Stand By, Stand By

THIRTEEN

The SEAL team landed at a military airfield outside the old colonial town and port of Cartagena. The unmarked Herc which brought them from Florida touched down at 1600 local time, leaving them enough daylight for a quick scout round the port. As Tony later emphasized, they would normally have carried out a much more thorough reconnaissance, watching their target for several days to establish the routine on board and looking for weak spots; but this was a. fastball, and left no time for niceties.

DAS had laid on two nondescript vans to transport the team and their gear. They also provided a local liaison officer to brief Master Sergeant Al Layton, the team leader. The Colombian informed him that the ship was lying in berth No. 7 on No. 1 Pier, the western of the two main arms at the Terminal Maritimo on Manga Island, at the north side of the bay. The dock gates were guarded by regular police, and there was no chance of gaining access through them, but the ship could be seen from the south side of the bay. Al therefore had the team driven to an observation point on the southern shore.

Casual clothes did much to disguise the physiques of the eight team members. Al was twenty-six, and although of only medium height he was extremely powerful, with particular strength in his upper body. His colleagues were all much the same, built up by years of swimming, running and work in the gym. Had they all stripped off on the beach they would have started a riot.

The vans parked on the south-east side of the bay, on a stretch of the shore that nobody had yet got around to developing. Other vehicles were already scattered along it, so that the new arrivals attracted no attention, and Al’s guys were able to carry out covert observation without hindrance. The Old Town, out on the point beyond the harbour, did not interest them. Nor did the new, high-rise blocks in the smart suburb of Bocagrande, away to their left. They wasted no time looking at the tourist boats drifting in and out of the harbour as they plied to the coral reefs offshore. Their attention was focused exclusively on the Santa Maria.

The ship was a fair distance across the bay, but through binoculars and a 30-power telescope they were able to make out useful details. She was moored with her bow facing the bay and her starboard side to the quay, so that they were looking at her port bow. She was second in line on that side of the harbour, with other ships moored close up fore and aft. Her hull was black and her upperworks white, but showing rusty patches, and she was flying the Panamanian flag. She looked scruffy, at least twenty years old. As Al and his men watched, she was still being loaded; two tall dock cranes were swinging nets over her deck and lowering them into the forward hold. According to DAS information, her cargo was officially coffee, but almost certainly included cocaine, probably several tons of it. With a street value in the United States of $35,000 a kilo, the illicit element in her holds could well have been worth over a hundred million.

For the SEAL team, the position of the ship was ideal. From where they were, they could swim straight to her without coming close to any other vessel or the dockside. At their normal average speed of a hundred metres in three minutes, it would take them just under half an hour to cross the bay. They decided that their best access point was forward of the accommodation, and beside the third hold; the hatch-cover stood three or four feet proud of the deck, and would help conceal them as they came over the rail. Having sized things up, Al opted for a midnight departure; because she was still loading, it was clear that the Santa Maria wasn’t on the point of sailing, and if they reached her well after midnight there was a good chance that all the crew except the gangplank guard would be in their bunks.

During the interval, the team repaired to an empty warehouse which DAS had taken over. There they had plenty of room to lay their gear out and check it through. As usual, Al split his party into two four-man teams, A and B, each of two pairs. Team A would do the swim and place the device, with Team B in reserve, keeping a lookout and ready to go after them or stage a diversion, should the need arise.

By 2345 both teams were back on the dockside at their launch point, clad in their black Spandex wetsuits. Working in pairs, each man checking his buddy, they squeezed out all the excess air and breathed themselves down until the suits were clinging to their bodies. Over the neoprene suits went their ops waistcoats, loaded with weapons and ammunition. Each man had an MP 5 and three spare magazines, besides a Browning and two spare mags for that. The weapons had all been soaked in Silverspeed and thoroughly oiled; immersion in water would make no difference to them. For safety’s sake each man clipped his shooters to him with nylon lanyards and small karabiners.

Working with his buddy, Gus Ford, Al breathed down all his equipment to clear the air from it, then lashed a hooligan bar — an angled jemmy with a spike on one end — to the middle of Gus’s back. Each man checked the other off:

‘MP 5?’

‘Yep.’

