Fuchida didn't bother telling Ramid that, in fact, the three of them on the bridge were now receiving a fairly sizeable dose of hard radiation. It wasn't enough to make them sick, not yet. That would come with accumulated exposure over a period of time… in this case, a period of several days or even as much as a week.
And a week from now they would be at their final destination, and nothing would matter to any of them anymore.
Of course the men in the special technical unit — Chujiro Moritomi and the volunteers from among Khalid's Muslims — were already dying.
Stateroom 4116, Atlantis Queen 47deg 08' N, 10deg 36' W Saturday, 2120 hours GMT
Nina McKay leaned against the railing of her private balcony, looking down into the night. An overcast sky and night-shrouded ocean surrounded her, but bright work lights on the deck of the smaller freighter immediately below her stateroom cast dazzling pools of light over the other ship's deck and illuminated several men working beside the open maw of one of the large deck cargo hatches.
She had a deeply uneasy feeling about all of this. Those men — many in military uniforms and carrying weapons openly — and the presence of that other ship still tied to the Atlantis Queen's side, plus the sudden, terrifying drama of that jet plane shot down earlier in the day, all of it added up to one thing: something was terribly wrong.
Nina hadn't seen the downing of the aircraft; she, Andrew, and Melissa had been in the mall on the first deck, where the only windows were huge stained-glass panels high up in the gallery's overarching walls. But she'd heard about it from other frightened passengers and from the announcement over the ship's PA. She was still shaken by that nightmare crush, by the pounding fear that Melissa might be trampled in the crowd.
Turning, Nina looked back into the stateroom, lit now by a single night-light. Melissa was asleep on the huge bed with her favorite stuffed animal, a war-weary, much-patched, much-loved gray tiger kitten, cuddled tight against her cheek. When the panic had begun, Andrew had scooped Melissa off the deck with one arm, grabbed Nina's hand with the other, and plowed his way through the press of bodies by sheer brute strength.
Andrew could be… dominating sometimes. He had what she'd laughingly called a white-knight complex, a need to gallop in full tilt, take charge, and fix things whenever there was a problem. It had driven her nuts throughout the eleven years of their marriage and was a large part of why she'd left him, that and his need to always know everything and always be right. She didn't like other people taking charge of her life and telling her what to do, what she needed to do to straighten out her life. It was so much… so much like her mother…
Right now, though, Nina thought she would appreciate some macho counsel, or a bit of well-meaning knight-errantry. Protecting her daughter, keeping her safe, was Nina's single driving need right now, and she had no idea how to do it. She knew something was wrong, but she didn't know what, and with all that black and empty ocean out there, she had no place safe to run.
The men on the deck of the small ship alongside were hoisting,something out of the hold — a bundle of cylinders each perhaps six feet long, dull-gleaming under the work lights like lead.
Pirates, looting the ship's cargo? It was all she could imagine, and the guns those men had slung over their shoulders made the thought credible.
Leaving the balcony, she quietly slipped across the stateroom, first checking on Melissa's quiet breathing, then moving to the door that connected them with the stateroom next door.
Very, very softly she rapped on the door. "Andrew? Andrew, we need to talk."
The door swung open a moment later.
Pyramid Club Casino, Atlantis Queen 46deg 59' N, 11deg 08' W
Saturday, 2212 hours GMT
As Jerry Esterhausen sat at the Pyramid Bar in his tweed jacket and blue jeans, watching the crowd in the casino, he was becoming more and more worried. There was something wrong.
Rosie was functioning brilliantly, dealing out the cards at the blackjack table with slick, sure precision, bantering with the customers as she did so, but the problem was that there weren't that many players. Most of the people in the casino that evening were gathered in small groups, clustered around dining tables or at the bar or within the faux jungle at the front of the room. Not even the patter of a stand-up comedian on the stage an hour earlier had lightened the atmosphere, which felt oppressive and claustrophobic.
People were scared.
