Star of Africa

‘I was thinking of myself.’

‘Without getting caught and shot to pieces?’ said Condor, the eternal optimist. ‘You want to tell me exactly how you’re planning on managing that?’

‘Son, it might as well be on Mars,’ Gerber said. ‘You’d never make it.’

Jude rubbed his chin and thought hard for a few moments. An idea was growing in his mind, and the more it grew the more he believed it could work. ‘Diesel,’ he said. ‘This is the engine room, yes?’

‘Last time I looked,’ Diesel said, sweeping an arm back at the blue-painted mass of iron machinery, pipes and control equipment behind him.

‘So we have control over the ship’s power and they can’t override us from the bridge in any way?’

If the answer was no, Jude’s germ of a plan was dead before it was even born.

‘Sure, we can throw the master switches on everything right here. Engine power, electrics, hydraulics, air, emergency generator, the works,’ Diesel said, still staring at him, as were the others, apart from Scagnetti who had wandered off on his own to light a roll-up and pollute the unbreathable air of the engine room still further.

‘What about the radar?’ Jude asked.

‘Uh-huh,’ Diesel said, uncertain where Jude was going with this. ‘We can knock that out along with every other instrument in the conning station. So?’

Jude could feel a smile spreading over his face as his confidence in his plan grew stronger. ‘And if we cut the engines, the ship will stop moving and stay pretty much put?’

‘As long as the sea’s calm, sure,’ Diesel replied. ‘We’ll drift, but not by more than a few points, depending on the currents. Cut to the chase, kid. What the hell is this about?’

‘Listen,’ Jude said.

Chapter 15 (#ulink_5f573477-42d3-50c7-9605-cbafaf11d421)

Jude’s brainwave caused a lot of disagreement among the others. Condor thought he must be nuts to contemplate taking such a risk, with pirates almost certainly scouring every inch of the ship to murder each and every one of them. Gerber declared he had some balls on him and reckoned, on consideration, that it was worth a try. Nobody denied that Jude was the quickest and knew his way around the ship as well as any of them.

‘It’ll work,’ Jude kept saying.

Scagnetti was sitting on a duct pipe, swinging his legs and puffing his roll-up. ‘Who you gonna call in, Limey Boy?’ he called out with a grin. ‘Friggin’ Double O Seven?’

‘Shut it, Scagnetti,’ Gerber warned him.

‘Never thought I’d say it, but Scagnetti has a point,’ Hercules said. ‘You wanna take this kind of crazy-ass risk to send a lousy email? To who?’

‘I have an idea about that,’ Jude said. ‘Trust me, okay?’

‘It’s not going to work,’ Diesel said. ‘The moment you shut down the power, the pirates will know something’s up. These guys ain’t stupid. They’re sailors. They know ships. We cut the juice and engine power just like that, it’ll give us away for sure. Like waving a big flag saying “Here we are!” They’ll be all over us in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.’

‘I thought you said it’d take a rocket to get through that hatch,’ Condor said.

‘It would. But none of us wants to be out there with ten fuckin’ Somalis blocking the way back with AK-47s.’

‘We don’t cut the power right away,’ Jude said. ‘I’ll need it for the satellite hookup. Fifteen minutes, that’s all I need, then throw the switch.’

‘Then you have another problem,’ Diesel said. ‘We have to assume the pirates are all over the bridge, right? Which means that if the power’s still on they’ll be able to monitor the watertight door indicator. The panel of lights will show them exactly which doors and hatches are opening and closing below. It’ll give your position away from the moment you start moving.’

Jude wasn’t put off. ‘I’ll take my chances with the indicator panel. They probably won’t even notice.’

‘It’s nuts.’

‘Maybe so, but it’s the only way,’ Jude said. ‘I’m going for it. Exactly quarter of an hour after I step out of that hatch, you pull those switches. I’ll leg it back down below before they realise what’s happening.’

‘You’re crazy, you know that?’ Hercules rumbled, shaking his head. ‘You gotta death wish?’

‘Hey, if stupid wants to go get himself creamed, let’m,’ Scagnetti said.

Diesel wasn’t happy about it, but it was clear to everyone that Jude couldn’t be dissuaded. Nobody had yet come up with anything better.

