"What if the passengers are being held sequestered someplace on board?" Wallace asked. "Under guard."
"According to our informant," Dean said, "that hasn't happened yet."
"Hostages who don't know they're hostages?" Wallace asked.
"Essentially. At least for now." Dean glanced at Saunders, who was scowling. "While it's possible that eventu ally they'll do what General Saunders suggested — herd everyone into one place and keep them under guard — they haven't yet taken that step. If we are dealing with just a few terrorists, they're going to try to keep their hostages in the dark for as long as possible. They can't afford the manpower to watch over three thousand prisoners — not if that means feeding them, giving them water, getting them to the restroom a couple of times a day… at least until they show their hand."
"Or they may hold a few prisoners as assurance for the good behavior of the rest," Lia said. "But at the moment, the passengers are just being told to stay in their staterooms. If that doesn't change, we have the opportunity to slip a team inside."
"And what if it changes?" Saunders demanded. "What if they do round everybody up and hold them at gunpoint?"
"Then we'll still have a team on board," Dean told him, "that can adapt to the situation as it changes. The Atlantis Queen is a big ship. Lots of places to hide."
"I don't think you can do it," Saunders told him. "Parachute a recoil team onto a ship held by armed and fully alert terrorists? It's unprecedented."
"It's not unprecedented," Dean told him. "There's the Achille Lauro in 1985. Terrorists on board an Italian cruise ship hijacked the ship and threatened to kill everyone on board."
"But there was no CT assault on the Achille Lauro" Saunders said. "The terrorists negotiated with the Egyptian government by radio, took the ship into Port Said, and went ashore peacefully."
Dean's mouth worked in what was almost a smile. "There's considerably more to the story than that, sir. First off, there was a U. S. Navy SEAL team at sea, just a few hours away from boarding that ship."
"I know. Those were the SEALs who tried to capture the terrorists after they flew to Sicily."
Dean nodded. The Achille Lauro hijackers had boarded a 737 bound for Tunis after coming ashore at Port Said. U. S. Navy Tomcats had forced the plane to land at the NATO naval air station at Sigonella, in Sicily, where the SEALs surrounded it — and had very nearly gotten into a firefight with Italian carabinieri who'd demanded jurisdiction. Ultimately, the two leaders of the hijackers, Muhammad Abu Abbas and Ozzudin Badrack Kan, had walked away free, released by Italian authorities.
"Second," Dean continued, "it's not common knowledge, and it can't ever be confirmed, but the unofficial word in the intelligence community is that the Israelis already had two CT-recon teams in place on board the Achille Lauro, and that they were just waiting for the go order. It's possible that the hijackers knew this — or suspected it — and that that's why they suddenly decided to turn around and go to Port Said after only three days."
"This recon force of yours,"/Saunders said. "I assume it's one of your SEAL teams?"
"I can neither confirm nor deny that, General," Dean told him. "But they are good. Very good."
"The SAS is good as well," Saunders said. "I canriot countenance this plan."
"What is it you propose instead, General?" Wallace asked.
"We've already deployed Royal Navy vessels to shadow the Sandpiper and the Atlantis Queen. We send in a couple of our destroyers or frigates to block the target vessels, force them to stop. While we're negotiating with them over the bow, a couple of helos off the Ark Royal come in from astern, and we put a platoon of SAS commandos down on the stern of both ships. Another helicopter drops a stick of commandos abseiling down onto the Queen's bridge. Sweet, neat, and simple."
"You may be forgetting something, sir," Dean said. "The 30mm cannons on the Sandpiper? They've already shot down one Royal Navy aircraft. Those helicopters would be sitting ducks."
"So we send in a flight of helicopter gunships just ahead of the transports," Saunders replied with a shrug. "That's just a minor operational detail. We hit those gun positions with rockets or chain guns before the terrorists even know we're there."
"I must admit to some… concern about firing live weapons at the Sandpiper, General," Wallace said. "Her cargo is highly radioactive."
"It's also well shielded and well protected, if your corporate propaganda is to be believed," Saunders told him. "Besides, those gun positions are nowhere near the ship's cargo hold."
