Sea of Terror (22 page)

Reluctantly Phillips left his station behind the helmsman and joined Khalid. Khalid let him step past him and onto the port bridge wing, pressing the suppressor of his pistol up into Phillips' side.

"I don't know what you're trying to accomplish with this insanity," Phillips growled.

"At the moment, all I want to know is the seaman's take on those ropes."

"Lines," Phillips said. He sounded tired. "They're called lines."

"Lines, then. If the seas get rough, will they hold?"

"It depends on how rough it gets. If a gale starts blowing, or a storm hits, no. Nothing would keep us tied together." He hesitated. "You have no
i.e.
how powerful the sea can be."

"But will it hold for now? In these seas?"

Again Phillips paused, frowning. "Yes."

"How fast are we moving right now?"

"About four knots. Enough to maintain headway."

"Will those lines hold if we increase speed to, say, ten knots?"

Phillips looked hard at Khalid, startled. "What, towing that ship like this?"

"Exactly."

"Probably. If it doesn't get rougher than this."

"How about fifteen knots, Captain?"

He shook his head. "I don't know if we can manage fifteen knots dragging the other ship."

"What if the other ship was running at fifteen knots as well?"

"Listen, mister. This ship isn't designed for that sort of thing. I don't know if we can do that or not."

"Best guess, Captain."

"I don't know!"

Khalid shrugged, then grasped Phillips' arm and guided him back inside. "Let me explain. You are going to give the order to your engineering room to make revolutions for ten knots. My men are going to watch those ropes . . . those lines, I should say. If they start to break, my men are going to go down and bring every passenger on B Deck forward to the Neptune Theater. That would be . . . how many people, do you think?"

"I'm .. . I'm not sure. Two or three hundred, perhaps."

"That's what I thought. Men, women, and children, locked inside. They will be our hostages for your good judgment."

"Damn you, many what are you going to do?"

"If the two ships break apart, I will order my men to begin shooting the hostages. All of them."

"Then the lines aren't going to hold!" Phillips said quickly, his eyes wide. "The ships will break apart if you try to do more than five knots!"

"Ah," Khalid said. "I see. In that case, Captain, I want you to pass the appropriate orders to tie the ships together in such a way that they will not break apart, at ten knots, even at fifteen. When you have completed that, we will bring the passengers from B Deck up to the theater and lock them in. They will wait inside while we test your seamanship. If the lines hold, we will permit them to return to their staterooms."

Phillips sagged, like a puppet with its strings cut. "The lines will hold," he said.

"What was that?"

"I said the lines will hold, damn you. As they are. I told you they wouldn't so I wouldn't risk those passengers' lives."

Khalid smiled. "I thought as much. So .. . you would bet your life on the lines holding as they are?"

"Yes."

"You would bet the lives of two hundred of your passengers that they will hold? At ten knots?"

"Yes, damn you!"

"That is what I wanted to hear. Captain, you may give the order to increase speed--slowly--to ten knots. Helmsman ... you will put us onto a course of two-zero-zero degrees."

The helmsman cast a scared look at Phillips, who nodded at him. "Yes ... sir."

"Rashid?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Radio our people on the Sandpiper. Tell them what we are doing. Have them match our speed."

"Yes, sir!"

"Don't worry, Captain," Khalid added. "If you do what we say, you and every one of your passengers and crew will come out of this safely. We are making a ... political statement. We have no wish to harm anyone. But we are going to make our message heard!"

"What message is that? Maybe ..."

"Yes?"

"Maybe I can help."

"You are helping, Captain. Just continue following my orders and everything will be fine."

"But what is this message? What does this, this hijacking accomplish for you?"

"All in good time, Captain Phillips. All in good time. For the moment, all you need to know is that the safety of your passengers and crew rests entirely in your hands."

And slowly, the Atlantis Queen began gathering speed, her smaller consort tied close alongside.

