Star of Africa (Ben Hope, Book 13) (16 page)

Ben’s first and main priority was to stow the prisoners securely under lock and key. Of the sixteen African pirates who had been aboard the ship at the time of the rescue assault, nine were still alive including their leader, Khosa. Those who had stayed on board the smaller vessel could be presumed drowned or blown to bits. Ben, Jeff and Tuesday hurriedly stripped off their dive apparatus and wetsuits. Once they had changed into combat trousers and T-shirts and swapped the cumbersome flippers for the lightweight assault boots they’d packed in the watertight kit bags along with the rest of the gear, Tuesday took charge of guarding the prisoners while Ben and Jeff hunted about below by torchlight for a suitable temporary cell space. They soon found a storage compartment in the aft cargo hold that would serve as a makeshift brig.

Three at a time, the prisoners had their ankle bonds slashed and were frogmarched below at gunpoint and bundled into the pitch-black hole that would be their home for the foreseeable future. Allen and Lang were stationed on sentry duty outside the door.

‘I don’t like it much,’ Jeff said. ‘That room isn’t half secure enough to hold them. Especially Scarface. I look at that guy, I see trouble.’

They were making their way back up through the pitch-darkness below decks when the electrical power flickered on and the winding passages, hatchways and stairways that honeycombed the vast bowels of the ship were lit up in a stark neon glow. Seconds later, they felt the thrum of the restarted engines and the vibration of the ship’s massive twin screws resonate under their feet. Cherry’s guys had done their work and the
Andromeda
was back in business.

Ben’s next priority was to check on the bridge. Now that the power was restored, he needed to make sure that the two crewmen up there, Trent and Lorenz, didn’t do anything stupid like radio the coastguard and inform them of the attack. If the storm should suddenly abate, the last thing he needed was for a squad of trigger-happy Somali police to show up in a fast cruiser and spark an international incident when they discovered an unofficial hostage rescue team on board, with enough small arms to start a war.

Ben needn’t have worried. When he stepped onto the rocking, swaying bridge he found Trent and Lorenz bent anxiously over the bullet-holed remains of the long-range radio receiver. ‘It’s fubar,’ was Trent’s technical assessment. Lorenz looked at Ben. ‘Mister, I hope you know how to fix this or we’re cut off from the whole freakin’ universe.’

Ben examined it. One time, in his early days with 22 SAS, he had been on patrol in the Middle East when his unit’s radio operator lost the top half of his body to a high-explosive 30-mm cannon shell. Even though much of the radio set had been pulverised along with him, Ben had managed to twist enough loose wires together to get it operational again. But that had been years ago, when they were still making technology he could understand. This thing was all circuit boards and computer chips, reduced to tiny shards of silicon that lay like dust in the metal casing. He could tell from the holes that two large-calibre handgun bullets had smashed through the electronics, ploughing through just about everything they needed to hit in order to ruin the radio beyond salvation.

‘You’re right,’ he told Trent. ‘It is fubar.’ The whole freakin’ universe would have to do without them for now.

Ben found Jeff and Tuesday below on A Deck. Smelling the scent of freshly brewed coffee, they followed their noses to the mess canteen where Jude and two of his crewmates sat huddled at a table knocking back as much hot coffee as they could swallow. Jude looked ashen and shaken up. The mood was that strained mixture of elation and sombreness that comes when danger has passed and nobody quite knows whether to celebrate the fact of their own survival or mourn the loss of those who didn’t make it. It was an atmosphere Ben had shared in many times before.

They pulled up three more chairs and sat together. The floor of the mess canteen was rocking from side to side so much from the weather that the sailors had to hold their mugs to stop them sliding off the table. Ben put his hand on Jude’s arm and gave him a look that said, ‘You okay?’

Jude quietly nodded, but he didn’t look okay. His face fell even more when Ben broke the news to them about the damaged radio. First the attack, then the storm, and now this.

Jude broke the dejected silence with introductions. ‘This is Lou Gerber,’ he said, nodding at the older man at the table. ‘And this is Condor.’

Jeff smiled. ‘Condor?’

‘That’s right, man, just Condor.’ Condor’s face was the colour of a long-dead fish and he kept clutching at his stomach as though he was about to throw up.

‘Call yourself a mariner,’ Gerber snorted. ‘Seasick, at your age?’

