Sea Of Terror (2010)

by Stephen - Deep Black 08 Coonts

Ever since the assault group had taken over the bridge, they'd been finding the Atlantis Queen's security personnel, the real ones, and taking them, one by one, to the Neptune Theater, where they were being kept under close guard. The ship's officers were being held in one of the ship's two conference centers on Deck One, as were those few crew members who'd realized something was wrong and come to the bridge or to Security to report it. At this point, the Atlantis Queen was completely under the hijackers' control. Only the passengers, the hotel staff, and a few dozen crew personnel on the engineering levels and in the service sections remained free, and with a little luck they could be kept ignorant for a few precious hours more.

  And after that, it wouldn't matter what they knew.

  That would be the beginning of phase four.

  Bridge, Atlantis Queen 48deg 25' N, 9deg 28' W Saturday, 1614 hours GMT

  They led Fred Doherty and James Petrovich forward to the bridge, passing through two separate checkpoints where one of the men had to slide a card through a reader. He wondered how they'd managed to get those security IDs. At the final checkpoint, the gunman who appeared to be in charge slid his card through a scanner and pressed his thumb against a print reader; somehow, these people had gained high-level security access throughout the ship.

  They had to be terrorists. Nothing else made sense-- men with assault rifles herding passengers around like cattle, the shoot-down of that Harrier. And his assumption was validated the moment he stepped onto the bridge.

  Doherty and Petrovich stepped into a small whirlwind of drama. A bearded man in a blue and white security uniform was screaming into the face of a man in what looked like combat fatigues and with a red-and-white-checked Arab-style kaffiyeh over his head.

  "Majnun! Mahbul!" the security guard screamed. He glanced around as Doherty walked in, opened his mouth, then seemed to reconsider. "Idiot!" he said in English, his voice lowered. "Because of you the entire operation has been jeopardized! I think, for you ... the special technical unit."

  The color appeared to drain from the other man's swarthy face, and his eyes grew large. "Ia!" he screamed. He then dropped to his knees and loosed a babbling torrent of a foreign language far too swift for Doherty to catch more than isolated syllables. The security guard looked at one of the other uniformed men and jerked his head. Two security men came forward, grabbed the kneeling man, and hoisted him to his feet. Doherty and Petrovich stepped aside as the security men marched the blubbering man off the bridge.

  The leader of the group nailed Doherty with a glare. "And you are . . . who?"

  "Fred Doherty. CNE. This is my cameraman, James Petrovich."

  "CN . . . CNN?"

  "Not quite. CNPS. Cable Network Entertainment."

  "My men thought you might be television reporters. They saw your camera."

  "Yeah, and I'll ask you to tell them to be careful of it," Petrovich said. "That thing cost eighty grand and I'd rather it not come out of my paycheck!"

  "At the moment," the leader said slowly, "you two have more important things to be concerned about than paychecks."

  "You're terrorists," Doherty said with what he hoped was an emotionless, matter-of-fact delivery. "You've hijacked these ships."

  "You're very perceptive, Mr. Doherty."

  Doherty's mind was racing frantically. "And you need us!"

  "Oh? And what makes you think that?"

  "Easy. Your men spotted the camera, and promptly hauled us up here to see you. I figure you're going to want to transmit some sort of ransom demand to the world, right? We can help you with that!"

  "Actually, we brought our own cameras along, and we have the transmission facilities of this ship. Had we known you were going to be on this voyage, perhaps we would have planned otherwise. This ... CNE. What is it?"

  "It's like CNN. Main offices in Hollywood, not Atlanta. Not as big as CNN, of course. Not as well known. But we have connections! And a news studio. We could set you up with a live feed, interview you, let you put your demands to the right people, the whole schmeer! Like I say, you do need us."

  The leader took three swift steps forward, and suddenly his face was inches from Doherty's, the man's eyes glaring into his with a dark heat, the voice low and dangerous. "Do not presume to tell me what I need, Mr. Doherty. This operation has been planned for years, with attention to every detail. You and your tall friend here are two passengers among two thousand. Two hostages among two thousand, I should say. And if you get in my way or simply make me angry, I will have you executed instantly. A number of people have been killed already to carry out this plan. Two more are nothingl Do we understand one another?"

