Sword of Allah (8 page)

‘Jesus Christ!’ said Littlemore as he scrabbled for cover, his face cut in several places from flying stone chips.

The pilot jinked his aircraft around in an attempt to fool the ground fire. At first he succeeded, the tracer missing its mark. But soon the man behind the machine gun began to lead the target rather than follow it. The helo
made three circles and was heading back for a fourth when its aluminium skin was punctured repeatedly by the deadly fusillade. A loud mechanical bang followed a screeching whine that filled the bay. Smoke poured from the helo’s jet exhausts and black transmission fluid fouled its flanks. One more blast from that machine gun and the 117 was fish food.

Wilkes cracked the launcher, punched in a flash-bang, aimed and fired. The trackless ordnance arced towards the ship below and exploded above its decks with a thunderous crash that echoed around the bay. Some of the men dropped their guns and took cover, thinking they’d come under attack from some massively powerful gun or mortar. The man firing the machine gun dropped to the deck, hunching his head into his arms.

As it scrabbled desperately for height, the thump of the helo’s rotor blades thrashing the air combined with the screeching howl of jet engines tearing themselves to pieces. The aircraft somehow managed to clear the lowest of the volcanic spurs ringing the bay and then disappeared from view behind it. Wilkes and the others held their breath, waiting for the explosion the helo would make when it hit the water.

And then…nothing. The deafening noise that had filled the bay only moments before evaporated with a few final small arms pot-shots in the helicopter’s general direction. The crew wandered about the ship, dazed, holding their ears. Wilkes trained his binoculars on the man who had fired the machine gun. He wasn’t Asian, and he wasn’t a local. A thick beard covered his face and a baseball cap kept his eyes hidden in shadow. ‘Who are you?’ Wilkes
said quietly. Within half an hour, the commerce was underway again: bags of dope for a rifle. It was as if what had just happened, indeed, what was happening, was the most normal thing in the world.

Commander Steve Drummond pulled the Panamanian registered tanker,
Ocean Trader
, into focus. ‘Has she decided to come clean, X?’

‘Negative, sir,’ said the executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Angus Briggs. ‘We’re getting the same crap about agricultural supplies.’

‘What’s she steering?’ asked Drummond.

Briggs leaned back and checked the figure on the screen. ‘No change, sir.’

Commander Drummond examined the vessel looming larger in the Zeiss lenses. HMAS
Arunta
’s high power cameras were trained on the tanker, presenting it clearly on the bridge’s colour monitors, but Drummond preferred to use the binoculars, a present from his wife when his command of the brand new Anzac-class frigate had been confirmed.
Ocean Trader
was an oil tanker, an old clunker long overdue for the boneyard. Who was its master kidding? thought Drummond. HMAS
Arunta
was making twenty-five knots to the tanker’s fifteen, running down the rust bucket like a young lion tackling an old wart-hog. The commander did the calculations in his head. It’d take thirty minutes to close the five nautical miles between the two ships.

Drummond touched the computer screen at his elbow, calling up the Gulf’s merchant schedule for the week. Yep, there it was, the
Ocean Trader.
It was indeed due in the Gulf waters at this time, but according to the schedule, it wasn’t a tanker. Yet here it was, an oiler and low in the water with its belly full of what was most likely crude stolen from Iraqi fields. And it was attempting to make a run for it, for Christ’s sake. How stupid was that?

‘What does
Franklin D
say?’ the captain asked. The American battle group to which the
Arunta
was attached, headed by the aircraft carrier USS
Franklin D Roosevelt
, was steaming in the opposite direction, keeping an eye on Iran and Syria.

‘Sir, they have no record of
Ocean Trader
being challenged. This one’s kept its nose clean.’

The captain continued to keep his eyes on the quarry. ‘Officer of the Watch, what other surface contacts do we have on radar?’

‘Sir, there’s nothing much in our immediate vicinity. Aside from the
Ocean Trader
, there’s a fishing boat in its lee, currently heading in the opposite direction.

‘What’s the separation between them?’ asked Drummond.

‘Three miles, sir, and it’s roughly on a parallel course.’

‘What are you silly buggers up to?’ Drummond said to himself. The tanker was still churning the water. ‘What do you think, X?’

Angus Briggs stood beside Drummond and glanced again at the monitor behind him. ‘Nothing makes a lot of sense here, sir. We’ve raised its master on the radio, but it doesn’t look like he’s got any intention of heaving to.’

‘Okay, enough already,’ said Drummond, his mind made up. ‘We’ll board her. And get that fishing boat on the line and tell him to get the hell out of there in the nicest possible way.’ Drummond turned back to their quarry and considered the closing angles of the two vessels. ‘Nav, bring us round on a parallel course.’

