Free Death in the Kingdom by Andrew Grant Page A

smell. It worked somewhat, but the smoke and the motion of the boat started to churn my entrails into soup. I tossed the half-finished cigarette butt over the side and then went to the railing. There, I followed the butt with my last meal or two. Fuck, I hated boats!
    Eventually we found the lee of an island to hide behind for the night. There were so many reefs, rocks and small islands in the area that to go charging around in the dark was a sure recipe for disaster. The sea behind the island was calm and I finally stopped chucking. I wiped my face with unsalted water from a tap on the bulkhead beside me and risked another cigarette. I had coughed up a storm but I didn’t lose it as we cruised closer to our shelter.
    Like all good consorts our escort was still following, both behind and a little to our right (starboard as the nautical types call it). The trawler had a crew of eight: three to run the thing and five to run the assortment of weaponry that Tuk Tuk had put on board. I had been impressed by the inventory. There were half a dozen LAW 80 shoulder-fired tank busters guaranteed to take just about anything short of a cruiser to the bottom of the ocean. There were also two Browning .50 calibre heavy machine guns, plus a couple of M79 grenade launchers and the usual assortment of M16s and AK47s. Short of an all out war, we were tooled up to account for ourselves in a damned good skirmish.
    The pirate thing in the Andaman and down through the whole region to just about Australia was a reality. However unlike the cut-throats in the Malaccan Straits, there was not a hell of a lot of publicity about the Andaman pirates. The Burmese broadcasted bugger all of anything to the outside world so the pirates existed and prospered, and they were a bloody pack of real villains. Most of their victims were fishermen, but if a nice fat tourist yacht or cruiser happened by, they would have a go at it too. Generally, there were no survivors. The sharks saw to that.
    The rattle of the anchor chain broke my musing. There was activity up the pointed end of our tub and shouts from the bridge, followed by the grumble and vibration of an old diesel engine as the boat reversed to set the hook. Two minutes later we were swinging on the cable in near silence. I stood and watched our escort go through the same manoeuvre fifty yards away to starboard.
    I noted the other vessels in the big bay. A luxury two-master yacht was anchored to our left and beyond that a string of Moken boats were rafted up closer to the shore. These long, low barge-type boats were home to the sea nomads who were the main occupants of the area. Whole families lived on board the big mother craft, and often they could be seen travelling between the islands with a caravan of dugout canoes strung behind. Once the group arrived in an area they wanted to fish or scavenge in, the larger boat anchors and the owners of the dugouts would go about their business.
    The bay in which we had taken shelter had an island mass on three sides of us, and in the gathering gloom I could see sparks of light on the shore—fishing villages or just camps, I guessed. I knew from a briefing long ago, at a time when I had been doing things in these waters, that there were bugger all shore dwellers out there. Almost a thousand islands made up the Mergui Archipelago, the true name of the area. To me back then it was just bloody sea with lumps in it. I hadn’t so far seen anything this time round to change my opinion.
    I risked going inside the boat. I’d decided, thanks to my rather perverted sense of humour, to name the tub the SS Odorama : it was smelly, uncomfortable and sloshed along like a damn bathtub.
    The main cabin—a sort of mess and sleeping quarters for the crew—was directly through the door leading to the deck. Mess was probably a good description for it. Hammocks were slung from the ceiling beams. There was a table of sorts that doubled as the engine-room hatch cover,