A Cry From The Deep ( 1 )

A Cry From The Deep

It began on the west coast of Britain. A ruthless assault on Peter Wade, a British Intelligence agent assigned to "Cobra", and his partner David Armstrong. Silent, but alert at all times "Cobra" is placed on red alert by the disappearance of a British nuclear submarine....
Next stop the Mediterranean. Seventy-Four naval marines, the stench of death is only hours away....
Peter Wade sets out to destroy the brains behind the ruthless group of terrorists - his search leading him across oceans and continents, and finely into the sun-scorched desert of Chad on the African continent....

..... Part 1 .....

Peter turned the hang-glider again dropping his shoulder into the wind with the face of the cliff only inches from the out stretched sail. The air swept his face, numbing it, forcing the tears from the corners of his eyes back into his brown-matted hair.

The afternoon sun was turning the sea a copper-gold, and the waves a hundred feet below him tumbled through the off-shore currents like darkened thunder clouds swept across the sky before a westerly wind - before shattering nosily along the deserted shore.

Peter Wade had been at it all afternoon, and now almost hypnotized into a false sense of assurance by the sliding images of land and sea, he felt the sudden surge of his weightless body caught in the updrafts that swept the cliff face in twisted erratic eddies. He steadied the hang-glider and broke into a ninety-degree turn. For just a second he had risen above the cliff. David Armstrong had his back to Peter watching the approach of a white Ford panel van. Peter worked on the bar, pulling it back to gain speed, and then lifting the nose he soared up from behind the cliff again.

The panel van rolled to a stop a respectful distance from David, and a single figure stepped out dressed in a full cut navy blue worker’s overall. He moved briskly forward, three paces out from the front of the van, then turned abruptly and shouted something to the unseen driver. The distance to Peter was too great and the man's words wandered away on the wind, but it was only when the man turned again did Peter notice the machine pistol. He held it with both hands, and at arm’s length, the muzzle blast lost to the wind in a flash of crimson-red and orange rope of fire, smothered only briefly by the blue-grey smoke of the after fire. David Armstrong shook violently, stumbling backwards against the barrage of shot and from the closeness of the onslaught, then fell to the ground in a bundled heap beside the jeep.

Instantly Peter clutched his chest and an overwhelming sense of nakedness came over him, for he had stashed his handgun in the glove compartment of his jeep.

Peter turned into the wind, facing them, giving himself a better view of what lay below. To the northeast another white panel van in a cloud of swirling dust was bounding across the gravel road towards them. He turned again, dropping altitude, his left wing fluttering at staling point as he drifted out over the cove.

He never heard the crack of the semi-automatic hand pistol directed at him, but the sudden change from the gentle whisper of air as it passed smoothly over his sail, to the fluttered gasp of ruffled canvas as the air gushed through it, made Peter look up. Two holes had appeared in the sail at his left side, and instantly the hang-glider rocked unsteady as it lost the lift of the under wind flow.

Peter Wade didn't like the thoughts that ran through his mind as he sheared away, dropping like a stone below the cliff into the darkening reflection of the copper-gold sea. He had only started his leave, just four days into a well-deserved break. He desperately needed the rest to loosen his nerves.

Peter checked his fall and turned again. He hated panic; an inexorable feeling as the gut muscles tighten, and his were as tight as they could get.

The cove had the form of a horseshoe, both sides stretching to a distance of more than a hundred and fifty yards out into the ocean, and the beach beneath him, a small expanse of rock and sand nestled in the heart of the shoe, would offer little protection from his attackers on the ledge above him. Suddenly a marked chill came over Peter - not a chill that comes from wind or rain, but the kind that bites the gut and quickens the heart, for in a flash he realized his only escape was back up the solid stone wall, a ninety yard dash across the open ground where David Armstrong lay, then out into the now fading light above the south cliff, and down to the beach below. Peter shivered at the thought.

He slid in closer and closer to the cliff waiting for the sudden up surge of wind. He kept looking up but the sail blocked his vision. He was flying blind. He had no idea what awaited him when he rose above the cliff. Then it came in a gust of fury off the sea, across the sand and rock, surging up the rock face, bowing the sail, and he lifted instantly.

The sight of them tightened his stomach again. There were four of them now ransacking his jeep. Peter's tumble down into the cove had obviously miss led them. Thinking he had been hit by their gunfire, they had offered him less than a second thought. Peter had risen swiftly on the wind, turned south, and had covered more than fifty yards across the open ground before they spotted him. Their shouts and repeated gunfire were muffled to Peter's ears by the wind and flapping noise that came from his damaged sail.