Chapter 12

Stateroom 6029, Atlantis Queen North Atlantic Ocean 49deg 11' N, 8deg 34' W Saturday, 1138 hours GMT

it hadn't been at all difficult to talk Tricia Johnson into bed. Twenty minutes' casual small talk by the Atlas Pool had convinced her that they'd known each another for years. She even "remembered" having some drinks and a burger with him and some other friends at the Rathskeller one evening. Tricia, Llewellyn suspected, was achingly lonely after her bad marriage and on the lookout for someone new.

Llewellyn had pulled this scam several times before on the last ship he was on, but never with such spectacular success. The two of them now were stretched out in her bed after several exhausting hours of lovemaking, the sheets and blankets in a tangle beneath them, their swimsuits discarded on the carpet. Her wealthy grandparents had done well by her; 6029 was one of the mid-to-upper-priced staterooms on Deck Six, with a large ocean-view window and a sliding door leading out to a private balcony on the starboard side.

As he'd expected, she looked a lot better in the flesh, as it were, than she had in the black-and-white fuzziness of the X-Star scan. He held her close, stroking her, whispering in her ear how glad he was to have found her and what a remarkable coincidence it had been to meet here, three thousand miles from home ...

His only problem through the rest of the cruise would be to stay clear of her when he was on-duty and in uniform. That wouldn't be too hard to arrange, since he could track her identity chip anywhere on the ship and always know exactly where she was.

The stateroom door swung open and two men in security uniforms walked in.

"What the hellT Llewellyn shouted. He blinked. He didn't know either of these guys, though they were wearing blue and white security uniforms, and one was holding the security key that had given them access to the stateroom.

They also both held automatic pistols with suppressors screwed to the muzzles.

"Sorry to interrupt you two," one of them said with a nasty leer, gesturing with the pistol. "Get up! Hands behind your heads!"

Johnson tried to cover herself with the sheet, but one of the intruders yanked it away. "On your feet, whore!"

"You're David Llewellyn?" the other said. "Head of Ship's Security?"

The pistol was inches from his nose. "Uh . .. yeah. I'm Llewellyn."

"Ship's Security?" Johnson said, looking at him. "David? What is all this?"

"If this is a robbery," Llewellyn told the gunmen, "my wallet is back in my quarters."

"Get dressed."

"I don't know," the leering intruder said. "I think we should take them like that."

"Majnun!" the other man said. He added in English, to Llewellyn, "Make yourselves decent. You will both come with us."

National Security Council

White House basement

Washington, D. C.

Saturday, 0945 hours EST

"We believe," William Rubens said, "that we have a situation developing in the North Atlantic."

He was standing at the podium at the front of one of the sub-basement briefing rooms deep beneath the foundations of the White House. On the projection screen behind him was a satellite photograph, somewhat grainy and low resolution but with a sharp, metallic glint to both them and the surface of the water, of two ships side-by-side, one much smaller than the other.

The audience listened impassively in the twilight of the room. Major General Barton and Admiral Prendergast of the Joint Chiefs both were there, together with several uniformed aides. Debra Collins, Deputy Director of Operations for the CIA, was there as well, along with Thompson of the DIA, Carter from NCTC, Radebaugh from Homeland Security, and Dominic, the NSC's liaison with the FBI.

At the head of the table, at the far end from Rubens, was George Francis Wehrum, senior aide to the current Chairperson of the National Security Council, Dr. Donna Bing.

Rubens had crossed swords with both Wehrum and his boss more than once.

The National Security Council, or NSC, consisted of about one hundred staffers working within the labyrinthine recesses of the White House basement. Under the direction of ANSA, the assistant to the president for National Security Affairs--currently an unpleasant woman named Dr. Donna Bing--the NSC briefed the President on all potential international crises. The Joint Chiefs of Staff kept the President up-to-date on all military developments worldwide; the NSC kept him informed on unfolding diplomatic, economic, and intelligence problems and, when necessary, ran the President's White House Situation Room.

Rubens had called Donna Bing's office two hours earlier, requesting a special briefing session this morning. His audience now included Wehrum and several other NSC staffers, as well as liaisons from the Joint Chiefs, the CIA, and NCTC.

