He stood up and took a quick look into the corridor. There was no one there, but the starboard door to the outside passageway was open.
He ducked back for a second. Khalil had taken Shaw and possibly Katy as hostages and was holding them in the stern of the ship. There were outside stairs down to the main deck, where a small boat was probably waiting to take them off. In the meantime the passengers had most likely been led below and locked in the galley, or possibly the dry-storage pantries, to keep them out of the way. For the moment then Khalil’s forces were divided.
But it was the countdown that bothered him. There were less than ten minutes remaining. For what? He had a lot of ideas, but none of them were very comforting.
McGarvey checked the load on his RAK and stepped out of the Grand Salon, intending to cross the corridor and take the inside stairs down to the main deck, when someone fired from the door to the men’s bathroom ten feet to the right, spraying the deck and bulkheads.
Instinctively, McGarvey fell back while firing a short burst down the corridor in the general direction of the shooter. The terrorists were a lot smarter than he thought they were. They’d expected him to return to the Grand Salon, and they’d simply waited for him to show up.
All that went through his brain in a flash. Dropping to the deck as he spun around, he fired toward the front of the room as one of Khalil’s men came through the portside door from the bow viewing area, where he had apparently been waiting to catch McGarvey in a crossfire.
The man shouted something in Arabic and fired another long burst toward the back of the room, the bullets smacking into the bulkhead.
McGarvey rose up on one knee and fired two single shots, both catching the man squarely in the chest, knocking him backward into the piano.
The RAK was out of ammunition. McGarvey ejected the spent magazine, pulled the spare out of his belt, and was about to shove it into the pistol grip when the terrorist who’d fired down the corridor rushed into the Grand Salon.
He didn’t see McGarvey crouched against the bulkhead to his right. His attention was directed toward his dead comrade at the front of the room.
It was all the opening that McGarvey needed. He dove forward, catching the younger man at hip level, bowling the hijacker over, the man’s head bouncing off the carpeted deck. McGarvey had dropped his RAK, and he pulled the Steyr pistol out of his belt, cocked the hammer, and jammed the muzzle into the man’s neck just below his chin.
“What happens in ten minutes?” McGarvey demanded.
The terrorist’s eyes were bulging. He shook his head.
“Ten minutes. There’s a countdown. What’s going to happen—”
The terrorist got one hand free. He grasped for the pistol, and McGarvey fired one shot, the bullet spiraling up from beneath the man’s chin and plowing into his brain.
There was no time. The single thought crystallized in McGarvey’s head as he got to his feet, crossed the corridor, and started downstairs to the stern observation area on the main deck.
FIFTEEN
At the stern rail, Khalil cocked an ear to listen to what he thought sounded like gunfire from somewhere forward and above. But he wasn’t sure. Although the ship’s engines were silent, the wind howling around the superstructure was almost as loud as a jet engine.
A full gale was developing, and he was beginning to worry about getting back to the island airport, and about the ability of their bush pilot to lift off.
He peered over the rail. Mohamed had eased the Nancy N. close enough so that the boarding ladder reached the foredeck. She rode fairly easily in the lee of the Spirit.
But time was running out.
Shaw and his wife were huddled together, and Kathleen McGarvey was holding the young woman and infant closely to conserve body heat in the sharp cold.
Pahlawan and his assistant had come up from the engine room without spotting McGarvey. Abdul Adani and his three people came up the aft stairs a minute later.
“The passengers are securely locked below,” Adani reported. “They were as so many sheep,” he added in Arabic, which drew a few chuckles from the men.
“What will happen to them?” Katy demanded.
“Why nothing at all, if your husband does not interfere with our orderly departure,” Khalil told her. He thought of the things that he would teach her once they were away from here. She would not be happy, but she would be amazed.
In addition to the one man who’d been standing lookout in Soapy’s Parlor with the dead poker players, Khalil had a force of eight operators back here, plus Mohamed aboard the Nancy N., out of the fifteen he’d started with. But every mission had its casualties. It was to be expected. And in the end, McGarvey was just one man, for whom time had just about expired.
Khalil could not remember the name of the boy he’d sent to the purser’s office and then to the bridge deck to intercept McGarvey. But there was a much better than even chance he was already dead.
He had served his purpose, as all of Allah’s soldiers of God must.
He keyed the walkie-talkie. “Achmed, it is time.”
With the boy from the purser’s office to draw him off, McGarvey would have walked into a trap in the vicinity of the Grand Salon. Khalil almost wished he could have been up there to participate in the killing. But there were other more interesting pleasures to contemplate.
Impatiently he keyed the walkie-talkie again. “Achmed, report. It is time to leave the ship.”
There was no answer.
He and Said should have dealt with McGarvey by now. The first glimmerings of doubt began to enter Khalil’s mind. He worked out in his head what McGarvey could have deduced given the information at hand and the man’s experience.
“Have you misplaced even more of your toy soldiers?” Katy asked, sweetly. “I did warn you.” She turned to the other hijackers. “Release us, and then get out of here while you still can.”
Khalil resisted the nearly overpowering urge to smash a fist into her face, to wipe away the smug Western expression he’d seen on so many other faces, especially on those of intelligence officers who thought they were coming in for the arrest when in fact they were coming to their deaths.
McGarvey knew that a trap had been set for him. He knew they would expect him to return to the Grand Salon, where he had last seen his wife.
Khalil suddenly knew. McGarvey was right here, probably within a couple of meters.
He drew his Steyr pistol, grabbed Katy away from the young woman and child, and placed the muzzle of his pistol against Katy’s temple. “Mr. McGarvey, won’t you come out and join us?” he called out over the shriek of the wind.
“Kirk, no!” Katy shouted.
“I can’t miss from here,” McGarvey said from the darkness somewhere above.
Pahlawan spotted him first, on the stern viewing area one deck up. He raised his RAK, but Khalil stopped him with a head gesture.
“Neither can I miss at this distance,” Khalil said, pulling Katy closer.
“Frankly, what do we have to lose?” McGarvey asked. “If I lay down my weapon and surrender, you will kill me and my wife. My way, we have a chance.”
“What if I give you my word that no harm will come to either of you?” Khalil countered. “We only took your wife as hostage to neutralize you. All we want is Shaw.”