The ship hummed softly. The lights were on and Mac smelled breakfast. Eggs, toast, coffee.
But no people. Nothing.
They were in a lobby, much like that of a mid-sized apartment building.
Paul pulled the hatchway door behind him, closing it silently.
Didn’t want to leave it fl apping and have some do-gooder come down for a nosey-poke.
Paul pointed downstairs; he wanted to check the troops before he stormed the bridge. Like Mac, he liked to know the numbers.
They went down a fl ight of stairs and into a storage area. From here, most of the food that ran a ship was kept cool till it needed to be freighted up the service elevator to the kitchens. The stewards’ area was down there too: all the toilet paper, the laundry, the cleaning gear.
They walked through the area, both breathing shallow, shit-scared about when that VX was going to blow. The silence was eerie.
They came to a cool store at the end, pushed through the clear plastic curtain and stood there in a room that was the size of a one-bedroom apartment. Five men, aged about nineteen to mid fi fties, lay on the fl oor. Filipinos by the look of it.
A carcass had fallen on one. Some were dressed in whites – kitchen guys probably, getting the provisions for the evening meal when the pirates hit. Two of them were in orange overalls, bullets in foreheads, behind ears. Blood across the fl oor, set like a dark carpet.
Mac tasted that metallic blood thing. Some people smelled it; he tasted it.
They pushed back out and went further into the ship. If Garrison and Sabaya had wanted this whole thing to go smoothly they would have needed most of the crew onside going into Singers. You couldn’t run a nine-thousand-container ship without engineers, general seamen and the offi cers. They’d waited and then executed the lot of them.
He needed to check the engine room. Even on ships this large there was only one engine and one screw shaft so it should be straightforward.
Mac accidentally knocked the claws loose on his wrist bandage, thought Bugger it and unbound the crepe. Chucked it.
They came to the hatchway door, AUTHORISED ACCESS ONLY written in several languages, Korean at the top. Paul couldn’t open it. There was a keypad on the wall beside it with a solid red light on top and a green light beside, but not on. Even large ships had manual overrides on their engines, so the last thing ship owners wanted was some seaman getting drunk and deciding it would be fun to fuck around with an eighty-thousand horsepower MAN B amp;W straight-14.
Paul turned to Mac. ‘Any ideas?’
Mac shrugged. ‘Someone’s birthday?’
‘Anything else?’
‘Four zeroes – always works for mobile phones.’
‘Let’s forget it,’ said Paul.
They walked back across the vast storage bays, noticing how many nooks and crannies and smaller offi ces and rooms there were. They could have searched the lot, but it didn’t seem like a lively place.
They hit the stairs to go back up. Paul stopped, brought his SIG up. Mac followed his gaze. Brought his own Heckler up.
Paul moved to his right, angling towards the stack of boxes that said Kleenex on the side. Mac hooked left. Moving in an arc, his breath was rasping now. He could feel the adrenaline pumping blood into his brain and ears. Everything roared. He couldn’t get enough air.
Wiping the wetness from his forehead he tried to concentrate.
Mac found a half-wall, propped against it, aimed up with a cup-and-saucer and fl icked the safety. Paul looked over and, happy with the cover, walked further forward, looking, looking. Mac tried to keep his breathing down. A shoot-out in a confi ned space like this left no room for retreat. Someone was going to drop. He didn’t want it to be him.
Paul moved forward slow, keeping the head, arms and shoulders absolutely still. His heavily muscled upper body fl exed against the grey cotton overall fabric, his legs moving beneath like they were independent of his body. His sleeves had two turn-ups; Mac could see his wrists fl exing.
Suddenly Paul leapt back, could barely get his SIG down fast enough. Hyperventilating.
Mac came out from the wall, ready for it, shooting stance going haywire, back and forth, up and down. Breathing all over the shop.
Paul held the stance, chest heaving. Then Paul’s SIG was at his side and he was laughing at the ceiling.
Mac walked over. Looked around the Kleenex stacks and saw a West Highland terrier panting back at them.
White.
They found the biggest pile in the kitchens. Mac counted eleven Filipino sailors, most of them in pale blue ovies. They were lying across each other, under the stainless-steel kitchen tables, along the lino fl oor. One sat in a chair in an offi ce, slumped, tongue out slightly, eyes open, bullet hole in the forehead. A psychedelic screensaver pattern repeated on the laptop in front of him.
