Pirate - Duncan Falconer [98]
Howel stepped out and waited for Stratton to follow him. ‘We’re to go straight to the operations room,’ the young lieutenant said.
On deck a tall, thin, hawkish-looking officer in a camouflaged windproof eyed Stratton with a level of curiosity that bordered on suspicion.
‘Lieutenant Winslow,’ Howel said by way of introduction.
Winslow nodded, keeping his hands behind his back.
Stratton didn’t dwell on it, used to the negative attitude from some members of the military. He knew all about how being special forces polarised opinion. People either held you in extremely high regard – more than you generally deserved – or considered you overrated.
Howel led the way through an open steel door into a red-lit corridor and up a flight of steps. Winslow followed. At the top another secure door that required a code-entry to unlock. Jasper tapped in the pass code and led them into a dimly lit operations room filled with a variety of humming electronic communications and technological equipment operated by several sailors. None of them took much notice of Stratton save a glance as he walked through in his boiler suit and sandals.
Winslow went ahead and opened a door into a small, gloomy communications shack packed with equipment like a compressed sound studio. A Wren, wearing a pair of headphones, sat concentrating on a complex-looking switchboard. When she saw the officer and the dishevelled man in the boiler suit, she got to her feet like she had been expecting them. She smiled politely and handed Winslow her headset and left the room.
‘Your operations officer is on the other end of that,’ Winslow said.
Stratton put on the headset and adjusted the microphone in front of his lips. Winslow stood in the doorway and Stratton took the opportunity to return the man’s cold glare. ‘Close the door behind you,’ Stratton said, deliberately omitting the words ‘please’ and ‘sir’.
Winslow wasn’t used to any level of insubordination and had it been any other subordinate in Her Majesty’s armed forces he would have reminded them of their respective ranks. But at that particular moment he knew it was a conflict he would not win. He might have contempt for the man but the Royal Navy did not. He clenched his teeth and closed the door.
Stratton spent almost an hour inside the room talking to the SBS operations team in Poole over the secure communications system. He explained everything that had happened, in the finest of detail, leaving nothing out. As he had expected, they didn’t react to his description of Hopper’s death. He tried to be as clinical as possible, and if he had been describing someone else who had killed Hopper, he might have managed it. But the hints of his culpability and responsibility for what had happened seeped into the report. The ops team remained coldly automatic with their questions.
When Stratton finally put down his headset and opened the door into the operations room, the occupants spared him a glance or two, as though in his absence they had been told who he was. To him it looked like they had all heard his story, or, more to the point, his confession. That was impossible of course. No one on the planet but him and the ops team had been privy to that conversation. They were merely curious about the individual who had arrived on the boat from out of nowhere.
Stratton walked from the operations room back down the steps and outside for some fresh air. He’d forgotten how stale the ship’s filtered air could taste in confined places like the operations room with all its heated circuitry and sweaty personnel.
He walked to the rails to look at the ocean and clear his head.
A matelot stood nearby having a smoke. He ditched the cigarette over the side when he saw Stratton. ‘S’cuse me, sir,’ he said.
‘I’m not a sir,’ Stratton replied without looking at him.
‘Sorry. I’m s’posed to show you where to bunk.’
Stratton hoped they had given him a room to himself.
‘The old man wanted to have a word but they