"What have you brought us, Rashid?" he asked Aziz. There were attractive women in this group as well. One in particular…
"They were in the casino," Aziz replied. He glanced at the woman in the seat next to Nehim, who was trying to straighten her clothing. "None of that, Nehim," he snapped. "We have work to do. Holy work!"
"What work?"
"The enemy has boarded the ship! Three of our brothers are dead! Guard the prisoners well, and keep your pants buckled. There will be time for games later!"
Nehim helped herd the new batch of prisoners down the aisle as Aziz and the others turned and headed back out into the Deck One mall area. Hijazi was giving Nehim a smug, I-told-you-so look, but he wiped his mouth with the back of one hand and ignored him.
That was the problem. There would be no time later, not if the enemy was already coming on board the ship. Nehim had been hungering for one of the half-naked bitches for a week, and in all likelihood the hijacked liner was going to be blown to bits within the next few minutes. Damn Khalid, and damn the sanctimonious Saudi ulema who'd put him here!
He was going to have one of these bitches before he died, no matter what Hijazi or Aziz or the Amir himself might say.
The question was, which one?
Art Room
NSA Headquarters
Fort Meade, Maryland
Friday, 0531 hours EST
"Face the front of the theater," Rubens said, looking closely at the schematic showing the Neptune Theater. Pinpoints of red light representing forty more passengers had just entered the room and were moving down toward the front.
"Okay," Dean's voice came back from an overhead speaker. The dots representing him and Walters were green. Both were carrying ID passkey cards provided by Royal Sky Line before the mission. There were well over a hundred colored pinpoints already within the theater, a mingling of red and blue.
Not counting the blips representing Dean and Walters, there were eighty-eight green, people carrying crew-member IDs. Many of those would be terrorists, but most would be prisoners, crew members brought to the theater. Separating the two was going to be tough.
"We've identified five tangos surrounding your group," Rubens said, "the ones who brought you in. They're at twelve o'clock, two o'clock, five o'clock, six o'clock, and nine o'clock."
"Rog. Got 'em spotted."
"You have four shooters in the Deck Two balcony. Two o'clock, four o'clock, eight o'clock, and ten o'clock."
Again there was a pause. "Okay. I have them. And I saw two outside the Deck One doors. Any more?"
"There may be others mixed in with the prisoners. We can't differentiate here."
see one, yeah. One o'clock, thirty feet away. He's hassling a couple of women. Damn it… one of them is CJ! Our GCHQ contact!"
Rubens checked the indicated area. Two green blips overlapped, close beside several blues. "We see them."
"Ten targets. That'll take some shooting."
"Charlie, I recommend that you wait. The tangos who brought you down here will probably be leaving soon. And Brisard and three men are on their way on Deck Two. They'll be there in a few minutes."
"Rog. We'll wait." Almost a minute later, Dean spoke again. "Listen… that son of a bitch mixed in with the hostages. He's just grabbed a woman… no, two women! CJ and someone else! He's leading them up the other aisle!"
Ruben saw the dots, one blue, two green, moving closely together toward the door. "I see them."
"We need to take him now."
"You need to sit tight, Dean. Brisard's's almost there."
"Damn it, Bill!"
"By the book, Dean. By the book."
The three points of light moved through the door and into the passageway.
"They're gone," Dean said.
"You'll have your chance in a moment."
Brisard and the other three operators were nearly at the theater's Deck Two entrance
Chapter 26
Neptune Theater, Atlantis Queen
Thirty miles south of Nantucket
Friday, 0531 hours EST
Dean and Walters walked all the way down the aisle, to a point where they could see all four of the terrorist shooters in the second-floor balcony The five who'd brought them here were all leaving, at the top of the aisle and filing through the doors.
"Brisard's at the door on the second deck," Rubens' voice warned.
"Right. Walters? Get ready!"
Together the two men reached behind their backs and drew their pistols, sitting down in theater seats on opposite sides of the aisle as they did so, keeping the weapons carefully hidden.
