And if the rescue turned into a clusterfuck like Eagle Claw…
Yeah. No wonder the President wanted someone else on point this time.
But Desk Three, Rubens decided, would begin preparing for a hostage rescue anyway. The one thing they could not afford now was to be caught unprepared.
'Yeah, now this is more like it!' James Petrovich said, his eye pressed up close to the LED screen of his camera. 'I think I love my job.'
'Feeling warmer, yet?' Fred Doherty asked with a sour smile.
'Oh, yeah! Big-time.'
'Unfortunately, we won't be able to use the footage. Damn her!'
The two of them were again on the Deck Twelve Terrace overlooking the Atlantean Grotto Pool area. An hour earlier, Terry Carter had text-messaged Doherty on his cell phone — the Queen had her own cell network on board, since they were well out of range of shore-based systems when they were at sea — with the news that Gillian Harper would be sunbathing at the pool.
Once again, Doherty and Petrovich had trekked up to the terrace area overlooking the Grotto Pool. The sun was shining now, though there were still banks of clouds visible to the south, and the air was considerably warmer now. Gillian Harper had arrived right on cue, wearing an almost nonexistent bikini… then promptly removed the top and stretched out on her back on a deck chair, fully and magnificently displayed for the camera looking down on her from above as she began rubbing herself down with suntan lotion.
'Quit bitching, boss,' Petrovich said. 'Carter said he wanted her to get more exposure!'
'Yeah, but I think he meant something we could air on TV.'
'Not a problem. It^ll be late-night airtime. We'll just drop some pixilation over her titties. Blur 'em right out.'
There were a handful of other sunbathers, and two or three other women had gone topless as well. It was not unusual, Doherty knew, for cruise ships to designate one of their pools — usually on an upper deck where they were not in full view of staterooms or public areas where there might be children present — as a topless area, or even as clothing optional, at least during certain hours. European cruise lines, especially, were far more relaxed about such things than American lines. There would be Ship's Security present in the Atlantean Grotto lounge, he knew, tactfully steering families with children or fully dressed male sightseers elsewhere.
Personally, Doherty didn't care if Harper ran around the ship stark naked. She did have a reputation to uphold in that department, after all. But right now he wanted useable footage for CNE, and the self-centered little exhibitionist just wasn't cooperating.
He'd need to text Carter back about this one.
Odd. A couple of people — they looked like teenaged boys, eighteen or nineteen, perhaps, though they could have been a couple of years older — had just emerged from the Grotto Restaurant almost directly beneath Doherty's camera position. They wore shorts, T-shirts, and sandals… not exactly out of place at the poolside but not exactly in place, either.
'Where the hell is Security?' he asked aloud. The two kids had wandered over to the starboard rail and were leaning against it, but they weren't watching the ocean. Instead, they'd turned and were watching Harper, grinning and making suggestive motions with their hands. After a few moments, one of them pulled a cell phone from his pocket, punched in a number, and started talking into it.
'Security's probably watching the show on their TV monitors,' Petrovich said.
'No,' Doherty said. 'They should have someone present to make sure female sunbathers don't get gawked at. Something's not right.'
'Ah, they're probably just keeping a low profile. You worry too much, boss.'
'Worrying is my job.'
Two more teenaged boys emerged from the restaurant beneath the terrace and, a moment later, three more came out onto the terrace from the steps aft. They were laughing and joking with one another until they saw the camera crew. 'Hey, man!' one said with a distinctly Midwest American accent as he leaned against the terrace rail. 'You guys sure got yourselves good seats!'
'How'd you guys get past the guards?' Doherty asked.
'Guards?' the kid said, genuinely puzzled. 'What guards?'
A hell of a way to run a cruise ship, Doherty thought. This was the sort of thing that could end in lawsuits — privacy violations, indecent exposure, and even corruption of minors charges.
Or were the Europeans really that free and easy about casual social nudity?
'Wrap it up, Pet,' he said. 'We've got all we can use, here.'
Doherty was curious. He wanted to find someone in Security and ask what the hell was going on.
He heard thunder in the distance and turned. Off to the northeast, a pair of tiny black specks winged in low above the water.
Chapter 13
Commander Christopher Pryor sat in the cockpit of his Sea Harrier FRS.2, watching the screen of his radar as the flight vectored toward the target as the ocean's surface blurred beneath the belly of his aircraft, less than a hundred feet below. His wingman, Commander Vincent Spick, was parked off his right wing and slightly behind, in the four o'clock position. The Rolls-Royce Pegasus engine at his back thundered raw power as the two Harriers hurtled southwest at over six hundred knots.
'Alpha One, this is Alpha Two,' Spick's voice called over his helmet headset. 'I have visual on the target.'
Pryor glanced up. Sure enough, there it was — a cruise ship gleaming a dazzling white in the afternoon sun, still a good twenty miles off. 'Copy that, Two,' he replied. 'I see him. Throttle back to three hundred.' 'One, Two. Roger three hundred.' The two Harriers slowed rapidly. In the dense, wet air this close to the deck, moisture streamed from the upper curves of their wings like thick fog.
'King's Palace, this is Alpha One,' he called. 'Visual on target. We are on intercept approach.' He flipped a switch on his console. 'Cameras are rolling.'
'Copy that, Alpha One,' replied the voice of Flight Control back aboard the Ark Royal 'Get us some good pictures.'
Except for a pair of 30mm Aden Mk 4 gun pods apiece, the Harriers were unarmed. Both, however, had been fitted with reconnaissance pods, streamlined cylinders slung like bombs from their bellies containing highspeed cameras at both optical and infrared wavelengths as well as forward-looking and side-scan radar. The Sea Harrier had been designed with both fighter and reconnaissance roles in mind, and it performed both well.
Pryor brought the nose a bit higher and began angling the main engine thrust down until his Harrier seemed to be floating in mid-air, drifting forward just a bit faster than the ship was moving. He peered out the side of his canopy, studying the ship.
She was huge, a third again longer than the Ark Royal and riding considerably higher above the water. Her sides looked like cliffs closely pocked by balconies on the middecks, by portholes in long lines both higher up along the superstructure and closer to the water, and by broad expanses of glass at places like the bridge and wrapped around the aft portion of the superstructure. A large swimming pool formed a broad, rectangular patch of azure blue on her fantail; another, smaller pool was on the very top of the superstructure, between the rise of the bridge forward and the aft deckhouse and smokestack. As the Harriers slowly moved up the ship's starboard side, he could see people. Hundreds of them, appearing on the superstructure balconies, along the Promenade Deck encircling the deckhouse, and on the sundecks amidships and aft.
'King's Palace, Alpha One,' he said. 'I can see a lot of passengers. Some are waving. Everything looks normal.'
'Copy One.'
