The Angry Sea

He slowed the helicopter to fifty knots, so that it was simply keeping pace with the yacht.

‘Go on!’ shouted the sniper on the left hand side. ‘They can’t hit us from here. I need to get closer.’

Again, the pilot nodded and tilted the helicopter forwards.

Both snipers were now leaning well out of the aircraft, trying to get their sights on the centre mass of their targets.

The left-hand marksman shook his head in frustration and hauled himself back inside.

‘This is no good,’ he shouted, to his colleague. ‘I can’t maintain the target in the scope. I’m going to try with the 41.’

He stowed his AMP, unclipped his Heckler & Koch G41 assault rifle, and leaned back out.

Way outside the effective range of the weapon, but he could at least keep the iron sights on the group and maintain better situational awareness.

‘Closer!’ he said.

In response, the pilot dipped the chopper slightly, to gain on the terrorists.

At which point, one of them vanished inside the boat.

‘One of them just went below,’ said the co-pilot.

‘Seen,’ said the pilot.

‘Keep going!’ shouted the left-hand sniper.

What happened next happened very quickly.

The Lucky Lady suddenly slowed, meaning that the helicopter shot forwards relative to the boat.

Both snipers temporarily lost her, as the controlling pilot throttled back, lifting the nose to avoid getting within 7.62mm range.

At the same moment, the terrorist who had gone below now reappeared, carrying something long and black in his right hand.

In one smooth motion, he hefted it onto his shoulder, braced his feet, and looked up.

‘Oh, shit,’ said the pilot, instinctively breaking right, away from the contact.

Unfortunately, the manoeuvre simply made the roaring engine – and its heat signature – more visible to the missile’s infra-red sensors.

Below him, out of the pilot’s eyeline, there was a flash, and the Russian-made 9K38 Igla MANPAD released its projectile.

The pilot had pushed the Eurocopter hard right and down, desperately trying to throw the SAM off, but, with no countermeasure capability on the aircraft, they were dead and he knew it.

The missile detonated a little over a second after being fired, igniting the 280 litres of avgas still in the tanks and turning the front of the aircraft into an inferno.

As the disintegrating helicopter started to spin and descend, the snipers could hear the pilots screaming over their headsets.

The left-hand man unbuckled himself and leaped out, breaking his legs and back when he hit the water two hundred feet below, and knocking himself out.

He drowned shortly afterwards.

The other three men lived only until the aircraft itself smacked into the surface and exploded.

By which time, the Lucky Lady was already back up to top speed, and powering south through the choppy Mediterranean Sea.

26.

THE LOSS OF THE Cuerpo Nacional de Policía helicopter was not immediately confirmed, but there is only one obvious reason why such an aircraft might have both suddenly dropped below the radar horizon and lost radio contact, and the controllers in Seville were immediately alarmed.

They made contact with the amphibious assault ship SPS Juan Carlos I, which had a section of marines aboard a long-range NH Industries NH90 some twenty minutes away and closing in on the Lucky Lady, and asked for a local SITREP.

In London, Justin Nicholls and the rest of the MI6 leadership watched the situation develop.

The Policía chopper had disappeared at 14:24hrs BST, and repeated radio messages had gone unanswered.

At 14:40hrs, the Juan Carlos aircraft arrived at its last known location and reported debris and at least one body in the sea.

It then departed in pursuit of the yacht, which was by now some thirty-five kilometres off the coast of Morocco.

The Royal Navy of Morocco, meanwhile, had a French-built VCSM fast boat and a Floréal-class frigate, the Hassan II, out on exercise to the east. After liaising with the Spanish, those craft were now steaming west to try to intercept the terrorists. The Hassan had had its Panther helicopter up, but the ship’s captain now recalled it, understandably wary of letting it get within shooting distance of the yacht, which was heading at maximum speed towards Morocco’s northern coast.

‘What’s their game?’ murmured C. ‘They must know they’re going to be caught.’

‘They don’t care, do they?’ said the head of the Spanish desk. ‘They’re hoping to ram something and go out in a blaze of glory.’

‘So why go to the trouble of taking hostages?’ said Justin Nicholls. ‘Why not just kill them on the beach?’

27.

