"We don't have much time," Akil said.
Riley quoted the words he had spoken in that hotel room in Istanbul. " 'Nothing will look out of the ordinary until the very last moment, and by then it will be too late.' I didn't think you could do it."
"We haven't done it yet, Riley." Akil holstered the pistol. "What about communications?"
Riley reached up to flip a switch. "I slaved all communications to a single switch," he said, as if he were expecting applause.
"Telephones? Internet access?"
"All," Riley said. "No one can call in or out."
"Cell phones?"
"I don't have any control over those."
"All right. Show me the controls for the 76mm."
Riley folded his arms across his chest. "Show me the money first."
Akil stared at him.
"I want my money before we go any further with this," Riley said. "I'm about to be a very wanted man. Maybe even one of the ten most. Maybe I'll even be on America's Most Wanted."
The idiot sounded proud of it.
"I'll never be able to show my face in America again," Riley said. "It'll be expensive, staying in hiding. Show me the money. Isa."
He gave a crow of laughter at Isa's look. "Did you think I didn't know? Did you think I couldn't figure it out? Of course you are Isa. Zarqawi's right-hand man. Why do you think my price was so high?"
"If you knew who I was, you could have turned me in for about the same price as what I'm paying you," Isa said. "Why didn't you?"
Riley, still with that rictus of a smile on his face, said, "I figured this would be more fun."
ON BOARD SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR
"T minus twenty-two. Endeavour," MCC said, "we're going on hold here." Curses echoed over everyone's headsets. "What's the matter?" the Arabian Knight said. "What's wrong?"
"Relax," Kenai said to him, "there's no problem, everything's fine." She switched channels. "Rick, what's the problem?"
"Ah, something's going on with the GLS. Sit tight, they'll fix it." Kenai mentally condemned the ground launch sequencer to the city dump.
At least her bladder was empty.
ON BOARD USCG CUTTER MUNRO
Cal wondered if he was imagining the list to port. Half his remaining crew was on the hangar deck, sitting around the helo in lawn chairs, cameras at the ready. The other half were lined up along the port side. "I sure hope somebody's minding the store," he said. As he said the words, he heard a noise.
"What the hell's that?" he said, in a low voice so as not to alarm the Munros, although he saw Admiral Barkley's head turn. The senator had gone down to the hangar deck to work the crowd, and Admiral Matson had gone with him.
The XO cocked his head. "It sounds like the 76mm."
"That's what I thought."
They looked at each other. "XO, I don't think even the gunnies would think shooting off the 76mm during a space shuttle launch was a good thing."
"No," the XO said decidedly.
"Not to mention which, GMC and almost all of the gunnies are on liberty."
"There's that, too," the XO said.
They both drifted back inside the bridge. "OOD, did you hear that?"
Gilmartin was on the phone. "Yes, Captain, I'm calling CIC to find out what's going on but I'm getting no answer."
"Call the armory."
"I did, sir. No answer there, either."
"Get the BMOW down on the gun deck right now and find out what the hell is going on."
"Yes, sir." Gilmartin jerked his chin at Myers, who reached for the IMC.
He didn't live to make the pipe. The silenced bullet took him in the back and he fell forward with barely a cry.
They all stared at the body on the deck, the red stain spreading beneath him, uncomprehending.
"If everyone will please remain calm until we are through, we will leave and no one else will have to be hurt."
A man in casual clothes stepped into the bridge. He was holding a small automatic pistol in each hand, and at first Cal thought stupidly of John Wayne. It was so dark on the bridge Cal couldn't make out the man's features. His voice was young, with an edge of excitement for all his apparent composure.
He stood aside and a second man shepherded the Munros into the bridge at gunpoint. In the dim light Cal could see that Doreen was white and shaking. Nick looked angry. He thought he caught a glimpse of a body sprawled on the bridge wing. Admiral Barkley. Christ.