Paul and Mac avoided each other’s eyes. This many corpses, so well organised, meant there’d been a decent-sized posse on this ship at some point. The signs were not of struggle: no tracked blood, the bowls and knives were undisturbed on benches.
‘Mate, let’s stay out of the blood, eh?’ said Mac.
‘Yeah, and no touching.’
If they could defuse the bomb and save this ship Mac wanted the Singapore cops all over this, wanted a proper crime scene, wanted Garrison and Sabaya sitting in a courtroom, getting nagged to death by a public prosecutor. One charge of murder after another would be harder on a couple of egos like theirs than dying of lead poisoning.
They went back out into the lino-fl oored dining room, took a seat at a table. The offi cers’ was on the other side, with mahogany panels and big crystal decanter sets. The place was set for a meal.
Paul grabbed a bottle of mineral water and they both slugged on it.
‘They must have had at least ten guys in here to do this lot so fast,’ said Paul.
Mac hoped they weren’t still aboard, hoped they didn’t get to the bridge and fi nd a greeting party. He was starting to have these weird feelings, as if Garrison and Sabaya had been expecting him to come here all along. Like it was some kind of game. He was so tired he could no longer judge if what he was thinking was sensible or not.
The next step was going to be tricky. Mac’s assumption was that Sabaya had someone in the captain’s family and had him making contact with the Emergency Operations Command at set intervals.
He’d also be watching on CNN. Would have told the captain that.
‘You know, Sabaya does kill these people. He’s serious. So how are we going to do it?’ said Paul, worried.
‘I have an idea for that,’ said Mac. ‘But fi rst, let’s see that song sheet.’
The bridge wasn’t secured, even though it could be locked in the same way as the engine room. There were two stairways into the bridge.
Paul and Mac took the port side one. They were assuming whoever was on the bridge would have all their attention focused to starboard and the Emergency Operations Centre behind the pile of containers on Keppel Terminal.
The port bridge door had a large glass window in it. Looking through it, Mac saw one man in a white shirt slumped in what looked like a huge La-Z-Boy. It looked out through tinted glass along the entire loaded deck of Golden Serpent. The man seemed to be gnawing on his fi ngers.
Mac craned his neck to the starboard side of the bridge, couldn’t see anyone else, and looked at Paul. ‘One there at the moment. Want me to take him?’
Paul gave thumbs-up and Mac eased the door inward. It made no sound. Still a relatively new ship.
Glancing behind him, he saw that Paul had stowed the SIG, had a small pad of lined paper and a pen.
Mac pushed through, took two strides, cupped his hand over the reclining bloke’s mouth. Paul moved to the starboard end of the bridge. As he did, a face poked out, white-haired, middle-aged, a steel teaspoon in his hand, mouth open, confused.
Paul didn’t blink. Veered straight into him, hand over the mouth, swung him round into a half-nelson.
Mac brought his mouth down to his bloke’s ear. Whispered, ‘No sound. Okay?’
His head nodded.
‘Speak English?’
Nodded.
‘They got your wife?’
Head shook.
‘Kids?’
Nodded.
Mac felt a gulp.
‘They’re listening in, right?’ whispered Mac.
Shoulders shrugged, then head nodded, a yes, maybe.
‘My name’s Mac, Australian intelligence. That’s Paul, British intelligence. We’re here to help but they can’t know we’re up here or they’ll kill the hostages. Okay?’
The head nodded. Another gulp.
‘We’re going to communicate by writing, okay? Talk to the other guy, but not us. We’ll try to sort this. Okay?’
Nodded.
Mac let him go and he turned slowly. Dark hair, fortyish, long face, eyes red. Been crying a lot.
Mac offered his hand and they shook.
Paul let the other guy go and they walked over to Mac. All shook hands. Silent. The two ship guys looked hollowed out with stress and lack of sleep.
Paul got to the map table behind the big recliner chairs, put the pad on the map table. The older guy put on half-glasses.
Where’s your song sheet? Mac wrote on the pad.
The older guy walked to the starboard wing of the bridge, picked up a piece of paper, came back.
They looked at it. The last announcement had been and gone at one pm. The next was for one-thirty. They looked to the last page.
The fi nal demand was at 6.05 pm – essentially, a long screed of Moro invective and praises given to Allah.
Mac fl ipped back. The next demand to be broadcast was going to be: We demand the fourteen Moro separatist prisoners being held illegally in Manila be released before six pm local time tonight and brought to this ship, or we will detonate the VX nerve agent.
