Sea Of Terror

Chapter 20

"Is the camera on?"

Doherty glanced at Petrovich, who had his camera riding on his shoulder, the small red light on. "We're rolling," he said. "You're on the air."

The terrorist leader actually looked a bit nervous. He pulled himself up straighter and held the microphone a bit closer to his mouth.

"I address the governments of the United States, of Great Britain, and of the world!" he said. "I am Commander Yusef Khalid of the Islamic Jihad International. As our enemies will have guessed by now, Jihad forces have boarded and captured two vessels at sea, the cruise ship Atlantis Queen, of Royal Sky Line, and the plutonium transport ship Pacific Sandpiper, belonging to PNTL. We now hold some three thousand people hostage. As you see here, we are in control of the cruise ship bridge, and we have dozens of fighters dedicated to the cause of martyrdom, positioned at key points throughout the ship." He gestured, leading Petrovich over to the starboard wing of the bridge, pointing down and aft. "You see there," Khalid continued, "the PNTL ship, tied to the side of the Atlantis Queen. We could blow it up, and sink the Atlantis Queen with all of her passengers trapped and helpless on board.

"During the past several days, we have transported a part of the radioactive cargo from the Pacific Sandpiper across to the Atlantis Queen, in effect turning that ship into a gigantic floating nuclear bomb. Any attempt to attack either ship will result in the immediate destruction of both vessels, and the deaths of everyone on board." He pulled Petrovich's arm, guiding the cameraman back into the main part of the bridge.

With the camera again on him, Khalid continued. "The United States of America has committed itself to the path of destruction, with its invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, its tortures and barbarities at Guantanamo and the ADX, the so-called 'Supermax' prison, in Colorado.

"In exchange for the release of our hostages, we demand the immediate release of all Islamic prisoners currently held in the West as a result of the illegal military invasions of Islamic countries by the United States and the so-called coalition forces. In particular, we demand the immediate release of the inmates of 'H-Unit,' including Ramzi Yousef, Zacarias Moussaoui, Richard Reid, Wadih El Hage, and the other Islamic fighters held at the ADX facility in Colorado.

"In addition, we demand the payment, within four days, of one billion American dollars to agents we shall designate in Beirut, Lebanon. Upon confirmation that these prisoners have been released and that this sum has been paid, we shall release the Atlantis Queen and all hostages aboard it.

"We shall, however, retain control of the Pacific Sandpiper; and of its crew. We shall relinquish control of that vessel, its crew, and its cargo upon the confirmation of the receipt of a second payment of one billion dollars by our agent in Beirut.

"We are monitoring the standard marine radio channels, and are awaiting your answer. Remember! The lives of over three thousand civilians are in your hands! Any attempt at military intervention will result in their immediate execution! Any attempt to damage this vessel's propellers or otherwise cripple the ship, and everybody dies!"

Khalid made a slashing motion across his throat, ending the speech, and Petrovich lowered the camera. One of Khalid's men took it from him.

"That was… dramatic," Sandra Ames said, accepting the microphone from Khalid, then handing it to another of the uniformed terrorists standing on the bridge. "Would you like an interview as well?"

"Why?" Khalid said.

"I don't know. To get your message out. To win… understanding. I could ask you questions on the air, about you, about your cause, and you could — "

"I do not want understanding, woman," Khalid told her. "I want only fear." He gestured at the three CNE people. "Take them back to their stateroom. Put their equipment back in the radio room."

"Two billion dollars?" Doherty asked him. "Do you really think they'll pay you that?"

"Actually," Khalid said with a cold voice, "I don't really care."

And they led the news team back to their stateroom.

General Saunders was stepping onto the port flight deck elevator when his chief aide, Colonel Mabry, hurried up. "Sir! Dispatch from HQ!"

God, Saunders thought, accepting the message flimsy. Now what?

The elevator gave a lurch and began to rise with a shrill whine. Saunders stood between the safety railing overlooking the ocean and the bulk of an AgustaWestland AW101 Merlin helicopter transport riding the elevator up to the flight deck. The wind had freshened in the past several hours, raising the seas in swells and chop.

