Deacon wrote down the number and read it back to make sure it was correct. When he and Kaan were satisfied he turned off the phone and put it in his pocket.
He went to his bag that rested on the floor beside the Scotsman, took from it a small metal money box and placed it on the desk. The words WARNING: DO NOT OPEN THIS BOX WITHOUT THE CORRECT CODE had been written in bold letters on a piece of tape fixed across the keypad. Deacon removed the tape and studied a digital display, which he activated by pushing a button. He read the number on the piece of paper again and hit the first key.
‘What’s that?’ Jock asked.
‘My next orders,’ Deacon replied, keying in the next number.
‘Inside the box?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they don’t want me to see them before I have to.’ He pressed another key.
‘Bit silly, isn’t it, leaving your orders in a little box?’
‘Not if it’s got a stick of plastic that’ll detonate if anyone tries to open it without the right code.’
Jock nodded, impressed. ‘Nice. Wouldn’t it also be a good way to get rid of you if they’ve changed their mind about the task? They just give you the wrong code.’
Deacon hadn’t thought of that and gave Jock a look.
‘’Scuse me,’ Jock said, picking up his newspaper and walking into the security office to stand behind a cabinet from where he could just about see his boss.
Deacon’s finger hovered over the final key. If that was true, how had they planned to kill the rest of the team? He decided that killing just him would not make sense and so he pushed the key. Nothing happened. He could not help giving a small sigh of relief as he turned the handle on top of the box and raised the lid.
A lump of plastic explosive had been fixed to the inside of the lid. The detonator was wired to a battery and a small circuit board was attached to the keypad. An envelope rested in the bottom of the box. Deacon removed it and put the box into his bag.
The envelope contained a single sheet of instructions and a photograph of a man was stapled to a corner of the paper. The man was Jordan Mackay.
As Deacon read the instructions his brow creased into a frown. Jock stepped back into the room. ‘I take it we’re moving right along, then.’
‘It would seem so.’ Deacon put the envelope into his pocket. ‘I’m going down to the galley.’
Jock watched him go and glanced at the technician, who was looking at him. When he saw Jock’s hostile expression, the nerd could not get back to work quickly enough.
Deacon entered the accommodation block and wiped the rain from his face as he made his way down the stairs. He strode purposefully along the corridor, through a door and along another corridor towards the galley. The Lebanese thug slouched outside the entrance to the food hall. He gave Deacon a glance but no more.
‘What you doin’ out ’ere?’ Deacon asked.
‘I think some of them have shit their pants,’ the Arab said.
Deacon pushed open the galley door and scanned the room. It smelled like a foul toilet, and the workers were crammed into every inch of floor space. Some of them appeared to be sleeping. Banzi, the Pirate and the Bulgarian were sitting on the long serving counter, guns across their laps.
‘Why aren’t you letting these blokes do their business?’ Deacon called out.
‘We are,’ Banzi answered. ‘Some of ’em couldn’t wait. The she-he is making food for them now.’
Deacon scanned the faces of the hostages. He saw the one he was looking for. The man was staring straight at him. Deacon checked the photograph to confirm the man’s identity, realising he was one of the men they had filmed on deck. ‘You,’ he said, pointing. ‘Get to your feet.’
Jordan struggled to comply.
Deacon indicated the entrance doors. He stepped aside to let Mackay pass into the corridor. When the doors had closed behind them he said, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Don’t you know?’ Jordan said coldly.
‘I know
a
name.’
‘Jordan Mackay.’ He turned his back to Deacon and offered his bound hands. Deacon took a knife from a sheath on his belt and cut the plastic bonds. The Lebanese wondered what was going on.
Jordan rubbed his chafed wrists. ‘Give me your pistol.’
Deacon looked at the man questioningly.
‘You were given instructions about me.’
‘They said nothing about you being in charge.’
‘You were told to give me anything I asked for.’
‘They said nothing about a weapon.’
‘A weapon comes under “anything I ask for”,’ Jordan said, holding out his hand. ‘You all have weapons. You have them for a reason. Give me one.’
