The Wrecking Crew (Janac's Games) Read online

  Richardson’s tall, frail body as he had stepped forward to his death. The bewilderment on his face — on all their faces — as Phil had failed to appear. The growing terror as the minutes had ticked away. The accusing looks cast at her by the others. And then the sudden explosion of violence. None of them had tried to run. She closed her eyes again as she recalled the scene, but the images only returned all the more vividly. They had just stood there, dithering away the last chance they had for life. A wide burst of continuous fire had brought all of them down, followed by a carefully aimed bullet for each twitching body — until the only motion among the litter of corpses had been the splash of rain, clothing tugged by the wind and the steady flow of blood. Then the dead had been casually kicked into the hold. And all the time the din of automatic gunfire as they had tried to kill her lover. A tear trailed down her cheek.

  But questions tumbled through her mind. What had happened on that ship? Why hadn’t Phil come forward? What did he know? Where was he now? Had he survived the shooting gallery that his rescue attempt had become? Her thoughts whirled onwards, diving to ever-darker depths as she sat silently waiting.

  She didn’t see the helicopter land on the Shawould, but its descent over the parachute flare was the signal for the American to put the boat into gear again and pull out from under the security of the mangroves. His crew remained silent. Surviving the roller-coaster journey they’d just endured would normally have left them giggling like schoolchildren. But the American was angry. In a land where people lived on a dollar-and-a-half a day, life was cheap, yet his capacity for violence still frightened them. They knew to be quiet, to let the anger burn slowly rather than provoke it into explosive combustion.

  The driver gradually increased power until the RIB was churning a phosphorescent wake through the dark water. Engine noise and wash bounced off the silent mangroves, which steadily closed around the narrowing river. The moonless night, thick with swirling rain, allowed no visibility beyond the shadowy outline of encroaching foliage. The men on the boat were silent, faceless shapes.

  The inflatable motored past the barge. No one spoke on either vessel. The journey continued through tightening turns in the river. Then, ahead, the suspicion of a light was reflected in the falling rain. Soon, a handful of individual glows were distinguishable, strengthening as successive layers of mangrove were peeled away at the rounding of each bend. Finally, stilted houses could be made out, fires and gas lamps bright through doorways and fissured walls. The RIB slowed and turned towards a group of dark figures squatting on the porch of one single-storey wooden building.

  The American manoeuvred alongside, and as a couple of the crew stepped ashore with mooring lines, he turned to Anna. She was staring at her left hand in the firelight, knuckles stark and white, blood oozing between her fingers. Only now did she see that she had torn the skin while holding on during the journey to the river mouth. The American indicated she should be taken inside, then jumped out ahead of her. She allowed herself to be pulled up and off the boat. She stumbled on the uneven planking, her arms held firmly and protectively across her stomach. She was frightened for herself now. Frightened for her babies. The horrors of the ship, of the massacre, receded as she focused on her own immediate future.

  Inside the building a woman squatted over a fire, the lid of a steaming cooking pot rattling quietly. Anna was led to a mat in one corner. She sat watching as someone lit a couple of gas lamps and yellow light flooded the room. By the door the American was staring out into the rain. This was the first time Anna had got a good look at him. Her eyes ran over his sodden tunic, taking in streaks of dirt, a heavy revolver in a shoulder holster under one arm. A gaunt, stubbled chin. Water trickled through cropped ginger hair, across a face lined and freckled by the sun. He blinked occasionally to clear drops from the lashes that hung over relentless grey eyes, but otherwise he was motionless. And everyone else waited.

  Finally, the man turned to his second in command, who had brought her in — a barrel of a man, heavy and awkward. ‘So, Mike,’ he said, ‘what do you think? Did he stay on the boat?’

  Mike Bureya remained silent, staring at Anna. He knew the question was rhetorical — the boss would answer it himself soon enough.

