'HAHO is 'High Altitude, High Opening,'' he added for Mayhew's benefit. 'They would use ram-air steerable chutes that would let them fly in to the target.'
'But… but the ship is moving,' Saunders insisted.
'It also has extremely good security systems,' Mayhew added. 'Cameras overlooking all of the public areas, the Promenade Deck, the swimming pool decks. How could you land your team without being seen?'
'The ship's movement is not a major problem,' Dean said. He held up his hand, palm down, demonstrating an approach to the tabletop. 'Ram-air chutes let you come in at a very flat angle, like this, and you can adjust your forward speed easily enough on the approach. Have you ever seen the Leap Frogs?'
'Leap Frogs? What are those?' Wallace asked.
'The exhibition parachuting team of the U. S. Navy SEALs, Sir Vincent,' Lia said. 'They put on exhibitions at air shows, sometimes. They'll jump out of a plane two miles up, fly circles around and over the air show crowd, and walk in for a landing directly on top of a one-meter bull's-eye staked out on the ground.'
'An experienced team can pretty much step down out of the sky onto any exposed, flat piece of the deck they choose,' Dean said. 'They'd be wearing night-vision devices, so they'll see exactly what they're doing, and their approach would be completely silent. The tangos would never know they were there. The biggest technical problem in that approach would be the ship's slipstream, the disturbance its superstructure makes in the air behind it as it moves forward. Our team will have to fly up that slipstream to touch down on the fantail deck. That could be dicey… but we have people experimenting with the problem now off the coast of Virginia.
'We're also looking at the possibility of inserting a force by helicopter onto the ship's stern. We know it's possible to approach by helicopter — especially a covert ops aircraft with near-silent rotors — and not be noticed from the bridge. Unfortunately, we have two ships to worry about here, and the likelihood of the Queen's fantail being guarded by sentries and monitored by cameras. A helo op appears too risky.
'Sir Charles, your point about the security systems on board the Queen is our primary concern right now. We have two things going for us there, though. First off, the Queen's security people — or, rather, the terrorists, assuming they've taken over the Security Office — can't possibly be watching everywhere all the time. There are hundreds of security cams on that ship, and only so many monitors.'
'If I were a terrorist who'd hijacked a ship,' General Saunders said, 'I would expect the opposition to try to put an assault team onto the ship. I wouldn't worry about using the security cameras to watch places like the ship's hold, or the galley, or the shopping mall. I'd probably herd all of the hostages into one place, where I could keep an eye on them with just a few men. And I'd set the cameras to watch the Promenade Deck and the fantail.'
'We agree, General,' Dean told him. 'And that's where our second ace comes into play. We have at least one and possibly three people on board the Atlantis Queen who may be in a position to help us. One of them is a young Englishwoman who works for GCHQ. The other two are SOCA and MI5.'
Mayhew nodded. 'Agents Mitchell and Franks,' he said. 'They're on board investigating the Darrow murder. Who's the woman?'
'One of the Menwith Girls. She happened to be on board checking out aspects of the Ship's Security systems. She has a laptop computer with a direct satellite link, so she's not dependent on the ship's communications systems. I'm told she got in touch with GCHQ about an hour ago.'
'Why the hell weren't we told this?' General Saunders demanded.
'I'm sorry, General,' Charlie Dean said, looking him in the eye, 'but this whole things has been unfolding very quickly. We're having trouble getting around the compartments.'
Compartmentalization was both the strength and the bane of modern intelligence organizations worldwide. The idea was simple enough. If a department, unit, or person didn't need to know something, they weren't cleared to know it. Sensitive information could be easily controlled, kept in its own separate box, and any leaks in that box could be identified and stopped before too much damage was done.
But that also meant that it was tough to disseminate important information to the people who needed it. It took time to get special security clearances, or to be sure that the routes for transmitting that information — phone lines, computer networks, distribution lists — were secure, and that unauthorized personnel didn't have access to them.