At first, Esterhausen had been primarily worried that Rosie wasn't drawing in the players as CyberAge's marketing department had promised. A failure at the tables on this cruise, a lack of rich suckers willing to put their money on the table and bet they could come closer to 21 than a vivacious machine, might translate as a lack of orders for CyberAge's products, and even a cancellation of the contract with Royal Sky Line.
Sitting at the bar watching the customers, though, had convinced Esterhausen that the problem wasn't Rosie. Snatches of overheard conversation whispered about the crash of that Royal Navy jet, the mysterious activity on board the freighter tied up alongside, and the appearance of ominously garbed and armed security guards. Esterhausen turned his head to look aft through the huge glass doors and windows there, out onto the Queen's Deck Nine fantail. The ship's Atlas swimming pool was located out there, along with two hot tubs. Normally, both pool and spas would have full complements of swimmers and soakers taking advantage of the night air. There were no passengers out there at all, however, not now.
But there were two of the bearded, khaki-clad guards standing near the glass, with their black berets and black and orange assault rifles very much in evidence. They lent a sinister presence that overshadowed the crowd in the casino. Esterhausen saw how people at the tables nearby kept glancing outside, and how worried they seemed when each glance confirmed that the guards were still there.
Security guards off the Pacific Sandpiper, the announcement earlier that evening had claimed. But the Sandpiper was British-flagged, and these guys didn't look British. They weren't American or Israeli, either. Esterhausen would have guessed they were Egyptian, Jordanian, or from some other Middle Eastern nation.
He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned in his bar seat as Sandy Markham sat down next to him. She looked scared, and her eyes were red, as if she'd been crying.
"What's wrong, Sandy?"
"Hi, Jerry," she said. "I… I'm not sure. Things are kind of crazy."
He nodded toward the glass doors. "You mean with those armed thugs on board?"
"Among other things."
"Something's happened," he told her, sensing that she was holding something back. "What?"
She glanced around the room. "I think — " She stopped. "You can't tell the other passengers, Jerry. I don't want to start a panic. Or a massacre… "
"A massacrel.. "
She laid a hand on his arm. "Shh! Jerry! Please!"
"Sorry. But what the hell are — "
"About four hours ago, some of us were getting worried, you know? Calls to the bridge weren't being answered. And we couldn't find some of the crew. David Llewellyn, the head of Ship's Security? We can't find him anywhere!"
Esterhausen frowned. "Don't you guys have some sort of super high-tech ID locator on this ship? A way to tell where everyone is at any time?"
"Yes. That's why we were looking for David! The Security Office wasn't answering calls! And the passageways up on Deck Eleven, leading to Security, have all been closed off. There are armed guards up there!"
"Shit."
"So the CD, Sharon Reilly? She said she was going up to the bridge and talk to Captain Phillips. That was four hours ago, and she hasn't come back! We've tried calling her, and she's not answering her phone. Jerry, I don't know what to do!"
Esterhausen was watching the guards outside. He nodded slowly. "Well, the first thing, Sandy, is not to panic."
"But what's happening? What does that ship tied up alongside have to do with us? Are they pirates? Terrorists?"
<
br /> "I think," he said slowly, "that we've been hijacked, and the bad guys just haven't bothered to tell us yet."
"Hijacked!"
It was Esterhausen's turn to lay a cautioning hand on Markham's arm. "Like I said. Don't panic. There are a couple of thousand of us, and only a few of them. We can do something about this."
"Jerry, they have machine guns!"
"Yeah. But there still can't be more than a few dozen of them. They can't possibly control all of us. And if we know what's happening, maybe we can… I don't know. Hide someplace. This is a big ship, lots of hiding spaces. We can figure out how to strike back."
"You're forgetting something."
"What?"
"If they're in control of security, they know where all of us are. They'd know immediately if some of us tried to hide."
"Then we'll have to figure something out. Flight Ninety-three."
"Flight Ninety-three? What's that?"
"Nine-eleven?"
"The World Trade Center bombing?"
"You remember the airliner that crashed in Pennsylvania?"
"I'm English, Jerry. And I was a teenaged girl in Woking then."
