skittering across the deck. Mitchell stepped inside the reach of the weapon, pushing the muzzle aside as he swung a vicious uppercut with his left, uninjured hand, then grabbed the gun's muzzle ^nd yanked forward, hard, tugging the gunman off-balance.
Howorth, standing to one side, thought first about grabbing Mitchell's pistol, but it had skittered to the other side of the stairwell and was balanced precariously on the top step, with Mitchell and the gunman between her and the weapon. The unarmed man was on his hands and knees; Howorth leaped at the gunman's back, grabbing his kaffiyeh and the iqal cord that held it in place from behind with both hands and dragging them down over his eyes.
The gunman spun, teetering at the edge of the steps, holding the AK with his right hand as he fumbled with his left to pull the checkered cloth off his face. Howorth raised her right leg, planted her deck shoe on the man's chest, and kicked, hard, sending the gunman, arms flailing, backward and off the top step.
He screamed going down, the cry echoing down the stairwell as he slammed into the steps halfway down and completed an awkward backward roll to the first landing below. Mitchell flew after him, vaulting into space and landing on the gunman's chest five feet below with a sickening thud. Reaching down, Mitchell pulled the AK from unresisting fingers with his injured hand while drawing his other fist back to deliver a final blow —
'Stop!'
Howorth turned at the voice. The unarmed man, ignored for the opening seconds of the fight, had scooped up Mitchell's P226 and now held it aimed straight at Howorth.
'Don't move or I'll shoot!' the man shouted, his voice cracking on the last word. He held the pistol with a manic intensity, both hands on the grip, arms stiff, the gun's muzzle wobbling in his unsteady grasp. Howorth raised her hands as Mitchell dropped the AK, dangling uselessly backward in one hand.
'Don't shoot!' Howorth said; She was close to the now-armed man, close enough to see the beads of sweat rolling down his cheek. If she could get a little closer… 'Please, don't shoot!'
'Shit!' the man said. 'Shit! Shit! Shit!…'
Howorth was startled to realize that it wasn't sweat she was seeing on the man's face but tears. He was crying. The pistol's muzzle wavered, then dropped to point at the deck as the man sagged, his shoulders heaving with his sobs.
Swiftly Howorth stepped forward and snatched the pistol from the man's hands. Mitchell retrieved the AK, then stooped to check the terrorist sprawled at the bottom of the steps. He looked up to meet Howorth's eyes. Dead, he mouthed. The tumble had broken the man's neck.
Their prisoner continued to cry.
Dr. Heywood Barnes stepped into the lush tropical ambir ance of the Grotto Lounge and walked forward, toward the big sliding glass doors opening onto the Deck Eleven pool area. The restaurant, curiously, was deserted. Normally, it was one of the busiest social areas on the ship. A 'Closed' sign had been hanging at the front entrance, but he'd ignored it and come inside anyway. The lounge was supposed to be open all hours.
Barnes rarely got up here. His quarters, along with those of the other medical personnel on board, were on A Deck, just forward of the infirmary, and while there were no rules against his coming up into the passenger areas, fraternization was discouraged, save for very specific instances — when ship's officers dined in the formal Atlantia Restaurant on Deck One, for instance, or up on Deck Nine, in the Lost Continent.
Generally, Barnes was a solitary soul who disliked crowds and social mingling, preferences that years ago had led to his taking the position of ship's doctor when he could easily have had a thriving practice ashore.
For the past several days, however, the infirmary had been anything but quiet. Members of the ship's crew and staff kept gathering there, hanging out in the waiting area or in the staff lounge, drinking tea and coffee, and discussing them.
'Them,' of course, were the foreign soldiers, presumably Arabs, who were now everywhere on board the Queen and who appeared to be in control of the ship. Two of them were in the main galley now at all times, flanking the big double doors leading to the aft A Deck hold. Galley personnel who had to go into the hold for supplies were escorted in and out and kept away from the area near the loading bay and external doors. But Johnny Berger and several other members of both staff and crew had been back there and seen a number of trucks parked near the doors and a large number of armed and uniformed men.
