McGarvey flattened against the bulkhead behind the door and waited until the terrorist reached the landing and stopped. He could imagine the man peering through the window in the door to make sure the corridor was empty. The terrorist might not want to go up against an armed man; unarmed passengers were much easier to deal with. But he had his orders.
The door slowly came open, and the terrorist stepped out into the corridor, sweeping his machine pistol to the left, when McGarvey took one step forward and popped the young man at the base of his skull with the butt of the RAK. The terrorist dropped to the floor like a felled ox.
For just a second McGarvey could feel hatred rise up from his gut, like bitter bile at the back of his throat. It would be so easy to fire one round into the back of the young man’s head and end his miserable life here and now. If the terrorist wanted to reach Paradise as a martyr, why not help him along?
Who would know what really happened up here? And who would care?
McGarvey hurriedly dragged the unconscious man around the corner, out of sight from anyone emerging from the stairwell. Then he took the terrorist’s weapons and walkie-talkie, and turned and sprinted back down the corridor, where he let himself out onto the open deck, closing and latching the door behind him with as little noise as possible.
It would take the hijackers only a minute or two to figure out that the terrorist from the purser’s office was taking too long to report back. But by the time someone realized that McGarvey had made an end run, it would be too late.
He slung his RAK muzzle down by its strap over his shoulder so that it was centered on his back, then went to the starboard rail and tossed the terrorist’s weapons and walkie-talkie overboard. Although it had mercifully stopped raining, the wind was on their starboard quarter, blowing at least twenty-five knots and bitterly cold. The sky was cloud-covered, and there was almost nothing to see except for the flashing red buoy bouncing around about a hundred yards ahead.
The Spirit, whose motion was lively as it balanced under full power between the two anchors, suddenly steadied out, as if it had broken free. Almost immediately McGarvey realized that the engines had been shut down. He could no longer feel the deep, low-frequency vibration on the soles of his feet.
The terrorists were getting set to abandon ship. Some of them might have already been aboard when the Spirit left Juneau but some of them must have come aboard earlier this evening. Probably from a chase boat that had been waiting in some cove along the Inside Passage; an approaching floatplane or helicopter would have made too much noise. Somebody would have heard it. Boarding a moving ship in this kind of weather would have been dicey. Getting off would be no worse, even though the ship was bucking and heaving against her anchors.
He leaned well out over the rail, but he couldn’t see anything aft. If there was a chase boat, it was either standing off in the darkness, or it was hidden by the bulk of the hull at the stern.
But they were taking Shaw with them and he was precious cargo, so they had shut down the engines to steady out the motion. They didn’t want to lose him.
The problem was, who else were they taking off the ship?
And the other problem was his nearly uncontrollable anger. He could see the expression in bin Laden’s eyes, hear the tone of his voice saying that every non-Muslim — men, women, children — were fair game for murder.
McGarvey climbed over the rail, dangled there for just a moment, then swung himself inward and dropped down to the upper deck, landing off-balance with more noise than he’d wanted to make.
He pulled out the Steyr pistol he’d taken from the terrorist in the radio room and scrambled into the deeper shadows to see if someone would come to investigate. He almost wished that someone would come.
Except for the wind there were no noises.
He eased around the corner and made his way to the forward extremity of the upper deck. Directly above was the bridge; below were the Grand Salon and the open-bow viewing area where on good days passengers gathered to watch the passing scenery and wildlife.
Big windows in the Grand Salon’s forward bulkhead opened onto the viewing area. Anyone jumping from the deck above would be visible for just a moment as they dropped. But the bow area was in darkness, and the terrorists’ attention would be directed toward the passengers.
In any event there was no time to consider any other alternative.
McGarvey climbed over the rail and jumped. This time he landed solidly, but without making a sound. He ducked below the level of the windows, unslung the RAK, switched the safety lever to off, and crabwalked the five feet to the starboard door. He rose up, intending only to take a quick peek through the window and to then duck down. But he stopped.
The Grand Salon was apparently empty of any living thing. The room had become a killing ground, as he feared it would.
He yanked open the door and rushed in, sweeping his weapon left to right in case any of the hijackers had anticipated his arrival, but stopped again. There was nothing here except for corpses and blood — blood in pools under the dozen or more bodies, splashed across tables, some of which had been overturned, up against the bulkheads, and along the buffet serving line and service bar.
Katy wasn’t among the bodies, nor were the Shaws, but there was some blood on the tablecloth at the former SecDef’s place.
McGarvey almost turned to go when he spotted a tiny pencil with a gold cap lying beside Katy’s napkin. He went back and picked it up. It was her eyebrow pencil. She had left it on the table for some reason.
She’d been trying to tell him something.
He lifted the napkin. Beneath it, written on the tablecloth was one word: KHALIL.
Like Carlos the Jackal in the sixties and seventies, Khalil was just a work name. He was a man who the Western intelligence agencies considered to be the real brains behind most of the successful Islamic fundamentalist attacks against the West. No photographs of him existed in the West, nor were the CIA, FBI, or British SIS even sure of his nationality.
What everyone did agree upon, however, was that Khalil was as deadly and merciless as he was elusive. No one who had ever come up against him lived to tell about the encounter. The attacks of 9/11 were probably his doing, but they were only the most recent and most infamous of his operations, which stretched back at least twenty years.
Currently the U.S. was offering a twenty-five-million-dollar reward for his capture dead or alive. In the two years since the reward had been posted, there had been no takers; in fact, there hadn’t even been one inquiry.
Except for Katy’s earring this operation would probably have gone off exactly the way Khalil had planned it. No one knew that the director of Central Intelligence would be aboard, nor could anyone have predicted the business with one passenger’s earring. It was nothing but pure, dumb luck.
And McGarvey planned on telling Khalil that his luck had run out. Nothing would give him more pleasure.
Where were the passengers?
McGarvey went to the back of the room and checked Grassinger’s pulse. His bodyguard was dead, as was Shaw’s. They had tried to do their jobs, but they’d simply been outnumbered.
Their deaths he could understand. And Shaw’s kidnapping made sense from the terrorists’ viewpoint. But why kill passengers? Innocent men and women?
Osama bin Laden had tried to explain that reasoning to him in a cave in Afghanistan before 9/11. But what he said about no one being innocent made no more sense now than it did then. In McGarvey’s estimation, Islamic fundamentalists by very definition were little more than rabid animals snapping at anything that moved, trying to tear down anything that didn’t square with their own brand of radicalism, their own horribly misguided take on a fine religion.