece brought the boat around as hard as it would go, slowing down and around into the trough of the swell. The boat heaved heavily to starboard and rode up, its stern facing the rising wave behind it, which gathered itself into a vertical wall. Reece let the wave catch up with him, then applied the power to face down the wave. ‘Check,' he said.

‘OK,' said Casey, looking back at the wave, a stationary wall above.

Reece's hand was on the throttle. He glanced forwards and to the side to make sure he had matched the speed of the wave. He would have to keep his heading and speed exact for perhaps two hours. ‘Check.'

‘Check,' said Casey, watching the steel wall rising behind them, poised and frozen above.

Reece grinned up the right side of his face. The next hour or two were going to be very real.

They were all in the wheelhouse as they approached land. The waves were gigantic, blown up into mountains by the force eleven gale. The sea was as white as if its steely cliffs were covered with snow. With their backs to the wind and the protection of the water wall behind them, they were sheltered from the worst of the hurricane.

Reece was nudging the boat to keep it in line with the harbour entrance. Behind the lip of the next wave, he was navigating on instruments alone. They would have to surf towards the shore past the edge of the harbour wall, then jink hard to starboard to get behind the breakwater. The closer to the outer edge of the concrete barrier they came, the better for the manoeuvre. The closer to the sea wall they were, the more chance there was that the boat would be driven onto it. He was going to try to thread it through the eye of a needle in the midst of the typhoon.

Brandon looked at the radar and its map overlay. Reece was cutting it close. He might come in too tight on starboard and wreck, or be driven off to port and get dashed onto the shore ahead. In his mind, they were in the hands of the Almighty.

Casey was calling, ‘Check,' every few moments, as Reece kept the boat on the slope of the wave, continually trimming the engine to keep it in the notch.

Danny was looking out of the windscreen through the water that the wipers struggled to clear. He was grinning painfully, like someone thinking of a hurtful but funny joke.

Brandon could hear the thunder of waves breaking on the harbour wall. The white explosions were erupting into sight now, above the crest of the forward wave.

‘Hold on, guys,' said Reece. He accelerated, turning the boat, dived down the wave and across its trough.

The wave was rising, a giant black jaw that was heading forwards to engulf them and smash the boat to pieces.

Jesus, thought Brandon. Reece was going to drive them along the wave and into the tube like some boat-sized surfer dude.

There was a monstrous explosion of water to starboard as the wave struck the edge of the harbour wall, forward of them. The rear of the fishing boat rolled, but its bow was dipping into the broken ocean. It sank and rose into the suddenly calm waters of the harbour.

Brandon and Danny high-fived and whooped. They turned and Casey joined them.

‘Just let me get into harbour proper,' said Reece, unmoved. ‘You can all buy me a drink later.'

Brandon watched the waves roll in behind them as they entered the outer ring of the harbour. To starboard, wave after wave erupted against the high sea defences. He marvelled at how a few feet made the difference between misery and bliss.

At the quayside, a small crowd had formed to watch them dock. Brandon sprang onto the quay from the gently rolling deck, as the Japanese harbour men quickly tied up the boat. The look of relief on their faces was palpable. It wasn't their boat, of course, but it had sailed in on the wing of a typhoon and they had watched it on the radar as it made its dash for their safe harbour. The boat had navigated a remarkable escape and the harbour men were proud to be part of it. They bowed a lot at the crew and the SEALs bowed back and said, ‘
Domo
,' several times.

Brandon sauntered along at the head of the team. He was boiling over with adrenalin and relief, but he knew he had to hold it in so his buddies didn't see. He glanced back at the serious little Japanese guys and smiled.

They wandered down the jetty as if they had come back from an unremarkable day's fishing. On one shoulder they carried their diving kit in big nylon holdalls; Brandon had strapped his GI duffel and its golden load to his back.

Jim felt as if he had been slammed in the ribs with a sledgehammer. He sat turned to one side in the back of the Mercedes black cab. It wasn't like the old-style London cabs. It was much bigger, which he had appreciated when he had struggled to climb in, bent in half. The painkillers weren't helping.

The surgery had taken longer than promised but it had been worth it. He was holding the innards of the gadget that Dr Eric had removed. It was an entire device, about the size of a box of matches. The case looked like it might be platinum or some other non-corroding metal. It had a green LED that flashed every minute. He imagined it flashing in the closed container attached to his rib. It had a functional but sinister appearance, smooth and cold to the touch.

The green light flashed again. Was it sending information, or had it merely reassured its owners before it was fitted that it was functioning? He was going to put it on the shelf at home and then they would think he was sitting there permanently. It would tell them he had become a hermit, forever housebound. Now he could go as he pleased and no one would know where he was. In the Congo that would have been fatal, but he wasn't aiming to get into any more scrapes. He had had enough adventure for a lifetime already.

The black cab felt like a limo, heading back to Wapping and his riverside mini-palace. It wasn't like one of Davas's mansions, historic and huge. It was a modern sanctuary fashioned out of an old warehouse that had once stored produce from all over the world in a pre-modern chaos that would be seen now as quaint and inefficient. In the block, there was an aura of two hundred years' ground-in sweat and blood lurking below the brick. It gave off an atmosphere of a reality that was just waiting its chance to burst to the surface.

He pressed his side, which ached. He imagined himself opened up, Dr Eric working away with his scalpel and screwdriver. He was amazed that, after a few stitches, a shot of antibiotic, bandages and a dose of painkiller, he could be on his way home. It seemed mildly barbaric.

Still a little dazed, he wondered how he would feel if a limb had been blasted off in some battle. Would he drag himself along, trying to reach safety, or would he just lie there? He felt like a clock, set going at the watchmaker's behest. To Jim, it seemed that if you could just keep moving, nothing could stop you. His head was spinning. He could do with a lie down.

He gave the cabbie forty pounds. ‘Keep the change.' The meter looked like it said twenty-eight, but he wasn't going to hang around to juggle change. He was hunting for keys.

‘You all right, boss?' said the cabbie, but Jim didn't hear him as he lunged for his front door.

If he had been thinking, he would have rung the bell and Stafford would have answered, but instead he was trying to extract his keys from his pocket and select the right one without looking. He failed and, leaning against the door, he went through all four before he had the one he needed. He plunged it towards the lock, which admitted it. He turned it and toppled into the hallway, pulling the key out as he went. He tilted back, slamming the door. His side felt heavy. He steadied himself and moved forward. The way ahead was blurred.

There was the shriek of the alarm.

‘Bloody hell.' He staggered and the floor sagged. There was a loud grinding sound and a metal grille shot up in front of him.

Jim spun round.

There was another prison grille behind him. He was penned in.

He fell to his knees.

Stafford dashed into the hallway. ‘I'm so sorry,' he said, typing something into a small white panel in the wall.

Jim wanted to lie down on the carpet – it felt so friendly and warm. The cage ground back into its place.

‘Are you all right?' asked his butler.

‘Fine.'

‘Let me help you up.'

‘No, I'm OK.' He concentrated and forced himself to his feet. He smiled unconvincingly at Stafford. ‘I think I need to go to bed.'

‘Please let me help you, sir.'

‘No, I'm fine.'