Mac looked at his G-Shock: 1.13 pm.
He beckoned the offi cers, and they all left the bridge, moved down two fl ights to the dining room where they introduced themselves.
Jeremy was the younger one – a New Zealander; Wylie was American and the captain. They were both based out of Singapore, where their families lived.
Jeremy shook his head. ‘How are we, I mean, how can we…’ His voice broke, unable to go on.
Wylie looked at Paul as if to say: See what I’ve been putting up with?
‘No one wants to be here, right Jerry?’ said Paul.
Jeremy nodded.
‘But here we are all the same. We’re gonna try and sort it, but we’re gonna need you, mate. Up for it?’
Jeremy nodded. Looked away. Embarrassed at his state.
‘We’re betting these guys have gone into the AIS system and switched on the bridge broadcast system,’ said Mac.
‘The one that only cuts in after a collision?’ said Wylie.
‘That one, yeah,’ said Mac, liking Wylie already. ‘We think your conversations are broadcasting to all ships, and that’s how Sabaya and Garrison are listening in.’
‘Is that their names?’
‘What are they like?’ asked Mac.
Wylie grimaced. ‘Well, they know how ships work, they knew what we were doing and where we’d be. I mean, they weren’t like what you expect of a pirate or a terrorist.’
‘What were they focused on?’
‘The American kept talking about clarity, kept reminding me that anyone who commanded a vessel this large had to have an adult grasp of clarity.’
Wylie exhaled, grabbed at a glass of water. ‘Then he put that sheet on one side of the table, and the photo of my wife on the other, said, Here’s how it works. And we’ve been up here ever since, broadcasting this rubbish.’ He slapped the song sheet against his thigh.
Jeremy sniffed. Paul eyeballed him, said, ‘Come on, mate.’
Mac wanted more. ‘They tell you they’d be watching on TV?’
‘Yes, sir. Told us that this was a tailored CNN incident.’
Mac’s ears pricked up. Didn’t know why. ‘The American. He said incident?’
‘Sure did. Said it several times. Said he’d be watching it on CNN and if we got stormed before the set time on the sheet, he’d blow the place up and kill his hostages.’
‘You know which one is the VX?’ asked Mac.
‘The what?’ said Wylie.
‘It’s nerve agent. They stole it, got it on this ship.’
‘Oh that. Is that what they call it? Yeah, they hauled these big black bags down to twelve -‘
‘Twelve?’
‘Bay Twelve. It’s the twelfth container from the stern. About halfway between the bridge and bow.’
‘Then what?’
‘We worked out it was twelve eleven eight-six.’
‘What was?’
‘The container they were working on. They knew all about the bridge gantries and ladders and lashing. They seemed to know their stuff.’
‘What’s twelve eleven eighty-six?’
‘It’s the container position,’ said Wylie. ‘It’s bay twelve, row eleven, tier eighty-six.’
Paul frowned. ‘In English that would be?’
‘It would be halfway to the bow, on the outside – starboard – side of the stacks, and high up. About second or third from the top of the stack.’
Mac mulled it. Twelve eleven eighty-six, exactly where the offi cers on Hokkaido Spirit said you’d have to put a container if you wanted to open it en route.
Mac beckoned Paul to another table, whispered, ‘We can’t pull the cops and the Yanks in here to do the bomb or these guys are going to lose family, right?’
Paul nodded.
‘So we have to get the TV cameras shut down. Make it look like the Singaporeans have moved to a new Em-Con level.
‘Once we can get those helos and cameras out of here, then Sabaya and Garrison are blind. They can hear those demands going out every thirty minutes, and they think it’s all going on. But they don’t know the Twentieth is crawling all over Golden Serpent trying to disarm their bomb.’
‘Sounds like a plan.’
Mac went back to Wylie and Jeremy. ‘Mate, think we might have an idea,’ Mac said to Wylie.
Paul wanted to know how they’d been speaking with the Americans, and Wylie said, ‘The ship-to-shore phone.’
‘Where is it?’ asked Mac.
Wylie pointed at a table next to the starboard window. There was a heavy white handset face down on a white plastic cradle.
‘Got a number?’ asked Paul.
Wylie pulled a folded piece of white paper from his shorts.
