all the doors.'
'How'd you get out of Security?'
'The others were distracted, trying to figure out what you did. I slipped out, took a gun, and came down to Kleito's Temple before your people locked the doors.'
'Why Kleito's Temple?'
He nodded at Khalid's body. 'Because I knew that bastard would run if the bridge was threatened. If I went up there myself, I'd never have gotten close to him. But if he ran, if he came down here…' Another shrug. 'I just had to wait and see which ladder he came down, port or starboard.'
'Your family's okay, by the way,' Dean said. 'SAS released them yesterday. They weren't hurt.'
Ghailiani smiled again. 'I saw. It's been… a nightmare.'
Motion and a flutter of sound pulled at Dean's eye, and he looked out over the water, toward the south. The sky was growing lighter in the east — the approaching dawn — and the other ship, the Pacific Sandpiper was there in the south surging directly toward them, her bow wake a white mustache against the darkness.
Worse, a helicopter was flying toward them — an Agusta
Westland Super Puma. It had just lifted off the Sandpiper's deck and was accelerating straight toward the Queen.
There were still tangos on the Queen's upper areas, outside on Deck Eleven, the ones who'd been shooting at him a moment ago. Possibly the helicopter was flying to pick them up… or to bring reinforcements for the terrorists from the other ship, but Dean had a feeling that the bad guys had something else, something deadlier, in mind.
'Rubens!' he called over his comm implant. 'They're trying to ram! The Sandpiper… and there's a helicopter that looks like it's lining up to crash us!'
'We're on it,' Rubens replied.
'Tell them to turn the Queen to port!' By turning into the attack, the Queen might be able to swing her stern out of the way. Her Azipod thrusters gave her a lot more maneuverability than a ship her size with conventional screws.
'We're on it,' Rubens repeated.
The helicopter was closer, much closer, looming huge… close enough that Dean could see the pilot at the right-seat controls…
The missile streaked in out of nowhere, coming from the west on a slender white contrail. It struck the Super Puma squarely in its starboard fuselage, exploding in orange flame.. and then a far larger explosion followed, a vast and thundering boom across the water as the aircraft was completely engulfed in flame and black smoke. Burning chunks of wreckage scattered through the air, and something struck the Queen's hull with a metallic clang a few yards away.
The fireball plunged suddenly down, striking the water twenty yards clear of the ship. Dean released the breath he'd been holding; the size of that explosion meant the terrorists had had explosives inside the helicopter, a last-ditch effort to detonate the explosives in the Queen's hold and scatter radioactive death across New England.
It had been that close…
With a roar, a British Sea Harrier flew in low above the water, banking as it passed the surging circle of white water where the Super Puma had gone down. Dean heard shouts from farther aft, and the rattle of automatic weapons.
Shit. There were still tangos back there, and they might still have Stinger missiles.
'Help me up!' He'd lost his H&K, but he had Khalid's AK-47 and Ghailiani's pistol. The terrorists were on the Deck Ten pool area, behind Kleito's Temple and the ship's health club. Once on his feet, Dean found he could manage a halt-footed limp. It wasn't broken then, just sprained… but getting around was going to be damned tough.
With Ghailiani helping him, he plunged back inside the ship.
Guided by Rubens and the Art Room, Tom Brisard had left one man at the ship's helm and led the rest aft, down one level to Deck Eleven, then out onto a raised promenade overlooking the Deck Ten Atlantean Grotto Pool area. Through their night-vision monoculars they could see five tangos there — three of them standing guard, the other two opening one of the long dark olive crates lying on the deck.
Brisard had been Army Delta Force before signing on with Black Cat… and before that he'd been an Army Special Forces staff sergeant, with experience both in Afghanistan and in Iraq, none of which had required him to parachute into swimming pools or hot tubs, thank God. He knew the others weren't going to let him live that one down, and he was briefly tempted to take out his embarrassment on the tangos in his sights.
'Take prisoners if you can,' Rubens' voice reminded Brisard over his headset.
'Roger that,' he replied in a whisper. The Black Cat personnel's emergence from the ship was silent, and the tangos never heard their approach. At the moment, all of them were staring off to port, where an approaching helicopter had just fallen into the sea and a British Sea Harrier was drifting slowly closer toward the ship's side. The terrorists appeared mesmerized by that shrieking, hovering apparition.
'Wakkif!' he shouted, targeting one of the thunderstruck men below. 'Halt! Do not move!'
For a heart-pounding instant, commandos and terrorists faced one another across fifty feet or so of emptiness. A second Sea Harrier appeared, followed by the thunderous beat of more helicopters.
Then, faced by the Sea Harriers' cannons, incoming helicopter transports, and the aimed weapons of the commandos on the railed balcony above them, the terrorists began dropping their weapons and raising their hands.
Fred Doherty put a hand on James Petrovich's shoulder.
'Don't worry, man,' Petrovich said before Doherty could say a word. 'I've got it and it's fucking great!'
Leaving Ames in the room, they'd emerged cautiously from the wardroom cabin where the terrorists had been keeping them along with Phillips and other bridge officers, slipping out after hearing what sounded like muffled shots or explosions and finding the guard posted outside of their room was gone.
There'd been no guards in front of the storage room where their cameras were being kept, either. They couldn't access the security door leading to the bridge and decided they didn't want to tangle with whoever was in there — Khalid or whoever had just stormed the ship. A body lying in the forward stairwell showed that a takedown was under way.
Instead, they'd made their way aft down Deck Ten, through the Kleito bar-restaurant area, and then past the cruise ship's large and rather formidably equipped health center.
Through the large glass windows at the aft wall of the exercise room, Doherty could see several terrorists standing pinned in a glare of light from the sky. There were helicopters as well; his time in the Navy years before had taught him to recognize both British Merlins and U. S. Navy Seahawks, and the pair of British jump jets hovering off the side of the ship were a nice, if noisy, extra touch.
Using his camera's night settings, Petrovich had started filming as the first black-clad commandos had begun fast-roping onto the deck…
It took him almost five minutes, with Ghailiani's protesting help, to hobble through the bar and into the health club farther aft. Two men were standing by the large glass windows, one with a camera balanced on his shoulder.
'Halt!' Dean had snapped, raising the AK. 'Who the hell are you two?'
One of the two turned, raising his hands slowly. 'Uh… press!' he said. 'News reporters!' He seemed to be trying to decide whether Dean and Ghailiani were terrorists or rescuers.
The other man continued filming through the window.
'Get the hell down!' Dean said, deciding that the two were what they claimed to be. They would sort things
