by Cindy Dees
The SEAL glanced up at the wall chart. “Yes, that’s correct.”
Jack looked back at his boss. “What if we close the port and send everyone home. Then we could bring ashore a good chunk of that tender ship’s crew and have them replace the dock crew in Port-au-Prince. They’d know how to service the Grand Adventure. We could use other crew off the ship to pose as civilians, Haitian soldiers and random people moving around the dock.”
Wittenauer’s eyes lit up. “We only have about four hours to get everything in place. I don’t think the Haitians can order lunch in four hours. Although, I know the prime minister. In fact, he’s alive because I helped him out a while back, but even with his cooperation it’d still be tight.”
Jack shrugged. “I know a few people in Haiti who owe me favors. They could get the police to close the port quickly. The question is, can we get the crew of that tender into place in time?”
Lipton leaned forward. “I used to work for the captain of that vessel. He and his crew will get the job done. Especially if we tell them how many kids’ lives are at stake.”
Jack cleared his throat. “Perhaps a call to the White House is in order?”
Wittenauer grinned unrepentantly. “No time for that. Operational necessity dictates that I make a command decision, don’t you think?”
Jack grinned back, relieved. “Absolutely, sir.” And then he added, “Your head is going to roll after this operation is over.”
Wittenauer shrugged. “If I can save all those people, it’ll be a good way to go out. And some ops are worth sacrificing a career for. After all, what’s a little tin in the trash, eh?”
Jack snorted. Hell. From his end of the business, he was expected to be willing to sacrifice his life for most ops. Killing off his career was kid stuff by comparison.
Wittenauer turned to the comm specialist Jack had kicked out of his seat. “Sergeant Bell, patch me through to the prime minister of Haiti.”
Chapter 13
Aleesha pushed the door open with her back while she pulled the heavily laden cart of food. The kitchen staff had been more than happy to let her take a stint at facing the armed gunmen guarding the children. It was time to get a solid head count on the children in the kids’ adventure area. An eager cry went up behind her. Apparently, the arrival of lunch was a big event. One of the hijackers headed over to keep an eye on the distribution of the food. What? Like she was going to pass out butcher knives to five-year-olds? She recognized the guy as one of the Americans. She nodded pleasantly to him, and the guy looked taken aback. Hey. She was all about collaborating with the enemy if it threw the Tangos off balance.
As she handed out plates of macaroni and cheese, mixed vegetables and warm brownies, she assessed the children’s health and general well-being while counting them. They looked pretty strung out. The younger ones, in particular, were showing signs of severe mental strain. The SEALs needed to get in here in the next day or two and end this nightmare. Lord knew, she was doing her best to bring it to a close sooner rather than later.
The big, blond American reached for his ear. She recognized the telltale gesture. He was receiving a transmission and was blocking out the ambient noise of the excited kids.
“Are you Aleesha?” he snarled at her abruptly.
She started. “Uh, yes. Why?”
“Michael says to bring him lunch on the bridge in an hour. And it better be hot.”
“On the bridge,” she repeated. “Right. Hot. Yes, sir.”
The American didn’t seem to catch her sarcasm. Must have spent a lot of time in a rigid, militaristic environment where people were expected to react with such exaggerated deference. Some sort of extremist group, then. Even in the Special Forces, where military discipline was practically a religion, people didn’t suck up to their superiors like sycophants. There was mutual respect but a minimum of ass kissing.
“Get moving, woman!” the American barked at her.
Whoops. She’d just been standing there, thinking. A terrible transgression. Definitely a fanatic, this American. Michael was right. If all the Americans were this way, they’d be dangerous when it came to a shootout.
She finished passing out plates and waited the fifteen minutes or so it took the kids to start finishing their meals. She occupied herself by surreptitiously finding both of the room’s security cameras. They were tucked unobtrusively in the corners, high in opposite ends of the room. The far camera was right beside the emergency exits, which were currently chained shut, compliments of the terrorists. The near camera covered the area directly in front of the main entrance. She began collecting empty plates. One of the kids’ area staffers came over in her distinctive orange shirt to hand Aleesha her plate.