He read the dispatch as the elevator ground its way up, leaving the cavernous embrace of the hangar deck below. As Mabry watched, he shook his head, then read it a second time. "Bollocks," he said at last, then crumpled the message into a ball and flicked it over the railing and into the sea. "This is a hell of a time to bring this up," he said.

"Sir," Mabry said. "Is there a reply?"

"Negative," Saunders replied. "We're operating under radio silence, remember?"

"Sir!"

"This is just a delaying tactic, Mabry. They still want to bring the damned Americans into this."

"Yes, sir. But… if the report is accurate, sir…"

"It is not!" Saunders snapped. "It was demonstrated most convincingly years ago that the batteries on those weapons systems degraded without proper maintenance and storage. By now they are quite useless!"

"Yes, sir."

"Besides, man, consider the source! A shortwave broadcast from the hijacked ship? Shortwavel When they have cell phones and computers with satellite uplinks to the Internet? This… this message GCHQ claims to have intercepted was clearly enemy disinformation, an attempt to thwart any attempt to get close to those vessels with helicopters. And certain elements within the government are using it as an excuse to delay our op."

The elevator ground to a halt and locked with a shudder felt through the deck. The inboard safety rail dropped, and Saunders strode onto the Ark Royal's flight deck. Behind him, deck personnel swarmed around the Merlin, removing chocks and attaching cables so that a tractor could tow it into position. Four other helicopters, the smaller, sleeker Super Lynx gunships, were already parked on the deck.

The Ark Royal was small as aircraft carriers went — nothing at all like the ponderous, angled-flight-deck nuclear monsters so beloved by the American Navy. In fact, when the Ark Royal had first been launched back in 1981, she and her sister ships had been designated as cruisers for political reasons.

There could be no mistaking the old girl's true design and purpose today, though. Her 183-meter flight deck with its characteristic ski-jump bow ramp for Harrier takeoffs was crowded with the readied gunships and a number of Sea Harriers; deck personnel swarmed everywhere in their color-coded jerseys, readying aircraft for Harrow Storm.

Saunders felt a surge of pride. Damn the politicians! He and his men were about to make bloody history!

And those damned terrorists were never going to know what hit them.

"Attention, passengers and crew of the Atlantis Queen" Khalid said, speaking into the PA system handset. "The governments of the United States and of Great Britain have continued to trample the rights of the Muslim peoples of the world, to wage war against us in unending crusade, to insult our holy faith, to silence our voice, and to rape our sovereign nations of our natural resources. We are fighting back. It is time now to inform you all that the Atlantis Queen has been commandeered by fighters in the service of Allah and of world jihad. I am Amir Yusef Khalid of the Islamic Jihad International, and all of you are my hostages until the governments of Great Britain and the United States of America surrender to our demands."

Khalid sat in the captain's chair, delivering his speech. It was amazing, he thought, that he'd been able to go this long without making this announcement, his men hiding in plain sight, as it were, as they seized the ship right under the noses of most of the civilians on board. Westerners, it was quite true, were sheep, easily misdirected, easily herded, easily managed.

Even so, it wouldn't do to underestimate them. Now that he'd transmitted his demands to the Western media, now that news of the double hijacking was appearing on every TV screen in the West, it would only be a matter of time before friends and family of the hostages ashore would begin trying to reach them. Haqqani had disabled the electronics that relayed cell-phone calls and Internet connections to and from the passengers — only on the bridge could they still get CNN — but he could do nothing about direct satellite links, rented satellite phones, and the like.

They'd discussed that possibility in their final planning session, in that dark and filthy cave in Pakistan months ago when Operation Zarqawi had first been conceived. During the al-Qaeda attack on New York and Washington, passengers on board the hijacked aircraft had learned what was happening from people on the ground. In particular, the passengers on Flight 93 had learned of the World Trade Center attacks long before the hijackers could reach Washington, D. C., and the passengers' interference had forced the airliner to crash far short of its goal.

That would not happen this time.

"If all of you remain calm and do what you are told," he continued, "no harm will come to you. When Great Britain and America accede to our demands, as they must, we shall depart this ship and all of you will be free to go home.

