The Storm_A Black Force Thriller Read online

  ‘I know enough.’

  ‘Well, the captain’s brought you here for a reason. And if you don’t know, then he’s just using you.’

  ‘Speak of the devil,’ the Russian muttered, staring over Xu’s shoulder.

  Behind you.

  Wordlessly, heart thumping in his chest, Xu faked a dry heave and turned on the spot, keeping his head down and his gaze facing the opposite direction to the man who had just stepped into the mess. Xu brushed straight past the captain, shielding his face from view with one hand, masking his appearance as naturally as he could. He let out a violent cough for added effect, and hurried straight out into the corridor outside, weaving back toward his living quarters.

  He sensed the captain’s gaze drilling into the back of his head the entire time.

  Does he know?

  He had to.

  Xu powered back to his cabin with the uneasy feeling that he’d already blown his cover.

  9

  He slammed the cabin door shut with more force than necessary, making a point of sealing him inside the safe haven and restoring some semblance of calm. He couldn’t be judged here, couldn’t be scrutinised.

  He replayed the entire incident in his mind — there was no way the captain hadn’t noticed something was awry. Even if Jimmy Neak had been struck by a sudden bout of sickness, he would have at least nodded a greeting to the captain, or made eye contact.

  Xu had stormed past like he had something to hide.

  You’ve got everything to hide.

  He recalled what the Geordie had said.

  An unscheduled stop out in open waters.

  For what?

  Maybe the younger Neak brother had been radicalised. Maybe the laptop ordeal was just a major coincidence, and Neak was knee-deep in a conspiracy to commit a terrorist act in the aftermath of his brother’s death. Maybe he was meeting a convoy of Islamic militants on open waters, and paying the captain off to do so. That would explain the strange secrecy aboard the ship, with most of the crew left in the dark.

  If it was savoury business being conducted in international waters, the crew would know about it.

  It wouldn’t be smothered with a blanket, to the point where no-one besides the captain knew what Jimmy Neak looked like.

  Xu determined enough developments had been made to contact Lars. He fetched his satellite phone and dialled, breathing a sigh of relief as the call went through. If the sat phone malfunctioned, his worst nightmare would materialise. He would be stranded on a freighter with a dozen hostile crewmen, each of them as hardened and strong as the last. He could put up a fight, but in close quarters eventually sheer numbers would overwhelm him.

  Lars answered in a heartbeat. ‘James…’

  That’s not good, Xu thought before he cut Lars off. He sounds panicked.

  ‘Listen,’ Xu said. ‘I don’t have much time. The captain was working with Jimmy. They’re meeting someone way out in the Gulf of Guinea — where no-one’s watching.’

  ‘Oh, Christ. That lines up with my updates.’

  ‘Which are?’

  ‘The laptop’s on the move.’

  Xu paused. ‘How the hell do you know that? I thought whoever stole it killed the security measures.’

  ‘They did. But they didn’t get everything. Our man probably held back on a few things before they killed him. We can track it. It sends pre-programmed electronic pings every twenty minutes.’

  ‘So you know its location? So this whole trip is pointless? I can get off whenever I please?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Lars muttered, as if ashamed about what he had to say. ‘We can’t smother it fast enough. We only picked up on its location minutes ago, and it’s patchy to say the least. But we can roughly track where it’s been, and where it’s headed.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s moving fast as hell. Since it’s gone missing, whoever took it made a beeline for the border of Niger, crossed into Burkina Faso, moved south like lightning, crossed again into Ghana, and now they’re only fifty miles from the coast. They’re heading for Takoradi Harbour. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘How sure?’

  ‘Clear as crystal. Whoever stole it knows the region well.’

  ‘Knows it like a group of Special Forces soldiers embedded in Africa would know it?’

  ‘I don’t want to jump to conclusions…’

  ‘It’s Randall,’ Xu hissed. ‘He’s either working with Islamic militants or convinced his own men to tag along for the ride. They’ll head from the harbour straight out to sea, and intercept the ship I’m standing on. Jimmy was a deckhand. He would have known his way around the wheelhouse. He could have stowed them away.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking, but we need to keep ourselves open for other possibilities.’

  ‘Why else would the captain bring Jimmy on board this particular vessel? It lines up with their trajectory. This was pre-planned.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘So smother Takoradi Harbour,’ Xu said, the intensity in his voice ramping up. ‘If that laptop is as important as you say it is, we can’t risk it. Surely we have troops embedded in Ghana. Send them all to the coast.’

  ‘They won’t get there before the laptop does.’

  ‘How fast is it moving?’

  ‘Consistent with a high-speed vehicle.’

  ‘So you have some time, at least. Alert the port authorities.’

  ‘We already have. I don’t think that’s going to matter.’

  ‘Well, if they’re trying to smuggle themselves—’

  ‘They’re not hiding anything. They’ll take a boat by force.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Because I’m getting reports coming in as we speak about dead border patrol officers at both the north and south of Burkina Faso. They didn’t enter that country subtly. They’re not doing anything subtly.’

