Sea Of Terror (2010)

by Stephen - Deep Black 08 Coonts

  If she could find a way through those doors, she might be able to get to the computer room behind the Ship's Security Office. But... what then? It would be more effective, actually, if she could somehow get the passwords that would let her break into the ship's computer network. Or possibly the Netguardz trapdoor might give her access.

  David Llewellyn, she thought, would have those codes, or be able to get them. But she'd not seen him since Friday.

  She'd been wondering if the ship's senior security officer had fallen afoul of the terrorists and been killed or marched off like the SOCA agent she'd seen outside of Connexions.

  With chilling suddenness, a man's hand slipped around the right side of her head, clamping down tightly over her nose and mouth, drawing her backward as a second hand and arm grabbed her from the left, pinning her arms to her sides. Howorth struggled wildly, trying to break free, trying to kick back against the kneecaps of her captor, but her foot struck empty air as the man squeezed more tightly. She tried to scream, but the smothering hand blocked all sound, threatening to drag her into unconsciousness.

  Security Office, Atlantis Queen 48deg 32' N, 27deg IT W Monday, 1641 hours GMT

  "There it is again, sir," Hamud Haqqani said, pointing at the display. Khalid leaned over the man's shoulder for a closer look.

  The display screen was long and narrow, running left to right, and was touch sensitive. At the moment, it was showing Deck Eleven as yellow lines on a black background, the various compartments and passageways marked with coded alphanumerics translated by an inset table. Deck Eleven was divided into two sections--the aft sundeck around the ship's smokestack aft, and the superstructure forward housing security, the computer center, and, on Deck Twelve, the bridge.

  Khalid touched the screen next to the forward superstructure, and the schematic expanded. Six red dots were clustered inside the Security Office--marking Khalid himself, Haqqani, and the other four with them. Just outside of the Security Office area, however, lay a passageway and, off to one side, the service access stairwell connecting several of the upper decks forward, including the bridge and Deck Eleven. A red dot hovered inside that stairwell and, when Khalid touched the screen again, expanding the schematic further, the single dot became two pressed closely together. He touched one of the dots, and a name and ID number appeared: Judith Carroll. One of the passengers. He tapped the other dot, and his eyes opened wider when he saw the ID.

  Khalid looked up. Ghailiani and another member of the security team, Mahmoud Amin Rawasdeh, were seated at the security console near the door. "You two," Khalid snapped. "We have inquisitive intruders in the stairwell next to the passageway outside. Two of them. Bring them in!"

  Rawasdeh picked up his AK-47, leaning against one bulkhead, and snapped back the charging lever with a harsh snick-snack. "Alive?" he asked.

  "Any way you Can get them," Khalid replied.

  Rawasdeh nodded, and he and Mohamed Ghailiani hurried from the Ship's Security Office.

  Deck Eleven, Atlantis Queen 48deg 32' N, 27deg 17' W Monday, 1641 hours GMT

  "Do not scream," the man's voice whispered in Howorth's ear as he clamped a hand down over her mouth. "I'm a friend! Okay?"

  She nodded, and the hands released her. Turning, furious, she looked into the creased face of a rough-looking man in a dark suit jacket and tan slacks--probably in his forties, stocky, and with thinning hair. He didn't look much like an Arab terrorist.

  "What are you doing up here?" he asked. "Who are you?"

  "I might ask you the same thing."

  "Mitchell," he said. "MI5." He quirked an eyebrow. "You?"

  Before she could decide whether to answer or not, the door to the stairwell banged open and two men walked in on them.

  The one in the lead wore a Royal Sky Line security uniform and appeared to be unarmed. The second man, with a bushy mustache and pocked skin, wore a khaki uniform with an Arabic kaffiyeh over his head, and was holding an AK-47 assault rifle in both hands.

  Mitchell reacted immediately and decisively, stepping past Howorth, snapping his right arm out, hand open flat, to catch the first man beneath his jaw with the heel of his palm and slam him backward into the gunman. As the two collided, Mitchell reached inside his jacket and dragged out his handgun.