"However, to guarantee your good behavior and to keep you out of our way, some one hundred passengers and crew members have been taken to a separate pa'rt of the ship and are being held there under guard. They are unharmed, and are being well cared for. I've given orders that they be untied and given mattresses, that they be taken to the toilet facilities in small groups, that they be given food from the galley. If at any time, however, any one of you decides to 'play the hero,' as the Americans like to say, if any of you attempts to interfere with our operation in any way, we shall begin shooting them one at a time in a public place to enforce compliance.

"The rest of you may move around as you wish. I recommerfd that you stay in your staterooms most of the time, but you may go to the restaurants and other public areas on board as you usually do. Exceptions are the mall area on the First Deck, the theater on the First and Second Decks forward, the Promenade Deck outside, and the outside pool areas on the Ninth and Tenth Decks. Anyone who enters those areas will be shot.

"Crew members will continue to carry out their normal duties. You may go anywhere you need to go in the performance of those duties. Exceptions are the bridge, radio room, and security areas on Decks Ten, Eleven, and Twelve, the ship's holds, the theater, and the Promenade and pool deck areas outside. Any crew member who needs to go into any of those areas in pursuance of his duties must approach one of our fighters and ask permission first. Any crew member who enters any forbidden area without permission and an escort will be shot.

"Any attempt to harm or disarm one of our fighters or to communicate with the outside world will result in the deaths of the hostages we have sequestered for safekeeping. So stay out of our way, do not attempt to interfere, and all of you will get out of this alive." He paused, looking across the bridge at the electronic chart table. Over the past hours, enemy ships and aircraft had steadily been drawing their noose tighter.

"One thing more. At some point within the next day or two, we expect the military forces of Great Britain and the United States to make some sort of demonstration, a hostage rescue attempt. Such an attempt would be quite foolish and doomed to fail, but your governments will feel the need to flex their muscles and try to prove to us how powerful they are.

"We are ready for them. If such an attempt is made, I strongly advise all of you to remain in your staterooms and out of danger. We cannot be held responsible if any of you are caught in the lines of fire between our fighters and hostile forces attempting to board this ship. Any attempt to interfere with our defense of these vessels, or to help an enemy boarding party in any way, or to communicate with them will result in your death and in the death of all of the hostages.

"We shall continue to address you with updates on the situation as necessary. In the meantime, stay out of our way!"

And now, Khalid thought, for the next inevitable step..

"Yes, Dr. Bing," Rubens said into the telephone receiver. "We've seen it."

A wooden panel on his office wall had been opened, revealing a line of six TV monitors. All were on, now, showing the ongoing news from two CNN feeds, plus FOX, CNBC, and the major networks. One monitor now was showing a replay of the shaky footage from the Atlantis Queen, broadcast at just past eight that morning, Eastern Time. The others all showed talking heads. "It's been playing on every news channel since the transmission came through this morning," Bing said at the other end of the line. "God. CNBC already has a fancy computer-graphic logo for their special news bulletin up and running."

" Terror at Sea,'" Rubens said. "Yes. A bit on the tacky side."

"The terrorists are demanding two billion dollars plus the release of several hundred prisoners. The President has announced that we will not negotiate."

"I saw his press conference a few minutes ago," Rubens told her.

"He wants to know if your Black Cat team is still ready to go."

"It is." Rubens did not add that most of Black Cat Bravo was already on board the carrier Eisenhower; now steaming less than two hundred miles to the south of the hijacked ships. Charlie Dean was en route on board a COD C-2A — the acronym stood for Carrier On-board Delivery — flying from England to a rendezvous with the carrier in another few hours. In addition, the USS Ohio, a special forces-capable submarine transport, was on her way from Norfolk with Navy SEALs on board and an ASDS strapped to her afterdeck.

"The President still insists that the British go in first," Bing told him. "We still fully expect the SAS to be able to capture both ships. However, should they run into trouble, the President is authorizing a limited military response."

"A limited response? What the hell does that mean?"

"That we be prepared to assist British forces, but that they handle the brunt of the operation."

"Fair enough."

"The President is adamant, however, that we not risk a public relations debacle. With over three thousand hostages on board those ships, collateral damage is inevitable. We can't afford to be… to be associated with that."

Rubens managed to bite back an acid reply. It wouldn't do to antagonize ANSA, who, together with the Director of National Intelligence, was one of the NSA's two conduits to the Oval Office.

