“Let’s go a little nuts here. Make some illogical leaps. What if the plane crash was a fake? What if the women are still alive?”
“OK, what if they are?”
“They disappeared at around the same time as the submarine, right?”
“Yes.”
“So, what if those facts are related? What if the women got hold of that submarine?” Her dark eyes glowed with excitement.
“Farfetched,” he said promptly. “That theory has a lot of what-ifs without a lot of data.”
“The existing data aren’t leading anywhere else either. Why not give it a second look? You don’t have anything else to do.”
“Ouch,” he said. But it was true.
“You know what I mean. Why not go for it?”
“I can look for more about the women, see what turns up.” He felt energized. He had a new lead. “If they’re alive, I bet I can find some trace of them, maybe on surveillance cameras, maybe online or on social media. It’s hard to disappear. If I find them, we can nail them to the wall.”
“Like they haven’t been through enough already.” She touched the printout of Laila Dakkar’s biography. “What if we just let them fight their fight?”
“And I live in this house forever, waiting to be killed by an assassin because someone thinks I tried to murder Prince Timgad?”
“You don’t know what these women have been through. Solve your problem yourself. Work diplomatic channels. Get the royal family to call off their assassin, if he even works for them.”
“And let the women get away with murder?” He couldn’t believe law-and-order Vivian would propose such a thing. “What if they try to kill Prince Timgad again?”
Her jaw jutted forward like it always did when she was angry. “Maybe they should.”
Chapter 24
Laila looked around her once-Spartan bedroom. Aunt Bibi had given them small carpets to hang on the walls or tack to the floors, a tea service for the mess hall with ornate metal cups that wouldn’t break if they were knocked off in a strong sea, packets of fine tea, expensive chocolate, sheer scarves, pots of paint and brushes, and so much more. The women had set about brightening up their austere living quarters. If the Chinese builders could see the ship now, they would shudder.
But the Siren looked wonderful and homey. They would hate to leave her after they took care of Prince Timgad. Maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe they would sail the seas forever, resupplying at Aunt Bibi’s, living on fine tea and fresh fish. They didn’t have to abandon their vessel when she’d completed her task.
Aunt Bibi had included backgammon and chess and other travel-sized board games. Most pieces had magnetic bottoms, and she remembered playing with similar versions as a child. Aunt Bibi had also burned DVDs full of music and movies and television shows. The television in the mess hall was scheduled for many shifts to come.
They had one more training exercise, and then they had only to wait for their target to come to them, and hope they didn’t miss. If they hit their target, a thousand lives would be lost. If they missed, it would be a hundred times that, and Nahal would never let her forget it. They had to practice.
She took a sip of black tea sweetened with so much sugar it made her teeth hurt and ate the last fresh fig. She wondered if the new indulgences were weakening the crew’s resolve.
Today would show otherwise.
She walked leisurely to the bridge. Someone had painted the once-gray floor a bright orange with paisley patterns. It brightened the corridor and gave the crew something to do, but she missed the simple gray. It had been restful.
She entered the bridge. No one had changed anything in here, per her orders. This place permitted no distractions. The women sat tense at their posts.
“Captain on the bridge,” said Ambra, again with the emphasis on captain. “Coming up on the Narwhal.”
The Narwhal was an oil tanker that had visited New York a few days before to deliver her oil. She was returning to her home base in the country of Laila’s birth. A banged-up old tub, she’d been in service for a long time and didn’t have the latest in electronics and sonar. She thought she was alone in the middle of the Atlantic.
But she wasn’t.
Ambra used her yellow pencil to trace their course relative to the Narwhal’s on the paper maps. Laila was thinking about the men aboard the Narwhal. She must encourage the crew to think of those men as collateral damage, not as men with wives and children and mothers. Men who would be mourned. Men whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although, not all the men were innocent. One had beaten Rasha so hard she’d lost her child. And it was a small crew, just over twenty men. They had to practice.
Laila and the crew had discussed this for hours. Some had suggested shooting at ghost ships, others at empty oil rigs. In the end, they had agreed that targeting a moving boat in the middle of the ocean was the only real test they had time for. They had to intercept the Roc in six days, so their options were limited.
They had chosen a civilian boat that seemed unlikely to be monitored by sonar. Rasha’s husband’s presence was merely a bonus. The time for the test had come.
Ambra ran a polished red nail across their course, stopping at the point of intercept. “Right there. They might as well be on Ceti Alpha V.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s the planet where Captain Kirk marooned Khan in the Space Seed episode,” Ambra said.
“You know the episode name?”
“You wanted a mathematician. We know this stuff.”
“The episode name?” Laila asked.
“They also made two movies about Khan. As a film major, you ought to have seen them.”
“I bet they were classics.”
Ambra smiled. “In the genre, yes.”
“Is Ceti Alpha V a good place to intercept?”
“So long as we don’t beam down to the planet’s surface.”
“Duly noted. Proceed to Ceti Alpha V.”
“Aye aye, Captain.” Ambra marched back to her duty station.
It seemed like a movie, or a game, but it wasn’t. The lives they would end were real.
“Close to firing distance,” said Ambra without even turning to look. “No other vessels in range. No other vessels for miles.”
So, no one would see their attack, or come in time to rescue the survivors. The ship was helpless. Rasha would get revenge, and they would be able to practice for their more important mission. An ideal scenario, but Laila knew they all felt conflicted about it.
“How long until we’re in torpedo range?” Laila asked.
“A little over a minute,” Ambra said. “Sixty-seven seconds.”
“Load torpedoes.”
Ambra relayed the order to the torpedo room.
“Breech door open,” said Rasha’s curiously deep voice through the intercom. “Loading torpedo.”
They waited. She imagined the scene in the torpedo room — they’d opened the inner door, also called the breech door, to the torpedo tube. Right now, they were watching the giant explosive device slide into the firing tube.
“Torpedo loaded. Breech door closed,” said Rasha. She sounded uncertain. Laila had thought it would be best to have her man the torpedoes, but maybe she should have used someone else, someone who didn’t know one of the men to be killed.
“Roger that,” said Laila. “Stand by.”
They continued on their course through the deep blue. If she didn’t do anything to stop it, twenty-five men would die.
“In range, Captain.” Ambra’s voice trembled.