They caught up with the target vessel late on Monday afternoon, after they’d asked the captain of the Muttrah to increase speed to twelve and a half knots. Once they’d done so, Richter had confirmed that it was the correct vessel through the satellite imagery – the drums stacked on deck were the obvious identification feature for the orbiting cameras – and then they’d backed off slightly, to match speed with the other vessel while still holding her as a solid contact on the ship’s surveillance radar.
In the interim, the people at Hammersmith had been gathering other intelligence, including a response from Salah Barzani, the asset worked by Legoland at Khasab. Barzani had confirmed that he had noticed several other people, not shooties, arriving on the smugglers’ open boats in the harbour on the same day that the drums had been unloaded and, as far as he could tell, all of those men had then boarded the small coaster that had collected the cargo.
They had also, he had reported, carried bags onto the ship, but not the kind of cases most people would use to pack their clothes. These bags were black in colour and three or four feet long but not very deep. Knowing that they were probably soldiers sent to guard the cargo meant that the deduction by Hammersmith that they might have held assault rifles, probably the ubiquitous Kalashnikov AK-47, had not been difficult to reach. The asset hadn’t been able to identify the coaster because the name was too faded and the paint too badly damaged for him to make it out at the distance involved.
By the time his handler at Six had established two-way contact with him through the email account, the coaster had already sailed and Barzani was relying only on about a dozen pictures he had taken of the scene with his digital camera from his apartment. If contact had been established sooner, Six could have told him to walk down to the harbour and get close enough to positively identify the ship. But in the event, that was something else that didn’t matter.
Simpson advised Richter in an encrypted email that additional preparations were being made for action of a very different kind some distance to the east, an action that would hopefully convince the Iranians that the biological attack they had launched was an extremely bad idea, and that continuing along that track was an even worse idea. Even if it didn’t convince them, what was going to happen would probably set their chemical and biological weapons programme back several years.
‘So how do we stop it?’ Masters asked.
‘That’s a bloody good question,’ Richter replied, ‘and I’m not entirely sure that I’ve got a bloody good answer. In fact, I’m not even sure I’m the right person to try to come up with a bloody good answer.’
‘As I see it, we’ve only got two options,’ Moloch said, recognising his cue. The four of them – Richter, Masters, Moore and Moloch – were sitting round a table in the mess room, one of the Red Sea navigation charts in front of them. ‘We either ram them or board them, and I’m not that enthusiastic about either. If your information is correct,’ he said to Richter, ‘then I guess the regular crew of the ship are still on board and actually driving the thing, while the extra bodies that were seen boarding the vessel in Khasab are most likely Iranian soldiers or maybe even special forces troops on board to make sure the cargo gets to its destination. What they won’t be doing is sitting around drinking or playing cards or anything like that. They’ll be mounting watches on the bridge and maybe have lookouts posted on the decks as well, each one probably with a Kalashnikov over his shoulder. Even at night, trying to get close enough with the skiffs to board the vessel would be fucking difficult and dangerous, and maybe impossible.’
‘So you reckon ramming makes better sense?’ Moore asked.
‘Yes, but only slightly. We could use the predict vectors built into the radar system to work out roughly where the two vessels could collide. We could make it look like an overtaking manoeuvre that had gone wrong. The basic maritime rules of the road state that the vessel being overtaken is to maintain its course and speed, and that the faster ship is to keep clear of the slower one. I suppose we could ask the captain to increase speed so that we’d pass maybe half a mile clear of the target, wait until it was right abeam us and then just steer towards it. That wouldn’t give their crew much time to manoeuvre, and if we did it so that the coast or an island or something was close by on the other side of their vessel they wouldn’t have any sea room either. And there are a lot of small islands in this stretch of water.’
‘If you’re right about the extra lookouts,’ Masters said, ‘then they’d realise something was going on pretty soon after we started heading towards them.’
‘I know,’ Moloch replied, ‘but there wouldn’t be a hell of lot they could do about it. Ships are made of thick steel, and everybody on this ship would be inside the accommodation section before we started the turn, so even if they opened up with their Kalashnikovs or whatever they’re carrying, we’d be well protected. Even if they have a few RPGs, they’d only do minimal damage. The only vulnerable point would be the bridge, but the helmsman could set the steering and then just walk away once we were close enough to make a collision inevitable.’
Moloch looked at the other three men and gave them a bleak smile.
‘It sounds like it would be okay if you say it quickly,’ he said, ‘but there are a few other factors. Like if we hit the side of that ship with our bow, we could suffer more damage in the collision than we cause, and this vessel might start going down while the target ship just sails away. Even if it was a glancing blow, the amount of damage to both ships is impossible to predict, and I don’t like uncertainties.’
‘Neither do I,’ Richter echoed.
For a couple of minutes, none of them spoke, all pondering the conundrum that had occupied their collective thoughts since the ship had sailed from Salalah. Eventually, Richter broke the silence.
‘What we really need,’ he said, ‘is to be able to get close enough to that ship without being seen as a threat.’
‘Yes, obviously,’ Moloch said impatiently. ‘Just tell me how and we’ll do it.’
‘I’m still trying to work that bit out. Just remind me of what you guys brought on board with you. The heavy stuff, I mean.’
Moloch gave him a short verbal list, then leaned back and looked at him expectantly.
‘Okay,’ Richter said, ‘maybe something like this would work.’
He sketched out the idea that, in truth, he was still formulating and refining, but the bare bones of it were simple enough. When he’d finished, he glanced at the other three men sitting around the table.
‘Could that do it?’ he asked.
‘I like it,’ Masters replied. ‘So, it’s like we arrange for them to hit a rock that isn’t there. More or less, anyway.’
‘They’ll probably guess it isn’t a rock pretty quickly,’ Moloch said, ‘but it could still work. Don’t forget that there’s been conflict in this area for decades, so encountering some kind of munition wouldn’t be all that surprising. They’re not even certain that they’ve shifted all the mines from the Suez Canal. And I think we can take this plan maybe a couple of steps further, to make it work even better for us.’
He explained briefly what he had in mind.
‘Now that’s clever,’ Moore said. ‘Can we do it?’
‘No reason why not,’ Moloch said. ‘The ship must have ropes that float. We’ll need extra flotation devices, something to take the weight, but that’s just a matter of trial and error. Are we all happy with this?
‘It’s the best idea we’ve had so far,’ Richter said. ‘It covers stopping the target vessel, what to do with the other ship and guarantees we can recover the bioweapon, so I’ll go for it. I mean, with a bit of luck, the Iranians will end up doing most of the work for us.’
Masters and Moore both nodded.
‘Just one thing,’ Richter said. ‘I need to ask the captain a question.’
He walked across the mess room to the wall phone, dialled the bridge and held a short conversation with the man who picked up the line. Then he strode back to the others and nodded.
‘What was that all about?’ Masters asked.
‘Just tying up a loose end,’ Richter said, and explained what he’d asked and why.
Moloch stood up.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’ll get things under way right now. We’ll time it for around dusk this evening, when the visibility starts to degrade. We’ll have a full formal briefing here in the mess room at 1600 hours.’