Liz Carlyle - 06 - Rip Tide by Stella Rimington Read Free Book Online Page B

replaying the hijacking in his mind. One moment he was in charge, on the bridge of the SS Myrmidon , the world’s seventeenth-largest oil tanker; the next moment, a young African was pointing an AK-47 at his head. Then another five pirates had swarmed in, armed to the teeth. There wasn’t anything to be done: the ship’s sole firearm was an old 12-bore shotgun which had belonged to Luckhurst’s father, and which the crew used to shoot clay pigeons off the stern, to pass the time on long voyages.
    Of course he had known that hijacking was a possibility, but he’d received no warning of any imminent attack from the naval vessels that were supposed to be patrolling the area, so he did not have his crew on alert. His instructions were not to resist if hijackers boarded and so he had followed the commands of their leader, brought his ship into the coast off Mogadishu and meekly allowed himself and his crew to be taken ashore. From then on his main responsibility had been to calm his crew and to try to make sure they did nothing to excite or alarm their young captors.
    The crew were a polyglot bunch from all over the world, who liked to view Captain Luckhurst as typically English. So he had played to the stereotype, adopting a stiff upper lip and a ready smile, keeping his own worries about their safety strictly to himself. It wouldn’t have done to let them know how alarmed he’d been when they’d been taken off the ship at gun point, ferried ashore, and herded into this cattle pen.
    He knew he could not complain about the treatment they were receiving. There would have been no point. The man Khalid, who had led the raiding party and seemed to be in charge, called their holding pen his ‘Guantanamo’, and like its Cuban counterpart this place was primitive: built of wooden posts with wire sheep fencing strung between them. Thank God for the fact that at one end of the pen there was a rough roof of plywood boards covered by tar paper, with a raised shelf under it for sitting and sleeping; this gave them some protection against the sun, which blazed for over ten hours a day, raising the temperature to 40 degrees Centigrade. They were let out each morning for an hour’s exercise in the middle of the compound, and by the time they returned to the pen were desperate for relief from the blistering heat and the wind – a dry scorching wind which blew all day, driving sand relentlessly into their mouths and eyes.
    At least the nights were cool. Then Luckhurst would sit on his bit of the wooden platform, wrapped in one of the thin blankets which the guards had grudgingly distributed, staring out at the sky. Up there, he thought, among all those stars is a satellite looking at us. They know where we are. But they’re not going to intervene. We just have to wait for the ransom negotiations. Get on with it, he’d implore the unknown negotiators. Get us out of here.
    The biggest frustration for him lay in not knowing what was going on. The hostages had no contact with any of the men in the camp except for the young boy, Taban, who brought them their food. Luckhurst smiled at the thought of the young Somali. Even in the bleakest circumstances the kindness of an individual could stand out, and he could tell Taban was a gentle soul adrift in a situation beyond his control. The boy reminded him of his own son, George, his youngest, who despite the utterly different worlds they inhabited, had the same kind of sweetness as this African youth. At first there had been no communication between the Captain and the Somali boy, but in time Luckhurst had found that his smattering of Arabic, Taban’s few words of English and a burgeoning use of sign language meant they could make their respective meanings clear.
    One day, almost two weeks before, the boy had seemed very agitated. Luckhurst had gathered from him that new men had arrived in the camp, though he had not seen them himself. ‘Arab,’ Taban had said, lowering his voice and looking