The Wrecking Crew (Janac's Games) Read online

  The Wrecking Crew

  Mark Chisnell

  Kindle Edition

  Originally published by:

  HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited 2004

  P.O. Box 1, Auckland

  Copyright © Mark Chisnell 2009

  Mark Chisnell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Kindle Edition, License Notes:

  Thank you for downloading this ebook, it’s yours to enjoy – but this ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy.

  There are more books, blogs, journalism and lots more information on the author at:

  http://www.markchisnell.com

  Reviews of The Wrecking Crew

  ‘It’s a great escapist yarn with Janac a really nasty villain who gives Hamnet untold grief. I enjoyed this one.’

  Hawkes Bay Today

  ‘I found it impossible to put down.’

  Boating New Zealand

  ‘A real ripping yarn, hard to take seriously but begging to be made into an all-action film.’

  Qantas in-flight magazine

  ‘Perfect for summer reading.’

  CityMix Auckland

  By the same author - The Defector (originally published as The Delivery)

  Reviews of The Defector

  ‘An excellent drug-smuggling thriller.’

  The Bookseller

  ‘This is a remarkable thriller – chillingly violent, full of tension and with a very original ending.’

  Publishing News

  ‘New British fiction writer Mark Chisnell will have to go a long way to top his debut.’

  Bristol Observer

  ‘A fabulous and brilliantly written story.’

  Peterborough Evening Telegraph

  ‘What an impressive debut it makes … Compelling, hard to put down.’

  City Mix Auckland

  ‘A taut thriller… The Defector allowed Chisnell to create Janac, a truly memorable anti-hero.’

  The Press, Christchurch

  ‘An evil storyline, with little relief and with great tension created.’

  Hawke’s Bay Today

  ‘This thriller has pace and immediacy.’

  Wairarapa Times-Age

  ‘Throw in a love triangle, the microcosm of a boat at sea and some good sailing and you’ve got a fine yarn… Chisnell has managed to create a smart and articulate villain, always the best kind.’

  Sailing Magazine, USA

  ‘The culmination of the game will astound you.’

  Trade-a-Boat, NZ

  ‘Never, never, never would I read a psychological thriller … Just as well, then, that I didn’t read the description on the back cover until after I’d finished the book, and by then was too breathless, terrified and awed to care…. The book’s strength is the author’s confident, original, at times tawdry, writing style.’

  Boating New Zealand

  Chapter 1

  Phillip Hamnet rattled quickly down the two flights of stairs from the bridge, his shoes skidding lightly across the steps hollowed and smoothed by countless watch changes. The master of the MV Shawould hit the deck at the bottom and strode along the passage to his cabin. He grabbed the handle and, with the deftness of practice, twisted and lifted. The door, with its sadly sagging hinges, still opened unwillingly. His wife, Anna, looked up at the noise and smiled as he entered. The door fell shut behind him.

  ‘Everything all right?’ she asked, watching him carefully. A white T-shirt was stuck to his wiry frame, and a sheen of sweat and grease layered his tanned forehead. He looked heroically exhausted, she reflected, the handsome face stubbled and sagging off the high cheekbones, the hazel eyes shadowed by bags. And the matted blond hair needed cutting.

  Hamnet dropped into a chair by the small dinner table they had set up in his day room. ‘I suppose. That damned cargo never showed up. I just got the word from the company to go anyway. We’ve slipped anchor and headed down the channel. It looks like there’s some bad weather coming, but they want us moving, all antsy because we’re late now, when it’s their phantom cargo that’s caused it.’ He paused. ‘I left Richardson up there. It’s his watch, and supper’s waited long enough.’

  Anna nodded, and in silence served two portions of a rice dish. Hamnet stared at the electric fan, brooding. It struggled hopelessly to move the heavy air around the cabin, and the full weight of the tropics bore down on them — at its most oppressive and threatening in these moments before a storm. Anna coughed lightly. Hamnet sighed, glanced round and took the proffered plate.