Jude went on with the intros. ‘This is Tuesday Fletcher—’

‘Welcome to the silly names club,’ Tuesday said.

‘—and this is Jeff Dekker—’

‘Uncle Jeff,’ Gerber said with a thin smile.

Jeff raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s a new one on me. I’ve never been an uncle before.’

Jude motioned towards Ben. ‘And this is … this is …’ As if he couldn’t bring himself to say the words ‘my father’.

Ben respected that. He had never deserved the title, anyway. ‘Ben,’ he finished for Jude. ‘Jude and I go back a long way.’

The happiest person in the mess canteen was the large black man introduced to Ben and the others as Hercules. He couldn’t stop chuckling and grinning as he navigated across to the table and served more mugs of steaming coffee for the honoured guests. A grey parrot with a red tail and suspicious eyes was perched on his shoulder, regarding them all with great disdain.

‘I see you got reunited with Murphy,’ Jude said, forcing a smile.

Hercules tenderly held up a finger for the parrot to gnaw at. ‘Yeah, he was the only one of us who had the sense not to let himself get caught by those motherfuckers.’

‘Who’s a pretty boy, then?’ Jeff said to the bird.

‘Up yours, buttcrack,’ the bird shot back, giving him a look that would terrify a hawk.

‘He’s a charmer, isn’t he?’ Jeff said.

‘He don’t like to be patronised,’ Hercules said.

‘Sorry I spoke.’

Ben smiled and took a sip of the coffee. It tasted like something that had been ladled up from the recesses of the ship’s hold and mixed with engine oil, but it was strong and hot and that was good enough.

‘Speaking of those motherfuckers,’ Gerber said when Hercules had gone weaving off over the listing floor, ‘I’m not going to ask you fellas how you did it, where you came from or who you are. But I am going to thank you, on behalf of all of us, for saving our bacon, which you well and truly did.’

‘Yeah, man,’ Condor mumbled. ‘We were dead meat.’ The thought of actual dead meat almost made him vomit, and he went back to groaning and clutching his stomach.

Jude looked solemnly at the three of them. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Then say nothing,’ Ben said.

‘We do this kind of thing all the time, dear boy,’ Jeff said.

‘That’s right,’ Tuesday laughed. ‘Piece of cake. Especially the hanging-on-like-grim-death-to-a-manned-torpedo-with-eighty-pounds-of-RDX-high-explosive-strapped-six-inches-from-my-bollocks part. I’d do it again tomorrow.’

‘Let’s hope we won’t need to,’ Ben said. ‘And let me just say this, that the person everyone should be thanking is Jude. He’s the one who sent the message.’

‘Jude already knows how grateful we are,’ Gerber said. ‘But hey, does no one else know about this?’

‘Not that we’re aware of,’ Jeff replied. ‘And we’d prefer to keep it that way until we’re off this ship, so as to avoid any unwanted, uh,
entanglements
, know what I mean?’ Turning to Jude, he said, ‘Seriously, mate, I feel like shit that I got you into it. If I’d thought there was the slightest risk of you getting hit by pirates—’

‘It wasn’t pirates,’ Jude cut in. ‘This was no ordinary attack.’

Ben looked at him. ‘What are you saying, Jude? How do you know that?’

The rest of them sat in silence and sipped coffee as Jude laid it all out, starting with his visit to the bridge, the radar alert and the appearance of the three passengers who had turned out to be hijackers and murdered the captain and ship’s mates right in front of his eyes.

‘Pender, he was the one in charge, except he was calling himself Carter. I think he bribed Captain O’Keefe to let them on board in secret. O’Keefe said something about a deal. I think he knew what was about to happen. I think he was paid to let it happen. That’s why he seemed to turn a blind eye when the radar showed up the boats heading towards us. But he didn’t realise they were going to kill anyone, least of all him.’

‘Fuckers,’ Condor breathed. Gerber looked sombre. They were hearing this story for the first time, too.

‘You’re saying this Pender hired Khosa and his men to attack the ship?’ Ben asked.

Jude nodded. ‘That’s what it looks like to me. Then after he killed the captain, he killed his own accomplices. But then when Khosa saw
it
, he double-crossed Pender and tried to take it for himself.’

‘Slow down,’ Ben said. ‘You’re not making any sense. Saw what? Tried to take what?’

‘This,’ Jude said. ‘
This
is what this whole thing is all about.’

He took out the diamond.