  "Y-yes."

  "Good. Because, as it happens, we may take you up on your kind offer of help." He nodded at one of the guards. "Room ten-oh-two. Watch them."

  And they were taken off the bridge and into the passageway leading aft.

  Deck One, Atlantis Queen 48deg 25' N, 9deg 28' W Saturday, 1617 hours GMT

  The crowds in the ship's public areas were dispersing by the time Carolyn Howorth reached the First Deck and walked aft toward the computer room. She'd paused in the stairwell to listen to the PA announcement, then continued on her way down. That bit about "special police powers" didn't sound right, nor did she believe that what had happened to that Harrier outside was an accident.

  She was walking past the Atlantis Queen's Sea Goddess Hair and Beauty Salon, the Interconnexions computer center just ahead.

  Something was wrong. Three men in khaki uniforms and black berets were ahead of her, opening the center's door. Two, she saw, had AK-47 assault rifles slung over their shoulders, a most un-British weapon to bring aboard a British cruise ship. The third held a drawn automatic pistol.

  Fading back a few steps, she moved into the entrance of the hair salon, watching as one of the armed men stood guard and the other two pushed the door open and vanished inside. Several tense moments passed, and then the two reappeared, with a civilian between them. The man was short and had the look of an accountant, with glasses, sports coat, and a balding scalp, but as he struggled in their grip, his coat fell open and she noticed that he had a shoulder holster rig on underneath .. . and that the holster was empty.

  Not an accountant, then, but police . .. possibly a detective investigating the Darrow murder. Then she remembered her conversation with David Llewellyn the previous night and him talking about two MI5 men on board, one of them seconded to SOCA.

  They'd used a plastic zip strip to tie the civilian's wrists behind his back.

  Quickly she reached into her hip pocket and pulled out her mobile--her cell phone as her American colleagues would have called it. Pretending to look up a number, she snapped several photos with the camera function before putting the phone to her ear and pretending to talk to someone.

  Someone back at GCHQ or Fort Meade might be able to get an ID on one or more of those thugs. They weren't security; of that much she was certain.

  The fact that they'd grabbed that man in the computer room led her to suspect that it wouldn't be safe using the ship's Internet center to call home; the ship's Security Department likely was able to monitor computer use, and that might have been what brought those three down here. She continued pretending to talk on her phone as the three armed men marched their prisoner off, passing her just a few feet away.

  She waited until they were gone, then found a stairway and started climbing back to Deck Six and her stateroom.

  Back in her stateroom, minutes later, she opened up her laptop, which was slightly more than it seemed. The battery pack was actually a powerful satellite uplink unit that would allow her to communicate directly with both Menwith Hill or with Fort Meade. A slender cable unreeled from a spool inside; laid out across the desk, it served as the satlink antenna.

  Strange soldiers on board the ship, rounding up select people, binding their hands, and leading them off. PA announcements invoking special police powers.

  The ship had been hijacked. Of that Howorth was cer
tain. And it was up to her to get the word out.

  All regular communications to and from the ship, she knew, went through the radio room adjacent to the bridge, which was why she couldn't simply use her mobile to call Menwith Hill. The TV sets in the staterooms were not working--she'd already checked--probably because the people on the bridge now didn't want the passengers seeing news broadcasts from ashore right now.

  Typing swiftly, Carolyn Howorth entered her code designation, routing code, and an urgent flag. She attached the photos she'd taken with her phone, then began writing her report.

  Terrorists have taken control of the cruise ship Atlantis Queen and the freighter Pacific Sandpiper she wrote. The terrorists are well armed and the operation appears to be well planned. . . .

  Security Office, Atlantis Queen 48deg 06' N, 9deg 37' W Saturday, 1619 hours GMT

  Thomas Mitchell emerged from a stairwell on the Eleventh Deck forward, just down the passageway from Ship's Security. A dozen feet down the corridor was a locked steel door with security check hardware beside it--an ID card reader and a thumbprint scanner.

