"Charlie! Lia!" Rockman's voice whispered in Dean's ear. "Pull in the horns. We have to stay on this guy's good side!"
"The SAS can have the publicity, General," Dean added, standing up suddenly "No one will ever hear about our people being there… or if they do, they'll assume they belonged to you. But we're ready to go and can get a team on board those ships with a minimum of delay. I suggest you consult with your superiors and then get back to us." He turned and walked away from the table. Lia stood as well and followed.
"Charlie, you're screwing this deal up!" Rockman called.
Dean did not reply as he strode out the door.
Chapter 16
David Llewellyn sat in one of the plush theater seats, his wrists tightly strapped together at the small of his back, another zip strip binding his ankles, a strip of cloth tightly cinched between his teeth and tied at the back of his head. An entire afternoon of cautious struggle had done nothing but chafe the skin of his wrists raw.
He glanced to his right, where Tricia Johnson was slumped in the theater seat next to his. At least the bastards had let them get dressed before hauling them down here; she was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Llewellyn, though, was distinctly chilly. All he'd had available to put on in Tricia's stateroom was his swim trunks.
She met his gaze, and he saw her eyes darken with anger before she sharply turned her head away. They hadn't been able to talk much since the intruders had broken into her stateroom and hauled them out of bed. Clearly, though, she knew he was Ship's Security and not a rich passenger who'd known her at Penn State. Presumably she was also angry that he'd not done anything to stop this… this invasion.
He looked around the theater, an enormous bowl-shaped auditorium located at the extreme forward part of the ship's superstructure, occupying Decks One, Two, and Three. With two levels of balcony above the main floor, the theater was large enough to hold a thousand people or more. At the moment, however, it held perhaps a hundred or so — a few passengers but mostly men and women wearing Royal Sky uniforms. Perhaps twenty or thirty wore security uniforms; clearly, the hijackers had spent the afternoon rounding up shipboard security personnel and anyone else who might pose a problem. All of them, like him and Tricia, were bound hand and foot, and gagged, and all were clustered in the front-center few rows of seats, just below the stage. There were four men in khaki uniforms and carrying AK-47 assault rifles stationed in the balconies, giving them a perfect view of their prisoners.
Llewellyn was trying to think the situation through. This was a hijacking, obviously enough. Their captors looked Middle Eastern, and the Russian-made weapons suggested they were from one or several of the old Soviet Union's Arab clientele. Al-Qaeda, perhaps? Or Hamas? There was no way to tell. Whoever they were, they continued to bring people into the theater, singly or in small groups.
He heard a door bang far up the aisle behind him and turned in his seat, trying to see. A soldier was walking down the aisle, guiding a woman with a grip on her upper arm. Llewellyn's eyes widened slightly when he recognized her as Sharon Reilly, the ship's Cruise Director, her normally perfectly coiffed blond hair in disarray, her expression one of sheer fury. She struggled against the man's grip, her hands bound behind her back, but the guard forced her along quickly, bringing her down the aisle to the row where Llewellyn was sitting. "Let go of me, you bastard!" Reilly said, her voice piercing in the otherwise silent theater.
Roughly the soldier shoved her into the seat next to Llewellyn's, and she landed heavily against his shoulder. Twisting, she tried to kick the soldier, but he laughed and grabbed her ankles, pinned them with one hand, and fished inside a combat-vest pouch for another zip strip.
"No… no!…"
With a slick, practiced motion, the soldier tied her ankles together, dropped her feet, and then pulled a strip of cloth out of another pouch. "Quiet, whore," he told her, reaching to tie the gag around her head.
With a sick shock of recognition, Llewellyn recognized the soldier as the leering one of the two men who'd broken in on him and Tricia. The soldier finished knotting the cloth behind Reilly's head, then grabbed her jaw and turned her face toward his, just inches away. "You just wait, whore," he told her, his accent thick. Releasing her chin, he dropped his hand to her thigh, nakedly exposed as her short skirt rode up on her hips. "Wait, and maybe we have much fun in later." His eyes shifted to meet Llewellyn's. "So now you getting two girlfriends, eh?" Reaching across in front of Llewellyn, he grabbed Tricia's left breast and squeezed, eliciting a muffled yelp through her gag. "Enjoy yourselves good!" Chuckling, he turned and strode back up the theater aisle. Reilly struggled for a moment, then slumped in resignation.
"May I have your attention, please?" a voice called from the PA system overhead. Llewellyn straightened in his seat, looking up and around, though he knew the speaker wasn't here. Likely, it was someone either on the bridge or in the Security Office.
The voice carried a trace of an accent and sounded cultured, well educated.
"Again," the voice continued, "we regret any inconvenience you might have suffered. The ship tied up alongside us, the Pacific Sandpiper, is carrying a very important and very secret cargo. The soldiers you may have seen on board the Adantis Queen are a part of the Pacific Sandpiper's security force.
"Because of certain problems incurred by the Pacific Sandpiper when her escort ship exploded this morning, Royal Star Line has volunteered to render all possible assistance. The soldiers are on board the Adantis Queen while we take on board some of their cargo.
"There is no emergency, and no reason for alarm. We urge the passengers of the Atlantis Queen to remain calm and, if possible, to remain in their staterooms. The dining rooms are open, however, for those of you who wish to eat.
"We do not expect the problem to last more than a very few days, and we do not expect that it will interfere with your cruise. The officers and crew of the Atlantis Queen thank you for your understanding and for your cooperation."
Llewellyn wondered if anyone in the theater was going to get to eat… or be allowed to go to the restroom. He and Tricia had been brought here hours ago, and there was no indication that their guards were going to let them take care of any bodily needs.
The hijackers apparently were determined to keep as many people among the passengers and crew in the dark as they could, for as long as they could.
He wondered how much longer they could maintain the charade, until all of the passengers were tied up down here with him.
Abdullah Wahidi stood before the gleaming titanic cylinder and tried to get his breathing under control. The sight of the thing, looming, massive, aglow with reflections of the fluorescent light tubes overhead, filled him both with awe and with terror.
"Let's get on with it," Chujiro Moritomi said in thickly accented Arabic. He pointed. "Cut there.. there… and there."
Wahidi exchanged a long, nervous glance with the other Arab member of the team — a kid from the Damascus slums named Musab Bekkali — and then dropped the welder's helmet down over his face and slowly raised the cutting torch.
Allah will protect me, he thought. The thought became a mantra, repeated over and over and over again. Allah protect me! Allah protect me! Allah protect me!…
He struck the spark, and the torch flared to life. A scaffold had been erected for the men in front of the face of the cylinder so that they could reach the locking bars located at three points around the cylinder's cap, inside the seal. He lowered the sharp-pointed blue-white flame to touch the metal, and white light exploded, dazzling even through the heavy visor of his mask.