The theater was a gaudy, glitzy explosion of Baroque architecture, heavy on the gold paint and curlicues, filled with Nereids and dolphins, seashells and seahorses, nets and tridents. An enormous figure of Neptune — the Roman Poseidon, the god who'd supposedly founded Atlantis —: emerged from the bulkhead directly above the stage.
Their guards were leaning on the balcony railings, looking down into the auditorium, but they seemed to just be watching, not preparing to massacre the hostages. If any of them took aim, Dean was ready to pull out his weapon and begin firing, Brisard or no Brisard.
Dean was angry about the one tango he'd seen leaving the theater with two captives. For Dean, the horror of extremist Muslim fundamentalists wasn't their religion; so far as he was concerned, people could believe what they wanted. He knew that moderate Islamic clerics taught justice and equality, including equality for women, a fairly advanced concept for a Prophet born in the sixth century. The problem was that too many fundamentalists of all religions relied not on their scriptures but on local custom and belief… and then went through their holy books looking for isolated verses that would justify those beliefs. If your culture already believed that women were second-class citizens or worse, it wasn't hard to make the Qur'an support your prejudice.
As a result, there were Muslim societies where women were forbidden to go to school, where their genitals were mutilated, where rape victims were imprisoned and even killed, where a woman who didn't wear the veil was automatically responsible for whatever a Muslim male decided to do to her:
All in the name of Allah, the merciful, the all-knowing.
"Keep tracking those three," he murmured to Rubens.
"We are. Stand by. Brisard is coming in."
"Walters!" Dean snapped. "Ready…"
Cougar Six
A Deck, Atlantis Queen Friday, 0532 hours EST
"We're at the infirmary," Yancey said. Behind him were five of the jumpers in a strung-out line. They'd ditched their oxygen bottles and masks but were still in their combat blacks. Their NVG monoculars were in place, their gain tuned down to allow for the ship's ambient lighting but still revealing the aim points for the IR laser sights.
"Copy that," Caravaggio replied. "We have you on the board. The passageway is clear ahead of you, all the way through the galley. You have one green light standing next to the far door inside the galley, probably a tango guard, and ten more in small groups left and right — probably galley staff."
"Roger that." They would have to sort tangos from crew members when they went in.
Hiding there behind the bar up in the casino had been one of the toughest things David P. Yancey had ever done — and he'd been through SEAL training and Hell Week, through a deployment in Afghanistan and two tours in Iraq, none of it exactly easy duty. Crouching there in silence, looking up with weapons ready to open fire if they were discovered or if the tangos started slaughtering hostages, they'd waited out the confrontation in the casino, emerging only after one of the elderly women — a Ms. Caruthers — had called out "Ally ally outs in free!"
There were ten of them, now, with Walters and Dean on their way forward with the terrorists. After briefly consulting with the Art Room, Tom Brisard had taken three of the men and headed forward, intent on following Dean and Walters to wherever the hostages were being led. Yancey took the remaining five and, guided by Caravaggio back in the A
rt Room, found a service stairwell that would take them all the way down to A Deck.
They emerged in a passageway outside the ship's infirmary. Several civilians, including two of the ship's doctors, clustered around them. "Are you here to rescue us?" one, an older woman, asked.
"We're going to try, ma'am," Yancey had replied. "All of you stay here and stay down!"
"Dr. Barnes! Have you seen him? The terrorists took him… "
"We'll take care of it, ma'am." Brushing aside other questions, they'd moved aft down the central passageway leading from the infirmary to the massive watertight door leading to the galley.
Coulter and Yancey took the lead, since both of them had suppressed H&Ks, while Boone and Michelson carried combat shotguns, and Daniels and O'Brien had assault rifles. He took a stance, weapon braced against his shoulder, and said, "Go!" Daniels swiped an ID card through the reader, and Michelson pushed the door open.
Beyond was the gleaming expanse of the galley for the Atlantia Restaurant, one deck above. At the far end of the room, a lone man in a khaki uniform and holding an AK slouched in a chair, looking bored. Both Coulter and Yancey opened up with sharp, precise three-round bursts, their fire guided by the infrared dots visible through their monoculars. The man sprawled backward, arms flying to either side and weapon clattering to the deck as he slammed against the door at his back, then spilled from the overturning chair and sprawled in front of it in an untidy heap.