But the chronic Washingtonian ass-covering infuriated Rubens. Bing was right, of course. With a military assault on those hijacked ships, there would be "collateral damage," as she so delicately put it, almost certainly. Counter-terrorist scenarios typically assumed a minimum of 10 percent casualties among any hostages present, and for the Adantis Queen, that meant an appalling figure of over three hundred civilians killed or wounded in the assault, many of them, probably, victims of friendly fire. If the attack stalled on the way in, leaving terrorists guarding the hostages time to begin killing their prisoners, the figure would be much, much higher.

But the alternative was either paying the ransom or watching all of the hostages die if the terrorists had explosives on board those ships — and that was a near certainty. Carrousel's interrupted report had mentioned trucks in the cargo hold. That might mean as much as several tons of high explosives on board the Atlantis Queen, enough to easily sink the ship.

Enough to easily create a titanic dirty bomb with the radioactive material from the Pacific Sandpiper.

Paying the ransom, Rubens knew, would not be an option. Some of those talking heads on the TV monitors had been urging just that: give them what they want; too many lives are at stake to play macho games.

But the lesson learned from the turbulent seventies and eighties, when international terrorism had first exploded across the national consciousness, had been that giving in to terrorist demands guaranteed more terrorist demands, more hostages taken, more lives lost. If al-Qaeda thought they could bully America into paying money and freeing prisoners, they would continue to bully America in a never-ending vicious circle.

Besides, no one in either Whitehall or Washington was going to let Khalid and his people blissfully sail off with a cargo of two and a half tons of plutonium. Rogue states such as Iran and North Korea had the industrial capability to turn MOX into weapons-grade plutonium; no one wanted to see them or al-Qaeda acquire sixty atomic bombs or use the stuff with conventional explosives to spread radioactive dust clouds over Western cities. There would be a military reckoning. There was no other viable choice.

"You can tell the President that we will be most discreet," Rubens said at last, barely disguising the sarcasm. "This isn't about who gets the credit, you know. Or about who gets the blame."

"Sometimes, Bill," Bing told him, "I don't think you grasp the realities of modern global politics."

"Sometimes I'm delighted that that's the case. I would be risking my sanity otherwise."

She ignored the riposte. "Tell me about this message your people picked up yesterday."

"Your office has a copy. As does NCTC and CIA."

"Yes, but what do you make of it?"

"Our listening station at Menwith Hill picked it up about sixteen hours ago. Shortwave broadcast. It purported to be from one of the Atlantis Queen's doctors. It pretty much verifies what we already know of the situation… but adds that he saw a number of crates on an upper deck with TIM-92' stenciled on them. He thought it important enough to make a special note of it. As with Carrousel, the transmission was cut off in mid-broadcast. We haven't heard from him since."

"I was told you informed General Saunders directly."

Her voice was cold, colder than usual. God, he thought. She's going to make it into a turf war. Within the intelligence community, information was power. ANSA would see his decision to bypass the NSC, the NCTC, and the President himself as undercutting her authority.

"Actually, Dr. Bing, I told Menwith Hill to pass the information on to Saunders. It is military intelligence critical to his operation, first, and second, I thought it would help mend fences if I made sure he heard it from a British intelligence source, rather than from us. I gather Saunders is sensitive about the… relationship we have with GCHQ."

He didn't add that he doubted that Saunders would have accepted any information from an American source in the first place, or that Rubens had also transmitted the information to Lia and Akulinin in Southampton, just to be certain.

He could almost hear the wheels turning in Bing's head on the other end of the line. "That was good thinking, Bill," she said at last. "And appropriate. Just remember that the President is very concerned about the diplomatic angles of this situation. You'd be best advised to keep the NSC in the loop with all of your decisions to disseminate information. We have protocols for controlling that sort of thing."

"Of course, Dr. Bing."

"We'll talk again after Harrow Storm."

She hung up, and Rubens turned again to watch the talking heads on his wall. On NBC, a noted psychologist was discussing the sense of helpless anger within the Palestinian community that led to their feeling of betrayal and abandonment by the West.

