Sea of Terror (33 page)

"So what do you think, David?" Vandergrift asked. "Should we ... 'roll'?"

He shook his head. "Whatever these people are planning on doing, they're ready for the long haul."

"What makes you say that?"

Llewellyn raised his hands, exposing his wrists. "They untied us. They let us use the loo ... and gave us mattresses to sleep on. Not the Queen's usual luxurious accommodations, certainly, but it shows they're going to keep us for a while."

"How long, I wonder?"

"Depends on where we're headed, I guess. America? The Med? Maybe back to England?"

"We were on a westerly heading," Vandergrift said. "I got a glimpse of the sun when they brought me down here. America."

"So that's five days to a week, depending on our speed."

"You think they're going to hold us down here that long?"

"I think they're prepared to. I think we're here to guarantee the good behavior of the skipper and maybe the rest of the passengers."

"Which suggests we need to make a break somehow. . . ."

"Not if it gets us all killed, Charles," Llewellyn said, shaking his head. "Anyway, before too long, somebody's going to notice that we're not oncourse for the Med anymore. They may stage a rescue mission."

"You think so?"

"I hope so. I think this is one we need to leave to the professionals."

Vandergrift looked again at the guards watching from the balconies. They seemed to be interested in an argument developing between Bernstein and the Harper woman.

"That could still get bloody," Vandergrift said. "Commandos storming in here? The terrorists might open fire on the crowd."

"We'll need to think about ways we can minimize casualties," Llewellyn said, thoughtful. "Maybe try to disperse everyone in small groups, as much as they'll let us. Warn them not to jump up in the line of fire if shooting starts."

"We could do that, yeah," Vandergrift said. "Make a list of things to do and not do. Pass the word on a few people at a time."

"And we can think about grabbing weapons when the time comes," Llewellyn added. "It's all a question of being ready when things go down."

"I agree."

Llewellyn found himself looking across the theater, halfway up the ranks of seats. Tricia was up there, sitting in an aisle seat, and one of the terrorists was talking with her. The man said something ... and Tricia smiled, the expression startling Llewellyn. What the hell?...

The terrorist, he saw now, was not one of the two who'd broken in on the two of them in her stateroom yesterday. This one was young, with little more than fuzz on his cheeks instead of the beards or heavy mustaches sported by most of the others.

It was tough to see their captors as individuals. The guns, the attitudes, the broken English all combined to turn them into faceless, threatening shadows.

But there were differences. That one, for instance, was almost painfully young, and he seemed to be treating Tricia with a measure of deference. The two who'd captured them--especially the leering one--had been quite different. There was an interesting difference. The leering terrorist had been all but drooling over the attractive women; that kid looked like he was almost afraid of them. From what Llewellyn knew of Arab, cultures, there was a tendency to treat women as second-class citizens ... but the teachings of their Qur'an, he'd heard, tended to stress women's equality. Most of the Muslim men he'd known in England seemed to think of women as almost their equals; he suspected that the real difference lay not in the religion but in the myriad native cultures beneath the Islamic overlay, in peoples as mutually alien as Moroccans, Egyptians, Syrians, and Afghans.

This lot seemed pretty diverse. Ghailiani was Moroccan. He thought Khalid might be Egyptian ... or possibly Saudi. Was there a way to use that, to drive wedges between their individual captors?

Was that what Tricia was doing?

She glanced his way and caught his gaze. He saw again the anger flash in her eyes.

Maybe, he thought, they should be thinking about the wedges driven in between the individual captives instead. He didn't like to think it, but it might be necessary to be careful when it came time to sharing escape plans with the others.

The guard said something and Tricia laughed

Bridge, Atlantis Queen

North Atlantic 47deg 59' N, 18deg 14' W Sunday, 1730 hours GMT

Khalid leaned over the electronic chart table and drew the line again, just to be certain. He nodded, satisfied, then looked up at Aziz. "Is everything ready?"

"Yes, Amir." He nodded toward the bridge window. On the Atlantis Queen's forward deck, two lonely figures stood next to the starboard side railing. "As you ordered."

"Bring him here, then."