Mac and Paul swapped a look. With the ship-to-shore phone not jammed it might be possible to get through to Sawtell or the Port Master or Hatfi eld. Mac wasn’t hopeful on that score. Once the EOC starts its business – especially a US military one for a terrorist threat – the lines of communication go so high that outside calls are not taken.
Hatfi eld would be sit-repping as high as CINCPAC, Joint Chiefs and maybe the Oval Offi ce. There wouldn’t be too many rubber-neckers getting through.
Still, it was worth a shot.
Mac checked his G-Shock: 1.25. He looked at Wylie, whose face fell off him like a fl esh waterfall. ‘Guys, you’re up again. Do what they tell you, all right? Don’t talk about us. We’re trying to get this sorted.
Do it by the book, right?’
The two offi cers nodded, gulped down some water and walked back upstairs, dragging their feet. Mac sat back. According to the Sabaya sheet, the whole thing timed out at six that evening. It gave them about four and a half hours to come up with something. If they couldn’t alert the Singaporeans and the Yanks within the next half-hour, Mac was going to slip back into the water and stealth round there himself. Or even better, get Paul to do it. He got out of Hasanuddin, piece of piss. He could try getting into a US Army EOC.
Mac walked to the starboard window, looked out. He could make out the fl ash of a rotor or a truck at intervals where you could see through the mountain of container stacks. There were black-clad Singaporean SWAT teams lurking between the containers. Mac wondered what they thought they were going to do: storm the VX consignment? Intimidate the CL-20?
The EOC had been mounted back from the apron. Tucked among the container stacks.
Mac could see broadcast trucks along the raised Ayer Rajah Expressway. There were at least thirty of them and there seemed to be a roadblock of more trucks and vans trying to get the circle seats.
Even without binos Mac could see their satellite dishes on the roofs, uplinking with a continuous feed. They were getting used to the thirty-minute spacing of the demands, perhaps. The AIS broadcasts meant CNN and Fox News could be getting their feeds from any one of the ships. Could even be getting it from a hobbyist with a VHF receiver who could hook into the maritime bands.
There seemed to be a fl urry of activity, then voomph, along the rows of OB trucks the klieg lights and refl ector brollies lit up and the row looked like something out of a sci-fi movie.
Mac wondered why the lights had gone on now, in the middle of the afternoon, then looked at his watch: 1.29. Golden Serpent had become the news cycle. Bottom of the hour live feeds to the anchors.
Lots of reports starting sentences with things like ‘We’re hearing’, and
‘There’s a real sense’, in lieu of having any information.
The next thing to arrive was going to be the anchors. They’d be coming in from Honkers, Sydney, KL, Manila, Jakarta and Bangers.
They’d want their own trailers. They’d want higher platforms than the others, better lighting, better synergies with the EOC. They’d need bigger OB trucks so the anchors could broadcast their shows out of Ayer Rajah, with Golden Serpent in the background. They’d need more producers, more lights, more make-up. They might even bring the weather girl and the sports guy.
They’d be clamouring for the Twentieth or the Singapore cops or the MPA to appoint a PR fl ak to manage the media. The PR fl ak would be so inundated with requests and demands from the producers and reporters that she’d have to requisition time, real estate and resources to create constant cycles of press conferences. People like Hatfi eld and the Port Master would tire of saying no. They’d fi nally drag themselves into the press conference, become annoyed, mumble something like, ‘Who ordered this gaggle-fuck?’ Which would become the next news cycle.
Mac wanted to short-circuit that process.
Standing back from the window, he looked up at the wall, saw a TV.
He found a remote beside it on the wall-mounted platform. Switched it on, found CNN, kept the volume low. There were panning shots of Golden Serpent with American voices narrating, bringing audiences up to date. A large container ship has been hijacked by terrorists and is currently berthed at Port of Singapore with what is believed to be a large amount of nerve agent rigged to a very large bomb.
The voices went on, talking about demands and Moro prisoners, had experts talking about what nerve gas does to people. The nerve gas guy kept trying to make a point, but he got talked over so they could seg to the OB. Mac thought he heard the nerve gas guy trying to say, ‘Are your people suited up?’
CNN cut to the OB. The reporter had a helmet of hair, a Banana Republic photo-journalist uniform and a beautiful delivery. But she wasn’t suited up and would have a major problem if she was still standing on Ayer Rajah when the VX blew.
The fi nal demand was at six o’clock. It was going to be a prime time nerve gas attack.