luck they could be kept ignorant for a few precious hours more.
And after that, it wouldn't matter what they knew.
That would be the beginning of phase four.
They led Fred Doherty and James Petrovich forward to the bridge, passing through two separate checkpoints where one of the men had to slide a card through a reader. He wondered how they'd managed to get those security IDs. At the final checkpoint, the gunman who appeared to be in charge slid his card through a scanner and pressed his thumb against a print reader; somehow, these people had gained high-level security access throughout the ship.
They had to be terrorists. Nothing else made sense — men with assault rifles herding passengers around like cattle, the shoot-down of that Harrier. And his assumption was validated the moment he stepped onto the bridge.
Doherty and Petrovich stepped into a small whirlwind of drama. A bearded man in a blue and white security uniform was screaming into the face of a man in what looked like combat fatigues and with a red-and-white- checked Arab-style kaffiyeh over his head.
'Majnun! Mahbul!' the security guard screamed. He glanced around as Doherty walked in, opened his mouth, then seemed to reconsider. 'Idiot!' he said in English, his voice lowered. 'Because of you the entire operation has been jeopardized! I think, for you… the special technical unit.'
The color appeared to drain from the other man's swarthy face, and his eyes grew large. 'Ia!' he screamed. He then dropped to his knees and loosed a babbling torrent of a foreign language far too swift for Doherty to catch more than isolated syllables. The security guard looked at one of the other uniformed men and jerked his head. Two security men came forward, grabbed the kneeling man, and hoisted him to his feet. Doherty and Petrovich stepped aside as the security men marched the blubbering man off the bridge.
The leader of the group nailed Doherty with a glare. 'And you are… who?'
'Fred Doherty. CNE. This is my cameraman, James Petrovich.'
'CN… CNN?'
'Not quite. CNPS. Cable Network Entertainment.'
'My men thought you might be television reporters. They saw your camera.'
'Yeah, and I'll ask you to tell them to be careful of it,' Petrovich said. 'That thing cost eighty grand and I'd rather it not come out of my paycheck!'
'At the moment,' the leader said slowly, 'you two have more important things to be concerned about than paychecks.'
'You're terrorists,' Doherty said with what he hoped was an emotionless, matter-of-fact delivery. 'You've hijacked these ships.'
'You're very perceptive, Mr. Doherty.'
Doherty's mind was racing frantically. 'And you need us!'
'Oh? And what makes you think that?'
'Easy. Your men spotted the camera, and promptly hauled us up here to see you. I figure you're going to want to transmit some sort of ransom demand to the world, right? We can help you with that!'
'Actually, we brought our own cameras along, and we have the transmission facilities of this ship. Had we known you were going to be on this voyage, perhaps we would have planned otherwise. This… CNE. What is it?'
'It's like CNN. Main offices in Hollywood, not Atlanta. Not as big as CNN, of course. Not as well known. But we have connections! And a news studio. We could set you up with a live feed, interview you, let you put your demands to the right people, the whole schmeer! Like I say, you do need us.'
The leader took three swift steps forward, and suddenly his face was inches from Doherty's, the man's eyes glaring into his with a dark heat, the voice low and dangerous. 'Do not presume to tell me what I need, Mr. Doherty. This operation has been planned for years, with attention to every detail. You and your tall friend here are two passengers among two thousand. Two hostages among two thousand, I should say. And if you get in my way or simply make me angry, I will have you executed instantly. A number of people have been killed already to carry out this plan. Two more are nothingl Do we understand one another?'
'Y-yes.'
'Good. Because, as it happens, we may take you up on your kind offer of help.' He nodded at one of the guards. 'Room ten-oh-two. Watch them.'
And they were taken off the bridge and into the passageway leading aft.
The crowds in the ship's public areas were dispersing by the time Carolyn Howorth reached the First Deck and walked aft toward the computer room. She'd paused in the stairwell to listen to the PA announcement, then continued on her way down. That bit about 'special police powers' didn't sound right, nor did she believe that what had happened to that Harrier outside was an accident.
She was walking past the Atlantis Queen's Sea Goddess Hair and Beauty Salon, the Interconnexions computer center just ahead.
Something was wrong. Three men in khaki uniforms and black berets were ahead of her, opening the center's door. Two, she saw, had AK-47 assault rifles slung over their shoulders, a most un-British weapon to bring aboard a British cruise ship. The third held a drawn automatic pistol.
Fading back a few steps, she moved into the entrance of the hair salon, watching as one of the armed men stood guard and the other two pushed the door open and vanished inside. Several tense moments passed, and then the two reappeared, with a civilian between them. The man was short and had the look of an accountant, with glasses, sports coat, and a balding scalp, but as he struggled in their grip, his coat fell open and she noticed that he had a shoulder holster rig on underneath.. and that the holster was empty.
Not an accountant, then, but police… possibly a detective investigating the Darrow murder. Then she remembered her conversation with David Llewellyn the previous night and him talking about two MI5 men on board, one of them seconded to SOCA.
They'd used a plastic zip strip to tie the civilian's wrists behind his back.
Quickly she reached into her hip pocket and pulled out her mobile — her cell phone as her American colleagues would have called it. Pretending to look up a number, she snapped several photos with the camera function before putting the phone to her ear and pretending to talk to someone.
Someone back at GCHQ or Fort Meade might be able to get an ID on one or more of those thugs. They weren't security; of that much she was certain.
The fact that they'd grabbed that man in the computer room led her to suspect that it wouldn't be safe using the ship's Internet center to call home; the ship's Security Department likely was able to monitor computer use, and that might have been what brought those three down here. She continued pretending to talk on her phone as the three armed men marched their prisoner off, passing her just a few feet away.
She waited until they were gone, then found a stairway and started climbing back to Deck Six and her stateroom.
Back in her stateroom, minutes later, she opened up her laptop, which was slightly more than it seemed. The battery pack was actually a powerful satellite uplink unit that would allow her to communicate directly with both Menwith Hill or with Fort Meade. A slender cable unreeled from a spool inside; laid out across the desk, it served as the satlink antenna.
Strange soldiers on board the ship, rounding up select people, binding their hands, and leading them off. PA announcements invoking special police powers.
The ship had been hijacked. Of that Howorth was certain. And it was up to her to get the word out.
All regular communications to and from the ship, she knew, went through the radio room adjacent to the bridge, which was why she couldn't simply use her mobile to call Menwith Hill. The TV sets in the staterooms were not working — she'd already checked — probably because the people on the bridge now didn't want the passengers seeing news broadcasts from ashore right now.
Typing swiftly, Carolyn Howorth entered her code designation, routing code, and an urgent flag. She attached the photos she'd taken with her phone, then began writing her report.
Terrorists have taken control of the cruise ship Atlantis Queen and the freighter Pacific Sandpiper she wrote.
