'Of course you were, Number One.' Eric Phillips was watching the ship ahead as he spoke. The Sandpiper was off the Atlantis Queen's port bow, now, and about three hundred yards ahead. The cruise ship was so much larger than the freighter that, from the bridge, Phillips could actually look down on the other vessel, and he was puzzled by a couple of inconsistencies.
For one thing, he'd been expecting to see a lot of injured crewmen off the Ishikari on the forward deck. As the silver-painted helicopter lifted off the Sandpiper's forward deck, he could see that the deck was empty. For another, there appeared to be some damage forward. It was tough to tell from this distance even through binoculars, but there was something not quite right forward. It looked as though several of the stanchions holding the deck safety railing had been snapped off. He could see one dangling from a length of cable over the side of the ship, up toward the ship's raised forecastle. And there was some scarring or minor damage to the deck up there, too.
He lowered his binoculars, thoughtful. Possibly they'd ripped up the stanchions and railing in order to facilitate bringing injured people on board. Or maybe that helicopter had caused the damage. Landing a helicopter on a ship at sea was tricky business at best. That helicopter was a civilian aircraft — he could tell that from the markings — and the pilot might simply not have the experience necessary to touch down on a moving deck without clipping a railing with his landing gear, say.
There were other questions, too. The plutonium ship's gun ports had been opened; he could see two of the guns exposed, one over the fantail, the other at the starboard-forward corner of the bridge house. Was that standard procedure for armed PNTL ships during rescue efforts? Phillips didn't know.
And why were they steadily cruising away from the disaster area? Were they that certain they'd rescued everybody in the water? Phillips knew from experience just how big the ocean actually was, when there were men in the water after the sinking of a ship. Typically, SAR efforts continued for hours, even days, after a ship went down, until the rescuers were absolutely certain that every survivor had been recovered.
As Phillips watched, however, and as the Queen drew closer, he could see a number of crewmen on the Sandpiper's decks. Several of them were waving as they waited to take lines aboard from the Queen.
'Pass the word for line-handling parties to stand by, port side,' he said.
'Aye, aye, sir.' Vandergrift began speaking into a handset.
'Sparks! Tell the Sandpiper to come to a full stop. This is going to be tough enough without them charging across the ocean at five knots.'
Phillips turned from the forward windows and walked to the starboard wing, using the, binoculars to look at the smoke plume still rising from the sea. The fire appeared to be dying out, though thick smoke continued feeding the black, roiling column ascending into the sky. At this distance, it was impossible to see if there were any people still in the water, but he could make out a lot of debris on the surface.
Damn it, there could easily be survivors there still, clinging to wreckage or buoyed on life jackets. He intended to have a long talk with the Sandpiper's skipper in a few moments. There was no reason for the transport ship to leave the scene and every reason for her to stay.
'Captain?' the radio operator called. 'Got something funny here.'
He walked away from the bridge wing to the radio shack door. Inside, three operators sat at a bank of consoles. 'What do you have?'
'We have a frequency scanner going, to keep track of local traffic, right? It just jumped to a military frequency. I think it's a military radio.'
'What did they say?'
'I don't know, sir. It wasn't in English.'
'French?'
'No, sir. This was… not sure. Kind of guttural? Sounded like 'hellick.''
' 'Hellick'? Just that?'
'Yes, sir. Repeated three times, 'hellick, hellick, hellick,' like that… and then there was a pause, maybe a few seconds, and it repeated three more times.'
'Maybe the Germans have a ship in the area.'
'Maybe, sir.' The radio operator didn't sound convinced.
' 'Hallig' is the name of a German island in the North Sea,' one of the other operators suggested.
'You speak German?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Keep listening, then.' But the North Sea was a long way from here. It didn't make sense. Perhaps Hallig was the name of a German ship?
'Captain!' came over the bridge intercom system.
Phillips picked up the intercom handset. 'This is the captain.'
'Sir! This is Carter, Security Department. We may have a situation, here.'
'What kind of a situation?'
'We're picking up crewmen on our security cams.
They're moving — '
'Damn it, Carter, of course they're moving! I just gave orders to stand by to pass lines to that other ship!'
'No, sir! Not that! We have… looks like eight or ten men coming up the passageway toward Security. They… my God!'
'What? What is it?'
'Captain! They're armed Automatic rifles! Eight of them outside Security! Eight more on their way to the bridge! I don't know how they got past the secure doors, but — '
Carter's voice cut off, and Phillips heard a loud, hammering sound, followed a moment later by the unmistakable flat and chattering crack of automatic fire.
'Seal all security doors!' Phillips snapped, and Kelly, the security man assigned to the bridge, moved to comply.
And then the aft door to the bridge banged open, and men were storming in, some with semiautomatic handguns, some with assault rifles. 'Get away from the console!' one of the intruders barked.
Kelly continued to type on a console keyboard, entering his password, and the leader of the attackers raised his pistol with a long sound suppressor screwed onto the muzzle and fired once… a sharp, hissing exclamation. Kelly jerked, back arching away from the shots, then collapsed on the deck, leaving a smear of blood on the console.
The leader of the attackers wore the dark blue uniform and badge of the Atlantis Queen's Security Department. Turning, he leveled the pistol at Phillips' head.
'Captain,' the man said calmly, 'I am Yusef Khalid of the Islamic Jihad International Brigade of al-Qaeda. Your ship now belongs to us! All of you, down on the deck! I will shoot anyone who disobeys, or who doesn't carry out my orders instantly!'
Automatic gunfire barked from the radio room, and Phillips heard a man scream.
Chapter 11
Donald Myers looked up from the menu as Ms. Caruthers and Ms. Jordan hurried up to join them. Myers and the rest of the tour group were already seated at the large table along the port side windows, looking down on the merchant vessel close alongside.
The Lost Continent Restaurant was the second-largest dining area on the Atlantis Queen, luxuriously furnished and appointed, with large windows, crystal chandeliers, imitation Mayan walls and columns, and a small rain forest's worth of potted trees and vines giving the place the romantic atmosphere of a fantasy-adventure novel. It was located on the Tenth Deck, aft, overlooking the Atlas Pool on the Deck Nine fantail and, at the moment, offering an unparalleled view of the Queen's docking with the other ship.