  ‘God, it’s hot in here. Can I open the door?’ he said, putting the plate down and rising from his seat.

  ‘Of course. I only closed it while I was showering,’ replied Anna.

  Hamnet looked at his wife for the first time since entering the cabin. She was cool and composed in her light silk robe — an effect the water in the ship’s tanks was just about cold enough to produce. But it wouldn’t last for long. He pulled the door open and jammed a wedge under it to keep it that way, kicking it into place with unnecessary aggression.

  ‘Hey, cheer up, it’s the last trip,’ chided Anna as she reached for a bottle of white wine and poured him a large glass.

  ‘Thank God. I hate this damn boat,’ said Hamnet with some feeling, returning to his seat.

  ‘You’ve earned the holiday, and your new ship,’ replied Anna.

  Hamnet picked up the wine and took a long sip. He sighed heavily again, but the tension in his body eased visibly. He looked at Anna. ‘It’s coming right, isn’t it?’ he asked, with a hesitant smile.

  Anna nodded.

  ‘Thanks.’ The smile was looser; he offered the glass. ‘To us,’ he toasted. The glass had little resonance. There wasn’t the full, fruity hum of Waterford crystal on Waterford crystal, just the cheap chink of cheap glasses. Hamnet drained his of the not-so-chilled white regardless.

  ‘The four of us,’ replied Anna. Her chocolate-brown eyes flickered warmly, gazing through the loose fringe of her black, bobbed hair as she sipped at her iced water. Hamnet had a vague suspicion that it was bad luck to toast with anything other than alcohol, but couldn’t be sure. Perhaps he should have got her to take a glass of wine. Just a sip wouldn’t hurt — not now, with only five weeks to go. Four of us. Who would ever have guessed at twins? It was, he considered, a bloody terrifying thought. That’s why Anna had wanted to do this trip. Last chance for a while.

  Anna finished her meal first, refilled her glass from the water jug and slid across onto the sofa that lined one wall of the day cabin. Hamnet mopped up the last of the rice with a finger and moved to sit beside her, kicking off his deck shoes.

  ‘How’re you doing, Mrs Hamnet?’

  ‘Pretty good, Mr Hamnet.’ She smiled, and shifted to lie back against the cushion, the silk robe falling away from her smooth and amply distended belly.

  ‘And all the little Hamnets?’ He laid his hand gently on the soft, warm skin.

  ‘Kinda frisky tonight.’ She twitched her eyebrows up suggestively, sipped at her water and put the glass down on the side table.

  Hamnet could feel the motion. ‘I guess they get that from their mother.’

  Her hand tugged at the buttons on his shirt, then slid up a
nd onto his chest. ‘You need a shower, darling,’ she said, her pretty nose twitching.

  ‘Maybe you should come with me,’ he said, leaning forward to meet her slightly parted lips, their eyes locked together, his hand slipping down her belly, the open door forgotten.

  The buzzer went on the intercom.

  ‘Damn,’ he swore. Anna frowned as he pulled back and leaned over to reach the handset.

  It was the voice of the chief mate, Paul Richardson, that greeted him. ‘Skipper?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Hamnet replied shortly. He couldn’t keep the impatience out of his voice. This had better be good. Anna’s hand ran tantalisingly slowly down his chest to his navel, and hesitated.

  Richardson continued. ‘Could you come up and take a look? I'm not sure about this turn.’

  Hamnet glanced skywards in resignation. His eyes scanned the rusting rivet line that ran the length of the cabin. He would be so happy to get off this worthless crate and away from its mediocre crew. He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. ‘Anna, I'm sorry, you know what an old woman he is. If I don’t go now he’ll be back on the line in another five minutes.’

  Anna rolled her eyes, and sighed loudly enough for those on the bridge to hear her.

