bikini tops, the gunmen waited, then started herding all of the passengers toward the restaurant.
One gunman glanced up and saw Doherty, the two teenagers, and Petrovich with his camera on the terrace above. The gunman aimed his rifle. 'You, up there! Do not move!'
Doherty slowly raised his hands and took a step back from the railing. 'I think we'd better do what he says.'
A moment later, he heard the sound of running footsteps at his back.
Carolyn Howorth was on the Promenade Deck, on the port side forward, just in front of the Queen's towering white superstructure. She'd come out here for a better look as soon as she'd heard the thunder of the two approaching jets and seen them move past her stateroom porthole on the starboard side. She'd jogged down three decks, cut across the atrium and the onboard shopping mall, and emerged on the Promenade just as the two Sea Harriers began drifting past on the far side of the Pacific Sandpiper.
Hundreds of other passengers were already on the Promenade, and she had to shoulder forward a bit to get a good view. Deck Three, the Promenade Deck, was above the Sandpiper's deck alongside, but about at the same level as the freighter's bridge. She reached the railing just as one of the Harriers came apart in a hail of 30mm cannon fire.
Passengers around her began screaming, some streaming back for the imagined shelter of the Queen's interior, others just pushing away from the port side railing, as if they were afraid the Sandpiper was about to turn those unexpected guns on them next. Turning, she looked up at the Queen's bridge high overhead, but she was too close to see in through those high, slanted windows.
She wasn't certain what was happening, but she knew she had to get back to her stateroom. She needed to use her laptop to get in touch with either GCHQ or their American cousins, the NSA, and she needed to do it now.
Once back inside the Queen's superstructure, however, Howorth found the passageways too jammed with humanity for her to make any progress. By the time she reached the Atrium and the Grand Staircase, she wasn't able to move at all. Instead, she ducked back into the ship's Starbucks and began considering her options.
Her laptop was in her stateroom, on Deck six, three levels up. There was a service stairway behind her, she remembered, that would take her up to six and, better still, on to Deck eleven, and Security. If it was less packed than the Grand Staircase in the Atrium, maybe she could find David Llewellyn.
That staircase would also take her down two decks, to the First Deck, where, she remembered, a computer center offered Internet access to passengers.
Two decks down was better than either three or eight decks up.
Emerging once more into the current of panicked passengers, she headed for the computer center.
Chapter 14
Thomas Mitchell and Samuel Franks were in the ship's computer center when Mitchell heard the far-off drumroll of thunder. On this sunny Saturday afternoon, the two of them were the only people in the computer center.
The center, located off the large, broad atrium on the First Deck through which they'd first entered the ship, provided shipboard passengers with a large number of computers and access, by way of the Queen's own server system, to a satellite link and the Internet.
Franks was using that access now to check SOCA, Interpol, and Europol databases for names he'd gotten from the Purser's Office that morning, a list of the roughly nine hundred crew and staff people who worked on board this floating hotel. Mitchell was using another computer to complete and transmit a report for MI5 on what the two agents had accomplished so far on this cruise, which was, essentially, nothing. When he was done with that chore, he planned to help Franks divvy up the names and start searching, looking for anyone with previous convictions for selling drugs, smuggling, association with criminal elements, hell, for failure to use the zebra crossing zones at Piccadilly Circus if he had to. There had to be something.
Mitchell dismissed the sound at first as thunder, but after a few moments he realized that he could still hear it. 'Hey, Franks? You hear that?'
'Huh? Whadjasay?'
'That rumble. You hear it?'
'Sounds like a jet.'
'Yeah. Out here? I'm going up on deck and have a look.'
'Suit yourself,' Franks said, submerging again into his monitor display.
Mitchell emerged from the computer center and into chaos. The broad, sweeping curves of the Grand Staircase to his left was packed with people, some going up, some going down, all looking panicky. The Atrium itself was a mob scene. He estimated that there were two or three hundred people packed into that space, all of them going somewhere, but looking as though they had no idea as to where.
He looked around for a security uniform. Whatever had just happened, shipboard security was going to need some backup. He doubted that they had the training or the experience to deal with a full-fledged riot, and this crowd had the look of a riot in the making.
God, what had happened? Was the ship sinking? Unlikely in clear weather, and there would have been an announcement over the PA system if there was a problem.
Reaching out, he grabbed the arm of an older man in a bright-colored T-shirt and white slacks; a much younger woman beside him was clinging to his other arm, her face streaked with tears. 'Hey!' Mitchell shouted, trying to make himself heard above the noise of the crowd. 'What's going on?'
'They shot down that plane!' the woman shrieked. ' They shot down that plane!'
The man shook his head, his eyes distant, as if he was in shock. 'God!' he said. 'Oh, God!' The two pulled away from Mitchell and kept pushing ahead through the mob.
He thought he saw the blue and white uniform of a shipboard security man going up the Grand Staircase. Plunging ahead, Mitchell elbowed through the crowd, making his way after the man. Around him, people shouted and screamed, and he caught occasional fragments in the racket: 'Those were gunsl Big machine guns!' 'Why would they shoot down Royal Navy jets?' 'They shot down those planes!'
The guns, Mitchell decided, must be the 30mm cannons carried by the Pacific Sandpiper. The Queen, he knew, was unarmed. But Royal Navy aircraft?
Halfway up the staircase, a voice boomed from the PA system, 'Attention! Attention, please! May I have your attention, please?'
The surging, jostling crowd slowly came to a stop, voices falling silent, faces turned toward the ceiling as though they were searching for the source of that voice.
'May I have your attention, please?' the voice continued, sounding louder now as the crowd noise dwindled. 'Everything is under control. There is no need for panic. Repeat… there is no need for panic!'
The crowd had stopped moving, now, but the rumble of voices was beginning to rise once more. People were murmuring to one another, still uncertain, still frightened. A few continued to push ahead through the stalled mass of humanity.
'The freighter Pacific Sandpiper possesses an automated antiaircraft weapon system,' the voice said in measured, reassuring tones. 'It's a kind of robot that automatically tracks aircraft with radar and, when the safety is off, it automatically shoots the aircraft down.
There has been some kind of terrible accident, which many of you witnessed just now. One of the British jets came too close to the Pacific Sandpiper and one of those automatic weapons locked on and shot it down.
'There is absolutely no cause for alarm. Everything is under control, and the malfunctioning weapon has been locked down. Our ship's officers are assisting in investigating what went wrong.
'The best thing all of you can do is return to your staterooms immediately and stay there. We will keep you updated on developments as they occur. Due to the serious nature of this emergency, however, Ship's Security
