Miller replaced Fisher, another regular bridge crewman, at the helm. Aziz led Fisher back toward the wardroom.
"Where are my people?" Phillips asked, blunt. "The rest of my bridge crew?" His questions yesterday had been ignored, but he was determined to push the issue as far as he could.
"They are safe, Captain," Khalid told him. "Safe and being well looked after. We no longer need them on the bridge, and they would just be in the way."
"And there are some other of my people I haven't seen. David Llewellyn, my chief security officer. Where is he?"
"Safe, Captain."
"Their safety is my principal responsibility," Phillips said. "I want to see that they're all right."
"In time, Captain. In time. For now, your principal responsibility is the safe navigation of this ship. And to obey my orders."
"What is it you want of me?"
Khalid gave a negligent wave. "Run the ship. Continue as if nothing was happening out of the ordinary."
"And my crew?"
"Later, Captain Phillips. After I know whether or not you can be trusted."
Phillips sagged a bit inside. He could push the issue no further.
Khalid, he saw, still wore the blue and white shipboard security uniform he'd been wearing when he took over the bridge, as did several of his men.
This hijacking, Phillips had decided, had been an enormous undertaking. It had taken a lot of money — that French helicopter demonstrated that — as well as a lot of planning, preparation, and advance work. Poor Darrow's murder, he now realized, must have been planned to help the hijackers get on board, and the terrorists had shown an astonishing knowledge not only of the Ship's Security systems but of shipboard routine as well.
His face darkened with a scowl. One of the regular security officers, Mohamed Ghailiani, evidently had been a mole, the means by which these armed thugs had gotten on board in the first place and penetrated Ship's Security.
So far as Phillips was concerned, the blood of two men, now — Security Specialist Kelly and Radio Operator Farnham — was on Ghailiani's hands.
And Phillips was determined that there would be a reckoning.
The question was how best to fight back. Khalid seemed utterly confident of his control of the ship. He held the bridge, obviously, as well as the radio room, Security, the IT department — the entire suite of departments and rooms on Deck Twelve, and in the forward portion of Deck Eleven, just below. From comments Phillips had heard, they had at least one man watching over the engineering crew on D Deck, and someone watching the catering staff in the forward galley.
That left a very great deal of ship and about three thousand passengers and crew unaccounted for, and from the sound of it most of them weren't even aware yet that the ship had been hijacked.
If those three thousand could be warned somehow… a handful of terrorists might kill some of them, but not all. Maybe he could arrange some sort of uprising… a mutiny, of sorts.
Except hundreds might be killed in such an attempt.
And if he did nothing, how many would die in New York City? Phillips was convinced, now, beyond any shred of doubt, that Khalid planned more than a simple shakedown of the American and British governments with these ships as hostage. The presence of the Sandpiper alongside suggested a scenario so dark that Phillips could scarcely bring himself to think about it.
His passengers and crew, or the life of a major city.
Whatever he did would have to be more subtle than an uprising among the prisoners. And there just might be a way…
Casually he walked over to the chart table and checked the ship's course… still on a bearing of two-six-zero, still at twenty knots. Turning, he walked over to the ship's compass binnacle, checked the heading, then began punching some numbers into the keyboard mounted on the binnacle's face.
Khalid might be in control, but he was not a sailor. Phillips remembered their conversation on the bridge yesterday, where Khalid had committed the landlubberly mistake of calling the lines securing the Sandpiper alongside ropes. On board ship, the only rope was wire rope, the steel cable used for specific tasks such as lifting heavy cargo from a hold — or to secure the two ships together as they now were. But the lines first passed between the two ships had been "lines," and a sailor, someone with naval or merchant marine training, would have known that.
Phillips thought he saw a way to use that.
"What are you doing?" Khalid asked.
"Checking the compass," he replied. He kept his voice even, though his heart was pounding in his chest. "Recalibrating it. The navigator usually performs the task, but he seems to have disappeared."
Khalid walked closer and looked at the compass heading. It read 250.
"According to this," the man said slowly, "we are off-course."
"By ten degrees, yes. The navigation officer checks the compass with our GPS twice daily, to make certain this sort of thing doesn't happen. We've been having some trouble with it."
"What kind of trouble?"
Phillips shrugged. "Nothing serious. We just need to recalibrate for the currents, the tides, the wind, for the changing angle on magnetic north. That's what I just did."
"But this means we're headed too far south, yes?"
"Then I would suggest that you bring the ship ten degrees north."
"Order it."
"Helm!" Phillips said. "Come right ten degrees."
"Come right ten degrees," Miller replied. Phillips saw the sweat on the young man's face. "Aye, aye."
Gently the Atlantis Queen edged onto her new, more northerly course. As minute followed agonizing minute, Khalid said nothing more, content with staring out the bridge windows forward at the bright blue sky above the endless violet-gray,blue of the horizon.
They might just be able to get away with this.
David Llewellyn paced up the aisle of the theater, deliberately testing the bounds set on the prisoners. Halfway up the aisle, a bearded man in khaki had stepped out of the shadows, pointing an AK at Llewellyn, barking something in Arabic. He raised his hands and took a step back. "Easy, man, easy!"
The guard barked again, and a second armed man appeared. "You need piss?" the man demanded. "Uh, yeah," Llewellyn said. "Come."
The man led Llewellyn through the double doors at the top of the aisle and down a short passageway toward the mall. Several men's and ladies' rooms were located here. The guard led Llewellyn inside but let him use one of the stalls in privacy.
At least, he thought, their captors had seen fit to come in last night and cut those damned plastic strips off their wrists and ankles. As each man or woman was cut loose and their gag removed, they'd been led away, and at first Llewellyn had thought they were being taken away to be killed. Some of the captives had thought the same and began screaming and struggling. When that happened, they would be released, and the guards would choose another to release. And those who were led away were brought back safely after a few minutes.
As each prisoner was returned, as they rejoined the others and began talking in hushed, urgent whispers, Llewellyn had realized that they were being taken, one by one, to one of the restrooms just outside the theater. The process had taken a long time; there were almost a hundred people being held in the theater, now, and only a handful of guards.
Eventually, it had been his turn. He'd scarcely been able to walk after hours of being tied, and he'd been afraid that they would be tied once more afterward, but when the guard had brought him back from the head, he'd been released. Later, a couple of catering staff people had brought box dinners in — sandwiches, fruit cups, and small cartons of juice — not quite the usual sumptuous fare on board the Queen, but at least the hijackers didn't intend to starve them all.