The camera swung around to a man kneeling. He was sweating profusely and looked terrified. A terrorist held the tip of a sharp knife to his throat. Aalam took the terrorist’s position. “To convince you to come, I will kill this hostage and another one every ten minutes until you arrive.”
The camera spun away and all that could be heard were the screams of the people. It went blank. Malinov bent his head as the screen went blank feeling fierce anger rise inside him for the man’s death.
“We have to get to those people. Where is Antonia?” Vikktor asked worried.
“I have her safe in the suite but I know she will give herself up. I have to get to her before she does. He knows exactly how to play her.”
“We have the majority of the ship contained and have stopped three suicide bombers. The SAS and the Royal Navy with Bomb Disposal are on the way. Aalam is holed up in the Crow’s Nest Bar Forward on the ship. We can’t get near it yet. I don’t know how you are going to get Antonia from the suite there is a battle going on at the stairs.”
Malinov patted him on the back and grinned. “There is always a way,” he told him slinging the Uzi around his body as he made his way towards the balcony. “I’ll bring her and join you for the assault on the Crow’s Nest. I don’t want that man getting out alive.”
“No one takes a Russian man’s woman away without a fight, huh,” Vikktor shouted after him with a grin.
As luck would have it, he was on the right side of the ship and could see the suite’s long balcony above the line of small ones. Gabriel looked up at the rows of partitioned balconies above the one he stood in and worked out how he was going to climb up them. He pulled one of the loungers towards the side and stood on it. Holding on to the bottom of the balcony above him he swung his leg up onto the partition separating the one he stood in from the next and pulled himself up into the space above. The choppy North Sea water was swirling menacingly below as night fell and he continued hoisting himself up from one balcony to another. Finally, he reached the top and jumped onto the suite’s hoping Antonia was still locked in the bathroom. He shot the lock off the patio door to get in the cabin and bounded up the stairs.
But the door was flung open and she was gone.
Chapter 15
Adrenaline coursed through Gabriel’s veins. He had to get her back. About to move, he stopped, hearing the sound of military helicopters approaching the ship. He needed to be at the top of the ship and in the Crow’s Nest before Aalam killed her. He picked up some more ammunition for the Uzi and retrieved the Glock she’d left lying on the floor of the bathroom.
Malinov made his way to the stairs. Finding those ones clear he ran up another three flights. The four helicopters were getting closer. He reached the top floor at Deck 18 and ran past the Spa and out to the pool. The helicopters were above him now and doing their best to blow him off the deck.
Gabriel made his way up the short open air stairs to greet the SAS who were already fast roping down onto the deck. Malinov showed his ID when they pointed their weapons at him. He was taken to the man in charge of the SAS operation and he apprised him of the situation as far as he could. Vikktor was already speaking to him through his earpiece.
Accompanied by four men with their identities protected from view by gas masks and combat gear, they went inside the ship and found a screen in the spa to see the live feed Aalam was showing from The Crow’s nest. Vikktor had already told them that the CCTV cameras in the Crow’s Nest had been disabled by Aalam and they were blind.
Gabriel stared at the screen. The camera was panning around giving them a sweep of the room.
“Two to the left, three at the right,” one of the SAS soldiers said out loud picking out the terrorists from the crowd of hostages they had forced to sit on the floor of the bar at one end on a raised platform where the band usually played. The camera lowered to a woman on her knees in her evening dress.
“Antonia,” Gabriel whispered her name.
The soldier in charge turned to look at him.
“You know her?”
“Yes. She is the journalist I have been protecting who has been providing us with information on Aalam El Hashem’s terrorist cell from the Refugee Camp. I need to get in there. He is going to kill her and the rest of them if we don’t get in there now.”
Aalam held a knife to her throat.
“I am not going to kill you this way. You will die a more brutal way. I want everyone to witness this. The more my people are oppressed in your western countries and Syria is bombed the more of your own I will kill,” he said directly to the camera.
“This is going out live on social media,” Vikktor told them in their earpieces.
“Take hold of her arms and bend her forward,” Aalam instructed. Aalam started playing to the camera again and giving another lengthy speech.
Gabriel had seen this before.
“He is going to take her head off. We need to get in now,” he yelled horror struck. They couldn’t take her away from him now. He would never recover from her loss.
The
