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.