‘Magazines?’

‘Three.’

‘Lanyard?’

‘Yep.’

‘Hooligan bar?’

‘Yep.’

‘Respirator?’

‘OK.’

Al was also carrying the transponder, sealed in polythene and attached by a lanyard to a ring on his waist. Normally, in salt water, he needed eight kilograms of extra weight to stop him bobbing on the surface. The transponder, together with its magnetic fastener, weighed one kilo, so he loaded one more kilo weight into a spare pocket. Finally the men pulled on their Drega rebreathing kits — cumbersome, heavy outfits incorporating mask, hood and oxygen bottle, that use a sealed circuit so that they let out no bubbles. Again each buddy checked his partner, then the supervisor said, ‘OK, guys. Go on gas.’

To purge his lungs of extra nitrogen, Al took three deep breaths of oxygen, in through the mouth, out through the nose. His mask misted up immediately, and he was uncomfortably aware that he had thirty ks of equipment slung round his neck. Even though he’d been diving for ten years, he still hated this moment. If he was going to get an O₂ hit, this was when it would come. He himself had never gone down with oxygen poisoning, but he’d seen other guys go into spasm and then arc back, rigid. The cure was plenty of fresh air, quickly — but the experience was one he could do without.

Once in the water, everything changed. He felt comfortable and secure in a world with which he was completely familiar. After one last check to make sure his three companions were ready he set off, swimming on a bearing of 305 degrees.

The night was very dark. There was no moon, and hazy cloud was blocking the starlight. The water of the bay lay still as black ink, with the distant lights of the harbour and the town reflected in it. For the first half of the journey Al judged it safe to remain on the surface. He swam gently, keeping well within his capabilities, and watching the compass, depth-gauge and timer on the swim board held out ahead of him.

After fifteen minutes, with the party out in the middle of the bay, an offshore breeze started up, putting a ripple on the water. Then Al heard a speedboat approaching from behind his left shoulder. It could have been narcos, running a consignment of drugs across from Bocagrande to one of the ships in the harbour. It could have been late-night revellers taking a short-cut home. Whatever, he was taking no chances, so he and the others dived — and the speedboat passed harmlessly above them.

Thereafter he swam at a depth of four metres, coming up at the end of every three minutes to check his position. At twenty-one minutes the harbour lights were much closer, but still it was impossible to tell which ship was which, and he had to rely on the compass bearing to keep him oriented. All the time Gus was one man’s length behind him, guided by the phosphorescence which Al’s passage through the water was creating. The other two followed at similar intervals behind.

At twenty-seven minutes he slowed, and when Gus came alongside he gave him one squeeze on the arm to indicate that he was surfacing for another observe. This time he found a big hulk of ship right in front of him, but he could tell by the outline of her bow against the sky that she was the first in the line. They had drifted slightly to the left of their target. The tide must have been going out faster than they’d expected. Sinking back, he gave Gus two squeezes to indicate that they were approaching the target, then swam on, heading right. Three minutes later he surfaced again. This time he was just off the bow of the Santa Maria. The big white letters of her name stood out boldly from the sweep of the black hull.

Diving again, he gave Gus three presses to tell him they’d arrived. Gus passed the message back to the other pair. All four men surfaced and swam gently to their right, observing from a distance. Apart from one light showing through an open doorway in the accommodation block, and one naked bulb dangling from a cargo derrick, the ship was dark.

Satisfied that their plan was good, Al swam in and clamped himself to the side with two magnets. Now he was close, a faint hum of generators told him that the ship was alive. There was also the usual background noise of water slapping gently against the hull. Four presses, passed back through the team, confirmed that they were at the entry point. Al pulled off his rebreathing kit and magneted it on to the side, out of the way, and the others did the same. If anything went wrong while they were on board, they could jump over the rail and recover the sets from this temporary storage. Peering up, Al was glad to see that the curve of the hull put them out of sight — and range — of anyone looking down.

It took Gus only a few seconds to assemble the telescopic pole which had travelled strapped to his back. As he fitted the lengths together, the No. 3 swimmer, Jack Ashby, was unrolling the thirty-foot kevlar ladder. Then, with two of the others holding him steady on short ropes, Gus swam out a few feet, hoisted the pole and hooked the ladder over the ship’s rail.