Deacon considered the brief instructions on the sheet of paper. As the man said, anything meant anything. He reached inside his coat, took his pistol from its holster and put it in Jordan’s hand. Mackay removed the magazine, pulled back the top slide enough to see the round in the breech and replaced it.
‘So. What’s your part in this?’ said Deacon, curious.
Jordan levelled the pistol at the Lebanese thug’s face and pulled the trigger. The deafening report of the gun reverberated along the corridor as the bullet went through the Arab’s head and into the wall behind, followed by a spout of blood. His body went limp and dropped to the floor.
Deacon stiffened at the sight and sound but kept cool, wondering immediately if he was going to be next.
Jordan stuck the pistol into his trouser belt. ‘You can have his,’ he said.
The doors slammed open and Banzi crouched in the opening with his M-15 at the ready, his gaze flicking between the two standing men and the Lebanese thug’s corpse on the floor. ‘Is all okay?’ he asked, confused.
‘He was a wanker anyway,’ Deacon said.
‘Have you laid the charges?’ Jordan asked.
‘Yep.’
‘I want to take a look.’
Deacon took the Arab’s coat off a hook and handed it to Jordan. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Would you mind tossin’ ’im over the side?’ he called out to the Japanese mercenary. ‘Weigh ’im down a bit so’s he doesn’t float where someone might find ’im.’
Deacon led Jordan into the accommodation block. Partway along a corridor Jordan stepped into one of the doorways. ‘I need a minute,’ he said. Deacon paused at the end airlock. A moment later came the sound of a toilet flushing and Jordan stepped back into the corridor, buckling up his trouser belt.
Outside the weather hit them like a brutal ambush, heavy pelting rain and powerful winds that twisted between the sandwiched deck and through the grilles above and below. It felt like a typhoon was assaulting the platform. The men leaned into the storm as they moved across an exposed stretch of deck to a flight of rain-soaked metal stairs. They held tightly to the rails to maintain their balance.
Deacon stopped halfway down the steps and crouched to indicate the huge platform leg nearest to them. ‘There’s the first,’ he shouted above the wind. Jordan continued past him onto the next deck. The wind and rain lashed at him as he limped across the griddled flooring to the massive leg. He examined the linear charge, wrapped in black plastic sheeting, and followed it around its entire circumference.
Deacon joined him. ‘Is it okay?’
‘Looks it,’ Jordan shouted back.
‘The other charges,’ Deacon said, pointing.
Jordan leaned over a rail to look down between the lower struts. He saw a charge wrapped around a heavy link that held fast one of the dozen anchor cables that kept the rig in position.
‘There are five more like that. Can you manage a ladder?’
Jordan frowned at the implication and walked over to a ladder welded to the side of the leg. He grabbed hold of the cold wet rungs with his bare hands, swung his legs beneath him and began to descend.
Deacon grinned, amused by the man’s effort to prove himself. He rubbed his hands together against the cold, took hold of a rung and followed.
Jordan reached the lower deck. Here there were fewer equipment blocks and machinery to check the wind and rain, and the gale funnelled between the spars ferociously. He inspected one of the charges and eyed the others spread around the perimeter of the deck. He looked back to see Deacon partway down the ladder. ‘You have the detonating control?’
Deacon touched down onto the deck and removed a yellow box the size of a cigarette pack from his pocket. Jordan wanted to ask for it. But from what little he knew about Deacon he could sense that the man wouldn’t give it up. The bosses hadn’t been clear enough about who was in ultimate command. Splitting the leadership in this way was not very clever and could cause friction when final decisions had to be made. Jordan decided not to make his play just yet.
He took in the vast oil platform above, below and around them. ‘You think they’re serious enough to do this?’
‘I get the feeling they don’t bluff.’ Deacon wondered what Mackay knew. ‘Is this just about ransom money or is it something else?’
Jordan wondered in turn how much the other man knew, if anything. ‘I’ve got my piece to do, just like you. Other than that I don’t know.’
‘You’re the platform expert?’ Deacon shouted.
