Peering down through the tiny window next to the projector, she saw the hostages. They were mostly crowded on the floor, sleeping on blankets, although some were seated at the tables. They looked as bad as you would expect. Little food, little water, little sleep. And there were ten armed terrorists stationed around the perimeter of the room, just in case anybody got any ideas. She headed back to the kitchen and quickly made her way down to B Deck.
Stokely had told her where to find the bridge deck pod. It was the clear plastic egg she’d seen suspended from the bottom of the airship’s hull. Stoke said to go to the very center of A Deck, and there she’d find the entrance ladder down to the control pod.
B Deck aft where she was now, was mostly crew quarters. Zero décor. Pretty grim compared with the luxurious spaces above. Two jumpsuited crewmen were headed her way. Laughing, arms around each other, drunk. She took a deep breath, kept whistling, smiled at them as they approached her. The one nearest her reached out, leering, and grabbed her arm. She hissed at him, something low and threatening, and wrenched her arm away. “Asshole!” she said, giving it her native Cape Verde accent. She was clearly more trouble than she was worth. They kept moving.
She kept moving. All the way to the end of the corridor, down a set of service steps to the A Deck. Then she started back toward the middle of the ship. It was steerage down here, crew quarters even less appealing than the deck above.
“Hey! Stop!” someone called out in English as she passed an open door. She’d caught a glimpse inside and speeded up a little bit. There had been at least a couple of men in there, playing cards, it had looked like, a huge cloud of smoke over their heads, noisy, drunken laughter from inside.
“Hey! You deaf? I said stop.”
She did, her heart pounding. If she ran, he’d catch her. It would be over. She turned around.
The guy was at the door, leaning out into the hall, a half-empty bottle of vodka in his hand. He looked vaguely familiar. Oh, yeah. Happy the Baker, God help her.
“Come back here.”
“Okay,” she said, using a universal word and trying to give it a bit of an island accent. She turned around, walking toward him, head down with her hands clasped behind her back. A perfectly obedient little Stepford Maid but one with her finger on the trigger.
“Haven’t seen you before. What’s your name, honey, you look familiar.”
“Tatiana.”
“Whatever. Come on in, baby. Join the party,” the big fat man said, slapping her rump as she stepped through the door and into the smoke-filled room. He turned and locked the door.
Not a good sign.
TWO FOURTEEN-MAN TEAMS of commandos huddled at the base of the steel ladder inside the conning tower. They’d been exhaustively briefed over the last hour. The mood was good. They had a workable mission plan now, and they had confidence in the two men who’d lead the assault. One was American, Stokely Jones, a legendary SEAL in his day.
The other was a Brit named Alex Hawke, and it was obvious he’d been there, done that, and, besides, they liked what they saw in his eyes.
The absolute animal willingness to kill.
Each man was clad in black rip-stop Nomex with lightweight Kevlar and ceramic body armor. Their faces were smeared with black camo face paint. They carried a lot of gear, including the new M8 assault rifle, maybe the deadliest such weapon in the world. The SIG Sauer P228 pistol, carried in a low-slung tactical holster just below the hip, would act as backup. Pistol magazines hung precariously from gun belts, M8 mags rode in thigh pads for quick access. Some members carried the M4-90, a magazine-fed tactical shotgun. A street sweeper if ever there was one.
In addition to the knives and ammo hung from their web belts, they were equipped with flashbang stun grenades. These nonlethal explosives could incapacitate targets through blinding light and an excruciating 180-decibel noise. And they had smoke grenades to screen movement or disorient targets when necessary.
Each man wore a Kevlar helmet headset with an earpiece that fitted snugly inside the left ear and a filament microphone that lay just below the lower lip. They had their Motorola wireless sets turned off now, most of them practicing how to say “Drop the gun!” and “On the floor!” and “Shut the fuck up!” in phonetic Russian.
Hawke, Stoke, Brock, and Hynson stood to one side of the group, going over last-minute instructions with the skipper of the submarine. Timing was going to be absolutely everything now, and they couldn’t afford even the slightest error on anybody’s part.
Hawke checked his watch. Ten minutes out.
They were ready. Now all they had to do was wait and pray for Fancha’s call.
HAPPY THE BAKER. That’s who the guy was, all right. The one at the birthday party in Coconut Grove, whom Stoke said the FBI called the Omnibomber. A guy who went around the world blowing up people the Russians at the Kremlin didn’t like.
Happy and two other guys were sitting around a card table littered with overflowing ashtrays, empty bottles, and dirty glasses. Russian engine-room crewmen, by the looks of them. They were wearing oil-stained “wife-beater” undershirts, the ones with shoulder straps. By the sweat and stink rolling off them, there wasn’t a lot of bathing going around here.
One of them looked her up and down, picked up an ashtray, and upended the contents onto the rug.
“Oops,” he said, laughing, the other two finding the whole thing hilarious. They looked at her through lowered lids, their hands moving down to the crotches of their greasy work pants.
Happy the fat boy, his little pig eyes narrow, nuzzled her ear, his hand on her ass, mercifully too drunk to recognize her from the party in Miami.
“Clean it up, bitch,” Happy said, his voice thick with alcohol and lust. He was standing close behind her, his foul breath on her neck, his rough hands kneading her buttocks, reaching up under her arms to squeeze her breasts hard enough to make her wince. He wasn’t close enough to feel the gun yet, but he was getting there.
She had to get him, get all of them, out in front of her.
Now.
“Okay,” she said, moving quickly away from Happy.
She dropped to one knee and swept the butts and ashes back into the ashtray with her hand. Then she rose and carried it over to the table between the two unmade beds. She placed it on the table and sat down on the bed farthest from the door. She saw the ugly black gas masks hanging on the backs of their chairs. And in the corner behind the card table were the tanks she’d seen on Happy’s back when the terrorists seized the ship. She might not live through this ordeal, but at least there was one threat she could eliminate right now.
“What are you sitting on your pretty little ass for, honey?” Happy said in his Brooklyn accent. “Boys want to see you dance.”
“Dance?” she said, smiling sweetly.
She stood up and reached behind her, fussing with her apron strings. “Shouldn’t I take all this off first?”
“Yeah, baby. That’s a great idea,” Happy said. “That’s it. Take it off. All of it. Real slow.”
“Real slow,” she repeated, smiling as she brought the 9mm automatic pistol around where they could all get a good, long look at it.
“Fuck,” Paddy said.
“You said it, not me,” Fancha said.
She raised the gun, squeezed the trigger, and shot Happy the Baker in the crotch. Giving him just a second to look down at the spreading bloodstain and realize what had just happened to him, she then raised the gun and put one in the middle of his face. A cherry-and-black blemish instantly bloomed on the bridge of his nose, and a piece of his skull about the size of a quarter hit the wall behind him in a spray of red mist.
The other two, terrified, were diving for the floor. She took a step forward so she’d have a clear shot at each of them. She took her time, gripping the pistol out front with two hands the way Stoke had taught her at Gator Guns, aiming carefully, squeezing the trigger gently. She shot each one of the men in the head.