Sea of Terror (54 page)

America was safe. But the debrief, Dean thought, was going to be a bitch.

The hijackers should never have been allowed to get that close to American waters.

He suspected that there would be some policy changes in the very near future.

Chapter 29

Bridge, Atlantis Queen Passenger ship docks New York City Friday, 1702 hours EST

"ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Welcome to New York City."

Captain Phillips hesitated, uncertain as to what to say. He exchanged glances with Charlie Vandergrift, who shrugged and looked away. Behind him, the man in the business suit, a "Mr. Johnson" of the State Department according to the ID card he'd flashed, stood listening as well.

Outside, the armada of boats and small craft that had descended on the Queen as she made her way north into the mouth of the Hudson River continued to circle and hover; horns, bells, whistles, and a cacophony of noise continued to sound from the fleet. The entire city, it seemed, had shut down in order to welcome the Atlantis Queen to her unexpected berthing at the city's passenger ship docks--Luxury Liner Row, as they were known to the crews of the ships that used them. Nearly all major transatlantic liners had docked here over the years, including the RMS Queen Mary 2 and the MS Freedom of the Seas.

"The nightmare is over," Phillips said at last. "As you can tell from all of the commotion outside, we're being given a truly magnificent welcome to the United States. For those of you who wish to debark, our agents ashore will see to it that you make the appropriate travel connections. Those who wish to remain aboard are welcome to do so. We expect to remain in New York City for approximately one week for maintenance and service, before returning to Southampton.

"Arrangements have been made with several major hotels in New York City for those of you who wish to stay. Transportation will be provided at the head of the pier, and your luggage will be sent along to your rooms later.

"I'm sure all of us join together in giving thanks to the brave British commandos who carried off an unprecedented, truly incredible rescue of this ship, and of all of us aboard ... while we were hundreds of miles out at sea." He glanced again at Mr. Johnson, who nodded. "As I'm sure you all can imagine, the press will be eager to interview anyone who was aboard the Atlantis Queen during the hijacking. Remember that you have the right not to speak with the press. You've all been through an extraordinarily trying week. You don't need to face that particular gauntlet unless you so wish.

"Royal Sky Line deeply regrets the circumstances of this past week. Our representatives will be in contact with you in regard to any and all monetary or legal claims that may have arisen as a result of this . .. incident.

"Thank you. All of you."

He hung up the intercom handset. "Satisfied?" he asked Johnson.

"You did fine, Captain Phillips. Our government thanks you."

"I do not like lying."

The man shrugged. "It's necessary, sometimes. As are oaths of secrecy."

Phillips hadn't liked that part, either. He and his bridge crew had been required to sign documents promising not to divulge certain pieces of information, under penalty of twenty years in prison and a one-hundred-thousand-dollar fine. He still wasn't sure of the legality of that. Phillips was, after all, a British subject, not a citizen of the United States, and he wasn't sure the U. S. State Department could require him to sign such an oath. A phone call to the British consulate in New York City that morning for clarification had ended with instructions to sign... and that the legal work would all be sorted out later.

Frowning, he walked over to the bridge window and looked down on the surging mass of cheering, waving people gathered at the head of the pier. It looked like Twelfth Avenue had been blocked off to accommodate the crowds.

He suspected that some sort of fix was already in the works. Two hours after his conversation with the British consulate, he'd received a phone call from another cruise ship line, one of Royal Sky's competitors . . . and the offer of a new command.

And what a command! Late last year, the first of a new class of cruise ship had been launched--the magnificent Oasis of the Seas. She was bigger and more luxurious than anything yet afloat: 360 meters long, with a displacement of over one hundred thousand tonnes, sixteen passenger decks, and a capacity of 5,400 passengers, with a crew of 1,500. She had a five-deck-high area in the center of the ship called Central Park, open to the sky and filled with lush tropical vegetation, shops, and upscale restaurants, and featuring the Rising Tide Bar, which would actually travel up and down through three decks. Arched glass domes in Central Park called the Crystal Canopies would channel sunlight into the ship's public areas below. The Oasis of the Seas and her sister vessel were astounding triumphs of marine architecture and art.