On the bridge were Gilmartin, the XO, and himself, along with the Munros. He couldn't tell how many pirates there were, if indeed these were pirates. Somehow he didn't think so.
He himself was standing a little in back of the XO. It was dark on the bridge. He might be out of range of the glow from the radar screens. He put his hand in the small of the XO's back and pressed.
After a moment of hesitation, the XO took a step forward. "What the hell's going on here?"
"Who are you?"
"Captain Schuyler, I'm in command here," Taffy said. "And you are?"
Instead of answering the first pirate took a step forward to peer into Taffy's face. "You look like a Muslim, friend."
"And you look like a pirate, asshole. What's going on?" The XO took another step forward. "What do you want with my ship?"
"Yeah." Gilmartin had somehow intuited what Cal wanted, attention diverted from whatever it was he was going to do. He rose to his feet from where he'd been trying unsuccessfully to revive Myers. "Good question, sir. Just what the hell is going on?"
As BMC and the XO stepped forward Cal took a step back, until he could feel the air coming through the starboard side door.
"Stay back!" the pirate said. As small as the pistol was, he'd already killed Myers with it. They froze. "All of you, back behind navigation." He snapped a phrase in what Cal thought must be Arabic, and the second man herded the Munros, Gilmartin, and the XO behind the nav table. No one betrayed his presence by so much as a glance and Cal took advantage of it to duck down on all fours and peer out the door.
He couldn't hear anything, and he couldn't see anything. He slipped outside, duckwalked aft, and pulled himself hand over hand headfirst down the flight of stairs to the small deck that gave off his quarters. He got the door open and ran for the phone.
He cursed and slammed the receiver down. "Dead." He keyed his radio. Dead. He went for the computer. Access denied.
Hijacked two miles off the coast of goddamn Florida. What the hell did they want? What justified this big an operation?
He felt a sudden chill. The space shuttle.
The 76mm. They were going to use it to bring down the shuttle.
They must have been on board that freighter. They took the small boat when Mun 1 did the ROA. He spared an agonized thought for the boat crew, but he knew there was nothing he could do for them right now. The pirates, no, these weren't pirates, they were terrorists. Call the sons of bitches what they were. The terrorists had pretended the radio went bust and brought the small boat back to the cutter.
"Son of a bitch," he said out loud. "We actually brought them on board."
They had the bridge, CIC, and the 76mm for sure. Probably Main Control. They had to have Main Control if they wanted to maneuver the ship. They'd want control of the ship so he couldn't take it back and screw with their aim.
The gun locker. Forward of the hangar deck, just off the boat deck. One deck down from his cabin.
He cracked open his door and listened. The interior of the ship was as quiet as he'd ever heard it, the online diesel muted. He slipped into the passageway and moved quickly into Chief's Country. He opened every door he came to. No one was home, they were all out on deck watching the launch, on duty, or on liberty.
He kept moving.
CIC
"How far offshore are we?" Two miles.
"Range is what, six miles?"
"About."
"Good."
OS2 Riley's hands worked the controls nimbly, although they were shaking. "There. Target is acquired, an
d the automatic tracking is engaged."
When Akil didn't reply, Riley said more insistently, "We're done here. So long as your guys got the ammunition in the right holes, it's all up to the machines."
"Yes," Akil said, "it is. Stand away from the controls, please."
Riley rose to his feet, a sickly expression on his face. "I've done everything you want, everything you asked me to do."
"And you were well paid for your efforts," Akil said. "At least your family will suffer no needless privation from your death," and he shot him, once. A third eye appeared between Riley's eyebrows. He fell back without another sound, eyes wide open and staring at the bulkhead above.
"I'm sorry, but I never trust a traitor," Akil told him, and left CIC without haste, disabling the lock before he pulled the door shut behind him.
MIAMI
Patrick was almost weeping. "Sir, I am telling you. Isa is at this moment attempting to hijack a United States Coast Guard cutter off the coast of Florida."