On Rubens' computer screen, a map showed the North Atlantic, with several points marked by red and blue dots, and by thread-thin lines showing the courses of a dozen ships over the course of the past several days. The red symbol pinpointing the Atlantis Queen and the Pacific Sandpiper had been maintaining a steady heading of almost due west, toward America's eastern seaboard. They were now less than eighteen hundred nautical miles from New York City.

Blue symbols were closing in on the red from three directions — the Ark Royal and her consorts from the east, the Eisenhower battle group from the south, the Ohio from the west. Aircraft were shown as well, forming a ring around the hijacked vessels a hundred miles out. Two British frigates, the Campbeltown and the Sheffield, had closed to within about fifty miles of the two hijacked vessels. The rest were farther out, strung out from one hundred to two hundred miles away.

"So what's your real mission, Khalid?" Rubens asked aloud. "You have to know we're "not going to let you get anywhere near the U. S. coast with that plutonium, hostages or no hostages."

If it was straight extortion — money for ships and hostages — they could have managed it with the Atlantis Queen alone and a few trucks full of high explosives. Why the added risk and complication of hijacking the Pacific Sandpiper as well?

Nor was it about hijacking the plutonium alone. The NSA had known almost immediately three days ago, on Saturday evening, when Khalid's people had begun transferring several hundred pounds of MOX from the Sandpiper to the Queen. Each large storage flask had a GPS tracking unit mounted on its casing, and each internal container had one as well; they could be tracked by satellite with superb accuracy, to within half a meter. If they tried to load even a single one of those containers onto another boat, the Agency would know and be able to track it anywhere in the world.

So this wasn't about trying to acquire plutonium for some rogue state's nuclear weapons program, either.

The Queen had radar. Khalid must know those ships and aircraft were out there.

What are you up to?

The records people at Langley had already pulled a fat dossier on Yusef Khalid, or, rather, on Rahid Sayed as-Saadi, which appeared to be his real name. As Yusef Khalid, he'd been hired by Royal Sky Line three months earlier. He'd claimed to be Egyptian, born and raised in Alexandria, and had come with sterling references, of course, including a letter from the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. His excellent English — he also spoke fair German and Turkish besides both the Egyptian and Syrian dialects of Arabic — had recommended him to the cruise ship company first as a translator. His training and his first shipboard assignment, however, had been with ship's security. That was an odd anomaly that would need to be investigated.

So much for the man's legend — the intelligence community's word for his fictitious background and identity. Royal Sky Line and MI5, it seemed, simply hadn't dug deep enough.

The man whose bearded face had appeared on all of the news channels this morning had been positively matched by the CIA's Office of Image Analysis with another identity entirely — Rahid Sayed as-Saadi. Like Osama bin Laden, he was Saudi, a native of Riyadh. He might have known bin Laden at the King Abdulaziz University. He'd fought with bin Laden and other mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan and probably been in on the formation of al-Qaeda in the early 1990s. He was still wanted for questioning in regards to the first World Trade Center bombing back in 1993; he'd been photographed by the FBI in several meetings with Ramzi Yousef, who'd masterminded that attack. After 9/11, Rahid had gone first to Afghanistan, where he'd been captured by American forces at Tora Bora and questioned by the CIA… before being mysteriously released by Afghan Northern Alliance troops.

After that, he'd gone to Iraq, where he'd helped Abu Musab al-Zarqawi create the Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn, better known as AQI — al-Qaeda in Iraq.

He'd been with al-Qaeda from the beginning, a member of bin Laden's inner circle. The CIA's best guess was that this Islamic Jihad International was a new operations arm for al-Qaeda.

If Rahid Sayed as-Saadi was running this show, it was very big, and very deadly.

What are you really up to, you bastard? Rubens asked again.

"So we're agreed?" Andrew McKay said.

The others sitting around the table with him nodded. Most of them looked scared. Some looked defiant. A few — like the Hollywood agent Jake Levy — looked numb.

"Not all of us," Dr. Barnes replied.

"I knew we'd been hijacked as soon as those men came to our stateroom yesterday," Adrian Bollinger said, grim. Tabitha Sandberg, sitting next to him and holding his hand, nodded. "They were looking for that woman who came in over our balcony, and they meant business. They hit me in the face with a rifle butt when I told them to get the hell out of my cabin, and they threatened to rape Tabby. If there's any way off of this hell-ship…"

"Yeah, well, we all heard the PA announcement from the bridge yesterday," Reggie Carmichael said. "We all know the score, right? We know we're all gonna die if we don't do something!"

