could do so by asking one of the guards to walk them out and back. Llewellyn joined him.
'Guards outside?' Vandergrift asked, his voice low.
'Two that I could see just outside the doors,' Llewellyn told him. 'Not good.'
'No… '
Arnold Bernstein picked his way over the mattresses on the deck and joined them. He was an older man — in his early sixties, Llewellyn guessed — and was the manager of a minor celebrity among the passengers. 'You fellows still talking about how to break out of here?' he asked.
'Maybe,' Vandergrift said. 'You have any ideas?'
'I have an idea,' Bernstein replied, 'that these people are going to kill us if we don't do something.'
'We're open to suggestions, Mr. Bernstein,' Llewellyn said. 'But right now I don't think there's much we can do.'
During the long night, Llewellyn, Vandergrift, and a few other men had discussed the possibility of trying to overpower the guards and break free. The numbers, certainly, were in the prisoners' favor — a hundred of them against six guards inside the theater.
But even if the prisoners could find a way to take out all six simultaneously, there would be noise, there would be gunfire, and the two outside would alert the bridge.
'We outnumber them,' Vandergrift said, 'but eight automatic weapons against a hundred unarmed men and women are no odds at all. The way I see it, we might, might, be able to take out two of the guards, maybe three, and turn their weapons against the others, but the end result is sure to be a bloodbath. The rest of the hijackers will fire into the crowd before we can get close to them.'
'There's also the possibility that the terrorists have rigged explosives around the theater,' Bernstein added.
'Have you seen any sign of that?' Llewellyn asked.
'No. But that's what they did at Entebbe.'
Llewellyn nodded. Entebbe was the Ugandan airport where 250 crew and passengers off of Air France Flight 139 had been imprisoned by terrorists and Ugandan soldiers after their plane had been hijacked in 1976. The prisoners had been locked up in an old airport terminal, given mattresses, and held under guard… just as was being done here. Explosives had been prominently placed around the terminal as an added threat.
As he looked at Bernstein, Llewellyn was forcibly reminded of another aspect of the Entebbe hijacking. At one point, the terrorists had gone through the prisoners' passports and separated out the ones with Jewish-sounding names. Those had been led to another room in a selection process eerily and nightmarishly reminiscent of the selection lines at Nazi death camps.
And there'd been the Jewish passenger on board another hijacked cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, an elderly man in a wheelchair shot by the hijackers and tossed overboard.
Llewellyn wondered if Bernstein was thinking about those incidents now.
'There's been no sign that they're wiring us with explosives,' Vandergrift said. 'The way I see it, they figure they can keep us under control just with the threat of those rifles.'
'Unfortunately, they're right,' Llewellyn said. The doors leading to the balcony stairways from inside the theater had been locked. Llewellyn could see no way to get at the men in the balconies other than swarming up the outside, using curtain ropes or the Baroque decorations covering the walls as climbing aids. 'If we rush them, it'll be a slaughter. We can't risk it.'
'If we take down the two up there by the doors,' Bernstein pointed out, 'we'll have their guns. We could shoot the ones in the balconies, then.'
Vandergrift shook his head. 'We wouldn't make it halfway up the aisles before the people in the balconies started shooting into the crowd. Damn it, we can't risk it!'
'The passengers on Flight Ninety-three risked it!' Bernstein said, angry, his voice rising.
'Please!' Vandergrift said, putting a cautioning hand on the man's shoulder. 'Keep your voice down!'
'Flight Ninety-three,' Bernstein said, more quietly. 'Nine-eleven? Does that ring any bells? I say we should roll.
'The hijackers on Flight Ninety-three were armed with box cutters and knives,' Llewellyn pointed out, 'not AK-47 assault rifles. They were also in close quarters, with the terrorists locked inside the cockpit.' He shook his head. 'We try that kind of hero stunt and we'll be cut to bits!'
'Bernie!' A piercing female voice echoed through the theater. Llewellyn turned and saw a tall, slender, big- breasted woman in a bare excuse for a bikini standing on the other side of the theater seats, hands on her hips. 'Bernie! Where are you!'
Bernstein sighed. 'The mistress calls,' he said. 'Look, if you guys decide to actually do something other than waiting to get shot or beheaded or whatever these clowns decide to do to us, count me in! And I suggest you hurry!' Turning, he tiptoed across mattresses and over passengers to rejoin the woman.
'Who is that?' Vandergrift asked.
'Some rock star or singer or something,' Llewellyn said. He tried to remember the passenger records he'd seen. He recalled that several staff people had been complaining about the woman, her complaints about her suite, her meals, and the service on board. 'Hopper? No, Harper. Gillian Harper. High maintenance. Thinks the world revolves around her.'
'I gather she's learning otherwise.'
She appeared to be telling Bernstein off. 'Maybe.'
'So what do you think, David?' Vandergrift asked. 'Should we… 'roll'?'
He shook his head. 'Whatever these people are planning on doing, they're ready for the long haul.'
'What makes you say that?'
Llewellyn raised his hands, exposing his wrists. 'They untied us. They let us use the loo… and gave us mattresses to sleep on. Not the Queen's usual luxurious accommodations, certainly, but it shows they're going to keep us for a while.'
'How long, I wonder?'
'Depends on where we're headed, I guess. America? The Med? Maybe back to England?'
'We were on a westerly heading,' Vandergrift said. 'I got a glimpse of the sun when they brought me down here. America.'
'So that's five days to a week, depending on our speed.'
'You think they're going to hold us down here that long?'
'I think they're prepared to. I think we're here to guarantee the good behavior of the skipper and maybe the rest of the passengers.'
'Which suggests we need to make a break somehow… '
'Not if it gets us all killed, Charles,' Llewellyn said, shaking his head. 'Anyway, before too long, somebody's going to notice that we're not on-course for the Med anymore. They may stage a rescue mission.'
'You think so?'
'I hope so. I think this is one we need to leave to the professionals.'
Vandergrift looked again at the guards watching from the balconies. They seemed to be interested in an argument developing between Bernstein and the Harper woman.
'That could still get bloody,' Vandergrift said. 'Commandos storming in here? The terrorists might open fire on the crowd.'
'We'll need to think about ways we can minimize casualties,' Llewellyn said, thoughtful. 'Maybe try to disperse everyone in small groups, as much as they'll let us. Warn them not to jump up in the line of fire if shooting starts.'
'We could do that, yeah,' Vandergrift said. 'Make a list of things to do and not do. Pass the word on a few people at a time.'
'And we can think about grabbing weapons when the time comes,' Llewellyn added. 'It's all a question of being ready when things go down.'
'I agree.'
Llewellyn found himself looking across the theater, halfway up the ranks of seats. Tricia was up there, sitting in an aisle seat, and one of the terrorists was talking with her. The man said something… and Tricia smiled, the expression startling Llewellyn. What the hell?…
