Lyla looked out a window and saw nothing but the sun shining through scattered clouds on the calm water below, but they should have stayed over the Saudi Arabian Desert for the duration of the flight. They were out of range for an ordinary mobile phone, and the odds of finding a satellite phone on board were minuscule. She had to get into the cockpit. If the pilots were on the same oxygen system, they might be unconscious as well, but she could radio a Mayday and get help from someone on the ground. She couldn’t land this plane, but the controls were so highly automated these days that someone at air traffic control in Dubai should able to talk her through getting them back to the airport safely.
When she got to the cockpit door, it was closed and locked. No one answered her pounding fist. She desperately tried to wrench it open, but it was a secure door. Since 9/11, all aircraft had been built with stronger cockpit doors and locking mechanisms controlled by the pilots to prevent terrorists from gaining access. It also meant that if the pilots were incapacitated, no one could get inside.
Lyla examined the door. She noticed a keypad with a red light beside it and realized there might be a way inside. She remembered reading that there was a code the flight attendants could use to access the cockpit in a medical emergency as long as the pilots hadn’t disabled it from inside, as they would during a terrorist event.
They had to keep a code like that nearby so all the flight attendants could find it quickly. She rooted through the food lockers in the front galley and found what she was looking for: a piece of paper taped to the inside of the cabinet door with a six-digit number written on it. The Arabic text above the number was unreadable, but it had to be it.
Lyla punched the number into the keypad, and the light turned green with a beep. She was overjoyed as she flung the door open.
Her happiness vanished when she saw the pilot slumped back in his chair, a small bullet hole in his right temple.
The copilot, however, was very much alive. She flinched and instinctively put up her hands when he turned around and pointed a small pistol at her.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“No . . . no one,” she stammered. “Just a passenger. Lyla Dhawan.”
“Where did you come from?”
“I was in the hold with Adam Carlton when we hit the turbulence.”
“Where is he?”
“He hit his head. He’s badly injured.”
“How did you get in here?”
“The access code. It was on a piece of paper.”
He got up from his seat. “Show me.”
He kept the gun on her the whole time as she showed him where it was in the galley. He yanked the paper off the door, crumpled it up, and shoved it into his pocket.
He motioned with his pistol for her to return to the cockpit. After shutting the door behind him, he got back into his chair and told her to sit in the jump seat.
“Belt yourself in,” he said while glancing at his watch.
Lyla let out a sob of relief. He wasn’t going to kill her. She snapped the seat belt together.
“Now put on the mask.” He pointed to the one hanging next to her.
The thought of all the unconscious passengers flashed in her mind. “Why?”
He held up the pistol and pointed it at her head.
“Do it.”
She had no choice. The dead pilot was evidence that he wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.
She fit the mask over her face but tried to keep it as loose as possible.
The copilot looked at his watch again and then at her. “No. Tighter.”
Reluctantly, she pulled the straps taut. Within seconds, she started to feel herself get light-headed. There had to be some kind of knockout gas in the emergency oxygen system.
“Why are you doing this?” she shouted through the mask, but the copilot ignored her.
He looked to his right, then shielded his eyes with one hand. A moment later, a blinding flash lit up the cockpit.
Immediately after that, the copilot pushed his control joystick forward. The huge airplane nosed into a steep dive.
Lyla tried to unbuckle herself so she could stop the maniac from killing them all, but her muscles were like jelly. She couldn’t feel her fingers, and her mind was a muddled haze. She had the sudden hope that this was all just a nightmare, that none of it was truly happening.
Then she looked through the front windows as they emerged from a cloud bank. No sky was visible. Only ocean.
They were going down, and there was nothing she could do to prevent it. Then, mercifully, she tumbled into darkness.
TWO
NAPLES, ITALY
The present day
Although the main workforce had gone home after sunset, the vast shipbuilding yards of Moretti Navi were still brightly lit. Asad Torkan crouched beside the outer fence in the most remote part of the facility. His reconnaissance during the previous two nights confirmed that there were no cameras observing the perimeter. The few roaming guards kept to a predictable pattern, making it easy for him to time his infiltration.
He threw his duffel bag over his shoulder and easily scaled the fence, protecting himself from the razor wire with a heavy leather welding blanket. When he was over, he took down the blanket and stowed it under one of the stacks of containers along with the black coveralls he’d just taken off. Underneath, he was wearing the uniform of a Moretti Navi construction foreman. He put on a hard hat, hoisted the duffel, and walked toward the docks as if he were heading in for his shift.
When Torkan passed a couple of longshoremen who gave him little more than a brief glance, he knew he’d have no trouble reaching his objective. He’d been trained by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security as a saboteur, carrying out successful operations in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Pakistan, always escaping undetected.
With brown eyes, dark hair, a strong chin, and a lanky runner’s physique, Torkan was often mistaken for a Greek or Italian, which made it easy for him to blend into European cultures. He spoke fluent English, as well as Farsi and Arabic, and was passable in several other languages, but Italian wasn’t one of them. Anybody seeing him in the shipyard would assume he was a fellow countryman. If someone tried to speak to him, he would say he was an American contractor here to supervise construction on one of the many ships being built.
