below her. She was strong and shimmied down fearlessly.
Stratton didn’t wait for her to reach the water before starting down. ‘Follow me,’ he said as he slid into the water and swam away at an angle towards the beach.
She swam close behind him.
He scanned the beach as they closed on it, in particular the fire. He could see the Somalis still gathered there, smoking as they sat around the flames. They didn’t look like they had recently found a throttled buddy.
The waves had got bigger in the short time they had been aboard the
The waves crashed heavily on to the beach. Stratton swam hard to pull himself through the surf. With metres to go, he lowered his feet and touched the sand. A swell raised him up and he floated in on it. The sea dumped him on to the sand and he crawled further up the incline on his belly. The water receded, leaving him high and dry. The next wave deposited the girl, who rolled on past him.
He looked at the men, and then he got up. ‘Come on,’ he said, grabbing her shoulder and dragging her to her feet.
They ran through the flood of ship lights up the beach until they reached darkness. They dropped on their knees to the sand and looked about them again. Then they moved stealthily towards the beachfront homes. A few had wood fires going inside or kerosene lamps. Several bright electrical lights shone somewhere in the town. They could hear the buzz of small petrol-driven generators.
Stratton saw movement between some houses and went to ground. Several people, a family perhaps, hanging around in the street. The wind toyed with their wet clothes as they knelt to watch and listen. It was late in the evening but not everyone went to bed with the setting of the sun. The air had cooled but there was far too much to think about for them to feel the cold.
‘Where are the rest of the missiles?’ Stratton asked in a low voice.
The girl looked at him, surprised, not so much by the content of his question but its timing.
‘If something happens to you, I need to know,’ he said.
‘If I tell you, perhaps you’ll let something happen to me.’
Her answer amused him. She was certainly used to devious company. ‘At least tell me if they’re close to here or miles away in another part of the country.’
‘They’re close. A few kilometres from here.’
‘How can you be so sure they’re still there?’
‘I’m not,’ she said.
That was not what he wanted to hear.
She sighed. Then she said, ‘It was Lotto’s men who hijacked the ship carrying the rockets. He did it for the Muslim fighters. That was a month ago. He is being well paid for his services. I suspect they intend to send many more of the missiles abroad. If that is so then they will still be close by.’
Stratton hoped she was right. ‘The drugs are his payment?’
‘Yes. Al-Shabaab pays him with heroin from Afghanistan.’
‘Do you think this is a new arrangement – between the pirates and the jihadists – drugs for their help?’
‘I don’t know. I think Lotto has been using hijacked ships to move drugs into other countries for several years. If it worked for drugs, it would work for weapons.’
Stratton found it disturbing. The jihadists could use the system to move practically anything they liked right under the noses of Western authorities. And they wouldn’t know a thing about it. Today, portable ground-to-air missiles. Tomorrow, biological weapons, dirty bombs. Even nuclear components and devices.
‘We have to stop those weapons from reaching their destinations,’ he muttered, more to himself. ‘I don’t suppose you know how many ships have already left here with missiles hidden on board?’
‘I only just discovered it today. Like you. It wouldn’t be difficult to find every ship that has been released from here since the weapons arrived.’
‘It will be if no one but us on our side knows about it.’ Stratton took a look at her as another thought came to him. ‘How were you supposed to communicate your findings back to your people?’
She took her time answering. ‘I was not completely truthful with you,’ she said. ‘Like you, we weren’t actually supposed to get captured.’
Stratton frowned at her.
‘We were supposed to make landfall and hide equipment we had on the boat. That included a satellite phone. One of Lotto’s boats saw us before we could get to shore. We dumped it all over the side. They would have taken it anyway and we wanted to look like simple sailors.’
‘What was supposed to happen after you reported you’d found the missiles?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t need to know, so I wasn’t told.’
Stratton thought about the Saudi again. Perhaps Sabarak had something to do with the weapons being moved from Indonesia. ‘Let’s get going,’ he said.
They covered the short distance to the first hut and then walked carefully up the street, hugging the houses. They criss-crossed through the town between the squat hovels until they reached the back of the prison hut. Stratton took a moment to study the window opening. ‘I’ll get my partner and we’ll get out of here,’ he said.
He jumped up and pulled himself into the opening enough to look inside.
He saw the prisoners lying on the floor. He saw Hopper in the darkness.
‘Hopper?’ Stratton said as loud as he dared.
Hopper didn’t move. Stratton climbed through the window as silently as he could and lowered himself to the floor. He crouched beside Hopper and rolled him on to his back. Hopper’s mouth had been taped over and his hands tied even more securely than before. A Somali who was lying on the floor across the room jumped up and shouted and aimed a rifle at Stratton. Another close by leaped to his feet brandishing a long blade.
The door burst open and more guards holding kerosene lights and weapons stomped in. The other prisoners parted before them, quickly back against the walls. Lotto walked in, swivelling his cane in his hand. He stopped in front of Stratton. The man reeked of perfume, which overpowered the smell of the kerosene.
Lotto said something in his native tongue. A pause, then Sabarak stepped into the doorway.
‘You were right,’ Lotto said to the Saudi. ‘He did come back for his friend.’
A Somali appeared in the windowless opening and said something. The leader nodded. The guard dropped out of sight.
‘Where have you and the girl been?’ Lotto asked.
Stratton had an urge to be flippant but he had seen Lotto’s quick temper. He decided it was unwise to rile the leader. ‘We were looking for a boat,’ he said. ‘We came back for our friends.’
‘You know the punishment for trying to escape,’ Lotto said. He barked a command and left the room. Sabarak followed him.
The guards had become much more hostile and two man -handled Stratton to the door, shoving him through it violently. Four others went to the injured Chinese man and Hopper and brutally hauled them to their feet. The Chinese man cried out but the Somalis showed no sympathy for his discomfort.
As Stratton stepped outside he saw the girl being pushed out of the gap between the buildings and falling to the ground, landing at Lotto’s feet. The pirate chief ignored her.
Stratton eyed Sabarak, who was standing between four hard-faced fighters. All sported long beards and looked like clones of the passenger of the truck who had delivered the missiles to the port. They were heavily armed with AK-47s, spare magazines in pouches and long machetes dangling from their leather belts. They stared aggressively at the two Englishmen like they wanted to eat their hearts there and then.
Sabarak smiled thinly at Stratton. ‘Now the tables have fully turned,’ he said.
Lotto shouted an order and a couple of his men grabbed Stratton’s arms and pulled them tightly behind his back, then securely fastened them together with nylon fishing line. One of the guards found the knife tucked into Stratton’s waistband and withdrew it. He recognised it instantly and said something to his leader.
‘Where’s the man who’s knife this is?’ Lotto asked Stratton. ‘He is not the only one who has gone missing tonight.’
Stratton could see little point in lying. The bodies would be found as soon as it was light anyway. ‘They came looking for revenge for our fight on the beach. They also wanted the girl. You can find them behind the building. I’m