Jude held the diamond out on the flat of his palm. It was as if the canteen lights had suddenly grown brighter. A hush fell over the table. Tuesday boggled at the sight of it, and almost spilled his coffee in his lap.

‘That’s not real,’ Jeff said, gaping. ‘No bloody way.’

Jude quickly explained how he’d taken it from Pender, and how Pender had later accidentally allowed Khosa to see it when they were all on deck. ‘They murdered him for it like stepping on a beetle.’

‘He had it coming,’ Gerber muttered.

‘May I?’ Ben took the diamond from Jude and examined it. He’d never seen anything like it before. ‘I’d say it’s real, all right.’

‘Oh, so you’re the big expert now,’ Jeff said, without taking his eyes off it.

‘People are liable to start massacring each other over a lot of things,’ Ben said. ‘But a lump of cut glass isn’t one of them.’ He handed it back to Jude.

‘What would it be worth?’ Jude asked.

Jeff whistled. ‘If you have to ask, mate, you can’t afford it. Millions? Tens of millions?’

‘Hundreds of millions,’ Ben said. ‘Question is, where did it come from?’

‘I think Pender stole it,’ Jude said. ‘Who from, I have no idea. Someone in Oman, I thought. That would explain why he was on the ship, why he bribed his way on board incognito. He needed to get out of the country unnoticed.’

‘To Dar es Salaam?’ Jeff said. ‘Or Mombasa, maybe?’

‘Except he had no intention of going that far,’ Jude said. ‘He could have disembarked at Djibouti just as easily, but he didn’t. He wanted to disappear into thin air with the diamond. That’s why he set up the attack, to intercept us midway.’

‘A staged pirate attack,’ Ben said. It made an awful lot of sense. But it also raised more questions, and he could see from Jude’s expression that he had already figured that much out for himself.

‘Question is, why he’d need to get away in the middle of the Indian Ocean,’ Jude went on, frowning. ‘Why not just wait until we hit port? It doesn’t add up. Unless maybe he was scared that the police were on to him and would be lying in wait to grab him at the docks.’

Ben could see another possibility. ‘Or unless there was a third party involved. If we can suppose that Pender was the active partner in the robbery, the one who did the crime and took the biggest risk, it would make sense that maybe someone employed him to snatch it and deliver it to them, either at Mombasa or Dar es Salaam.’

‘A sleeping partner,’ Jeff said, cottoning on to the idea. ‘Mister Big. The head honcho.’

‘Who at this point may not even realise that Pender was planning to cut him out and do a runner,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.’

Gerber took a noisy slurp of coffee. ‘Here’s another question for you, folks. If this Khosa character and his boys aren’t Somali pirates, then who and what in hell’s name are they?’

‘Not Somalis, for a start,’ Ben said. ‘They speak Swahili among themselves.’

‘You speak it?’ Gerber said, surprised.

‘Some,’ Ben said.

‘So they’re from Kenya?’ Jude asked.

‘Possibly. Or Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, the Congo; pretty much anywhere in central or south-east Africa. It’s not where they’re from that concerns me. It’s what they do for a living.’

‘Boosting ships?’ Gerber said.

Ben shook his head. ‘No. Jude’s right. These guys are in a whole other line of work. They’re PMCs. Private military contractors. Professional guns for hire, most or all with some kind of army or militia training, or what passes for that in Africa.’

‘Freakin’ mercenaries?’ Condor gasped, almost letting go of his stomach contents.

Ben nodded. ‘That’s who you’d approach if you were planning something like this, or at least, I would. Someone who could bring the necessary firepower to the table and get the job done quickly and effectively. Or at least more quickly and effectively than a band of complete amateurs. All it really takes is a few guys who can yank a trigger, aren’t afraid of a little blood and won’t run away if anyone starts shooting back. But it seems that Pender slipped up. He obviously didn’t reckon on what his mercenaries would do to him if they got an inkling of what this was really about. I’ve come across men like this Khosa before. Pender made a big mistake with him.’

‘And then some,’ Condor groaned. ‘Jesus Christ. Mercenaries. I heard about these fuckers, man. They’d slit their own sisters wide open from ass to eyeball for something like this.’

‘That’s right,’ Gerber said, scratching his beard. ‘The world’s chock full of evil sonsofbitches who’d do anything for even just a few bucks, let alone a rock like that. I wouldn’t feel safe with it, that’s for sure.’