  ‘On my way,’ said Hamnet. He replaced the phone. ‘Sorry, darling. I’ll just go hold his hand for a while. I won’t be long.’ He eased himself stiffly off the couch and fumbled for his shoes. Behind him, Anna’s sigh was transforming itself into a rather steady heavy breathing. He stood up and moved towards the door.

  ‘I'll try and save you some dessert, honey,’ murmured Anna.

  Hamnet kicked the wedge away, stepped outside and quickly closed the door. He stood for a moment in the corridor while his eyes adjusted to the red night-lights. The engines rumbled in the depths below his feet. The moaning of steel plates and wires was louder out here. The wind and sea had continued to build. But the rain and the ship’s motion cooled the air, and Hamnet could feel the sweat start to dry as he strode down the corridor and back up the steps, two at a time, to emerge onto the bridge.

  ‘The weather’s really closed in, hasn't it?’ he said curtly, still thinking of Anna.

  Richardson looked up from the chart table he was huddled over. His stooped figure and lined face indicated a lifetime of worry. Behind him, rain splattered suicidally against the bridge glass. Beyond, it was completely black, without even the reassuring glow of navigation lights. The company’s standing orders were to run without lights whenever in close proximity to the Indonesian, Thai, Philippine or Malaysian coasts. Which for this Singapore-based tramp was most of the time. It was one of the precautions against pirates. Hamnet always added a deck watch on the stern, complete with shutters for the anchor hawsepipes, barbed wire on the guardrail and a supply of beer bottles filled with sand as missiles. The stern was always where they came from, slinging grappling hooks from fast, open boats. Creeping on board with machetes. Most of the time they could come and go without a crew even realizing. The first they knew was when the master returned to his cabin to find it ransacked and the contents of the safe gone. The thought had Hamnet reaching for the intercom just as it buzzed.

  ‘Phil?’ It was Anna’s breathy voice.

  ‘I was just about to call you.’

  ‘Don’t call me. Come on back down here, babe.’ She paused, breathing heavily, rhythmically.

  Hamnet could feel his face flush. ‘Darling, this is a ship’s intercom, not a phone-sex line.’ He slapped the receiver back down. Then thought, damn, he’d forgotten to tell her to lock the door. But still, it was a filthy night — no one in their right mind would be out there in an open boat.

  Richardson was talking to him. ‘She just blew up from the northwest like we thought it would. Always bad, the storms when the monsoon’s changing.’ There was a crack and a flash of lightning, as if to emphasize his words.

  Hamnet caught a glimpse of the cargo deck, lashed with rain; beyond it, whipped-up, white-capped water. There was more vibration now as the Shawould rolled off the occasional bigger wave. ‘Hmm,’ he grunted, a hand on the console to brace himself. ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘Well.’ Richardson drew out the word with his Texan drawl, but Hamnet could see from the rapid tap, tap of his hand on the chart that he was far from composed. ‘We've been heading down the channel as planned, and according to the GPS we’re here.’ Richardson’s finger finally came to rest, and Hamnet moved over to the chart table to take a look.

  The Global Positioning System plot put them safely in the middle of the Bangka Channel, headed just south of east. ‘So what’s the problem?’ Hamnet repeated.

  ‘Well,’ Richardson drawled again, ‘I’ve been waiting to pick up the light and the radio beacon here, before I commence the turn to south-southeast round Selokan Point.’

  Hamnet glanced at the chart again, at the Pelepasan Rock, whose light should have been flashing at them three times every thirty seconds, from as far as thirty-six miles away. It should have been visible from the moment they had left Muntok, on a clear night at least. He waited impatiently, his fists slightly clenched. But experience had taught him that rushing Richardson was worse. Then the Texan started to stutter. It was an inability to perform under pressure that had kept the old boy as chief mate on a boat like this.

  ‘Now it should only be five miles away on the bow. And I still don’t have a visual or a radio contact,’ finished Richardson, finally.

  ‘Not a huge surprise. The Indonesian buoyage isn’t the world’s most reliable.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I figured too. So I thought I would make the turn on the GPS, but that doesn’t seem to agree too good with the depth right now.’

