Dead Centre - Andy McNab [40]
‘So the attack was five days ago?’
‘I don’t even know if they’re still alive.’
He fished into a big pocket that looked like it had been specially sewn into his coat, pulled out an iPad and sparked it up.
‘How are things in the K&R world?’
His fingers played about on the screen. ‘Business is good. I’ve stopped working for a percentage of the premium saved. I can normally get them out in about three months, so it’s better just to take a set three grand a day.’
‘In that case, you can pay for these.’ I offered him the plate of Danishes but he shook his head. I dunked one in my coffee.
‘Still busy in South America, Central America, Mexico. Africa is still good, and of course Somalia’s top trumps.’ He finished tapping away. ‘Not a thing, Nick. They don’t show up anywhere.’ He looked up. ‘Do you know who’s holding them? If they’re with a clan? Has anyone been approached about a deal?’
‘Nothing. The BG should be keeping their real identities quiet.’
‘That’s good. But somebody somewhere must have been approached.’
He turned the iPad so both of us could see the readout. ‘As far as we know, twenty-nine vessels held and six hundred and eighty-one hostages.’
The list was divided into countries, age groups and occupations. ‘There’s a lot of sea out there. Maybe they didn’t make it back to the coast.’
That got me worried. ‘Do you think they’ll have been zapped?’
‘Unlikely. They’re merchandise. But that’s not to say the BG didn’t put up a fight and the three of them were killed – or they may have sunk. Those fishing skiffs they use aren’t exactly on the Lloyd’s Register.’
‘What about the four Americans?’
‘That was a total mess. The Somalis went to negotiate with the US Navy. The US Navy didn’t believe them. They held them instead. Their friends on the captured boat thought they were being stitched up, so they killed the Americans.
‘In general, if they’ve got them, they still won’t kill them. Only when they stop being worth money do you have to get worried. If they don’t have outside investors, they’d have to take a loan from their clan warlord to keep and feed the hostages. They might be using your three to pay off debts they owe the clan. Who knows? It’s complicated out there.
‘But if they are alive, even if they’ve been sold on, someone would start to negotiate, someone would make contact. Otherwise there’s no point in keeping them.’
I nodded, and threw down some more Danish. ‘You’re sure they’re not anywhere in that box of tricks?’
‘Just a sec. Maybe I can work out which group took them. You said it was towards the end of last week?’
He logged onto a website, and I watched him enter his password. The page opened up on the Anti-piracy Environment Awareness Chart. It wasn’t a chart at all, more a collection of big break-out boxes, with Google maps, pie charts and bar graphs. He expanded the page to show me something.
‘Depending on the time of year, some areas are more swamped with pirate activity than others. These people are fishermen. They know the winds and tides. They know the sea. They know when they can go out there safely. They know when they can’t – well, the successful ones do. Look.’ He pointed at the screen. The Monthly Piracy Risk showed a satellite picture for each month of the year, and then dots where the attacks had taken place.
‘See the difference between March and June?’
The Gulf of Aden in June had just a few dots on it, and the same past the Horn of Africa and out into the Indian Ocean. But March was a different story. The area was almost black with dots, as was the whole area east, north and south.
‘It’s because of the north-eastern monsoon. That comes down from India and Arabia, normally about December to March. The swell is only about two or three metres, so those small craft can use the wind to negotiate it, get clear of the coast and go out there looking for a mother-ship. If they strike lucky, they might hit what they want to hijack straight away.
‘But June and October are when the south-west monsoon comes in. We’re talking thirty-knot winds and swells of ten metres. That