Jude blanched and stared at the diamond in his hand. ‘I can’t stand hanging onto this thing any longer. It’s too much responsibility for me.’ He thrust it towards Ben. ‘You take it.’

‘What makes you think I want it?’ Ben said.

‘It’d be safer with you.’

‘Safest place for it would be at the bottom of the sea,’ Ben said. ‘That’s the only way you can guarantee it won’t do any more harm.’

Jeff interrupted. ‘Gents, I hate to break in on this sociological, philosophical or whatever-the-fuck-it-is discussion, but we need to talk about what we’re going to do with the prisoners. If we’re right and it now looks like we’re dealing with a bunch of hardcore warriors led by some nutjob who’s pretty highly bloody motivated to slaughter every single one of us on board to get his mitts on a bobby dazzler the size of Manchester, we need to be taking every possible precaution. That storage locker they’re in isn’t secure enough and I don’t feel good about having two inexperienced sailors down there on guard duty. No offence.’

‘None taken,’ Gerber said. ‘I was in the Corps myself, back in the day, final rank of staff sergeant. Most of these boys couldn’t guard a Quakers’ convention.’

‘Jeff’s right,’ Ben said. ‘Ideas?’

Jeff shrugged. ‘What about all these containers up on deck? Those things are built like tanks. Empty one out, dump whatever cargo’s inside and bung the bastards in there in its place.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Ben said.

‘In this weather?’ Jude objected. ‘What if it breaks free and goes overboard? That can happen. We almost ran into a forty-footer floating adrift just after we left Djibouti. They’d drown inside.’

‘Then let them,’ Ben said.

‘And even if it doesn’t, once the storm’s over, they’ll bake in there.’

‘Then let them,’ Ben repeated.

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘Don’t I?’

‘You’re not that cruel, surely.’

‘There are quicker ways,’ Ben said. ‘If you’re concerned about inflicting cruelty on your fellow man.’

‘Meaning what?’ Jude said.

Ben just shrugged.

‘I can’t believe you would even contemplate that,’ Jude said. ‘What, you want to line them up on the deck, make them kneel, bullet in the back of the head and dump them in the ocean? Execute them in cold blood?’

Ben said nothing.

‘No. Absolutely not. That’s not who we are,’ Jude said.

‘Compassion is great, Jude. But if these men had half a chance to get free, do you think they’d show you an ounce of quarter? Have you forgotten what they did to your friends, and almost did to you?’

Jude was silent for a second. ‘Fine. I agree that’s a risk we can’t afford. But I can’t accept that we stick them in a container, and we’re certainly not going to murder these people. So we find another way.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as, we don’t keep them on the ship. We let them go.’

‘I see. Drop them off at the nearest port, nice and easy, wave bye bye and put it all behind us?’

‘Or something,’ Jude said.

Ben looked at him. ‘Think about who you’re dealing with, Jude. Khosa won’t give up easily. He’s seen what’s at stake here. He’s had the diamond in his hands once already. And you can be sure he’s got the contacts to put together as many men and as much hardware as he’s going to need to reclaim it. If you let him go, he’ll be back again before you know it, and I don’t think he’ll be any more interested in negotiating than he was first time around.’

‘They’re murderers. I know.’

‘No, Jude. You don’t know.’

‘But we’re better than that. At least, I thought we were. What happened to you?’

Too much
, Ben thought. ‘That’s just the way it is.’

‘Here’s what we’ll do,’ Jude said. ‘We’ll put them in the lifeboat and cut them loose.’

‘Aren’t you listening to a word I say?’ Ben asked.

‘Apart from anything else, it’s getting awful heavy out there,’ Jeff said.

‘No shit,’ Condor said miserably.

‘That thing’s pretty much unsinkable. They’ll have a chance,’ Jude replied. ‘You know, they’re still human beings. We owe them a chance, don’t we? Or what does it say about us?’

‘And you want to make a go of it in Special Forces,’ Ben said, looking straight at him.

Jude flinched. ‘Who told you?’

Ben pointed at Jeff. ‘He did. Apparently that’s what you’re gunning for, to get into the SBS. Starting with the navy interview in February. Tell me I’m wrong. I’d love to be.’

Jude said nothing. Jeff was frowning.

‘Trust me, Jude, you don’t want to be a part of that,’ Ben said. ‘You couldn’t be. Because it’s shit, and it makes stone-cold killers out of people, and you just proved to me that you’re better than that.’