AT THE VERY moment Nicholls said that, the Lucky Lady slowed temporarily to thirty knots, and Argun Shishani and the man in the Manchester United shirt pushed the three women – all roped together and wearing flotation jackets – into the water, and jumped off after them.

All five of them got ears and noses full of water, and surfaced, winded and choking, to see the white boat powering off into the distance.

In the open water behind it, a small green RIB – a rigid inflatable, its shape picked out by a rubber buoyancy tube – had been bobbing in the gentle swell, a sea anchor holding it on station.

Low profile, invisible to radar.

The single man aboard it pushed the throttle forward, spooling up the big outboard Yamaha motor, and made his way over.

Shishani hauled himself aboard, and then leaned out to pull the first of the women in after him.

She struggled, at first, but when he punched her in the face she gave in. The others obeyed, meekly.

As the other man clambered into the dinghy, Shishani turned to the women.

‘Lie down!’ he said.

They did as they were told, huddling together in the bottom of the small boat. Shishani bent down, unfolded a dark tarpaulin, and spread it over the women.

Then he crawled under and lay down alongside them, the other terrorist following him.

Anyone looking from above would now see a small boat with – apparently – one person aboard.

The guy at the helm turned the inflatable and headed south-east.

Under the tarp, Argun Shishani smiled to himself.

One of the women started crying.

28.

TEN MINUTES LATER, the NH90 from the Juan Carlos finally caught up with the Lucky Lady.

Aware that another aircraft had gone down in the vicinity of the yacht, its crew were wary. Being military, they were at least trained to deal with MANPADs, and their helicopter was better-equipped with counter-measures, but still they stood off some 500 metres, the sensor operator observing the vessel’s progress on his screen.

After a few moments, he said, ‘No sign of the hostages on the rear deck. Take me to the side.’

The NH90 had a hundred knots on the boat, so it took a matter of moments for the pilots to get alongside.

The operator took his time, zooming in close on the yacht’s narrow, darkened windows.

‘Nothing,’ said the operator. ‘Front.’

The helicopter pulled ahead, the underslung camera swivelling to keep the speeding white craft in sight.

‘Nothing. Other side… Nothing. They must have taken them below.’

The pilot keyed his microphone to talk to the capitán commanding the marines in the back, who had been listening in.

‘You heard all that, Ramos,’ said the pilot. ‘What do you want to do?’

Capitán Ramon Ramos thought for a moment.

Fact was, he wasn’t sure what to do.

His orders were to recover the three women and take the terrorists alive, if possible.

But Ramon Ramos knew that there was no way these guys were coming quietly – he’d known from the moment he climbed aboard the aircraft that this was going to end in tears for someone.

His best hope had always been that his blokes could see and take out the bad guys.

But if everyone was below deck…

‘Ramos?’

‘Get back alongside, close enough so I can see the fucking thing.’

The pilot did as requested.

Ramos tugged on his harness and edged closer to the open door of the chopper.

Below him, the gleaming white yacht smashed and bounced its way inexorably through the shining sea.

He turned to the man next to him, Cabo Primero Jorge Fernández, who was sitting with his legs dangling in thin air, his Accuracy International .50 cal rifle cradled in his lap.

‘What do you reckon, Jorge?’ shouted Ramos, nodding at the rifle. ‘Can we stop him with that?’

Fernández shrugged. ‘How the fuck should I know, boss?’ he shouted back. ‘If I hit the engine, yeah. But just firing blind into the damned thing – who’s to say I won’t hit the fuel lines and barbecue the lot of them?’

Ramos keyed his mike, and got on the net to León, the HQ call sign.

Quickly, he updated them, and listened to the response.

Then he said, ‘We can take the entire back off it if you want, sir, but the hostages could be in living quarters directly underneath the rear deck for all we know. Meanwhile, the target will be inside Moroccan territorial waters in five minutes, I say again five minutes. Please advise whether we are free to pursue into Moroccan airspace. If not, please advise course of action, over.’

Again, he listened.

Then he turned to Jorge Fernández.

‘Fucking hell, Jorge,’ he shouted. ‘What a balls-up. The Moroccans have pulled back their ships and HQ can’t get any sense out of Rabat – it looks like they’re swerving it, they don’t want the blood of the hostages on their hands. And now HQ are swerving it, too. We’re cleared into Moroccan airspace, but the decision as to what to do is ours. Wankers.’

