"Tell me you're getting this, Pet!" Doherty said softly. Petrovich had been filming the approach of the two Royal Navy aircraft; his camera was locked onto the Sea Harrier as it yawed sharply right and then vanished behind the Sandpiper's bridge. "Tell me you got that!"
Aviation fuel exploded, the fireball boiling up from behind the Sandpiper's superstructure. The second Sea Harrier, farther away than the first, dropped its right wing and began accelerating rapidly, its engines howling as it streaked past the Sandpiper scant yards above the water. The thud-thud-thud of autocannon fire continued to hammer from the freighter's guns. As the Harrier hurtled toward the east, its slipstream raising a rooster tail of spray from the surface, green tracer rounds flicked toward it, throwing up gouts of spray. Petrovich had panned his camera from the fireball left past the Sandpiper's superstructure, following the fleeing aircraft as it vanished toward the horizon.
Silently Doherty put one hand on Petrovich's shoulder and pointed. As the Queen and the Sandpiper continued plowing forward, the wreckage of the downed aircraft slid into view astern of the freighter, its tail sticking up out of the water at a sharp angle, aviation gasoline spreading around it and burning furiously. Petrovich kept filming as Doherty scanned the water, looking for some sign, any sign, that the pilot had ejected or managed to get clear. He wondered if he should throw a life ring… or get help…
Then he began to realize through the mind-clouding shock that the Sandpiper had attacked those aircraft, had deliberately opened fire on them and shot one of them down.
"My God!" was all he was able to say, his voice tightening as he choked out the words.
"We'll… we'll need to get this out right away by satellite," Petrovich said.
"I don't think so," Doherty managed to reply. His thoughts were racing furiously. Ever since the rendezvous with the Pacific Sandpiper, things had been wrong. The two ships lashed together and heading southwest, without explanation from captain or crew; the fact that they'd left the area where the other ship had sunk so quickly; the odd lack of security on the sundeck just now; and now this. "Jim, I think we've been hijacked!"
"You're shitting me!"
"Damn it, that other ship shot that plane down!"
He could see the realization working its way through the cameraman's thoughts. "Holy Christ!"
The film crew had an arrangement with Royal Sky Line to transmit footage and interviews back to CNE using the Queen's onboard satellite communications system and didn't have a satellite transmitter of their own.
"Look," he said. "If we have been hijacked, they'll be in control of the radio room. And they might not like it that we got those pictures. We need to hide the tape."
"Yeah. Yeah. Hide the tape… "
Something was happening on the Grotto Pool deck. Two men wearing blue and white security uniforms had just burst out of the Grotto Restaurant. They were carrying AK-47 assault rifles, and they were shouting at the passengers gathered at the railing, "You! You! All of you! Move back! Move back!"
The passengers were screaming. "Jesus!" Fred Doherty said. It was a hijacking, a hijacking in progress. "Get that!"
Doherty pointed the camera again as the gunmen herded the screaming crowd back from the railing and past the pool. At least four of the women, including Harper, were still topless, were trying to cover themselves with their arms. One of the gunmen picked up a bright red beach towel from one of the chairs and flung it at one of them. "Filthy Western sluts!" Doherty heard him scream. "Cover yourselves decently!" As the women snatched up towels or bikini tops, the gunmen waited, then started herding all of the passengers toward the restaurant.
One gunman glanced up and saw Doherty, the two teenagers, and Petrovich with his camera on the terrace above. The gunman aimed his rifle. "You, up there! Do not move!"
Doherty slowly raised his hands and took a step back from the railing. "I think we'd better do what he says."
A moment later, he heard the sound of running footsteps at his back.