Briggs waited till the course changes had been completed and then said, ‘Quartermaster, get the gunner of the watch up here.’

‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Teo, the only Australian of Asian origin in the ship’s complement of sixty, and nicknamed ‘China’ by the crew.

‘Who’s on today, China?’ Briggs asked.

‘Sean Matheson, sir,’ said Teo from memory.

Briggs then called up Leading Seaman Mark Wallage, a twenty-year-old electronics whiz-kid in the ship’s operations room. ‘Mark, get us a firing solution on our tub.’

‘Aye aye, sir,’ he said. Wallage touched the computer screen on the steel bench in front of him, activating the weapons system. A small pair of crosshairs appeared on the screen and Wallage repositioned them amidships on the
Ocean Trader
’s waterline. It was as simple as that. The
Arunta
’s weapons systems could attack several ships at once, all while defending itself against hostile aircraft and their inbound missiles, track enemy submarines, and lay chaff and electronics countermeasures to confuse opposition attack systems. Dropping a couple of shells on this old girl’s hull was a doddle.

Moments later from up on the bridge, Briggs observed the barrel of the frigate’s foredeck-mounted 127mm Mark 45 Mod 2 gun swing forty degrees clockwise and drop almost level with the horizon.

‘Gunner of the Watch, Leading Seaman Matheson, sir,’ announced a tall nineteen year old appearing on the bridge.

‘How’s it going, Sean?’ asked Briggs.

Matheson relaxed slightly, the hint of a smile on his sunburned lips. ‘Good, sir.’

‘Glad to hear it. We need you to stitch the water ahead of our noncompliant friend over there.’

‘Aye aye, sir,’ said Matheson. He’d been watching the chase, helping the boarding crew get kitted up, waiting for the summons to the bridge for a good fifteen minutes. He enjoyed firing the Browning, the power of it never failed to amaze him. Matheson stepped out of the bridge onto the port wing and into the salt-loaded twenty-five-knot wind generated by the
Arunta
’s passage. He fitted the earplugs and slipped on the anti-burn balaclava and gloves, followed by the Kevlar helmet. The Browning .50 cal heavy machine gun was locked in place on its gimbals, the cover removed and folded. Being the gunner of the watch, Matheson had checked this weapon, so he already knew that the gun was serviceable, well oiled and the barrel clean and clear. Nevertheless, he quickly gave it another once-over, removing its red-flagged safety pins as he went. Matheson unlocked the gimbals and checked that the weapon’s movement was full and free. ‘Ready, sir,’ he said to Briggs, who had joined him on the wing.

The executive officer nodded and stepped back onto the bridge. The
Ocean Trader
now loomed large in the captain’s binoculars. Into his boom mic Briggs said, ‘Captain, gunner of the watch is ready. Operations also have a firing solution with the one-twenty-seven.’

‘We getting any compliance from the
Trader
, X?’

‘Negative, sir. Still proclaiming innocence. Tractor and irrigation parts, apparently.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said the captain to himself. There was something that just didn’t add up about this chase, something more than the obvious.

‘Sir,’ said Briggs, ‘operations ask if we want fish tonight?’

‘Pardon, X?’

‘Have a listen to this, sir. It’ll make your day. Channel twenty-seven.’

Drummond touched his command screen to change the communication channel on his phones.

‘I have lovely peesh! You love peesh! You buy from me! Very good!’ The man was yelling into his microphone in order to be heard over the unsilenced diesel chugging away beneath him. ‘You buy, you buy!’

‘It’s the fishing boat, sir,’ said Briggs.

‘Great timing,’ said Drummond. It happened occasionally, or rather, used to happen. The locals would sell their catch to the allied warships on Gulf duty, and then one blew itself up while alongside a British navy supply ship in port – an oiler loaded with diesel that went straight to the bottom with most of its hands. Everyone had wised up since. Under the brilliant sky, steaming on a perfect blue ocean, it was easy to forget sometimes that they were fighting World War III, a different kind of war that didn’t distinguish between soldier and civilian, fought out with increasing brutality and guile across the globe.

The
Ocean Trader’s
master, a Pakistani, had his binoculars trained on the warship now steering a parallel course off his starboard stern. It’d been closing at a fifteen-degree angle. The course change, along with the final warnings over the radio, could only mean one thing. He shifted the view to take in the fishing boat. It would be touch and go, he thought. ‘Give us more speed,’ he said through the intercom to the ship’s engineer.

‘That’s it. I’m very sorry to tell you, but we’re going as fast as we can,’ said the engineer, who also happened to be the master’s brother-in-law. It wasn’t his fault that the tanker’s massive engines were long past their use-by date.

‘Well…do what you can,’ said the master.

