Читать книгу End Game - Dale Brown - Страница 11

Captain Sattari felt the slight burn at the top of his shoulders as he paddled in unison with the others, propelling the small boat toward their target. The wind came at them from the west, trying to push them off course. They compensated for it as they stroked, but the boat still drew a jagged line forward.

Sattari allowed himself a glance to the other three craft, gauging his performance; it seemed to him that their boat was doing better than two of the others, and not much worse than Sergeant Ibn’s, which was in the lead.

The raft lurched with a sudden swell. Sattari gripped his oar firmly and dug at the water, stroking hard and smooth. His instructor had claimed propelling a boat was a matter of finesse, not strength, but the man had rowed every day of his life for years, and surely took strength for granted. Sattari’s chest rose and fell with the roll of his shoulders, as if he were part of a large machine. He heard the hard, short breaths of the men around him, and tried to match them.

A light blinked ahead. Ibn’s boat had stopped a few meters away. They changed their paddling and surged next to the other raft with a well-practiced flare. First test passed, thought Sattari. He reached for his night glasses and scanned around them as the other boats drew up.

Sergeant Ibn moved in the other raft until he was alongside his commander.

‘No sign of the Indian warship,’ said Ibn.

‘No. Nor the helicopter.’

A helicopter had nearly run into one of the airplanes roughly seventy miles from shore. Captain Sattari was not sure where it had come from. It seemed too far from Port Somalia to belong to the small Indian force there, nor had the spies reported one. The Somalian air force had no aircraft this far north, and it seemed unlikely that it had come from Yemen.

‘The helicopter most likely belonged to a smuggler,’ said Ibn.

‘Perhaps,’ said Captain Sattari. ‘In any event, let us proceed.’

‘God is great.’

Sattari put his glasses back in their pouch and began helping the four men on his boat who would descend to the pipes below them to plant their explosive charges. The charges they carried were slightly bigger than a large suitcase, and each team had to place two on the thick pipes below.

Sattari positioned his knee against the side of the raft, but cautioned himself against hoping it would brace him; he’d already seen in their drills that the raft would easily capsize. The trick was to use only one hand to help the others balance their loads; this was a heavy strain, but the team he was assisting managed to slip into the water without a splash or upsetting the raft.

The men on the raft on the other side of him did not. The little boat capsized.

Sattari picked up his paddle, as did the other man on his raft. They turned forty-five degrees, positioning themselves to help if necessary. But the two men on the other boat recovered quickly; within seconds they had their vessel righted and were back aboard.

‘Good work,’ Sattari told them.

He turned back toward Ibn’s raft. The sergeant had gone below with the others, but one of the two men still aboard had a radio scanner, which he was using to monitor local broadcasts. As Sattari picked up his oar to get closer, the coxswain did the same. They pushed over silently.

‘Anything, Corporal?’ Sattari asked the radioman.

‘All quiet, Captain.’

‘There was nothing from the Indian warship?’

‘No, sir. Not a peep.’

Sattari scanned the artificial island, roughly two miles away. Aside from a few dim warning lights on the seaward side, it was completely in shadow. It slumbered, unsuspecting.

‘We will proceed,’ Sattari said. ‘God is great.’