Andy McNab - Brute force

I'd nicknamed Ben Two Cells. It suited me to think of him as stupid. It cheered me up.

'I suppose need-to-know means you can't tell me who the woman is?'

'I don't know her, actually.' Lynn took a couple of seconds to check out the hauntingly beautiful, dark-skinned face. 'Probably one of Mansour's people checking the cargo.'

Two Cells' dark brown wavy hair was a bit longer than it had been in the briefing pictures, down to his shoulders and centre-parted, but it was definitely him. He towered over the Libyan, and probably everybody else aboard. He was at least six four, and built to build. I expected a bomb-maker's hands to be like a pianist's, but Benny Boy's were the size of shovels.

'Remember, you've got to make it look like an accident. And the ship must be preserved at all costs for the Spanish to capture.'

'Yep, I've got it.'

He'd told me enough times over the last few days. This had to be the best-briefed job I'd ever been on. But all the briefing in the world wasn't going to help me drop Two Cells without it looking like exactly what it was. I might be able to channel him into the killing ground, but if anything went wrong I'd have to contend with a good eighteen stone of seriously unsaintly Two Cells throwing one of those super-sized fists at me. If it made contact, I'd be over the side.

Mansour and the woman made their way back to the quay and disappeared into the maze of warehouses as Two Cells went onto the ship and started chatting with the skipper.

Liam Brian Duff was a lot more than a sailor boy. He'd been caught up in the events of Bloody Sunday, and joined the IRA the very next day. He was just sixteen. The following year, he was caught trying to bomb a government building.

Sentenced to six years, he shared cells in the Maze prison with some major league Republican icons. By the time he was released, Duff was quite the rising star. He came back onto British radar when he was arrested by the French police five or six years ago. He'd been travelling with a false passport on his return from a Hezbollah training camp in Lebanon – evidence of his role in fostering the international ties the IRA and Sinn Fein were building with the Middle East, and most particularly with Gaddafi's Libya.

I kept my binos trained on the ship as Duff checked the crane was lowering the boxes into the hold correctly. Then Lynn gunned the engine and I put them in the foot well as he drove us out of the port and along the coast road.

'Take a different route. We don't want to get stuck at another checkpoint.'

Lynn nodded.

We'd had a close shave on the way to the docks. Gaddafi's boys had set up a checkpoint where there hadn't been one on our dry run a few hours earlier. Our papers were good and our cover story had held – we were Dutch oil-workers in transit, a couple of guys making an honest dollar in Colonel G's workers' paradise. After scrutinizing the papers and turning them round a few times, the sentry had waved us on our way, but I wasn't in a hurry to risk an action replay. We had far bigger things to worry about.

He parked on a rocky headland about a K from the port. The rocks glistened in the light from the docks, and so did the plastic bottles and general crap spread across the beach. It looked more like a landfill site than a holiday destination. Perhaps that was why Club 18-30 had given it a miss this year.

'Everything in place? Any questions?'

'Yep – and no.' I clambered out of the jeep, leaving my cover docs on the seat. I grabbed the re-breather and fins from the back, and checked the karabiner was still hooked into the netting of the rope sack. All the gear I was going to use to get on board was inside.

Without ceremony, Lynn was gone. He didn't want to be in the vicinity if I got lifted.

I started to sort myself out on top of the landfill. I got the rebreather on my back. It was a commercial system, the sort underwater photographers use when they don't want to frighten the fish. A normal scuba tank is noisy and streams bubbles; re-breather apparatus prevents both by reusing the air you exhale.

One of the small tanks on my back was pure oxygen; the other was normal air. The plastic tub between them was filled with soda lime. As I breathed out, the exhaled air was piped into the tub. The soda lime retained the carbon dioxide but let oxygen through, along with a little top-up from the oxygen bottle. It was ingenious, but that didn't mean I liked using it. If I'd wanted to fuck about underwater I'd have joined the navy.

I attached my navigation aid, a 12cm luminous ball compass mounted on a hard plastic sheet. It hooked onto the re-breather harness and dangled down my chest, a bit like a map case.

Fins in one hand, the sack in the other, I waded into the sea. It was freezing. The mask covered my face. I tightened the straps, dipped my head underwater and took a few breaths to make sure there was a tight seal.

I put the fins on, and kicked off slowly and steadily. I'd insisted on calling them flippers in front of Lynn. At least it made me smile.

I'd hooked my left arm through the net and I kept my hands down by my stomach while I finned. Its weight kept the rest of my body submerged.

As I rounded the headland, I could see the lights of the docks in the distance. I lifted the plastic plate, checked the compass bearing was direct onto the boat I was after, and started to fin myself down about five metres below the surface. I took slow, normal breaths, which echoed in the silence. The soda lime gave the breathing mixture a citrus, acidic taste.

I knew not to rush. If I did, the board would push upwards and I wouldn't be able to keep on-bearing. I pumped the fins methodically and kept my eyes glued to the luminous markings of the ball compass.

It wasn't long before the dock lights glared overhead, and the silence was broken by a cacophony of turning screws and clanging hulls, and the demented buzz of a powerboat skimming across the harbour. I kept the ball compass up in front of me and stuck to my bearing.

Even though I kept the pace slow and constant, I was starting to feel the strain now. Vast, barnacle-encrusted hulls hung in the water on either side of me. I just kept on-bearing; that was all I could do, short of popping up and checking.

Two sleek, chiselled shapes rode the swell ahead of me, left and right of a larger, blunter craft.

I dived under the keel of the Bahiti. Pockmarked with barnacles and swirling seaweed – in sharp contrast to the patrol boats at either end – it was like the roof of a sea cave. The steamer's idling engines throbbed above me and metal clattered against metal.

Two huge brass propellers glinted in the murky water ahead; they would start turning soon, to take us out of port – but not just yet, I hoped.

The quay was now behind me. The Bahiti's bulbous stern swept out above the waterline and I kept out of sight beneath the overhang. I unclipped the compass and let it drop.

I finned up slowly, brushing my hand against the hull from time to time to steady myself. The vibration from the engines pulsed up my arm. My head broke the surface; I was still sheltered by the overhang.

There was clamour and movement above me. The world was unmuffled. I took off the mask and let it hang by its tube as I undid the catches on the re-breather and sent it the same way as the compass.

Finning to keep my head above water, I felt around in the net and pulled out the modified mine magnet. Well, not so much modified as minus its mine. It was about twenty centimetres by twenty, with a thin rubber cushion cemented to one side to prevent a resounding clang inside the ship as the thing grabbed onto the hull, followed by a shower of grenades from the deck.

I clipped the karabiner to the steel handle I'd welded onto the other side of the magnet, where the mine had been, then hung onto the net sack and waited for the crew of the Bahiti to get their shit together.