  The American commander sucked at his teeth, thinking. That Hamnet had survived the hail of gunfire he had no doubt. It was unfortunate there hadn’t been more time, either to hunt him down and finish him off for sure, or to force the issue with his wife, which, considering how he had let the thin officer die, might have taken a while. So the question now was as he had voiced it: had Hamnet stayed on his ship and waited for the bird from the oil rig? If he had, would he report their differential transmissions? And if he hadn’t, could he survive in the water long enough to get ashore? And what would he do then? Certainly he would take the threat to his wife seriously. Surely that was enough to keep him quiet — wasn’t it? Too many imponderables — he didn’t like it. The name meant something too. Hamnet: where the hell had he heard that before? She would know. He turned to Anna: ‘Coffee?’

  Anna nodded tightly, and he waved a hand at the woman by the fire. She ladled liquid from the steaming pot into a cup and carried it over. Anna took it carefully with her good hand, searching for eye contact with the woman, for some kind of reassurance. None was given.

  The American commander spoke again. ‘My name is Janac. As you will have gathered, I am responsible for tonight’s events. My apologies for the rather dramatic turn your evening has taken. It is of course your misfortune to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  Anna was staring at the black liquid in the cup but listening to every word.

  ‘I must assume that your husband is still alive. I need to keep him quiet, and while he remains so, you get to stay alive. As you know him rather better than I do, you can make your own judgement as to your chances.’ Janac watched her carefully. Even in these circumstances she was, he judged, very beautiful. Latin blood, perhaps — dark hair, soft brown eyes and a caramel complexion to match. A lucky man, Phillip Hamnet. At least until tonight. ‘Phillip Hamnet,’ he continued. ‘I’ve heard of him. Tell me why.’

  Slowly Anna looked up from the cup at Janac. The line of his mouth was zipper straight. His grey eyes seemed to pin her to the spot.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Tell you what?’ she replied, creases at the corners of her eyes now.

  ‘Tell me why I’ve heard the name Phillip Hamnet.’

  Anna blinked slowly. Would this be a betrayal?

  Even her short hesitation was too much for Janac. It had been a long night — he didn’t need this. He sighed and stepped towards her, pulling his heavy revolver from its holster and flipping it round so that he was holding it by the barrel, all in one smooth motion. The butt clattered the cup away. Anna stifled a scream as hot coffee splashed across her bare legs. With his other hand, Janac pushed her hard, forcing her off balance. She fell backwards. He dropped on top of her, a knee across her thighs, his hand round her throat. He held the gun above her stomach. Anna’s arms reached across her belly protectively. Her brown eyes were wide, locked on Janac’s face in the sudden stillness. The wind moaned, and the rain clattered on the corrugated-iron roof above them.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘what kind of damage I do depends on how hard I hit you.’

  He choked off her scream with a little more pressure from the hand on her windpipe. ‘It's real simple,’ said Janac. ‘Just tell me what I need to know.’ He raised the gun a couple of inches higher.

  Anna’s lips were working, but only a gurgle emerged. Until Janac eased the pressure on her throat, and then the words came in a hoarse rush. ‘The Lifeboat Man, he’s the Lifeboat Man.’

  Janac smirked as he let her go and stood up. She rolled onto her side, curling into the foetal position. Now he knew what Hamnet had done. He turned to Bureya. ‘He won’t have waited for the helicopter. He’s out there somewhere. We’ll start a search at first light. Use the fishing boats
so we don’t attract any unnecessary attention from whoever’s on the wreck. Sweep south from the river mouth — if he hasn’t drowned he’ll be down tide and wind.’ He glanced at the heavy stainless Rolex watch on his wrist. ‘We have a lot to do. The barge should be here in a couple of hours. Get the people fed before then. I want it unloaded tonight so everyone is out looking in the morning. I’m going to Palembang first thing. I want a full inventory of what we’ve got off the Shawould by then, as I’ll be seeing the owner tomorrow. But hold the stuff here — we’ll decide exactly how we get it out when we know how badly the shit is going to hit the fan over this. It’s not going to be as simple as I planned, what with a dead crew and Hamnet loose.’ Janac shook his head. ‘And I need that money.’

  Bureya nodded silently. Janac turned and walked slowly back to the door, where he stared out into the dark and rain again, his anger gone as quickly as it had flared. He snapped out the cylinder of his revolver and spun the chamber thoughtfully before reholstering the gun. He glanced over at Anna, still curled up defensively.