Promenade Deck, Atlantis Queen 48deg 25' N, 9deg 28' W Saturday, 1539 hours GMT
Carolyn Howorth was on the Promenade Deck, on the port side forward, just in front of the Queen's towering white superstructure. She'd come out here for a better look as soon as she'd heard the thunder of the two approaching jets and seen them move past her stateroom porthole on the starboard side. She'd jogged down three decks, cut across the atrium and the onboard shopping mall, and emerged on the Promenade just as the two Sea Harriers began drifting past on the far side of the Pacific Sandpiper.
Hundreds of other passengers were already on the Promenade, and she had to shoulder forward a bit to get a good view. Deck Three, the Promenade Deck, was above the Sandpiper's deck alongside, but about at the same level as the freighter's bridge. She reached the railing just as one of the Harriers came apart in a hail of 30mm cannon fire.
Passengers around her began screaming, some streaming back for the imagined shelter of the Queen's interior, others just pushing away from the port side railing, as if they were afraid the Sandpiper was about to turn those unexpected guns on them next. Turning, she looked up at the Queen's bridge high overhead, but she was too close to see in through those high, slanted windows.
She wasn't certain what was happening, but she knew she had to get back to her stateroom. She needed to use her laptop to get in touch with either GCHQ or their American cousins, the NSA, and she needed to do it now.
Once back inside the Queen's superstructure, however, Howorth found the passageways too jammed with humanity for her to make any progress. By the time she reached the Atrium and the Grand Staircase, she wasn't able to move at all. Instead, she ducked back into the ship's Starbucks and began considering her options.
Her laptop was in her stateroom, on Deck six, three levels up. There was a service stairway behind her, she remembered, that would take her up to six and, better still, on to Deck eleven, and Security. If it was less packed than the Grand Staircase in the Atrium, maybe she could find David Llewellyn.
That staircase would also take her down two decks, to the First Deck, where, she remembered, a computer center offered Internet access to passengers.
Two decks down was better than either three or eight decks up.
Emerging once more into the current of panicked passengers, she headed for the computer center.
Chapter 14
Deck One, Atlantis Queen North Atlantic Ocean 48deg 25' N, 9deg 28' W Saturday, 1539 hours GMT
Thomas Mitchell and Samuel Franks were in the ship's computer center when Mitchell heard the far-off drumroll of thunder. On this sunny Saturday afternoon, the two of them were the only people in the computer center.
The center, located off the large, broad atrium on the First Deck through which they'd first entered the ship, provided shipboard passengers with a large number of computers and access, by way of the Queen's own server system, to a satellite link and the Internet.
Franks was using that access now to check SOCA, Interpol, and Europol databases for names he'd gotten from the Purser's Office that morning, a list of the roughly nine hundred crew and staff people who worked on board this floating hotel. Mitchell was using another computer to complete and transmit a report for MI5 on what the two agents had accomplished so far on this cruise, which was, essentially, nothing. When he was done with that chore, he planned to help Franks divvy up the names and start searching, looking for anyone with previous convictions for selling drugs, smuggling, association with criminal elements, hell, for failure to use the zebra crossing zones at Piccadilly Circus if he had to. There had to be something.
Mitchell dismissed the sound at first as thunder, but after a few moments he realized that he could still hear it. "Hey, Franks? You hear that?"
"Huh? Whadjasay?"
"That rumble. You hear it?"
"Sounds like a jet."
"Yeah. Out here? I'm going up on deck and have a look."
"Suit yourself," Franks said, submerging again into his monit
or display.
Mitchell emerged from the computer center and into chaos. The broad, sweeping curves of the Grand Staircase to his left was packed with people, some going up, some going down, all looking panicky. The Atrium itself was a mob scene. He estimated that there were two or three hundred people packed into that space, all of them going somewhere, but looking as though they had no idea as to where.
He looked around for a security uniform. Whatever had just happened, shipboard security was going to need some backup. He doubted that they had the training or the experience to deal with a full-fledged riot, and this crowd had the look of a riot in the making.
God, what had happened? Was the ship sinking? Unlikely in clear weather, and there would have been an announcement over the PA system if there was a problem.
