Brute Force (22 page)

I went back to studying the harbour. Lynn had pointed out the little dinghy he pottered about in. I tracked on down the line of boats on the far side of the marina. The bigger the boat, the closer it was to the open sea. By the time I'd panned down to the end of the sea-wall, adjusting the focus as I went, I half expected to see Roman Abramovich waving at me.

The really big numbers were crawling with crew. Hulls were being scrubbed down, decks swept and paint applied to metalwork.

My binos swept past them and headed out towards the open water.

More boats bobbed up and down just beyond the marina, a mixed bag, all of which still cost more than your average house – on second thoughts, make that ten average houses. I tried to work out whether there was any significance to them being out there, and decided that their owners were too tight to pay harbour fees.

I kept panning, then stopped. Something sleek and dangerous slipped into the field of view – not as big as anything I'd seen on Abramovich Row, but probably no less damaging to the bank account.

It had a matt black hull and a shiny grey upper deck. Antennae sprouted from the roof. A radar revolved on a beam just above and behind the main cabin. The thing looked like an ocean-going Ferrari. And to top it all, there was a really good-looking woman sunning herself on the front deck. I adjusted the focus again. She looked Chinese or Japanese; it was hard to tell at this distance. Oriental, anyway. Her eyes were closed and her face angled towards the weak, wintry sun.

A guy suddenly appeared on deck. I followed him as he edged round the cabin, crept up on her and dropped something down her sweater. Even though the boat was 500 metres away, I heard her squeal.

She jumped up, pretending to be cross, and threw it back at him. Ice-cube attack. The guy ducked and it splashed into the sea. Too bad he didn't follow it. Now that would have been funny. He was neither young nor beautiful. But then with a boat like his he didn't have to be. I narrowed my eyes and peered at him. Well fed, comfortable, tanned and pushing fifty. Lucky fucker.

'What did you say?' Lynn was back, standing beside me, holding two cups of coffee.

I hadn't realized I'd spoken aloud.

I took one and sniffed it. It didn't smell any better than the last cup. 'What's that black and grey Batship out there?'

He peered out to sea.

I pointed.

'That thing?' He made it sound like we were looking at the boating equivalent of a Ford Fiesta. 'It's a Predator 95-100.' His lip curled. 'A Sunseeker.'

All of a sudden it was an it, not a she. 'How fast does it go?' I kept my eyes on the deck. The girl was running after Fatman, arms and legs flailing like windmills. I watched as the two of them disappeared below deck. A moment or two later somebody drew the curtains on a porthole just above the waterline.

'Fast. Probably in excess of thirty knots – forty mph to you, Nick. Why do you ask?'

63

'The confidence and power of this craft is simply awe-inspiring. Performance levels can be adjusted depending on your preference of engine and drive systems. Accommodation is as generous as it is comfortable, whilst an immense upper deck saloon is fitted with a stylish bar and galley. On deck, ample sunbathing space and a retractable bimini top over a huge cockpit area make for effortless entertainment.'

Lynn had pulled the blurb for a Sunseeker Predator 95-100 off the web and read from it as he paced the room. We'd already established he was wrong about one thing. The Predator had a top speed of fifty knots. In excess of sixty-five mph. We could almost be in Tripoli tonight, if we wanted.

Lynn read on. Its vital statistics were awesome: length overall – 28.77 metres; fuel – diesel; propulsion – direct gear drive through triple Arneson surface drives, or submerged twin-props in semi-tunnels. I wasn't sure what it all meant, but I was impressed.

Next came the important bit. It had a fuel capacity of 8500 litres or 1870 gallons. If we hammered it at roughly thirty knots – forty mph – Lynn calculated that we'd be able to go around 350–400 miles on a full tank. As Libya was 700 miles away, we were looking at one refuelling stop, possibly two; and a total journey time of around twenty hours.