  Anna’s mind was ablaze with conflicting emotions. The fear she felt at the possibility of losing her babies was altogether different from the fear she had felt before. And she hated it because of the anger that swelled beneath it. Anger that she had snivelled in the face of this man instead of spitting in it. Anger at the babies for making her so helpless — she hated them for that. And she hated herself for feeling so.

  There were heavy footsteps on the wooden floor as Bureya moved to the fire to help himself to coffee. He took a sip and joined Janac at the door. Janac glanced at him, then spoke softly into the rain. ‘I'll be away for a couple of days, to find out how this thing is being reported, to see if Hamnet turns up on the outside. I want you to look after things here, Mike.’ He nodded at Anna. ‘If Hamnet doesn’t turn up, or keeps his mouth shut, we’ll need to get her out of here. I’ll sort that out while I’m away. In the meantime, keep her safe — I don’t want anyone touching her. Get her some clothes and feed her properly. But if you find Hamnet, don’t wait for me. Kill them both.’

  Chapter 5

  The rain and wind had stopped as abruptly as they had started. Hamnet had stirred constantly through a cramping, endless night, lying with his head propped in the crook of a mangrove branch to stop it slipping into the water when he dozed off. On one of the countless occasions when wakefulness had broken the shallow veneer of sleep, the elements had become still and quiet. On another he had been aware of light — a weak orange glow — off to the east. But by then he had been too tired to react, and sleep had finally sucked him down from the surface and into its swampy grasp. Just when it was time to move.

  In the end it was a fleeting thought of Anna that jerked the impossible weight from his eyelids, as sharply as if he’d woken to the thunder of a rumble strip under the wheels of a car. His collision with the bulkhead when the ship had run aground had left him with a stupefying headache. He gently brushed his fingertips over the bruise — the bandage was long gone. The skin didn’t seem to be broken, and there was no blood. He struggled to sit up, and the pain rolled out through his body. He sat still and looked around. The sky above him was clear, but glowering cumulus topped the low hills of the island, and haze hung above the steaming mangroves. The water of the channel shimmered blackly. To his left he could see his ship, resting peacefully with a forty-degree list. There was no sign of life. No indication of the bloody mayhem that had taken place in the night. But he had to forget that — the ship was no longer his problem. His only concern was to find Anna. At the moment he had nothing — no money, no papers, no food or water. And there was only one man he knew he could trust, who would help, who would know where to look. He had to find him first.

  Hamnet scoured his memory for details of the chart to work out which way he should proceed. He knew there was a port city called Palembang about eighty kilometres inland, and a major river that led there from the Bangka Channel somewhere to the north, but he could remember nothing of what lay in between. He glanced behind him at the mangroves. It would take him hours to do just a couple of kilometres through them, and they could extend for ten or twenty. It made more sense to stick to the coast — he would have a better chance of finding people, a fishing village perhaps, somewhere he could get water and food. But he had to be careful. Most of the pirates had been locals, and doubtless the word had gone around that he was wanted. He needed to put some distance between himself and the ship before he could come out into the open. He would head north, towards the traffic that he knew plied the river up to Palembang.

  He pulled himself unsteadily out of the shallow water, and a further wave of pain rippled out. He moved off, skirting the mangroves, stumbling over the uneven mudflat. As the sun rose, the air grew hot and steamy. The light glared down, reflecting off the water, dazzling in its intensity. Hamnet’s mind drifted, unprompted, back to the events of the night.

  It was a variation on the old ‘rust-bucket’ fraud: hiring a crew to illegally sell a valuable cargo before scuttling the ship in deep water and collecting the insurance as well. The scam with the GPS should have achieved the same end with less risk. No weak links. No chance of anyone getting drunk on the pay-off and blowing the story all over the docks.

  He had worked it out, but not fast enough. He should have been sharper, and it was his crew who had paid the price. And Anna — what of her and the babies? Their future could still be in his hands, but only in return for silence, allowing the pirate crew free reign. Yet what if they continued to murder indiscriminately aboard the ships they attacked?

