Hercules sniffed. 'That's 'cause we don't, not as a rule leastways. I been at sea twelve years and I ain't never seen it. This ain't no d.a.m.n cruise liner. Ain't no Sunday picnic neither. Like I don't already got enough to be doin' down here without I've got to carry up their meals twice a f.u.c.kin' day. What, are their a.s.ses too high an' mighty to chow down here with the rest of us? Ain't no room for freeloaders in this here merchant marine. Everybody pulls their weight or they ain't got no right bein' here in the first place.'

'What are they, friends of the captain?'

'You bet I already asked the bosun the same question 'fore we shipped out.'

'And what did he say?' Jude asked, wondering whether maybe Jack Skinner wasn't quite as unapproachable as Mitch had suggested.

Hercules grunted. 'Didn't say s.h.i.t. Just gave me the look that says, don't even f.u.c.kin' ask.'

Chapter 9.

As he went about his duties that day, Jude kept an eye open in case he might spot one of the mystery pa.s.sengers. He saw no sign of them, and presumed they must be confining themselves to their quarters and choosing not to mix with the others on board. But what he did start to pick up more signs of were the grumbles of resentment among the crew against the unknown, nameless, faceless freeloaders up on D Deck. None of his business, he decided, reminding himself that he, too, was just pa.s.sing through and only here thanks to some favour called in, some string or other pulled by one of Jeff Dekker's connections in the maritime world. He wasn't one of these guys. He was only here to gain knowledge and experience.

Which he was doing, every waking moment. Jude had always been a fast learner, effortlessly remaining top of his cla.s.s at uni before he'd decided that Marine Biology was not what he wanted to spend his life doing. He was constantly full of questions for Mitch and the others, though careful not to overdo it. He soon filled in the gaps in his knowledge concerning the roles of the senior crewmen. The impressively named Henry Hainsworth O'Keefe was, as he'd supposed, the supreme authority aboard ship, directing things from his throne room up on the bridge. Frank Wilson, the chief mate, was responsible for overseeing the loading and unloading cargo, as well as handling security and the general day-to-day running of the ship. The chief engineer, Diesel, was a rare sight above decks, he and his a.s.sistants seldom emerging from their domain in the engine room down below. When not filling his already capacious belly, Guzman, second mate, was the so-called 'paper mate' in charge of navigation, charts and all the electronics up on the bridge. The third mate, Marshall, acted as an a.s.sistant. And as Jude had already inferred, the fearsome Skinner's job as bosun was to mediate between the mates and the rest of the crew, as well as ensure discipline on board.

In addition to learning about the men he was sailing with, Jude was also getting to know the ship pretty well. His first impression of a floating city had been perfectly right: you could lose yourself for days in the bewildering, endless maze of pa.s.sageways and storerooms both above and below decks. Maybe it was because he was the youngest and most fleet of foot out of the crew, or maybe it was just because he was the new meat; either way, Jude found himself running back and forth all day on gopher duty. Clattering up and down rusty iron steps. Fetching this, fetching that, pa.s.sing messages here and there.

On his errands about ship he was constantly intrigued by the heavy steel-mesh gates that barred virtually every external walkway and ladder, coming up from the deck to the superstructure. Every time you pa.s.sed through one of the gates, you had to close and lock it behind you. It meant you couldn't go anywhere without first getting a set of keys from the bosun, and returning it afterwards. Unable to think what purpose the gates served, Jude quizzed the old salt Gerber on the matter.

'Those are pirate cages,' Gerber explained with a bristly scowl.

'Pirate cages?'

On the flight to Oman, Jude had contemplated the possible dangers of a voyage down the east coast of Africa. Typhoons, reefs, sharks, heatstroke, getting arrested in port for unruly behaviour and ending up incarcerated in some African jail had all occurred to him. He hadn't once thought about pirates. How could they even still exist, in this day and age? Terrorists, sure. But pirates? To him, the word conjured up images of snarling buccaneers with cutla.s.ses and eye-patches, and the Jolly Roger flying at the masthead. Wasn't that ancient history?