  The gunman, though, was fast and strong. He knocked the unarmed man aside with a sweep of his rifle butt, smashing the muzzle down across Mitchell's right wrist with a sharp crack and sending the pistol clattering and skittering across the deck. Mitchell stepped inside the reach of the weapon, pushing the muzzle aside as he swung a vicious uppercut with his left, uninjured hand, then grabbed the gun's muzzle ^nd yanked forward, hard, tugging the gunman off-balance.

  Howorth, standing to one side, thought first about grabbing Mitchell's pistol, but it had skittered to the other side of the stairwell and was balanced precariously on the top step, with Mitchell and the gunman between her and the weapon. The unarmed man was on his hands and knees; Howorth leaped at the gunman's back, grabbing his kaffiyeh and the iqal cord that held it in place from behind with both hands and dragging them down over his eyes.

  The gunman spun, teetering at the edge of the steps, holding the AK with his right hand as he fumbled with his left to pull the checkered cloth off his face. Howorth raised her right leg, planted her deck shoe on the man's chest, and kicked, hard, sending the gunman, arms flailing, backward and off the top step.

  He screamed going down, the cry echoing down the stairwell as he slammed into the steps halfway down and completed an awkward backward roll to the first landing below. Mitchell flew after him, vaulting into space and landing on the gunman's chest five feet below with a sickening thud. Reaching down, Mitchell pulled the AK from unresisting fingers with his injured hand while drawing his other fist back to deliver a final blow--

  "Stop!"

  Howorth turned at the voice. The unarmed man, ignored for the opening seconds of the fight, had scooped up Mitchell's P226 and now held it aimed straight at Howorth.

  "Don't move or I'll shoot!" the man shouted, his voice cracking on the last word. He held the pistol with a manic intensity, both hands on the grip, arms stiff, the gun's muzzle wobbling in his unsteady grasp. Howorth raised her hands as Mitchell dropped the AK, dangling uselessly backward in one hand.

  "Don't shoot!" Howorth said; She was close to the now-armed man, close enough to see the beads of sweat rolling down his cheek. If she could get a little closer . . . "Please, don't shoot!"

  "Shit!" the man said. "Shit! Shit! Shit!. .."

  Howorth was startled to realize that it wasn't sweat she was seeing on the man's face but tears. He was crying. The pistol's muzzle wavered, then dropped to point at the deck as the man sagged, his shoulders heaving with his sobs.

  Swiftly Howorth stepped forward and snatched the pistol from the man's hands. Mitchell retrieved the AK, then stooped to check the terrorist sprawled at the bottom of the steps. He looked up to meet Howorth's eyes. Dead, he mouthed. The tumble had broken the man's neck.

  Their prisoner continued to cry.

  Atlantean Grotto Lounge, Atlantis Queen 48deg 31' N, 27deg 31' W

  Monday, 1702 hours GMT

  Dr. Heywood Barnes stepped into the lush tropical ambir ance of the Grotto Lounge and walked forward, toward the big sliding glass doors opening onto the Deck Eleven pool area. The restaurant, curiously, was deserted. Normally, it was one of the busiest social areas on the ship. A "Closed" sign had been hanging at the front entrance, but he'd ignored it and come inside anyway. The lounge was supposed to be open all hours.

  Barnes rarely got up here. His quarters, along with those of the other medical personnel on board, were on A Deck, just forward of the infirmary, and while there were no rules against his coming up into the passenger areas, fraternization was discouraged, save for very specific instances--when ship's officers dined in the formal Atlantia Restaurant on Deck One, for instance, or up on Deck Nine, in the Lost Continent.

  Generally, Barnes was a solitar
y soul who disliked crowds and social mingling, preferences that years ago had led to his taking the position of ship's doctor when he could easily have had a thriving practice ashore.

  For the past several days, however, the infirmary had been anything but quiet. Members of the ship's crew and staff kept gathering there, hanging out in the waiting area or in the staff lounge, drinking tea and coffee, and discussing them.

  "Them," of course, were the foreign soldiers, presumably Arabs, who were now everywhere on board the Queen and who appeared to be in control of the ship. Two of them were in the main galley now at all times, flanking the big double doors leading to the aft A Deck hold. Galley personnel who had to go into the hold for supplies were escorted in and out and kept away from the area near the loading bay and external doors. But Johnny Berger and several other members of both staff and crew had been back there and seen a number of trucks parked near the doors and a large number of armed and uniformed men.

