“Do your best, Derek,” Arch Penney said. He faced Mustafa. “Seen enough?”
“So the ship cannot move?”
“That is correct.”
“Perhaps I shoot someone. Will it be able to move then?”
“Not unless you can fix it yourself.”
Mustafa pointed his rifle at one of the engineers and pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through the man’s neck; bloody tissue sprayed out his back. Down he went, probably dead, beside the body of a pirate. The body twitched, moving as muscles contracted involuntarily, and Arch Penney got a glimpse of the man’s eyes, full of fear. Then they relaxed and focused on infinity. He was dead.
“You have two hours, Captain. Then I start shooting more people. I shoot someone every five minutes until the ship moves.”
The fury welled up in Arch, rose like the tide. The dead man was Jerry Robinson, from New Zealand. He saw Jerry’s wife’s face in his mind’s eye, hysterical.
Arch closed his eyes, tried to control his breathing. When he opened them, he focused on the chief engineer, who was fixated upon Jerry’s corpse. Arch reached for the man and turned him by pulling on his shoulder until he was facing the captain.
“Wire the generators to one pod. Just one. We’ll move on that while you work on the second one.”
The man’s eyes flicked to Mustafa, then back. He nodded.
Arch Penney headed for the ladder leading out of the engineering spaces. Mustafa stood for a second, watching his back, then trailed after him.
Benny and Sarah Cohen stood at the door to their balcony looking at Richard Ward lying there in the gentle sea. Swells were negligible; there was essentially no wind. The gray warship seemed immobile, as if she were fixed to a pier.
Beyond Ward they could see an Osprey circling. Even hear it.
“We could jump,” Benny told his wife. “They would pick us up.”
Sarah held tightly to his arm. They leaned out and looked at the people on the other balconies. Some were talking and pointing. Several were looking down at the water twenty-five feet below. It was a healthy drop. Hit the water wrong and you could break your back. Especially if you were over fifty, and most of them were.
Sarah whispered, “Go if you want, Benny. I’m too old and can’t swim very well.”
Benny pulled her to him. “We stay together,” he said.
They heard a shout. A woman’s voice. A man plummeted toward the sea. He had a full head of gray hair. He went in feet first, then rose and started swimming.
Above them a weapon chattered. As the Cohens watched, bullets began striking around the man. He kept swimming. The bullets impacted all around him, churning the water. He was fifteen feet away from the side of the ship, now twenty …
Then a bullet hit him in the head and they saw a little cloud of red spray. The man ceased swimming and floated facedown. The pirate on the deck above them ceased firing.
On Richard Ward a marine first lieutenant watching through binoculars made an instant decision. “Shoot him,” he snapped at the sniper lying at his feet.
The sniper’s bullet went through the pirate’s chest and he collapsed on the deck. He was several decks above the Cohens, who didn’t see him fall or hear the shot.
The Cohens heard a woman screaming.
“It was that Texas oil dude, Warren Bass,” Benny Cohen said bitterly. He stepped back into the room with Sarah and pulled the French door closed.
When Mustafa al-Said returned to the bridge, prodding Captain Penney along with his gun barrel, he could hear a loud-hailer from the destroyer lying a mere thirty or forty yards away.
“Throw your weapons into the sea and come out on deck with your hands up. If you do, you will not be harmed.” There were men on the bridge in uniforms, one of them holding a loud-hailer. Two men in khaki, two in some blue mottled coveralls. The warship’s bridge was a bit lower than that of the cruise ship, so Mustafa could only see the wing of it.
One of the pirates who obviously understood some English had his gun pointed at the deck and was looking around nervously.
Mustafa cuffed him across the mouth. “Bring one of the civilians. The woman.”
The man did as he was told. Grabbed her and shoved her forward. Mustafa gestured with his head. The woman was shoved out onto the wing of the bridge. She grabbed the rail and sank to her knees.
The destroyer accelerated away. The aft gun turret went past, then the stern. The wake was boiling white foam.
“You should have surrendered,” Penney said as Mustafa shoved the woman into a corner out of the way, beside the others. “They’ll be back.”
“For everyone’s sake, let us hope not,” Mustafa said and looked at his watch. “One hour and fifty minutes. You will decide who we shoot first.”
The radio loudspeaker was squawking. “Sultan, this is Chosin Reservoir—”
Mustafa al-Said fired a three-shot burst into the loudspeaker. In the profound silence that followed the burst Arch Penney could hear the spent cartridge cases tinkling as they bounced off the steel deck, which was stained with blood and human tissue.
Arch could feel himself slipping gently away, letting go of this reality in favor of another, gentler one. He ground his teeth together, shook his head violently and forced himself back to the here and now.
He had only a thread to hang on to, so he seized it. Somehow, someway, he was going to kill Mustafa al-Said, even if it was the very last thing he did upon this earth.
“Ah, Jake, come in. Come in, please.”
The director, Mario Tomazic, nodded toward a chair, and Jake Grafton dropped into it. Although it was midmorning in Pirate Alley, it was three thirty in the morning in Washington. Only the night shift was left on duty. And the head dogs, who didn’t work shifts.
Tomazic was of medium height, balding, but fit and trim, as befits a modern CEO or senior general. The newspapers said he was one of the leading experts in antiterrorism; Jake had seen nothing from Tomazic to prove or disprove that assertion. He had a nice smile and never raised his voice … and was absolutely ruthless.
“What do you hear from Tarkington?” Grafton asked.
“The Task Force 151 commander? You served with him?”
Jake merely nodded.
“It’s a fuckup. The SEALs stopped the ship. She’s DIW. Then the geniuses at the White House realized that the pirates had over eight hundred hostages, and would probably kill a bunch of them on general principles. They chickened out, got cold feet.”
“So?”
“So the cruise ship is DIW, the task force is on the scene, and the White House doesn’t have the guts to order a boarding.” Tomazic sighed. He hated civilians who meddled. Unfortunately, this was the age of meddlers.
“What does Tarkington propose?”
Tomazic sorted through a pile of messages and passed one to Jake. “You know that he wanted to do a show of force and rappel down marines. They are having a big debate over on Pennsylvania Avenue. I don’t think they’ll tell the admiral to stay away from the cruise ship or allow him to do anything. Those people have never had any experience with combat situations. They are going to have to look at it from every angle, think about political repercussions, get advice. In other words, they’re paralyzed.”
“They liked the SEAL idea,” Grafton remarked.
“Unconventional warfare, commandos, surprise, surgical violence,” Tomazic replied. “They thought it would make great television, sorta like a computer game. Military orgasm: the bad guys all fall down, the good guys win again. Ta-daaa.” Tomazic paused to clear his throat. “They’re idiots.”
Grafton didn’t bother to reply.