Stella Rimington - Rip Tide

Taban jumped in regardless; to stay on land would mean certain death. The bottom of the boat was fairly dry, and tucked under one gunwale was a pair of oars. He undid the rope, pushed off as hard as he could from the wooden platform and quickly slotted the oars into the rowlocks. He heard the jeep roar into the hamlet and heard its engine cut out. They were here.

Struggling at first with the long oars, he gradually found a rhythm. The tide was going out, which helped, and he made rapid progress, pulling away from shore – when he allowed himself a glance back he was almost a hundred yards out. The men couldn’t have looked out to sea at first – they must have started by searching the huts – but now one of them appeared at the far end of the landing stage, shouting and gesturing to his comrades.

Soon there were three men running along the wooden planking, all armed, and as the first got to the end, he started firing. A bullet sang by Taban with the buzzing whine of an angry bee. He tried to row faster but almost lost an oar, so he forced himself to row calmly, rhythmically. The bullets were hitting the water well short of him now and the firing paused; then it resumed and they must have been using a different weapon, for he heard a sharp crack and realised that a bullet had found the side of the boat.

Another bullet struck, low down, near the keel. Water began to trickle in at first, then flow freely, like a tap gradually opening – soon it lay an inch deep in the bottom of the boat and it was rising fast. Taban was well out to sea now, at least two hundred yards from the beach. The firing was intensifying, though it seemed to be getting less accurate. But his progress was slowing as the boat grew heavier, with more and more water accumulating in the bottom. He was afraid that if the boat stopped moving he would be an easy target. The water was over his ankles now and he knew the boat would not stay afloat much longer. What should he do when it sank, as it soon would? Should he try to cling on and hope the timbers would be buoyant enough to support his weight? Or should he abandon it and try to swim back to shore further along the coast and hope to avoid the Arabs there? He was not a strong swimmer, and the thought frightened him.

Then he heard the noise of an outboard engine, and turning around he saw a bright yellow inflatable, a quarter of a mile further out, coming straight towards him. His heart sank – he hadn’t realised that the pirates had their own boats; he’d thought they relied entirely on Khalid’s skiffs to go out to sea.

He could see, in the bow of the approaching boat, a crouching figure, holding a weapon. As the boat drew closer the man in the bow began firing, and Taban saw bullets soaring above his head, making long trails against the sky.

He ducked instinctively, but the bullets were not for him, they were aimed at the men on the shore. Taban lifted his head cautiously – the dinghy was no more than a couple of hundred yards away from him now and he could make out the face of the man holding the weapon. He was a Westerner. And as the bow of the boat bumped up and down over the little waves, Taban could see painted along its side a familiar flag. The same flag that his friend the Captain had worn on his jacket. These men were British, and when Taban looked back at the shore, he saw that the Arabs had fled.

Dave did not sleep. His head was throbbing after the blows from the Arab’s gun and his boot. The wind blew remorselessly, carrying sand up from the beach and filling his mouth and the cut on his face with grit. His nose was still bleeding on and off and he was trying to stop the blood by stanching it with what was left of his shirt. Guthrie had been suffering from the heat during the day, sweating profusely and complaining of dizziness. Now he seemed to be asleep but was shivering continuously.

The Somali pirates had fled the compound the previous evening after Khalid had been shot dead, and now only the Arabs remained. Dave reckoned at least three must have been captured on the Aristides, along with the four British Pakistanis meant to join them. But the ones who remained were well-armed, seemed well-trained and very determined.

Dave hoped Taban had got away safely. Ten minutes after the boy had left, having distracted the tall Arab by claiming troops were on the beach, the leader had returned, furious at the false alarm. Coming over to the pen he had motioned Guthrie to stay where he was, then forced Dave out at gunpoint. As he emerged, the Arab had hit him with his free arm, knocking him down. The punch had been followed by a kick to the back of Dave’s head, which had left him stunned.

He had not tried to get up again, and was lying there, curled into a ball, waiting for the Arab to hit him again, when someone shouted from the edge of the camp. Dave heard the name ‘Taban’ and realised the boy’s escape had been discovered. The tall Arab kicked Dave one more time, then dragged him back into the pen, before turning to give his men orders. He seemed to be telling them that the boy could not get far and they should wait till morning to go after him.

What a cock-up. Dave wanted to blame the French for the mess that had brought him here, but he knew the operation had been a joint Anglo-French one. The combination of mist and darkness and the surprise boarding of the Aristides via the bow as well as the stern had caused the disaster, allowing the leader of the hijackers to get away and take Dave and the Captain with him as hostages. The only consolation, he thought, was that none of the Pakistanis had escaped.

What was going to happen to him and Guthrie? He had assumed they would be held to ransom, and had pictured Geoffrey Fane receiving the demand then trying to buy time to mount a rescue operation. The Government would never agree to pay a ransom. He had hoped that Liz would be involved in any response. She knew the background to all of this and would have a pretty clear idea of the sort of people they were dealing with.

But now ransom seemed the least of the Arab leader’s priorities. If this were a group of Al Qaeda or one of its affiliates, they would be looking for something other than money in return for their hostages – if they were interested in negotiating at all. Dave’s main fear now, which he wasn’t going to share with Guthrie, was that since their leader seemed to know that Dave was a British intelligence officer, he would be keen to extract whatever useful information from him he could, doubtless using very unpleasant methods. How far would he go? From the egg-sized bump on his head, the bruise on his cheek, and the cut on his nose that kept dripping blood, Dave guessed that when the man really got to work he would show no mercy. He would enjoy inflicting pain on the West’s spy. And after that – well, he had shot the Somali without compunction so wouldn’t hesitate to kill a British agent, though Dave feared his death would not be so quick or easy.

He assumed an assault on the camp was being considered, and the helicopter he’d heard half an hour before flying overhead was probably pinpointing their location. Daylight was slowly breaking, the ideal time for such an assault. But would it be in time? And even if it were, it posed its own dangers – the men here in the compound wouldn’t stand a chance in a fire fight with the SAS, but that would be small solace if their first act, in the event of an assault, were to open fire on the pen holding him and Captain Guthrie.

As Dave lay sleepless, brooding about this, a jeep started up and drove away along the beach. There was silence after that and then the sound of desultory gunfire from a short distance away. Then, suddenly a fusillade much nearer, from the dunes towards the sea. Within seconds the men in the compound were running to the beach, holding their guns at the ready. A muffled explosion sent a cascade of sand blowing across the open compound into the pen. As it settled, Dave saw an object the size of an apple, just visible in the early light, land on the soft sand, short of the compound’s edge; whoof it went, and again sand flew through the air. Grenades – thrown from the other side of the dunes, where soldiers must be crouched, having landed on the shore. They would be safe from outgoing fire as long as they stayed on the other side of the dunes, but there was no way they could take the camp without directly assaulting it.