Al was the first up. His jungle boots made only faint scuffling sounds on the ship’s side. When his head reached deck level he paused, listening. Then with a quick scramble he was over the rail and against the hatch cover, Browning in hand. A moment later he holstered the pistol and brought his MP 5 to the ready. A tug on the ladder: two up. Another tug: three up. The fourth man, Sonny Mitchell, came up and took station to secure their entry point.

The other three moved cautiously aft, keeping in the deep shadows thrown by the single light high on the derrick. Al was thinking to himself, ‘Now we’ve got this far, why don’t we go in and rescue the hostage?’ The trouble was, they didn’t know which part of the ship the poor bastard was in — he could have been down in one of the holds — and in any case, he was bound to be guarded.

The night air was hot and moist. Inside his suit Al was sweating freely. Creeping aft, he came level with the start of the accommodation block. The first doorway stood open. Beyond it was a porthole, also open. Through it Al could hear the hiss of water moving through pipes. The john. Just the place, except that he wanted somewhere higher, on an upper deck. It was odds on that all the plumbing systems were stacked on top of each other.

A metal companionway led upwards. Leaving Jack to guard the base of it, Al and Gus went up. Another open doorway. Another porthole in a similar position. There was one more deck above them, but there was no more external companionway, and this was the highest they could go without penetrating into the heart of the accommodation.

Al pointed to the porthole and stuck up a thumb, meaning ‘This will do’. Gus stood guard with his MP 5 at the ready while he stepped carefully over the sill. The metal door of the john was ajar. He applied pressure very gently, in case it squeaked, but the hinges gave silently. With the door open, there was enough light for him to see all he needed: a cistern above the twin urinals on the outside bulkhead.

The metal lid was held in place by small bolts with wing-nuts on them, one at either end. The threads of the bolts had been painted over, and he couldn’t shift the nuts with finger and thumb. Pulling out a pair of pliers, he unclipped them from their lanyard, reached up, and got the nuts moving. In a few more seconds he had lifted off the metal lid and laid it carefully on the floor. Then he drew his knife from its sheath, slit the wrappings of the transponder, pulled out the pin to activate the device and held it firmly to prevent any sudden jerk as its powerful circular plate-magnet clamped itself to the underside of the lid. A moment later he had the lid back in position. It was fractionally tilted forward by the aerial wire leading out over the rim and propping the back up, but no Colombian seaman was going to notice that. He screwed the wing-nuts back down by hand, leaving the upper threads of the bolts bare of paint. Nothing he could do about that — but again, it was highly unlikely that anyone would notice so small a change. Providentially, a metal pipe ran up and down the bulkhead behind the cistern, giving him an ideal conductor. He wound the naked end of the wire round it, and pushed the rest of the coil down out of sight.

Out in the open again, he faced in the direction of the rear party, onshore across the bay, and turned on an infra-red torch, invisible to the naked eye, but instantly detectable to someone with the correct receiver. Seconds later a voice in his earpiece said, ‘OK, Al. We’re just going to check your signal strength with base. Stand by.’

He waited, thinking of the satellites passing overhead, and reflecting on how extraordinary it was that the little device he’d just stuck in the john could communicate with them. Then came the voice from the shore again. ‘OK, Al. They have you loud and clear. Signal strength six. That’s as good as you’re gonna get.’

He doused the torch and raised a thumb to Gus. The two of them checked each other in whispers:

‘Pliers?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Knife?’

‘Yeah.’

‘All screws back in position?’

‘Two screws back.’

Both knew full well that the slightest trace of their presence, the smallest alien object, could destroy the secrecy of their visit. Satisfied that all was well, they crept down the companionway to the main deck. Back at their entry point, they unhooked the ladder and secured it temporarily with long lines of paracord tied in slip-knots, which would fall away when pulled from below. Al saw the other three down, then went over the side. Two tugs on the cords brought the ladder splashing softly down on them. With their rebreathing kits back on, they sank away into the black depths of the harbour, and the Santa Maria bore no more trace of their entry than if she had been visited by a ghost.