What was happening?
A woman in a red kimono-like robe, her hair in a topknot, leapt up from the floor and shouted at the closest gunman.
“I need my medication. I need water. I need to use the toilet. I’m sixty-seven years old. Let me go back to my cabin. I’m not a flight risk.”
The gunman told her to shut up and sit down and then gave her a shove.
There was shrieking, and people shrank from the armed men, but another woman shouted, “You can’t keep us here like this. We are human beings.”
A gunman raised the muzzle of his gun and fired into the air, sending a shower of glass and plaster down on their heads.
The screaming that followed was cold, sheer horror transmuted into sound. It had been a building panic with nowhere to go.
Yuki had taken her phone out of her robe and pushed the button to record. She had narrated her video in a whisper but a gunman had seen what she was doing. As he was coming toward her, Yuki had quickly sent the video to Lindsay.
The gunman had grabbed her phone, dropped it, and crushed it under his boot.
“You’re crazy sending pictures,” he had shouted into her face. “And crazy has to pay.”
He had backhanded her across the face. Yuki staggered back, but due to the sheer density of people surrounding her, she didn’t fall. She’d never in her life been struck in the face. The pain was excruciating, and she’d heard herself moan.
She wished she could take that moan back.
She wished she hadn’t shown that she was afraid.
Another big man appeared in the doorway, at least six feet and maybe two hundred pounds, also wearing fatigues and mask.
He had shouted, “Everyone shut up! Sorry to be blunt, but everyone just shut the fuck up, okay?”
A restive quiet came over the lounge as the passengers muffled their fear and waited to hear what was coming.
Chapter 57
Yuki didn’t remember every word but close to it.
She had a very good memory for the spoken word and was known around the DA’s Office for being able to recall depositions and court testimony verbatim.
The big man in the mask and fatigues, who had told all of the passengers crammed into the Veranda Lounge to shut up, had stepped up onto a chair.
“My name is…well, you can call me Jackhammer. And this is your orientation session. In a few minutes you’ll know everything you need to know in order to survive. We are in charge.
“‘We’ is me and my squad, and I mean we are completely in charge. The ship’s crew can’t help you. They are locked up, in chains, under guard. And their lives depend on—you. More on this later.
“To continue, the engine room and the communications deck have also been disabled, but if anyone feels like taking a swim, you’re welcome to try. No one will stop jumpers. We are twenty-five miles from land. You will suffer shock the moment you hit the water. It will take about ten to twenty minutes for hypothermia to set in, and even if you make it to shore, which no one can, there’s nothing out there.
“So, here’s the business end. We’ve made a demand of the Finlandia Line and assured them that we will shoot a passenger every hour until our money has been wired to our bank account in Zurich. We’re caught up now for the first three hours in advance. A few passengers made bad decisions. So.
“So if Finlandia gets moving, if everyone behaves, you can go back to your vacation and we will get out of your lives. And your cooperation will ensure that the crew will also survive.
“Now we are moving you upstairs to the Pool Deck. As you go through the door, drop your cell phone into the box provided. Keep cool. That’s my advice. Oh. We are looking for a volunteer. Who is the one who took pictures?” Jackhammer asked.
“This one,” said the gunman standing so close to Yuki that she could smell his sweat. He grabbed her arm roughly and shoved her forward. She had lost her footing and fallen to Jackhammer’s feet, her robe swinging open and her nightgown hiking up to her hips.
Yuki had experienced fear before. But this was an order of horror beyond her nightmares. She expected a gun in her face, a bullet to her head.
Jackhammer glared at her through slits in his mask. “Thank you for volunteering. You are the next to be shot,” he said.
Yuki struggled to her feet and backed into the crowd. And she turned her back on Jackhammer, closing her eyes as the tears sheeted down her cheeks.
If nothing else, she was going to stand up for herself as she always had.
Where was Brady?
Was he one of the passengers who had made a bad decision?
Yuki found it hard to even breathe.
Chapter 58
Cold salt air blew the smell of sweat across the several hundred passengers who were packed on the Pool Deck. Yuki shivered as she sat with her back against a bulkhead. She was jammed against that wall, jammed tight.
Yuki scanned the terror-stricken faces of the passengers, who, like her, had been ripped from their sleep and told that they could be murdered at random at any time, pirate’s choice.
And although she’d been told she was the next to be shot, two other people had already been dragged to a railing and, while screaming for help and pleading “no, no, no,” shot in the back of the head, and their bodies had been hoisted over the side.
As far as Yuki could tell, the murdered passengers hadn’t made a break or hit out or started a fight. They’d been sitting on the deck. Whereas she had taken pictures. There was a death penalty for that.
Possibly she’d been forgotten or her location in the middle of the crowd was inconvenient for Jackhammer’s thugs. If they came for her, could she save herself?
She took a visual tour of the Pool Deck, mapping the structures, the doors, and staircases.
At the bow of the boat was the Luna Grill restaurant, with a bandstand outside it, a raised platform for live entertainment outside the pool.
The middle of the deck was all about the swimming pool, with decking between the edges of the pool and the railings. At the back end of the Pool Deck, the ship’s stern, was the Wave Spa, with a wet bar that had been overturned by the terrorists.
Metal stairs began at the base of both the Grill and the Spa, and those outside staircases ran up one flight to the Sun Deck and running track above the pool. The track was open above the Pool Deck, and the terrorists were using the track as a spy’s nest, a shooting platform.
Right now one of the terrorists was standing above her on the metal stairs near the Grill, only ten feet away. He wasn’t tall, but he was muscular and alert and he carried a massive assault rifle with ammo clips on his belt. His mask hid anything that might be human in him. How could she appeal to a man in a mask?
The male passengers had been moved from wherever they had been sequestered to the part of the deck that was opposite the women, at the far end of the unlit swimming pool. Their backs were to the closed doors of the Water Spa.
Yuki searched the silhouetted grouping of men. Some men stood, but more squatted or sat on the deck behind a ragged line of gunmen. She counted about six of them.
A bright flash in the unrelenting dark caught her eye. It was Brady’s hair. She was sure of it.
He was standing toward the back of the crowd, and she wanted to screw everything and just run to him. But she knew that was irrational. She didn’t even dare to draw his attention. She couldn’t put him in danger. Her tears welled up as she thought about how close he was while so far away.
Just then, as if she had summoned him with her fear, Jackhammer walked onto the track above the Pool Deck, that long, hollow rectangle, with its gun’s-eye view of the passengers.