It had taken an interminable half an hour to track down Kallendorf's location, and another ten minutes to pry the phone number out of directory assistance. For a spy agency, Patrick thought bitterly, we're just not very damn good, are we?
Melanie was a warm presence against his side, her hand cupping the back of his neck, her eyes loving and concerned. While he'd been waiting on Kallendorf, he'd used the hotel phone to call the local authorities. The problem was he didn't have a working relationship with anyone in Miami, except for a bored third-class detective down at Metro Dade who had long since packed it in for the night. He'd called the Pentagon. They'd promised to call him back right away. He was still waiting.
He'd woken Melanie in the mad scrabble for his cell phone. He couldn't use the hotel phone, not for something like this, it wasn't secure. He'd finally found his cell behind the nightstand when he called the number on the hotel phone and it went off. He must have kicked it there when he and Melanie-
"Patrick, what have you been smoking? I haven't heard of anything like this in the wind, and you just admitted, neither have you. Do you really think even your pet terrorist could pull something like this off without leaking a whisper of it to someone?"
"If anyone could, Isa could, sir."
"Patrick, look, I think maybe you've been working a little too hard. Why don't you take some time, catch some sun and sand and-"
"Goddammit!" Patrick said, surging to his feet.
Melanie flinched away from the bellow, crouched on the bed, staring up at him in alarm and not a little wonder.
"Why, Patrick," Kallendorf said, "I didn't know you had it in you."
"Sir, this is no time for your adolescent jokes. If you don't call the Coast Guard right now, I swear to God I'm calling the White House! I'll go over your head, sir, I sure as hell will! I'm telling you Isa is hijacking a Coast Guard cutter even as we speak, so he can use one of its weapons to take down the space shuttle! They're minutes away from launching, sir, minutes! Do you really want to go down in history as the CIA director who fiddled while the enemy blew up the most iconic symbol of American might and power ever? Do you?"
24
ON BOARD SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR
"T minus ten."
Ten minutes to launch. Still wearing dry pants. Still with her heart beating faster than any human heart ever had. In twenty minutes she could be in space. Correction. In twenty minutes she would be in space.
ON BOARD USCG CUTTER MUNRO
There couldn't be that many of them if they'd all fit into Mun 1 on the way over. He could raise a hue and cry and alert his crew.
But none of his crew were at present armed. He thought of Myers. The terrorists were.
He looked at his watch. Ten minutes to launch. Nine.
He swung around the foot of the stairs and diverted momentarily to put his head into the chief's mess. No one there, either. He wanted GMC and he wanted him now, but GMC was on liberty. He stepped back and turned to head for the door to the main deck and crashed into someone coming from the opposite direction.
There was a clang of metal dropped on metal followed by a curse not spoken in English. Going on instinct Cal hit out blindly, his right hand connecting with someone's belly. He shoved him out of the way and went scrabbling about the floor looking for what the man had dropped. A foot connected solidly with his side and he grunted. His hand touched the butt of a pistol and he snatched it up and brought it to bear. His finger was squeezing the trigger when the same foot came out of nowhere and kicked it out of his hand.
His hand went instantly numb. He dropped the weapon.
The pistol clanged off down the passageway. The other man went after it. Cal went for the door, got it open in record time, and tumbled out on the main deck. He hotfooted it to the forward stairs and pelted up to the boat deck. Behind him he heard running footsteps. They hit the stairs. He ran aft, making sure his own footsteps hit the deck loudly enough to be heard, ducking out of the way of the Darwin sorter.
As he had hoped, his pursuer was not so lucky. He hit the Darwin sorter at full throttle and from the sound of it laid himself flat out on the deck. Cal didn't stop to check, didn't try to find the pistol in the dark, he kept going until he got to the forward door of the hangar, worked the lever, and got inside, pulling it shut behind him.
"Captain?"
He jumped about a foot. "Jesus!" he said, peering through the dark. "Who's that?"