And Eric Phillips was being offered her captaincy.

Apparently, both the Ministry of Trade and Sir Charles Mayhew expected Royal Sky Line to file for bankruptcy. The company had been running close to the wire to begin with, and the company's solicitors were expecting a storm of lawsuits engendered by the hijacking, not to mention the loss of tens of millions of pounds in returned fares. The company, after all, had not made good on its promise of a luxury cruise through the eastern Mediterranean.

And that despite all of the new state-of-the-art security systems.

It would be quite an honor to command the Oasis of the Seas ... but Phillips wasn't sure he would accept. During the hijacking, he'd been forced to choose between the safety of his passengers and the safety of those thousands of people down there on Twelfth Avenue. His attempt to ground the Queen and the Sandpiper off Newfoundland had failed, and he'd spent the rest of the voyage locked up in the wardroom area until those commandos--American commandos--had freed him that morning.

Eric Phillips felt. . . broken.

He wasn't sure he could ever face the responsibility for almost seven thousand souls. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to retire and never go to sea again.

But he also knew that once the sea was in your blood, it never let go. Now was too soon to make anything like a final decision. He needed time..

But he did know that he would not accept his next command as a bribe for his silence.

Pier 88

Passenger ship docks New York City Friday, 1730 hours EST

Andrew, Nina, and Melissa McKay walked down the starboard gangway together, stepping onto the passenger ship pier off of West 48th Street in west Manhattan. It was a brilliant, clear, crisp September afternoon. Seagulls wheeled and shrilled overhead, and the air smelled of mingled salt and big city. In the distance, a roar like heavy surf echoed back from a wall of skyscrapers.

As Nina stepped onto the concrete of the pier, her knees almost gave way. God, it was so good to be home.

"Look, Mommy!" Melissa cried, pointing excitedly to a massive, looming gray shape alongside the pier directly ahead, just beyond a quay converted into a park. The park was filled with cheering, waving people, as was the deck of the ship behind it. "An aircraft carrier! Maybe it's the one that rescued us!"

"No, I don't think so, sweetheart," Andrew replied. "That's the USS Intrepid, and she's a part of a naval museum now. The ships that helped us are still out at sea."

He started pointing out to her two other exhibits at the Intrepid Museum--a submarine tied up at the near side of the Intrepid pier and the bizarrely out-of-place droop-snooted bird shape of a Concord SST, rising on its raft next to the dock.

Nina smiled. By all rights, Melissa should have been somewhere between exhausted and unconscious, but she was showing no signs of running down. Andrew had taken her to the ship's library that morning to look at a book about aircraft carriers when she learned that their black-clad rescuers had flown in off of a British carrier called the Ark Royal

After the dramatic rescue of the passengers and crew of the Atlantis Queen early that morning, there'd been neither time nor inclination for sleep. The three of them had been interviewed by some men in conservative dark suits while the ship was still cruising west past Long Island. Apparently, everyone on board was going through a thorough debriefing before they could go ashore; the McKays and the other passengers who'd been held in the ship's theater had gone through the screening first, so they were among the first to be allowed to leave .. . thank God.

A polite but very serious gentleman from the U. S. State Department had asked the questions, but the men standing behind him, Nina thought, were from a different government agency. FBI? CIA? There'd also been several armed soldiers present. She wasn't positive, but she was pretty sure that the purpose of the interview was to make sure none of the surviving al-Qaeda terrorists walked off the ship pretending to be legitimate passengers.

Nina watched Andrew take Melissa's hand as they walked across the pier for a closer look at the Intrepid, and wondered--yet again--what the future held for them.

Andrew, Nina thought, had been uncharacteristically subdued since they'd been caught by the terrorists at the lifeboat early that morning. The memory sent a small shudder through her; the small group of passengers had been herded forward at gunpoint, and their captors had argued loudly with one another in Arabic. She'd thought they were trying to decide whether or not to kill the would-be escapees then and there.