Reaching out, he grabbed the arm of an older man in a bright-colored T-shirt and white slacks; a much younger woman beside him was clinging to his other arm, her face streaked with tears. "Hey!" Mitchell shouted, trying to make himself heard above the noise of the crowd. "What's going on?"
"They shot down that plane!" the woman shrieked. " They shot down that plane!"
The man shook his head, his eyes distant, as if he was in shock. "God!" he said. "Oh, God!" The two pulled away from Mitchell and kept pushing ahead through the mob.
He thought he saw the blue and white uniform of a shipboard security man going up the Grand Staircase. Plunging ahead, Mitchell elbowed through the crowd, making his way after the man. Around him, people shouted and screamed, and he caught occasional fragments in the racket: "Those were gunsl Big machine guns!" "Why would they shoot down Royal Navy jets?" "They shot down those planes!"
The guns, Mitchell decided, must be the 30mm cannons carried by the Pacific Sandpiper. The Queen, he knew, was unarmed. But Royal Navy aircraft?
Halfway up the staircase, a voice boomed from the PA system, "Attention! Attention, please! May I have your attention, please?"
The surging, jostling crowd slowly came to a stop, voices falling silent, faces turned toward the ceiling as though they were searching for the source of that voice.
"May I have your attention, please?" the voice continued, sounding louder now as the crowd noise dwindled. "Everything is under control. There is no need for panic. Repeat… there is no need for panic!"
The crowd had stopped moving, now, but the rumble of voices was beginning to rise once more. People were murmuring to one another, still uncertain, still frightened. A few continued to push ahead through the stalled mass of humanity.
"The freighter Pacific Sandpiper possesses an automated antiaircraft weapon system," the voice said in measured, reassuring tones. "It's a kind of robot that automatically tracks aircraft with radar and, when the safety is off, it automatically shoots the aircraft down.
There has been some kind of terrible accident, which many of you witnessed just now. One of the British jets came too close to the Pacific Sandpiper and one of those automatic weapons locked on and shot it down.
'There is absolutely no cause for alarm. Everything is under control, and the malfunctioning weapon has been locked down. Our ship's officers are assisting in investigating what went wrong.
"The best thing all of you can do is return to your staterooms immediately and stay there. We will keep you updated on developments as they occur. Due to the serious nature of this emergency, however, Ship's Security personnel have special police powers. Please cooperate fully with anyone wearing a blue and white security uniform, or the uniform of a ship's officer.
"Return to your staterooms immediately, please."
Mitchell felt rather than heard something like a collective sigh arising from the hundreds of people around him and crowding the Atrium just below. The crowd collectively seemed to sag, like puppets relaxing against slackened strings.
"Special police powers?" Special police cock was more like it. There was something decidedly not right about that announcement.
From the sound of things, a Royal Navy aircraft had just been downed outside, but blaming it on an accidental firing of a robot antiaircraft system was also cock.
There was, Mitchell knew, an automated weapons system like the one described just now. It was called CIWS, for close-in weapon system, and was pronounced "sea-whiz" in military-speak. It consisted of a multiple-barreled Gatling gun mounted inside an upright cylinder with an astonishing rate of fire — as high as fifty rounds per second. It was used as a missile defense system, particularly on aircraft carriers. It was never installed on a civilian vessel.
He decided to make his way up to Security and see if he could find David Llewellyn.
Security Office, Atlantis Queen 48deg 25' N, 9deg 28' W Saturday, 1558 hours GMT
Yusef Khalid leaned over the shoulder of one of his men, studying the TV monitor on the console before him. At the moment, the camera was looking down onto the Atrium on Deck Two, as the crowds slowly thinned. Nearby, another monitor showed the length of a long passageway on Deck Seven, where people were unlocking their stateroom doors and stepping inside. The fantail was clear now, as was the Atlantean Grotto high atop the ship's superstructure. "Security guards" had also been sent out onto the Promenade Deck to herd the sightseers inside.