  There was also a push-to-talk intercom that would let him request to see someone from Security, but he hadn't yet decided whether he should take that option. He was moving cautiously and once, on the way up the stairs, he'd stopped when he'd heard a door bang open far above him and waited until the sound of footsteps receded again.

  Something was very, very wrong on board this ship. The more he thought about it, the more suspicious he was of that PA announcement a few moments before. He was determined to track down David Llewellyn and find out what was happening.

  But he also wasn't convinced that it was a good idea to call attention to himself just now.

  He heard something rustle behind him, and he turned sharply. Someone was coming around the corner of an intersection down the passageway aft, and an instant before they came into view, he ducked back into the stairwell. There was a small, square window in the door. Mitchell pressed himself up against the door and edged his head just enough to one side to glimpse movement in the passageway outside. Two figures strode past, their shadows cast by overhead fluorescents momentarily sweeping across the glass. Stepping to the other side of the window, he pushed his face up against the glass in time to see the backs of two men walking toward the security checkpoint.

  Both men were wearing khaki uniforms. Both had AK-47 assault rifles slung over their shoulders and had small, military-type radios clipped to their belts. One wore a black beret, the other a white and gray head cloth, an Arab kaffiyeh, held in place by the braided cord called an iqal.

  The one with the beret pulled an ID card out of a breast pocket and slid it through the reader. He then pressed his thumb against the scanner, and Mitchell heard the metallic click as the steel door popped open.

  Terrorists, with ID cards and thumbprints on file giving them access to Ship's Security. Mitchell reached inside his jacket and pulled out his pistol, a service-issue SIG P226, and quietly pulled the slide back, chambering a round.

  Think! Think!. . .

  If terrorists were in control of Ship's Security, they were already in control of the bridge, and probably engineering as well. The freighter tied up alongside must belong to them now as well; probably terrorists had come aboard the Queen from the Sandpiper. This operation clearly had been carefully planned and orchestrated, and must involve a large number of well-armed men.

  Think it through! Think!

  The Ship's Security personnel must all be dead or have been captured, if the terrorists were this much in evidence. Mitchell realized at that moment that he might well be the only free man on board the Atlantis Queen who was armed and alert to the terrorist threat. He couldn't take on the entire terrorist group ... but perhaps he could get intelligence on the hijackers that would help a CT team. If he could get in contact with MI5 or military intelligence, he might be able to pass them critical information about the takeover, including the very fact that the Atlantis Queen and the Pacific Sandpiper had been hijacked at sea.

  First he needed to find Sam Franks and bring him into this.

  Carefully he began tiptoeing back down the stairs.

  Chapter 15

  Satellite Imaging Center National Reconnaissance Office Chantilly, Virginia Saturday, 1248 hours EST

  "we're about one minute out, Mr. Rubens."

  William Rubens nodded, looking up at the large flat-panel screen dominating one wall of the Imaging Center. The room, with its high-tech collection of SPARC workstations and large-screen monitors, was located in the ultra-secure underground levels of the NRO's new headquarters in Chantilly, Virginia, one of the most highly secret offices in an entire sprawling complex of top-secret installations. It was here that real-time imagery from space was processed and displayed.

  "This is from Argus Twelve?" Rubens asked. "Yes, sir." Chris Atwilder was an assistant director of the NRO, in charge of digital imaging. "We put it onto a new orbit fifty-five minutes ago. We should have a good look at the site in ... thirty seconds."

  Argus 12 was part of a constellation of seventeen highly classified surveillance satellites, each orbiting the Earth once each ninety minutes at an altitude of between 120 and 160 miles. Although both the NSA and the National Reconnaissance Office continued to vigorously deny it, Argus--named for the hundred-eyed guardian of Greek myth--could give better than one-centimeter resolution in real time, day or night. Using synthetic aperture radar, Argus could image a basketball through any weather, making it an invaluable eye-in-the-sky shared by the NSA, the CIA, the DIA, and several other U. S. spy and law enforcement agencies.

