Stratton opened the door fully. ‘Give me one minute.’
As the operative closed the door behind him it aroused Rowena’s suspicions once again. ‘Have you considered the possibility that he’ll simply tell the helicopter crew what we’re doing and bring this to an end?’ she said.
‘Don’t you believe him?’ Jason asked.
‘Does he need us to achieve his mission?’ she wondered.
‘I think he needs us - for the initial stage, at least.’
‘Want to bet he doesn’t plan on taking us all the way to the platform, though?’
Jason opened the door enough to let the noise back in and saw Stratton walk up the steps of the helipad and out of view. ‘We’ll have to watch him.’
With the rotors unengaged only the hot exhaust from the engines bothered Stratton as he entered the Chinook. The relatively spacious cabin had a line of hammock seats halfway down one side, while on the other dozens of various-sized plastic moulded boxes were lashed to rings on the bulkhead. Taking up most of the centre of the floor was a reinforced fibreglass SBS mini-submarine that looked like a fat and stubby black cigar, rounded at the front like a revolver bullet. The propeller, at the rear, sat inside a housing designed to protect a diver from swimming into it. Directly behind the nose was the open cockpit with seats for pilot and navigator. A compartment behind that, separated from the cockpit by a grille, was just about large enough to accommodate four people. The craft had breathing umbilicals attached along the inside of the bulkhead with nozzles for six divers. With no doors in the cabin or cockpit, just gaps where the crew climbed in and out, the sub was termed a ‘wet ride’: it flooded fully when it was underwater.
As soon as Stratton saw the sub he had a fairly good idea what the SBS plan was. In the cockpit the pilots and the crewman were in a discussion about something. Stratton put down his bags, reached inside and tapped the crewman on the back.
The man looked around and broke into a broad grin on seeing the face he instantly recognised. ‘Stratton. What’re you doin’ ’ere?’ he asked, immediately wondering why he was wearing a firesuit.
‘How’s it going, George? You well?’
‘Not bad. Not bad. Chaz didn’t mention we were picking you up.’
‘Who’re the drivers?’ Stratton asked, trying to get a look at the faces inside the helmets worn by the two guys sitting with their backs to him.
‘Charles and Steve,’ George said, tapping both men on the shoulders and indicating the new visitor.
Charles, the pilot, smiled a hello on seeing Stratton and Steve gave him a wave. ‘What are you doing here?’ Charles shouted.
‘Complicated story,’ Stratton said.
‘Got a comms problem,’ the pilot continued. ‘We were in the middle of a sitrep from ops when everything shut down.’
‘Can you fix it?’
‘It’s not us. I’m certain of that.’
‘Maybe it’s this complex.They have a lot of security here. Haven’t you spoken to ops at all?’
‘Told them we arrived.’
‘Did they mention our situation?’
Charles shook his head. Stratton got a little closer. ‘There’s been a security breach inside the complex. One of the team tripped a lockdown.’
The pilot’s gaze moved to look beyond Stratton at the bunch of new faces outside, all wearing firesuits and carrying kitbags. ‘Who are they?’
Stratton glanced over his shoulder to see Jason and the others. ‘What I thought you’d already know by now. Chaz and the others are stuck in a security vault for the next twenty-four hours. They took something into the complex that tripped the lockdown. London has given us the okay to continue with the task. These guys are up to it. Luckily enough I happened to be here.’
The pilot looked from his own crew to the newcomers. It was definitely an odd situation. ‘I need to confirm this with ops.’
‘Of course,’ Stratton agreed.
‘But I don’t have any comms,’ he reminded Stratton.
Stratton needed to help him along. ‘We can’t jeopardise the task,’ he shouted above the noise of the Chinook’s engines. ‘I suggest we get airborne, see if your comms clear, then confirm it with ops.’
The pilot agreed. ‘Get them on board and I’ll wind us up.’
Stratton waved Jason aboard and the team filed into the cabin.
The entire crew gave Rowena a double take and George looked approvingly at Stratton.
Stratton moved his lips close to the crewman’s ear. ‘Careful, George, you’re just her type.’
George suspected that Stratton was joking but a part of him hoped it could be true. Smiling, he faced the team as the engine noise increased and he indicated for them to sit in the seats. ‘Buckle up!’ he shouted and mimicked buckling the seat belts.
They felt at their sides for the belts. George was on his knees and in front of Rowena like a shot. He slid his hands past her thighs in order to retrieve the straps from beneath the thin nylon seat. She watched him but George was too thick-skinned to read her disdain. He went as far as to buckle it up for her.
‘I’ve never seen a strap tighten that small before,’ he said, raising his eyebrows and grinning.
Her look froze even further.
George stood up and took a step back. He walked around the mini-sub where Stratton was checking the boxes for the equipment they contained. ‘Does she always look like that?’
Stratton glanced over at her. ‘Yes,’ he said.
George took it to mean nothing but then was unsure. He moved away to prepare the chopper for lift-off.
Stratton lifted a silenced H&K sub-machine gun out of a box to inspect it. The helicopter shuddered as it ascended. He looked through a porthole at the shrinking old compound. They’d done it. Now how the hell were they going to get to the coast, never mind get into the water?
8
The sumptuous penthouse offices of Arcom Oil looked out on a partially constructed cityscape: a forest of cranes and beyond them a sea of sand. Inside the spacious suite furnished with an unsubtle blend of expensive Arabian and Western fixtures sat four men, two of them Arab, two Eastern European.
The two Russians were both large and overweight, one of them was bald. One of the Arabs wore traditional if rather expensive Bedouin garb. His skinny companion wore a fine-quality Western suit. All four men were sunk into deep, comfortable leather chairs. The Arabs had cups of tea on small tables in front of them. The Russians had large glasses partially filled with ice on a single table between them, on which also rested an ice bucket that had a bottle of vodka pressed into the snowy shavings.
Two beautiful and busty young women in revealing evening wear sat on high stools at a bar at the far end of the room. They were talking quietly and comparing their nails.
The bald Russian looked at the face of the gold and diamondstudded watch he wore. But he seemed neither bored nor restless despite the lack of conversation. He leaned his heavy frame forward, reached for the bottle of vodka and filled a glass. He said something quietly in his native tongue to his colleague who nodded. The bald Russian filled his colleague’s glass. They took a stiff drink under blank but somehow still disapproving gazes from the two Arabs and sat back, exhaling deeply with the effort.
A door opened and a well-groomed Arab in a smart Western suit walked in. It was Mr Kaan, Arcom’s crisis manager, carrying a phone, which he held in front of him as if it were a chalice filled with God’s blood. The skinny Arab snapped his fingers several times in the direction of the girls. After several sharp ‘tsks’ from the man the girls stopped talking, slid off their chairs and sashayed out of the room. Kaan placed the phone in a cradle on a desk, adjusted a speaker box attached to it, and touched a button. ‘You can go ahead,’ he said loudly. ‘Say what you have to say.’
‘The people from MI16 are on their way to the Morpheus,’ a man’s voice crackled.
