Pirate

the men took their seats inside the cabin it peeled off and headed away low over the water.

Bob and the crew watched it disappear into the sunset. Stratton was living most of their fantasies.

‘I suppose you’ve been on board the Ocean before?’ Howel asked Stratton loudly over the noise of the engines. ‘The SBS have used it a lot over the years as an operations platform.’

‘I’ve been on board a few times before,’ Stratton said. He hadn’t been aboard it for several years, the last time off the coast of West Africa when he spent almost a week on it before a land operation.

The flight took less than half an hour but in that time the sun dropped beyond the horizon. The Ocean looked very much like a traditional aircraft carrier but it was a quarter of the size of the American supercarriers. Its island tower superstructure sat in the centre shoved over to one side to allow as much flat runway space as possible. A strobe light near the back end of the flight deck signalled the helicopter’s landing point. Stratton could make out half a dozen large helicopters in a line along the deck.

He stared at the carrier through the window. Memories of his time spent on board it flooded back. They hadn’t been particularly interesting ones. Life on a navy ship could be staid, especially when there were adventures to be had elsewhere in the world. He remembered the time the squadron had been waiting for some low-life criminals deep in the jungle along the Sierra Leone–Liberia border to negotiate the release of some British aid workers they had kidnapped. For some reason the kidnappers hadn’t made contact on the satellite phone they’d been given. A couple of less experienced members of the operations HQ supposed the criminals would be conscious of having their positions vectored as soon as they turned on the phone. Others, like Stratton, put their money on the idiots not being able to figure out how to use it. It turned out he was right but for the wrong reasons. Whoever had organised the phone hadn’t activated the pay-as-you-go sim card before sending it to the kidnappers. The card had been included in the package but the gangsters didn’t know its relevance. And so the operation dragged on for another week before Stratton and his team were allowed to swim ashore one night and move upriver until they found a position to lie up. They spent the following day watching the riverbank, where fresh human tracks came down to the water’s edge. Sure enough, a couple of gang members eventually turned up to collect water.

Stratton and his team tracked them back to their camp where it all ended bloodily for the rest of the gang, but that had been the intention of the message – we don’t pay ransoms but that doesn’t mean we don’t play the game. Stratton hadn’t gone back to the ship but took a helicopter to Sierra Leone and a flight back to the UK.

He’d hoped he might not see the Ocean again but it looked like he was destined to spend a little more time on it after all.

The helicopter approached the rear of the flight deck like it was a fixed-wing aircraft, the narrow superstructure ahead and to the right, lit up like a dull Christmas tree, red, white and green. The wind had picked up even more after the sun went down and the little craft buffeted as it came into the hover above the deck. It landed with a heavy bump, the ship coming up to meet it. As soon as they touched down the engine pitch changed and figures headed out of the shadows towards it. One of them pulled open the door.

Howel stepped out and waited for Stratton to follow him. ‘We’re to go straight to the operations room,’ the young lieutenant said.

On deck a tall, thin, hawkish-looking officer in a camouflaged windproof eyed Stratton with a level of curiosity that bordered on suspicion.

‘Lieutenant Winslow,’ Howel said by way of introduction.

Winslow nodded, keeping his hands behind his back.

Stratton didn’t dwell on it, used to the negative attitude from some members of the military. He knew all about how being special forces polarised opinion. People either held you in extremely high regard – more than you generally deserved – or considered you overrated.

Howel led the way through an open steel door into a red-lit corridor and up a flight of steps. Winslow followed. At the top another secure door that required a code-entry to unlock. Jasper tapped in the pass code and led them into a dimly lit operations room filled with a variety of humming electronic communications and technological equipment operated by several sailors. None of them took much notice of Stratton save a glance as he walked through in his boiler suit and sandals.

Winslow went ahead and opened a door into a small, gloomy communications shack packed with equipment like a compressed sound studio. A Wren, wearing a pair of headphones, sat concentrating on a complex-looking switchboard. When she saw the officer and the dishevelled man in the boiler suit, she got to her feet like she had been expecting them. She smiled politely and handed Winslow her headset and left the room.

‘Your operations officer is on the other end of that,’ Winslow said.

Stratton put on the headset and adjusted the microphone in front of his lips. Winslow stood in the doorway and Stratton took the opportunity to return the man’s cold glare. ‘Close the door behind you,’ Stratton said, deliberately omitting the words ‘please’ and ‘sir’.

Winslow wasn’t used to any level of insubordination and had it been any other subordinate in Her Majesty’s armed forces he would have reminded them of their respective ranks. But at that particular moment he knew it was a conflict he would not win. He might have contempt for the man but the Royal Navy did not. He clenched his teeth and closed the door.

Stratton spent almost an hour inside the room talking to the SBS operations team in Poole over the secure communications system. He explained everything that had happened, in the finest of detail, leaving nothing out. As he had expected, they didn’t react to his description of Hopper’s death. He tried to be as clinical as possible, and if he had been describing someone else who had killed Hopper, he might have managed it. But the hints of his culpability and responsibility for what had happened seeped into the report. The ops team remained coldly automatic with their questions.

When Stratton finally put down his headset and opened the door into the operations room, the occupants spared him a glance or two, as though in his absence they had been told who he was. To him it looked like they had all heard his story, or, more to the point, his confession. That was impossible of course. No one on the planet but him and the ops team had been privy to that conversation. They were merely curious about the individual who had arrived on the boat from out of nowhere.

Stratton walked from the operations room back down the steps and outside for some fresh air. He’d forgotten how stale the ship’s filtered air could taste in confined places like the operations room with all its heated circuitry and sweaty personnel.

He walked to the rails to look at the ocean and clear his head.

A matelot stood nearby having a smoke. He ditched the cigarette over the side when he saw Stratton. ‘S’cuse me, sir,’ he said.

‘I’m not a sir,’ Stratton replied without looking at him.

‘Sorry. I’m s’posed to show you where to bunk.’

Stratton hoped they had given him a room to himself.

‘The old man wanted to have a word but they thought you might be knackered and want to get your ’ead down first.’

Stratton still felt tired despite the few hours’ sleep he had grabbed on the cargo ship. He expected it would take another day to recover fully.

‘I’m to ask you if you need the sickbay for anything.’

Stratton thought about having his bullet wounds looked at. But he hadn’t even thought about them since waking up on the Orion. The many hours he had spent in the sea should have cleaned them up but that didn’t necessarily mean they would not get infected. ‘I’m fine,’ he decided. He knew where the sick bay was and if they started to become painful again, he would pay the place a visit.

Stratton followed the young man through the ship, down a narrow set of stairs to a wider, well-lit corridor. Part of the way along it he saw a pair of swing doors. Stratton remembered it was the galley and pushed one of them open. The place had been crammed with more chairs and tables than it was designed for.

‘If you want a wet, you can ’elp yourself over there,’ the sailor said, pointing to a counter with an urn on it. ‘Your bunk room’s down the end of this corridor. Number fourteen. Last door on the left.’

‘Thanks,’ Stratton said, aware of the man’s eagerness to complete his duties.

‘OK. I’m off watch so I’m going to get my ’ead down.’

‘Have a good night,’ Stratton said with a smile. He walked over to the urn and made himself a cup of tea. He heard the sound of aluminium trays being stacked somewhere beyond. A cook walked out of the back and placed a