Dean was angry about the one tango he'd seen leaving the theater with two captives. For Dean, the horror of extremist Muslim fundamentalists wasn't their religion; so far as he was concerned, people could believe what they wanted. He knew that moderate Islamic clerics taught justice and equality, including equality for women, a fairly advanced concept for a Prophet born in the sixth century. The problem was that too many fundamentalists of all religions relied not on their scriptures but on local custom and belief… and then went through their holy books looking for isolated verses that would justify those beliefs. If your culture already believed that women were second-class citizens or worse, it wasn't hard to make the Qur'an support your prejudice.
As a result, there were Muslim societies where women were forbidden to go to school, where their genitals were mutilated, where rape victims were imprisoned and even killed, where a woman who didn't wear the veil was automatically responsible for whatever a Muslim male decided to do to her:
All in the name of Allah, the merciful, the all-knowing.
"Keep tracking those three," he murmured to Rubens.
"We are. Stand by. Brisard is coming in."
"Walters!" Dean snapped. "Ready…"
"We're at the infirmary," Yancey said. Behind him were five of the jumpers in a strung-out line. They'd ditched their oxygen bottles and masks but were still in their combat blacks. Their NVG monoculars were in place, their gain tuned down to allow for the ship's ambient lighting but still revealing the aim points for the IR laser sights.
"Copy that," Caravaggio replied. "We have you on the board. The passageway is clear ahead of you, all the way through the galley. You have one green light standing next to the far door inside the galley, probably a tango guard, and ten more in small groups left and right — probably galley staff."
"Roger that." They would have to sort tangos from crew members when they went in.
Hiding there behind the bar up in the casino had been one of the toughest things David P. Yancey had ever done — and he'd been through SEAL training and Hell Week, through a deployment in Afghanistan and two tours in Iraq, none of it exactly easy duty. Crouching there in silence, looking up with weapons ready to open fire if they were discovered or if the tangos started slaughtering hostages, they'd waited out the confrontation in the casino, emerging only after one of the elderly women — a Ms. Caruthers — had called out "Ally ally outs in free!"
There were ten of them, now, with Walters and Dean on their way forward with the terrorists. After briefly consulting with the Art Room, Tom Brisard had taken three of the men and headed forward, intent on following Dean and Walters to wherever the hostages were being led. Yancey took the remaining five and, guided by Caravaggio back in the Art Room, found a service stairwell that would take them all the way down to A Deck.
They emerged in a passageway outside the ship's infirmary. Several civilians, including two of the ship's doctors, clustered around them. "Are you here to rescue us?" one, an older woman, asked.
"We're going to try, ma'am," Yancey had replied. "All of you stay here and stay down!"
"Dr. Barnes! Have you seen him? The terrorists took him… "
"We'll take care of it, ma'am." Brushing aside other questions, they'd moved aft down the central passageway leading from the infirmary to the massive watertight door leading to the galley.
Coulter and Yancey took the lead, since both of them had suppressed H&Ks, while Boone and Michelson carried combat shotguns, and Daniels and O'Brien had assault rifles. He took a stance, weapon braced against his shoulder, and said, "Go!" Daniels swiped an ID card through the reader, and Michelson pushed the door open.
Beyond was the gleaming expanse of the galley for the Atlantia Restaurant, one deck above. At the far end of the room, a lone man in a khaki uniform and holding an AK slouched in a chair, looking bored. Both Coulter and Yancey opened up with sharp, precise three-round bursts, their fire guided by the infrared dots visible through their monoculars. The man sprawled backward, arms flying to either side and weapon clattering to the deck as he slammed against the door at his back, then spilled from the overturning chair and sprawled in front of it in an untidy heap.
"One tango down," Yancey said as the six Black Cats rolled through the open door in swift succession, keeping their weapons up. Cooks, stewards, and galley assistants stood to either side, some screaming, some taking cover behind tables and food prep stations.
"Stay down!" Coulter barked. "Everybody down! Hands on your heads!"
There was no time to check for terrorists mixed in with crew members; Yancey saw no obvious tangos anywhere else in the galley, but that didn't mean they weren't there. So long as he saw no weapons, however, he kept moving forward, H&K at his shoulder, making for the far door.
"There… there are terrorists in there!" one young woman called out.
"We have four tangos inside the after hold," Caravaggio said over his radio headset. "All together, all toward your right as you go in, at roughly two o'clock."
"Stay down! Nobody move!" O'Brien called out, moving backward across the galley as he brought up the rear. Yancey and Coulter both dropped their half-empty magazines and popped in fresh ones, took stances in front of the door, and waited for Boone, Michelson, and Daniels to get into position between and behind them. "Go!"
The door to the aft hold opened, and Yancey stepped through, immediately pivoting to keep his weapon and its dancing IR spot aimed toward the four tangos inside. From the door, however, all he could see was an enormous stack of massive crates and cardboard boxes, bank upon bank of refrigerators, steel shelves, and piles of canned goods and boxed food.
"They heard you," Caravaggio warned. "Two targets, moving toward you and toward your right."
The trouble was, Yancey knew, that back in the Art Room they were looking at nice, clean deck schematics and they couldn't see the mountains of supplies that were providing cover at the moment for four jihadist tangos. It was comforting knowing how many tangos they faced and what their general direction was, but that didn't make getting at them very much easier.
"Boone! With me!" Yancey started forward, following the main open pathway leading aft from the door.
"Rest of you with me!" Coulter added. He broke to the right and started climbing a pile of wooden crates fifteen feet high.
"Watch out for hot tubs," Yancey said, grinning. Coulter's jumpsuit was still sopping wet from his accidental immersion in a spa on the Atlas Pool deck.
"Yancey!" Caravaggio said, her voice urgent. "Two tangos right in front ofyou\ Range ten feet!"
What was right in front of him was a line of refrigerators forming the right-hand wall of the passageway he and Boone were following. It looked like there was a cross-passage just ahead, however. Gun still tight against his shoulder, Yancey broke into a run.
Swinging around the corner of the last refrigerator, he came face-to-face with two bearded men, khaki-clad, both holding AKs at port arms. Reflexively his finger tapped the trigger before his brain had fully processed what he was seeing; a three-round burst of 9 mm bullets slashed into the face and throat of the closest man, spinning him roughly aside.
An instant behind Yancey's burst, Boone opened up with his AA-12, the combat shotgun set on full auto. With a fire rate of three hundred rounds per minute, the weapon loosed a thundering barrage of four blasts in less than a second, the 12-gauge shot ripping into both terrorists and cutting them apart. Blood splashed across the refrigerator, stacks of crates, and the deck.