As Fernandez shook his head and smiled wearily, the captain keyed his mike again.

‘León, we are…’ he said.

But that was as far as he got.

‘What the…?’ he said. ‘Stand by, please.’

The helicopter had banked violently right, and out of the open door Ramos could see why.

Below them, the Lucky Lady had turned sharply inland.

The pilot came on the net. ‘Looks like he’s heading towards Ceuta,’ he said. ‘What do we do?’

Ramos, toying with the St Christopher’s medallion round his neck, thought for ten seconds – a long time to think, at times like this.

Then he said, ‘In the next few minutes, they’re going to have to make a decision about where they go ashore. We’re going to follow until they disembark. Maybe we can get a clear shot then. Any reason why that’s a shit plan, Jorge?’

‘No. I mean, it’s not a great plan, boss, but we are where we are.’

‘Do we put down?’ said the pilot, over the radio.

‘Not unless I say. Get us within range, but watch out for fucking MANPADs, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Oh, I will, don’t you fucking worry about that.’

Below them, the yacht ploughed on.

Capitán Ramon Ramos looked ahead.

The boat was heading directly for El Chorillo beach.

Crowded with sunbathers.

It was still doing close to fifty knots, and showing no sign of slowing

And Ramos suddenly realised what was happening.

‘Oh, fuck,’ he shouted. ‘Fuck!’

29.

THE FIRST TWO to die were swimmers who were run over and dismembered when the final terrorist – a short, stocky Moroccan called Khaled Benchakroun – deliberately ploughed through a bunch of people in the water.

The next two were a pair of teenaged girls, who were smeared like strawberry jam on the sand as he drove the 190-tonne boat ashore and straight over the top of them.

Six more people were killed when Benchakroun jumped from the stranded, heeling yacht and shot indiscriminately at horrified holidaymakers on the very beach on which he had spent his teenaged summers, selling T-shirts and trinkets to identical tourists.

The eleventh person to die was Benchakroun himself, his head blown half off by Jorge Fernández from the hovering helicopter three hundred metres offshore.

Under Ramos’ instructions, the helicopter then landed a hundred metres from the Lucky Lady.

Half of his men were sent to clear away those few people who had not run off the beach, and the other half began to approach the yacht, to engage the remaining terrorists, whom they had every reason to believe were still aboard, and to free the hostages.

But as they got within ten metres of the boat, a twenty-kilogram ball of Semtex was ignited by a timed detonator, initiated by Benchakroun in his last act before leaving the vessel, and five marines were killed, Jorge Fernández and Ramon Ramos among them.

30.

BY NOW, JUSTIN Nicholls was alone in his office, on the fifth floor of the SIS HQ at Vauxhall, digesting the news from the explosion on the beach at Ceuta and casting his eye over casualty reports.

The numbers would change – they always did – but the best current estimate was eighty-nine Britons killed aboard the MS Windsor Castle, out of a total of 104 dead, and seventeen dead on the beach, out of a total of seventy-one.

It could have been worse, he supposed – but then, if you lost more than a hundred of your own and still found yourself looking on the bright side, that was a very bad day.

His phone buzzed, quietly.

It was his assistant, Hugo.

‘Alec Palmer from the Spanish desk, sir,’ he said.

‘Thanks, Hugo,’ said Nicholls.

He heard a click and said, ‘Alec?’

Palmer sounded breathless.

‘The three female hostages taken from Marbella, Justin?’ he said. ‘We’re pretty sure that one of them is the Prime Minister’s oldest daughter, Charlotte.’

Justin Nicholls was a very intelligent man, with a double first in mathematics from Cambridge and over two decades in the SIS behind him; it was rare that he was lost for words.

This was one of those times.

He and his wife were family friends of the PM, Penelope Morgan, and he’d seen Charlotte Morgan grow up from a shy teenager to a confident young woman in the early stages of what was sure to be a glittering career at the Bar.

He shuddered at the thought of her being taken by those evil people, and blown apart on some foreign shore…

‘Justin?’ said Alec Palmer.

‘Yes. Sorry. Christ. Charlotte? When did you hear this? How?’

