CHAPTER 41
T he 1800-ton ocean-going tug, the Montgomery, and her sister tugs, the Wavell and the Winston Churchill rode uneasily on the restless harbour swell that alternately pushed and pulled at the United Towage Company berths in the capital of Liberia. The thick mooring ropes strained and creaked against the rusted bollards on the broken concrete of the dimly lit, dilapidated main wharf in the Freeport of Monrovia. Low asbestos warehouses, holes in the roofs, garish green paint peeling from their sides, stretched the length of the 600-metre pier. Halfway down the pier the wreck of a small 5000-ton container ship lay on its side. It had been there for over three years and rusted containers were still half submerged on the decks and in the holds, the result of a disastrous miscalculation on ballast. Like the piles of rotting rubbish in the main streets of the city, the Port of Monrovia was a symbol of more than a decade of civil war. For al-Qaeda, the location was perfect.
Below the decks of the Montgomery, Hani Bassnan, a wiry, wizened engineer of indeterminate age, was going through the start up procedures for the two huge, reconditioned Daihatsu diesel engines. The turquoise paint gleamed under the soft lights of the engine room. The massive diesels each put out 5000 horsepower to two enormous propellers that were encased in large nozzles beneath the hull. Rudders were now unnecessary. Protruding deep into the ocean, the propellers could swivel through 360 degrees in an instant. The engine room was spotless and packed with air and hydraulic hoses and a myriad of other pipes connected to heavy gearboxes, hydraulic pumps and steering. Towards the aft of the engine room, a small soundproof control room served as Hani’s office; a mass of warning and control lights quietly winking on the console. Further aft, a hydraulically controlled watertight steel door was open. Once they were underway the hydraulic door would be sealed. If the aft compartment housing the propeller units and the engine room were to flood the Montgomery would go straight to the bottom.
Hani checked the big sumps on the diesels. The oil was constantly circulated through a purifier and it looked clean. He opened the sea valves that provided the seawater cooling, then he checked the big steering pumps. Next he started one of two huge caterpillar generators, checked that the banks of compressed air cylinders were full, and disconnected the shore power. Satisfied, he moved back to his control room and pushed the ‘Start’ button for the starboard main engine. A burst of compressed air exploded into the number one cylinder and then into successive cylinders as each massive piston passed through top dead centre. The fuel-air mixture followed and the main engine burst into life, the big flywheel settling down to just under 100 revs per minute. Hani grinned to himself as he went through an identical procedure for the port engine, doubling the noise in the confines below decks. Hani had been around tugs for nearly fifty years and nothing gave him greater satisfaction, other than doing the will of Allah, than to be below decks among the diesel and the oil, the raw power pulsating beneath his feet.
On the bridge, nearly 18 metres above him, Captain Malik al-Falid was preparing to put to sea. In this cell, he knew how critical the tugs were to the success of the mission. He scanned the weather forecasts with an increasing sense of foreboding and glanced at the black gradations inside the brass casing of the barometer above his head – 980 hPa and falling. Beyond the breakwater lay two oceans, both of them renowned for angry mood swings.
Malik al-Falid had just turned 28 and was young for a tug captain. His dark face was pockmarked and his hair was black and curly. His alert brown eyes reflected a deep sadness that could never be eased, at least not in his lifetime. Malik glanced at the framed photograph that had a permanent place to the left of the depth sounder on the polished marine ply console. It was a photograph of his wife and two daughters aged four and five. It wouldn’t be long now and if Allah willed it he would be able to avenge their death at the hands of the hated secret police and their American allies. In just a few weeks he would join his wife and daughters in paradise.
As Malik al-Falid waited for the massive diesels below him to come up to operating temperature, he pulled open the chart drawer beneath the table on the starboard side of the wheelhouse and took out the chart for the approaches to the target city. It was highly unlikely that anyone in Monrovia would ever ask why he might have that particular chart, but just in case, the drawers held the charts of forty other major cities that an ocean-going tug might need at short notice. Malik had already committed this one to memory but somehow it gave him a sense of satisfaction to have the details of the infidel’s city out on the chart table, and he scanned it once again. The traffic in and out of the port was tightly regulated and the Jerusalem Bay would be restricted to an arrival through area Alpha to the north. Departures came out of the port through area Bravo. A new separation zone was marked on the chart between Alpha and Bravo, brought in because of a rivalry between incoming and outgoing vessels seeking to use the same set of navigation leads, and the port authorities had imposed a strict requirement for arriving ships to keep to the north of the leads at all times. Both he and the masters of the Wavell and the Jerusalem Bay would obey the regulations to the letter, and so would the Captain of the Ocean Venturer. He would have no choice. A pilot would board the big tanker at a point 4 miles due east from the lighthouse on the very edge of area Alpha. Malik traced the route they would take. The tanker would be allowed in first and once it reached the sea buoy inside the entrance, the pilot would turn the lumbering giant from area Alpha towards the Western channel, a channel that was 210 metres wide with a minimum depth of 13.7 metres at low water. The Jerusalem Bay would be next on the schedule. The authorities would log that the Montgomery and the Wavell were midway through an ocean voyage and that they were scheduled to visit for refueling. With a bit of luck, their arrival at the same time as the tanker and the Jerusalem Bay would be put down to coincidence. If Allah willed it, Malik mused, when the port authorities discovered that the Montgomery and the Wavell were no ordinary tugs, it would be too late.
Malik put the chart away leaving the chart table bare. There was no chart for the soundings of Monrovia Freeport. In a country like Liberia one had to depend on local knowledge. Taking hold of one of two radio microphones dangling from the roof of the wheelhouse, Malik acknowledged his engineer’s signal that control of the big diesels had been transferred to the bridge and he radioed the deckhands to cast off.
Malik grasped the two gleaming throttle levers in his left hand and the steering joystick in his right and expertly moved the big tug sideways away from the pier. Rather like the control stick in a modern jet fighter, the joystick spun the big enclosed propellers in any direction and the dial on the console enabled him to read the precise direction of thrust. Malik eased the big throttles forward and 10,000 horsepower of diesel throbbed into life. The massive steel bow on the Montgomery was protected by huge tractor tyres. It dipped and then rose on the swell of the inner harbour, parting the waters. The Wavell followed in her wake as they powered towards the gap between the two rocky breakwaters where, beyond the entrance, a stormy Atlantic was waiting. In the half light of the approaching dawn, Malik could make out a bank of dark clouds rolling down the coast of Africa from the north and he checked his watch: 4.30 a.m. The Jerusalem Bay would have left the waters of Sierra Leone about midnight but he calculated that she would still be a good 40 nautical miles to the north-west. This would be the last delivery of fertiliser they would need. Malik had no idea that thousands of kilometres away two other cells were already inside the targeted country, preparing for attacks that would be launched at the same time. He steadied himself as the Montgomery reached the breakwater and the bow rose alarmingly against the first of the Atlantic swells before it smashed back down in a cloud of spray. The foam crashed against the reinforced glass that encased the wheelhouse and the big wipers worked furiously to clear the excess water as the two tugs headed into the gathering storm.
CHAPTER 42
P rofessor Sayed took a seat beside Kate’s desk.
‘This is my resignation, Imran,’ Kate said, holding up a piece of paper, furious at what the Administration was up to and the deception of people like Wassenberg. Ever since his meeting with Curtis O’Connor, Imran had