Lynn stopped reading from the laptop and came and sat back down in his chair. 'Why don't we take something a little bigger – something with more range? That way we won't have to refuel.'

I shook my head. I was still eyes-on the boat. Fatman and his oriental eye-candy remained below. They'd been down there for an hour.

'The bigger the boat, the more people on board. Fewer people makes it easier to lift. By the way, can you drive one of these things?'

'Of course.' He sounded indignant. I guessed piloting a Predator was like falling off a log if you happened to be a member of some posh yacht club on the north Norfolk coast. He frowned again.

When he spoke, he kept his eyes on the sea. 'How are we going to refuel if the police – actually, more likely the Coast Guard – know that the boat's been stolen? That thing—' he waved an arm in the direction of the Predator – 'is two to three million pounds' worth of vessel, brimming with every bit of kit imaginable – radar, GPS, the whole lot. A Sunseeker is a floating computer. It's probably got a tracker device on it, too. They'll be onto us in hours – maybe minutes. Then what?'

I thought he'd finished, but he was only just warming up.

'Just how do you intend to get to Tripoli? I know the Colonel's back in the fold, but they don't just throw their doors open to foreigners, you know. I know the Libyans. This is a society that's been shut off for decades. Even if we evade the Italian authorities, we'll have the Libyan navy to contend with. After the Americans bombed Tripoli in '86, Gaddafi spent serious money beefing up their defences.'

'I said lifted, not stolen. Anyone on board comes with us. We've just got to make sure everything appears completely normal, because they – the owners, whoever they are – are coming with us. Nobody's going to report the boat stolen if it isn't stolen, and that way we can get
them
to refuel. As for the Libyan navy, fuck 'em. The Colonel has got plenty on his plate already – a people-trafficking problem, for starters. My guess is the Libyan navy will be looking out, not in.'

I wasn't an expert, but I remembered seeing something on the news a few years back – seventy migrants dying on one ship when they'd tried to reach Europe illegally from Libya. They'd died of hunger and thirst after the boat broke down and drifted for ten days before being spotted by an Italian steamer. The poor bastards had come from all over Africa – Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, you name it – and Libyan middlemen had promised them safe passage to a new life in Europe.

Of course, there had been a catch – in this case, a shit boat that had broken down almost as soon as it had left Libyan waters. The Europeans had finally demanded action and Gaddafi, by now intent on greasing his way back into the international fold, promised to tighten things up. We'd be doing what the authorities least expected – going against the human tide. Besides, we were in a big sleek boat that meant cash coming into the country.

Lynn drew breath to speak, but I cut him short. 'Listen, it's not a drama. I don't know yet what we're going to do with Candy Girl and Fatman. Unless, of course, you want to kill them . . .'

'Christ, no.'

'Then let me worry about them. If the nav systems give our position away, let's turn 'em all off. We'll buy a bog-standard GPS down the marina and do our own navigation – or get to work with a compass, if necessary. Can you do that?'

'Of course.'

'OK, now we're talking. I'll take first stag. We'll do one hour on, one hour off. We maintain eyes-on that Predator the whole day, to make sure it's just those two. If there's anybody else on board, I need to know. If they leave during the day, tough – it's back to square one.'

I glanced at him to see if he'd got the message. A thin sheen of sweat glistened on his bare head.

He got to his feet. A look of resignation passed across his face. 'What are we going to do with the Predator when we get to Libya?'

I raised the binos. The curtains were still drawn. I could feel Lynn's gaze on the back of my neck. 'I may not know how to drive one of those things, but trust me, I know how to sink them.'

64

It looked as if the sun had brought all the beautiful people of Europe out to play, bang in front of Lynn's apartment. It was not yet dark, but the restaurants and bars around the marina were already starting to fill up. We had passed the day stagging, on and off – never a drama for me, but Lynn's boredom threshold was clearly a lot lower than mine. When he wasn't watching the boat, he slept, until I told him to go out and check what time the marina's fuel station closed and, while he was about it, to buy what we needed for a twenty-hour boat trip – food, drink and a cheap GPS.

