Greed (12 page)

'You fucking tossers,' shouted one of the boys from the bar in a scouse accent. Reid turned around and attempted to lunge back into the crowd. Matt struggled to hold him – the man had the shoulders of an ox – and signalled to Ivan and Damien to give him a hand.

Reid snarled as they hauled him off towards the door. 'A bloody Irishman and a bloody bender!' he roared. 'Get your stinking hands off me and let me finish this fight!'

'You're a fucking idiot,' Matt shouted back, steering him out into the street. 'Just leave it. You get yourself arrested, the whole job goes to bloody pieces.'

After the trouble in the bar, Matt wasn't about to let the gang out of his sight. The next morning they were sitting around the hotel, none of them drinking anything harder than orange juice or coke. Reid had a plaster stuck over his ear and a bruise on his face, but otherwise was in good enough nick. 'You don't look any uglier than usual,' Matt remarked, after he patched him up. Reid had apologised to Ivan and Damien and although they had laughed it off Matt suspected it still rankled. Insults, he knew from long experience, are seldom forgotten quickly.

It's going to be hard work to keep this team together.

Ivan was trying to teach them the basics of bridge. He and Cooksley made up one team, Matt and Damien the other. They had played a few rounds already, and Matt could see that Ivan was wondering whether Cooksley and Reid weren't more suited to snap. He was clearly struggling to hold back from making any condescending remarks.

The game was not so different from soldiering, Matt decided, laying down an ace of trumps and collecting the trick from the table.
You save your big gun for when you really need it.

'OK,' said Damien. 'After I get this money I can see I'm going to piss it away playing cards.'

'I'll have it off you in no time once we're playing for money,' said Ivan, glancing upwards. 'I'm already working out how to spend four – my two and your two.'

Matt glanced at both men, aware of the tension in both sets of eyes, then gave himself a break by collecting a new round of drinks from the bar. Two Cokes, two orange juices and a large bottle of still mineral water. 'Great looking stag party we make,' he said, putting the tray down on the table. 'I feel sorry for the bride if this is the most fun we know how to have.'

He glanced at his cards. One ace, a couple of queens, and a pile of fives or sixes. Rubbish, he decided. A beep from his mobile broke his concentration. Matt fished the phone from his pocket. A text message. He pressed the button, glanced at the words displayed on the tiny screen, then looked up at the men seated around the table.

'Time to go.'

'Finish the round?' said Ivan.

'Who do you think you are?' Matt said, standing up. 'Sir Francis fucking Drake?'

The boat ploughed steadily through the night water. Damien stood on the bridge, his hands steady on the wheel. It was one o'clock in the morning and a bank of clouds had drifted across the night sky, dimming the light of the moon. As the darkness descended upon them, their faces were illuminated only by the green glow of the radar screen.

Towards the back of the boat Matt could hear a pair of gulls squawking and the insistent monotonous hum of the engines. But the men had all quietened down – and so had the wind.

There is always a moment of stillness before a mission begins.

'How far?' Cooksley asked, standing next to Matt on the bridge.

'About three nautical miles,' said Matt. 'Maybe another twenty minutes' sailing.'

The radar screen showed their position as a small green dot. Ahead there was another dot, marking the position of the target. It was moving, but they were moving faster. To keep on its track, Damien just had to steer the boat into its slipstream.

Matt looked into the sky, watching the last of the moon slip behind the clouds. The darker it gets, the better, he decided. They can't see us, but we can see them.

Damien steered the boat in silence, keeping his eyes fixed on the radar. Their training was completed, and each of them had practised their moves a hundred times over. Each man knew exactly what he had to do and when. If everything went according to plan, they would be back on the boat in an hour, and safely tucked up in their hotel bedrooms in three hours.

But when did it ever work out the way the plan said it should?

Damien killed the engines on the boat. It was one forty-five. The level of noise suddenly reduced, a stillness descended upon them.

Matt could hear the waves lapping against the vessel – it seemed to be getting rougher as the wind started to pick up again. 'Get the dinghy ready,' he said. 'The target is a mile due west of here.'

Reid and Cooksley lowered the dinghy into the water, steadying it as it started to sway. Matt checked his Bushmaster rifle, made sure his pistol was securely fastened to the belt of his wetsuit, and that his night-vision goggles were strapped into place. 'All systems go?' he said, looking around.

Reid, Cooksley and Ivan nodded. Their faces were all blackened up, and they were wearing black wetsuits with lightweight body armour strapped around their chest. Through the pale light, only their eyes could be seen clearly.

'Your explosives in place?' Matt asked Ivan.