Instead, they'd been roughly shoved into the theater with dozens of other captives and told they'd be "dealt with" later.

Nina had watched Andrew struggle with the situation. The man had always been so damnably competent, so frustratingly right about everything ... a white knight convinced he could handle any situation, and who always knew the right way to do it. During the hijacking, though, he'd been helpless--they'd all been helpless--and she'd seen that knowledge torture him. He'd wanted to gallop in on his charger and save her and Melissa from the bad guys, and his best attempt to do so had only made things much, much worse, had almost gotten them all killed. It hadn't been his fault, certainly; apparently the terrorists had set the Ship's Security system in such a way to alert them to just such an attempt by the hostages, and there was no way any of them could have known that.

But since their capture Andrew had been taking his helplessness badly.

Trying and failing might even have been good for him.

Nina walked up beside him and took his free hand. "Will you have dinner with us tonight?"

Andrew looked down at her, surprised. "Sure," he said, the word a mumble. "If you want."

"No promises," she said. "But I really do want to talk."

"No promises," he agreed. "But. . . hell. We've just been given a new chance at life, right? At living?"

"We'll see where it takes us," she told him. And she squeezed his hand.

*

Andrew McKay felt the squeeze of Nina's hand and squeezed back. He was still sorting through what needed to be done. They'd told them on the ship that hotel rooms were being reserved for all of the liberated passengers off the Queen--and how many tax dollars had that cost? he wondered. Still, it would give him and Nina a chance to talk.

They hadn't done much of that on the Queen. Things had been moving too quickly, too desperately, for that.

Just like the past six months.

A soldier in full combat gear and holding a rifle was standing a few yards down the pier, waving them along, so Andrew tugged gently at Melissa's hand. "We've got to move along, honey," he told her. "Mommy and I are talking about having dinner tonight together. Do you think you'd like that? Or do you want us to go to the hotel and let you sleep?"

"How can I be sleepy, Daddy?" Melissa said. "We're home\ Well. . . almost. But we're in New York\ And we didn't get to see New York when we flew out to England!"

That seemed to explain everything.

He wondered if he and Nina could make things work. He honestly wasn't sure he wanted to go back. So much had been said, so much had not been said. . . and so much trust had been lost.

He'd always thought of himself as able to make things work. Everything but his marriage, apparently. And his life. But they had been given a second chance.

And it was certainly worth exploring.

Mall Concourse Deck One, Atlantis Queen New York City Friday, 1737 hours EST

"No, I don't think you understand," Fred Doherty said, angry now. "Do you people have any
i.e.
who I am?"

"We know who you are, sir," the man in the dark suit said. "But your equipment has been impounded."

"That's, like, a hundred, a hundred-twenty thou worth of gear, man!" Petrovich cried. "Counting the computers and the transmitter! And it'll come out of my salary if I don't turn it back in!"

"We've already given you a receipt for your equipment, Mr. Petrovich. And your people can pick it up after we've had a chance to go through your recordings." "To do what?" Doherty demanded. "To determine whether or not there is material there that could be prejudicial to national security," the man said.

"Everything we shot has already been broadcast," Doherty said, trying to keep his voice patient and reasonable. "Including the terrorists' demands. The people already know al-Qaeda was trying to blackmail us. What else could we release that they haven't already seen?"

"I am not going to comment on that, Mr. Doherty. But I will ask you for your cooperation. So far as the government of the United States is concerned, this story is over."

Doherty looked around the mall concourse. It was becoming crowded as more and more passengers and crew members were released by the government officials who'd been questioning them. "Come on, Jim," he said. "We won't get anywhere here."

"But. . ."

"Come on."

Sandra Ames was waiting for them at a cafe table in front of the shipboard Starbucks. She still looked pale and withdrawn, and had said little since they'd witnessed the brutal execution of Arnold Bernstein. "No luck?" she asked, looking up from her espresso.