"Oh. Right. The terrorists hijacked four planes that morning. Two crashed into the World Trade Center. A third hit the Pentagon, in Washington. The fourth was Flight Ninety-three. It was hijacked over Ohio someplace. They turned it around and were flying toward Washington, D. C. We're not sure, but the terrorists were planning on crashing into either the White House or the Capitol Building.
"Anyway, the passengers knew something was wrong, and they used their cell phones to talk to friends and family on the ground. They learned about the WTC and Pentagon attacks, and figured out that their airliner was a part of it.
"So they stormed the cockpit. One of the passengers was heard to say, 'Let's roll.' It became a kind of a battle cry for the whole nation."
"What happened?"
He shrugged. "We'll never know. They broke into the cockpit. There was a struggle. And the plane crashed in a field in western Pennsylvania. Everyone on board was killed."
"God… "
"The point is.. the passengers of that airliner refused to just roll over and be victims. They did something. And we can, too."
He continued to watch the guards outside, his mind turning furiously.
Bridge, Atlantis Queen 46deg 59' N, 11deg 08' W
Saturday, 2212 hours GMT
Khalid stood behind Captain Phillips, who was leaning over the large electronic chart table at the back of the bridge. At the moment, the table's display showed in glowing blues and yellows a stretch of ocean 600 miles across. The tip of the Brittany coast of France lay 250 miles to the east, while the Scilly Islands and Cornwall were slowly receding astern, 270 miles distant.
"This is our position," Phillips told him, pointing to the end of a yellow line stretching southwest into the North Atlantic. "About forty-seven degrees north, about eleven degrees west."
"I see. And how far are we from New York?"
Phillips looked startled. "New York? New York City?"
"Yes."
The ship's captain appeared to wrestle with this information for a moment, then used a stylus to touch the ship's current position and dragged it across the plastic surface of the map. The software automatically zoomed out until the curvature of the Earth came into view on the screen, showing the coastlines of Europe as far as Greece and Scandanavia, much of northwestern Africa, and, to the west, half of Canada and the United States, as well as much of the Caribbean.
As Phillips dragged the stylus, a yellow line extended with it, connecting the Queen's current position with Manhattan. The line bowed slightly, following the Great Circle, passing just to the south of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, then down past Cape Cod and Long Island.
"How far?" Khalid asked as Phillips straightened up.
Phillips tapped a menu box, and the answer appeared on the navigation screen. "About twenty-seven hundred nautical miles," he said.
"And how long will that take?"
"At fifteen knots?" He tapped out the calculation on the display and read the result. "One hundred eighty hours," he said. "That's about seven and a half days."
"A week. And how much faster could we get there if we increased our speed?"
"Increased it by how much?"
"The Pacific Sandpiper seems to be riding alongside quite well," Khalid said. "I propose we increase speed to, say, twenty knots."
"I don't know if we can manage that."
"I understand. But if we could?"
Phillips tapped out another calculation. "Five-point-six days. Say.. five days, fifteen hours."
Khalid's mouth worked silently for a moment. "So, at twenty knots, we could reach New York by next Friday, sometime in the afternoon?"
"Yes. But I can't recommend that."
"Why not?"
"I can't predict the stress on this vessel caused by dragging that freighter. And it will take a lot more fuel to move that much weight, at that much higher a speed."
"Would you have enough fuel to make it?"
Again Phillips worked out the calculation. "Yes." He said the word reluctantly. "Barely, but yes."
"Then that is what we will do," Khalid told him. "Give the order, please, to come to this new course."
"Helm," Phillips said, his sense of dread growing swiftly deeper. "Come to new heading… two-six-zero, please."
"Coming to new heading two-six-zero, Captain. Aye, aye."
The helmsman put the wheel over, and the liner slowly began to edge onto her new course.
After several moments, the helmsman announced, "We're on new course two-six-zero, sir."
"Increase speed… slowly… to two-zero knots."
"Coming to two-zero knots, slowly, Captain. Aye, aye."
God, what did this man want with them, steering a course for New York City?