“How are the kids holding up?” Aleesha murmured.
“Ragged,” the girl murmured back, looking furtively at the guard.
“Don’t look at him. Stay here and help me,” Aleesha directed.
The girl did as she was told. They collected plates in silence for a few minutes and Aleesha kept an eye on the guard. When he moved away from them to look out a porthole, she said quickly, “Do your best to keep the kids calm and give the guards no trouble. Help is on the way.”
“Who are you?” the girl whispered back.
“Nobody important. Hang in there for just another day or two.” She might as well do what Michael had asked her to and pass on that message. If he was trying to pull some sort of stunt, it might be interesting to see where it led.
The guard noticed them speaking and strode back quickly, looking angry.
Continuing in the same low murmur as before, Aleesha said smoothly, “Okay, I’ve got this load of dishes. I’ll be back in a few minutes to collect the rest.” She nodded again at the guard and pushed her cart toward the door as if she hadn’t done a thing wrong. She caught the American’s frown and chuckled mentally. He didn’t know what to make of a woman who wasn’t cowering in fear before him and his big gun.
She made two more trips to the kids’ area to collect dishes. On the last trip, she was able to pass one more quick message to the kids’ staff girl that the moms on the ship sent their love to their kids. Then Mr. Grouchy swooped in again and ended any conversation.
Then it was time to take lunch up to Michael on the bridge. What was up with that? Clearly, he had something in mind. On a hunch she prepared a dozen plates of food. Michael had said there were always two, and sometimes more, Tangos on the bridge, and rumors among the female crew said a couple of female bridge officers were still alive up there, too.
She wheeled the cart to an elevator and rode up to the tenth deck. As she stepped outside into a brisk breeze, she was startled to see the distant smudge of land on the horizon. She peered through the haze. Yup, that was definitely the black hump of an island sticking out of the flat expanse of ocean. Must be Haiti, where they were due to dock this afternoon. Had Viktor changed the schedule? It was only a little after 1:00 p.m. Crap. If the SEALs had something planned for the Grand Adventure, was it about to get screwed up?
She hurried to the bridge door and rang the bell for entrance. A slight, dark-haired guy let her in. She put a name to him from this morning. Franco. A Frenchman. And if she didn’t miss her guess, an old friend of Viktor’s. Franco nodded at her but did not speak.
“You’re late,” Michael snapped from the captain’s seat.
She cast her gaze down and mumbled an apology. Jerk. He probably got a big kick out of ordering her around like this in public. “I brought food for everyone. I hope that’s all right.”
Michael nodded at her disdainfully, and she carried plates to the three women officers at a map table. She smiled reassuringly at them but said nothing. Franco took his plate into the security office in front of the bank of video monitors. And last, she carried Michael’s plate to him. His eyes glinted in amusement. It hadn’t escaped him that he got lunch last.
“What did you bring me to drink?”
“Hemlock,” she muttered under her breat
h.
He choked on a bite of grilled salmon and coughed hard. So. He had sharp hearing, did he? Served him right.
“Come over here and toss my salad for me. And cut it up into smaller pieces.”
She picked up his knife and fork and ran her finger down the edge of the knife blade, testing its sharpness. She looked down pointedly at his lap, and set off another fit of coughing in the poor guy. She duly tossed and diced his salad and then murmured, “Do you need me to feed it to you? You seem to be having trouble swallowing today.”
He glanced over his shoulder at Franco, and she did the same. The guy was engrossed in whatever he was watching.
“Are we early to Haiti?” she asked Michael quietly.
“No. Viktor wants to loiter out here for a while and see if any Navy vessels try to jump us.”
“Let me guess. He’s hoping they will, so he can kill some hostages and toss their bodies out of Port-au-Prince in front of the cameras.”
“Probably,” Michael agreed.
Franco came out of the security office to get a drink, and Aleesha drifted over to the three women from the Grand Adventure. “Can I get any of you anything?”
Gratitude shone in all their gazes. Inger answered, “A machine gun would be nice right about now.”