The shipyard was so immense that it took twenty minutes before he saw his target in the distance. It was a relatively small freighter just 400 feet in length that was undergoing final outfitting before its maiden voyage scheduled for the next day. It seemed like a normal cargo ship except for two distinguishing features: a large white satellite dish mounted on the deck and four spiral wind turbines that looked like upside-down eggbeaters. The turbines generated auxiliary power when the ship was at sea.
As he got closer, Torkan could see Colossus 5 painted on the bow. The other Colossus ships were already at sea, making them more difficult to reach since their locations were closely guarded secrets, so he had to disable this one before it left port. The ship looked anything but colossal compared to the giant cruise liners and Panamax containerships being built nearby, but the name didn’t refer to its size. It referred to the payload inside.
Torkan stopped when he was within a hundred yards of the ship to survey the area. Unlike any other vessel in the yard, the Colossus 5 was cordoned off by specially built fencing that was far more formidable than the facility’s outer perimeter. Guards at the gate were heavily armed with submachine guns and carried themselves like the former soldiers they were. In addition, Torkan counted at least a dozen security professionals patrolling the deck of the ship as well as the dock. His mission was to destroy the ship’s satellite dish, rendering the Colossus 5 unusable for weeks until they could install a replacement.
Attempting to get on the ship would be suicide. Not only would such a mission fail, Torkan wasn�
�t suicidal. He enjoyed the fruits of his now private career since leaving government, and he had every intention of living a long life. So attacking the ship head-on was out of the question.
His current objective wasn’t the Colossus 5 itself. It was the loading crane on the dock next to it.
As tall as a thirty-story building when its boom was pointed nearly straight up in the air, the orange crane had four legs and looked like a gigantic modernist sculpture of a giraffe. Pulley cables as thick as pythons held the steel latticework boom locked in the vertical position now that it had finished loading construction materials onto the ship.
Torkan maneuvered himself so that the crane shielded him from the ship’s view. The stairs were partially visible to the guards on the Colossus 5, but if they noticed him, he hoped they would think he was a dockworker doing an inspection.
When he reached the top, Torkan bypassed the crane operator’s cab and entered the rear housing, where the huge motor and drive gears for the pulleys were protected from the elements. He unzipped the duffel and removed three shaped charges armed with remote-controlled detonators.
He attached two of the bombs to the cables controlling the hoist that raised and lowered the boom. To ensure that the collapse of the crane would be catastrophic, he also snuck out to the crane’s roof. He kept low while he affixed the final bomb to the boom pendant that provided stability for the crane.
Torkan took a SIG Sauer pistol from the duffel, tucked it under his shirt, and left the empty bag on the crane. By the time he set off the bombs, he would be well away from the shipyard.
He descended the stairs. At the bottom, he was about to disappear back into the facility’s maze of containers when a couple of dockworkers spotted him. They looked at each other, then started walking toward him.
“Ehi! Tu!” one of them called to him. “Cosa stai facendo lassù?”
Torkan couldn’t understand the Italian, but he knew the man was asking why he had been on the crane. He put on a look of confusion and pointed at himself.
“Me?”
The burly longshoreman stopped in front of him. “Sì, tu. Chi sei?”
“I’m sorry,” Torkan said in English. “I don’t speak Italian.”
The dockworker furrowed his brow. “I say, who are you? Why you on crane? This is my job.”
“Oh! I didn’t know any more work was being done on the Colossus 5 tonight.”
“No. No work. I work on different crane tonight.”
“That explains it.”
The two men spoke to each other in rapid-fire Italian, then the first man turned back to Torkan. “Nothing is explain. Who are you?”
Torkan smiled at them. “I work for the owners of the ship. They wanted me to make sure this crane isn’t a hazard.”
“Hazard?”
“You know, a danger in the pulley housing. There was some difficulty during the loading process.”
“Danger? Is no danger.” He pointed at the crane and said something to his companion. The younger man immediately began climbing the stairs.
“No need for another inspection,” Torkan said. “I can confirm that it’s completely safe now.”
“Is strange.” The dockworker took out his phone. “I call the manager.”
“There’s no need to do that,” Torkan said. The nimble young dockworker was already halfway up to the top.
“Is necessary. I no see you before.” He began to dial, but Torkan put his hands up to stop him.
“Wait! You’re going to get me in trouble. Here, let me call my boss and you can speak to him. He can tell you I have complete authorization.”
The longshoreman looked at him dubiously, then nodded and pocketed his phone.
As he dialed the number, Torkan kept an eye on the dockworker climbing the crane. When he opened the door to the pulley housing, Torkan pressed the CALL button.
The detonators on the bombs all received the same cell phone call simultaneously. A massive explosion blew apart the housing, taking the dockworker with it. The cables holding up the crane’s boom were instantly severed, and it began falling toward the Colossus 5.