"But accidents do happen," Wallace said, "especially in combat. The Home Office has already insisted that no action be taken that would jeopardize the passengers on the Atlantis Queen… or risk the release of radiation from the Pacific Sandpiper."
"The recon teams," Dean suggested, "would be in a position to take those guns out ahead of time. They could coordinate their strikes to take out the bridges of both ships and all three guns, then send a signal to bring in the helicopters."
"I still must protest," Saunders said. "Remember… those ships both technically are British soil. It should be British troops who carry out the rescue."
"General Saunders," Dean said, "forgive me for saying so, but this is not the time for fucking politics!"
"Mister Dean, I would remind you there's a lady present!"
'That's okay, General," Lia said. "Charlie is fucking right! You want to beat your manly chest and play your testosterone-sodden games, go ahead, but if you do, you're an idiot, putting at risk three thousand civilians and a very great deal of dangerously radioactive material to salve your wounded national pride."
"Charlie! Lia!" Rockman's voice whispered in Dean's ear. "Pull in the horns. We have to stay on this guy's good side!"
"The SAS can have the publicity, General," Dean added, standing up suddenly "No one will ever hear about our people being there… or if they do, they'll assume they belonged to you. But we're ready to go and can get a team on board those ships with a minimum of delay. I suggest you consult with your superiors and then get back to us." He turned and walked away from the table. Lia stood as well and followed.
"Charlie, you're screwing this deal up!" Rockman called.
Dean did not reply as he strode out the door.
Chapter 16
Neptune Theater, Atlantis Queen North Atlantic Ocean 47deg 40' N, 10deg 09' W Saturday, 1823 hours GMT
David Llewellyn sat in one of the plush theater seats, his wrists tightly strapped together at the small of his back, another zip strip binding his ankles, a strip of cloth tightly cinched between his teeth and tied at the back of his head. An entire afternoon of cautious struggle had done nothing but chafe the skin of his wrists raw.
He glanced to his right, where Tricia Johnson was slumped in the theater seat next to his. At least the bastards had let them get dressed before hauling them down here; she was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Llewellyn, though, was distinctly chilly. All he'd had available to put on in Tricia's stateroom was his swim trunks.
She met his gaze, and he saw her eyes darken with anger before she sharply turned her head away. They hadn't been able to talk much since the intruders had broken into her stateroom and hauled them out of bed. Clearly, though, she knew he was Ship's Security and not a rich passenger who'd known her at Penn State. Presumably she was also angry that he'd not done anything to stop this… this invasion.
He looked around the theater, an enormous bowl-shaped auditorium located at the extreme forward part of the ship's superstructure, occupying Decks One, Two, and Three. With two levels of balcony above the main floor, the theater was large enough to hold a thousand people or more. At the moment, however, it held perhaps a hundred or so — a few passengers but mostly men and women wearing Royal Sky uniforms. Perhaps twenty or thirty wore security uniforms; clearly, the hijackers had spent the afternoon rounding up shipboard security personnel and anyone else who might pose a problem. All of them, like him and Tricia, were bound hand and foot, and gagged, and all
were clustered in the front-center few rows of seats, just below the stage. There were four men in khaki uniforms and carrying AK-47 assault rifles stationed in the balconies, giving them a perfect view of their prisoners.
Llewellyn was trying to think the situation through. This was a hijacking, obviously enough. Their captors looked Middle Eastern, and the Russian-made weapons suggested they were from one or several of the old Soviet Union's Arab clientele. Al-Qaeda, perhaps? Or Hamas? There was no way to tell. Whoever they were, they continued to bring people into the theater, singly or in small groups.
He heard a door bang far up the aisle behind him and turned in his seat, trying to see. A soldier was walking down the aisle, guiding a woman with a grip on her upper arm. Llewellyn's eyes widened slightly when he recognized her as Sharon Reilly, the ship's Cruise Director, her normally perfectly coiffed blond hair in disarray, her expression one of sheer fury. She struggled against the man's grip, her hands bound behind her back, but the guard forced her along quickly, bringing her down the aisle to the row where Llewellyn was sitting. "Let go of me, you bastard!" Reilly said, her voice piercing in the otherwise silent theater.