"At approximately oh-eight-thirty hours GMT," Rubens told them, "or about six and a half hours ago, now, a Japanese warship escorting the latest plutonium transport vessel from England to Japan exploded and sank in the North Atlantic, about a hundred miles off the tip of Cornwall. Initial reports were that the explosion was an accident, possibly the simultaneous detonation of her Harpoon warheads. Signals intercepts from GCHQ in northern England picked up radio traffic in the area indicating that the plutonium ship, the Pacific Sandpiper, was picking up survivors, that a civilian cruise ship that happened to be in the area was moving to assist, and that a French military helicopter was also moving in to look for survivors. Other ships and aircraft are also deploying to the area."

Turning, Rubens aimed the bright red dot of a laser pointer at the screen, indicating the smaller of the two ships. "This vessel is the Pacific Sandpiper Three hundred twenty-five feet long, seven thousand, seven hundred twenty-five tons' displacement, with a crew of twenty-eight, plus thirty security personnel on board. British flagged, owned and operated by PNTL, out of Barrow, England. On board are fourteen TN 28 VT transport flasks, each weighing ninety-eight tonnes, containing a total of twenty-five hundred kilograms of plutonium. That's two and a half tonnes of highly radioactive material."

His audience shifted uncomfortably in their seats. The plutonium shipments to Japan had long given the NSC cause for concern. Some of the Council's deliberations had helped shape the regulations surrounding those shipments--such as the arming of a civilian vessel and the embarkation of large numbers of armed security personnel.

Rubens shifted the laser dot to the larger vessel, riding close against the plutonium ship's right side. "This is the civilian cruise ship that was rendering assistance," he said. "Royal Sky Line's Atlantis Queen. Nine hundred sixty-four feet long, displacing ninety thousand tons. A crew of nine hundred, with about twenty-four hundred passengers. British flagged, out of Southampton." He turned back to face the audience. "The escort was the Ishikari, with a crew of ninety."

"A terrible tragedy, I'm sure," Wehrum said from the far side of the table. "How, exactly, does this involve the NSC?"

"According to Royal Sky's records," Rubens said, "over twelve hundred of the passengers on board the Atlantis Queen are American citizens. Further, the United States is signatory to the international agreements surrounding the plutonium shipments, and by treaty shares the responsibility for safeguarding those shipments. And, more to the point, we now believe there is a possibility that the Pacific Sandpiper has been seized by forces hostile to the United States."

"If you mean terrorists," General Barton snapped, "sayso."

"We don't know who is involved as yet," Rubens said. "As yet, we've been unable to make contact with either ship. But there is that possibility, yes."

"What's that on the plutonium ship's forward deck?" Prendergast wanted to know. "I can't quite make it out."

"That," Rubens said, "is part of the problem. It's a helicopter out of Brest, France. Signals intercepts identified it as French military. The French deny that it's ALAT-- French Army--and ATC records identify only a single civilian helicopter operating out of Brest this morning. We're still checking into that."

Rubens indicated the photograph on the screen behind him, pointing to the blocks of text at the lower right, including the date and time stamps. "This photo was taken by one of our Argus satellites at ten-forty-eight hours GMT . . . that's just less than five hours ago. The image was taken by narrow-aperture radar from an altitude of one hundred twenty-nine miles. Radar has a much longer wavelength than visible light, so detail resolution is necessarily lower than what we can manage with optical sensors. The target, however, was under largely overcast skies at the time, and this is the best we could do.

"As you can see, the cruise ship appears to be secured to the freighter. At first we thought that they were taking injured aboard from the Sandpiper--the Atlantis Queen has a large and well-stocked shipboard hospital--but you'll notice here ..." His laser pointer flicked along the metallic glitter of the V-shaped wakes frozen astern of the two ships. "Our analysts tell me that wakes of that size would be generated by ships of this size moving at a speed of between four and six knots."

Rubens flicked off the pointer. "There is something extremely wrong about this. Both the Queen and the Sandpiper should have remained in the vicinity of the disaster, assisting with rescue efforts. At the time this photograph was taken, they'd actually moved to a point some three miles southwest of the disaster. In the hours since, they have traveled an additional fifty miles, indicating an average speed of eight to ten knots.