The boom was so large that the fall seemed to be happening in slow motion. The guards on the ship could only look on in horror or run for their lives as it plunged down between two of the wind-generating masts.
The crane’s hook hit the satellite dish dead center. It erupted in a shower of debris that rained down all over the ship’s deck. The sudden impact sheared the boom from its mounting, and the remainder of the lattice structure slammed into the dock, smashing the gate and crushing one unfortunate guard who didn’t get out of the way in time. The boom finally came to rest across the midpoint of the ship.
An emergency klaxon sounded, and men were shouting everywhere as they raced to see if any survivors were trapped in the debris.
The longshoreman gaped at the stunning scene of destruction that caused the death of his friend.
“I told you it was dangerous,” Torkan said, and pumped two bullets into the man’s chest. The man crumpled to the ground, a look of surprise on his face before he died. There was so much going on that no one would notice the gunshots, allowing Torkan to get rid of the last witness to his mission.
Amid the chaos and confusion, he disappeared into the shadows and was able to use his planned escape route over the perimeter fence. When he was safely outside the shipyard and walking back to his car, he made another phone call.
“Yes?” a man’s voice answered immediately.
“It’s done,” Torkan said. “The ship is temporarily out of commission.”
“Excellent work. That will set the Colossus Project back by two weeks. When can you reach Mumbai?”
Torkan checked his watch. Only one minute off his expected completion time.
“I’ve already got my boarding pass,” he said. “I’ll arrive at ten in the morning.”
“Good. I’ll have a helicopter bring you out to the launch platform when you get there. But don’t be late.”
“That’s really not up to me, is it?”
“If you think the flight is going to be significantly delayed, I wouldn’t get on if I were you,” the man on the other end warned him. “If everything goes according to plan, you won’t want to be on a plane tomorrow afternoon.”
THREE
THE WESTERN INDIAN OCEAN
Captain Keith Tao cursed when he saw smoke on the horizon, glowing red where it was backlit by the morning sun. It was directly in his ship’s path, and they didn’t have time to waste. He had a tight schedule to keep. But stopping to render aid to a ship in distress was required by the Law of the Sea. If his freighter was witnessed bypassing a sinking ship, it would raise questions he didn’t want to answer.
“Should we go around?” the executive officer asked.
To avoid being spotted by anyone aboard the stricken ship, they’d have to go at least two hours out of their way, and their timetable was already off because of their delayed departure from Mozambique.
Tao raised a pair of binoculars and could see the outline of a cargo ship coming into view. “Has there been any SOS sent from this area?”
“No, sir. I’ve checked the marine traffic website, and there aren’t supposed to be any other ships within a hundred miles.”
That was what Tao had been expecting. They were far off the main shipping lanes on purpose, so to encounter another ship out here in the middle of nowhere was bad luck.
Tao lowered the binoculars. He’d have to risk being seen to stay on schedule. “Maintain the current heading.”
“Aye, Captain.”
In another hour, the foundering ship was easily visible, and, based on its condition, Tao was surprised it remained afloat.
The ancient tramp steamer, more than 500 feet long, looked like a funhouse mirror version of his own cargo ship, the Tri
ton Star. The vessel was listing fifteen degrees to port and sitting low in the water. Tendrils of smoke curled up from several spots on the hull that had been blackened by fire.
Decades ago, the ship must have cut a graceful course through the sea, with its clean lines and a stern reminiscent of the Titanic’s champagne-glass tail. But now, even without the fire damage, the ship appeared to be on its last voyage. Rust ate at the peeling paint on the mottled pea green hull. The three cranes forward and the two aft of the dingy white superstructure were in such disrepair that it seemed like they could collapse at any moment. The radio antennas were broken in half, possibly hit by debris in an explosion. Overturned oil drums and junk littered a deck encircled by a chain railing that was broken in many places. The ship looked like a disaster, which is exactly what had occurred.
Tao could just make out the faded lettering below the Iranian flag fluttering on the stern’s jackstaff: Goreno.
Now the ship’s condition made sense. Its Iranian registry meant it could be a black market smuggler calling on the world’s seedier ports to pick up its cargo. That also explained why there wouldn’t be any record of it in the marine traffic database.
“Captain,” the XO said, “we’re picking up a distress call. It’s very faint.”
“From the Goreno?” Tao peered at the bridge, but he couldn’t see anything through its cracked and grimy windows.
“No, sir. He says they had to abandon ship.”
A lifeboat came into view as they passed the bow of the Goreno. It looked like it was in even worse shape than the ship, if that was possible. The entire hull had been blackened by flames, and part of the roof was caved in. It seemed to be dead in the water.
“Put the call on speaker,” Tao ordered.
A desperate voice pleaded with them in Spanish-accented English through the bridge’s loudspeaker. “To the ship off our bow, this is Eduardo Barbanegra, captain of the Goreno. We need your assistance. My crew and I have been adrift for three days without food or water.” The signal was weak and full of static. Since they hadn’t heard it until now, it was probably coming from a low-powered walkie-talkie with a short range.
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