  ‘Dead officers? Anything else? Any details?’

  ‘Nothing so far.’

  ‘You should be able to work out who it is if they’re blazing a trail across Africa.’

  ‘They’re not letting anything slow them down. But this is unfolding in real-time. We’ll find out who it is soon enough.’

  ‘It’s Randall. I can guarantee it. No-one mows through soldiers like that.’

  ‘Special Forces operatives could.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Christ,’ Lars muttered. ‘Okay. Sit tight. Try and keep your head down. We’ll do our best to sort this mess out before it reaches you. You’re our last resort. If they’re planning to come aboard the freighter you’ll have a logistical nightmare on your hands.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Five men under JSOC. That’s top-of-the-line training. And they’re good, too. We had them embedded in Niger for a reason.’

  ‘How many bodies did you say hadn’t turned up at the crime scene?’

  ‘Five. Including Randall Neak’s.’

  ‘You really think five of them turned at once?’

  ‘I’ve seen less surprising things.’

  ‘I don’t know, Lars…’

  ‘You know what kind of price they could fetch for that laptop?’

  ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘To the right bidder, it’s a nine figure deal. You know what they could do with that kind of cash?’

  ‘I could only imagine.’

  ‘We pay you well enough.’

  ‘I know,’ Xu said. ‘Why? You having doubts?’

  ‘Just let me know if you’re going to run off in search of profit. The right number is almost impossible to resist. And situations like this make me question the nobility of our operatives. That’s one of the reasons we pay you so much in the first place.’

  ‘I’m sitting on six million dollars in a Swiss bank account, Lars. I could retire on a beach for the rest of my life if I wanted. Instead I’m on this piece of shit freighter with a dozen men who aren’t going to put up with me much longer, and what’s probably a boatload of corrupt Special Forces
thugs coming in hot. You think I’d be doing any of this if I didn’t want to?’

  ‘We just need people we can trust.’

  ‘You can trust me.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Sit tight. If we find out that it’s Randall and his friends doing this, we can bring half the U.S. military down on that freighter when we get the approval. You’re our eyes and ears on the ground, so to speak. I don’t want you doing anything to jeopardise that. Keep your head down, and stay alive.’

  ‘That’s what I’m best at.’

  ‘It certainly isn’t. Try not to be a battering ram. Just this once.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Good man,’ Lars said, and the line went dead.

  Xu dropped the satellite phone on his bed…

  …and the steel door to his living quarters vibrated three consecutive times.

  Someone had knocked.

  10

  He pondered whether to open it or not. Lars’ words rang in his ears, and above everything else he simply wanted to retreat to the tiny ensuite bathroom and curl up in the shower, out of sight and out of mind. He didn’t need to be out there mingling with the crew, and any attempts to do so would only lead to trouble.

  But they had to know he was in here.

  Confrontation was inevitable.

  He didn’t quite think it would resort to a fistfight yet, so he crossed to the door and lay a palm against the thin metal handle. The steel vibrated again — more knocking. Whoever was on the other side wanted desperately to talk to Xu.

  Should he oblige?

  He had to.

  He couldn’t ignore them forever.

  He swung the door open with an innocuous expression on his face…

  …and made direct eye contact with what he presumed was the captain of the freighter.

  Xu froze. His train of thought faltered. Completely at a loss as to how he should proceed, he momentarily averted his gaze. The captain stood there, unwavering, staring daggers across the threshold. The man didn’t blink. He didn’t budge an inch. He simply stood and sized up the stranger aboard his vessel that was obviously not Jimmy Neak.

  ‘I’m not Neak,’ Xu said after a silence that felt like eons.

  Way to state the obvious, he thought.

  The captain knew that.

  Xu had been so startled by his presence that he hadn’t had time to size the guy up. He stood a few inches taller than Xu, probably six-three or six-four. His caramel skin and coarse salt-and-pepper hair meant he was European — if Xu had to guess, he would say Icelandic. The man was in his fifties or sixties with a beard the same colour as his hair, but the resemblance to Santa Claus ended there. There was no warmth or openness in the pale blue eyes — instead they were scalding.

  Withering in their intensity.

  And Xu knew, in that moment, the captain would have no hesitation in ending his life to further his own interests.

  After all, he had brought Jimmy Neak aboard for something sinister in the first place.

  Protecting that secret was everything to him.

  Xu sized all this up in a glance. Before the captain responded, he readied himself mentally. His brain switched to primal mode, his hands warming and his veins beginning to flow with the intoxicating chemical cocktail of the fight-or-flight stress response mechanism.

  He was ready.

  Good thing he’d prepared himself.

  Instead of responding with words, the big beefy slab of a man lurched over the threshold, hands searching for Xu’s throat. Startled by the intensity of the gesture — the guy was impressively fast — Xu swung a cocked elbow with all the effort he could muster, sideswiping one of the captain’s outstretched hands away. A couple of the delicate carpal bones in the guy’s hand shattered upon impact with the bony point of Xu’s elbow, and the kinetic force behind the blow sent his hand flying into the steel doorframe, probably breaking something else in the process.

