Golden Serpent

CHAPTER 36

Mac and Paul jogged down the forested knoll in the centre of Brani and into the vast boulevards of the terminal, where container stacks took the place of buildings. Mac had lost the thread on Golden Serpent , wanted to get a closer look before he decided what to do.

‘Mate, Port Master is letting them go,’ Paul panted, putting his hand up to his ear.

‘Who?’ said Mac.

‘Ships, mate. Weenie says the Port Master just cleared a bunch of ships to leave, they’ve been threatening legal action.’

Mac kept hauling.

‘How they going to get out without tugs?’ asked Paul.

Mac thought back to the way those seamen looked on Hokkaido Spirit .

‘Mate, they’ll fi nd a way, believe me. They’ve all got bow-thrusters.’

They kept good pace. The wet frog gear dripped down Mac’s back, blending with the sweat.

They stood panting, hiding beside a stack of containers. Humidity was getting up. They shared a bottle of water.

Before them stood an eighty-metre stretch of concrete apron. Big rail lines sat lengthwise in the apron and the enormous portainers that ran along the rails sat idle. Across the channel behind Keppel Terminal was the city and the leafi er residential areas of the city-state.

Garrison and Sabaya had picked a good spot to blow the VX.

Paul worked the radio with Weenie. ‘Mate, can we get anything from the Americans? Yeah I know, mate, but…’

Mac looked through the Leicas. Scanned the Golden Serpent. No movement.

He held on the bridge as long as he could without getting eye-strain. The windows on the bridge were tinted so that the brighter the sun, the darker they got. He couldn’t say there was no movement. But he couldn’t see anything that would count for people either. He had no confi rmation that they were on the bridge.

They needed confi rmation on whether the hijackers were even on the ship.

Further down the Keppel quay two ships cast off, their bow-thrusters boiling, pushing them out from the container terminal.

Another ship was already making way up the channel and was about two minutes away from Golden Serpent.

Paul and Mac looked at one another. Neither of them wanted to be frogging across that channel with some of these three-hundred-metre giants in a race to get out of town.

‘What’s Weenie up to?’ asked Mac.

‘Been watching CNN. Reckons the place is in lockdown. Changi’s shut, railway stations closed down. Only things open are the causeways into Malaysia, which are packed. Total panic. Media’s not reporting what the stuff is but the assumption is that it’s serious.’

‘How’s that?’

‘An amateur grabbed footage of the US Army in their bio-hazards.

CNN were running it for a while, but it’s stopped. Government probably asked them to take it off.’

Mac nodded but something felt wrong. ‘Isn’t it time you got on to your military attache people? They got us into this game. They’re a part of the coalition, aren’t they?’

‘I don’t know if our people are down there. But you know what happens when the Yanks turn up. They control all outbound comms.

It’s their protocol, you know, because of the Nokia detonators.’

Mac hadn’t worked with the Americans at this sort of police-action level, but he’d heard they jammed all comms other than frequencies they approved to prevent the two most obvious ways a bomber detonated an IED: by Nokia phone or a simple radio switch.

Bombers could also use on-site detonation – made famous by suicide bombers – or a timer. If you wanted to make it really diffi cult, you put in a chemical tilt-switch which closed the detonator circuit when someone messed with the IED.

The Americans didn’t jam frequencies so they could show off.

They did it so bombers didn’t lure law enforcement and military on site and then detonate something right under the Emergency Operations Centre.

Mac did a three-sixty, put his hands on his hips, walked out onto the apron. Kept walking, down to the waterside. The helos had dispersed: one to the north, one to the south.

Paul stuck his head out from their hiding place beside the container stack. ‘Oi! What the fuck are you about?’

Mac stopped and turned. The frogman kit dripped down his left hip. ‘Come on.’

‘Sabaya said no one is to approach the ship. Aren’t we stealthing?’

Paul shouted.

‘Mate, they’re not on that ship.’

‘How do we know that?’

‘Because they’re too smart and whatever else they want, it has nothing to do with blowing themselves up on CNN.’

Paul walked out onto the apron, looking around, and stopped near Mac.

‘Just worked this out?’ he asked.

‘Been gnawing at me. You know.’

‘They’re not the vest types?’

Mac smiled. ‘I was thinking about what that much CL-20 could do to that ship. Those blokes have no intention of going down with it. And they can’t detonate remotely, not with the Yanks jamming the frequencies up.’

‘So how are they doing this?’ said Paul.

‘The same way they did Minky and the manager of the MPS store.’

‘Hostage?’

‘Or threat of it,’ said Mac. ‘You worked for Sabaya. Think it through, how would he be handling this?’

Paul looked to the horizon. ‘He’d have the captain and the XO really scared. Shitting themselves. They’d be reading from a song sheet.’

‘Literally.’

‘Well, yeah. Don’t you reckon?’

‘Yeah,’ said Mac. ‘I think you’re right. They’re shit scared and they have a script they’re reading from. They’re making their calls at the intervals Sabaya instructed. And Sabaya is listening in.’

‘How’s he doing that?’

‘Reckon he’s changed the settings on the Universal AIS.’

‘The what?’

‘The Universal Automatic Identifi cation System. It broadcasts a whole list of information to all other ships all the time. Helps them calculate time to collision, that sort of thing.’

‘What are these guys doing with it?’

Mac thought about it. ‘I think Golden Serpent ‘s AIS is broadcasting a whole lot of info that Sabaya input. I think these other ships know exactly what’s on board because it’s coming up on their screens.

Sabaya wanted a stampede. He wanted it in the world’s busiest port,’ he said, pointing at the channel where fi ve ships were now vying for exit room. ‘And he’s got it.’

‘So how is Sabaya hearing the captain do his thing?’