  Hamnet’s eyes flicked over the depth gauge: sixty feet. He turned back to the chart. If they were where the GPS said they were, they should be in fifty feet of water. Not so badly wrong as to get you in a panic. But not right either. Perhaps Her Majesty’s hydrographers had been a little rough and ready down here, or, more likely, had used data from someone else’s survey. Hamnet checked the chart, then grunted to himself: the sources were Indonesian government charts. Another note confirmed the unreliability of the navigational aids in Selat Bangka, a third the movement of the mangrove swamp that lined the channel. He sighed. So much for the radio direction-finding beacon and the light. They were on their own.

  ‘What about the radar?’ he asked Richardson.

  ‘Well, with all this weather I was having trouble getting a picture worth looking at.’

  Hamnet contained himself with difficulty. This was the real reason Richardson had got him up here. He couldn’t confirm their position with the radar. Getting clear radar vision in bad weather was an art, because the rain and sea deflected the signal back at the detector. The result was a wall of noise and clutter on the screen behind which genuinely solid objects could hide with ease. But the art of brushing aside that curtain of clutter was one you were supposed to have mastered by the time you were a chief mate in your mid-fifties.

  Hamnet would deal with the radar in a moment; in the meantime, he had to believe the GPS. The US Department of Defense’s ten billion dollar satellite position-fixing system was to be trusted, even if some of the residents of the Lone Star State were not. And the GPS said they would be aground shortly if they didn’t turn to the southeast now.

  ‘Start the turn to sou’-sou’east please, Richardson. And slow her down to half speed to give us a little time to figure this out properly.’

  Hamnet listened to Richardson step over to the wheel and dial up the change. His eyes went to the chart; there were some low hills on Bangka Island to the east that he should be able to pick up on the radar. He checked the position on the GPS so he could measure the distance it gave from the hills. It was then he noticed the indicator light showing that the GPS unit was receiving signals from a differential radio-transmitter beacon. A differential beacon used a precisely known position on land to check the accuracy of the satellite signals. It then t
ransmitted the necessary corrections to all GPS units in the area, corrections that each GPS automatically included in the calculation of its position.

  Hamnet scanned the chart. Differential was used in places where high navigational accuracy was required or helpful — outside ports, along well-travelled coastlines. This didn’t seem the kind of place for someone to set up a beacon. The only traffic through here would be the few ships headed to Jakarta via Muntok, like the Shawould. Anyone else would go round the outside of Bangka Island. There were some oil installations further south — they could have installed differential, perhaps that was it. Perhaps not. Could they be picking up some rogue signals bounced long distance through the atmosphere by the storm? Hamnet couldn’t remember if this was possible with differential transmissions. He decided it was worth checking the GPS fix using the satellite signals alone.

  ‘Richardson, you know how to stop this thing switching to differential automatically?’ Hamnet turned to look at his first officer, whose face was creased in puzzlement.

  ‘It's getting a differential signal?’ he asked slowly, his heavy, walruslike moustache twitching nervously.

  ‘Yes,’ snapped Hamnet, finally losing patience. ‘And I would appreciate it if you would shift it to manual reception of satellite signals only, while I sort out the damn radar.’

  Richardson moved forward to the GPS, the pain of a decade-and-a-half of career stasis written all over his face.

  Hamnet went back to the chart and measured the distance to the hills from their GPS position. They were between nine and fifteen miles away. There was also an island in the channel; it wasn’t as high as the hills but it was closer — only seven miles in front. He glanced again at the depth before he went back to the radar. It was shallowing quickly — forty-five feet. They drew forty with this cargo. The turn to the southeast should have meant the depth was increasing. Now he was worried. Damn it, what the hell was going on? He stepped over to the engine control and rang up neutral. They were coasting, and would quickly lose steerageway in the tight channel, but steerage was little use to him when he had no idea what the error in their position was or which way to turn.