  PA announcements and a memo from the bridge had spoken of helping the Pacific Sandpiper and of security personnel from the other ship protecting a top-secret military cargo ... but no one really believed any of it. Phone calls to the bridge had gone unanswered. Personnel who'd physically gone to the bridge or to the Security Office to talk to someone in charge had never returned. The mess stewards, though, had been ordered to take boxes of food--cold cuts and sandwiches, mostly, and hundreds of bottles of water--up to the doors leading to the Neptune Theater, where gruff and uncommunicative uniformed guards had taken them inside. Rumor had it that the missing crew members were being held prisoner inside the theater.

  Earlier that afternoon, Barnes had made his way up to Deck One and found an out-of-the-way alcove in a deserted Starbucks on the mall. From there, he could see down a passageway leading forward to the theater, where he could just make out one of the guards at the entrance without being seen himself. After an hour of waiting, another guard had led a woman out of the theater and steered her to the left, toward the restrooms. After perhaps ten minutes, the two had reappeared, vanishing once more into the theater.

  So ... there were prisoners being held in the theater. They were being fed and being taken to the nearest restrooms, but they were under heavy guard. Barnes had considered going up to Security but decided against it. The terrorists, if that's what they were, must be in control of the Security Department and the bridge, and if he called attention to himself, he would end up with that woman and God knew how many others tied up and under guard inside the theater.

  And so, using back service access ways and emergency stairs, Barnes had ascended all the way up to Deck Eleven and the Grotto Lounge. Partly, he wanted a look at the Pacific Sandpiper, which some of the staff said was still tied up alongside as the Queen clipped ahead through the ocean at a good twenty knots--an insane pace if they were, indeed, towing another vessel. Barnes' cabin was on the starboard side of the ship, and he couldn't see anything from there. From the Deck Twelve Terrace, though, he would be able to see clearly in all directions, and be able to look down onto the Sandpiper

  He also wanted to check for himself the ship's course. Rumor had it that the ship had changed direction two days ago, late Saturday, and was now heading due west, instead of south toward the Strait of Gibraltar.

  He heard a clatter of noise from just ahead and froze, then stepped back into the shelter of a spray of palm fronds. The restaurant's tropical jungle decor had always seemed rather silly to him, but he was glad to have the cover now. Several men were talking to one another just ahead. There was a long string of almost guttural words, followed by a loud thump. "Iyak!" one voice cried, the voice sharp, even threatening.

  Barnes had spent a year in Kuwait, during his stint as a medical officer with the British Army, right out of medical school. He didn't speak the language, but he knew Arabic when he heard it. Easing forward, he tried to get a better view.

  Four uniformed men were at the glass sliding doors leading out to the pool area, and they were manhandling a large flatbed handcart piled high with wooden crates under an olive-drab tarp. The cart had just become entangled with a table as they'd tried to position it in front of the door, and the men were trying to pull the cart free. "Yallah!" the one in charge cried. "Yallah!" Two more armed men, Barnes saw, were standing outside by the pool, apparently guarding a stack of identical tarp-covered crates.

  Abruptly the cart bounced free of the obstruction and three of the men wheeled the cart out onto the deck while the fourth, the leader, stood to one side, gesturing to the others. In that moment, Barnes noticed two critical things.

  First of all, the afternoon sun was streaming through the broad glass windows of the Atlantean Grotto Lounge. Those windows faced forward, and if the sun was coming in that way, it meant the ship was sailing west, into the late-afternoon sun.

  And as the soldiers bullied the cart out the door, the tarp had been tugged aside just enough for Barnes to see letters stenciled in black on the side of one of the cases.

  "FIM-92 STIN" was all he could read, the letters centered above a portion of a serial number.

  But that glimpse was enough to chill Barnes' soul.

  My God! he thought. I've got to tell someone!

  But who? And how?

  And was it already too late?

  Chapter 19

  Stateroom 8001, Atlantis Queen North Atlantic Ocean 48deg 31! N, 27deg 40'W Monday, 1715 hours GMT

  "it's okay," howorth told their prisoner. "It's okay! We're not going to hurt you!"

