Scott Mariani 2-book Collection: Star of Africa, The Devil’s Kingdom. Scott Mariani

      ‘It’s my decision,’ Jude said. ‘It’s the right thing to do. Everyone agreed?’

      ‘I’m getting too old for this shit,’ Gerber said, shaking his head resignedly. ‘I’ve seen enough blood for one day. Let’s do what the young fella says and get shot of ’em, and be done with it.’

      ‘Whatever, man,’ Condor said. ‘I ain’t up for no killin’.’

      ‘Not in cold blood, anyway,’ Tuesday said. ‘Seems like this is the best option.’

      ‘Don’t look at me, boys,’ Jeff said. ‘I’m just a dyed-in-the-wool heartless killing machine.’

      Ben held back from saying more. He’d said too much already.

      ‘Then it’s agreed,’ Jude said. ‘The lifeboat it is.’

      It had been many, many years since shipwrecked crews had been forced to take their chances at sea in open rowing boats. The Andromeda was equipped with a modern MOB, or Man Overboard rescue vessel, a bright orange fibreglass craft some eighteen feet long, with an outboard engine and basic bench seating inside for a whole crew, as well as internal storage space for spare fuel and supplies. Jude had always thought it looked like the submersible Thunderbird 4 from the old TV series. The MOB hung forty feet above the sea from external mountings on A Deck. To release it from its cradle it had to be winched up a few feet, then swung out clear of the ship’s side and lowered down on cables using the davit, a small crane used for hoisting materials up and down from the water.

      Which was a straightforward enough operation in still and clement conditions. In the middle of a howling tropical storm, it was anything but. The wind was blasting them so ferociously that it was hard to stand up on deck without clinging onto something solid for support. A murky midday had become an even more cloud-laden afternoon, with visibility reduced to almost zero by the time Ben and Jeff had finished loading up the extra water, provisions and fuel that Khosa and his men would need to make it back to the coast.

      Next, the prisoners were marched laboriously up from the hold and lined up on the bucking, rolling deck, drenched with rain and spray and closely watched at gunpoint by Tuesday while Ben and Jeff ushered them one at a time into the bright orange craft. One of the men was selected as its pilot and Ben, communicating with him in Swahili, talked him through the basic controls. Jude stood a few feet away, watching.

      Khosa was the last to board the lifeboat. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Jude the entire time, and they were filled with a crazy fire that made the back of Jude’s neck tingle. The African’s horribly scarred face twisted into a leer of hatred mixed with triumph. His cheek and brow were swollen and crusted with dried blood. One or two extra scars to add to his collection.

      ‘You will see me again soon, White Meat,’ he told Jude as Ben grabbed his arm and shoved him into the boat.

      ‘Not if we see you first, sunshine,’ Jeff said.

      Ben slammed the hatch and activated the winding gear to crank the MOB off its cradle. The winch took up the slack in the cables. They released the catches holding the craft to its moorings. Then the davit swung the lifeboat outwards from the deck. It dangled, rocking in the gale, before the pulleys began to turn and the swaying craft descended to the water. Once it was floating on the surface, Ben yanked the lever to detach the MOB at the other end, and set the winch into reverse to spool the empty cable back up the ship’s side.

      In the name of human compassion, the ship was now minus its only lifeboat.

      They leaned over the rail and watched as the MOB tossed and bobbed like a rubber duck on the waves. Its outboard motor burbled and churned foam. In minutes, the ship was cleaving away and leaving it behind as it struggled away in the opposite direction, just a tiny orange blob in the midst of the vast, dark, boiling ocean. Ben thought he saw a wild-eyed monstrous face staring up at them from one of the lifeboat’s little porthole windows. He might have imagined it, but it was an image that he wasn’t able to shake from his mind for a long time afterwards.

      ‘Well, that’s that,’ Jeff yelled over the wind as they headed indoors to dry off.

      And that could have been that. But it wasn’t.

       Chapter 29

      As the afternoon wore on, the storm kept worsening steadily. Waves that before had been as tall as houses now loomed vertically like mountains of water, peaking high above the deck of the Svalgaard Andromeda and smashing thousands of tons of water over her bows with a violence that made the ship quiver from stem to stern and every man aboard catch his breath with fearful anticipation. The news from the bridge was grim: the latest weather update from the GMDSS reported that the severe tropical storm that had been lashing the Somali coast was now being upgraded to a full-blown cyclone. And from the readings, it looked as if the Andromeda was heading right into it.

      Assuming the role of captain, Trent ordered the engine room to crack on under full power while he deviated course to try to outflank the storm. But it was moving so fast and erratically that it was impossible to anticipate where the cyclone might hit.

      Sometime after 4 p.m., Jeff Dekker and Tuesday climbed up to the bridge to relieve the exhausted Trent and Lang. Ben had last been seen heading out onto the main deck to check on the fixings holding the fore and aft cargo cranes in place, lest they be torn loose by the incredible wind and start swinging destructively about.

      In the galley, plates and cutlery were crashing all over the floor with the wild motion of the ship, and Murphy was squawking and flapping about in a panic. Jude helped Hercules clear up the mess and stow everything safely in place. As he worked, he was feeling unsettled and restless, and not just because of the storm. He couldn’t get Pender out of his head. Who was he? Jude wanted to know more. It suddenly occurred to him that, with all that had been happening, nobody had thought to search the cabin where the three mystery passengers had been accommodated.

      Jude told Hercules he was going to the head, which was what they called the ship’s toilets. Instead, he crept unnoticed up the ladder way to E Deck and made his way to the cabin down the hall from O’Keefe’s quarters.

      That was where Jude made his discovery.

      Pender had apparently been in such a tearing rush to get off the ship with his prize that he’d left a number of items behind. On the bed lay an abandoned holdall containing some clothes and toiletries. There was a yellowed old Wilbur Smith paperback lying propped open on the floor. And a phone.

      He found it under a bunk, where it had either been kicked by accident or had slid across the floor with the motion of the ship. Jude fished it out and examined it with a thumping heart. It looked like a normal Motorola cellphone, except for its unusually chunky size and the thick antenna attached to the casing. Jude quickly realised what it was. A satellite phone.