His grin came close to being a leer. 'Absolutely! Tomorrow then!'
As she walked out of Tarhan's office, the dossiers in hand, Jeff Rockman's voice whispered in her ear. He'd been monitoring the entire conversation from his console back at the Art Room under NSA headquarters. 'Lia, you are absolutely shameless! You have a flight out of there tonight!'
'Oh, I don't know,' she murmured as the door closed behind her and she walked through the outer lobby toward the front entrance. 'He's a charmer. I might be convinced to stay on an extra day.'
'Not this time, Lia,' Rockman said. 'The boss wants you in Southampton.'
'Southampton?' she asked, puzzled. 'England? I'm not coming back to Fort Meade?'
'Something's breaking in the North Atlantic,' Rockman told her. 'No details yet, but it's tied to your friend Erbakan, and we're putting a team together. You'll be meeting with Charlie in Southampton.'
That would be Charlie Dean, and her heart quickened just a bit. 'And Taggart?'
'He'll be getting orders from our friends at the Company. I think he's going to be on his way to Paris.'
'Okay. When's my flight?'
'We have you booked on a British Air flight out of Ankara at seven-ten tonight, your time. And Mr. Rubens wants you to scan those dossiers you just got out of lover boy and transmit them back here stat.'
'As soon as I get to my hotel,' Lia told him.
Damn! The round of jet-hopping was starting to catch up with her — Baltimore, to Lebanon, to Turkey, and now up to England.
But at least she would be seeing Charlie Dean.
Yusef Khalid stepped onto the port bridge wing of the Atlantis Queen and looked down at the Pacific Sandpiper. The smaller ship was tucked in close alongside the Queen, now, and fenders had been lowered over the sides of both ships to keep their hulls from smashing into each other in rough seas. Massive cables crisscrossed the space between the vessels, giving the Sandpiper the look of a tugboat nuzzling her far larger consort.
From his vantage point on the wing, Khalid could look down on and into the Sandpiper's bridge, which only came up to about the Fifth or Sixth Deck on the Queen. He could make out figures inside, though without detail enough to tell who was who.
There could be no doubt, however, that the IJI was in full control there, as well as on board the Queen. Armed men stood on both of the Sandpiper's bridge wings and on the forward deck, supervising the crewmen who'd just completed the binding of the two ships. They wore the uniforms of the Sandpiper's security force now, the so- called Atomic Police, to allay the suspicions of the curious, but Khalid knew they were his.
The helicopter had been circling in the near distance, but Mohamed Darif had already sent the radio call to bring them back on board the Sandpiper. Had there been a problem in taking the Queen, the men on the helicopter would have taken out the ship's bridge and any other pockets of resistance they could see on the deck or in spaces like the casino with large windows with automatic weapons fire. Fortunately, that hadn't been necessary; the plan called for a quiet takeover of the Atlantis Queen. With over two thousand passengers on board, plus nine hundred crew, the IJI strike force had to proceed carefully. The longer the passengers and the majority of the crew could be kept in the dark as to what was happening, the better. Khalid had only twenty-four men at his command with which to control over three thousand.
Even cattle could be dangerous if they broke into a stampede.
Glancing up, he saw that the weather appeared to be breaking, with large patches of blue sky beginning to break the overcast to the west and south. The seas were gentler, too. A mixed blessing, that. Calmer seas meant fewer problems towing the Pacific Sandpiper; Clear skies meant they would be exposed to the snooping lenses of Western spy satellites. As with the passengers on board the cruise ship, it was important to keep the Americans and the British in the dark as to what was happening for as long as possible. The Atlantis Queen and the Pacific Sandpiper still had a long and risky voyage in front of them.
He watched as the helicopter moved in close for a landing, drifting in across the Sandpiper's port side, touching down gently well over on the port side of the deck in order to keep its rotors clear of the towering cliff side of the Adantis Queen.
Looking aft along the Queen's superstructure, Khalid saw people, hundreds of people, watching the show. Many of the fancier staterooms on the Queen had exterior balconies walled off from their neighbors but providing an outside space for sun worshipping, a romantic outside cabin-service dinner for two, or simply watching the ocean and taking in the sea air. At the moment, those balconies also provided excellent seats overlooking the Sandpipers deck, and the passengers in those staterooms were taking advantage of the fact.
Let them watch. As long as there was no panic.
Yet..
Turning, Khalid walked back off the weather platform and into the bridge. Three of his men stood guard over Phillips and a helmsman, both of whom stood by the ship's wheel. Vandergrift and the others had been herded aft to join other prisoners in the officer's wardroom, and the security guard's body had been carried away and the blood mopped up. It was important to maintain appearances, at least for a time.
'Tell me something, Captain,' Khalid said.
Phillips looked at Khalid but said nothing. Khalid saw the anger in the man's eyes, but he also saw the fear. It would be important to keep Phillips afraid until he was no longer needed.
'Our calculations were necessarily rushed,' Khalid told the Queen's captain, 'and not many of us have much experience with the sea. I want you to come over here and tell me if you feel the two ships have been tied together securely enough to make this voyage.'
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 idea 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!'
