Mac brought his mouth down to his bloke’s ear. Whispered, ‘No sound. Okay?’
His head nodded.
‘Speak English?’
Nodded.
‘They got your wife?’
Head shook.
‘Kids?’
Nodded.
Mac felt a gulp.
‘They’re listening in, right?’ whispered Mac.
Shoulders shrugged, then head nodded, a yes, maybe.
‘My name’s Mac, Australian intelligence. That’s Paul, British intelligence. We’re here to help but they can’t know we’re up here or they’ll kill the hostages. Okay?’
The head nodded. Another gulp.
‘We’re going to communicate by writing, okay? Talk to the other guy, but not us. We’ll try to sort this. Okay?’
Nodded.
Mac let him go and he turned slowly. Dark hair, fortyish, long face, eyes red. Been crying a lot.
Mac offered his hand and they shook.
Paul let the other guy go and they walked over to Mac. All shook hands. Silent. The two ship guys looked hollowed out with stress and lack of sleep.
Paul got to the map table behind the big recliner chairs, put the pad on the map table. The older guy put on half-glasses.
Where’s your song sheet? Mac wrote on the pad.
The older guy walked to the starboard wing of the bridge, picked up a piece of paper, came back.
They looked at it. The last announcement had been and gone at one pm. The next was for one-thirty. They looked to the last page.
The fi nal demand was at 6.05 pm – essentially, a long screed of Moro invective and praises given to Allah.
Mac fl ipped back. The next demand to be broadcast was going to be: We demand the fourteen Moro separatist prisoners being held illegally in Manila be released before six pm local time tonight and brought to this ship, or we will detonate the VX nerve agent.
Mac looked at his G-Shock: 1.13 pm.
He beckoned the offi cers, and they all left the bridge, moved down two fl ights to the dining room where they introduced themselves.
Jeremy was the younger one – a New Zealander; Wylie was American and the captain. They were both based out of Singapore, where their families lived.
Jeremy shook his head. ‘How are we, I mean, how can we…’ His voice broke, unable to go on.
Wylie looked at Paul as if to say: See what I’ve been putting up with?
‘No one wants to be here, right Jerry?’ said Paul.
Jeremy nodded.
‘But here we are all the same. We’re gonna try and sort it, but we’re gonna need you, mate. Up for it?’
Jeremy nodded. Looked away. Embarrassed at his state.
‘We’re betting these guys have gone into the AIS system and switched on the bridge broadcast system,’ said Mac.
‘The one that only cuts in after a collision?’ said Wylie.
‘That one, yeah,’ said Mac, liking Wylie already. ‘We think your conversations are broadcasting to all ships, and that’s how Sabaya and Garrison are listening in.’
‘Is that their names?’
‘What are they like?’ asked Mac.
Wylie grimaced. ‘Well, they know how ships work, they knew what we were doing and where we’d be. I mean, they weren’t like what you expect of a pirate or a terrorist.’
‘What were they focused on?’
‘The American kept talking about clarity, kept reminding me that anyone who commanded a vessel this large had to have an adult grasp of clarity.’
Wylie exhaled, grabbed at a glass of water. ‘Then he put that sheet on one side of the table, and the photo of my wife on the other, said, Here’s how it works. And we’ve been up here ever since, broadcasting this rubbish.’ He slapped the song sheet against his thigh.
Jeremy sniffed. Paul eyeballed him, said, ‘Come on, mate.’
Mac wanted more. ‘They tell you they’d be watching on TV?’
‘Yes, sir. Told us that this was a tailored CNN incident.’
Mac’s ears pricked up. Didn’t know why. ‘The American. He said incident?’
‘Sure did. Said it several times. Said he’d be watching it on CNN and if we got stormed before the set time on the sheet, he’d blow the place up and kill his hostages.’
‘You know which one is the VX?’ asked Mac.
‘The what?’ said Wylie.
‘It’s nerve agent. They stole it, got it on this ship.’
‘Oh that. Is that what they call it? Yeah, they hauled these big black bags down to twelve -‘
‘Twelve?’
‘Bay Twelve. It’s the twelfth container from the stern. About halfway between the bridge and bow.’
‘Then what?’
‘We worked out it was twelve eleven eight-six.’
‘What was?’
‘The container they were working on. They knew all about the bridge gantries and ladders and lashing. They seemed to know their stuff.’
‘What’s twelve eleven eighty-six?’
‘It’s the container position,’ said Wylie. ‘It’s bay twelve, row eleven, tier eighty-six.’
Paul frowned. ‘In English that would be?’
‘It would be halfway to the bow, on the outside – starboard – side of the stacks, and high up. About second or third from the top of the stack.’
Mac mulled it. Twelve eleven eighty-six, exactly where the offi cers on Hokkaido Spirit said you’d have to put a container if you wanted to open it en route.
Mac beckoned Paul to another table, whispered, ‘We can’t pull the cops and the Yanks in here to do the bomb or these guys are going to lose family, right?’
Paul nodded.
‘So we have to get the TV cameras shut down. Make it look like the Singaporeans have moved to a new Em-Con level.
‘Once we can get those helos and cameras out of here, then Sabaya and Garrison are blind. They can hear those demands going out every thirty minutes, and they think it’s all going on. But they don’t know the Twentieth is crawling all over Golden Serpent trying to disarm their bomb.’
‘Sounds like a plan.’
Mac went back to Wylie and Jeremy. ‘Mate, think we might have an idea,’ Mac said to Wylie.
Paul wanted to know how they’d been speaking with the Americans, and Wylie said, ‘The ship-to-shore phone.’
‘Where is it?’ asked Mac.
Wylie pointed at a table next to the starboard window. There was a heavy white handset face down on a white plastic cradle.
‘Got a number?’ asked Paul.
Wylie pulled a folded piece of white paper from his shorts.
Mac and Paul swapped a look. With the ship-to-shore phone not jammed it might be possible to get through to Sawtell or the Port Master or Hatfi eld. Mac wasn’t hopeful on that score. Once the EOC starts its business – especially a US military one for a terrorist threat – the lines of communication go so high that outside calls are not taken.
Hatfi eld would be sit-repping as high as CINCPAC, Joint Chiefs and maybe the Oval Offi ce. There wouldn’t be too many rubber-neckers getting through.
Still, it was worth a shot.
Mac checked his G-Shock: 1.25. He looked at Wylie, whose face fell off him like a fl esh waterfall. ‘Guys, you’re up again. Do what they tell you, all right? Don’t talk about us. We’re trying to get this sorted.
Do it by the book, right?’
The two offi cers nodded, gulped down some water and walked back upstairs, dragging their feet. Mac sat back. According to the Sabaya sheet, the whole thing timed out at six that evening. It gave them about four and a half hours to come up with something. If they couldn’t alert the Singaporeans and the Yanks within the next half-hour, Mac was going to slip back into the water and stealth round there himself. Or even better, get Paul to do it. He got out of Hasanuddin, piece of piss. He could try getting into a US Army EOC.
Mac walked to the starboard window, looked out. He could make out the fl ash of a rotor or a truck at intervals where you could see through the mountain of container stacks. There were black-clad Singaporean SWAT teams lurking between the containers. Mac wondered what they thought they were going to do: storm the VX consignment? Intimidate the CL-20?
The EOC had been mounted back from the apron. Tucked among the container stacks.