Death in the Kingdom (14 page)

God, I had to get my arse out of there before Jaws or one of his mates came back for dessert. I wasn't cut, so there was no blood trail leading to me. I had to relax as much as I could and quieten my breathing. I did some hurried figures with my watch and gauges.

Three-quarters of an hour had passed since I'd hit the water. I had blown two thirds of my air, most in the last ten minutes, I guessed. I had enough to decompress safely and get me topside but nothing in reserve. I started east, angling up, torch on my bubble trail, making sure I stayed below it. I resisted the temptation to search the darkness around me for any more sharks. I'd be spinning like a top and burning up my air supply like crazy if I started doing that. I'd survived everything so far. I now had to do this last bit right or it all went down the gurgler.

Away to my left and a long way above me, the underwater scooter was accelerating upwards, still turning in a lazy spiral. I guessed it was for safety reasons that they had been balanced in such a way so as to head for the surface if they lost their rider. Away to my right through the hazy water I could make out the anchor chain of Tri's boat. The sun was up and the water was getting lighter above me. I headed for the anchor line. If I had to I'd hang there to decompress, then surface and swim across to
Odorama.

At fifty feet I stopped and hung from the anchor chain for an agonising five minutes. Nothing came steamrollering out of the dark at me. At twenty feet there was light above. The underwater scooter was bobbing on the surface further away to my left as the current carried it off. Some lucky fisherman was going to score big time, maybe.

The light was brightening by the second. I forced myself to hang from Tri's anchor line for another five nervous minutes, relieved that the sun was starting to drive away some of my demons. I turned off the torch and risked a long look down and around, turning slowly as I hung there. The hull of the boat above me gave me some reassurance. I could hear the grumble of an engine turning over although the screws weren't moving.

I turned my attention down beyond my fins again. No monsters were coming up at me out of the shadows below. I wasted a couple of pounds of air by breathing a huge sigh of relief. The water was clearer up here and the light was tinting it a beautiful shade of turquoise. Now I could plainly make out the hull of the
Odorama
off to my right, a solid black whale shape outlined against the beautiful daylight. I was going to make it.

I had enough air in my tanks to swim the whole way underwater so I released the anchor chain, zeroing in on the prawn boat as I slowly began finning my way towards it. As I moved I gradually eased my way up towards the surface. I had gone maybe twenty feet from the anchor chain when all hell broke loose above me.

13

Underwater the sound of an explosion can travel a long way. This one did. It was a bloody big bang and it came from behind me. I turned. The trawler's twin screws were churning the water into foam. The anchor chain from the gunboat was falling away towards the ocean floor. Someone had smashed a quick-release shackle. Tri was on the move in a big hurry, it seemed. The water all around the black hull was filled with twinkling golden sparks that spiralled slowly down towards the reef below. There was a slapping, banging, drumming sound that cut across the sound of the trawler's engine.

For a moment I didn't get it, then I realised that the golden sparks were the spent shell cases from Tri's heavy artillery. The noise was that of the heavy machine guns at work, transmitted down through the boat's hull. While the big Brownings were doing their thing, brass was being sprayed out of the guns and over the side where it tumbled into the depths. The slow dance of the spent shell casings was almost beautiful. Beautiful! Jesus, I thought, my oxygen must be on the way out. There was a fucking battle under way up above and I was being poetic.

I was about as decompressed as I was going to get, so I started for the
Odorama
at full kick. I didn't want Niran bailing out and leaving me in the water. To have made it this far then to drown, die of exposure or get eaten by sharks as I drifted around the bloody ocean was not on my agenda.

I surfaced twenty feet from the side of the boat. Yes, there was daylight, plenty of it now. More than enough for me to see the faces and waving arms at the side of the boat ahead of me. The divers were back on board. I could hear the slow thud of the
Odorama's
diesel engine. With my head above water, and even with my dive hood on, the rattle of fire from machine guns was clear. I turned. Tri's gunboat was racing towards a white shape that I could just pick out as I rode the crest of the swell. The target was the white cruiser. Off to the left of Tri's boat, something was sending a plume of black smoke up into the sky.

