Pirate - Duncan Falconer [40]
Keeping low, he moved across the deck between the winch machinery looking for any sign of the crate. But he found nothing. The most obvious location to store anything that big at the front of the ship would be the bosun’s locker, a deep storage space that went from the main deck level all the way down to the bottom of the boat.
He looked at a large square hatch that was open. It had to be the locker. There was a light on inside. Which suggested that someone might be down there. The bosun’s locker wasn’t usually a place anyone hung around unless they were working in it.
He crept to the hatch and leaned over the opening to look down. Lights illuminated the locker all the way down, a good fifteen metres. The entire inside had been painted white. Metal stairs zigzagged part of the way down to ladders that continued to the bottom.
An oxyacetylene gas bottle stood upright just inside the hatch. He listened hard but he heard nothing. The hatch was the only way in or out. He took a quick look around and then he stepped into the hatch and down the handful of steps to the first landing and the gas bottle. A rope had been fixed to a strong point near the hatch and dangled all the way to the bottom.
The forward part of the bosun’s locker was the sharp-angled inside of the bows that cut through the water. The welded steel plates had been reinforced by a series of ribs and bracings. These were used as storage shelves and were stacked with ropes, chains and rat cones.
He stepped carefully down the steeply angled staircase to the next landing. From there it was a series of vertical ladders to the bottom. He went down the first two and paused on the bottom to look around. The whole area was cluttered with ropes, old paint buckets filled with shackles, nuts and bolts and odd bits of bracing, pulleys and large pieces of timber. It all appeared to be covered in grease and grime. He stepped on to the final ladder to the bottom and then he listened again. He climbed down and stepped on to the hull of the boat.
A portable electric lamp had been clipped to a brace and aimed at an angle. The hull below the waterline was reinforced by box sections of welded plates. The light was pointed at a particular section, which had been cut open using a torch. The white paint along the cut had bubbled or burned away. An acetylene bottle lay nearby, the piece of metal that had been cut away beside it.
Stratton walked over to look at the opening. The long wooden crate lay inside the space. They had most likely lowered it down on the end of the rope. There was a tin of white paint on the floor with a paintbrush and cloth on top.
He reached inside the hollow hull and searched for the clips that secured the lid of the crate. He found three along its length, unfastened them and gripped the edge. The lid was a tight fit but after a couple of tugs it gave way. Stratton pulled the lid fully open to expose the contents.
He saw a layer of tough, black sponge moulding that ran the length of the box. He peeled it back to reveal a dark-green, metal and plastic weapons system. He knew exactly what it was – a Chinese hand-held HN series ground-to-air missile. He had fired the original Soviet version, which the Chinese had later copied. It was an effective and lethal man-portable missile system designed to shoot down any size aircraft between eight hundred metres and four and a half kilometres above the ground.
As soon as he saw it, several things fell into place that he had a very bad feeling about. The Somalis, or more to the point the jihadists who had delivered the missile, were smuggling the weapons out of the country. They must have muscled in on the hijacking business to use the ships to distribute their ordnance and to send anti-aircraft missiles around