‘Not exactly.’ Jordan looked out to sea. ‘They’ll come at night.’
‘Who?’ Deacon asked.
‘Those whose job it is to take back the platform. They might come in force, one heavy assault, or send in a recce team first.’
‘When?’
‘Depends on the negotiations . . . Soon . . . Days.’
Deacon had an idea who - or, at least, what - Jordan was. ‘You ex-SBS?’ he asked.
Jordon nodded.
Deacon smirked. ‘We’ll be ready for ’em. I’m going to place booby traps on all the stairs and ladders coming from below.’
‘They won’t come the way you think. You won’t see them until they show themselves. If you’re still on board when they get here they’ll kill you.’
Deacon’s smile melted.
Jordan reached for a rung and pulled himself up the ladder. Deacon watched him climb, suddenly feeling less comfortable. He sensed that Jordan might be a problem. The man had the air of someone who thought he was in charge. Deacon would take the first opportunity to let him know who really was.
The Chinook cruised at several thousand feet above the English countryside, keeping the city of Sheffield on its left as it headed towards the coastline at Scarborough. Stratton had gone through every operational trunk and the team’s personal boxes to gather the equipment that he felt he needed for the task. It had been more an exercise to keep himself busy than it had been based on any great confidence that he would actually use it.
The crewman came over to Stratton and tapped him on the shoulder, looking concerned. ‘Charles is getting stressed about the lost comms,’ he yelled above the noise of the rotors and engines. ‘What’s weird is that none of us have even been able to get a signal on our cellphones.’
‘What does he want to do?’ Stratton asked, placing a magazine into a semi-automatic pistol. It was drawing close to that critical moment.
‘Do you think something back at MI16 damaged our comms?’
‘Ask those guys,’ Stratton said, indicating the scientists still in their seats.
George glanced at them. Jason was looking at the ceiling. Binning was watching him and Stratton. Jackson was tapping the screen of a pocket computer with a stylus. Smithy was literally twiddling his thumbs and Rowena had her head back and her eyes closed. ‘Doesn’t matter if they can’t fix it. We’re going to have to land somewhere we can contact ops.’
Stratton had been thinking all the time about a way round this obstacle and had been unable to come up with an even remotely acceptable option. The only solution was the extreme long shot of the pilot taking things into his own hands and pressing on with the task. But that would have required a sudden madness in Charlie.
‘If there’s been a change in plans we won’t know about it,’ George explained.
Stratton knew he had to make some kind of effort, futile though it looked. He made his way to the cockpit, stepped inside and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. Charles looked around at him. ‘Ops’ll know that you have lost comms. The procedure is to continue with the task.’
‘I understand that. The plan calls for us to put down on a ship north of the Morpheus. But a serious storm has overtaken the operational area. We have enough fuel to get to the ship and land on it but not for a return to the mainland. If the ship has moved and we have to turn back for the coast, we could be in trouble.’
Stratton had hoped they were headed directly for a sea drop-off. ‘Could you drop us off a couple of miles from the Morpheus and get back?’
‘The rig’s closer to land than the command ship. But those aren’t my orders.’
‘It’s one of the contingencies, though, isn’t it? To go direct to water drop?’ Stratton was guessing but it was an option he would have put in the orders.
‘I can’t make that decision. And neither can you.’
Stratton knew he had hit a brick wall.
‘If we don’t have comms by the time we reach the coast, I’m landing,’ Charlie added.
Stratton nodded and walked away. He sat beside Jason. ‘The pilot’s going to land if they still have no comms by the time we reach the coast.’
‘What are our options?’ Jason asked.
‘If we have any, I can’t think of one.’
Binning began to look agitated. ‘If it comes down to it, could we threaten the pilot?’
‘You want to threaten to shoot one of the crew?’ Stratton asked sarcastically, wondering about the man’s common sense.
Binning realised it was a stupid comment but it was a sign of his growing frustration.
The crewman stepped out of the cockpit and walked over to the group. ‘Scarborough’s coming up,’ he said.
Stratton looked through the porthole behind his head at the coastline below. The sea stretched to the horizon.