'Ready,' said Ivan.

Matt turned towards Damien. 'OK, we're off,' he said. 'When we've cleared their boat, we'll radio you. You need to get your foot on the accelerator of this thing as fast as possible and bring it across to join us. OK?'

Damien nodded. 'Let's just fucking do it.'

Matt jumped down into the dinghy and sat next to Reid at the back. Ivan and Cooksley were ahead of them. The outboard was already fired up and its engines sliced through the water. 'Due west,' said Matt, leaning back as the dinghy powered away from the boat. 'At least we haven't got that bastard Bulmer shouting at us.'

He could see only darkness ahead. The dinghy was bouncing across the surface of the water, crashing through the waves that assaulted its hull. Matt held the Garmin navigator firmly, checking their progress against the co-ordinates of the target. He still couldn't see it, even through the night-vision goggles, but at the rate they were travelling he reckoned they would be there in nine minutes.

'Two degrees left,' he muttered.

Matt could feel the dinghy changing direction. He checked their position again. The target was straight ahead of them now. The al-Qaeda boat was moving at a steady pace of eight or nine knots, but the dinghy was going much faster, rapidly closing the distance between them. They were now just one nautical mile from the target.

'Goggles on,' he shouted across the boat.

He pulled his Rigel down over his eyes, checking the rest of them had done the same. The frames felt heavy around his face, cutting into his skin. But Matt had fought in goggles before, and knew that the pain was irrelevant. In pitch blackness, the ability to see was the greatest weapon of all.

If you can see your enemy before he can see you then he's already a dead man.

Matt looked up. Cooksley and Ivan were marked out as green blobs. He scanned across the ocean. Right now, there was nothing except for a small flock of birds drifting through the sky to the east. 'One degree right,' he told Reid.

Where are you?

The target appeared as a tiny pale-green dot, floating on the edge of the horizon. Matt's eyes locked on to it, watching as it grew steadily larger.

'You see it?' he whispered to Reid.

'Clear as daylight,' said Reid. 'That's our boy.'

Matt checked the Garmin. The instructions from Bulmer were that the noise of their engine would travel no more than a thousand metres at sea – sound travels poorly across water because of the noise of the waves and because the curve of the earth deflects it away from the surface. But Matt wasn't planning on taking any chances.

His stomach was heaving. The dinghy was rocking wildly with every wave, and it seemed rougher now than on any of their training exercises. He could see that Cooksley had already thrown up – some of it was now running down the side of Reid's wetsuit. The vomit was mixing with the water splashing over the side of the boat and swilling around Matt's feet. Ivan was making retching sounds, leaning over the side of the vessel. From the state of his own stomach, Matt thought he was about to join him.

They were drawing closer now, the engine growling at a steady pace. The noise of the ship and the hissing of the wind drowned out the sound of their dinghy. They didn't need any electronics to guide them towards the target. They could see it looming towards them, illuminated in vivid green on the screens of their goggles.

Matt scanned the surface of the vessel. From this distance it looked like a rough cargo ship, about eighty feet long, the sort you could see in any docks. There were a couple of winches at the back for loading and unloading, and a bridge at the front. Not much on deck. He could see the outlines of the stern, and the heat from the engine beneath it. He searched for signs of a lookout but could see nothing. It was now one-thirty in the morning, local time. There should certainly be one man on the bridge, maybe two, but it didn't look as if they had posted a lookout on the stern.

This might turn out easier than expected.

Matt's stomach heaved once more and he put his face low over the water, trying to keep as quiet as possible as he vomited burger and chips into the sea. He looked up and saw vomit smeared across Reid's face: the man was concentrating so hard on the target he had forgotten to wipe it away.

'Steady her,' he muttered to Reid.

They were approaching the tail-end of the wake, five hundred metres from the boat. 'There's someone there,' muttered Ivan from the front of the boat.

Matt looked up towards the target. There was the faint trace of a green object towards the stern. He steadied his head, letting the goggles get a lock on to the object – a round, green blob with things that looked like arms. No question – it was a lookout. The man was pacing up and down, and, as they got closer, Matt could see that he was smoking.

Stupid. He should know that night-vision goggles work on heat. You might as well wave a placard above your head saying
COME AND SHOOT ME.

'Wait till we're down to fifty feet,' Matt muttered. 'Cooksley . . .'

The plan was that they'd fire simultaneously. Matt picked up the Bushmaster rifle and held it tightly in his right hand. 'Move her up,' he muttered.

