They didn’t tell Jordan very much about the job, other than that it was a task on an oil platform and that it could involve working against the British security forces. The man gave him a letter containing a decryption code word and a few days later he received an e-mail with an encrypted file attached that the code word opened. The attachment contained details of the promised Cayman Island bank account with half a million US dollars in it and a proposed date for the next half-million to drop. After checking that the funds really did exist he became very excited, more about the prospect of spending a million dollars than about the task itself. But as the operation drew closer the excitement about the money turned into something else: concern. About what he had to do. About Deacon. About Deacon’s men. They were a threat to his control. He had the feeling right from the start that Deacon wasn’t comfortable being his subordinate. And now he could feel the man looking at him in a way that suggested the idea was eating at him.
Deacon suddenly wondered if his own expression reflected his contempt for Jordan. He looked away. ‘Do we need this guy all night?’ Deacon asked, wanting to get rid of the technician.
Jordan considered it, wondering what Deacon wanted. ‘I can monitor things for a while.’
‘Hey. You,’ Deacon said to the technician who looked at him fearfully. ‘I want you to go down to the cookhouse and take a break until I send for you. I’m going to let you go unescorted. But if you don’t turn up, if you try and hide, when I find you I’ll toss you overboard. Do you understand?’
The man nodded quickly.
‘Good. Get going.’
The man headed for the door.
Deacon picked a radio off the desk and pressed a button in its side. ‘This is Deacon in the control room. Technician coming down to the cook ’ouse. Let me know when he arrives.’
A moment later a squelch came from the phone, followed by a gruff foreign voice. ‘Understood.’
Deacon put the radio down. He wondered again what more Jordan knew about the operation than he did, and how he might get the man to reveal any of it. Deacon’s orders had been quite specific. He was responsible for the team and the prisoners, none of whom were to be harmed if at all possible. Jordan now had charge of the operation itself and the final say over strategy and policy. But the man didn’t appear to be the chatty type. Yet he was an ex-serviceman and one thing ex-servicemen liked to do was talk about the years they’d spent as soldiers, Deacon reasoned, usually because civilian life was nearly always so dull and unamusing by comparison. He hoped that rule applied to Jordan. ‘How long you do in the SBS?’ he asked.
The question didn’t particularly surprise Jordan. It was one ex-special forces guys always seemed to ask each other. A way of gauging their experience. Anyone who’d done less than eight years wasn’t considered rounded enough. They might have seen a lot of action but that wasn’t where the SF experience really lay. It was in the depth and variety of challenges. Jordan hadn’t given much thought to Deacon’s background, other than assuming the man was ex-service himself. It only then occurred to him the bloke would not have been hired without a suitable pedigree, such as SF. As they might be together for days he tried to be friendly. ‘Long enough,’ he said. ‘What’s your own background? ’
Deacon’s instinct was to keep his identity secret but he couldn’t control his ego. Not with this individual. He wanted his top-dog status back. ‘SAS.’
Jordan wondered if the man was lying. A lot of ex-servicemen in the civilian security business claimed to be former special forces. ‘Which squadron?’ he asked.
‘B.’
‘When did you get out?’
Deacon suspected that Jordan was verifying his claim. It only added to his resentment. Surely it was obvious to another soldier that Deacon had to be SAS. He and Jordan had never met but they were men of the same era. Even a shaky boat could see that. It wasn’t unusual for the two services that they’d never crossed paths. Some guys had spent much of their careers cross-training between the SBS and SAS and some hardly at all. ‘Just before Afghanistan.’
‘You know Marvin Goodman?’
‘Marvellous was my sergeant major.’
Jordan nodded, convinced. Deacon was former SAS all right. The man’s arrogance sealed it - he acted as if he’d been insulted by Jordan’s doubts. It didn’t matter that he’d answered the question correctly.
‘You get the leg on the job?’
‘Afghanistan.’ Jordan felt reluctant to discuss his service history.
‘I’ve been there but as a civvy.’ Deacon felt he had little in common with the other man. ‘Was it operational?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Something go wrong?’ It was a fair enough question to ask about an SF wound. The ops were so meticulously planned that if anyone got hurt it was worth hearing about.