'Compartments my arse,' Saunders growled. 'What is a British subject doing working for American intelligence?'
'General,' Wallace said carefully, 'we all know that GCHQ has a, um, special relationship with the American NSA. I, for one, don't care where the information is coming from, so long as we have it. What does the young woman have to say, Mr. Dean? What's going on aboard those ships?'
'She confirms that armed men, probably Middle Eastern, are in control of the Atlantis Queen. The same group is also likely in charge of the Pacific Sandpiper. She watched the Sandpiper shoot down that Royal Navy Sea Harrier earlier today. She also believes that one of the British intelligence agents on board has been captured. She saw armed men enter the ship's computer center and take him into custody.'
'Is she sure he was one of ours?'
Dean shrugged. 'She saw an empty shoulder holster. Unless he was plainclothes security of some sort…'
'If he was, he wouldn't have been armed,' Mayhew said. 'This is terrible.. terrible…'
'What is it the hijackers want?' Wallace asked. 'This seems to be a lot bigger than the usual antinuke protest, people chanting slogans and waving signs from Zodiacs.'
'That is our feeling as well,' Lia said. 'This operation doesn't have the flavor of Greenpeace or any other environmentalist group we know. Different M. O. It's big and it's flashy, which suggests al-Qaeda. The agent on the Atlantis Queen saw AK-47s and Middle Eastern dress, which supports that idea. The operation is large, well planned, and well funded.'
'They don't appear to have made any demands as yet,' Wallace said.
'They will,' Dean told him. 'Count on it. Right now, they'll be consolidating themselves, making certain that they're in control. Their biggest problem at the moment is having… what, Sir Charles? Three thousand hostages?'
'Twenty-four hundred passengers,' Mayhew said. 'And nine hundred crew and hotelier staff.'
'Thirty-three hundred, then. There can't be more than a few dozen terrorists on board. They'll be limited to however many they were able to infiltrate at the Southampton docks and at Barrow, plus maybe seventeen or eighteen more squeezed onto that Eurocopter.'
'We know they had two people in the Sandpiper1 s crew,' Wallace said. He looked grim.
'How do you know that?' Saunders asked.
'There were two men on board who were representing the Japanese utilities company that owned that plutonium shipment,' Wallace said. 'Kiyoshi Kitagawa and Ichiro Wanibuchi. Their bodies were discovered early this morning on the outskirts of Barrow. Both were killed execution-style — a 9mm bullet behind the ear. The bodies were deposited in two different Dumpsters near the waterfront. We're assuming that terrorist agents took their place.'
'Wait a minute,' Saunders said. 'You're talking about Japanese terrorists?'
'I imagine the Sandpiper's crew would have noticed something wrong if Wanibuchi and Kitagawa had been replaced by Englishmen,' Wallace said dryly. 'They hadn't met them yet, but they knew their names and had their security clearances from the home office. We're now assuming that there was at least one terrorist agent among the Japanese escort vessel's crew as well.'
'Why would Japanese terrorists be helping Middle Eastern terrorists?' Saunders said, shaking his head. 'That just doesn't make sense.'
'Of course it does, General,' Lia told him. 'We've seen this before. Remember the JRA?'
'The Japanese Red Army was declared disbanded in 2000,' Saunders said.
'By one of the founding members, who was in jail at the time,' Lia said. 'We know. But the Japanese Red Army never had serious support at home, and ended up financed and equipped by the PFLP, in Lebanon and Syria. We're operating under the assumption that some JRA members may have hooked up with another dissident group, or reorganized themselves into something new. And we assume they still have solid contacts with the PFLP, and maybe Hamas, al-Qaeda, and other Mideast terror groups as well.'
'Yes, but to what end? Why would a Japanese terrorist group want to help Muslim extremists?'
'We'll have to ask them,' Dean said. 'Just as soon as we get them off those ships.'