Lynn still puzzled me. He'd told me he'd spent years setting up the apartment, exactly for this kind of contingency – but I was sure he wasn't telling me the whole story. I knew he was getting a bit of a rush as we stayed one step ahead of the bad guys, but he still wore his defeated look the rest of the time. There was a wedding photograph on the dressing table in front of the balcony window, and yet he hadn't even mentioned Mrs Lynn in passing since we'd left the mushroom farm.

I was beginning to understand why Fatman had dropped anchor where he had. He and Candy Girl had stayed below deck the entire day. The good news was that nothing else had stirred on the Predator. According to the blurb, the 'Master Stateroom' boasted a double berth, a nineteen-inch flatscreen TV, CD/DVD/Radio surround-sound speaker system, air conditioning and a hand-held fire extinguisher. It looked as though the last two were going to come in very useful.

At five o'clock, Lynn came and sat down next to me. I handed him the binos and he passed me the laptop. 'It's not going to be a piece of cake, is it?'

He'd downloaded an article entitled 'Middle-Power Approaches to Maritime Security – Italy'. It told us that the Italians had a coast guard, a customs service, a maritime extension of the carabinieri and a navy, all charged with policing their national waters. The Guardia Costiera alone had 10,000 personnel and almost 400 ships stationed at 118 bases – most of which looked as big, sleek and impressive as the ocean-going Ferraris I'd clocked on millionaires' row in the marina, except with pop-guns on-deck. The coast guard, the customs service and the navy also operated a variety of fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft equipped with radar and electro-optical sensors that could cut through the night.

Had we bitten off more than we could chew?

I didn't have time to think about it. Something was happening aboard the Predator.

Lynn handed me the binoculars.

They were standing on the back deck. She was wearing a dress that didn't leave much to the imagination. He was doing his best to keep up, with white jeans and a powder-yellow sweater draped over his shoulders. His stomach strained against a white Polo shirt.

He pressed a button and a thing like a car boot swung open – the Predator's 'hydraulic opening stern garage'. Inside was a smart-looking tender with a powerful outboard. With another press of a button, a winch lifted the tender a few feet into the air. Fatman gave it a quick once-over then swung it out and lowered it into the water. He was so smooth he didn't even get his shoes wet.

I'd seen enough. I handed Lynn the binos and told him to keep watching. I headed for the stairs.

65

The seafront was brimming with people doing what Italians do best: strolling, chatting, flirting and posing. The air was heavy with the smell of perfume and reverberated with the clip-clop of heels on the cobbles. A moped shot past and backfired, causing a ripple of outrage amongst the promenaders.

Viewed from the back, almost every couple were dead-ringers for my targets. I dodged a taxi and weaved my way past shop windows filled with merchandise and designer labels. The town stretched away from the harbour up into the hills. Above me, lights twinkled.

Across the marina, the tender had already come alongside. Fatman was onto the quay quicker than I'd have given him credit for – something I'd need to remember later.

After tying up the dinghy, he did the gentlemanly thing and helped Candy Girl ashore. I got my first really good look at them in the lights along the seafront. She was Eurasian rather than Chinese, and absolutely stunning. He was over-fed and greased up, and twenty to thirty years her senior. They didn't get a second look as they made their way towards the centre of town.

I tucked in around twenty metres behind them. The bells rang twice as they passed the church; it was six thirty. The girl was doing her best to slip her arm around Fatman's waist, but she wasn't finding it easy. They crossed the main square and headed down an alley. As I rounded the corner, I saw them duck into a doorway. I followed them inside, down some stairs and into a basement with bare rock walls. With its low lighting, little round tables and wine bottles stacked to the roof, it was the chicest cave I'd ever been in – including some pretty well-appointed Al-Qaeda hangouts in Afghanistan.