  Shock set in.

  The captain froze in place.

  He hadn’t stepped over the threshold yet.

  Xu snatched the giant steel door and swung it shut in an instant, slamming it back into place before either of them could escalate the confrontation further. The captain’s attention would, for now, be seized by his mangled wrist. All his mental energy would fixate on that particular problem.

  Xu stood rigid on the other side of the door and bolted it shut for good measure.

  And then he waited.

  It had been a simple decision to make. The captain had twenty or thirty pounds on him, but Xu knew he could have beaten the man to death without raising his heart rate in the process. That was not his main concern. Instead, he feared the ramifications of having to manhandle the corpse of the most important man on board the freighter around a set of catwalks and corridors that were foreign to him.

  If he needed to kill the captain, this certainly wasn’t the place to do it.

  Especially considering he’d infuriated certain members of the crew in the mess just minutes ago.

  He stood unnaturally still, only inches from the giant steel door, ludicrously calm after such a violent altercation with the captain. Sure enough, the big man had no idea what to do with himself when the fight abruptly ceased. Xu heard his laboured breathing, the adrenalin spearing through his veins, the rush of sensation to his brain as his synapses fired on all cylinders…

  …then the come down. The breathing quietened. Xu heard the man audibly gulp. He was staring at his hand, no doubt. Beginning to sense the dull, ominous throbbing in his wrist that indicated something was seriously wrong. The chemical cocktail would mask the pain of the broken carpal bones for a few moments longer, but nothing past that.

  Any second now…

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  There it was.

  Thunderous footsteps sounded on the catwalk outside — the captain retreating hastily to the upper deck, or wherever the hell he’d come from. Xu thought he heard a muffled moan follow in the wake of the guy’s movement, but his brain could have been making it up. He had the same chemicals flooding his own system — violence inevitably brought it out, and he had no doubt the captain would have killed him right then and there if the altercation had gone his way. Xu would have been strangled to death in this tiny box that stank of sweat and salt and steel.

  It was much easier to cover up the death of a deckhand than a captain.

  The man would know that. So his retreat would be brief. He would probably be back with a pistol or a shotgun — whatever weapon the shipping company had deemed it necessary to arm him with for security measures.

  So Xu only stayed still for another beat.

  He couldn’t kill the captain so close to the mess and the rest of the crew. But he could do it somewhere quieter. Somewhere the captain was no doubt retreating to right now.

  Xu hurled the steel door open and took off in the direction of the footsteps.

  As he burst over the threshold, the first of the hideous vibrations resonated through the bowels of the ship.

  A colossal impact with something outside.

  A storm was coming.

  And the waves were starting to build.

  11

  Takoradi Harbour

  Ghana

  There was nothing special about the fishing trawler. Its crew of six were fiercely loyal, having worked together for the better part of five years in the often turbulent waters of the Gulf of Guinea. They made a respectable living and were learning, year by year, how to operate more effectively to ensure they could maximise their profits and provide for their families, and maybe prosper along the way.

  Today they surrounded the trawler, working as a cohesive unit, scrubbing the exterior of the boat as it bobbed and weaved against the dock, moored to the harbour by thick salt-encrusted ropes.

  It was simply a matter of wrong place, wrong time.

  Rubber screeched against asphalt and the six men — all natives of Ghana — twisted in unison to search for the so
urce of the strange sound. They found it simultaneously.

  A giant military truck pulled up beside the trawler, sporting a modified suspension system lifting the chassis far above the wheels to handle the difficult African terrain. A couple of the fishermen recognised the insignia emblazoned onto the side of the truck — this was an official Army vehicle of the neighbouring Burkina Faso.

  But the men who stepped down from the vehicle’s elevated chassis certainly weren’t Burkina Faso soldiers.

  In fact, most of them were white.

  Before any of the fishermen could react, the five-man procession raised automatic weapons and emptied dozens and dozens of rounds into them, taking care not to damage the fishing trawler in the process. The last few seconds of the withering volley proved wholly unnecessary, but the five of them were pulsating with momentum, flooded with a fanatical energy that only materialised in the aftermath of overwhelming success. They had succeeded at every step of their brazen plan so far, and these six peasants weren’t about to get in their way.

  Whilst four of the soldiers lowered their M4A1 carbines to their sides and confirmed amongst themselves that all the fishermen were well and truly dead, the fifth slid a disposable satellite phone out of the rear pocket of his cargo pants and answered a call that had come through at precisely the right time.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘We’ve agreed to your terms,’ said the voice on the other end of the line.

  Randall Neak didn’t need to mask his delight. There was no-one around — aside from his four brothers in arms — to judge him. He beamed. But he didn’t allow a shred of his happiness to filter through into his tone.

  ‘Perfect,’ Neak said. ‘It’s been hell to get this thing out safely. You don’t want to know what we had to do to the suit who was carrying it around. He was sitting on a lot of juicy information about how the thing functions.’

  ‘I assure you your tactics pale in comparison to what we use in interrogations.’