‘Not as badly as it could’ve.’ Other than the official debrief, Jordan had told no one about the operation in any detail. Much like Stratton. He had refrained from discussing it with SBS members because it would only cause friction. Some believed it was Stratton’s fault and others felt that the incident was the price of war. He couldn’t discuss it with a civilian. They could never fully understand. But another SF operator might be able to put himself in his shoes. Apply his own experiences as well as his knowledge of the system. Jordan didn’t particularly trust the man in front of him but he had a sudden urge to tell him the story. Perhaps it was because he wanted to hear a qualified outsider’s view. An SAS guy might give an unbiased opinion. ‘It was one of those jobs that was wrong from the start.’
‘Why’d it go ahead?’
‘Same reason a lot of them do. Ego. On the ground as well as those up top. You know what the SBS and SAS hierarchies are like. Always competing against each other, point scoring, wanting to impress London. No offence but the regiment’s been falling behind a bit of late, what with Iraq dying down. And the SBS getting all the glory in Afghanistan. And the Yanks finally starting to share the lead in SF roles . . . maybe even take it from us in places.’
This was all news to Deacon and it did not sit well with him. He had no contact with current troopers or any of his old mates from the regiment yet he had strong opinions regarding special forces. All of them. As far as he was concerned the SAS were at the top of the SF tree with the SBS several branches down and the Yanks even lower. And it had always been that way. It was only to be expected - and typical - for an SBS operator to rubbish the SAS at any opportunity. He suddenly had a good reason to dislike the other man. ‘So what happened?’ Deacon asked.
‘The job went ahead - a hit on a Taliban encampment. We try not to arrest many these days. Ever since the media clowns and bleeding-heart liberals have been bleating on about the treatment of terrorists in prisons like Guantánamo, the only solution is to shoot them instead.’
‘I like that,’ Deacon said.
‘Too much had been left to chance on this one.’
‘I don’t see why it was allowed to go on.’
‘Sure you can. The SAS has had more cock-ups over the last twenty years than anyone.’
‘That’s because they’ve done nearly all the bloody work,’ Deacon said defensively, feeling his hackles rising.
‘That may be a part of it,’ Jordan said, unaware of the hurt and venom in Deacon’s reply. ‘But you’re missing the point. Many of those ops were damned before they started. It didn’t stop ’em from going ahead, though. It’s still about peer pressure and egos causing a lot of the problems.’
‘So what happened?’ Deacon asked, controlling his anger at the digs against his beloved former unit. His foul temper had grown worse over the years and once it turned physical he knew he was apt to lose control altogether. He had spent so long in lawless environments, where he had not been held to account for his actions, that he was no longer able to check himself. The oil platform was just such a place. The only law was that imposed by Deacon and his men, all answerable to him. The only chance of keeping him in check here was the risk of screwing up the task and losing the money.
Jordan had no inkling of his colleague’s murderous intent and how his talk was eating away at the restraints on the man’s madness. To him it was just a conversation, albeit a contentious one, with a fellow ex-special forces operative who was under the illusion that he was the senior figure in charge of the operation. ‘As I’d expected, the hit didn’t go as planned and I had to go in and hot-extract the team with vehicles. It was a mess. We were only lightly armoured and we took a lot of fire.’
‘And you took one in the leg.’
‘As a result I had to leave the mob.’
‘What about the team leader?’
Jordan gave him a look. It was an interesting question. He hadn’t intended to discuss that side of it. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you blame him, right?’
Jordan did blame Stratton but he experienced an internal conflict whenever he thought about it. He had always liked and respected Stratton. The man was highly rated by everyone in the SBS and to accuse him of incompetence did not sit well with most of them. It felt awkward - traitorous, even. ‘I suppose so,’ he finally admitted.
‘What do you mean, you suppose so? It was ’is fault. You got shot. Why didn’t you take it out on ’im?’
‘Because that’s not how it’s done.’