Roughly the soldier shoved her into the seat next to Llewellyn's, and she landed heavily against his shoulder. Twisting, she tried to kick the soldier, but he laughed and grabbed her ankles, pinned them with one hand, and fished inside a combat-vest pouch for another zip strip.
"No… no!…"
With a slick, practiced motion, the soldier tied her ankles together, dropped her feet, and then pulled a strip of cloth out of another pouch. "Quiet, whore," he told her, reaching to tie the gag around her head.
With a sick shock of recognition, Llewellyn recognized the soldier as the leering one of the two men who'd broken in on him and Tricia. The soldier finished knotting the cloth behind Reilly's head, then grabbed her jaw and turned her face toward his, just inches away. "You just wait, whore," he told her, his accent thick. Releasing her chin, he dropped his hand to her thigh, nakedly exposed as her short skirt rode up on her hips. "Wait, and maybe we have much fun in later." His eyes shifted to meet Llewellyn's. "So now you getting two girlfriends, eh?" Reaching across in front of Llewellyn, he grabbed Tricia's left breast and squeezed, eliciting a muffled yelp through her gag. "Enjoy yourselves good!" Chuckling, he turned and strode back up the theater aisle. Reilly struggled for a moment, then slumped in resignation.
"May I have your attention, please?" a voice called from the PA system overhead. Llewellyn straightened in his seat, looking up and around, though he knew the speaker wasn't here. Likely, it was someone either on the bridge or in the Security Office.
The voice carried a trace of an accent and sounded cultured, well educated.
"Again," the voice continued, "we regret any inconvenience you might have suffered. The ship tied up alongside us, the Pacific Sandpiper, is carrying a very important and very secret cargo. The soldiers you may have seen on board the Adantis Queen are a part of the Pacific Sandpiper's security force.
"Because of certain problems incurred by the Pacific Sandpiper when her escort ship exploded this morning, Royal Star Line has volunteered to render all possible assistance. The soldiers are on board the Adantis Queen while we take on board some of their cargo.
"There is no emergency, and no reason for alarm. We urge the passengers of the Atlantis Queen to remain calm and, if possible, to remain in their staterooms. The dining rooms are open, however, for those of you who wish to eat.
"We do not expect the problem to last more than a very few days, and we do not expect that it will interfere with your cruise. The officers and crew of the Atlantis Queen thank you for your understanding and for your cooperation."
Llewellyn wondered if anyone in the theater was going to get to eat… or be allowed to go to the restroom. He and Tricia had been brought here hours ago, and there was no indication that their guards were going to let them take care of any bodily needs.
The hijackers apparently were determined to keep as many people among the passengers and crew in the dark as they could, for as long as they could.
He wondered how much longer they could maintain the charade, until all of the passengers were tied up down here with him.
Forward Hold, Pacific Sandpiper 47deg 14' N, 10deg 40' W Saturday, 2025 hours GMT
Abdullah Wahidi stood before the gleaming titanic cylinder and tried to get his breathing under control. The sight of the thing, looming, massive, aglow with reflections of the fluorescent light tubes overhead, filled him both with awe and with terror.
"Let's get on with it," Chujiro Moritomi said in thickly accented Arabic. He pointed. "Cut there.. there… and there."
Wahidi exchanged a long, nervous glance with the other Arab member of the team — a kid from the Damascus slums named Musab Bekkali — and then dropped the welder's helmet down over his face and slowly raised the cutting torch.
Allah will protect me, he thought. The thought became a mantra, repeated over and over and over again. Allah protect me! Allah protect me! Allah protect me!…
He struck the spark, and the torch flared to life. A scaffold had been erected for the men in front of the face of the cylinder so that they could reach the locking bars located at three points around the cylinder's cap, inside the seal. He lowered the sharp-pointed blue-white flame to touch the metal, and white light exploded, dazzling even through the heavy visor of his mask.