Aziz left the bridge and returned a few moments later, leading Phillips at gunpoint. He watched the captain's eyes as the man saw him standing next to the chart, saw those eyes widen ever so slightly. He's afraid. Good.. ..

"Perhaps, Captain, you would be so good as to explain something to me."

"Perhaps you would tell me what you are doing with my people! Your thugs just came up and dragged Jason out of the wardroom."

"First, Captain," Khalid snapped, "you will tell me why you tampered with the compass this morning!"

"I... I told you. It needed to be calibrated."

Khalid sighed. "Captain Phillips ... do I look stupid? Or do you simply assume Arabs don't understand technology?" He touched a control on the chart table, and a yellow line drew itself across the curve of the Earth's globe, sliding just south of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the hook of Cape Cod, before coming to a halt a few miles south of Long Island and the entrance to New York Harbor. "This is the course I ordered you to set."

He touched the control again and drew a second line, one that diverged slightly from the first, to the north, a line that diverged farther and farther as the miles slipped past until it came to a halt smack against the coastline of Newfoundland, well to the north of Cape Race.

"And this is the course you recalibrated for us this morning. Do you notice a difference in our destination?"

Phillips said nothing, his jaw tightening.

"Did you think I would fail to notice, Captain? Your change would have put us over a hundred miles too far north. Were you planning some sort of distraction, to keep us from realizing you were attempting to run these ships aground?"

"Please, Amir Khalid," Phillips said. His voice quavered just a bit. "Please. I'm afraid that. .. that you intend to use these ships as a weapon, somehow. An attack on New York City. If that's true, my passengers and crew are dead no matter what."

Khalid seemed to consider this. "Come here," he said after a moment. "Look out the window. What do you see?"

Phillips looked out over the forward deck. Hijazi had the prisoner on his knees, facing away from him, his hands zip-stripped behind his back. "Who ... who is that?"

"That is one of your helmsmen, Captain. Jason Miller. He was at the wheel, I believe, when you changed the compass."

Khalid pulled a handheld radio from a belt holster, pressed the send key, and said something in Arabic.

"Wait!" Phillips said. "Please--"

A sharp crack sounded from outside, the shot slightly muffled by distance and the glass. Jason Miller flopped forward, striking the ship's railing, then slumped back in an untidy huddle at his executioner's feet. The gunman slung his AK, then proceeded to lift Miller's body up, press it against the railing, and topple it over and into the sea far below.

"You murderer!" Phillips snarled, turning suddenly from the bloody scene. Several of Khalid's men on the bridge stepped forward, weapons coming up.

"Do you wish to die as well, Captain?"

Phillips stopped in mid-stride, his fists clenched, breathing hard.

"If you wish, I will kill you as well, and bring your second in command up here in your place." His head cocked to one side. "Or... it may even be that I don't need you any longer. The ship continues to run smoothly and well. It will be simple enough to get it back on its proper course." He paused, as though thinking about it. "I choose to let you live for the moment, Captain," he said at last. "I may have need of you when we reach New York."

Reaching for a small device in a second holster on his belt, he extracted a handheld GPS receiver. "I have my own means of determining our position, Captain. And I can easily compare this with the numbers on your various instruments here. I can read a map, and some of my people are quite good with computers.

"In short, Captain Phillips, this operation has been most carefully planned and orchestrated. We know what we are doing. Do not attempt to trick me again! Do you understand?"

Phillips said nothing.

"I said, do you understand? Or shall I bring another member of your crew onto the forward deck? How many must I shoot before you obey me?"

"All right! All right! I understand!"

"Good." He looked at Aziz and jerked his head. "Take him back to his room," he said in Arabic.

When Phillips was gone, Khalid stood for a moment looking out over the ocean. Five more days and then it would be over. It was going to be hard keeping the majority of the crew and passengers ignorant of what was happening .. . and sooner or later they would find out or figure it out, and then it would be a matter of keeping them all cowed.

Just five more days ...

And then none of it would matter anymore.

Chapter 18

National Security Council

White House basement

Washington, D. C.

Monday, 1030 hours EST

"the president," dr. bing said, "was most emphatic. Both ships belong to Great Britain. The problem is theirs as well."