‘The AIS is broadcasting from the bridge, Sabaya just opened the mics. It’s on the maritime VHF band and Sabaya is betting it’s one of the few frequencies the Americans would never shut down. Sabaya’s listening from somewhere and he’s running a watch on the poor bastards who are reading this stuff.’

Paul walked around in front of him, sceptical. ‘You heard that message from Sabaya. He warned about approaching the ship, said he’d blow it if we came anywhere near.’

‘He knows the Yanks have shut down the airwaves, so he can’t detonate remotely. So it’s either on a timer or it’s a hoax,’ said Mac.

‘What I don’t want happening is the media seeing us. If Sabaya’s got hostages, that’s when they die.’

Paul accepted the argument. ‘If Sabaya and Garrison aren’t on the ship, where are they?’

‘Dunno. But I know how we can fi nd out.’

They found an MPA tender craft moored two-thirds of the way down the Brani Terminal quay. It was a thirty-fi ve-foot rigid infl atable design with a small, functional cabin at the front. Paul found the key fi rst time, under the cushion on the skipper’s chair. He fi red up the two Evinrudes, pushed the throttles forward and banked the craft round as it struggled to get up on a plane. They had their rebreathers strapped to their chests, over the ovies. The dual corrugated rubber hoses fell away over the front of the breathing bags. It wasn’t as good as a bio-hazard suit, but it might just save their lives in a scrape.

They motored straight towards the port side of Golden Serpent. Mac was pretty sure that if Sabaya and Garrison were not on board, the crew would be relieved to see them. The problem was going to be ensuring that Sabaya was not listening in, that the place wasn’t bugged and that there were no Sabaya-friendly crew on lookout. Paul and Mac also had to make sure they didn’t show up on CNN because Sabaya and Garrison would be watching. The bomb was another matter. It was obviously on a timer, but neither of them wanted to dwell on that.

Midway across the channel Paul keyed the radio again to speak with Weenie. But the connection had gone. They’d moved into the jammed airspace and for the rest of the mission they’d be operating unsupported. They came alongside the huge ship. Helos thromped somewhere but were still standing off. Mac couldn’t see them. Paul cut the engines and they drifted until they touched, then he put a pole out, pushing off slightly to stop a thunk. As the tender wallowed, Paul pulled an eleven-millimetre grappling rope from his backpack. The line was thin brushed nylon with a small, heavy three-point hook on the end.

Mac looked up, doubted they had enough rope, doubted he had the ticker for this climb. The last time he’d done something like this he was in his twenties and now he was closer to forty than thirty. Still, there was no way he was going to whine about his wrist. Paul’s face was still a mess and he hadn’t heard a peep out of the bloke.

Paul couldn’t get a bite on the hook, so Mac had a crack and got it over the railing on the third go. It seemed to be a solid hold, but you never really knew about these things until you were halfway up the wall. They pulled on black fi ngerless gloves and Mac wiped the soles of his Hi-Tec Magnums by rubbing each on the opposite ovie leg.

He made a trial squeeze on the rope and the wrist didn’t feel too bad but he reckoned he had about forty seconds to do the business before he ran out of gas. It could be a wet ending.

Mac swung to the side of Golden Serpent, letting his knees bend as he hit painted steel. He felt his arms and wrists take the weight through his back, and he consciously kept his feet soft. Then he started to climb, right hand over left, small steps, trying to get the weight pushing out and letting the knees do the bending.

Two-thirds into it his arms started to lock out. His normal workout regime revolved around the boxing bag, and that kind of fi tness was pretty hopeless for a rope climb. He groaned it out, trying to relax the crook of the arms slightly. But he slipped back down the rope.

He got his feet on the steel again and pushed out, his arms and stomach crying out for respite. He started up again. Got to four-fi fths, and the arms were totally locking out at the elbows. Like the forearms and biceps had set solid and would never open again, and as he hissed through the agony his arms went into a full cramp. He gritted, mumbled, blew spittle and turned the word fuck into a very simple but long prayer.

He ground it out: three steps to go, two steps, one step. His mantra became the Royal Marines’ combat course instruction: Don’t let go of the rope until you’re over the edge.

But he was in too much pain, his arms needed rest and he reached out for the bottom rung of the railing in front of him. Like a whisper of hope.

He wasn’t past the edge.

In an instant, his legs fell out from under him, his rebreather on his chest bouncing him off the ship’s side so he was stretched out to a full traction position, his hands locking around that bottom railing.

Flying like a fl ag.

From the corner of his eye he saw the rope go taut again. Paul’s turn. Mac swung his legs side to side, then threw his right leg upward, catching a toe on the deck. Dragging his knee up, he pulled himself up to the iron bulwark, rebreather getting in the way, and willed himself over the railing.

He fell in a heap, caught his breath on his knees. Felt sweat dripping beneath the rebreather unit. Looked around. No one having a nosey-poke. Reaching into the side fl ap of his ovies, he pulled out the Heckler, checked for load, checked the breech, ejected the magazine, double-checked.

Mac looked at the decks above him. Still no movement from the bridge and no security detail like you’d expect if Sabaya was around the shop.

Paul came over the side. Collapsed with a groan. ‘Too old for this shit.’

They crouched there, got their breathing under control, got circulation back in their arms and hands. Paul pulled out his SIG, checked for load, checked the mag.

They’d landed almost directly below the bridge wings and were probably in the best place on the ship not to be seen.

They moved to the hatchway door that would lead into the deckhouse where they discarded their rebreathers. If the VX blew, it would wipe the ship out anyway.

After jiggling their ovies to check for change or keys, Mac took three strides to the hatchway door. Turned the lever handle.

Pushed in.