  Time passed, measured in steps forward. His head throbbed to the uneven rhythm of his progress. Two steps, a slip, a splash, a foot jammed under a root. The struggle to get free. The untiring resistance of the water to his progress. The constant desire to slake his thirst. Vision, blurred and uneven, pulling in and out of focus unbidden. And overlying everything, the heavy silence of moisture-laden air.

  Until a steady tick-tick-tick broke that silence. It was growing rapidly louder. Hamnet stopped, recognising the even beat of an outboard motor. The sound seemed to be coming from his left, apparently from deep in the mangroves. He crouched down in waist-deep water until only his head was visible. Just in time — a slim wooden dinghy burst out of the foliage about a hundred metres away. The starboard gunwale dipped as the boat made a right-hand turn and headed towards him. On board were three men, all staring intently at the passing shoreline. Hamnet caught a glimpse of a rifle propped up in the bow. There was no time for anything else. He hauled in a breath, slid below the surface, found a submerged mangrove branch near the bottom and hung on.

  The seconds ticked by. Hamnet knew from experience that he could manage just under a couple of minutes underwater. That was a long time at the speed the boat was going. At ten knots, it would cover some six hundred metres. He’d be safe. He started to count. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand . . . He scanned the water surface above him. He could see no sign of a wash — perhaps he would feel it as it rolled over him. One minute. And one thousand, two thousand, three . . . No vibrations, no ripples — the water remained still. He had to start coming up while he had enough air in his lungs to be in control, not charge for the surface at breaking point, sucking back frothy seawater. Thirty thousand. He was close to his limit. Keeping his legs locked in position, he eased his grip on the branch and slowly sat up.

  The water streaming down his face made vision difficult, but he didn’t need to look far — the dinghy was ten metres away. An adrenaline surge burned what was left of the oxygen in his lungs. His eyes bulged, fixed on the three men. They were so close he could have spat on them. But they were all looking the other way. As his mouth came clear he grabbed a breath and slid back to the bottom. Every inch of his skin tingled with the anticipation of a bullet.

  He must stay down until they left or he drowned — but he knew he couldn’t hold himself under until he passed out. He was considering using his belt to strap
himself to the branch when the water ten metres away exploded into a white froth. They had restarted the engine. The wake was already carving away from him, through the murk. He had only to hang on a few more seconds.

  He forced himself to count to ten, then eased his way airwards. The top of his head broke the surface, eyes peering cautiously while mouth and nose remained submerged. He was safe. The boat was fifty metres away, the occupants’ attention firmly directed ahead of them. He lifted his nose and mouth clear of the water and sucked in deep breaths of air with the relish of a smoker taking the first drag of the day. Slowly his body re-established some sort of equilibrium. Oxygen flooded into his blood stream, and the adrenaline receded, although a nagging tension persisted. He remained motionless until the dinghy had moved out of sight round a curve in the shore. Then he dragged himself, still half-submerged, deep into the mangroves.

  He fought his way towards the river from which the boat had emerged until he was just back from the edge, facing a hundred-metre-wide expanse of brown water. To his left the river disappeared round a bend. To his right, the southern shore on which he stood became a spit, extending into the Bangka Channel. At the end of the spit was his foundered ship, still silent and lifeless. Hamnet swore heavily under his breath — they had so nearly missed it. But more interesting at that moment was the opposite shore. Fringed with forest, it curved away sharply to the west, offering a view up the channel. No more godforsaken mangroves. He would be able to move fast and in good cover. How quickly could he swim a hundred metres? A couple of minutes? It would be a long time in the open, but the risk was worth it.

  Hamnet stood and listened. The boat engine had gone. He pulled off his shoes, tied them together by the laces and hung them round his neck, then pushed through the remaining screen of mangroves. He slipped into the deeper water, electing a steady breaststroke — that way he could still hear. He soon realised there was a lot of water running out of the river from the previous night’s rain, and the current was carrying him towards the channel. He adjusted his direction to compensate, using two trees to keep his bearings. He kept listening, kept swimming, kept hoping he’d stay lucky.