Stella Rimington - Rip Tide

The noise made by the men must have wakened Khalid, who usually slept until early afternoon, after staying up late watching Western movies on the big screen in his house. He came out and asked the Tall One what was going on. Taban could only hear snatches of what the Tall One said, but it was clear that the hijacking attempt had gone wrong – the Arabs had brought back hostages without a ship. Khalid was visibly alarmed and, for the first time, he seemed to be standing up to the Tall One. Taban edged closer so he could listen.

‘What is the point of holding these two men if you don’t have their ship?’ Khalid demanded.

The Tall One glared at him furiously. ‘Listen, you snivelling piece of dog! Three of my comrades have been captured by foreigners along with four new fighters from Pakistan who were supposed to join us here. They may be dead for all I know. So I have no time for your moaning.’ He pointed to the pen. ‘I have to deal with this scum here – the Pakistani leader told me on board that the younger one is a British spy. And the other man is Captain of the vessel. He will be valuable to its owners.’

‘Bah!’ said Khalid derisorily. ‘He is nothing to the owners. It’s the ships and the cargoes they want.’

‘This British spy is a different story.’

‘He certainly is, and it is a dangerous one. Can’t you see? They will come after him.’

The Tall One said, ‘Let them come. They will find more than they bargained for.’

‘Are you mad?’ Khalid’s voice was rising. Taban knew that the last thing he would want was a confrontation in his own camp. ‘They will kill us all.’

‘Not before we kill many of them,’ said the Tall One. He spoke with an eerie calm. ‘I can think of no finer way to die. No real warrior is frightened of death.’

Khalid ignored this. ‘I can’t have them coming here. It would destroy our entire operation.’

‘Operation? You mean making money. That should not be the priority for any true Muslim.’

But Khalid wouldn’t yield. ‘I cannot have them coming here,’ he repeated. ‘You will have to go. And take the hostages with you.’ Taban could tell that Khalid was scared of the Tall One, but he could see that he was even more scared of an attack by Western forces.

‘Say that again,’ said the Tall One coldly.

‘You will have to go,’ repeated Khalid. The Tall One’s eyes widened at Khalid’s unprecedented boldness. He stood back for a moment, scratching his chin thoughtfully. Then the Tall One’s face hardened, his jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed. He suddenly swung up the AK-47 he was holding and fired a burst straight at Khalid.

Khalid fell backwards on to the ground, blood pouring from what was left of his head. Taban stared, too stunned to move. He didn’t dare look at the Tall One but waited, expecting to be next and wondering what it would feel like to die.

Suddenly a man shouted from nearby. The Tall One looked round, distracted by the sound, and Taban dared to turn his head too. The younger hostage had his face pressed up against the wire of the pen. ‘Water! My friend needs water!’

The Tall One strode over to the pen and unlocked the door, all the while pointing his rifle. He trained the gun on the younger man; the older hostage was lying down in the rear of the pen, and looked ill.

‘On your knees,’ ordered the Tall One.

The younger one obeyed, slowly getting down on all fours. The Tall One stepped forward, swinging his rifle slowly round until its barrel end touched the forehead of the hostage. ‘I am told you are an agent of the West.’

The man said nothing, and the Tall One moved the barrel away, then suddenly swung it back fast across the man’s face. He winced in agony, and Taban saw blood flowing in a swelling line from the bridge of the hostage’s nose.

‘Do your people know where this camp is?’ the Tall One demanded. This time he didn’t swing the gun away, but pushed it straight against the man’s forehead. The man closed his eyes, and Taban knew he thought he was about to die.

Taban had to do something; any moment now, the Tall One would pull the trigger. So he shouted, a loud inarticulate cry designed purely to attract attention. Momentarily the Tall One looked behind him, startled, then snapped, ‘Shut up,’ at Taban and turned back to the hostage.

‘They’re coming!’ Taban shouted again.

‘What?’ This time when he turned the Tall One kept his gaze on the boy.

‘Over there!’ Taban was pointing frantically towards the nearby dunes. ‘They’re landing – the enemy!’

And without thinking how the boy could know this, standing just twenty feet away from him, the Tall One came out of the cage quickly, stopping only to close the padlock. Then he ran across the compound towards the dunes.

Taban breathed out; his heart was beating like a drum. He walked over to the pen, where the younger man was now sitting on the floor, all colour drained out of his battered face. The hostage said, to Taban’s surprise, ‘A man was here once called Richard Luckhurst. Do you remember?’

Of course he did. Captain Richard had been his friend. He nodded vigorously. The hostage added, ‘You are Taban, right?’

Taban nodded again and smiled. ‘I help you,’ he said eagerly.

‘No. You need to get out of here… fast.’ When the boy looked puzzled, the man made gestures as if shooting a gun.

‘Go,’ he said. ‘Quick. Vamoose. He was going to shoot you. If you stay here any longer, he will do it.’

‘But I-’

The Western man interrupted, shaking his head. ‘You must go. Run and get help. Or they will kill you.’ And he drew his finger across this throat. ‘Now!’ he said urgently.

Taban hesitated no longer. He struck out at once, not towards the dunes, where men were already positioned with guns, but north, over a section of low wall. Once out of sight of the compound, he started to run. He ran straight on without looking back, then he turned towards the coast. He was heading for the sanctuary of his past – the village, less than two miles away, where he had grown up with his father and brother; the village from which he had gone out to sea each day to fish; the village where he had seen his father murdered. He wondered who would still be there; the last he had heard, some other pirates were using the dilapidated huts as shelter, in between their hijacking runs.

He ran as quickly as he could. He was young and fit, but the soft sand slowed him down. At last, as he climbed up to the top of the dunes, he could see the huts and the splintered wooden landing stage beside his former home. It was beginning to get dark now and he ran faster, fuelled by the adrenalin of fear, sprinting down the last few yards of sulphur-coloured sand to the hamlet nestled on the shore. As he reached the straw-roofed huts he could see that none was inhabited – they had been stripped bare by raiders, who had taken everything from chairs to cooking pots. There was nowhere to hide: not a bed to crouch under, no cupboard to conceal him, just sand floors and bare board walls and open squares for windows. Soon it would be pitch black, so propping himself up against the back wall of one of the huts, he sat down to wait till dawn.

Taban opened his eyes suddenly to grey daylight and the low throbbing of an engine. Peering round the wall of the hut, he could just make out, far in the distance, near the compound, a jeep moving along the beach in his direction. Men had been sent to bring him back. No, not to bring him back; they would have been sent to kill him.

The noise of the jeep was growing louder; he could hear the harsh cough of its carburettor, but didn’t dare wait to watch his pursuers draw closer. He looked desperately about for some way to escape. Then he spotted a single skiff moored at the end of the landing stage. But was it still seaworthy or had it been holed? He ran out along the splintered boards to where the little boat floated at the far end, tethered by a fraying piece of rope. It had no engine, and its mast was badly split – too broken to support a sail.