The men on the deck of the small ship alongside were hoisting,something out of the hold — a bundle of cylinders each perhaps six feet long, dull-gleaming under the work lights like lead.
Pirates, looting the ship's cargo? It was all she could imagine, and the guns those men had slung over their shoulders made the thought credible.
Leaving the balcony, she quietly slipped across the stateroom, first checking on Melissa's quiet breathing, then moving to the door that connected them with the stateroom next door.
Very, very softly she rapped on the door. "Andrew? Andrew, we need to talk."
The door swung open a moment later.
As Jerry Esterhausen sat at the Pyramid Bar in his tweed jacket and blue jeans, watching the crowd in the casino, he was becoming more and more worried. There was something wrong.
Rosie was functioning brilliantly, dealing out the cards at the blackjack table with slick, sure precision, bantering with the customers as she did so, but the problem was that there weren't that many players. Most of the people in the casino that evening were gathered in small groups, clustered around dining tables or at the bar or within the faux jungle at the front of the room. Not even the patter of a stand-up comedian on the stage an hour earlier had lightened the atmosphere, which felt oppressive and claustrophobic.
People were scared.
At first, Esterhausen had been primarily worried that Rosie wasn't drawing in the players as CyberAge's marketing department had promised. A failure at the tables on this cruise, a lack of rich suckers willing to put their money on the table and bet they could come closer to 21 than a vivacious machine, might translate as a lack of orders for CyberAge's products, and even a cancellation of the contract with Royal Sky Line.
Sitting at the bar watching the customers, though, had convinced Esterhausen that the problem wasn't Rosie. Snatches of overheard conversation whispered about the crash of that Royal Navy jet, the mysterious activity on board the freighter tied up alongside, and the appearance of ominously garbed and armed security guards. Esterhausen turned his head to look aft through the huge glass doors and windows there, out onto the Queen's Deck Nine fantail. The ship's Atlas swimming pool was located out there, along with two hot tubs. Normally, both pool and spas would have full complements of swimmers and soakers taking advantage of the night air. There were no passengers out there at all, however, not now.
But there were two of the bearded, khaki-clad guards standing near the glass, with their black berets and black and orange assault rifles very much in evidence. They lent a sinister presence that overshadowed the crowd in the casino. Esterhausen saw how people at the tables nearby kept glancing outside, and how worried they seemed when each glance confirmed that the guards were still there.
Security guards off the Pacific Sandpiper, the announcement earlier that evening had claimed. But the Sandpiper was British-flagged, and these guys didn't look British. They weren't American or Israeli, either. Esterhausen would have guessed they were Egyptian, Jordanian, or from some other Middle Eastern nation.
He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned in his bar seat as Sandy Markham sat down next to him. She looked scared, and her eyes were red, as if she'd been crying.
"What's wrong, Sandy?"
"Hi, Jerry," she said. "I… I'm not sure. Things are kind of crazy."
He nodded toward the glass doors. "You mean with those armed thugs on board?"
"Among other things."
"Something's happened," he told her, sensing that she was holding something back. "What?"
She glanced around the room. "I think — " She stopped. "You can't tell the other passengers, Jerry. I don't want to start a panic. Or a massacre… "
"A massacrel.. "
She laid a hand on his arm. "Shh! Jerry! Please!"
"Sorry. But what the hell are — "
"About four hours ago, some of us were getting worried, you know? Calls to the bridge weren't being answered. And we couldn't find some of the crew. David Llewellyn, the head of Ship's Security? We can't find him anywhere!"
Esterhausen frowned. "Don't you guys have some sort of super high-tech ID locator on this ship? A way to tell where everyone is at any time?"
"Yes. That's why we were looking for David! The Security Office wasn't answering calls! And the passageways up on Deck Eleven, leading to Security, have all been closed off. There are armed guards up there!"
"Shit."
"So the CD, Sharon Reilly? She said she was going up to the bridge and talk to Captain Phillips. That was four hours ago, and she hasn't come back! We've tried calling her, and she's not answering her phone. Jerry, I don't know what to do!"
Esterhausen was watching the guards outside. He nodded slowly. "Well, the first thing, Sandy, is not to panic."
"But what's happening? What does that ship tied up alongside have to do with us? Are they pirates? Terrorists?"
"I think," he said slowly, "that we've been hijacked, and the bad guys just haven't bothered to tell us yet."
"Hijacked!"
It was Esterhausen's turn to lay a cautioning hand on Markham's arm. "Like I said. Don't panic. There are a couple of thousand of us, and only a few of them. We can do something about this."
"Jerry, they have machine guns!"
"Yeah. But there still can't be more than a few dozen of them. They can't possibly control all of us. And if we know what's happening, maybe we can… I don't know. Hide someplace. This is a big ship, lots of hiding spaces. We can figure out how to strike back."
"You're forgetting something."
"What?"
"If they're in control of security, they know where all of us are. They'd know immediately if some of us tried to hide."
"Then we'll have to figure something out. Flight Ninety-three."
"Flight Ninety-three? What's that?"
"Nine-eleven?"
"The World Trade Center bombing?"
"You remember the airliner that crashed in Pennsylvania?"
"I'm English, Jerry. And I was a teenaged girl in Woking then."
"Oh. Right. The terrorists hijacked four planes that morning. Two crashed into the World Trade Center. A third hit the Pentagon, in Washington. The fourth was Flight Ninety-three. It was hijacked over Ohio someplace. They turned it around and were flying toward Washington, D. C. We're not sure, but the terrorists were planning on crashing into either the White House or the Capitol Building.
"Anyway, the passengers knew something was wrong, and they used their cell phones to talk to friends and family on the ground. They learned about the WTC and Pentagon attacks, and figured out that their airliner was a part of it.
"So they stormed the cockpit. One of the passengers was heard to say, 'Let's roll.' It became a kind of a battle cry for the whole nation."
"What happened?"
He shrugged. "We'll never know. They broke into the cockpit. There was a struggle. And the plane crashed in a field in western Pennsylvania. Everyone on board was killed."
"God… "
"The point is.. the passengers of that airliner refused to just roll over and be victims. They did something. And we can, too."
He continued to watch the guards outside, his mind turning furiously.
Khalid stood behind Captain Phillips, who was leaning over the large electronic chart table at the back of the bridge. At the moment, the table's display showed in glowing blues and yellows a stretch of ocean 600 miles across. The tip of the Brittany coast of France lay 250 miles to the east, while the Scilly Islands and Cornwall were slowly receding astern, 270 miles distant.