He looked up out of his daze and surveyed the blood and gore in the confines of the relatively small bridge. Blood was pooled in several spots on the deck, splashed up on the bulkheads and overhead, on the windows, and on the faces of the dials and electronic equipment. This place had become a killing field.
The entire ship was a killing field.
A flashing red light directly ahead of the ship caught his eye. It was one of the buoys that marked the channel. With no one at the helm, the ship was slowly drifting off course to the left. If they went aground on the rocks at this speed, there was a very good chance they would punch a hole in the bottom and sink. The water was very near freezing. If somebody went overboard, they wouldn’t survive more than a few minutes.
He laid the walkie-talkie and machine pistol aside, and turned the wheel to starboard. It took several seconds for the ship to respond before the bows slowly came right, bringing them back into the navigation channel, the red buoy on their port side where it belonged.
All the communications and navigation equipment had been smashed beyond repair, but McGarvey was able to tighten the wheel lock, so at least for the moment the Spirit would continue on its present heading. That would be good only as long as the channel was straight, and didn’t take a jog to the left or right, but for now he didn’t have any other choice.
The engine telegraph lever was mounted on a console to the right of the wheel. It was in the All Ahead Full position. McGarvey disengaged the lock, and shoved it up to the All Ahead Stop position.
He waited for a few moments, but so far as he could tell nothing happened. The ship was not slowing down. The terrorists had also taken over the engine room and its functions which didn’t come as a surprise. Except for steering, the controls on the bridge were useless.
He couldn’t stop the ship’s engines, nor could he lock the wheel hard over to port or starboard, for fear that the channel was too narrow and he would end up ripping the bottom out of the ship after all.
Time was running out for him. He couldn’t leave the bridge for fear of sinking the ship, nor could he leave Katy or the other passengers under the guns of the terrorists. They’d already shown their utter lack of regard for human life. They’d already murdered in cold blood more than just crew members and his and Shaw’s bodyguards. He had spotted at least one of the passengers, a woman, lying in a pool of blood in the Grand Salon.
His eyes lit on another control panel. Two sets of buttons marked Up and Down — one for starboard, the other for port — controlled the ship’s anchors. If he couldn’t stop the engines, perhaps he could stop the ship.
He hit both Down buttons, then braced himself against the helm’s binnacle rail. Immediately a tremendous, deep-throated metallic clatter came from low in the bows as the two massive anchors dropped into the icy waters, dragging with them the heavy chains.
The din seemed to go on forever, until the Spirit gave a tentative lurch to starboard, and a high-pitched squeal of metal-on-metal rose from somewhere below.
The ship straightened her head, hesitated for a second or two, and then both anchors caught at the same time. The bows came sharply around to starboard, the ship listed about fifteen degrees, and then the stern followed.
At first McGarvey thought that the engines driving the ship forward would sail the boat around her anchors and break free, but it didn’t happen. Instead the Spirit came to a new heading, nearly back the way they had come, and then shuddered as she balanced between the anchors dug into port and starboard somewhere aft.
McGarvey pocketed the walkie-talkie, grabbed the machine pistol, and then started for the door. But he stopped. The bridge communications and navigation equipment had been destroyed, but a telephone-type handset hanging from a clip above the helm seemed to be intact. The panel beside it contained a small digital display with a selection switch beside it. The display showed Grand Salon. The phone was the ship’s intercom.
He went back and dialed through the selections to Public Address, pulled the phone down from the hook, and pressed the Push-to-Talk switch. He wanted everybody aboard the ship to hear him.
“I’m coming,” he said. He could hear his amplified voice somewhere aft. “I’m coming right now, and no one will help you. Not bin Laden, not even Allah.”
McGarvey put the phone back, then raised his gun to the anchor control panel and fired two short bursts, totally destroying the mechanism. The anchors were down, and they would stay down long enough for him to do his job.
THIRTEEN
People throughout the Grand Salon were still picking themselves up after the ship suddenly lurched and heeled to starboard when McGarvey’s warning came over the public address system.
The instant he’d heard the anchors dropping, Khalil braced himself in anticipation that people and things would get tossed around when the ship came to an abrupt stop, her engines still producing full power. He glanced over at where Kathleen McGarvey had also braced herself, helping Shaw and his wife to hold on as well. Khalil’s eyes met Katy’s, and she offered him another grim smile, as if to say she had warned them.
Khalil’s rage threatened to rise up and blot out all sanity, but he returned her smile instead, the almost inhuman effort causing sweat to pop out on his forehead. He had been raised to accept the Muslim fundamentalist philosophy that although women were not second-class citizens as they were portrayed to be by the West, they occupied a different place in Allah’s scheme for the world. Women organized and ran the home, while men organized and ran the world. It was a simple division of labor set down more than ten centuries ago by Allah’s prophet Muhammad.
Men were strong, and women were silent. Sons were of inestimable value, while daughters were a burden upon a family. Especially if they grew up not knowing or understanding their place.
Like Western women. Especially American women. Especially this woman.
Khalil raised his pistol and pointed it directly at Katy’s face. She didn’t flinch, nor did she avert her eyes. It was as if she was almost daring him to fire.
Taunting him with failure in front of his men.
Khalil lowered his pistol, turned, threw his head back, and laughed out loud as if he had heard the most amusing thing in his life. “One man,” he said in English for the benefit of the passengers. “Apparently he has delusions of grandeur.” He shook his head. “Well, I for one can scarcely wait until he shows up here. If he has the courage. Although we’ve already seen what his real mettle is. After he killed young Ismal, he did not stay to fight. Instead, he turned and ran away like a mouse.”
Some of Khalil’s operators laughed uncertainly, but their eyes kept darting to the door as if they expected McGarvey to burst into the Grand Salon spraying the room with gunfire.
Khalil looked at his watch. There were less than thirteen minutes remaining. He used his walkie-talkie to call the engine room. “The anchors have been released. Can you raise them from there?”
“I don’t think so,” Pahlawan came back. “The motors are forward behind the chain lockers. What happened?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Khalil said. “Never mind the anchors; we are leaving on schedule. Is everything in readiness down there?”
“We’ll shut down the engines and set the switches.”
“Be quick about it,” Khalil said. “When you’re finished, we’ll meet on the aft deck But keep alert. Our uninvited troublemaker is armed.”