My God! he thought. I've got to tell someone!
But who? And how?
And was it already too late?
Chapter 19
'It's okay,' Howorth told their prisoner. 'It's okay! We're not going to hurt you!'
But the man continued to sob. 'Zahra!' he finally managed to say. 'Zahra! Nouzha!'
'What language is that?' Mitchell asked. 'Arabic?' 'Maybe,' Howorth said. She frowned. 'Actually, I think they're names.'
They'd brought their prisoner down to Deck Eight, the highest deck on the liner with staterooms, and used a security passkey they'd found in the man's shirt pocket to open the door to an empty cabin. The other terrorist, the one who'd broken his neck on the stairs, had been dragged to a janitorial closet on Deck Nine and stuffed inside. They had his passcard now, too, as well as his AK-47.
Now they had the prisoner between them on the bed as they tried to get some kind of sense out of him. His emotional breakdown had been startlingly swift and complete; Howorth doubted that he was one of the terrorists. He'd not been armed, and he was wearing a Royal Sky uniform. Possibly he was as much a hostage as the rest of the Queen's passengers and crew.
'My… wife…,' the man finally managed to say, shoulders heaving. 'My wife, Zahra. And… my daughter…
'What about them?' Mitchell asked. Standing suddenly, reaching down, he grabbed the front of the prisoner's blue security force uniform and bunched up his other fist. 'You'd best start talking, raghead, or — '
'Stop it!' Howorth said, pushing the fist aside. 'Damn it, Mitchell, this isn't an interrogation!'
'Like hell it isn't!' But he relaxed slightly, backing off.
'Tell us about Zahra,' Howorth asked the prisoner.
'My… wife. They have her. And my daughter…'
'Who? Who has her?'
'Yusef Khalid. The leader of Islamist Jihad International. The men who… who have taken over this ship.'
'Are you a part of this group, then?' Mitchell demanded.
The prisoner shook his head. 'No. Or…
Slowly, they managed to drag the whole story from their prisoner He was Mohamed Ghailiani, and he was a Moroccan emigrant, now a British subject and an employee of Royal Sky Line, living in Woolston, just across the river from Southampton. Khalid's people had abducted Ghailiani's wife and daughter, were holding them to ensure Ghailiani's cooperation.
'Do you know where they're keeping them?' Howorth asked.
Ghailiani shook his head. 'No. But they've been e-mailing me… pictures. To show me they're still alive. And to… to remind me.' He closed his eyes, his face screwing tight with rising panic. 'Oh, God! I'll never see them again!'
'You will, Mohamed,' Howorth told him. 'We can help you! But you'll have to help us.'
'When they know I've helped you,' he said, pain etching his voice raw, 'when they know I've talked to you, they'll — ' He broke off, sobbing again.
'This is useless,' Mitchell said.
'No,' Howorth told him. 'This may be the one big break we need. You know they're going to be putting together some kind of rescue op. Mohamed, here, will be able to give us all the intel we need. We just have to show him we can help his family.'
'They… they're going to kill them,' Ghailiani said, miserable. 'They're going to kill them'
'Not if we have anything to say about it,' Howorth told him. 'We need to get to my stateroom and get my computer. And we'll need your e-mail account information, Mohamed. Address and password. Can you do that for us?'
Slowly, Ghailiani nodded.
'I think we'd better get out of here anyway,' Mitchell said. 'They'll be tracking this guy and his buddy. And us.'
'Too right.' Together, they helped Ghailiani stand and move toward the door.
Dr. Barnes sat down at the console in the back of the infirmary and switched on the power. Slipping the headphones on over his ears, he dialed up the volume slightly, listening to the hiss and crackle of ionospheric static.
The shortwave radio had been installed in the cruise ship's infirmary as a lifesaving measure, a means for the medical personnel to communicate directly with a hospital ashore in medical emergencies without having to run all the way up to Deck Twelve and the radio shack aft of the bridge.
He'd first tried using his cell phone, of course. The Atlantis Queen's onboard cell network connected via satellite to shore networks, enabling passengers to make calls and connect with the Internet. However, when he tried to make a connection, all he got was a recorded voice telling him the system was temporarily unavailable. That, he reasoned, would have been one of the first things hijackers would do — shut down the phone network so that the hostages on the ship couldn't call out.
But, just possibly, the hijackers didn't know about the infirmary shortwave.
'This is Delta Charlie Sierra One-one-three Echo,' he said. 'To any station hearing this call. Mayday, mayday, mayday.. '
The danger, of course, was that they might monitor the call from the radio shack. But it would take them time to get down here, or to disable the antenna on the radio mast.
'To any station hearing this call, mayday, mayday, mayday…'
'Where are they going?' Khalid demanded.
'It's hard to tell,' Haqqani replied, studying the liner's deck schematic. 'They were on Deck Eight, but they're going down, now.' He pointed. 'This stairwell.' 'Who do we have near there?' 'No one, sir. It's… it's a big ship.' Khalid scowled. That had been the problem from the beginning. With only thirty-one men on the Atlantis Queen, plus the fifteen or so he might be able to borrow from the Pacific Sandpiper at any given time, his personnel assets were sharply limited. There were so many places on board where he had to have people at all times — the bridge, engineering, watching the prisoners in the theater, the aft hold on A Deck, the fantail, the Deck Eleven Terrace. Most of the men had been awake for thirty hours straight at this point, and he needed to let them start rotating shifts to get some sleep.
But the two he'd sent aft to deal with the intruders on Deck Eleven had run into trouble. They should have returned almost immediately with two prisoners or word that the intruders had been dealt with… but according to the monitor, they were moving down and aft through the ship. Deck Six, apparently.
'Call up the records on the Carroll woman,' he said.
Haqqani did so.
'Her stateroom is Six-oh-nine-one,' Khalid said, reading the entry. His eyes narrowed. 'Another SOCA agent, no less. Show me Mitchell's records.' He scanned through those as well. 'He's on Deck Four — Four-oh-seven-two. Obviously they're working together, however.'
'We have six men on the Deck Twelve Terrace, sir,' Haqqani pointed out. 'We could send some of them down to deal with these two.'
'No. I need them where they are.' He was not going to allow these… these rats in the walls to sidetrack the plan or divert his people from their mission.
'Amir Khalid!' a voice called from the Security Office intercom speaker. 'Sir, are you there?'
'I am here, Fakhet,' Khalid replied. 'What is it?'
'Sir, someone is transmitting from inside the ship!'