‘We’ve just put it together. She was on holiday with a group of friends. One couple had a row and went back to their hotel – luckily for them, as it turns out. That couple contacted the consulate an hour or so ago to say that their friends hadn’t returned, and that they couldn’t raise them on their phones. They’ve just identified the other three males in the temporary morgue in Marbella, but there’s no sign of the three females. We’ve had a look at their phones. Nothing since about 1 p.m., which was roughly when they went onto the beach. So we’re assuming…’

‘Shit,’ breathed Nicholls. ‘Shit. Did she not have RaSP with her?’

RaSP was Royalty and Specialist Protection, the Met Police element charged with protecting the Prime Minister and her family, among others.

‘She’d turned them down, apparently. Said she wanted to “live her life”.’

Nicholls was silent for a moment.

Then he said, ‘They must have targeted her. The whole thing, this was what the Málaga distraction was all about. It was aimed at seizing her.’

‘It certainly looks that way,’ said Palmer.

‘Her boyfriend’s dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does Downing Street know?’

‘It hasn’t broken with the media yet. But…’

‘But she’ll have known Charlie was out there,’ said Nicholls. ‘So she’ll have tried to get in touch with her. And…’

‘That was what I was thinking,’ said Palmer.

Nicholls was silent for a moment.

Then he said, ‘I’ll have to break it to the PM. Can you get me the latest from Ceuta? Last thing I saw, the boat was spread over a couple of acres and they were looking for bodies.’

‘Will do.’

‘Do you have someone getting alongside the surviving couple? We want whatever they have ASAP.’

‘The Málaga officer’s on his way.’

‘Good. Thanks, Alec.’

Nicholls ended the call and dialled his assistant.

‘I’m just going to see the chief, Hugo,’ he said. ‘Can you get me a car, please? When I’m finished upstairs I’ll need to go over to Downing Street.’

31.

THE MI6 INTELLIGENCE officer arrived at the Puente Romano hotel, on the Bulevar Príncipe Alfonso von Hohenlohe, just as Justin Nicholls climbed into the car to take him to Downing Street.

He was a nondescript Welshman in his early thirties, who went by the name of ‘Liam’, and who worked – officially – in a back office notarial role in the Málaga consulate.

In reality, his job was to mooch around the place finding out what he could about serious organised crime that might lead back to the UK and assessing and updating the regional terrorism picture.

Thomas Carter answered his knock.

He looked shell-shocked.

‘My name’s Liam Smith, sir,’ said the MI6 officer. ‘From the consulate. May I come in?’

‘It’s not a good time,’ said Carter. ‘We…’

‘I’m afraid I do just need to come in,’ said Liam, firmly.

He stepped in, past Tom Carter’s weak protests.

It was cool inside. Jemima Craig was lying on the blue-and-gold brocade counterpane, her eyes puffy and red, a tissue in her left hand.

‘She’s in no fit state to talk,’ said Carter.

The MI6 man turned to face him.

‘I’m here on the instructions of the Prime Minister herself, sir,’ he said, very firmly. ‘I need to talk to you about your missing friends.’

‘Let him speak, Tom,’ said Jemima, from the bed.

Tom Carter’s shoulders relaxed. He sat down next to his girlfriend and looked up at Liam, his eyes strained and unbelieving.

‘What do you want to know?’ he said.

‘I need as much information about what happened today as possible.’

The couple both said nothing.

‘I know it’s tough,’ said Liam. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’ He pulled out a notebook. ‘You’ve been here for four days, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did anyone know where you were staying?’

‘My mum,’ said Jemima Craig. ‘But that was it.’

‘Could the others have told people?’

‘Yes. But I have no idea if they did. Why?’

‘Did you tell anyone that Charlotte Morgan was going to be coming with you?’

They looked at each other, blankly.

‘No,’ said Jemima. ‘Why would we?’

‘Prime Minister’s daughter,’ said Liam. ‘People might have been interested.’

‘It’s not a big deal to us. She’s just our friend.’

Liam nodded. ‘Did you go to the beach at Puerto Banús every day?’ he said.

‘No,’ said Tom Carter. ‘Today was the first time. We went to Bounty Beach on the first day. Elvira the next. Yesterday we did the Old Town.’

The MI6 man made a note. ‘Who took the decision to go down there today?’ he said.

Tom Carter looked at his girlfriend. ‘Charlotte, wasn’t it?’