The Pacific Sandpiper was carrying radioactive nuclear material. The men who'd captured both vessels were obviously Islamic fanatics.
The only conclusion Phillips could imagine was that these men intended an attack against New York City, a nuclear attack, an attack that would make the horror of 9/11 pale by comparison.
And Captain Phillips realized now that he might well have to choose between trying to save his crew and passengers.. and saving New York City.
Chapter 17
Cabin 27, Pacific Sandpiper North Atlantic 47deg 11' N, 14deg 57'W Sunday, 0920 hours GMT
Kozo Fuchida sat next to Moritomi's bunk. "There are doctors on the other ship," he said earnestly. "They might be able to help."
"There is a doctor on this ship," Moritomi replied. "Believe me, my friend. There is nothing any of them can do."
Chujiro Moritomi had begun showing signs of radiation poisoning only hours after the radioactive canisters had been transferred to the passenger ship. His face was flushed; the skin of his hands and arms was red and shiny, as though he'd received a bad sunburn. During the night he'd started vomiting. Fuchida didn't understand the science of it. That had been Moritomi's area of expertise, since he'd worked for several years at the Rokkasho nuclear plant. "I thought you had to breathe the powder to be hurt by it," Fuchida said.
The principal danger inherent in those metal tubes of plutonium oxides, Fuchida had been told, came with breathing the stuff, which had been described as the most toxic material known to man. Conventional high explosives would throw a cloud of dust into the air above Manhattan, and prevailing winds would carry the stuff in a deadly footprint up the New England coast.
But apparently those cylinders were leaking fairly high levels of gamma radiation as well, radiation enough to cook any unprotected individual who handled them.
"We weren't told.. everything," Moritomi said. "The Arabs were terrified. They thought the radiation would kill them right away." He started coughing, and a smear of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth. "They're going to wish it had been right away."
"Khalid lied to u
s?"
"He may simply not have known what to expect. Or perhaps some of those cylinders hold something more concentrated, more deadly, than simple MOX powder, and our intelligence wasn't good enough." He shrugged. "None of it matters now, of course."
Fuchida's gaze slipped to the small table beside Moritomi's bunk, which was empty except for the compact deadliness of a Walther P5 pistol. "Of course."
"Our omi," the sick man said, "remains."
Fuchida nodded. He touched Moritomi's shoulder. "I'll be back to check on you after a while."
Moritomi didn't answer, and Fuchida wondered if he'd fallen asleep. Fuchida let himself out of the cabin, one of the single berthing compartments for the ship's officers, quietly.
But as he was walking away down the passageway, he heard a single loud, sharp shot from the room.
Bridge, Atlantis Queen North Atlantic 47deg 11' N, 14deg 57' W Sunday, 0940 hours GMT
Captain Phillips and helmsman Jason Miller walked back onto the bridge, escorted by the terrorist Khalid had called Aziz. Phillips felt dirty and tired; he'd gotten little sleep the night before.
Since the takeover of his bridge almost twenty-four hours earlier, Miller, Phillips, and four others of his regular bridge crew personnel had been kept imprisoned in the officer's wardroom aft of the bridge. An adjoining bunkroom used by duty officers served for sleeping and hygienic considerations, and members of the ship's catering staff brought meals — under guard — up from the forward galley.
Staff Captain Vandergrift, four more bridge officers, eight security and ship's computer personnel, and two surviving radio operators had all… vanished. Khalid had ordered them taken away at gunpoint, and, so far, Phillips had been unable to learn what had become of them.
As the hours passed, their safety weighed more and more heavily in his thoughts.
Apparently, the hijackers were determined to keep the bulk of the ship's passengers and crew in the dark concerning what had happened. The armed guards wore military-style uniforms, and a few were wearing shipboard security uniforms. Khalid or one of his men made occasional intercom announcements from the bridge or radio room, announcements crafted to convince the floating city of the Queen that all was well, that the Atlantis Queen was rendering assistance to a vessel in distress, that the ship soon would be back on her regular course.
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