please.'
'Coming to new heading two-six-zero, Captain. Aye, aye.'
The helmsman put the wheel over, and the liner slowly began to edge onto her new course.
After several moments, the helmsman announced, 'We're on new course two-six-zero, sir.'
'Increase speed… slowly… to two-zero knots.'
'Coming to two-zero knots, slowly, Captain. Aye, aye.'
God, what did this man want with them, steering a course for New York City?
The Pacific Sandpiper was carrying radioactive nuclear material. The men who'd captured both vessels were obviously Islamic fanatics.
The only conclusion Phillips could imagine was that these men intended an attack against New York City, a nuclear attack, an attack that would make the horror of 9/11 pale by comparison.
And Captain Phillips realized now that he might well have to choose between trying to save his crew and passengers.. and saving New York City.
Chapter 17
Kozo Fuchida sat next to Moritomi's bunk. 'There are doctors on the other ship,' he said earnestly. 'They might be able to help.'
'There is a doctor on this ship,' Moritomi replied. 'Believe me, my friend. There is nothing any of them can do.'
Chujiro Moritomi had begun showing signs of radiation poisoning only hours after the radioactive canisters had been transferred to the passenger ship. His face was flushed; the skin of his hands and arms was red and shiny, as though he'd received a bad sunburn. During the night he'd started vomiting. Fuchida didn't understand the science of it. That had been Moritomi's area of expertise, since he'd worked for several years at the Rokkasho nuclear plant. 'I thought you had to breathe the powder to be hurt by it,' Fuchida said.
The principal danger inherent in those metal tubes of plutonium oxides, Fuchida had been told, came with breathing the stuff, which had been described as the most toxic material known to man. Conventional high explosives would throw a cloud of dust into the air above Manhattan, and prevailing winds would carry the stuff in a deadly footprint up the New England coast.
But apparently those cylinders were leaking fairly high levels of gamma radiation as well, radiation enough to cook any unprotected individual who handled them.
'We weren't told.. everything,' Moritomi said. 'The Arabs were terrified. They thought the radiation would kill them right away.' He started coughing, and a smear of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth. 'They're going to wish it had been right away.'
'Khalid lied to us?'
'He may simply not have known what to expect. Or perhaps some of those cylinders hold something more concentrated, more deadly, than simple MOX powder, and our intelligence wasn't good enough.' He shrugged. 'None of it matters now, of course.'
Fuchida's gaze slipped to the small table beside Moritomi's bunk, which was empty except for the compact deadliness of a Walther P5 pistol. 'Of course.'
'Our omi,' the sick man said, 'remains.'
Fuchida nodded. He touched Moritomi's shoulder. 'I'll be back to check on you after a while.'
Moritomi didn't answer, and Fuchida wondered if he'd fallen asleep. Fuchida let himself out of the cabin, one of the single berthing compartments for the ship's officers, quietly.
But as he was walking away down the passageway, he heard a single loud, sharp shot from the room.
Captain Phillips and helmsman Jason Miller walked back onto the bridge, escorted by the terrorist Khalid had called Aziz. Phillips felt dirty and tired; he'd gotten little sleep the night before.
Since the takeover of his bridge almost twenty-four hours earlier, Miller, Phillips, and four others of his regular bridge crew personnel had been kept imprisoned in the officer's wardroom aft of the bridge. An adjoining bunkroom used by duty officers served for sleeping and hygienic considerations, and members of the ship's catering staff brought meals — under guard — up from the forward galley.
Staff Captain Vandergrift, four more bridge officers, eight security and ship's computer personnel, and two surviving radio operators had all… vanished. Khalid had ordered them taken away at gunpoint, and, so far, Phillips had been unable to learn what had become of them.
As the hours passed, their safety weighed more and more heavily in his thoughts.
Apparently, the hijackers were determined to keep the bulk of the ship's passengers and crew in the dark concerning what had happened. The armed guards wore military-style uniforms, and a few were wearing shipboard security uniforms. Khalid or one of his men made occasional intercom announcements from the bridge or radio room, announcements crafted to convince the floating city of the Queen that all was well, that the Atlantis Queen was rendering assistance to a vessel in distress, that the ship soon would be back on her regular course.
'Good morning, Captain,' Khalid said as Phillips was led onto the bridge. He was standing next to the electronic chart table. 'And it is a good morning, I assure you.'
Miller replaced Fisher, another regular bridge crewman, at the helm. Aziz led Fisher back toward the wardroom.
'Where are my people?' Phillips asked, blunt. 'The rest of my bridge crew?' His questions yesterday had been ignored, but he was determined to push the issue as far as he could.
'They are safe, Captain,' Khalid told him. 'Safe and being well looked after. We no longer need them on the bridge, and they would just be in the way.'
'And there are some other of my people I haven't seen. David Llewellyn, my chief security officer. Where is he?'
'Safe, Captain.'
'Their safety is my principal responsibility,' Phillips said. 'I want to see that they're all right.'
'In time, Captain. In time. For now, your principal responsibility is the safe navigation of this ship. And to obey my orders.'
'What is it you want of me?'
Khalid gave a negligent wave. 'Run the ship. Continue as if nothing was happening out of the ordinary.'
'And my crew?'
'Later, Captain Phillips. After I know whether or not you can be trusted.'
Phillips sagged a bit inside. He could push the issue no further.
Khalid, he saw, still wore the blue and white shipboard security uniform he'd been wearing when he took over the bridge, as did several of his men.
This hijacking, Phillips had decided, had been an enormous undertaking. It had taken a lot of money — that French helicopter demonstrated that — as well as a lot of planning, preparation, and advance work. Poor Darrow's murder, he now realized, must have been planned to help the hijackers get on board, and the terrorists had shown an astonishing knowledge not only of the Ship's Security systems but of shipboard routine as well.
His face darkened with a scowl. One of the regular security officers, Mohamed Ghailiani, evidently had been a mole, the means by which these armed thugs had gotten on board in the first place and penetrated Ship's Security.
So far as Phillips was concerned, the blood of two men, now — Security Specialist Kelly and Radio Operator Farnham — was on Ghailiani's hands.
And Phillips was determined that there would be a reckoning.
The question was how best to fight back. Khalid seemed utterly confident of his control of the ship. He held the bridge, obviously, as well as the radio room, Security, the IT department — the entire suite of departments and rooms on Deck Twelve, and in the forward portion of Deck Eleven, just below. From comments Phillips had heard,
