An instant later, the glass door behind him slid open and a nightmare shape entered — all in black, the form turned monstrous by heavy clothing, combat vest, helmet, and mask. The man advanced with a submachine gun tucked up tight against his shoulder, moving as though weapon and man were one and the same.
The terrorist gave a strangled scream, struggling against the relentless, backbreaking steel hug. The black- clad apparition pivoted slightly at the sound and fired, putting two rounds into the terrorist's head, the shots no louder than a sharp click. Spent brass tinkled and danced along the casino floor in the deathly silence that had followed the parachutist's entrance.
Please, sir! You're making me blush!'
With that, a number of civilians started to rise. Someone cheered, the cheer joined by another, and then another.
'Quiet!' Carolyn Howorth startled herself with the strength of her bellow. Her voice cut through the rising crowd noise and brought the mob to a halt. 'Everyone quiet!
'Everyone stay down!' the black apparition by the door shouted. He kept the submachine gun up against his shoulder, pivoting this way and that, giving the appearance of being a machine himself, one seeking its next target. 'Everyone stay down, stay calm, and we'll get you out of this!'
A second man in helmet, mask, and combat gear entered the open door and the two separated, putting their backs against the bulkheads to either side of the rear wall.
'Don't shoot,' Howorth called. 'You got them all in here!'
'Atlas Pool deck clear!' one of the figures said. 'Casino clear! Three tangos down!'
And another black figure touched down on the deck outside, moving too fast. He took three running steps as he tried to come to a halt and fell into one of the two hot tubs set to either side of the swimming pool.
'In Allah's name, what is happening?' Khalid demanded. He held the radio against His ear. 'Tahir! Report!' He shook the radio in frustration, then put it to his ear again. 'El Hakim! Come in! This is Khalid. Talk to me!'
There was nothing, no response but static.
He changed channels. 'Aziz! Are you there?'
'Yes, Amir!'
Khalid felt, first, relief at hearing the voice, followed almost at once by a deadly and cold sense of purpose. A radio failure by itself he would accept as accident — a dead battery, perhaps — but to have all three of the men guarding the stern deck area of the ship go silent at the same time that the security cameras and the shipboard monitor system switched off could not be coincidence.
'We have lost touch with the guards at the back of the ship,' he said. 'We may have unwanted visitors aboard. Where are you?'
'Grand Staircase, going up,' Aziz replied. He sounded out of breath. 'Deck Five!'
'Get to the casino as quickly as you can. Watch out for an ambush!'
'Yes, Amir!'
'Keep me informed! Out!'
Khalid thought for a moment more, studying the four men seated at the Security Office consoles. Beyond, the door into the IT center was open, and he could see two more men there… Hamud Haqqani and Ghailiani. Slipping the radio into its belt holster, Khalid strode into the IT center.
'What has happened to the security systems?' he demanded.
'Amir, we don't know,' Haqqani said. 'The main computer may have gone offline for a moment.'
'Would that turn off the security cameras?'
'Amir, I don't knowl'
'Ghailiani? You know these systems! What's happened?'
Ghailiani turned in his seat, his eyes locking with Khalid's. 'I don't know, either,' he said. 'All systems appear to be functioning normally, except for the cameras and the security scanners. We could try to reboot. That will take about twenty minutes.'
Khalid considered Ghailiani for a second. The man was… calm, icy calm, when everyone else in the Security- IT suite was stressed to the point of near hysteria.
What had the man done?
Probably nothing. Ghailiani was weak and indecisive, paralyzed by the threat to his family. He wouldn't have done anything on his own. His current calm was probably simple fatalism… a numb acceptance that things were out of his control.
But Khalid would definitely ask some more probing questions later, perhaps after having the men at the Millbrook safehouse work on Ghailiani's daughter for a time and send him some more photographs of the process.
'Twenty minutes is too long,' Khalid said. 'You have five minutes to tell me what is happening to the security systems on this ship.'
He turned and left, walking swiftly through the Security Office and out into the Deck Eleven passageway. Through the security doors — he was relieved to see that they, at least, were still working as he swiped his key card — and up the service stairwell beyond. He emerged, seconds later, in the passageway leading to the radio room and the bridge.
'The Americans are continuing their transmissions, Amir,' Fakhet told him as he passed the open door to the radio room. 'They say they will give us whatever we want, but that we — '
'Ignore them,' Khalid snapped. He used his card to go onto the bridge. Three of his men looked at him curiously, Obeidat, Mohawal, and Abdallah. Abdul Mohawal was at the ship's wheel.
'Come hard right!' Khalid ordered. 'Steer north!'
'Yes, Amir!'
'Fakhet!'
'Yes, Amir!' the radio operator called from the next compartment.
'Call the Pacific Sandpiper. We need them!'
'At once, Amir!'
It wasn't yet too late.
'This is Eleven. Target is changing course,' sounded in Dean's helmet receiver. 'Stay with him.'
Dean saw the ship turning, but the movement was slow and ponderous. The hijackers were probably hoping to throw off the landings of any more parachutists, but a cruise ship of that size simply couldn't maneuver like a speedboat. Dean watched the silhouette of Gene Podalski, Cougar Eleven, touch down on the brightly lit pool deck now just a few hundred feet ahead. He tugged slightly at the ram-air chute's controls, bleeding off some of his forward speed, and held his breath as the deck swooped up to meet him.
He touched down on the hard wooden planking, taking a few steps to keep his balance, then collapsed the chute behind him. The other Cougar team members crouched on the deck, either forming a defensive perimeter, moving inside, or gathering up their chutes and jump gear.
They'd all made it! Some of the op planners, he'd known, had insisted that it would be impossible to get all of the chutists down safely onto that tiny aft deck of a moving ship. In fact, part of each man's gear included a tightly packaged, inflatable one-man raft, just in case he missed the target and ended up in the sea. It looked like Brisard had managed to fall into one of the aft deck pools, but he was the only one who'd gotten wet.
Dean unsnapped his harness, let his billowing chute, reserve chute, and harness go over the side. As he stepped inside the casino, he saw Carolyn J. Howorth and felt a further surge of relief.
'Hey, CJ,' he said, pulling off his oxygen mask, then raising his monocular. 'Enjoying your cruise?'
'Charlie!' Her eyes were wide. 'What the hell are you doing here?'
'Rescuing you,' he said. 'Unless you insist on doing it yourself.'
'Looks like trouble headed their way, sir,' Caravaggio said.
Rubens looked at the big screen with its side-by-side schematics of the Atlantis Queen's decks. A tight group of green dots was clustered in the Grand Staircase on Decks Seven and Eight. They appeared to be going up, toward Deck Nine. 'Dean?' he said. 'Yeah. Copy.'
'You've got eight hostiles one deck down, coming up the main staircase. They're moving slow, but you don't