Then I was at the side of the
Odorama.
I hit the climbing net and was hauled unceremoniously on board the prawn boat by grabbing hands. Niran had us on the move as he ran up his anchor cable. The old winch was in overdrive. He was figuring on picking the hook up on the run. That was a dangerous technique because the damn thing could smack into the hull if it went wrong, or if it snagged on the bottom of our bloody freighter it could pull our bow down, or simply bust up and send wire cable whipping around the deck.

Whatever, it didn't happen. The anchor rattled into its retaining bracket as I pulled off my mask and hood. Then I saw it. The buddha was there, in the deck well, still in the sling that had lifted it from the water. No one but me was looking at it, all other eyes were on the two boats. I dropped my tanks and weight belt and pulled off my fins so I could get to my feet to join the other guys at the rail. The buddha could wait.

The white boat was moving quickly, attempting to run for the passage back to the mainland. Tri was heading to intercept it. The source of the black smoke was what appeared to be the gutted hull of a small runabout, wallowing in the water a hundred yards away.

‘What the hell happened?' I asked no one in particular.

‘A speedboat came around the headland. They had guns and grenades. They fired at Tri's boat. A grenade landed on deck but I don't think it killed anyone. Tri fired back.' The speaker was Noy. His eyes were wide and focused on nothing but the racing boats. ‘Then the white boat came and they have been shooting.'

There were riflemen on the deck of the white boat. Their bullet strikes were all around the trawler that was rapidly closing in. Its speed no doubt surprised them. Tri's boat was capable of thirty knots which made it probably as fast as a big luxury cruiser. But he had the angle on the other vessel and he had the armament. The .50 Brownings were raking the white vessel from end to end, heavy continuous thumping underpinning the sharper sound of the smaller weapons. There was no doubt the white boat was taking a real pounding. If it hadn't been for that it might have made it past the gunboat and away. Then one of Tri's lot fired a tank buster.

The range was about a hundred yards. The rocket was launched from the bow of the trawler and it was right on target. The five- or six-pound package of high explosives slammed into the superstructure of the white boat and a fireball erupted. The ball rolled and twisted within itself as orange flames and black smoke wove themselves together. I saw a flaming figure fall from the boat and then the fireball was gone, leaving in its place a core of flames and twisted, smoking metal and fibreglass.

The bridge of the white boat was gone, but it carried on. Either there was another control panel below deck, or the helm and throttles were jammed because it didn't deviate from its course or speed. Tri's gunboat was closer now and a second rocket went out. This hit the stern of the white boat and a second fireball erupted. They were nasty missiles which burned as well as exploded. Figures were jumping over the side of the stricken boat, but Tri's killers weren't about to show mercy. The heavy machine guns continued to rake the ship while Tri's riflemen shot at the men in the water.

I might have stopped it if I could have. But then again, maybe not. Those two under the sea had been prepared to kill me to get what they were after. Sometimes it paid to just do what you had to in this business. The guys in the white boat had seriously underestimated what they were up against. They had figured on an easy hit against an old prawn boat, and not vectored our escort into their equation. Maybe that caused a change of whatever plan they had. I doubted we were ever going to find out what their original plan had been.

I guessed the two guys I'd taken out underwater had launched their scooter in the bay and homed in on our two boats to get themselves into the zone. Trying to spot two heads bobbing along in the swell would have been damned near impossible for Tri's watchmen. The divers also wouldn't have shown up on radar. Once they'd been close, the scooter jockeys would have gone under, buzzing along at five or six knots and with a powerful headlight, they wouldn't have taken long to spot the sub. I guessed the idea had been to grab the box and get away while their buddies took our boats out up above. Nice plan but they'd screwed it up big time.

The white boat had wallowed to a standstill. Black smoke plumed into the sky and orange and white flames licked out from the holes in the ruined hull. The pretty white cruiser was going to the bottom, as was everyone on it. The shooting had stopped. Tri had slowed to a crawl and was starting to circle the stricken vessel.

