Halstead leaped through the wreckage of the door, his H&K held shoulder high, the red beam from its laser startlingly crisp in the smoke-filled air. There was only an instant to determine that he'd hit pay dirt — a blond woman in a bikini handcuffed to a chair to the left, a red-headed woman on the bed to the right, naked, pinned down on her side by a wild-eyed, half-naked man.
The man was already dragging the woman in front of him as a shield with one arm, while his other hand brandished an automatic pistol. "Tawaqaf!" Halstead yelled as the laser dot jittered back and forth between the bulkhead and the woman's body. "Halt!"
"She dies!" the man shouted back in English, the muzzle of the pistol pressed hard against the woman's head. "You move, she dies!"
The woman doubled forward against the guy's arm, slamming her right elbow against the man's ribs. She probably didn't hurt him much, but the blow startled him enough to break his focus. Halstead triggered a three-round burst as the laser dot danced between the terrorist's eyes, exploding the man's head in a gory spray across the bulkhead over the bed. The pistol fell from nerveless fingers as the terrorist crumpled backward; the woman spilled onto the deck, shrieking.
"Lieutenant Halstead, U.S. Navy!" he shouted. "Stay down! Stay down!"
He checked the stateroom for other threats, then turned to cover the shattered doorway. "This is Trident One!" he called. "Room Three! One tango down! Two hostages secure! Clear!"
"Room One, all clear!" came back.
"Room Four, one tango down. Clear!"
"Room Two! Clear!"
Diller came through a moment later. "Looks like you won the prize, Skipper."
"Cut them, loose," he snapped, keeping his aim on the door. "We're not out of this yet!"
Zaki had just been discussing Al Qahir's condition with the yacht's captain when they'd heard the consternation coming from the aft deck. Leaning out of the starboard door and looking aft, he could see something burning on the water.
"What is that?" the captain asked. "A flare?"
"The men may be playing games," Zaki said, his voice dangerous. "I will have words with them!"
For Zaki, it was one more irritation in a very irritating night. According to the captain, water was coming in around the damaged propeller shaft at an alarming rate. It could be patched, and would not immediately threaten the boat, but it meant a further delay of some hours before they could get under way once more, and that news had not improved Zaki's temper.
"I don't think so," the captain said, scowling. "My crew knows better!"
"It might be my people, however. I'll go check…."
But he stopped himself an instant before stepping outside, something nagging at his awareness.
That was it. During one of his rounds of training at a camp in Afghanistan, years ago, he'd studied some of the great hostage and terrorist actions of the past forty years. If one knew how the opposition had launched assaults and hostage rescues in the past, it was possible to better prepare for the future.
In particular he'd read about a classic action in Somalia in 1977. The then-West German GSG-9 antiterrorist unit had stormed an airliner hijacked by Palestinian commandos at Mogadishu, killing the terrorists and liberating the passengers and crew.
What Zaki was remembering was the diversion — a bonfire built in the night some distance in front of the aircraft's nose, a fire that drew all of the terrorists forward to the cockpit moments before the GSG-9 troops stormed aboard.
"We are under attack!" he shouted, whirling away from the door. "Arm yourselves!" He reached for an AK-47 on the chart table. A loud thump sounded from overhead.
"What was that?" the sonar man said, rising from his console.
"Probably Abdul," the captain replied. "Stay at your post!"
Something bounced onto the bridge from the open doorway leading aft, past the radio room. Zaki spun, following the object with his eyes… and then the object detonated with a string of blinding flashes and ear-wracking blasts.
He dropped to the deck, the AK falling from his grasp. He couldn't see! His ears were ringing, he couldn't hear…
And then something unseen and unheard slammed against the side of his skull, punching Zaki into unconsciousness.
"Now hear this, now hear this" rang over Virginia's 1MC, as Jorgensen passed the word. "Rig ship for female visitors. That is, rig ship for female visitors."
Garrett looked up from his console, met Jorgensen's eyes. The XO shrugged. Women and submarines do not go together, he seemed to be saying.
Women rarely came on board submarines, in fact. When a sub was in port, there were the occasional dependents' cruises, where mothers, wives, and girlfriends were taken out on a quick sortie. The boat would dive— no deeper than 400 feet — and go through some angles and dangles to impress them, and then return straight to the dock.
With "ship rigged for female visitors," nudity was secured, cursing and loud shouting were secured, and all hands wore full uniform instead of skivvies or towels. It was, in fact, the same routine as for when a visiting admiral or other dignitary came on board.
The real problem was where to put the two women just rescued from the Al Qahir. They would be headed for sick bay first to be fully checked out, but after that… where did you put two women on a sewer pipe already crowded with 150-some men?
The gallant choice — Garrett surrendering his own cabin — was not an option. The bunk in there would only sleep one, hot-bunking was not a good idea when both women needed to catch up on a lot of sleep, and the adjoining office was a high-traffic area with lots of noise and lots of coming and going. In the end, he'd talked to the denizens of the goat's locker—Virginia's chief petty officers — and asked them to volunteer their quarters for the duration. The women would have their own shower, head, and some privacy. The chiefs would bunk with the enlisted men in the already crowded torpedo room and enlisted quarters.
Fortunately, Jorgensen had remembered in time to send Chief Kurzweil forward to the goat's locker with instructions to secure all salacious material — pin-ups, copies of Playboy and assorted skin books, posters, and Internet printouts of naked women and sex acts, and the like. Such materials were officially prohibited and vanished magically just before each shipboard inspection, but Garrett and Jorgensen both knew that those materials always reappeared magically within moments of the inspecting officer's departure.
On the control room screen forward, the monitor showed the view aft, where the Al Qahir had been tied up alongside the Virginia. Several sailors rigged with safety lines secured to the deck were helping to bring the two rescued women across to the submarine. Both wore life jackets and ill-fitting dungarees. Lieutenant
Kendall had broken the dungarees out of stores to replace the swimsuits and tattered shirts that were all they'd had with them on board the yacht. That nudity-secured rule went both ways in the cramped world of a submarine.
The women were safely on board. Good. Lieutenant Falk was leading them forward to the main hatch.