Aleesha grinned and took a look around the bridge. “I dunno. There might be special satisfaction in using, say, that crash ax to dismember a few of these assholes. Or I might enjoy koshing them over the head with that nice, heavy sextant. Particularly the Englishman.”
Aleesha was startled when Gwyn, the hospitality director shook her head in the negative. “Not him. He’s a decent guy. He takes good care of us and seems to be trying to keep the bloodshed down.” She added in a half whisper, “He’s the only one of them who’s not crazy.”
“Really? How interesting.”
“Enough talking over there,” Michael barked.
Aleesha turned quickly. Yikes. Viktor had just stepped onto the bridge along with several other Tangos. She did a quick face check. Hot damn! Three more faces they hadn’t identified yet. She carefully memorized the features of the three men. Only one more Tango to ID if Michael’s number of twenty-four was accurate, and then the Medusas would have spotted the entire badguy contingent. Not bad for less than two days’ work.
One of the Tangos caught her looking at him, and she bowed her head immediately. Time to do her submissive act again. She took the three women officers’ plates and carried them to her serving cart. While she was there, she picked up the pitcher of fresh-squeezed lemonade she’d brought and poured glasses for the half-dozen hijackers now standing on the bridge, staring expectantly at the coast of Haiti and the ocean around them.
Sorry, boys. The Navy isn’t that dumb. They’re not about to give you any excuse to kill anyone. If Viktor wanted to spill blood, he was going to have to take the heat and the responsibility for it all by himself. She glided around the room for the next hour, refilling glasses, passing around cookies and generally cleaning up the bridge. When nobody kicked her out after the first few minutes, she figured they’d accepted her presence up here. Amazing how the hired help was invisible to these men. Elitist bastards.
At about two-thirty, Viktor pointed at the communications console, and Michael stepped forward. He calmly requested permission from the Port-au-Prince harbormaster to make an unscheduled fuel stop.
A familiar voice replied, “Say reason for this stop, Grand Adventure.”
That was Jack Scatalone! She’d know him anywhere, even with the darned close-to-authentic Caribbean accent he was laying on. She’d been yelled at by that voice more times than she could count. What were he and the SEALs up to? She listened as Jack duly gave the ship permission to dock and assigned them a pier.
One of the hijackers went to the navigation table and bent underneath it. Aleesha frowned, confused, until she saw the guy pull out a key and unlock a chain from around the table’s center post. Inger Johannson stood up and made her way to the bridge controls, dragging a chain on her right ankle. Michael stood right behind her, watching her every move.
Aleesha’s gaze narrowed. Maybe he was British Navy before he went SIS. He acted like he knew precisely what was supposed to happen in the docking procedure.
Inger spoke up hesitantly. “Normally the captain would go outside and stand on that little porch over there. He calls out distances as we approach the dock. I’m likely to hit the pier without that guidance.”
Michael looked around the room and his gaze lighted on Aleesha. “You. Go outside and make the calls.”
She gaped at him in shock. She didn’t know the first thing about docking a giant ship like this! She was a support weenie in the Navy, not a field officer, and certainly not a bridge officer.
“Go!” he snapped.
It made sense. The hijackers wouldn’t put one of their men in such an exposed position where he could be shot. And they wouldn’t risk one of the ship’s officers revealing critical information to the dock workers below. She lurched into motion, stepping out onto a tiny balcony, barely a meter square. Oh, God. The floor was made of glass. A wave of vertigo slammed into her as she gazed straight down at the water ten stories below. She grabbed hold of the wooden railing, its sleekly varnished surface smooth under her hand. How hard could it be to guide the ship? All she had to do was yell out how far from the dock they were. She was standing directly over the starboard railing, about a hundred feet back from the prow. It couldn’t be any trickier than brain surgery.
But it came damned close. She constantly had to check herself against other reference points as the ship crept into the dock. At least Inger was bringing in the ship nice and slow.
The Norwegian woman called through the open door. “Tell me when the prow draws even with the end of the pier. That’s when I’ll throw the engines into reverse.”