"Noyes."
The aviator. "What are you doing here?"
"I was in the av shack, getting another pair of binoculars. I heard some funny noises and I came to check. What's going on?"
"We got some bad guys on board, trying to shoot down the space shut-tie, I think."
There was a startled silence.
"No, I'm not kidding," Cal said fiercely, "and this is not a drill."
Recovering, Noyes said, "How the hell did they get on board?"
"There was a freighter-never mind that now. I don't know how many of them there are, ten or twelve, I think, but they've got the bridge and CIC and I'd guess Main Control, too. All our communications are out, I can't yell for help."
He spun around and felt for the door to the gun locker. "Is there anyone else in the av shack?"
"No. Captain, why don't we just stick our heads out the door and yell for the crew?"
"Because the crew can't shoot back. Yet." Cal 's fingers felt for the lock.
"Do you want me to turn on a light, Captain?"
"No! No." He found the lock and delved in his pocket for the massive ring of keys he always carried.
It wasn't there.
He felt the other pocket.
The key ring wasn't there, either. "Goddamn son of a bitch." They must have fallen out of his pocket during the fight.
"Captain, hold up a minute. We've got the radios in the helo."
Cal 's hands stilled. He hadn't even thought of the helo's radios.
AKIL GAINED THE BRIDGE TO FIND ALL QUIET UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYE of Yussuf, who greeted him with a triumphant smile. On the gun deck forward, the barrel of the 76mm had been trained on the sky over the shuttle.
They could have destroyed it on the ground, but Akil wanted to hit it in flight. According to Bayzani and to Riley, with the automated tracking gear installed during the ship's last refit, it shouldn't be a problem.
The shuttle's destruction would produce the maximum amount of shock and horror in the viewers. Millions would be watching; online, on television, later on the news channels over and over and over again.
When they were done they would know two things they hadn't known before.
One, that no one was safe from him and his forces. No one was beyond his reach.
And two, that henceforward Isa and Abdullah were names of respect, of awe and admiration, names to be taken seriously by every Western nation in the world.
NO ONE ON THE HANGAR DECK WAS AWARE ANYTHING UNTOWARD WAS happening elsewhere on the cutter because no one on the hangar deck could hear anything over
the multiple boom boxes playing everything from Dave Matthews to the White Stripes. The 76mm was forward, that was where the attention of the terrorists would be concentrated. The hangar deck and his people were aft. For the moment, Cal wanted it kept that way. He didn't think his crew would panic but he didn't want to test the thesis, either.
He and Noyes walked to the helo at a casual pace, Cal unable to refrain from taking a look over the port side at the shuttle gleaming white and brave under the lights.
Noyes opened the door of the helo and slid inside. "Shit," he said a few minutes later. "The radios are dead. They've already been here. Somebody had some good intel, Captain."
"Yes, they did," Cal said. He scanned the crowd, a few of whom were giving them curious looks.
He looked at his watch.
"There can't be that many of them, Captain," Noyes said urgently. "We can rush them."
"They've got hostages," Cal said, "the Munros, BMC, the XO on the bridge. The watch standers in Main Control and CIC. They've killed Myers and I think everyone on the boat crew and they're not out of ammunition."
"They'd rush the bridge."
"I know they would. I don't want them to."
"How about rushing the 76mm?"
"They've got people on the doors leading to the gun deck."
"But we can't let them take out the shuttle."
"Did they just take out communications, or can you still get this bird in the air?" Cal scanned the crowd and didn't see the other aviator. "And can you do it alone?"
Noyes flicked a few switches. His frown cleared. "I think she'll fly, sir." He looked at Cal. "But sir, there isn't enough time to fly to shore and get help. The shuttle launches any second now."
"I know."
Noyes looked confused at first, and then he understood. His face changed in the reflected glow of the lights on land. "Oh. Shit. You want me to be a hero."
"If I knew how to fly it, I'd fly it," Cal said.
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