"One tango down," Yancey said as the six Black Cats rolled through the open door in swift succession, keeping their weapons up. Cooks, stewards, and galley assistants stood to either side, some screaming, some taking cover behind tables and food prep stations.
"Stay down!" Coulter barked. "Everybody down! Hands on your heads!"
There was no time to check for terrorists mixed in with crew members; Yancey saw no obvious tangos anywhere else in the galley, but that didn't mean they weren't there. So long as he saw no weapons, however, he kept moving forward, H&K at his shoulder, making for the far door.
"There… there are terrorists in there!" one young woman called out.
"We have four tangos inside the after hold," Caravaggio said over his radio headset. "All together, all toward your right as you go in, at roughly two o'clock."
"Stay down! Nobody move!" O'Brien called out, moving backward across the galley as he brought up the rear. Yancey and Coulter both dropped their half-empty magazines and popped in fresh ones, took stances in front of the door, and waited for Boone, Michelson, and Daniels to get into position between and behind them. "Go!"
The door to the aft hold opened, and Yancey stepped through, immediately pivoting to keep his weapon and its dancing IR spot aimed toward the four tangos inside. From the door, however, all he could see was an enormous stack of massive crates and cardboard boxes, bank upon bank of refrigerators, steel shelves, and piles of canned goods and boxed food.
"They heard you," Caravaggio warned. "Two targets, moving toward you and toward your right."
The trouble was, Yancey knew, that back in the Art Room they were looking at nice, clean deck schematics and they couldn't see the mountains of supplies that were providing cover at the moment for four jihadist tangos. It was comforting knowing how many tangos they faced and what their general direction was, but that didn't make getting at them very much easier.
"Boone! With me!" Yancey started forward, following the main open pathway leading aft from the door.
"Rest of you with me!" Coulter added. He broke to the right and started climbing a pile of wooden crates fifteen feet high.
"Watch out for hot tubs," Yancey said, grinning. Coulter's jumpsuit was still sopping wet from his accidental immersion in a spa on the Atlas Pool deck.
"Yancey!" Caravaggio said, her voice urgent. "Two tangos right in front ofyou Range ten feet!"
What was right in front of him was a line of refrigerators forming the right-hand wall of the passageway he and Boone were following. It looked like there was a cross-passage just ahead, however. Gun still tight against his shoulder, Yancey broke into a run.
Swinging around the corner of the last refrigerator, he came face-to-face with two bearded men, khaki-clad, both holding AKs at port arms. Reflexively his finger tapped the trigger before his brain had fully processed what he was seeing; a three-round burst of 9 mm bullets slashed into the face and throat of the closest man, spinning him roughly aside.
An instant behind Yancey's burst, Boone opened up with his AA-12, the combat shotgun set on full auto. With a fire rate of three hundred rounds per minute, the weapon loosed a thundering barrage of four blasts in less than a second, the 12-gauge shot ripping into both terrorists and cutting them apart. Blood splashed across the refrigerator, stacks of crates, and the deck.
"Two more down!" Yancey called, stepping across one of the bodies. Ahead he could now see the inside of the main outer doors to the cargo hold. Fifty feet to the right of those were three trucks, with enclosed cargo decks and open tailgates.
But he couldn't see the other two tangos.
Neptune Theater, Atlantis Queen Friday, 0532 hours EST
A door opened on the second-level balcony in the back of the theater. There were two tangos back there, one to the left, one to the right, and they both turned at the sound.
Dean lifted his SIG Sauer, dropping into a kneeling crouch and bracing the weapon in a two-handed stance, aiming at the gunman on the right-side balcony forward. The man had also heard the door and was turning to face it, raising his AK.