I carefully undid the straps which were holding the pouch to my chest and lowered it to the deck. I had a plain lead-covered box, contents unknown with a damned spear head embedded in it, and Tuk Tuk had a wonderful slime-covered gold and jewelled buddha. I squatted in front of the statue. The buddha was a little over four feet tall. It hadn't been made in the paunchy Chinese happy style, or in the aesthetically thin Cambodian one, but rather it fell somewhere in the middle. Even covered with weeds, algae and dripping slimy salt water, it was more than impressive.

A massive explosion dragged my eyes and those of everyone else back to the battling boats. The white vessel was totally gone in a final enormous ball of black smoke. It rolled into the clear blue sky and formed the familiar shape of a noxious nuclear mushroom. But this wasn't an atomic bomb—the fuel tanks had blown up and diesel smoke formed a towering monument to the death of the boat and its crew. The trawler was stationary for the moment. There hadn't been a shot fired for at least a minute or so.

‘Ranong?' called Niran from the bridge. I nodded and bent to retrieve the black box. As I did so, one of the tines on the embedded spear head jagged deep into my left thumb. I cursed, grabbed my dive knife from my calf sheath and levered the barbed arrow out of the box. I angrily tossed the offending piece of razor-sharp metal over the side and jammed my injured thumb in my mouth while I examined the damage to the box. The edges of the hole in the grey–black lead shone silver for a moment, and then the hole filled with a milky fluid that bubbled in the wound of the metal and began to spill out of it. I sat back on my heels, startled.

‘Fuck!' I muttered. What the hell was that fluid? The liquid foamed as it flooded out of the hole in the box. But it wasn't really liquid, or was it? It was like a grainy paste. Whatever it was in the box it was getting out, and that wasn't good. The flow was intensifying with every passing second. I wasn't panicking but, shit, I wasn't far off. Not knowing what the damned stuff was sent ice rattling down my spine. What the hell was I to do? Logic said to throw the damned thing over the side.

It was then that a series of heavy swells hit us side on as Niran brought us round, setting a course to take us back through the passage. I stood. I'd had enough of sticking my head underwater for one day. The heavy green seas boomed in through the scuppers and half-filled the well deck before draining away, swirling back the way they had come. We took maybe five big hits before we were turned and the swell was behind us. My eyes went back to the box at my feet. Whatever had been leaking out of it had gone. The edges of the gash in the metal gleamed around a clean black hole. My first instinct was to seal that damned hole before I got very much older. But seal it with what?

I pondered the question for maybe ten seconds before the answer came and I was yelling instructions at Noy, who was standing on the deck down by the door leading to the superstructure. Our chef-cum-deck hand vanished to organise things. My thumb was bleeding. I needed a damned patch on myself. I wondered if whatever had leaked out of the box had contaminated the spear head and, in turn, done the same to yours truly.

The solution to plugging the hole in the lead was simple: more lead. The crew of the
Odorama
, like any fishing boat anywhere in the world, had a plentiful supply of lead on board. The crew used it to make sinkers, net weights and the like. It took Noy ten minutes to rustle up some scraps of metal and melt them in a heavy cast-iron pot over a gas burner. While I waited for the lead to turn to liquid, I gingerly carried my prize to the cabin door. When the lead was molten I poured the gleaming semi-liquid silver into the wound in the box. The gash was filled in seconds and set in a minute. Whatever had been getting out of my personal Pandora's Box was once again sealed inside. But what was it that had seeped out?

I picked up the box and took it and myself down the deck to my makeshift accommodation. There I would hose myself down, dry off, dress and sit on this damned precious thing of Bernard's with my Walther in my hand. Not quite maybe, but having gone to so much trouble to find it and having killed so many people to keep it, I wasn't about to let it out of my sight.

When I was dressed I felt a little more human. The cold had leeched itself out of my bones. I found a Band-Aid for my thumb, helped myself to a coffee with a huge belt of Mekong in it, lit a cigarette and went out on the foredeck again. The black box with its flare of fresh, dulling silver on one side was in the base of my holdall at my side. My gun was in the small of my back under my shirt. If Tuk Tuk had given instructions for someone to whack me before we returned to the mainland, it was going to happen soon.