Gerber, however, seemed very certain of the risk. 'Yup. That's what those are, all right. So's if we get boarded by the little darlings, they can't get access to enough key points, the bridge especially, to take over the ship. Only way we can even try to keep those sc.u.msucking b.a.s.t.a.r.ds off our a.s.ses. That, or hose 'em with water as they come up our sides. Some ships pour oily foam on 'em, gunks 'em up good. Needless to say, we got jack s.h.i.t except a bunch of flimsy wire mesh.'

To Jude's amazement, Gerber explained how little shipping companies did to protect either their property, the cargo they carried or the men they paid to ferry it from the risk of violent armed pirate attacks that kept growing year on year in certain waters. Ships on the East Africa run, Gerber added bitterly, being one of the primary and most frequent prey, targeted by waterborne bandits operating mainly from the Somali coast.

'That's just how it is,' he told Jude. 'Personally, I'd like to see a whole d.a.m.n locker of M16s on board. Been saying it for years, but who'd listen? Those corporate sonsofb.i.t.c.hes would rather leave us out here like sitting ducks than trust us to defend ourselves.'

Jude hated to ask the inevitable question. 'What happens if pirates manage to get past the cages and take over the ship?'

Gerber shrugged. 'Best case, all they want is cash. Every vessel carries a few thousand bucks' worth in reserve in the captain's safe, for emergencies and such. If you get lucky, you might be able to just pay them off, and they'll beat it back to sh.o.r.e to get rat-a.s.sed and wh.o.r.ed up, and you can go on your way rejoicing. That's how it used to be, more often than not, but it's rare you get off so lightly now. See, when these s.h.i.t-eaters first started showing up twenty years ago, you were dealing with a few rag-tag fishermen making six hundred dollars a year, who thought five, ten thousand was the haul of a lifetime. Didn't take 'em long to figure out you could make a whole lot more by snapping up the whole ship and holding the cargo and crew for ransom.'

Jude was staring at him. 'They kidnap the crews?'

'This is all news to you, huh, sonny? Sure, these f.u.c.kers would kidnap their own mothers for a buck. They're taking hundreds of millions a year now in ransoms. It's big business. Instead of wooden skiffs they're coming out in speedboats, tooled up to the nines with Kalashnikovs, high as kites on f.u.c.kin' khat and ready to murder anyone who gets in their way. And they don't just cover a few miles out from the coast like they used to. Not when they can use stolen vessels as mother ships and hunt over the whole ocean looking for a juicy tanker to knock off. It's a whole other ball game now, and it's about G.o.dd.a.m.n time someone did something about it.'

'I had no idea it was so bad.'

Gerber pulled a disgusted face. 'Well now you have. Bring 'em on, I say. They want a fight, they'll get a fight like they won't believe. I'd rather be dead than wind up a hostage in some Somali stinkpit, or sold as a f.u.c.kin' slave to work in a d.a.m.n copper mine.'

Jude's head was still spinning from what Gerber had told him when he sat down to eat later with Mitch, Condor and another AB called Lang. 'Hey, s'matter, English? You don't think my jokes are funny any more?' Mitch said in a mock-hurt voice after Jude failed to break up at some stupid crack. Jude admitted what was on his mind.

'That old fart Gerber's just looking to scare your Limey a.s.s,' Mitch said.

'Can't get it up no more, so he wants to play Platoon instead,' laughed Condor. 'Thinks he's still in 'Nam. You know why they don't issue weapons to merchant crews? So that trigger-happy dudes like Gerber can't shoot the c.r.a.p out of every bunch of poor schmuck fishermen that come within a thousand-yard range, and call it self-defence. Who's gonna insure us for that?'

Jude wasn't sure. It had sounded pretty plausible the way Gerber described it.

'That's right, man, don't listen to his cranky bulls.h.i.t,' said Lang, munching loudly on a bacon sandwich and spitting bits out as he talked. 'Sure, the pirates might hit a vessel now and then, but we're talking small trawlers and private yachts mostly. Few years back, they took a pop at a German naval tanker thinking she was a merchant and those Krauts chewed their a.s.ses up something terrible. I'll bet ol' Gerber didn't tell you what happened last time a pirate crew touched an American ship, did he?' Lang dragged his forefinger across his throat and smiled wickedly, bits of bacon stuck between his teeth. 'I got two words for you. Navy SEALs.'

