Yuki’s voice was recognizable, even though she spoke in a whisper that crackled like crumpling cellophane.
“Lindsay. Our ship was attacked. We were hit with explosives. The engine room is dead. Men with assault weapons boarded us. Pirates or terrorists. I can’t talk long—some passengers were shot—”
Shit, shit, shit.
The camera angle shifted, and I saw blurry images of people crying into their hands, an elderly couple standing next to Yuki clutching one another in an embrace, their faces contorted in horror. A terrifying blend of shouts and muffled cries nearly overwhelmed Yuki’s words.
She said, “We’re in a lounge. Just women and elderly. The men are somewhere else. I don’t know where Brady is—”
Yuki’s voice broke up. I strained to hear her when she said, “We don’t know what they want or what they’re going to—”
A man in camo fatigues, assault weapon in hand, with a knitted black ski mask covering his face, filled the screen and was coming closer. Two seconds of that, then half the picture went dark. There was another flash of orange carpet and then the video was over.
I was screaming inside.
I replayed the video, hoping to extend the ten seconds, to see something beyond this one heartrending window of time. But of course, the wildly whipping video repeated the frightening scene before going black.
Rich, his eyes fixed on the screen, kept saying, “Holy crap.”
I said to him, “This has to be a hijacking. But in Alaska? There can’t be terrorists there, right, Rich? It’s not the Gulf of Aden, for God’s sake. Where’s the Navy?”
Richie left my side and went to his computer and typed.
“Oh, man,” he said.
“What did you find?”
“This: ‘Rogue pirates attack the cruise ship HM FinStar.’ And this. ‘The HM FinStar, flagship of the Finlandia Line, filled to capacity with approximately six hundred and fifty passengers and two hundred crew, was attacked by an unknown group of commandos as it prepared to enter Alaska’s Inside Passage at Dixon Entrance near Prince Rupert.’”
“Send me the link,” I barked.
He did it.
I reached for my keyboard, backhanding the coffee that Rich had left on my desk this morning and sending it spilling in every direction. I didn’t even try to contain it.
Richie brought over a wad of paper towels as I read the latest breaking news.
Summarizing: Eight hours ago rocket-propelled grenades had slammed into the FinStar’s hull above the waterline, possibly hitting the engine room. An unknown number of gunmen boarded the ship in the small hours of the morning. The group was unidentified. The ship was damaged but afloat. There was no information about casualties. No official word of any demands made by the presumed pirates.
When Yuki had sent the video, she was well. Was she still safe? Was Brady?
I played the video again, looking for any new detail.
I felt that I was looking through Yuki’s eyes.
Where was Brady?
Chapter 50
I was staring at the last frames of Yuki’s video when my desk phone rang. It was Joe.
I said, “Honey, turn on the TV—”
“I just saw,” said Joe. “That’s Yuki’s ship, right?”
“Can you find out what’s happening?”
“I’ll try,” Joe said.
I heard Julie whimpering in the background, the voice of Maria Teresa, her funny nanny, talking as the baby bawled.
“Call you back,” said Joe.
When Joe was with Homeland Security, one of his areas of responsibility was port security. If anyone was connected, it was my husband.
I found a day-old jelly doughnut in the break room, took one bite, and delivered the rest of it to Conklin. Then I maniacally hit news links while across the desk Conklin took calls from frantic cops, asking if we’d gotten any word from Brady.
When Joe called back, I grabbed my cell, fumbled it, and recovered it just before it hit the floor.
“Talk to me,” I said tersely into the phone.
Joe said, “The first mate got out a distress call to the Coast Guard just before the radio room was breached. A man, self-identified as Jackhammer, warned that if anyone approached the ship, people would be shot. The crew is detained in the hold. Passengers have been rousted out of their cabins and corralled under guard to various lounges. There’s a Coast Guard vessel in contact with this Jackhammer. I guess some kind of negotiation is in progress.”
“That’s it?”
“No. That’s the good news. A passenger got out a phone call saying two passengers were dead, but they weren’t named. I’ll keep checking.”
I called Jacobi to tell him what I knew.
He said, “Brady will take care of Yuki. If you were a hostage, Boxer, who would you pick to break you out? Brady, right?”
That was true. But where was Brady?
I forwarded Yuki’s video to Jacobi, then sent it to Cindy and Claire, both of whom had e-mailed me after they’d caught bulletins about the FinStar on the news.
Cindy had uncut video, just in, of helicopters in the air above the beleaguered ship. It was a haunting fifteen seconds, during which time sections of the ship went dark until the entire ship had been blacked out. Then shots were fired into the air. A lot of shots. Long bursts of them. These hostage takers, whoever they were, had no shortage of ammunition.
I organized a conference call, and Cindy, Claire, and I gibbered anxiously, helplessly. We sounded panicky because we were in a three-alarm panic. We were all accustomed to making things happen, getting things done—but this time we had no moves, no action plan, nothing.
My skull felt as hollow as a drum, empty except for the bad thoughts ricocheting around inside. How could this be happening off the coast of Alaska? Where was Brady? Was Yuki okay? Was she still alive? Was Brady?
When I looked up, Conklin was watching me with a steady brown-eyed gaze.
He said, “Can we do anything to help them?”
“You know that we can’t do one damned thing.”
“Then we’ve got a meeting with Donna Timko.”
The name rang a distant bell.
“Who?”
“Timko. Donna. Head of product development. At Chuck’s,” my partner said distinctly. As if he were talking to a child.
“Right. When are we supposed to see her?”
“You told her ten-thirty.”
It was 10:15 right now.
“I called her. Told her an emergency came up,” Conklin said. “She said, ‘It’s your meeting.’”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Let’s hit the road.”
Chapter 51
Conklin drove us northeast on Bryant Street toward the Bay Bridge and West Berkeley, a mixed-use residential/commercial area separated from the bay by the Eastshore Freeway.
As we drove, the car radio chattered, dispatch and squad cars urgently tracking the chase of a hit-and-run driver in the Financial District.
Conklin closely followed the chase and also negotiated traffic while I manhandled my phone. I jumped from news link to news link, cruising for information about the FinStar, a fully loaded floating ocean liner under siege.
I found snippets on YouTube—video clips like the one Yuki had sent, truncated and poorly shot, and also taped phone calls from terrified, clueless passengers who’d managed to get out calls before their phones were confiscated.
These postcards from the front were like random pieces of a table-size jigsaw puzzle, giving only ambiguous hints of the big picture.
And then there was breaking news from a passenger’s cell phone. A CPA from Tucson, Charles Stone, had hidden in a storage container on the sports deck. He called his brother in Wilmington, who taped the call.