Deacon, seething inside, studied Jordan. ‘Don’t take this wrong - just like you said to me with your comments about my old regiment - but I think you’re a pussy.’ ‘What’s that?’ Jordan asked, surprised. He hadn’t seen it coming. This was one old soldier telling a war story to another.
‘I’ve been in so many contacts, some that’d make yours look like an exercise on Salisbury Plain. Getting shot at is all part of the big show. Listen to your crap. You know what the difference is between the SAS and the SBS? You’re all a buncha whingeing pussies.’
Jordan’s eyes narrowed. He felt a cross between brimming anger and confusion.
‘Sorry, mate, but I ’ave to call it as I see it.’
Deacon’s radio came to life. ‘This is Pirate. I think there’s someone on the lower spans.’
Jordan and Deacon remained staring at each other despite the significance of the interruption. Jordan was the first to disconnect. This was why he was here, in command. There were more important things to deal with.
Deacon was far more self-destructive in nature and could easily value emotional issues above practical essentials. It would have needed a similar madness from Jordan to sustain their dispute. Deacon’s only respect for Jordan came from how decisively he had dealt with the Lebanese thug. That was warning enough not to give him any advantages. He suspected Jordan would not do anything to jeopardise the operation. It was the same weakness that had stopped him from challenging his team leader on that Afghanistan mission.
Jordan got to his feet. ‘Tell all your call signs to go silent unless it’s an emergency,’ he said as he pulled on his coat.
‘Why’s that?’ Deacon asked, remaining in his seat and looking at Jordan.
‘Because if your bloke’s right and someone has climbed onto the rig, it will most likely be the forward recce. It’s too soon for an assault. That means in turn they’ll be putting in a technical option, which means they’ll be able to hear you.’ Jordan felt a little better, talking down to Deacon like this. He made his way to the door. ‘Where’s this Pirate feller?’
‘I’ll show you,’ Deacon said, getting to his feet and pulling on his waterproof as he stared at Jordan. He disliked him even more for the way he was talking to him.
In the driving wind and rain outside Jordan squinted beyond the rails into the blackness where the join between the sea and sky had disappeared. It was as if the platform were shrouded in a tempestuous cloak that allowed no light in from the outside world. The cold rain beating against his face was refreshing, a cleansing balm against the anger that had engulfed him back in the control room.
He wondered who might be on the platform and if he knew them. His thoughts went to Stratton, not just because of the discussion with Deacon. Bumping into him at the airport the other day had been a strange coincidence and he wondered what the chances were of him being in the first wave. He dismissed the idea as quickly as he had thought of it. If Stratton was involved in any way it would be leading one of the assault teams, not the recce. He felt grateful for it.
‘This way,’ Deacon shouted, walking past Jordan, his hood pulled over his head.
Jordan followed. Deacon deliberately walked too quickly. He paused at the top of a flight of riveted metal steps to wait for the former SBS operative, a mean glare in his eyes that Jordan would never be able to see in the darkness and inside his hood.
They descended to the low-blocked accommodation deck and walked across an open space in front of the cabins to another flight of stairs going down. They followed these to the lower deck and on down a set of narrower, steeper steps to the machine deck, the lowest operating deck before the spiders. There was a mixture of machine equipment, storage containers and piping of every description stacked everywhere. The thunderous boom of the powerful swell pounding against the rig’s legs grew louder with each step down. The black-painted metal railings were wet and slippery.
They halted beside one of the four massive legs. A wide ladder leading down was welded to its side. Here the wind was even more turbulent, its pressure dropping and increasing alternately as it pushed between the supports.
Deacon’s pace slowed and became more cautious as his concentration focused ahead. Partway around the curved surface of the huge leg he stopped and pressed himself against it. He removed his hood and slowly leaned over a rail in order to look below.
Jordan gradually closed on him.
Deacon had to search for a while before he eventually spotted the Pirate squatting on a cross-brace some twenty feet below. Only when the jet-black Somali looked up and revealed the whites of his eyes could Deacon make out which part of the dark bundle was the man’s head. The Pirate pointed down and diagonally opposite.