Alex killed the headlights on the Land Rover and made a sharp turn off the main highway before bumping onto the uneven desert track. An old smugglers’ route over the border into Niger, he had used it countless times in the other direction and knew it well. The Land Rover Defender was fully equipped and upgraded for off-road expedition driving. In the passenger seat, Nish supervised the routing on the G.P.S, ensuring they didn’t get lost in the now near pitch black night-time desert, bereft of light pollution due to the complete lack of civilisation in the remote corner where Libya’s border touched Niger’s. It was several hours harsh driving before the Land Rover finally found tarmac again the other side of the border, Alex turned onto the road and illuminated the headlamps as he accelerated back up to try and make progress south to the shipping depot. Nish and Alex took alternating shifts of driving as they pounded across the vast, often featureless, country. The other catnapped as best they could as they traversed over the potholed or broken roads. By the time they arrived, the formerly pristine metallic grey Land Rover looked like it had just completed the full Paris to Dakar. A useful side benefit of their off-road excursion was the dirt, rock dings, cracked windscreen, and scratches now camouflaged the vehicle well into the other dirty battered vehicles that clogged the small town’s streets.
Alex navigated to their target destination, pulling in at a small African cafe bar, its dilapidated Pepsi Cola sign faded and flapping in the wind.
Alex and Nish emerged from the parked Land Rover and walked over into the small cafe where the welcome relief of air movement, from the overhead electric ceiling fan, broke the humid and stifling hot afternoon conditions. Alex ordered some food and drink whilst Nish went and relieved himself. They took up residence at a table under the main draft from the overhead fan, overlooking the entrance gates to the trucking depot opposite. The waiter brought over their food and ice-cold Pepsi in glass bottles, which brought Alex and Nish some welcome cold relief to their dry parched throats.
The afternoon passed slowly as a procession of trucks arrived and departed without much of interest, and boredom from a long op on observation started to set in when finally the activity they’d been waiting for started.
The trigger was the arrival of a clearly rented vehicle. Too clean to have spent any real time on the dusty roads, its occupants too fresh to be weather-beaten by the harsh African sun. They pulled into the trucking compound and were directed to the foreman’s office. The pair of P.M.C’s, and their suit in charge, were far too clean-cut to be the usual scruffbag local soldiers of fortune. They went into the office before emerging an hour later, and waited briefly before supervising the departure of a line of four H.G.V’s loaded with international cargo shipping containers. The P.M.C’s and suit-in-charge returned to their car and drove out of the compound before following in the direction of the trucks.
Alex and Nish returned to their drinks as if nothing had happened. Patience was on their side, since they knew the shipment was bound for Lagos, and there was only one principal road suitable for H.G.V’s to get there from their current destination, they had at least an hour to maintain cover of weary travellers before beginning the pursuit and surveillance. They would wait until just before dusk to get out of town, ensuring by the time they caught up that their vehicle would not identifiable under the cover of darkness. They would be fully into Nigeria before the dawn broke, and the P.M.C’s would likely have long forgotten any vehicles such as theirs that had caught their attention from a surveillance sweep of the departure point.
As the time approached, Alex and Nish both relieved themselves of the vast quantity of hydration they had consumed, paid the bill in old local currency notes and departed. They stopped for gas, which consumed another 45 minutes as the attendant manually pumped the petrol from its tanker before filling the extended long-range tanks of the Land Rover by buckets. They paid for the fuel and then made their way on the main road south-west towards the Nigeria border where they knew the H.G.V convoy would be caught for several hours while the slow and bureaucratic African customs officers processed the endless stream of traders crossing. They caught up with the trucks three hours later on the long road in the middle of the night. As Alex had suspected, any opportunity to inspect the trucks’ cargo wasn’t presented — the P.M.C and suit-in-charge kept a close eye on their shipment as it crawled slowly through the line at the border, and each of the trucks had a full compliment of replacement drivers so they didn’t stop to rest. Experienced as they were, both Nish and Alex were highly skilled in using the cover of other traffic to maintain a watchful eye without the P.M.C’s becoming aware of being trailed.
As they reached the outskirts of Lagos, the first element of their intelligence gathering was complete. Whatever was on the trucks was what had left Niger, and hadn’t been exchanged en-route.
