they had at least one man watching over the engineering crew on D Deck, and someone watching the catering staff in the forward galley.
That left a very great deal of ship and about three thousand passengers and crew unaccounted for, and from the sound of it most of them weren't even aware yet that the ship had been hijacked.
If those three thousand could be warned somehow… a handful of terrorists might kill some of them, but not all. Maybe he could arrange some sort of uprising… a mutiny, of sorts.
Except hundreds might be killed in such an attempt.
And if he did nothing, how many would die in New York City? Phillips was convinced, now, beyond any shred of doubt, that Khalid planned more than a simple shakedown of the American and British governments with these ships as hostage. The presence of the Sandpiper alongside suggested a scenario so dark that Phillips could scarcely bring himself to think about it.
His passengers and crew, or the life of a major city.
Whatever he did would have to be more subtle than an uprising among the prisoners. And there just might be a way…
Casually he walked over to the chart table and checked the ship's course… still on a bearing of two-six-zero, still at twenty knots. Turning, he walked over to the ship's compass binnacle, checked the heading, then began punching some numbers into the keyboard mounted on the binnacle's face.
Khalid might be in control, but he was not a sailor. Phillips remembered their conversation on the bridge yesterday, where Khalid had committed the landlubberly mistake of calling the lines securing the Sandpiper alongside ropes. On board ship, the only rope was wire rope, the steel cable used for specific tasks such as lifting heavy cargo from a hold — or to secure the two ships together as they now were. But the lines first passed between the two ships had been 'lines,' and a sailor, someone with naval or merchant marine training, would have known that.
Phillips thought he saw a way to use that.
'What are you doing?' Khalid asked.
'Checking the compass,' he replied. He kept his voice even, though his heart was pounding in his chest. 'Recalibrating it. The navigator usually performs the task, but he seems to have disappeared.'
Khalid walked closer and looked at the compass heading. It read 250.
'According to this,' the man said slowly, 'we are off-course.'
'By ten degrees, yes. The navigation officer checks the compass with our GPS twice daily, to make certain this sort of thing doesn't happen. We've been having some trouble with it.'
'What kind of trouble?'
Phillips shrugged. 'Nothing serious. We just need to recalibrate for the currents, the tides, the wind, for the changing angle on magnetic north. That's what I just did.'
'But this means we're headed too far south, yes?'
'Then I would suggest that you bring the ship ten degrees north.'
'Order it.'
'Helm!' Phillips said. 'Come right ten degrees.'
'Come right ten degrees,' Miller replied. Phillips saw the sweat on the young man's face. 'Aye, aye.'
Gently the Atlantis Queen edged onto her new, more northerly course. As minute followed agonizing minute, Khalid said nothing more, content with staring out the bridge windows forward at the bright blue sky above the endless violet-gray,blue of the horizon.
They might just be able to get away with this.
David Llewellyn paced up the aisle of the theater, deliberately testing the bounds set on the prisoners. Halfway up the aisle, a bearded man in khaki had stepped out of the shadows, pointing an AK at Llewellyn, barking something in Arabic. He raised his hands and took a step back. 'Easy, man, easy!'
The guard barked again, and a second armed man appeared. 'You need piss?' the man demanded. 'Uh, yeah,' Llewellyn said. 'Come.'
The man led Llewellyn through the double doors at the top of the aisle and down a short passageway toward the mall. Several men's and ladies' rooms were located here. The guard led Llewellyn inside but let him use one of the stalls in privacy.
At least, he thought, their captors had seen fit to come in last night and cut those damned plastic strips off their wrists and ankles. As each man or woman was cut loose and their gag removed, they'd been led away, and at first Llewellyn had thought they were being taken away to be killed. Some of the captives had thought the same and began screaming and struggling. When that happened, they would be released, and the guards would choose another to release. And those who were led away were brought back safely after a few minutes.
As each prisoner was returned, as they rejoined the others and began talking in hushed, urgent whispers, Llewellyn had realized that they were being taken, one by one, to one of the restrooms just outside the theater. The process had taken a long time; there were almost a hundred people being held in the theater, now, and only a handful of guards.
Eventually, it had been his turn. He'd scarcely been able to walk after hours of being tied, and he'd been afraid that they would be tied once more afterward, but when the guard had brought him back from the head, he'd been released. Later, a couple of catering staff people had brought box dinners in — sandwiches, fruit cups, and small cartons of juice — not quite the usual sumptuous fare on board the Queen, but at least the hijackers didn't intend to starve them all.
He finished up, flushed, and washed his hands at one of the sinks as the guard watched impassively. 'So, what's your name?' Llewellyn asked brightly.
'No talk.'
'Not very friendly, are you?'
'No talk.
The guard had led Llewellyn back to the theater, then, and he took the opportunity to look around. There didn't appear to be anyone in the bit of the ship's mall area visible down the passageway. Two men in Ship's Security uniforms stood to either side of the doors into the theater.
Inside, he took a moment to study the situation from the top of the aisle. Only the overhead lights illuminating the stage were on, and the prisoners were huddled together there, lying or sitting on mattresses.
At around ten the night before, a dozen crew members had been led away at gunpoint. Again the prisoners left behind had begun talking among themselves, wondering what was happening. The chosen prisoners had returned twenty minutes later dragging mattresses from the ship's housekeeping stores. Llewellyn and a number of other men had volunteered to help, then, and they'd spent the next hour and a half making trips down to B Deck Forward, dragging out blankets and more mattresses and hauling them up in the main forward service lift. The mattresses were laid out side by side across the theater's stage, with more on the deck between the front-row seats and the stage, and others in the side aisles.
At the time, Staff Captain Vandergrift had first suggested that the men and women take opposite sides of the theater for sleeping. Llewellyn had looked at Tricia and Sharon Reilly, who were huddled together now side by side in the front-row seats, and shaken his head. 'I think a better idea, sir,' he'd said, 'would be to put the women in the middle, the men around the outside.'
Several of their captors — the ugly, leering one especially — seemed to be eagerly anticipating a chance to rape some of the women.
Vandergrift had thought about it and agreed. The prisoners had passed an uncomfortable night on the mattresses, many of them clinging together for warmth and for at least an illusion of security. Their guards had watched impassively from the balconies, their shifts changing once in the twelve hours that had passed since.
There were, as near as Llewellyn could tell, four guards in the balconies — one on the left above the stage, one on the right, and two in the rear balconies above the door — as well as the two at the top of the aisle. One of those, his escort to the restroom, now nudged Llewellyn with the muzzle of his rifle. 'You go!'
'Okay, sunshine,' Llewellyn said. 'Don't get your camel in a twist.'
He walked back down to the mattresses. Vandergrift sat on the stage, his legs dangling over the edge as he ate a banana. More food had been brought in that morning, and prisoners who needed to use the restroom facilities