‘Hey, thanks,’ Jeff said. ‘Speak for yourself.’

Ben went on, ‘And you also proved to me that you wouldn’t survive in that environment. This is not your world, Jude. It’s my world and I know what makes it go round and round. So listen to me.’

‘We’re going to put them in the lifeboat,’ Jude insisted. ‘It’s the only way that we can get rid of them without losing our humanity. We’ll make sure they have enough fuel and supplies to make it back to the Somali coast.’

‘So they can reorganise themselves and come right back after us with double the forces?’ Ben said. ‘It’s a mistake.’

‘It’s my decision,’ Jude said. ‘It’s the right thing to do. Everyone agreed?’

‘I’m getting too old for this shit,’ Gerber said, shaking his head resignedly. ‘I’ve seen enough blood for one day. Let’s do what the young fella says and get shot of ’em, and be done with it.’

‘Whatever, man,’ Condor said. ‘I ain’t up for no killin’.’

‘Not in cold blood, anyway,’ Tuesday said. ‘Seems like this is the best option.’

‘Don’t look at me, boys,’ Jeff said. ‘I’m just a dyed-in-the-wool heartless killing machine.’

Ben held back from saying more. He’d said too much already.

‘Then it’s agreed,’ Jude said. ‘The lifeboat it is.’

It had been many, many years since shipwrecked crews had been forced to take their chances at sea in open rowing boats. The
Andromeda
was equipped with a modern MOB, or Man Overboard rescue vessel, a bright orange fibreglass craft some eighteen feet long, with an outboard engine and basic bench seating inside for a whole crew, as well as internal storage space for spare fuel and supplies. Jude had always thought it looked like the submersible Thunderbird 4 from the old TV series. The MOB hung forty feet above the sea from external mountings on A Deck. To release it from its cradle it had to be winched up a few feet, then swung out clear of the ship’s side and lowered down on cables using the davit, a small crane used for hoisting materials up and down from the water.

Which was a straightforward enough operation in still and clement conditions. In the middle of a howling tropical storm, it was anything but. The wind was blasting them so ferociously that it was hard to stand up on deck without clinging onto something solid for support. A murky midday had become an even more cloud-laden afternoon, with visibility reduced to almost zero by the time Ben and Jeff had finished loading up the extra water, provisions and fuel that Khosa and his men would need to make it back to the coast.

Next, the prisoners were marched laboriously up from the hold and lined up on the bucking, rolling deck, drenched with rain and spray and closely watched at gunpoint by Tuesday while Ben and Jeff ushered them one at a time into the bright orange craft. One of the men was selected as its pilot and Ben, communicating with him in Swahili, talked him through the basic controls. Jude stood a few feet away, watching.

Khosa was the last to board the lifeboat. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Jude the entire time, and they were filled with a crazy fire that made the back of Jude’s neck tingle. The African’s horribly scarred face twisted into a leer of hatred mixed with triumph. His cheek and brow were swollen and crusted with dried blood. One or two extra scars to add to his collection.

‘You will see me again soon, White Meat,’ he told Jude as Ben grabbed his arm and shoved him into the boat.

‘Not if we see you first, sunshine,’ Jeff said.

Ben slammed the hatch and activated the winding gear to crank the MOB off its cradle. The winch took up the slack in the cables. They released the catches holding the craft to its moorings. Then the davit swung the lifeboat outwards from the deck. It dangled, rocking in the gale, before the pulleys began to turn and the swaying craft descended to the water. Once it was floating on the surface, Ben yanked the lever to detach the MOB at the other end, and set the winch into reverse to spool the empty cable back up the ship’s side.

In the name of human compassion, the ship was now minus its only lifeboat.

They leaned over the rail and watched as the MOB tossed and bobbed like a rubber duck on the waves. Its outboard motor burbled and churned foam. In minutes, the ship was cleaving away and leaving it behind as it struggled away in the opposite direction, just a tiny orange blob in the midst of the vast, dark, boiling ocean. Ben thought he saw a wild-eyed monstrous face staring up at them from one of the lifeboat’s little porthole windows. He might have imagined it, but it was an image that he wasn’t able to shake from his mind for a long time afterwards.

‘Well, that’s that,’ Jeff yelled over the wind as they headed indoors to dry off.

And that could have been that. But it wasn’t.