The trucks pulled into Lagos docks, Nish parked up near the perimeter fence and they watched as the convoy made its way to be offloaded in the customs clearance area. Nish had already taken note of the international standard identification numbers on each of the containers so they could be tracked once they were loaded onto one of the several large container ships now waiting in port. Nish spotted a small hotel with a direct view over the port’s cargo area. He left Alex briefly to maintain the observation whilst he went to the hotel, returning some thirty minutes later. They pulled the Land Rover into the hotel’s side car park under the shade of a carport, unloaded their bags, and made their way inside.
Nish collected the room keys, they headed up a set of old wooden stairs to the uppermost of the four floors, unlocked the door and went in, dumping their kit on the bed. Nish pulled open the curtains shading the room from the afternoon sun, and stared across the commanding view the window gave over the entire of the wharf apron. Alex unpacked their camera with a telephoto lens and tripod then handed it to Nish to set up as he pulled a pair of chairs close to the window. Nish trained the lens down on the port then rigged up the output A.V line from the camera and plugged it into the video AUX-IN socket on the T.V. Alex turned the T.V on and switched it over to the channel to get the output signal from the camera.
‘You’re good,’ Alex said as the view of the port came up on screen. Alex took a portable video recorder, plugged it in the T.V’s AUX-OUT socket and set it to record. ‘You want to take first watch?’
‘Yeah I’m good,’ Nish replied. Alex took out some bottles of water from the minibar fridge and set them up for Nish before walked over to the bed, taking his boots off, and settling in to get some sleep.
It was past one in the morning when, under the dock’s floodlights, the containers were finally unloaded from the trucks onto waiting collection stands. Nish was suddenly jolted into activity as he focused the camera on the suit-in-charge and the P.M.C’s boarding the middle of the three waiting cargo ships.
‘Alex, I think we’ve got something.’
Alex got up and walked over to the window. He picked up a set of binoculars, focused it on the ship and watched as the P.M.C’s plus suit-in-charge made their way down the boat’s cargo deck.
‘Where are the containers?’
‘On the wait stand. You think that’s our boat?’ Nish asked.
‘Could be. They could just be getting a ride home. We won’t know for sure until they’re lifted. I’ll keep eyes on it, you go and ask around. Find out what you can about where they are going, and when they’re due to leave. We need to find out how long we have to act once we confirm. If they’re last on then we might not get on board in time.’
‘On it. You want me to pick up some food?’
‘Yeah, try and get something hot. And get some more salted pistachios.’ Nish grabbed his jacket and left leaving Alex to watch the boat.
Nish returned some four hours later.
‘You took your time.’
‘Those port workers took a lot of liquid lubrication.’
‘You get anything?’ Alex asked as Nish unpacked the takeaway cartons onto the table. He pulled out a notepad from his pocket and tossed it to Alex.
‘Middle boat is headed for Mombasa, rear is going to Seoul. The lead boat is off to Buenos Aires.’
‘Mombasa?’
‘It’d be my guess. Could be trans-shipping on to The Gulf.’
‘When’s it leaving?’
‘We’re good. The chief mechanic is laying waste to the local women of the night. They’re waiting on a new fuel filter to arrive and fit it before they go. I’ve got us an in. They were short-crewed. One of the guys I lubricated with refreshments cousins has gone aboard as a deckhand. He’ll get us on the boat. Mechanic says security is tight. He thinks it’s because they’re running pirate alley, but I think it’s more down to those containers. They’re expecting to leave port around 2 a.m. tomorrow. We should get a look just after midnight when they switch to off-watch.’
‘What about the containers?’ Alex asked.
‘Not getting loaded until tomorrow after they do the first customs clearance inspection around 10 a.m.’
‘Good work.’ Alex unpacked his dinner and settled down to eat.
They continued the observation throughout the following day as the Nigerian customs officer made a cursory inspection of the containers before they were sealed with tags and the port crew set to work loading them via the overhead cranes onto the boat. Alex and Nish watched intently as they traced them to their final position on the vast cargo ship loaded with containers stacked several high. Nish made a diagram of the deck layout and marked the row and positions of the four containers of interest to them.