Aleesha nodded her understanding. The flat, wooden structure drew near. A few people moved around like ants, little more than specks far below. There! The Grand Adventure’s nose had pulled parallel to the dock. “Now!” Aleesha shouted.
The ship vibrated, and a dull, grinding noise rumbled through the vessel’s hull. Ever so slowly, the prow of the ship slowed. The shore drew closer and closer. Crap! She hadn’t called soon enough. The ship was going to ram right into the big warehouse on the dock. Sweat popped out on her brow, and she wished desperately for a brake pedal that would stop the mighty ship’s ponderous progress.
And then it was over. The ship came to a halt smack dab in the middle of the dock. A longshoreman ran up beside the ship, picked up a thick rope dangling from the ship’s prow, and tossed it over a giant hook on the dock. A metallic rattle erupted, and Aleesha jumped. Belatedly, she recognized the sound of an anchor lowering into the water. Some naval officer she was. Didn’t even know an anchor when she heard one. And she’d bet real Navy officers didn’t about pee their pants while docking a ship. Amazing that she and Inger had done it. They’d safely docked the Grand Adventure.
Aleesha’s knees felt weak as she stepped back onto the bridge. That was even scarier than the first time she’d cut into a living patient. She glanced over at the Norwegian woman. Inger looked ready to throw up. Must have been her first solo docking, too.
Michael caught her gaze and gave the briefest of nods, then turned to Viktor. He said casually, “It’s time to send out the hostages and demonstrate your magnanimity to the world.”
Viktor laughed loudly, startling Aleesha. He bellowed between gusts of humor, “I’m a lot of things Michael, my boy, but magnanimous is not one of them! What the hell. Go ahead. Toss them off my ship.”
Aleesha was startled when Michael turned to her. “Go with the Montfort boys. Collect every child under the age of three, every woman over the age of sixty and anyone who’s sick. Assemble them at the forward hatch on deck two.” He added warningly, “I’m going to stay here and monitor the cameras to make sure there’s no shenanigans. Hurry along with you.”
And
here she’d been wondering how she was going to get off the bridge so she could keep an eye on the women and children waiting to leave the ship. Three brawny Frenchmen stepped forward. The Montforts. They all had cruel eyes and didn’t look like the brightest bulbs in the bin. Lovely. “Shall we, gentlemen?” she said lightly.
She stepped off the bridge, and the magnitude of actually getting nearly 150 passengers off the ship hit her. She turned to face the Montfort brothers. “Tell you what. Rather than you gents running all over the ship trying to collect hostages, why don’t you go down to the hatch and I’ll send the hostages to you?”
One of the brutes looked skeptical, but the other two nodded readily enough. They turned to head for Deck 2 and she took off in the other direction before they could pool their collective brainpower enough to reconsider. She’d expected at least one of them to tag along with her. But, hey. She wouldn’t look this gift horse in the mouth. She hastened to the kids’ area and told the staff it was time to go. They started sorting out the little kids to bring them to the hatch.
To the guards in the kids’ area, she explained, “Viktor wants the little kids off the ship. You’re to stay here with weapons on the older kids to ensure everyone’s cooperation. The orange shirts will walk the children down to the forward hatch on Deck 2 and then come back here. If they fail to do so, you have permission to start shooting. You can radio Michael or Viktor on the bridge to confirm this.”
The guy who acted like the leader of the bunch frowned but made the radio call. In a moment he nodded to the others. “She’s telling the truth.”
God, Michael was brilliant. Step by step he was establishing her credibility with the hijackers and setting her up as a collaborator to be trusted. She didn’t know what she’d do with that trust once she had it, but it couldn’t be a bad thing.
Now, to collect the women. Viktor had elected not to make a general announcement over the loud speakers for fear of triggering a stampede. He’d opted to notify by word of mouth only as many hostages as could be rounded up in ten or fifteen minutes. Little did he know that Aleesha had spent several hours immediately after the hijackers’ staff meeting spreading the word to the appropriate people—including the moms of all the toddlers and infants who would play sick and get off the ship with their children.