Colonel Qazi charged up a ladder on the starboard side of the ship with his two men carrying gym bags right at his heels. At the top of the ladder well, on the O-3 level, they turned inboard to the long passageway that ran the length of the ship on the starboard side. Although this was one of the two main thoroughfares on this deck, it was narrow. Men could pass each other shoulder to shoulder in the corridor, but the knee-knockers were only wide enough for one man at a time to pass through. Qazi consulted the numbers on the little brass plaques near the doors of the compartments as he walked past. He knew the numbering system, but he couldn’t readily visualize just where he was from reading the numbers. For the first time tonight Qazi knew a touch of panic. These passageways all looked the same, narrow and full of ninety-degree turns. The place was a maze, a labyrinth of walls and doors and passageways that led off in every direction but the proper one. When the watertight doors swung shut, he would have to fight his way from space to space and he would never know just where he was or where he was going. He would be trapped like a rat.
He touched the arm of a sailor walking aft. “I’m new aboard. How do I get to the communication spaces?”
“Port side, Chief.” The sailor gestured toward a passageway that led off to the left, presumably to join with the port-side passageway that paralleled this one. “And forward maybe fifty frames. There’s a window to pass messages through. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks.”
“Sure.” The sailor hurried away. Qazi and his men strode down the indicated passageway.
They were in luck. Just beside the window where the clerks accepted messages for transmission, there was a security door which was locked and unlocked by an access device mounted head-high on the bulkhead. The access device had a keyboard into which those who sought entrance tapped a code, which changed weekly. And as Qazi approached, a sailor was tapping on the keys, which were hidden from an observer’s view by a black lip which surrounded the keyboard.
The sailor started through the security door just as Qazi reached him and planted his shoulder in the man’s back. They crashed through the door together, the two gunmen right behind, extracting their Uzis from their gym bags. Black security curtains screened the doorway from the rest of the compartment. Qazi pushed his man through the drapes into the room and Jamail and Haddad, the gunmen following, stepped clear to each side and opened fire. The silenced weapons made a ripping noise. Spent shells spewed from the ejection ports. The sailor who had preceded Qazi spun toward him, and the colonel grabbed his head and broke his neck.
The other five Americans in the compartment died under the hail of bullets.
The office spaces were lit in white light, in contrast to the red light which had illuminated the ladders and passageways. As their eyes adjusted, the gunmen ran deeper into the communications complex, using their weapons on the four other sailors they found there. Qazi went into the equipment room. Banks of panels with dials and gauges and knobs covered the walls. Or did they? There seemed to be lights behind this equipment. Over there was a passage. Perhaps the power cables came in back there. That communications technician Ali had interrogated, what had he said?
Qazi stepped through the gap in the seven-foot-high gray boxes.
He saw the fist and the wrench swinging just in time, and ducked as the wrench smashed into the panel beside him.
The man wielding it was young. Young and black and scared. And quick. He had the wrench swinging again before Qazi could react. The colonel tried to fall, and the wrench struck his head a glancing blow.
He was on the floor, dazed, and the sailor was on his chest, pinning his arms with his legs, drawing back the wrench for the coup de grace, his lips stretched back exposing his teeth, the cords in his neck as taut as wires.
Qazi heard a pop and blood spurted from the side of the American’s head. The corpse collapsed on top of him. The wrench rang as it hit the linoleum-covered deck.
Jamail rolled the body away. Qazi tried to rise. God, not this!
“Quickly,” he tried to say, his tongue thick. He gestured vaguely at Jamail, who nodded and left him there, struggling to rise from the sitting position.
Jamail and Haddad had almost completed the task of setting the charges when Qazi had the cobwebs sufficiently cleared to stand upright and walk out into the equipment room. “Put one on the electrical cables under the raised area of the floor,” Qazi told them, “back there.” He pointed behind the panels. Haddad seized his gym bag and disappeared into the gap from which Qazi had just come. The colonel inspected the timer on the charge against the power-distribution panel. It was readily apparent what this panel was, because Haddad had opened the metal doors to expose all the switches and connectors. And he had properly armed the magnesium flare, which would ignite thirty seconds after the main explosion. Satisfactory.
“What the fuck?”
The exclamation came from the office, the first compartment they had come through. Jamail heard it too and charged in that direction, his Uzi ready. Qazi was right behind.
The officer in khakis went down under Jamail’s bullets. As he fell, the security curtains fluttered and Qazi heard the sound of the passageway door being jerked open. Jamail pumped a short burst into the curtains.
“Intruders in the comm spaces! Intruders …” The door clicked shut and the rest of the shout was lost.
“Quick! Let’s finish. Arm the fuses and let’s go.”
Fifteen seconds later the three men stood by the door and arranged the straps of their gym bags over their shoulders. Jamail and Haddad put new magazines into their Uzis.
“Jamail, you will lead us out. Clear the passageway left. Haddad, clear it right. Then I will lead you forward — that’s to the right — to the first passageway turning left, which will take us out of the ship onto the catwalk and up to the flight deck. Let’s go.” Qazi nodded and Haddad pulled the curtains aside and opened the door. Jamail went through low. He opened fire as Haddad and Qazi followed him.
In the red-lit corridor a small knot of men were gathered fifty feet aft, most of them facing in this direction. As the Uzi sprayed men dove into open doorways or collapsed onto the deck.
Qazi covered the twenty feet to the outboard passageway and turned the corner when the muffled bursts finally ceased. “The bastard,” he swore viciously as he ran. Jamail used a whole magazine on them — unarmed men. He enjoys this!
The passageway turned left, then right, and ended at a dogged-down watertight door. Qazi grabbed the one handle that was mechanically linked to all eight of the dogs and lifted. Each of the eight dogs rotated ninety degrees. Haddad pushed at the door. All three men were through the opening and Jamail was closing the door when the concussion from the explosions in the communications spaces hammered the deck and bulkheads. The heavy door flew out on its hinges and smacked against Jamail. He picked himself up and, with Haddad, dogged it shut.
The wind was fierce here under the catwalk. Through the grid, Qazi could see the streaks in the black sea from the foaming whitecaps. He waited as his eyes adjusted fully to the darkness. So far so good. Phase one almost complete.
The ship’s public-address system came to life. A speaker was located on the catwalk just above them. They heard the hum and hiss, then a Klaxon began to wail. The volume was deafening, probably so the announcements could be heard all over the flight deck. Qazi inserted his fingers in his ears. When the Klaxon stopped, a voice came on, equally loud: “General quarters, general quarters. All hands man your battle stations. This is not a drill. General quarters, general quarters. Go up and forward on the starboard side and down and aft on the port side. This is not a drill.” The Klaxon resumed its wail, then died abruptly. Even here on the catwalk, Qazi could feel the steel grid under his feet vibrate from the harmonics induced by thousands of running feet.