‘I got a call one day.’
It was obvious that Stratton did not want to elaborate but Todd could not resist taking advantage of such a rare opportunity, standing beside a real operative who was actually responding somewhat to him. ‘You’re SF, I suppose.’ He immediately felt uncomfortable asking the question. Prying into an operative’s background was not advisable but he decided he had started so he was going to finish. ‘Paul and I reckon you’re SBS . . . only because this is a dive task and we know the SAS don’t really do water - nowhere near as serious as this.’
Since the briefing a week before Todd had spent many hours with Stratton, sorting out equipment and going over the plans and countless procedures.The man was not exactly a chatterbox.They talked about nothing outside of the operation. Todd accepted that Stratton was on a different level - way above his - had different friends, and moved in very different circles. Nevertheless he felt comfortable with him despite how little they appeared to have in common. Stratton didn’t make him feel inferior in the way so many other superior types in the SIS seemed to enjoy. Stratton made his underlings feel as if they were every bit as essential a part of the team, which of course they were. The point was, he made them
‘Sorry,’ he said, filling the silence after his question.
‘I get a bit carried away . . . Good luck, anyway.’
‘You’ll always need that . . . In fact, we might need a little right now,’ Stratton said, looking towards the wheelhouse. ‘Paul!’ he shouted, banging on the side of the small cabin.
Todd wondered what had triggered Stratton’s sudden concern and he peered into the rain-soaked blackness. He immediately saw the tiny lights breaking through the weather, a green and red one either side of a patch of white signifying it was a vessel of some kind, the red on the right-hand side indicating it was approaching.
Paul quickly stuck his head out of the bridge door to look ahead. ‘I had short-range on. It just came on screen. It’s big.’
‘Is the support barge showing yet?’ Stratton shouted.
‘Dead ahead - three hundred metres. What do we do?!’
Stratton looked ahead as he thought, gauging the wind and water. ‘Push over to port!’ he shouted back to Paul. ‘Make them follow us. Give it all you’ve got! They won’t be able to turn as close to the barge as we can because of the sub-sea cables. Make a chase of it!’
Paul turned the wheel, the bows coming about sluggishly against the swell.
‘Perimeter security?’ Todd asked.
‘Who else?’
‘Do you think they’ll shoot - if we don’t stop, I mean?’
‘We’re about to find out,’ Stratton said, squinting ahead. ‘There’s the barge,’ he said, gauging the distances between them, the barge and the security boat as its glowing wheelhouse became clearer.
Several lights came into view dead ahead followed by the outline of an enormous black rectangular box, like a square island, so large and heavy as to be unaffected by the swell.They were crossing the tide which was against the security vessel, thus improving their chances of getting to the barge first.
‘We’re aiming too close,’Todd said, alarm in his voice. ‘We’ll be pushed into it!’
Stratton did not appear concerned as he watched the security boat, still gauging the distances. He banged on the wheelhouse. ‘The anchor cables!’ he shouted.
‘I know!’ Paul replied. ‘I know what depth we have!’
Stratton was more or less confident that Paul knew what he was doing. He was a careful young man, inexperienced but nonetheless someone who paid close attention to detail. Stratton had checked the anchor-cable angles from the corners of the barge and expected Paul to have done the same, especially since he was the driver.
Paul swung the boat out at the last minute and steered a wide berth round the first corner of the barge. A large wave suddenly shoved them within feet of the massive structure but by that time they were past the submerged cable. The good news was that the security boat was now out of sight.
The barge was a welded and riveted rectangular mass of metal the size of a tennis court, an uninhabited automated service vessel for the prison, held in position by a series of cables anchored to the sea bed. It contained fuel, potable water, emergency oxygen supplies and back-up generators. A structure in the middle bristled with various types of communication antennae. Fixed atop a stubby gantry was a giro-stabilised satellite dish fighting to maintain its position.All the various pipes and conduits were channelled into a single umbilical cord over a metre in diameter that snaked down from the centre of the barge to the prison a hundred and fifty feet below.
The small fishing boat bobbed its way along the side of the barge, the top of which was several metres above Stratton’s head. As they closed on the next corner Paul pushed the bows out to avoid the mooring cable he knew went down at a steep angle. But a heavy swell reversed the manoeuvre and the boat heaved over towards the barge. Stratton grabbed up a pole and held it at the ready as Paul struggled to turn the vessel away from the barnacled steel wall.
‘We’re going to hit as we take the corner,’ Stratton called out.Todd searched around for anything he could use, found an old oar and hurried to Stratton’s side with it.
As the boat reached the corner it was slammed into the side of the barge.The gunwales cracked loudly, several pieces smashing off. Stratton and Todd did what they could to push the boat off but their efforts were hardly effective. The boat scraped along the barge as the nose went past the corner. Everyone’s thoughts went to the cable that was just below them.The wind and tide were running along the edge of the barge around the corner. As the midway point of the boat reached the corner of the barge the bows started to make the turn around it. It looked as if the boat was going to break in half but the stern suddenly pushed out to follow the corner around. As the stern approached where the cable was attached a huge swell lifted the boat up and completed its turn. The crunch of the propeller being ripped off by the cable never came and they shot down the side of the barge towards the next corner.
‘Was that luck or what?’ Todd shouted.
Stratton ignored him.They were going to need a lot more.
Running with the wind and tide did not make the steering any easier to control but Paul managed a wide sweep of the next corner before turning the bows tightly back in.They passed the corner and entered the leeward side of the barge where the wind was only half as strong and the sea was practically calm. Paul played the engines as he manoeuvred the boat to face the barge, holding position in the tide that was coming at them from beneath it.
Stratton was galvanised into action. He dropped the pole, removed his sou’wester and oilskins, looped the harness attached to a small diving tank over his back and quickly pulled on a pair of fins.
‘What if the security boat comes before you get back?’ Todd asked.
‘Get the bundle ready! Now!’ was Stratton’s response. He pulled on a face mask, picked up a karabiner attached to one end of the coiled nylon line fixed to the dive bag, clipped it to his belt and leapt overboard. Todd looked over the side into the swirling black water but Stratton was already gone, the line unwinding rapidly and zipping over the gunwales after him.
Paul stuck his head out of the wheelhouse door. ‘We’re not close enough yet!’
‘He’s already gone. Get into the barge!’Todd shouted as he hurried to the bundle.
Paul yanked himself back into the wheelhouse and powered the boat ahead. A thought struck him that if Stratton couldn’t beat the tide he might go under the boat and get chopped up by the prop. The thought no sooner entered his head when it was brushed aside. He had his job to do and Stratton had his own.
Stratton turned on a powerful small light attached to his mask and headed down to the bottom of the barge. As soon as he slipped beneath it the tide hit him like a wall and threatened to push him back. He battled against it, turning onto his back and at the same time jamming his fingers behind any barnacle or limpet to pull himself forward.
Approaching the umbilical from the leeward side was still the best option as far as keeping the fishing boat in