‘No, it was Emily,’ said Jemima.

‘That’s right, Emily.’

Liam nodded. ‘Did you notice anyone watching you? Following you?’

‘Today?’

‘Any day. But today especially.’

‘No.’

‘I did,’ said Jemima. ‘I told you I had.’

Liam sat up straighter and looked over at the young brunette, who had raised herself onto her elbows.

‘Go on,’ he said.

‘There was a guy at the airport in Málaga,’ she said. ‘He was sort of loitering at arrivals. We’d ordered a minibus to bring us here, and it was ten or fifteen minutes late. The whole time, this guy was watching us. He tried to make out that he wasn’t, but he was. Charlotte saw it too, but… Anyway, at the time, I thought… well, Charlotte’s really pretty, and her friend Emily, she could be a model, so you kind of expect it. It was a bit creepy, but I didn’t think much of it. But then I saw him today, when Tom and I walked off the beach.’

‘What was he doing?’

‘Just kind of loitering by the palm trees up there.’

‘Can you describe him, Jemima?’

‘About my height, maybe a bit taller. Indian-looking. Mid-twenties. At the airport he was wearing jeans and a red football shirt. Manchester United, I think. Today he was wearing the same T-shirt, but a pair of shorts.’

‘If we could get some CCTV images, would you be happy to have a look at them for us?’

‘Of course.’

Liam took a moment. Then he said, ‘We’re working on the assumption that the three women have been taken somewhere, probably for ransom. What can you tell me about them? Starting with Charlotte.’

Jemima had been friends with Charlotte Morgan since their schooldays, so she was able to talk in great detail about her.

‘Tell me about Martha Percival?’ said Liam.

‘Lovely girl,’ said Tom Carter. ‘Her husband is… He was a good friend of mine. I’ve known her for six or seven years. Gregarious, funny, very bright. Lovely.’

Liam made a note. ‘And Emily Souster?’ he said.

‘She and Charlotte know each other from work,’ said Jemima. ‘She’s a solicitor, I think. Mostly human rights-type stuff. They’re kind of friends, but work friends, if you know what I mean?’

‘What’s she like?’

Jemima and Thomas looked at each other.

‘We don’t really know her,’ said Jemima. ‘First time we met her was at Stansted.’

‘I’m sensing something,’ said Liam.

‘To be brutally honest,’ said Tom, ‘she’s a bit of a pain in the arse. She’s a very attractive girl, but massively high maintenance. No sense of humour. Started bad and got worse, to the point where she hardly said a word to anyone today. She was just in a foul mood, I guess. I thought time of the month, maybe.’

‘Tom!’ hissed Jemima.

‘I’m trying to be fair to her,’ he said, defensively. ‘If she had PMT, fair enough. If not… Anyway, we tried to ignore it. All week she’d been giving her boyfriend a hard time.’

‘How do you mean, a hard time?’

‘I don’t know. She was just very cold to him, I thought. What did you think, Jem?’

Jemima nodded. ‘Yes, cold’s the right word. They hadn’t been going out very long, and it was like she had to bring someone, so she brought Nick? He was pretty fed up with her, I think. I don’t think they were going to continue seeing each other after… after…’

She started crying again, apologising through her sobs.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Liam. ‘It’s fine.’

‘Boyfriend seemed a decent bloke,’ said Tom Carter. ‘She’s a teetotaller, so she’d go to bed early every night, and he’d stay up boozing with us.’

‘You said she was high maintenance?’ said Liam.

‘Yeah,’ said Carter. ‘Like, we had a massive drama yesterday because she suddenly realised she hadn’t packed her favourite bikini. Sunday and Monday, a green bikini’s fine. Then suddenly it has to be her shocking pink one. So we spent half the morning yesterday trawling round the shops in the Old Town trying to get a shocking pink bikini in her size. In the end, the rest of us left her to it. She eventually turned up with the damned thing at about three o’clock. Don’t get me wrong, it looked pretty good on her, but…’

He tailed off.

‘I don’t know what more we can tell you,’ he said, eventually. ‘It’s just a terrible, terrible thing.’

32.

AT ABOUT THAT time, Justin Nicholls’ car arrived at the gate to No. 10 Downing Street.

He walked to the front door, nodded and smiled to the uniformed copper on duty outside, and stepped in.