Rubens' jaw tightened, and he made an effort to keep his voice calm. "Madam Chairperson," he said, "I cannot stress this enough. That decision is shortsighted and it is wrong. If I could just have ten minutes with the President--"

"That is not going to happen, Mr. Rubens," Bing told him, and the tone of her voice had the finality of a slamming door. "He was very clear on the matter."

"London has indicated that they are ready to go in with an SAS assault sometime tonight," George Wehrum added. "We will support their operation by sharing intelligence, by providing logistical support, and by making available ships and helicopters to evacuate crew members and passengers from those vessels and to provide medical support when and if that becomes necessary."

"How are you going to evacuate over three thousand people in the middle of the North Atlantic?" Rubens asked. He looked around the room, trying to gauge the mood of the rest of the people at the conference table. It was crowded here, more crowded than it had been on Saturday morning.

"By aircraft carrier, of course," Wehrum said. "The Ark Royal is in pursuit of the target vessels now. And the USS Eisenhower--she was en route from Norfolk to the Med--she's been redirected and should rendezvous with the British squadron within twenty-four hours."

"What, are you planning on building a tent city on the Ike's flight deck?" Admiral Prendergast asked, his tone sarcastic and possibly angry as well. Rubens wondered if the order to the Eisenhower had bypassed Prendergast on the way down.

"If necessary," Bing told him. "However, it almost certainly will not be necessary. The SAS is very, very good at what they do."

Rubens could only shake his head. While an aircraft carrier was big enough to carry several thousand people-- the Eisenhower had a complement of over fifty-six hundred--it would be an absolute nightmare trying to house, feed, and care for the needs of thousands of civilians as well. And that didn't even begin to address his original question, which was how the Navy would get those civilians off of the Atlantis Queen and onto the Eisenhower in the first place. They would not be able to transfer directly, not without risking a lot of damage to both ships. Personnel could be transferred by helicopter, but there would be only a few of those available, and each could carry only a handful of people--perhaps twelve to fifteen--at a time.

There was also a serious logistical question. If the Eisenhower's flight deck was covered with refugees, there wouldn't be room to handle flight operations--and there would be no place for the necessary small fleet of helicopters to land. No wonder Prendergast was pissed.

Of course, Bing was right in one respect. It probably wouldn't be necessary to evacuate the Atlantis Queen.

Either the SAS assault would be successful and the cruise ship secured ... or the terrorists on board would push a button and blow her up.

There was also the question of the Pacific Sandpiper and her deadly cargo. The terrorists must be planning on using the plutonium somehow, if only as a bargaining chip.

"What about the Pacific SandpiperT General Barton said, as if he'd just read Rubens' mind. "Suppose the terrorists are using the nuclear material on board to make a bomb?"

"I believe Dr. Cavenaugh has a report on that issue," Bing said. "Doctor?"

Dr. Bruce Cavenaugh was a member of the Atomic Energy Commission and served as an advisor on nuclear threats both to the NCTC and to Homeland Security. A rumpled man in a tweed jacket, the very image of an elderly professor, Cavenaugh stood to address the group, moving around to the lectern at the front of the room with a double handful of notes and folders before him.

"We've been reviewing the possibilities," he told the group, "given PNTL's cargo manifest for the Pacific Sandpiper While it's been widely reported that the ship carries enough plutonium to manufacture as many as fifty or sixty nuclear weapons, there is almost no chance at all that terrorists on board those two ships could create such a weapon themselves. For a nuclear explosion to be generated, two sub-critical masses of plutonium must be brought together very suddenly and very precisely. This requires precision tooling, and a means of reshaping the plutonium elements to achieve maximum effect. Usually, this means two hemispheres--imagine a ball cut in half--positioned so that conventional explosives slam the two halves together." He brought his hands together in a sharp clap, and several people at the table jumped slightly. "They achieve critical mass, and a nuclear explosion is the result. A second method is to machine a sphere of plutonium with a precisely drilled hole into which a plutonium cylinder is fired. A third would be to have one sphere of plutonium positioned inside a larger, hollow sphere, with conventional explosives around the outside to create a powerful implosion.