He didn't want to die.
Then what are you doing on this ship? The thought was defiant, even angry. You volunteered for this. You wanted to be a martyr… and one of Allah's blessed chosen!
Silver metal began running down the line of the seal, dripping on the deck beneath.
The reality, of course, was more complex than a hunger for the blessings of Paradise. His mother, his brother, and his sister back in Gaza would receive the equivalent of nearly ten thousand American dollars after his death — more money at one time than they could otherwise expect to see in their entire lives.
The first locking bar was cut through. Kneeling, he began cutting the second.
But he'd been expecting his martyr's death to be instant and painless — a single, sharp shock, a bright light… and Paradise would be opened to him. His understanding of radiation, however, was somewhat limited. He thought of it as a kind of poison that would seep from the container and slowly burn him, as if by a slow, roasting fire. Mustafa Abu Sayiq, who'd first recruited him in Gaza months before, had assured him that his death would be clean and mercifully swift. At the time, that has hardly seemed important; he would be providing for his family and striking a heroic blow against the hated West in the name of Allah, the merciful, the powerful.
The second locking bar was cut and Wahidi moved to the third. Cables dangling from the ceiling had been attached to massive eye hooks on the cylinder's end, to pull the heavy lid free when the locks were cut. The ship's traveling crane had been moved and the hatch cover on the forward deck opened, so that the container could be unloaded.
These casks, Wahidi had been told, were strongly built affairs, manufactured to standards set by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Each weighed nearly one hundred tons and was firmly bolted to the deck of the transport ship's hold to keep it from shifting during transit. Each, after its manufacture, was tested by being dropped nine meters onto an unyielding surface, immersed in fifteen meters of water for at least eight hours, and engulfed in flame at eight hundred degrees Celsius for thirty minutes. It was said that these casks could survive even the extreme pressures of the ocean's depths.
Inside those massive containers, the nuclear material was safe from just about anything Wahidi or the others could do to it. If they piled up all of the explosives they'd brought on board the Atlantis Queen and set them off at once, they might fling the cylinder into the air but still fail to breach it.
And so the contents of at least two of these forged steel canisters had to be removed from the layers of protective shielding and transported to the
Atlantis Queen. Several forklifts waited on the Sandpiper's deck now to effect the transfer.
The final locking bar was cut through. Wahidi switched off the torch, and he and Bekkali grabbed hold of the handles on the cylinder's end and pulled. With a slow sucking sound, the seal was breached and the metal disk came away.
Wahidi had been expecting fire or lightning bolts or something as evidence of the radiation spilling from the breached container, but he felt… nothing. Nothing at all. He looked at Bekkali again, and the other man shrugged and shook his head. He and Moritomi stood ready with a cargo sling, getting set to begin hauling the cylinders out and up to the ship's forward deck.
The interior of the large canister was dark. Wahidi had also been expecting some sort of magical blue glow.
There was nothing. No light. No fire… no death.
Grinning now with relief, Wahidi began to slide the first of the internal canisters out of the larger container.
Bridge, Pacific Sandpiper 47deg 20' N, 10deg 28' W Saturday, 2025 hours GMT
Alarms shrilled suddenly on the Sandpiper's bridge. Jamal Hasan, at the ship's wheel, and Abdel Ramid, beside him, both jumped at the sound, but Kozo Fuchida merely smiled.
"Radiation alarm," he said, reaching past Ramid to flick a switch. The shrill ringing stopped. "They have the first cylinder open."
"I didn't realize it would reach us herel" Ramid said. He sounded scared.
"It won't," Fuchida told him. "Or very little will, at any rate. The alarm is connected to sensors inside the ship's hold, to detect radiation leaks there. There actually will be little leakage when they transport the inner canisters across to the cruise ship."
"How much is 'very little'?" the shaken Ramid asked.
"Not enough to harm you. The inner containers are also well shielded against neutron radiation."
"Oh. That is good."
Another alarm shrilled, and Ramid switched it off, the motion almost casual.
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