Tamara had come running to meet him on the sand, and hugged him tight as she explained how she’d come rushing back the minute Jo had called her. Ben had returned her embrace with a real surge of affection.
‘What’s happening?’ she’d asked him in alarm when she’d noticed the electronic tag on his ankle.
‘I’ll explain,’ he’d said. ‘Did you bring the fuel?’
‘Just like you said. As many drums of 100LL avgas as I could carry. Even strapped one to the co-pilot’s seat. Why did we need them?’
‘You’d better sit down,’ he’d said. ‘I have a lot to tell you.’
They’d sat on the steps of the Lodge, and as the sun set across the beach he’d told her everything, watching her reaction shift from stunned disbelief to helpless tears to silent rage. When he’d reached the end of his long account, he’d described the idea that had been forming in his mind.
There had been no hesitation on Tamara’s part. ‘It’s what Nick would have done,’ she’d said. ‘Let’s do it.’
‘We can hide the plane beyond those trees,’ he’d said, pointing down the beach past Cuban George’s open-air bar, to where the coastline receded out of sight into a hidden bay. ‘You’ll have to sleep on board and wait for my call tomorrow.’
Sometimes, the simplest plans worked out the best. Ben smiled to himself as the Sea Otter roared low over the waves towards the Hydra. He patted the drum of fuel strapped to the co-pilot’s seat. 100LL avgas, one of the most highly combustible and explosive forms of petroleum fuel ever devised. The bright yellow Sea Otter, Nick Chapman’s pride and joy, was about to crown its long career by going out in a blaze of glory.
Ben could almost hear Nick laughing.
The magnificent sailing yacht was just two hundred yards away and closing fast. On the sweeping, gleaming deck, tiny figures were scattering in panic: either desperately trying to lower the lifeboats or clambering over the side to take their chances in the water. Hayden Roth stood his ground in the middle of the deck, roaring like a bull into his phone. ‘Hope! I order you to stand down immediately! You are a servant of Her Majesty’s Government!’
‘Not any more. I quit,’ Ben said into the phone, and tossed it out of the window.
The Sea Otter was almost on the Hydra. The ship’s expanse of white canvas sails blotted out the view from the cockpit as the aircraft swooped towards the deck. Ben caught a glimpse of muzzle flashes down below as Tartarus agents opened fire with submachine guns. Bullets raked the Sea Otter’s fuselage and cockpit windows.
But there was nothing they could do to prevent what was about to happen. This one was for Nick, and Hilary, and all the other innocents who’d lost their lives thanks to the men aboard the Hydra.
At the last possible instant, Ben leaped out of the pilot’s seat and dived towards the hatchway, grabbing the small rubber dinghy off the floor as he went. The rushing wind tore the inflatable out of his hands and snatched his breath away as he launched himself into space.
The stunning impact drove him deep underwater. Everything was a tumult of noise and confusion. Bubbles streamed from his mouth as he thrashed wildly to regain the surface.
His head and shoulders burst clear of the water at the same instant the Sea Otter hit the Hydra in a shattering, deafening collision of tangled wreckage and wings and sails and rigging and toppling masts. The explosion hurled Ben several yards back in the water and its heat seared his face as both aircraft and ship were engulfed in a gigantic rolling fireball that mushroomed high up into the sky.
Then the sea was suddenly burning, a slick of blazing avgas spreading rapidly across the water. Ben dived under the surface just before the carpet of flames burned him alive. Debris hit the water like a barrage of mortar shells and spiralled into the depths all around him as he swam like crazy away from the circle of devastation.
When he surfaced again, he turned to see a secondary explosion tear apart the shattered remains of the Hydra. Nobody on board could have had any chance of escape. A column of acrid black smoke towered into the sky. Flakes of ash rained down like black snow. Treading water, Ben watched the blazing wreck sink slowly into the sea. Only when it had slipped beneath the waves did he turn away.
The little dinghy was bobbing on the swell nearby. Ben swam after it, clambered on board and unclipped the folding oar from its side. His ears were ringing badly from the noise of the explosion, and the skin of his face felt tender where the heat of the fireball had scorched it. It would probably take a while for his eyebrows to grow back — but then, he wasn’t going anywhere. Not back to Credenhill RHQ, not back to Iraq — not any more, knowing what he knew. It was a different world for him now.
The burble of an approaching outboard made him look up and catch sight of the motorboat in the distance. Tamara’s black hair caught the wind as she stood behind the wheel and waved at him.
Ben waved back with a smile and started paddling across the water to meet her.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
There can’t be many authors who don’t take the occasional liberty by twisting real-life locations to suit their literary needs, and I will readily plead guilty to having taken a few with the Cayman Islands setting of this story. Care has been taken to keep these deliberate distortions to a minimum; however, my apologies to any Cayman Islanders who feel their wonderful Paradise home has been in any way misrepresented.
The ultra-covert branch of British SIS known as ‘Tartarus’ is entirely a figment of my imagination, and no organisation remotely like it exists in real life … of course it doesn’t …
Thank you for reading Passenger 13. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it. Ben Hope will be back soon for another e-prequel!
Scott Mariani