Briggs spoke briefly to Drummond through his mic and then nodded at Matheson. The gunner of the watch pulled back the Browning’s bolt, arming it, and sighted the barrel on a point roughly seventy metres ahead of the
Ocean Trader
’s bow. He squeezed the trigger and the Browning bucked. A burst of tracer spat from the weapon’s muzzle.

The master brought the binoculars back to his eyes in time to see the muzzle flashes from the warship’s bridge. Moments later, red tracer arced through the air well ahead of his bow. If this went on, the warship would get serious and, rather than a machine gun, the large gun on its bow would be employed. If that were to happen, he would probably lose his life, as would his crew. The Americans and their allies were becoming increasingly impatient
these days. His ship would burn for days if it didn’t sink, leaking a million barrels of oil into these beautiful, deadly waters. ‘Have I been paid to die?’ the master asked himself aloud. No
,
I have not
.
Indeed, there were now two million American dollars in a Cayman Islands bank account waiting for him. The fishing boat was out of harm’s way and his job was done. ‘Give us full astern,’ he said distractedly into the intercom, keeping the binoculars trained on the warship.

‘Full ahead and now full astern,’ muttered the engineer. It was likely the engines wouldn’t survive this treatment, but the ship’s master knew what he was doing, didn’t he? Besides, the engineer had been promised a huge bonus just to make the voyage, so why argue? He made the appropriate adjustments on the engine’s control panel and the enormous cylinders wheezed to a stop momentarily before reversing. There was a sickening shudder through the thick steel decking under his feet. Yes, he thought to himself, this would be the
Trader
’s last voyage.

Commander Drummond saw the white water swirling under the tanker’s stern as its monstrous propellers began making turns in reverse. He was relieved that its master had finally come to his senses. ‘Okay.
Trader
has pulled over, X. Let’s go breathalyse her, shall we?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Briggs.

‘Carry on, X,’ said Drummond, glasses still trained on the tanker, way coming off it quickly now.
What’s bugging me about this?

The fisherman swept the tanker and then the warship with his old brass telescope, the one that had belonged to his father and his father’s father. The ploy had worked as they said it would. A tanker obviously full of illegal oil
and
claiming to be a cargo vessel? It was the perfect decoy, the perfect diversion – almost too perfect. Perhaps this warship was a recent arrival in the Gulf, its captain too keen to charge in. The fisherman allowed himself the moment of smugness, if only because the terror of being discovered had passed. Calling the warship up on the radio and volunteering to be inspected by offering to sell the infidels his catch was an enormous risk. But it had paid off. The reality was that he had been heading away from the warship as fast as his old diesel could manage. Also – and this was the level of risk he was playing with – the fish in his hold were old, their eyes cloudy. If the warship had called his bluff, it would have been the end. Fortunately, the manoeuvring had concluded in his favour. The warship was engaged in boarding the tanker and, because of this, he had escaped detection. They’d seen him as a harmless fisherman, which, ordinarily, he was.

The approach had been made via the company that most often bought his catch, even when the harvest from the sea was thin. They had asked him not to fish on this trip, but to rendezvous instead with the
Ocean Trader
and take on a different cargo. The meeting had taken place before sunrise, under floodlight. The fisherman had been worried about his little wooden boat being dashed against the side of the steel tanker by the swell of the sea. He saw the first load being lowered in by rope netting: around a dozen wooden crates wrapped in heavy clear plastic. The
contents, he was told, were urgent medical supplies, but he knew better. Medical supplies had United Nations approval. And they didn’t need to be smuggled into Saudi Arabia. Besides, he had seen crates like these before and he knew they contained guns.

They then asked him to turn his back as the next load came aboard. Whatever it was, they didn’t want him to see it. But, as chance would have it, a rogue wave arrived, picked up his little boat and slammed it against the side of the tanker. In the confusion that followed, the fisherman turned to make sure his boat had survived the contact and, in that moment, he had seen two steel drums in the netting swing precariously and clang noisily against the rusting sides of the tanker. The fisherman looked away again, like he was told. Next came the ice, several tonnes of it, covering the contraband, followed by the fish. It was a good disguise, only the fish had been dead at least a week.

The fisherman knew he was being used, but he didn’t mind. There was a war on and the faithful had been called on to defend Islam. He loved Mohammed, may His name be praised, but he was not a fanatic. And he needed a new boat. The money he would earn from this trip would buy one, as well as a new home for his wife and six children – soon to be seven children. The fisherman sighed. More soldiers for Allah.

The transfer had been completed just before dawn. An hour later, the warship was bearing down on the tanker with just enough separation between his boat and the Ocean Trade
r
for the fisherman’s vessel to avoid suspicion. Even so, his heart was still beating like that of a frightened
bird, not so much for the detection and arrest he’d just avoided, but for the evil that now seemed to hang about his boat like a limp and blackened sail.