David Llewellyn, she thought, would have those codes, or be able to get them. But she'd not seen him since Friday.
She'd been wondering if the ship's senior security officer had fallen afoul of the terrorists and been killed or marched off like the SOCA agent she'd seen outside of Connexions.
With chilling suddenness, a man's hand slipped around the right side of her head, clamping down tightly over her nose and mouth, drawing her backward as a second hand and arm grabbed her from the left, pinning her arms to her sides. Howorth struggled wildly, trying to break free, trying to kick back against the kneecaps of her captor, but her foot struck empty air as the man squeezed more tightly. She tried to scream, but the smothering hand blocked all sound, threatening to drag her into unconsciousness.
"There it is again, sir," Hamud Haqqani said, pointing at the display. Khalid leaned over the man's shoulder for a closer look.
The display screen was long and narrow, running left to right, and was touch sensitive. At the moment, it was showing Deck Eleven as yellow lines on a black background, the various compartments and passageways marked with coded alphanumerics translated by an inset table. Deck Eleven was divided into two sections — the aft sundeck around the ship's smokestack aft, and the superstructure forward housing security, the computer center, and, on Deck Twelve, the bridge.
Khalid touched the screen next to the forward superstructure, and the schematic expanded. Six red dots were clustered inside the Security Office — marking Khalid himself, Haqqani, and the other four with them. Just outside of the Security Office area, however, lay a passageway and, off to one side, the service access stairwell connecting several of the upper decks forward, including the bridge and Deck Eleven. A red dot hovered inside that stairwell and, when Khalid touched the screen again, expanding the schematic further, the single dot became two pressed closely together. He touched one of the dots, and a name and ID number appeared: Judith Carroll. One of the passengers. He tapped the other dot, and his eyes opened wider when he saw the ID.
Khalid looked up. Ghailiani and another member of the security team, Mahmoud Amin Rawasdeh, were seated at the security console near the door. "You two," Khalid snapped. "We have inquisitive intruders in the stairwell next to the passageway outside. Two of them. Bring them in!"
Rawasdeh picked up his AK-47, leaning against one bulkhead, and snapped back the charging lever with a harsh snick-snack. "Alive?" he asked.
"Any way you Can get them," Khalid replied.
Rawasdeh nodded, and he and Mohamed Ghailiani hurried from the Ship's Security Office.
"Do not scream," the man's voice whispered in Howorth's ear as he clamped a hand down over her mouth. "I'm a friend! Okay?"
She nodded, and the hands released her. Turning, furious, she looked into the creased face of a rough-looking man in a dark suit jacket and tan slacks — probably in his forties, stocky, and with thinning hair. He didn't look much like an Arab terrorist.
"What are you doing up here?" he asked. "Who are you?"
"I might ask you the same thing."
"Mitchell," he said. "MI5." He quirked an eyebrow. "You?"
Before she could decide whether to answer or not, the door to the stairwell banged open and two men walked in on them.
The one in the lead wore a Royal Sky Line security uniform and appeared to be unarmed. The second man, with a bushy mustache and pocked skin, wore a khaki uniform with an Arabic kaffiyeh over his head, and was holding an AK-47 assault rifle in both hands.
Mitchell reacted immediately and decisively, stepping past Howorth, snapping his right arm out, hand open flat, to catch the first man beneath his jaw with the heel of his palm and slam him backward into the gunman. As the two collided, Mitchell reached inside his jacket and dragged out his handgun.
The gunman, though, was fast and strong. He knocked the unarmed man aside with a sweep of his rifle butt, smashing the muzzle down across Mitchell's right wrist with a sharp crack and sending the pistol clattering and skittering across the deck. Mitchell stepped inside the reach of the weapon, pushing the muzzle aside as he swung a vicious uppercut with his left, uninjured hand, then grabbed the gun's muzzle ^nd yanked forward, hard, tugging the gunman off-balance.
Howorth, standing to one side, thought first about grabbing Mitchell's pistol, but it had skittered to the other side of the stairwell and was balanced precariously on the top step, with Mitchell and the gunman between her and the weapon. The unarmed man was on his hands and knees; Howorth leaped at the gunman's back, grabbing his kaffiyeh and the iqal cord that held it in place from behind with both hands and dragging them down over his eyes.
The gunman spun, teetering at the edge of the steps, holding the AK with his right hand as he fumbled with his left to pull the checkered cloth off his face. Howorth raised her right leg, planted her deck shoe on the man's chest, and kicked, hard, sending the gunman, arms flailing, backward and off the top step.
He screamed going down, the cry echoing down the stairwell as he slammed into the steps halfway down and completed an awkward backward roll to the first landing below. Mitchell flew after him, vaulting into space and landing on the gunman's chest five feet below with a sickening thud. Reaching down, Mitchell pulled the AK from unresisting fingers with his injured hand while drawing his other fist back to deliver a final blow —
"Stop!"
Howorth turned at the voice. The unarmed man, ignored for the opening seconds of the fight, had scooped up Mitchell's P226 and now held it aimed straight at Howorth.
"Don't move or I'll shoot!" the man shouted, his voice cracking on the last word. He held the pistol with a manic intensity, both hands on the grip, arms stiff, the gun's muzzle wobbling in his unsteady grasp. Howorth raised her hands as Mitchell dropped the AK, dangling uselessly backward in one hand.
"Don't shoot!" Howorth said; She was close to the now-armed man, close enough to see the beads of sweat rolling down his cheek. If she could get a little closer… "Please, don't shoot!"
"Shit!" the man said. "Shit! Shit! Shit!…"
Howorth was startled to realize that it wasn't sweat she was seeing on the man's face but tears. He was crying. The pistol's muzzle wavered, then dropped to point at the deck as the man sagged, his shoulders heaving with his sobs.
Swiftly Howorth stepped forward and snatched the pistol from the man's hands. Mitchell retrieved the AK, then stooped to check the terrorist sprawled at the bottom of the steps. He looked up to meet Howorth's eyes. Dead, he mouthed. The tumble had broken the man's neck.
Their prisoner continued to cry.
Dr. Heywood Barnes stepped into the lush tropical ambir ance of the Grotto Lounge and walked forward, toward the big sliding glass doors opening onto the Deck Eleven pool area. The restaurant, curiously, was deserted. Normally, it was one of the busiest social areas on the ship. A "Closed" sign had been hanging at the front entrance, but he'd ignored it and come inside anyway. The lounge was supposed to be open all hours.
Barnes rarely got up here. His quarters, along with those of the other medical personnel on board, were on A Deck, just forward of the infirmary, and while there were no rules against his coming up into the passenger areas, fraternization was discouraged, save for very specific instances — when ship's officers dined in the formal Atlantia Restaurant on Deck One, for instance, or up on Deck Nine, in the Lost Continent.
Generally, Barnes was a solitary soul who disliked crowds and social mingling, preferences that years ago had led to his taking the position of ship's doctor when he could easily have had a thriving practice ashore.