Brute Force Read Free Page A

around in the wake as I bounced around at a forty-five degree angle.
I kept on going, hand over hand, foot over foot. The only lights I could see now were on the ship itself. If the ladder came unstuck or I fell, it was going to be a long swim back.
A couple of rungs from the top I could see that the ladder's hook, or at least one prong of it, was caught on the rope hole – and that it was too small for me to climb through.
I scrabbled to get one hand onto the bottom rail, then two, heaving myself up and onto the deck with the world's biggest chin-up. I kicked the ladder and pole away. They dropped into the boiling white foam eight metres below.
I moved straight into the shadows at the rear of the bridge tower, peeled off the wetsuit and binned it over the side as well. My head and hands were still ice cold, but my body was drenched with sweat.
The priority now was to get below. There were hatches all over the place. They were all tied down, but that didn't matter; I knew exactly where I was going and how to get there. As you looked towards the bow, there was a door to the right of the bridge tower. I edged my way to the corner and lay flat on the deck. I eased my head round at ground level.
The door was open, just as Lynn had said it would be. Weak yellow light spilled from inside. I drew level and checked down the narrow corridor. Layers of badly painted cream gloss adorned the walls, and stairs led off to the right and left. The lino-covered floor was impregnated with grit to prevent slipping.
I could hear voices on the bridge above me, muttering in Arabic-accented English, then Duff – it had to be him, because he was giving orders – replying. The engines thundered below. I couldn't see any sign of movement. I crossed the threshold and headed straight downstairs.
The engine noise got louder with each step I took. The louder the better, as far as I was concerned. An open door to my left reminded me of watching Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea as a kid: the Seaview's had been exactly the same.
I heard voices from the engine room but I didn't check them out – the door I wanted was opposite and just short of it.
The cargo hold was lit, but it felt like a dungeon. Crates and alloy boxes were stacked in two sections to within a few feet of the ceiling, leaving an alleyway between them just wide enough for a man to squeeze through, and another around the sides. The whole lot was lashed down with nylon nets and ropes.
The place stank of oily wood and grease. The floor seemed to be covered with wheat – its normal payload, perhaps – but these crates and boxes weren't going to be full of Shreddies, that was for sure. I stepped over the dark brown detonator cord that ran left and right of me then around the side of the cargo.
I had to climb on top of the stack before I found a spot where the net was slack and there was a space just big enough to move around in.
I unclipped the green metal retainers on the top wooden crate, and hauled up the netting so I could get the lid open. I didn't really need to check. I had spent years humping boxes exactly like these all over the world when I was in the infantry. The contents were as the stencilling described: it was a general-purpose machinegun in its transit chest. The butt and barrel had been removed and placed in receptacles cut into the interior framework. Even the GPMG's cleaning wallet, a green nylon bag, was exactly where it should have been. The whole lot was factory fresh.
The 150 tonnes of weapons were bound for the Provisional IRA. I wasn't going to unload each box to make sure Lynn was right, but he'd told me there were a thousand AKs; a million rounds of ammunition; loads of GPMGs; 450 hand grenades; rocket-propelled grenade launchers and grenades; SAM ground-to-air launchers and missiles, each one capable of downing a British army helicopter; anti-tank launchers, and thousands of electric dets and fuses. There were even a couple of crates of flamethrowers, apparently,