The range was a good fifty feet from the front-row seats to the front balcony one level up, a long shot for a pistol. Long hours on the practice range, however, had let Dean qualify as an expert, both with his beloved accurized M1911A1 and with the SIG Sauer P226. Releasing his pent-up breath halfway, he squeezed with his whole hand.
The shot came as a surprise, as it should in careful marksmanship. The terrorist lurched to one side, twisting, as the AK in his hands went off, the muzzle flash long and stuttering in the theater's dim light.
People in the theater screamed, some bolting in panic, others trying to duck down among the rows of seats. Dean reacquired and fired again, and the terrorist dropped out of sight behind the balcony railing.
At Dean's back, Walters fired again and again as his target jackknifed over the railing, then dropped twenty feet to the deck. Brisard and his people were moving down the balcony aisles at the same moment, firing at the two terrorist gunmen there. Dean pivoted, ready to add his fire to theirs, but both tangos were already dropping.
The back doors to Deck One swung open, however, and two more terrorists rushed in — the guards who'd been standing outside, obviously brought in by the burst of AK fire. Dean dropped his aim and fired twice at one, then pivoted to aim at the other… but held his fire. Panicking civilians were everywhere, scattering as one of the newly arrived terrorists opened fire with his AK.
"Get down! Everybody down!" Dean yelled.
One young man stood up, shirtless, waving his arms.
Aft Cargo Hold
A Deck, Atlantis Queen
Friday, 0533 hours EST
Omar Mohammed Ra'd heard the echoing thud-thud-thud-thud of a heavy weapon close by and leaped toward the trucks.
Aram and Fahaj had left moments before to investigate the opening of the door to the galley. No one was supposed to come through that door unless word came from the Amir himself that it was okay. In retrospect, it might have been better for the men guarding the trucks in the hold to have stayed in place, concealed and ready to open fire on any intruders… but the four of them had not been chosen for their combat experience or their tactical expertise.
Ra'd was the oldest of them, and he was just nineteen. He was Egyptian, the son of a poverty-crippled family in a suburb of Cairo. He'd joined the revived Gama'a al-Islamiyya, a militant Egyptian group that had united with al-Qaeda in 2006. From a training camp in Egypt he'd been sent to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, where he'd first met Amir Rahi
d Sayed as-Saadi and transferred to the Islamic Jihad International Brigade.
Ra'd and the three with him had been chosen, as-Saadi told them, because of their faith.
And Ra'd was dedicated to the way of submission, to Allah and Islam and the word of the Prophet. Ra'd had welcomed the opportunity offered by the Amir to guard the trucks and their tons of high explosives and to detonate those explosives if at any time the enemies of Islam tried to take them. The four of them had been warned not to wander too close to the trucks, that there was a deadly poison inside the trucks on top of the explosives, but if enemy forces tried to break into the ship's hold, they were to detonate the explosives immediately.
The detonator lay on a small folding table set up next to one of the trucks, at the end of a long, black coil of rubber-sheathed cable. A car battery rested in the deck beneath, connected with a tangle of electrical cables leading into each vehicle. All he needed to do was turn the arming key on the detonator and press the red button.
Behind him, Said Shalabi snatched up his rifle. "Go, Omar! Go, and I will cover you!" To his left, Aram and Fajah tumbled across the deck in an explosion of wet scarlet, as two ominous figures in black rounded a line of refrigerators holding foodstuffs for the galley.
One of the figures shouted something… but Ra'd spoke no language but Arabic — specifically the Egyptian dialect. He'd had trouble understanding his brothers from Syria and Morocco.
The thunder sounded again, and something shrieked off the bulkhead behind him. Heart pounding, he snatched up the detonator and turned the key…
Neptune Theater, Atlantis Queen
Friday, 0533 hours EST
"Everybody get down!" the shirtless man screamed, and then a burst of AK-47 fire tore through his body, knocking him over the back of a theater seat. As he fell, Dean had a clear shot at the shooter and took it, firing three rounds into the gunman in rapid succession as Walters opened fire as well. The gunman collapsed, and Dean swung, aiming his weapon across the crowd. It was still possible that there were other terrorists here on the main floor, sheltering among the hostages.
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