  At the moment, the screen showed a wide-angle view of the ocean, as if seen from a considerable height. The weather in the target area was clear at the moment, though the software could blend incoming data in several radar, infrared, and ultraviolet as well as optical wavelengths in order to build up a composite image of what was on the ground, peering down through clouds, fog, and all but the heaviest rain.

  Though there were special secure channels by which Rubens could have watched processed feeds from the NRO back in his own office or on the Art Room main screens, he'd driven out to Chantilly after his briefing session at the White House that morning specifically to see the raw feeds as they came down from the satellite. General Ronald McLean, DIRNSA, the Director of the NSA, had personally phoned Rubens before he'd left for the White House that morning. If there was a problem with that British plutonium transport, McLean wanted to know about it yesterday. Plutonium ships made the trip from Britain or France to Japan about once a year, and the National Security Agency made each voyage a high priority. With plutonium enough on that one ship to manufacture sixty fair-sized nuclear weapons, every intelligence organization on the planet was likely keeping close tabs on it.

  "We have the target on radar," a technician reported from a nearby console. "Cameras are slaved and locked."

  "High-speed recorders are running," another technician reported.

  And there it was, drifting across the screen from top to bottom, with blocks of technical data winking on in columns at the upper left, giving time and date, range, coordinates, and camera resolution data. The resolution was crystal-sharp, the image computer enhanced to show every detail.

  "That's the Pacific Sandpiper" Atwilder said. "What's that bigger ship tied up alongside?"

  "The Atlantis Queen" Rubens replied. "Cruise ship. She was last reported on her way to assist in SAR at sea."

  "They're lashed together. Look. .. you can see the hawsers."

  "And that helicopter still on the Sandpiper's forward deck," Rubens added. "That is odd."

  "Crewmen on the decks of both ships," Atwilder said.

  "Can we zoom in close on them for a closer look?"

  "We could ... but let's wait. We have only a few seconds on this pass. Once we have the whole pass recorded, we can process the imagery and give you a zoom look at anything you want, for as long as you want."

  "Unders
tood."

  The first Argus shot of the two ships, the photo Rubens had used in his briefing at the White House, had been a single shot, one of a series designed to keep loose tabs on the Pacific Sandpiper There'd been enough anomalies in that image--the helicopter, the two ships lashed together-- that McClean had ordered a detailed run with the next available Argus satellite, gleaning mountains of data at the highest resolution possible.

  Still, there didn't seem to be anything overtly wrong or out of place, nothing except that civilian helicopter where it didn't belong and the fact that those two ships were lashed together and steaming southwest at ten to fifteen knots, if that double wake was any indication. The Sandpiper was on course; the Atlantis Queen decidedly was not. Maybe they'd been tied together during the SAR operation a few hours ago--it would make sense if injured people had to be transferred from one ship to the other-- but there was no reason the two should have kept racing for the horizon together. There was every reason not to do so, in fact; the last report from GCHQ indicated that a dozen or so ships had reached the spot where the Ishikari had blown up and sank hours before, and they were still finding survivors, miraculously, clinging to bits of flotsam in the water.

  No, as he'd told the NSC people, there was something very wrong here. He'd already given orders to put Black Cat Bravo on full alert. If he had to, he'd put a team on board covertly and have them check things out.

  With two and a half tons of plutonium at stake, it was best to be certain.

  The two ships slid off the bottom of the screen, and the eye-in-the-sky was again staring down at blue water. "Thanks, Chris," he said. "Route that through to Desk Three as soon as it's processed, will you?"

  "Will do, Mr. Rubens. The Company's on my back for a copy, too. So's the NCTC."

  "Of course they are."

  Rubens checked out through several levels of security and walked back to his car in the NRO's north parking lot. As he walked, he pulled out his cell phone and saw that there was an urgent message waiting for him. Cell phones had to be switched off and surrendered to security inside the NRO's precincts; someone had been trying to reach him while he was inside.