'What happened?'

'Let's just say, our boys went home. The bad guys wound up as fish bait.'

'These waters are safe as houses,' Mitch said, ramming home the point. 'h.e.l.l, safer. Naval destroyers patrol up and down the coastline the whole time. Thank your fellow Limeys for that one. We even so much as smell a pirate, all Cappy O'Keefe has to do is dial up UKMTO on the sat phone, and the cavalry'll be all over us before you can say Jack Robinson.'

'Who the f.u.c.k was Jack Robinson, anyway?' Condor asked.

'f.u.c.k should I know?' Mitch shot back at him.

'Always wondered about that,' Condor said absently.

Jude already knew about United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, the clearing house that governed shipping security in the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. But he still wasn't entirely convinced.

'Okay,' he said, dubiously. 'Then if we're so safe and there's no risk, then why do we keep the pirate cages locked all the time? And how come these attacks are still going on?'

Mitch waved it away. 'Chill, dude. Ain't gonna happen to us.'

Chapter 10.

The young woman's eyes were wide with terror and pleading as she tried to scream out from behind the tape that covered her mouth. Her bleached hair was all awry, her hands tied, her blue chequered shop a.s.sistant's uniform ripped at the neck from the struggle with her attacker who, presumably, had already wiped out the rest of her colleagues in his murderous spree.

The hostage taker stood half-concealed behind her, using her body as a shield with one arm clamped tightly around her neck. Was he a terrorist, or just another crazy on the loose? It didn't matter either way. He was the threat, and he had to be neutralised. He was wearing a black sweatshirt and his eyes were hidden by dark gla.s.ses that glinted in the morning sun. He was clutching a stubby pistol that was aimed over the woman's shoulder and pointing at the hostage rescue team who had come to save her.

Milliseconds counted. At any instant, a desperate man like this, all out of options and wild with panic, might turn the gun on her at point-blank range and blow her brains out.

Brrrpp ... Brrrpp. The ripping snort of two short bursts from the silenced submachine gun, punctuated by the clackclackclack of the weapon's bolt and the tinkle of spent cartridge cases. .h.i.tting the ground. The hostage's left eye disappeared as the nine-millimetre bullets punched a jagged line from her throat up to her temple.

Then silence. The smell of cordite drifted on the cold morning air. A small trickle of smoke oozed from each of the bullet holes. The hostage taker's pistol was still pointing at the a.s.sembled HRT operators fifteen metres away.

'Cease fire,' Jeff Dekker said. 'Make your weapon safe.'

The shooter flicked on his safety catch and frowned at the woman he'd just killed.

's.h.i.t.'

'Okay,' Jeff said. 'Your hostage is dead, and so are you, or maybe one of your teammates.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Tell that to her kids.' Jeff stepped up to the firing line and took the smoking subgun out of the shooter's hands. 'Ben? You want to give us a demonstration?'

The shooter stepped aside, angry with himself and shaking his head. Without a word, Ben took the gun from Jeff, walked up to the line and waited for the buzzer. Jeff pressed the remote b.u.t.ton. At the signal, almost too fast for the eye to follow, Ben had the weapon up to his shoulder and on target with a single burst.

Brrrpp.

The hostage taker's sungla.s.ses shattered into fragments. Shreds of high-density polyurethane foam flew from the back of his head and littered the gra.s.s like confetti. Less than three-quarters of a second from the buzzer, he wasn't going to be harming any more innocents.

Ben lowered the gun, made it safe and handed it back to Jeff, keeping the muzzle pointed downrange. 'Something like that,' he said to the first shooter, who was still shaking his head and staring in amazement at the tight grouping of holes between the bad guy's eyes.

It was just another morning at Le Val. The cla.s.s were a group of twelve French police SWAT trainees who'd been sent out on a three-day instruction course in close-quarter shooting and hostage rescue tactics. The highly realistic, lifesize 3-D self-healing foam targets were a recent innovation Jeff had come up with, in conjunction with a Normandy plastic mouldings firm who couldn't manufacture them fast enough to meet the demand from law enforcement and military training units all over Europe.

'You want to break down for the group how you just did that?' Jeff asked Ben.

