CHAPTER 20
Since his transfer from the Sandpiper last night, Coburn had grown more accustomed to the Selina’s primitive conditions, and having spent the latter part of this afternoon getting to know Ali and Susilo, he was beginning to feel less of an outsider in the company of Hari’s crew.
The two divers had been slow to overcome their shyness — in part because of their rudimentary English — but once Coburn had shown an interest in the pearl business, they’d gradually lost their reservations, and with Hari on hand to act as an interpreter, they’d soon been more willing to talk about the job they’d come to do.
Hari himself had spent a frustrating day. While the Selina had slowly headed north, for much of the time he’d been at the wheel, maintaining his distance ahead of the meandering minehunter which had been easy to identify on his radar, but struggling to separate the echo of the Korean patrol boat from those of other vessels that were travelling up through the islands on similar courses.
Not until this evening when they’d dropped anchor at the co-ordinates on Ritchie’s chart had his mood improved, and then only because of an unscheduled call Coburn had received from O’Halloran.
The American had been in touch to say, that now the Selina was in position, the Sandpiper would be passing them shortly on the port side, and that accordingly, before Ritchie dropped his own anchor, it shouldn’t be long before they had their first visual sighting of the Osa.
As things had turned out, unlike the much larger minehunter which had been easy to see, the Osa hadn’t been.
In Yegorov’s pursuit of his target, he’d been keeping further to the west where the combination of the setting sun and fading light had made it all but impossible for Coburn to pick out the Korean patrol boat even with binoculars.
That had been ten minutes ago — a somewhat tense ten minutes during which Hari had finally located the Osa on his radar, while everyone else on the Selina had been waiting patiently for the announcement that would mean Ali and Susilo could begin their preparations.
‘Ah. You see.’ Hari pointed to a dot on his screen.
With each rotation of the Selina’s radar dish, the dot was glowing more brightly, but Coburn couldn’t tell whether it was continuing to move or not.
Hari could. ‘Now that Ritchie has stopped his ship, the Osa, too, is stopping,’ he said. ‘It is not as close to us as we could have wished, but close enough, I think.’
‘How close?’ Coburn asked.
‘Less than two kilometres — not so far for our divers to take the mines. When it is darker, and while we wait for the crew of the Osa to settle for the night we will inflate the dinghy and bring our halogens and machine-gun up on deck.’
‘What the hell do you want lights and the gun for?’ Coburn couldn’t think of a single reason.
‘It is a precaution. I do not wish us to be without defence if Ali and Susilo are watched on their way back here to the Selina.’
‘If that happens, a fucking machine-gun isn’t going to be any help, is it? You’re not up against an unarmed freighter, for Christ’s sake. You’re talking about taking on a full-blown missile attack boat.’
Hari shrugged. ‘It is my decision. When the man you call Yegorov has more important business to which he must attend tomorrow, he will not risk advertising his presence tonight by launching a missile at us. But he could choose to use his guns.’
Knowing better than to argue, and hoping Hari had decided this was an easy way to demonstrate his deep concern for the safety of his crew, Coburn kept his mouth shut, and for the next few hours, while Hari and the Somalian checked the detonators and bladders on the mines, kept himself busy by helping Indiri’s husband assemble and install the lights and the gun.
By midnight the divers were ready, the mines were ready and the dinghy was ready. Hari wasn’t, checking his watch every few minutes, chain-smoking and watching clouds scud across the moon as though waiting for some divine indication that the time was right for him to give the go ahead.
At 12.30, sensing a certain restlessness on deck, he launched the dinghy himself, lowering it over the stern on ropes and then assisting Ali and Susilo to load the mines one at a time until all four were on board and temporarily lashed in place.
Unlike the Zodiac which was still taking up space on the afterdeck, the dinghy was designed for use only in an emergency. It was small and difficult to manoeuvre, but because of its low profile and the black wetsuits of its occupants, it had the virtue of being almost invisible once the divers began to row away.
‘Let us hope they see the patrol boat early,’ Hari said. ‘They navigate by compass, but their job will be harder when they have sight of their target and must start to swim.’
‘How long do you figure it’ll take them?’ Coburn glanced at his own watch.
‘I think we give them two hours to get there and back again, and a quarter of one hour for them to attach the mines. Not until after that should we become concerned.’
It was easy to say, but hard to do.
Three weeks ago in Singapore, after Coburn had set the timer for the Semtex in his fridge, and two weeks ago while he’d been waiting for O’Halloran after the explosion of the munitions store, he’d been aware of how slowly time could pass. But on both of these occasions he’d been counting down minutes — tonight he was faced not with minutes but with hours.
Hari proved better at waiting for the dinghy’s return than he had been at despatching it, but after an hour and a half he went below and returned with a pair of night vision goggles which, when he wasn’t smoking or pacing up and down the deck, he used in a vain attempt to penetrate the darkness.
After two hours he gave up looking and abandoned the goggles in favour of listening for the splash of oars, an equally futile exercise on which he was still engaged when the dinghy suddenly appeared.
Coburn was the first to see it — or thought he had.
Approaching the bow of the Selina at an angle on the port side, it had emerged silently from nowhere and was within hailing distance before the Somalian too caught sight of it.
A minute later, leaving Indiri’s husband to retrieve it, the divers were back on board answering Hari’s questions while they stripped off their wetsuits.
Their smiles told Coburn what he wanted to know — which meant their job at least was done, he thought, and that none of the things that could’ve gone wrong had gone wrong.
Before conveying the news to O’Halloran he checked with Hari who was happy to confirm that from now on at a push of a button, Yegorov’s trip to Korea could be brought to a suitably violent and unpleasant end.
Coburn’s call to the Sandpiper was answered so promptly, O’Halloran couldn’t have been asleep.
‘Thought you’d be tucked up in your bunk,’ Coburn said.
‘I should be so lucky. Ritchie said he wanted to hear from me as soon as I heard from you. What do I tell him?’
‘Tell him that seeing as how it’s already the 9th of August, any time he wants I can blow four holes in the Osa right underneath each of its missile hangars. If that doesn’t slow it down, nothing will. All I need is for you to give me the word.’
‘OK. Ritchie’s aiming to have us up close to the Demarkation Line by 1700 hours. He thinks it’s best if we let Yegorov carry on shadowing the Sandpiper, and you hang back a bit so he doesn’t get suspicious.’
Rather than wasting his breath explaining that, even with the Selina’s tarpaulin-covered halogen lights and gun it was probably the least suspicious-looking vessel off the coast of the entire peninsula, Coburn changed the subject before he said goodbye, suggesting that, until they reopened communications later, O’Halloran might as well catch up on his sleep.