Now they were positioned right in the centre of the wake: the turbulence of the water would smother the noise as effectively as the silencer on a pistol. The prow of the dinghy jumped up as the engine roared forwards, the thick white water of the wake breaking over the top. Matt could feel the waves bouncing off the surface of his wetsuit but clinging to his hair and face. The glass of his goggles was constantly soaked, and he had to keep wiping them. They were within three hundred metres. 'Forwards,' he muttered to Reid.

He looked again to the surface of the ship. The green blob was pacing back and forth, the cigarette still dangling from its lips. Ahead, Cooksley was holding his rod, gripping it firmly between his fists. Ivan was at his side, both hands gripping the sides of the dinghy, his body swaying as the vessel rolled through the waves and the swell.

Two hundred metres. They're so close I can practically smell them.

Matt knelt forwards, struggling to find the perfect balance as the boat rocked through the wake. He took his goggles off, letting them hang freely around his neck. His forearms rested on the sides of the dinghy, and he raised the rifle to his shoulder, putting his eye to the kite-sight. Two yards ahead he could see Cooksley doing the same. He trained the sights on to the green blob, aiming precisely two inches above the cigarette. That, he calculated, should lodge the bullet directly into the man's brain.

He looked towards Cooksley. 'Now,' he muttered. If they both shot at the same time there was a greater chance of hitting the target, and no extra risk of alerting the rest of the crew.

Matt squeezed the trigger. The rifle kicked back against his shoulder as the bullet flashed through the night sky. A wave hit the dinghy, and Matt struggled to stay upright. He kept his eyes locked on to the stern of the target. The blob was down – but whether he was dead or just wounded Matt had no way of knowing.

Piss off to meet Allah, you bastard.

Matt could hear the roar of the propellers as they drew closer: two massive blades of steel, cutting through the water. Another hundred metres to go. The smell of diesel and oil caught on the wind, filling Matt's lungs.

Reid turned the dinghy left then right, steering through the narrow channel of water dead in the centre of the wake. On either side of them, banks of white water were starting to rise, reaching six or seven feet into the sky. The water poured down on them, covering Matt's face in spray. 'Keep her steady,' he muttered.

The stern was looming above them now. It rose twenty feet, a solid wall of black steel, its surface pitted with rust. The tips of the prop blades could just be seen slicing through the churning surface of the water. They were twenty metres away. Matt could feel the engine starting to drag them towards it, the dinghy gliding across the surface of the water as if it were being sucked up by a vacuum. 'Turn it around,' he said.

Reid spun the engine into reverse. At this point in the approach, the suction from the ship's engine was enough to drag them forward: they needed the outboard to stop them moving too quickly towards it. If they collided with the propellers it would slice up the boat.

'Got it,' Reid said, looking back at Matt.

The dinghy was moving more steadily towards the stern now – forty, thirty, then twenty feet. Cooksley stood up, Ivan gripping him at the sides, and slung the hook forwards. It clanked against the metal of the stern, bounced, and started falling backwards.

Christ, man, don't drop it.

Cooksley gripped tighter to the pole, slinging it forwards again. This time the hook settled into the stern, the metal catching on metal. Cooksley tugged once. It was secure.

Ivan grabbed a thin aluminium caving ladder, holding it steady as Cooksley used the hook to pull them closer to the ship. Ivan slipped the ladder on to the stern, holding it steady, a ramp between the dinghy and the boat. 'She's ready,' he said.

Matt moved swiftly forwards. His feet bounced off the surface of the dinghy, his hands gripping on to the sides of the ladder. He steadied his balance, then yanked himself forwards.

The first man over the top faces maximum danger. That's my job.

He started hauling himself upwards. Three rungs up, a wave crashed over the side of his body. The force of the water knocked him sideways, his left hand breaking free from the ladder. His left foot was bashed out, leaving all the weight on his right foot, and a bolt of pain ran up to his knee. He could feel himself starting to be washed down towards the propeller. His right hand gripped tighter to the ladder, desperately hanging on. The salt of the water was stinging his eyes. When he managed to get himself squarely back on to the ladder he moved swiftly up five more rungs. Christ, he thought. That was close.

Using his forearms he pulled himself up on to the deck, then crouched down low, ripping the Bushmaster from his back. He held the gun to his eyes, looking out over the deck. For forty feet it was empty metal, with two cranes at the side and a lifeboat. To his right he could see a body lying crumpled on the deck, a pool of blood seeping out of the hole in the head just above the ear, and a cigarette still smouldering at its side. Matt glanced back down to the men behind, giving them the thumbs-up sign. Reid was already on the ladder pulling himself upwards.