In an instant the prop thrust him upwards and he burst to the surface, launched up into the wake. He spun in the wash, gasping for air, with something running across his body. It was the line, cutting into his life jacket, with the girl on the end of it hurtling towards him. The second before she collided with him he yanked the blade across it and she rolled to a stop face down, her arms and legs thrashing in desperation.
Stratton grabbed hold of her and yanked her over. She choked and spluttered as she fought to catch her breath, instinctively clutching at him as if she might go under again.
‘It’s OK,’ Stratton said. ‘It’s me. You’re OK.’
She regained her breath enough to look at him through feverishly blinking eyes.
But it wasn’t over. The back of the bulker was fast moving away. He thought he could see people on the stern and he waved in the hope that they gave a damn about who he and the girl were. As the carrier steamed away, Stratton continued to wave his arms at them.
The security guards had been stunned when the torpedo turned into a person, and then two.
‘Bleedin’ ’ell!’ one of them exclaimed. The comment seemed to satisfy the moment for them all.
‘Who the hell are they?’ another said.
‘They don’t look black,’ another offered. ‘Maybe they ain’t pirates.’
‘Man overboard!’ Bob shouted into his radio, keeping an eye on the pirate vessel. It had turned away and was still going full speed, its two speedboats alongside it. He knew it had been plastered by rounds and wasn’t surprised to see it withdraw.
One of the guards grabbed a life ring from a rail and tossed it as hard as he could off the back of the boat.
‘Launch a lifeboat,’ Bob shouted and a couple of his men hurried away. ‘Captain, this is Bob. You can slow the ship and cancel evasive manoeuvring. The pirates have had enough. We’ve got a couple of people in the water we need to pick up.’
‘Roger. Understood,’ the captain replied.
Bob and the remaining guards stared at the two people in the water who by then had become tiny specks.
‘I wonder who the bloody ’ell they are,’ one of them said.
It was what they were all thinking.
15
A steel, pyramid-shaped baggage cage, on the end of a heavy, twisted cable, rose up the side of the bulker as it cruised along at slow speed. The sun shone high in the sky, giving the ocean a deep and inviting look. A gentle breeze rounded off the tops of the waves that lapped against the huge orange-painted side of the vessel. Stratton and the girl stood on a narrow rim around the bottom of the basket hanging on to its rope surrounds as it ascended. The lifeboat that had rescued them rode the swell below, its two crewmen attaching the shackles to its ends before it would also be winched aboard.
The Chinese girl still felt in a daze. Once again she had been reprieved, having left her life in the hands of the ocean and been prepared to accept the inevitable. She experienced the same clarity of thought as she had after deciding against suicide before dawn that day. But this time it wouldn’t be a temporary reprieve. She was free of that living nightmare. The ship was large and powerful. It had electricity, engines, food and warmth. Civilised people operated it and had aimed it towards a civilised port that would connect her with her home. She could hardly believe it.
But the euphoria didn’t last long and even before she stepped on board, it had been replaced by a stark reality. Returning to her normal life also meant seeing through her responsibilities to the end. Because the only way she could have shirked her duties would have been to have died. While she had been faced with that possibility, she had forgotten them. So her reprieve was temporary after all. She had work to continue. She could never return to China if she failed to complete her task. Impossible. Before getting to Somalia she had considered running away to live somewhere else in the world. But those she worked for would not forgive that. They would find her, one day, eventually. She would then pay a terrible price. But worse still, if she did manage to escape, those she held dear to her heart would suffer in her place. Her family, back in China, would suffer the consequences.
She would rather die than let that happen.
The basket was winched aboard and lowered to the deck. Most of the twenty-five-man crew, a mixture of Western officers and Filipino hands, watched from some part of the bulker. The captain and bridge crew stood on the bridge wings. On the deck, waiting for the basket to descend, stood Bob and the rest of his boys, except the pair who had picked up Stratton and the girl. When they had radioed ahead that the two people were an English Caucasian man and a Chinese woman, the word had spread and everyone wanted to see for themselves.
Stratton and the girl stepped off the side of the basket as it hovered inches from the steel deck. They could practically hear the whispered questions about who they were and what they had been doing in the middle of the Gulf of Aden.
Among the crew there had been the usual round of the more obvious suppositions and explanations: they had fallen overboard; they had been in a small boat that had sunk; they had been in a plane crash. But no one could work out how they’d managed to be speeding through the water having somehow attached themselves to the cargo ship while being pursued by murderous Somalis. At this point the conspiracy theorists among the crew, and there were always several, had a field day. One suggested they were submariners who had ejected from their vessel. Yet the fact that one of them was a girl served to enhance the most popular theory: they were spies of some kind and more probably assassins. The lack of any vaguely intelligent explanation as to what they could have been spying on or who they intended to assassinate did not deter this theory. Even those who declared the whole idea preposterous couldn’t help being lured to it in the absence of anything else.
‘Thanks very much,’ Stratton said with a smile. He held out his hand. ‘John Stratton.’
‘Bob Haldon.’ A firm handshake. ‘Pleasure to meet you.’
There was an awkward pause. They both stood for a couple of seconds. Stratton knew what he needed from the man but he waited. There were some rather obvious bureaucratic requirements.
On seeing Stratton face to face Bob had lost some of his confidence in regard to the questions he wanted to ask. He would have had no problem asking anything of a stranger under normal circumstances. Bob could be very direct. The same would have applied if Stratton had been an ordinary bloke, despite his anything but ordinary arrival. But there was something very unordinary about the man standing in front of him, soaking wet and looking at him with bright-green, intelligent eyes. Bob had never had anything to do with special forces, but he knew one when he saw him, or at least thought he did. This bloke, with his long hair, had the bearing and stature of someone who dealt with extreme adventures of a military nature. Bob felt certain of it. And although he had sneered at the stories going around about the couple, he couldn’t think of any other explanation for such an outrageous arrival.
Bob had had time to think about and time to prepare a few questions. But after a glance at the girl, he realised something. ‘I expect you could both do with a drink and something to eat perhaps,’ he said.
‘A wet would be fantastic,’ Stratton said.
Bob gave his men a glance, like he had discovered something. ‘This way,’ he said, indicating one of his men to lead off.
The girl discarded her sweater and buoyancy aids. The security guys almost tripped over themselves to help her, fumbling with the oversized kit as she removed it. She smiled politely, which only caused an even greater quality of fumbling.
Stratton walked behind the leading guard towards the superstructure. Bob followed a few steps back, leaning close to one of the other security guards.
‘I’ve sussed him,’ Bob said. ‘He said he’d like a wet. That’s a naval term.’
‘He’s a sailor?’ the guard said. ‘You think he fell off one of the navy patrol ships.’
‘No, you twat. Does he look like a bloody sailor? He’s a boot-neck. A Marine. We say “wet” for a brew as well as the matelots.’
The line trooped into the superstructure and straight into the galley. But Bob paused outside and out of earshot of Stratton and the girl.