  But the man continued to sob. "Zahra!" he finally managed to say. "Zahra! Nouzha!"

  "What language is that?" Mitchell asked. "Arabic?" "Maybe," Howorth said. She frowned. "Actually, I think they're names."

  They'd brought their prisoner down to Deck Eight, the highest deck on the liner with staterooms, and used a security passkey they'd found in the man's shirt pocket to open the door to an empty cabin. The other terrorist, the one who'd broken his neck on the stairs, had been dragged to a janitorial closet on Deck Nine and stuffed inside. They had his passcard now, too, as well as his AK-47.

  Now they had the prisoner between them on the bed as they tried to get some kind of sense out of him. His emotional breakdown had been startlingly swift and complete; Howorth doubted that he was one of the terrorists. He'd not been armed, and he was wearing a Royal Sky uniform. Possibly he was as much a hostage as the rest of the Queen's passengers and crew.

  "My . . . wife . . .," the man finally managed to say, shoulders heaving. "My wife, Zahra. And... my daughter. . .

  "What about them?" Mitchell asked. Standing suddenly, reaching down, he grabbed the front of the prisoner's blue security force uniform and bunched up his other fist. "You'd best start talking, raghead, or--"

  "Stop it!" Howorth said, pushing the fist aside. "Damn it, Mitchell, this isn't an interrogation!"

  "Like hell it isn't!" But he relaxed slightly, backing off.

  "Tell us about Zahra," Howorth asked the prisoner.

  "My ... wife. They have her. And my daughter . . ."

  "Who? Who has her?"

  "Yusef Khalid. The leader of Islamist Jihad International. The men who ... who have taken over this ship."

  "Are you a part of this group, then?" Mitchell demanded.

  The prisoner shook his head. "No. Or ...

  Slowly, they managed to drag the whole story from their prisoner He was Mohamed Ghailiani, and he was a Moroccan emigrant, now a British subject and an employee of Royal Sky Line, living in Woolston, just across the river from Southampton. Khalid's people had abducted Ghailiani's wife and daughter, were holding them to ensure Ghailiani's cooperation.

  "Do you know where they're keeping them?" Howorth asked.

  Ghailiani shook his head. "No. But they've been e-mailing me ... pictures. To show me they're still alive. And to... to remind me." He closed his eyes, his face screwing tight with rising panic. "Oh, God! I'll never see them again!"

  "You will, Mohamed," Howorth told him. "We can h
elp you! But you'll have to help us."

  "When they know I've helped you," he said, pain etching his voice raw, "when they know I've talked to you, they'll--" He broke off, sobbing again.

  "This is useless," Mitchell said.

  "No," Howorth told him. "This may be the one big break we need. You know they're going to be putting together some kind of rescue op. Mohamed, here, will be able to give us all the intel we need. We just have to show him we can help his family."

  "They . .. they're going to kill them," Ghailiani said, miserable. "They're going to kill them"

  "Not if we have anything to say about it," Howorth told him. "We need to get to my stateroom and get my computer. And we'll need your e-mail account information, Mohamed. Address and password. Can you do that for us?"

  Slowly, Ghailiani nodded.

  "I think we'd better get out of here anyway," Mitchell said. "They'll be tracking this guy and his buddy. And us."

  "Too right." Together, they helped Ghailiani stand and move toward the door.

  Infirmary, Atlantis Queen 48deg 31' N, 27deg 44'W Monday, 1720 hours GMT

  Dr. Barnes sat down at the console in the back of the infirmary and switched on the power. Slipping the headphones on over his ears, he dialed up the volume slightly, listening to the hiss and crackle of ionospheric static.

  The shortwave radio had been installed in the cruise ship's infirmary as a lifesaving measure, a means for the medical personnel to communicate directly with a hospital ashore in medical emergencies without having to run all the way up to Deck Twelve and the radio shack aft of the bridge.

  He'd first tried using his cell phone, of course. The Atlantis Queen's onboard cell network connected via satellite to shore networks, enabling passengers to make calls and connect with the Internet. However, when he tried to make a connection, all he got was a recorded voice telling him the system was temporarily unavailable. That, he reasoned, would have been one of the first things hijackers would do--shut down the phone network so that the hostages on the ship couldn't call out.