ground and had the advantage. They could wait for him to come to them. It all depended on how professional and vigilant they were. If they had night-vision aids and accurate weaponry he’d be an easy target.
He made it to the next spider deck, a complex intertwining of horizontal spars that connected the four legs. Stratton paused to take a breather and a better look above. Each step brought him closer to the enemy and perhaps into the cleaner view of a sniper. He glanced down to see Binning not far below. There was movement beyond him - Jason and Rowena.
Stratton pulled himself up onto a wide span and moved along it to leave room for Binning to join him. Rowena and Jason had stopped on the level below and as prearranged would wait for Binning to secure the device and come back down.
The first operational deck came next, a dark enclosure of machinery, drilling and pumping apparatus, the humming from its engines and generators mingling with the sounds of the sea and wind. The squally rain continued to pelt them. The water ran down their faces and into their eyes and mouths as if they were looking straight into a shower head.
‘Is this high enough?’ Stratton asked.
‘This should do fine,’ Binning replied, looking around. ‘I’ll need to take a reading, though.’
‘You happy with the procedure from here?’ Stratton said.
‘Do you really need to go?’ Binning asked. ‘You’ve come this far and risked so much already.’
‘I’m not prepared to die for Jordan or for anyone. If I can’t get him, well, at least I will have tried. Get that kit in place, go down and join the others and get going,’ Stratton said. He pulled himself up.
Binning watched him go, then glanced below to see Jason and Rowena looking up at him. The black container was still attached to his harness but he made no attempt to remove it.
11
Stratton eased himself onto the gangway between several massive, noisy pumping machines and shale shakers and held the silenced SMG in his hands. It felt good to be standing on a wide floor and holding the gun. And to have got this far. He felt more confident now that he had not been watched. An ambush would have come long before he reached firm footing.
He checked the magazine pouch and the spare ammunition it held and moved forward, his rubber-soled neoprene lace-up boots practically silent on the metal flooring. After a brief pause at the foot of a narrow stairway at the end of the line of machines, he quickly made his way up the steps, crouching at the top to reduce his silhouette. Above the main machinery the area was sparsely lit, with shadows everywhere. Now he cherished the wind and rain as they whipped between the piles of equipment, finding the gaps and flapping loose tarps or lines, adding to the cacophony. He wiped his face and padded across an open section to a corner of the platform and another set of broader steps leading up to the living deck.
Stratton took the steps slowly at a slight crouch. He waited at the top. This deck was a congested area of accommodation: galley, hospital, laundry and utilities. He scanned around once again. In front of him a broad, exposed space led to an illuminated door to the accommodation block. Beams of light filtered by the griddle deck above bathed it in a yellow glow. If he walked across the space anyone who might be there would see him. Stratton chose to go around the outer edge, keeping in the shadows thrown by the bulky containers and smaller items of machinery.
He crept across the deck. He did not see the figure that stepped out a few metres behind him. Yet he heard them, even through the hum and whip of machinery and weather. Stratton’s highly tuned senses picked up the out- of-place noise which sounded like a small piece of metal rolling along the metal floor. He stopped, his senses suddenly screaming but at the same time warning him not to turn around just yet.
Pirate hadn’t seen the tiny bolt that he’d scuffed with the toe of his heavy boot. His stare had been fixed on the back of the figure he had seen coming up through the guts of the platform. He had moved back from his position as ordered. He hadn’t engaged anyone. Yet. But he couldn’t comprehend the figure’s presence. He wasn’t used to taking orders, or obeying any that he considered stupid. That was how he had become a commander. During the attack on a Russian ship in the Gulf of Aden a couple of years before, his boss, a man from his own village and like him a former fisherman, had ordered the men not to kill any hostages. Pirate knew the Russians to be dangerous but when he suggested they should shoot the first crewman as a warning to the others the commander chastised him.
When the Somali thugs scrambled on deck, Russian crewmen stepped out of the engine room with their empty hands held high. The pirates moved forward to capture them, signalling to the boats to come alongside. The ship was theirs. But then the Russian crewmen dropped to the floor and others carrying AK-47 assault rifles leaped from cover. Their bullets tore into the pirate ranks, cutting them down.
Further along from the fighting Pirate had climbed unseen onto the vessel. He fired his RPG at the ambushers, killing several, wounding others, and setting the ship alight. Those who could fell back into the superstructure. Pirate led the charge but this was no longer an attack for profit. It became a battle for revenge. He went through the vessel room by room, killing anyone he found. He shot the captain and officers on the bridge. He walked calmly into the communications shack to kill the radio operator.
Pirate never knew what happened to the ship, neither did he care, after abandoning it ablaze. The attack had been a waste of time and manpower. A resulting argument with his commander left the leader dead, a knife buried in his neck, the hilt firmly in Pirate’s hands. And for his efforts the others made him commander.
From that day on his pirate philosophy had been to kill first, capture later. But his command turned out to be short-lived. His methods were shunned by other pirate commanders as counterproductive and he was soon forced out of his position under threat of execution.
Such was the way of his world. One’s power rose and fell like the tide. Surviving was the only important thing. And so here he was again, forced to obey orders that he believed to be wrong. He had watched this man step past him carrying a gun and knew he was a threat not to be ignored. And so he decided to act. ‘Move one more step and I kill you,’ the African warned.
Stratton’s mind raced. The fact that he had not been shot already told him the man was not quite prepared to kill him yet, for whatever reason. That gave him a narrow margin in which to negotiate. ‘I’m not alone,’ he said, hoping to unnerve the man.
‘You will be when I shoot you,’ Pirate replied.
Stratton sensed the murderous confidence in the foreign voice immediately.
‘Put your gun down on the floor now or I put a bullet into the back of your head.’
‘Okay,’ Stratton said, trying to sound nervous. ‘Don’t shoot.’
As he leaned forward he used his thumb to click the selector catch on the weapon from single-shot to fully automatic and moved the barrel round so that it angled across his body instead of facing his front. With nothing to go by but the voice he estimated the man to be three or four metres behind him. The barrel of the weapon was now pointing at a head-height container forming a wall to his side. He angled the gun a little further back as he bent at the waist and lowered it to the floor. Before it touched the ground he pulled the trigger. The only sound that resulted was the click, click, clatter of the moving parts as the weapon shuddered in his grip and the bang of the bullets hitting the metal container. The silenced SMG fired low-velocity rounds: bigger bullets than the average high-powered rifle but slower and less penetrating. They couldn’t pierce the skin of the container, for instance. Stratton held on to the trigger and emptied the entire magazine, the rounds striking and then ricocheting off the metal wall like billiard balls. He turned to see the figure of a man, juddering as he fell, a gun slipping from his grip.
Stratton moved to the man to look down on him. He was alive but breathing in short, rasping breaths. Stratton checked around to ensure they were alone. He couldn’t leave the Somali in case he was discovered. There was too much more to be done. Under normal circumstances a follow-up team would take care of him, the details of such cases depending on the nature of the operation and its ability to absorb enemy prisoners. In most cases this would be zero. That certainly applied to Stratton’s current situation.
Stratton couldn’t get the man to the platform’s outer edge because of the deck configuration: he’d have to drag him around the container and machinery to do that and risk exposure. The only choice he had was a gap between the narrow gangway he had climbed and the edge of the deck. A more or less unobstructed line of sight