'We need to look beyond the accepted principles of combat shooting in order to become really fast and accurate,' Ben told the cla.s.s. 'Forget what you've been taught about focusing on the sights of the weapon. And don't think too much about it. When you've shot enough to develop the right reflexes, muscle memory will bring the firearm to alignment instantly and without conscious thought. Even at twenty-five metres we've found it's possible to get good, solid hits in less time if you let the sights fuzz out and focus on the target instead. You'll also have better peripheral vision awareness of hostage movement or additional threats. Okay?'

'Okay,' came the muttered replies from the group.

'Let's try it again,' Jeff said.

'Just like old times,' Jeff said to Ben as the cla.s.s broke up for lunch.

Ben said nothing, because he knew Jeff was angling for him to stay on permanently. He didn't want to commit to anything. His plans were unchanged: to wait a couple more days to let things settle down in Paris, return there to finish doing up the apartment, and go looking for an estate agent.

But Ben privately couldn't deny that, after a few days back at Le Val, it was beginning to feel like home again, almost as if he'd never left the place. Initially, he'd resisted Jeff's invitation to get involved with the training side of things, and instead made himself useful elsewhere. He'd helped the decorators finish painting the new cla.s.sroom building, driven into Valognes in the old Land Rover to fetch supplies, and mended part of the perimeter fence that had blown down. The rest of his time, he'd spent sitting by the fire in the farmhouse kitchen smoking cigarettes and reading with a gla.s.s of wine at his elbow, or revisiting his old running tracks through the wintry Normandy woodland with Storm trotting along at his heel. In the evenings, he and Jeff dined together and drank more wine and talked about everything except Ben's coming back to work at Le Val.

Tuesday Fletcher, the new recruit, was a dynamic addition to the team. He had a quick wit, a lively manner and a ready smile that dazzled away the wintry cold and drumming Normandy rain. Ben liked him at once, and watching him spatter cherry tomatoes for fun at six hundred metres with an L96 sniper rifle, he had no problem conceding to the younger man's superior marksmanship skills.

'Sorry to hear what happened on your selection,' Ben said to him as they were packing the gear away in the armoury room.

Tuesday shrugged. 'Just one of those things. Would've been nice to have been the first black kid in the SAS.'

'I always used to think it was wrong that we didn't have any,' Ben said.

'Don't know what they're missing. We're great for night ops. n.o.body can see us coming in the dark,' Tuesday joked.

'Tuesday is that a nickname?'

'Nope. It's what it says on my birth certificate.'

'Seriously?'

Tuesday laughed and gave another of his patented room-brighteners. 'I was born Tuesday, March third, 1992. Mum said they called me that so I'd have a birthday every week instead of just once a year like all the other kids. Truth is, she wanted to call me Troy and Dad wanted Sam. After I was born they fought over it for six weeks, until they were about to get fined for not registering me quick enough. So they both caved in and just called me after the day of the week I popped out. If that hadn't happened they'd still be fighting over it now. Stubbornness runs in the family.'

Join the club, Ben thought.

That got Ben back to thinking about his own family. Jude was on his mind a lot over those days, as he reflected about the past and all the regrets he had about the way he'd handled things. If there was a league table for fathers, they'd have to invent a new bottom place just for Ben. The only thing he'd ever given Jude was the birthright of his own wild temperament. Hardly much of a legacy to pa.s.s down from father to son.

It was painful to contemplate all the ways he'd been such a letdown as a parent, just as it hurt to think about all the missing parts of their relationship. He'd never seen the boy grow up, never got to know him properly, or had the chance to do the things a father should do to bond with his child. He'd inherited Jude just as Jude had inherited him, two strangers brought together by a tragedy brutally foisted on them by the car crash that had ended the lives of Michaela and Simeon Arundel. Ben missed them both deeply, but he knew that Jude's pain was deeper still and would never go away. Yet they'd barely ever talked about it. Ben regretted that too.

He wished Jude could be here now. He blamed himself for having missed him before his departure, and was trying not to blame Jeff for not having told him sooner that Jude was at Le Val, even if he understood Jeff's reasons. Then, of course, there was the undeniable fact that Ben hadn't exactly made himself easy to get in touch with. But seven whole weeks! If he'd only known, he'd have been here. They could have spent that time together. Maybe tried to start again.