PA announcements and a memo from the bridge had spoken of helping the Pacific Sandpiper and of security personnel from the other ship protecting a top-secret military cargo… but no one really believed any of it. Phone calls to the bridge had gone unanswered. Personnel who'd physically gone to the bridge or to the Security Office to talk to someone in charge had never returned. The mess stewards, though, had been ordered to take boxes of food — cold cuts and sandwiches, mostly, and hundreds of bottles of water — up to the doors leading to the Neptune Theater, where gruff and uncommunicative uniformed guards had taken them inside. Rumor had it that the missing crew members were being held prisoner inside the theater.
Earlier that afternoon, Barnes had made his way up to Deck One and found an out-of-the-way alcove in a deserted Starbucks on the mall. From there, he could see down a passageway leading forward to the theater, where he could just make out one of the guards at the entrance without being seen himself. After an hour of waiting, another guard had led a woman out of the theater and steered her to the left, toward the restrooms. After perhaps ten minutes, the two had reappeared, vanishing once more into the theater.
So… there were prisoners being held in the theater. They were being fed and being taken to the nearest restrooms, but they were under heavy guard. Barnes had considered going up to Security but decided against it. The terrorists, if that's what they were, must be in control of the Security Department and the bridge, and if he called attention to himself, he would end up with that woman and God knew how many others tied up and under guard inside the theater.
And so, using back service access ways and emergency stairs, Barnes had ascended all the way up to Deck Eleven and the Grotto Lounge. Partly, he wanted a look at the Pacific Sandpiper, which some of the staff said was still tied up alongside as the Queen clipped ahead through the ocean at a good twenty knots — an insane pace if they were, indeed, towing another vessel. Barnes' cabin was on the starboard side of the ship, and he couldn't see anything from there. From the Deck Twelve Terrace, though, he would be able to see clearly in all directions, and be able to look down onto the Sandpiper
He also wanted to check for himself the ship's course. Rumor had it that the ship had changed direction two days ago, late Saturday, and was now heading due west, instead of south toward the Strait of Gibraltar.
He heard a clatter of noise from just ahead and froze, then stepped back into the shelter of a spray of palm fronds. The restaurant's tropical jungle decor had always seemed rather silly to him, but he was glad to have the cover now. Several men were talking to one another just ahead. There was a long string of almost guttural words, followed by a loud thump. 'Iyak!' one voice cried, the voice sharp, even threatening.
Barnes had spent a year in Kuwait, during his stint as a medical officer with the British Army, right out of medical school. He didn't speak the language, but he knew Arabic when he heard it. Easing forward, he tried to get a better view.
Four uniformed men were at the glass sliding doors leading out to the pool area, and they were manhandling a large flatbed handcart piled high with wooden crates under an olive-drab tarp. The cart had just become entangled with a table as they'd tried to position it in front of the door, and the men were trying to pull the cart free. 'Yallah!' the one in charge cried. 'Yallah!' Two more armed men, Barnes saw, were standing outside by the pool, apparently guarding a stack of identical tarp-covered crates.
Abruptly the cart bounced free of the obstruction and three of the men wheeled the cart out onto the deck while the fourth, the leader, stood to one side, gesturing to the others. In that moment, Barnes noticed two critical things.
First of all, the afternoon sun was streaming through the broad glass windows of the Atlantean Grotto Lounge. Those windows faced forward, and if the sun was coming in that way, it meant the ship was sailing west, into the late-afternoon sun.
And as the soldiers bullied the cart out the door, the tarp had been tugged aside just enough for Barnes to see letters stenciled in black on the side of one of the cases.
'FIM-92 STIN' was all he could read, the letters centered above a portion of a serial number.
But that glimpse was enough to chill Barnes' soul.