‘Hold on,’ Gerber said as Jude started opening the hatch. ‘You can’t go up there without some kind of weapon. Take my axe.’

Jude looked at it. ‘I can’t run about with that. It’s too big.’

‘How about this, bro?’ Hercules said, offering Jude the butcher’s knife.

The idea of using a knife on a living person made Jude’s flesh crawl, but he knew how lame that would sound to the others. ‘If I slip on a ladder and fall on it, it’ll go right through me,’ he said, by way of an excuse.

‘You’ll need this, at least,’ Diesel said, handing Jude a long, heavy metal Maglite. ‘It’s going to get pretty dark below decks once the power goes off.’

Jude stuck the torch in his belt. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’m not planning on getting caught.’

‘Good luck, son,’ Gerber said as they unlocked the engine room hatch. Jude kicked off his shoes, thinking he’d be quieter without them, and padded barefoot through the open hatchway, his heart rate instantly quickening as he suddenly began to ask himself what the hell he thought he was doing.

Once the hatch closed behind him, there was no going back. Jude set off furtively down the narrow metal passageway to the vertical ladder they’d scrambled down minutes before. He paused at the bottom rung, peering up through the circular hole above him as he listened for approaching footsteps or voices. Hearing nothing, he took a deep breath and climbed upwards towards the next level.

The coast seemed to be clear, so far. He wasn’t dead yet, although that could easily change at any second. His heart was in his throat as he padded gingerly to the next upward hatchway. He paused once more at the top, sweating. Then kept moving. Another bare metal passage with ducts and pipes running along the wall, another open-tread iron ladder.

It was as he was about to emerge onto the level above that Jude very nearly got caught for the first time. He ducked his head and shoulders down out of sight through the hatch and held his breath as a group of pirates appeared around a corner and passed directly above him, their footsteps clanging on the bare metal floor just inches away. There were three of them, heavily armed and apparently combing the ship for the rest of the crew, but they weren’t taking it too seriously, as if mopping up survivors was just another part of the game to them. Jude could hear them laughing among themselves, and caught a whiff of something that wasn’t tobacco smoke.

He waited until they were gone. When he could breathe again, he crept quickly onwards and upwards. Five minutes. Ten to go before Diesel shut down the power and the pirates would know something was up.

He was on A Deck now, into the bottom level of the house and approaching the heart of the danger zone. His pulse was escalating with every yard. Around the next ninety-degree corner was the mess room door, hanging ajar.

He drew breath as he saw the slick of blood on the metal step and across the passageway. The blood trail stopped in a pool that reflected the neon striplights above. In the middle of the pool, inert and spreadeagled on his belly, his head turned sideways with his cheek pressed to the floor and looking straight at Jude with lifeless porcelain eyes, was Jack Skinner, the ship’s bosun. He’d managed to drag himself this far before he died from his gunshot wounds.

Jude was gaping at the corpse when the mess room door swung wide open. He ducked behind it just in time to avoid being spotted by the two armed Africans who stepped out and walked through the blood towards Skinner’s body. They bent to seize a wrist each. Peering around the edge of the door, Jude was just three feet away from them, close enough to smell their sweat and the firing-range tang of cordite on their clothes. Their bare arms were muscled and lean and glistening. The pirate nearest him had his rifle casually slung over his shoulder, tantalisingly within Jude’s reach, and for a moment he was insanely tempted to make a grab for it.

The pirates started dragging the bosun’s body up the passage towards the external hatch that led to the main deck. The smeared blood trail they left in their wake made Jude want to throw up. He stood motionless until they were out of sight, then with legs like jelly he ran on towards the hatch for B Deck.

Up and up. Twice more, he froze as he heard voices and laughter, and whipped out of sight. By the time he reached E Deck his stomach muscles were clenched so tight that it hurt and he was cursing himself for having come up with this lunatic idea.

But they hadn’t got him yet, and he’d almost reached his objective.

Eight minutes, thirty seconds. Six and a half minutes to go before the guys below threw the power switch. The sands were running fast out of the hourglass.

The door of the captain’s cabin was shut, but not locked. Slowly, slowly, he eased it open and peered inside, ready to yank the big flashlight out of his belt and start flailing away with it as a club. As if it would do him any good against automatic weapons.