Or maybe it would just have made things worse. He worried that it was too late to try and repair things between him and his son, just as it was probably too late for Ben to fix the profound rift between him and his ex-fiancee, Brooke Marcel. Ben already believed in his heart that Brooke would never speak to him again.

If Jude never wanted to either, then Ben would just have to accept that, too.

Chapter 11.

On the morning of the fourth day since leaving Salalah, the Svalgaard Andromeda completed its south-westerly route down the Yemeni coast and arrived dead on schedule at the Port of Djibouti. Under the watchful eye of the bosun and a sun so searingly hot that the sky was burned almost white, Jude and the rest of the crew laboured and sweated for most of the day unloading cargo. When the gruelling toil was finally done, word came down from the captain that they were free to hit port for a few hours that evening before setting out again the following morning.

Condor and Mitch were first off the ship, in gleeful search of cheap beer and loose women both of which, being old hands on the East Africa run, they knew exactly where to find in sufficient quant.i.ties to gorge themselves to the maximum. Even the dour-faced Scagnetti was smiling at the prospect of being let loose on land for a while.

Jude resisted all invitations to come ash.o.r.e and have a good time with a polite smile and a 'That's okay, you go and have fun.' He spent the evening instead in his cabin, relaxing with a book. The next morning, he was predictably one of the only crew members who wasn't suffering a thudding headache and queasy stomach from a serious night on the town. n.o.body had been stabbed, robbed, or detained by the port police. Scagnetti appeared to have managed to go the whole night without getting into any bar brawls.

The ship departed from Djibouti shortly after 9 a.m. and cruised back out into the infinite blue on a north-easterly bearing that would carry them around the Horn of Africa before turning south.

Mid-afternoon, the first of that day's incidents occurred.

Jude was far forward on the cargo deck, one of a small party of mostly hungover and groaning ABs working to clear up after the previous day's unloading, when he happened to glance over the rail at the expanse of ocean ahead, and thought he saw a dark, strangely angular shape bobbing on the surface of the water directly in the ship's path. It was only visible for a fleeting moment; then it was gone. He blinked and went closer to the rail to take another look.

Jude hadn't been imagining things. As it turned out, what he'd seen was a discarded forty-foot steel shipping container apparently lost from another vessel, so waterlogged that it was floating too low on the surface to be picked up by the radar. He quickly alerted Ricky Marshall, the third mate, who relayed the information to the bridge, and the ship changed course a few degrees to avoid the potential hazard.

Marshall was pleased with him, explaining that ships lost containers all the time, running into thousands a year worldwide, and often failed illegally to report them. While such floating debris posed no serious risk to the thick hulls of larger vessels like the Andromeda, it was always worth steering clear. 'You've got good eyes,' he said to Jude. 'Like to take a tour of the bridge?'

'Really?' It would be the first time Jude had ever been up there, and he lit up at the offer.

Marshall smiled at his excitement, and explained that especially observant ABs were often posted up on the bridge, as an extra pair of eyes always came in handy. 'Plus,' he added, 'I hear you're thinking of a naval career. You might be interested in seeing what goes on up there.'

And so, novice able-bodied seaman Jude Arundel followed the third mate up the steps and walkways to pay his first visit to the real nerve-centre of the ship, where he was introduced in person to Captain O'Keefe. The captain was a large, bearded man with a red face and a disinterested manner, who thanked Jude vaguely for having spotted the floating container and didn't seem to care one way or the other about Marshall showing him around. O'Keefe returned to the conversation he'd been having with Wilson, the chief mate, who had the wheel. Jude caught a whiff of a scent from Wilson that could have been cheap after-shave, but smelled more like bourbon.

The bridge was the very top floor of the ship's superstructure, accessible from an outer door and an inner hatch that led through to the rest of D Deck. It was shielded from the elements by tall windows that gave a commanding view for miles in every direction. On its roof was a railed open-air platform called the flying bridge, and extending some eighteen feet either side of it jutted steel observation walkways that overhung the ship's sides, used for fine steering adjustments while docking.