"We don't grab easy."
Under her breath Agnes said so'mething thatsounded like 'fucking supermen' but, given her upbringing, obviously couldn't have been.
Chapter 28
The two captives, 82 and 83, were in the back seat of the Renault, handcuffed together (for once a handcuff key had worked, letting them loose from the van) left hand to left hand. That way, they could only move fast by some sort of ballet routine which it seemed unlikely they had practised, although Blagg was taking no chances. He sat swivelled around in the passenger seat with Maxim's pistol – he despised the little Czech.32 automatic taken from 83 – pointed.
"How many people do you get on a boat like that?" Maxim asked.
"Could be just five or six," Blagg said. "That's what a British ship that size would have. It's all automatic, steering, the engine, you know. I don't know about East Germany, but it looked pretty modern. Mind, that doesn't tell you what theyhave got. There'd be room for more. "
"We know they've got one extra, at least."
"Major – one thing: if we have to sort of go on board, remember a ship's all made of metal. Most, anyway. I mean, you can't just blow away a door lock, not in a metal door. And all the glass, that'll be pretty thick, too."
"Thanks. Did you pick this all up around the docks?"
"We used to… look around… some of the ships. Like, Dave Tanner and me and the others."
"Why didn't you go for the Navy instead?"
"Say a lot of things about the Army, at least it don't bleeding sink." From his tone, Blagg could be recalling the flooded shelter in Rotherhithe. Maxim just nodded.
The town was bright but utterly empty of movement. At the top of Bridge Street he kept on, so as to turn back near the station and come down to the docks by a broader and less obvious road. But he wasn't really expecting trouble. Theydrove slowly in through the gate by the church, along behind a warehouse and its loading bays, then turned as the Seesperlingcame into view two hundred yards ahead and parked in among several other cars and vans left there overnight.
That part of the Aldam Dock was a small headland sticking out into the water, so that they could come up to the ship from only the one direction. She lay bows-on to them, still brightly lit by lights on the stumpy masts and the front of the wheel-house. To look at, Seesperlingwasreally nothing more than a big barge, a long metal box sharpened at one end and with all the living space and engines stacked at the other. They began walking.
There were no big cranes at that berth, but the broad dockside was littered with stacks of timber that filled the night air with a rich resin smell and left a road perhaps only ten yards wide alongside the ship. They went slowly, a very close foursome, passing the bows of the ship on their left, the timber on their right and Blagg watching that way with constant nervous twitches of his head and the shotgun. The irregular piles made little dark alleyways in the harsh dockside lights.
Nobody was in sight, and the only sound was the mumble of a generator somewhere in the fo'c'sle. Maxim halted the group about twenty yards before they came level with the wheelhouse.
Sims must have been watching from behind the superstructure, because he immediately stepped out into the light and raised his hand.
"Are you ready, Major?" he called in a voice that was half whisper, half shout.
Maxim waved his left hand. Somebody pushed Caswell out beside Sims. He was heavily blindfolded and his hands were tied in front of him. He limped as he walked.
"I am afraid your friend got a little hurt, " Sims called down. "But he is all right." From the deck beside the wheelhouse they had to come down a steep flight of steps to the main deck level, which was about the same height as the dockside. Sims helped Caswell carefully down, step by step.
"All right, Major?"
Maxim looked carefully all round, but saw nothing. Hehadn't expected to. It was just the moment of decision… "Ron?" he asked.
"Go ahead."
Maxim unlocked the handcuffs from 82 and 83, but held one of them back, close. Sims let Caswell go forward, feeling his way with his bound hands on the side of the ship that reached up perhaps four feet above the deck level. After a few paces he caught his foot on something, stumbled, but saved himself even though his face fell nearly into his hands.
"That's notjim\"Blagg shouted, but Maxim had seen the fully bent left elbow himself and was dropping and rolling aside. There was a vicious rattle on the hull and the dockside went totally dark.
Perhaps not totally, but enough for a human eye striving to adjust, and that moment was what Sims had planned on. All Seesperling's lights and the nearest dockside lamps had gone out while the silenced submachine gun, somewhere in the timber stacks, had nearly taken Blagg out of contention for good.
The moment was gone. The shotgun boomed – Blagg had shifted a surprising distance – and the fake Caswell, hands suddenly free, collapsed as he jumped the ship's side to reach Maxim. The two goons were galloping away somewhere, but unarmed so he ignored them and fired twice down the nearest alleys among the stacks. Then he ripped two grenades from his pocket and threw one into the ship, one over the nearest stack.
"Grenade!" He flattened himself, hands over his ears and hoping Blagg did the same.
A four-second delay can be infinity or the blink of an eye, depending on which you don't want. Then both exploded almost together, so either the fuses varied or he'd acted faster than he realised.
He scrambled up. "Get the bastard with the SMG!" They rushed the little village of timber-stack houses, moving as fast as they could behind the dazing, deafening grenade. They worked entirely by trained instinct, swapping sharp barks of command, fire and move, fire and move.
Somebody staggered out from a cross-alley and Maxim shot him in the face, but he had no gun with him. Perhaps he'dbeen the one to turn off the lights. He jumped past the alley mouth and the wood tore open behind him, slashing him with splinters. The shotgun blasted. Blagg said: "Okay now, Major."
Maxim took the silenced gun – it was a 9 mm. Patchett/ Sterling after all – and tried to test how many rounds were left by the pressure of the magazine spring, but that was never much help. Call it fifteen for certain. There couldn't have been more than nineteen fired.
"Reload," he ordered, but of course Blagg was doing so already. "And give me your grenades. I'm going for the ship."
"Sure, Major." Blagg sounded surprisingly breathless until Maxim remembered the lung.
"Are you all right?"
"Course I am. " But in the feeble glow from across the dock, he saw Blagg smear away a trickle of blood from his lip. Maxim hesitated, then there came a gabble of distant shouting.
"You're the light machine-gun. Give me the Go."
Blagg moved through the stacks to get a better angle on the ship's superstructure. Maxim peered out at the Seesperlingand now his eyes were getting used to what was really only half darkness. The fake Caswell lay sprawled, unmoving, on the dockside. Where S2 and S3 had got to he couldn't tell; probably still running.
Blagg called softly: "Go," and Maxim ran for the ship.
Behind him the shotgun boomed regularly, one… two… three, spattering the wheelhouse and the portholes aft of it with shot. Fire and move, always keeping one foot on the ground – and as he ran he had a brief sharp vision of the schoolboy sergeant on the bright Kent cricket field. Then he had vaulted into the ship and came up in the narrow walkway between the side and the hatch coaming. He moved towards the wheelhouse, the muzzle-heavy submachine gun trying to droop in his hands and still counting. Five. He froze as Blagg's gun emptied.
"Major? Major, is it you?"
Sims's voice sounded tired, but Maxim tried to grovel himself invisible among the deckplate rivets until he could justmake out the shape jammed in a space between the steep steps and the foot of the wheelhouse. Sims must have dived in there when the grenade clattered aboard; the blast couldn't have slotted him in so neatly.