Mac pulled the Heckler out, pulled on his Hi-Tecs and did a quick recce, looking for eyes.
There were several buildings on Brani but the only movement seemed to be the cars of the employees trying to get off the island and onto the Gateway bridge. He couldn’t see to the north side of Brani so he couldn’t see Golden Serpent across the channel.
Coming back along the southern quay, he looked up at the ro-ro ship. It was white with blue and green piping, no evidence of a shipping line and no name. It seemed out of place amidst the behemoths on the other side of the island.
He froze as something caught his eye. Thought he saw movement on the upper decks, but couldn’t catch it again. Must have been a bird.
He kept moving, saw that the ship’s rear tail gate was down on the quay. But no people.
‘Place is deserted,’ said Mac, returning. ‘Can’t believe this is what they wanted.’
Paul nodded. ‘I see your point. It seems like a whole lot of trouble to go to and not push the button.’
Mac had talked Paul into the minimal approach if the bomb was detonated: jump into the water with rebreathers. It might not be foolproof, but VX was water-soluble and if they stayed in the water with their closed-circuit rebreathers they at least wouldn’t be breathing the stuff.
Paul got through to Weenie, nodded, signed off. ‘Development.
Our terrorist mates are broadcasting on maritime frequencies. They’re telling other captains what they’ve got and what they’re gonna do with it. They’re giving them an hour to get out of Dodge.’
‘I guess they’re still on the bridge, trying to create confusion, huh?’ said Mac, not entirely convinced.
‘Weenie reckons the message started going out about fi ve minutes ago.’
They looked at each other, puzzled. It was the weirdest terrorist incident they’d ever heard of.
Putting their dive gear into their webbing backpacks, they stowed them and readied themselves to speed-march a route north that would take them through the small forest in the middle of Brani and across the huge city of containers on Brani’s north shore.
As they set off, Mac thought he heard movement in the security building. Couldn’t be sure because at the same time the still air started vibrating as helos came into view. Two dark Singapore Army Apaches swept low over their position and headed north for the tip of Brani Island. Boeing’s AH-64D was one of the most heavily armed helicopters ever built and their mushroom pod above the main rotor gave them a sinister appearance. But with all their rockets and air-to-air missile capability, Mac knew they’d be pulling up well south of Golden Serpent. There wasn’t much that air power could achieve in the current situation. It would boil down to a couple of men getting onto the ship and doing what they had to do. It would be close-range and Mac was already nervous.
He got his mind focused on what was ahead. Tried to blot out the fear.
CHAPTER 36
Mac and Paul jogged down the forested knoll in the centre of Brani and into the vast boulevards of the terminal, where container stacks took the place of buildings. Mac had lost the thread on Golden Serpent , wanted to get a closer look before he decided what to do.
‘Mate, Port Master is letting them go,’ Paul panted, putting his hand up to his ear.
‘Who?’ said Mac.
‘Ships, mate. Weenie says the Port Master just cleared a bunch of ships to leave, they’ve been threatening legal action.’
Mac kept hauling.
‘How they going to get out without tugs?’ asked Paul.
Mac thought back to the way those seamen looked on Hokkaido Spirit .
‘Mate, they’ll fi nd a way, believe me. They’ve all got bow-thrusters.’
They kept good pace. The wet frog gear dripped down Mac’s back, blending with the sweat.
They stood panting, hiding beside a stack of containers. Humidity was getting up. They shared a bottle of water.
Before them stood an eighty-metre stretch of concrete apron. Big rail lines sat lengthwise in the apron and the enormous portainers that ran along the rails sat idle. Across the channel behind Keppel Terminal was the city and the leafi er residential areas of the city-state.
Garrison and Sabaya had picked a good spot to blow the VX.
Paul worked the radio with Weenie. ‘Mate, can we get anything from the Americans? Yeah I know, mate, but…’
Mac looked through the Leicas. Scanned the Golden Serpent. No movement.
He held on the bridge as long as he could without getting eye-strain. The windows on the bridge were tinted so that the brighter the sun, the darker they got. He couldn’t say there was no movement. But he couldn’t see anything that would count for people either. He had no confi rmation that they were on the bridge.
They needed confi rmation on whether the hijackers were even on the ship.
Further down the Keppel quay two ships cast off, their bow-thrusters boiling, pushing them out from the container terminal.
Another ship was already making way up the channel and was about two minutes away from Golden Serpent.
Paul and Mac looked at one another. Neither of them wanted to be frogging across that channel with some of these three-hundred-metre giants in a race to get out of town.
‘What’s Weenie up to?’ asked Mac.
‘Been watching CNN. Reckons the place is in lockdown. Changi’s shut, railway stations closed down. Only things open are the causeways into Malaysia, which are packed. Total panic. Media’s not reporting what the stuff is but the assumption is that it’s serious.’
‘How’s that?’
‘An amateur grabbed footage of the US Army in their bio-hazards.
CNN were running it for a while, but it’s stopped. Government probably asked them to take it off.’
Mac nodded but something felt wrong. ‘Isn’t it time you got on to your military attache people? They got us into this game. They’re a part of the coalition, aren’t they?’
‘I don’t know if our people are down there. But you know what happens when the Yanks turn up. They control all outbound comms.
It’s their protocol, you know, because of the Nokia detonators.’
Mac hadn’t worked with the Americans at this sort of police-action level, but he’d heard they jammed all comms other than frequencies they approved to prevent the two most obvious ways a bomber detonated an IED: by Nokia phone or a simple radio switch.
Bombers could also use on-site detonation – made famous by suicide bombers – or a timer. If you wanted to make it really diffi cult, you put in a chemical tilt-switch which closed the detonator circuit when someone messed with the IED.
The Americans didn’t jam frequencies so they could show off.
They did it so bombers didn’t lure law enforcement and military on site and then detonate something right under the Emergency Operations Centre.
Mac did a three-sixty, put his hands on his hips, walked out onto the apron. Kept walking, down to the waterside. The helos had dispersed: one to the north, one to the south.
Paul stuck his head out from their hiding place beside the container stack. ‘Oi! What the fuck are you about?’
Mac stopped and turned. The frogman kit dripped down his left hip. ‘Come on.’
‘Sabaya said no one is to approach the ship. Aren’t we stealthing?’
Paul shouted.
‘Mate, they’re not on that ship.’
‘How do we know that?’
‘Because they’re too smart and whatever else they want, it has nothing to do with blowing themselves up on CNN.’
Paul walked out onto the apron, looking around, and stopped near Mac.
‘Just worked this out?’ he asked.
‘Been gnawing at me. You know.’
‘They’re not the vest types?’
Mac smiled. ‘I was thinking about what that much CL-20 could do to that ship. Those blokes have no intention of going down with it. And they can’t detonate remotely, not with the Yanks jamming the frequencies up.’
‘So how are they doing this?’ said Paul.