Peter was now less than ten feet off the ground, stretched parallel to the hang-glider, trying to make himself less of a target than he could possibly hope for. He slipped out over the south cliff as three more holes appeared in the sail, and instantly he lost the support of the up draft currents as the sail tore under the pressure of his weight and wind. Peter fell quickly, without control, the sky, and sea tumbling about him. He made a last desperate attempt to steady himself, turning southwest and out over the sea.

Peter released the harness only seconds before he hit the water, entering the smooth curve of a perfect wave foot first. He stayed down tumbling inshore with the under currents, his feet and head striking coral and sand as he rolled. He desperately needed to shorten the distance between himself and the shore, for he was still well within their range and would offer an easy target as he bobbed in the surf.

Peter broke the surface gasping for air, coming out waist high, then twisting his body half a turn he returned to the water on his belly, thrashing through the surf and up onto the beach.

They were there as he expected; four silhouetted figures etched against the evening sky like distorted feathery shadows, and as one with the dark eerie form that supported them. Peter could see clearly the bright flames of yellow and orange spurt from their semi-automatic hand pistols as they trained them down on him, and his ears rang with the whispered zing of flighted bullets that sliced the air; ending abruptly with a squelching sound as the velocity drove them deep into the sodden sand.

Peter broke into a laboured sprint, stumbling awkwardly against the bubble of cream-white surf that choked his ankles on its surge up the beach, clattering the large pebble stones like the endless rumblings of thunder through distant hills.

He had almost reached the cover of the cliff when a sharp piecing pain tore through his left upper arm. Instantly he lengthened his stride and leapt into the air; diving the last few paces and rolled quickly into the dark gloom of beckoning rock. Peter expected the worst. A bullet fired from a semi-automatic hand pistol could shatter a man's arm reducing it to no more than a lifeless stump. He groped wildly at his left side searching for his arm; it was there and he squeezed it warmly. The bullet had passed through the fleshy tissue just below the armpit, and he quickly applied pressure to the wound with a hand full of cold wet sand.

He hadn’t given David Armstrong a second thought since his tumble down into the cove, and now Peter began to think of him. David had been a part of Cobra for almost four years. Since his inception they had been a team; Moscow, Tokyo, and the Middle East. Together they had seen the darker sides of most countries.

Although Cobra consisted of mainly men, it was hard to form close and lasting relationships. The possibility of losing a colleague was always close at hand, but with David it had been easy.

Cobra’s was the mastermind of Major-General Brain Jenkins, Director of British Intelligence. Cobra had been formed as a special task force attached to British Intelligence monitoring the development and illegal trafficking of nuclear arms through Asia, the Middle East, and the developing countries of North Africa.

The sun had set quickly as though a blanket had been thrust across the sky, extinguishing the lustre and splendour of the stratus bank that lay motionless over the western sea tier; interwoven with red and yellow, salmon pink and burnished gold - and now a stillness lay over the sea and land; a stillness of both mind and biosphere, except for the invisible waves breaking rhythmically against the dark backdrop of night. Even the clatter of the large pebble stones had given way to a soft gurgling sound that now emanated up from beneath the wash of the incoming tide like the contented grumblings of the giant elephant seal.

From his position Peter could not see or hear his attackers. He had no idea of their movements. He listened carefully against the dark silence hoping for a sound, but the night remained still. The only way down to the beach, to where Peter stood, was a narrow footpath a half-mile further down the coast, and the risk of losing one’s footing in the dark was the only advantage on his side against their attempt in reaching the beach.

Peter waited for more than an hour before moving off, stopping every fifty paces listening for a tell-tale sign that might give away the surprise assault of his attackers. At the base of the cliff where the footpath began its zigzag ascent up into the darkness, Peter halted.

It took him all of forty-five minutes to reach the summit, and to cover the ground to where he had left David Armstrong. The two white panel vans had disappeared and so had Peter's jeep. David lay on the ground in the same position that Peter had last seen him from the air. Peter checked for a pulse, but already the flesh had lost its warmth and elasticity of life and in the dim light of Peter's pocket torch the lifeless body shone a dusty white.

End Part 1

A Cry From The Deep [Part 2]


Nancy Barth was behind the reception counter attending to a young Swedish couple when Peter Wade finally stumbled into the foyer of the Wave Crest Beach Hotel. He swayed unsteady, almost drunkenly, and then dropped heavily onto his knees.

“Mr Wade__!" Nancy's voice rang with concern, and Peter looked up and wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm. She had slipped from behind the reception counter and was running towards him, long-legged in beach thongs and ice-blue training shorts, her dark brown eyes wide-staring and made even more so by her cheeks that had turned a dead white.

Peter pushed himself onto his feet and she caught him, steadying him as he teetered.

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