Star of Africa

Chapter 27

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.