She could get back to the Somali coast. But she would have to make her way to the village without being challenged. ‘Did she take a weapon?’
‘No,’ Andy said with confidence. ‘We’ve only got the five AKs on board and she wouldn’t get her hands on one of them even if she took a turn for the lads.’ Andy smiled at the crude quip but lost it when Stratton did not respond.
Despite the girl’s motives, her actions didn’t seem sensible ones to Stratton. And she never came across as stupid. The only other motive for her leaving the ship that he could think of was fear. But of what, he had no idea. Fear of failure perhaps. Fear of returning to her bosses without having completed her mission, whatever that was. He thought she’d done enough to be given a medal. Perhaps it was the fear of being questioned by the British. That might not go down well with her leaders. The Chinese Secret Service was clearly a strict outfit.
Stratton wished he’d had a moment to say farewell to her. He had grown to like her. He certainly respected her. She weighed nothing and was as hard as some of the toughest men he had known. He wished her well, whatever she was doing. He trotted down the steps to the main deck level. Through the open door he glimpsed a navy helicopter thundering by, a sleek, grey Lynx, the fastest chopper in the world and it looked like the pilot was putting it through its paces.
Stratton stepped into the galley.
Two young, intelligent-looking men in smartly pressed camouflaged fatigues stood talking. Stratton didn’t know either of them. They stopped talking and faced the operative. They looked at him respectfully.
‘Jasper Howel,’ the shorter, blond-haired man said, holding out a hand with a smile. ‘Lieutenant,’ he added, without sounding superior.
‘Hi,’ Stratton replied, shaking his hand.
‘Lieutenant Blythe,’ the other man said.
Stratton shook his hand too.
‘We’ve come to take you to HMS Ocean,’ Howel said.
Just as Stratton had expected.
‘You ready to go?’ Blythe asked.
‘Sure,’ Stratton said.
Blythe put a radio to his mouth and pressed the send button. ‘Sierra, this is hard stand. We’re ready to depart.’
‘Sierra, roger,’ a voice boomed back.
Stratton followed Howel out of the galley and on to the main deck. The sun glowed low above the horizon and the wind had picked up.
Bob and the rest of his security retinue had gathered on deck. He stepped forward and offered his hand. ‘It was good to meet you, Mr Stratton.’
Stratton looked him in the eye. ‘Thanks for everything,’ he said, shaking Bob’s hand firmly. The look he gave Bob was a sincere appreciation for taking on the pirates. Bob, his men and the ship had saved Stratton’s life and the operative didn’t take that lightly.
Bob nodded, more than proud of his actions that day. He would dine out on the story, no doubt for the rest of his life. He had seen action, and he had rescued a British SAS man to boot.
‘I sometimes go through Hereford. Perhaps we’ll bump into each other one day and have a pint,’ Bob ventured with a wink.
‘Perhaps,’ Stratton said. ‘You take care,’ he added.
The Lynx came into a hover by the side of the bulker and held its position alongside. Blythe hurried along the deck to meet it.
The security guards held out their hands for Stratton as he passed. He shook each one of them before heading for the helicopter.
‘You’d have more chance meeting him for a pint in Poole than Hereford,’ Howel said to Bob in a low voice, before following Stratton.
‘Bloody ’ell,’ Bob said. ‘Of course.’
‘What’s that?’ one of the guys asked a vexed-looking Bob.
‘Poole. He’s not SAS. He’s SBS,’ Bob said. ‘Bollocks. I should’ve known. The SAS can’t swim.’
Stratton climbed the rails and stepped across into the thudding chopper. Howel followed close behind and as the men took their seats inside the cabin it peeled off and headed away low over the water.
Bob and the crew watched it disappear into the sunset. Stratton was living most of their fantasies.
‘I suppose you’ve been on board the Ocean before?’ Howel asked Stratton loudly over the noise of the engines. ‘The SBS have used it a lot over the years as an operations platform.’
‘I’ve been on board a few times before,’ Stratton said. He hadn’t been aboard it for several years, the last time off the coast of West Africa when he spent almost a week on it before a land operation.
The flight took less than half an hour but in that time the sun dropped beyond the horizon. The Ocean looked very much like a traditional aircraft carrier but it was a quarter of the size of the American supercarriers. Its island tower superstructure sat in the centre shoved over to one side to allow as much flat runway space as possible. A strobe light near the back end of the flight deck signalled the helicopter’s landing point. Stratton could make out half a dozen large helicopters in a line along the deck.
He stared at the carrier through the window. Memories of his time spent on board it flooded back. They hadn’t been particularly interesting ones. Life on a navy ship could be staid, especially when there were adventures to be had elsewhere in the world. He remembered the time the squadron had been waiting for some low-life criminals deep in the jungle along the Sierra Leone–Liberia border to negotiate the release of some British aid workers they had kidnapped. For some reason the kidnappers hadn’t made contact on the satellite phone they’d been given. A couple of less experienced members of the operations HQ supposed the criminals would be conscious of having their positions vectored as soon as they turned on the phone. Others, like Stratton, put their money on the idiots not being able to figure out how to use it. It turned out he was right but for the wrong reasons. Whoever had organised the phone hadn’t activated the pay-as-you-go sim card before sending it to the kidnappers. The card had been included in the package but the gangsters didn’t know its relevance. And so the operation dragged on for another week before Stratton and his team were allowed to swim ashore one night and move upriver until they found a position to lie up. They spent the following day watching the riverbank, where fresh human tracks came down to the water’s edge. Sure enough, a couple of gang members eventually turned up to collect water.
Stratton and his team tracked them back to their camp where it all ended bloodily for the rest of the gang, but that had been the intention of the message – we don’t pay ransoms but that doesn’t mean we don’t play the game. Stratton hadn’t gone back to the ship but took a helicopter to Sierra Leone and a flight back to the UK.
He’d hoped he might not see the Ocean again but it looked like he was destined to spend a little more time on it after all.
The helicopter approached the rear of the flight deck like it was a fixed-wing aircraft, the narrow superstructure ahead and to the right, lit up like a dull Christmas tree, red, white and green. The wind had picked up even more after the sun went down and the little craft buffeted as it came into the hover above the deck. It landed with a heavy bump, the ship coming up to meet it. As soon as they touched down the engine pitch changed and figures headed out of the shadows towards it. One of them pulled open the door.
Howel stepped out and waited for Stratton to follow him. ‘We’re to go straight to the operations room,’ the young lieutenant said.
On deck a tall, thin, hawkish-looking officer in a camouflaged windproof eyed Stratton with a level of curiosity that bordered on suspicion.
‘Lieutenant Winslow,’ Howel said by way of introduction.
Winslow nodded, keeping his hands behind his back.