Six of Khalid's men were sitting at the line of monitors along the console, using security cameras mounted throughout the ship to watch as the crowds dispersed. It was bad, very bad, that some idiot on the Pacific Sandpiper had lost his nerve and shot down that Harrier, and Khalid had already sent word to Abdel Ramid to have the responsible person sent to the Atlantis Queen's bridge to see him. He hadn't decided yet what punishment to mete out for that extraordinary lapse of judgment…
The operational plan was divided into five distinct phases. Phase one had been the actual infiltration of both the Atlantis Queen and the Pacific Sandpiper, with IJI members disguised as security personnel or deckhands and staying very much out of sight. Phase two had commenced with the destruction of the Ishikari and the takeover of the bridge, security, and engineering sections of both target ships.
Phase three had involved tying the two ships together and proceeding southwest as quickly as possible, and was actually rather open-ended in terms of the operational time line. Khalid was all too aware that the operation could easily fail at this point for the simple reason that it would be all but impossible for twenty-four armed terrorists to control the nearly three thousand crewmen and passengers on board the Atlantis Queen if they panicked or if they got wind of what was happening too early.
The longer the passengers on the cruise ship could be kept ignorant of what was going on, the better; Khalid was determined not to have a repeat, on a far larger scale, of the debacle of Flight 93.
If that Palestinian idiot on the Pacific Sandpiper had not lost his nerve and opened fire, those Royal Navy fighters would have snooped around for a bit, helpless to do anything but look, then returned to England, where the information gleaned by their reconnaissance pods could be analyzed. Khalid fully expected the two hijacked ships to be intercepted by naval warships, but with luck that wouldn't have happened before mid-day tomorrow.
The hijackers had maintained radio silence, knowing that there might be key phrases or code words that would reassure the ships' owners in England that all was well; Ghailiani had told Khalid that there were such codes, but that only the ship's captain and senior security people knew them. Rather than risk having those people give him the wrong codes under interrogation — there would be no way to check what they told him even if they were tortured — he'd ordered radio silence. The enemy might suspect something was wrong, but they wouldn't know.
And the longer Khalid could maintain that balance of uncertainty, the better for the operation.
Khalid straightened up, then walked down the line of terminals, looking at each glowing screen.
"Wait a moment," Khalid said, pointing at one monitor. "Who is that? What is he doing?"
The screen showed a single man in a rumpled suit coat, sitting
alone in a room filled with computer screens and keyboards. He appeared to be alone at the only live monitor.
"Computer center, sir," Inan Al-Shafi replied. "Deck One. He's been in there all morning. There was someone else with him a little while ago."
"Can you zoom in on the screen?"
"Maybe," the man said. He typed a command into his keyboard, then held his mouse, turning the wheel with his forefinger. The camera view began closing in, peering over the passenger's shoulder. The monitor flickered with a bright, fluorescent glare. Khalid felt he could almost see what was on it — it looked like a list, in neat blocks of text, each with a small graphic or photograph. But the resolution was too poor to make out what it was.
"I have a list of people who've checked into the computer center this morning," Hamud Haqqani, at the next workstation over, announced. "There were only two. Samuel Franks… SOCA. And Thomas Mitchell, MI5."
"Well, well," Khalid said. "SOCA and MI5? What are they doing aboard?"
"There is a note attached to their passenger records, sir," Haqqani said. "They were given passage two days ago so that they could investigate the murder of a ship's officer on the Southampton docks without delaying the departure." His hands began clattering over his keyboard. "I should be able to call up what he's looking at."
"Do it."
Hamud Haqqani was an IJI Brigade member recruited from Islamabad, Pakistan, where he'd worked for a major international banking concern as an IT specialist. Khalid had several computer experts on his team — six of them were sitting here in this room — but Haqqani was undoubtedly the most brilliant, and the most skillful.
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