"They have Gillian," Levy said, "and they have Bernie… "

"Gillian and Bernie? Who are they?" Donald Myers wanted to know.

"Arnold Bernstein and Gillian Harper," Carmichael said. "Bernie is her manager." When Myers looked blank and gave a slight negative shake to his head, Carmichael added, "Gillian Harper? The hottest MTV star ever?

'Livin' Large'? Platinum labels and music video hits out the ass?"

"Sorry," Myers said. "Never heard of her."

"Jesus! Where've you been, man? Kansas?"

"Baltimore."

"Enough!" McKay said. "Keep it down, all of you!" He glanced around the room, trying to peer past the clumps of tropical vegetation and faux Mayan ruins. There didn't appear to be any of them in the Deck Eleven lounge, but he didn't want to take the chance of being overheard, or of attracting attention. Too much was at stake.

Barnes, the ship's doctor, took a sip of his drink. "The ship has been taken by terrorists," he said. "They are well armed, and preparing to fight off any attempt by the military to retake the ship. But it still might be that our best bet is to hunker down and wait this out."

"I am getting my wife and child off of this ship, Doctor," McKay said. "The sooner the better!"

He'd left Nina with Melissa back in the stateroom. He looked at the others around the table, trying to assess their spirit.

"How about a show of hands?" Stephen Penrose asked. "Everyone who thinks we should steal a lifeboat and get the hell off this ship, raise your hand!"

Of the fourteen people around the large table, eleven voted yes.

"We can't decide something like this democratically," Barnes said. He'd not raised his hand. "My duty is here, looking after the passengers and crew. But I'll help you if I can."

"I can't go," Levy said. "They have Gillian!"

"Yeah, Jake? And maybe you want to join the bitch, wherever she is," Carmichael said.

"Listen," Donald Myers said. He'd not voted, either, but he seemed unsure. "I've got a whole bunch of people in my tour group. Can we bring them?"

"How many?" McKay asked.

"Nineteen total," Myers replied. "Fourteen women, four men… and myself."

"That's the Baltimore tour group?" Barnes asked him.

"Yes."

Barnes shook his head. "Most of them are elderly," he said. "One's using a walker, isn't she? I think their chances are better here, not bobbing around in a rough ocean for God knows how long before a ship picks you up."

"I don't think that's a good idea," McKay said. "The fewer people in our party, the better, y'know? And we don't want to be held back by walkers and arthritis."

Myers nodded. "I understand."

"You're welcome to come."

He shook his head. "No. I need to stay with my people."

"It'll just be the eleven of us, then," McKay said. "That's a good number. Johnny, here, can use his key to lower one of the lifeboats. We pile in, lower away, and let the ship sail over the horizon. Then we use the emergency transmitter on board to call for help. You know the military's going to be listening to every frequency."

"It'll be rough," Berger warned. He was a ship's steward whom McKay had met and talked with several days ago. Berger had been instrumental in helping get this group of men and women together, passing messages and cell-phone numbers and getting them into the Kleito Lounge for this meeting. "Lifeboats aren't supposed to be dropped into the water when we're moving."

"How fast are we moving?" Penrose asked.

"I'm not sure," Berger said. "Eighteen, maybe twenty knots. Our top speed is closer to twenty-five, but we're dragging the Sandpiper alongside, so we haven't been going at our absolute max."

"We'll have to chance it," Bollinger said.

"If we release the davits just before we hit the water," Berger added, "it'll be a jolt, but it shouldn't be any rougher than an amusement park water ride, right?"

"We'll do what we have to do," McKay said. "This is about survival."

"How long will we have to wait before someone picks us up?" Sandberg asked.

"Probably not too long," Barnes told her. "My guess is that the military will be putting together a takedown as we speak. You'll be spotted pretty quick."

"If they get us soon enough, we can tell them what we know about the terrorists," Carmichael suggested. "They'll have us all on TV!"

"First things first," McKay said. "First we get off the ship. We worry about press conferences later."

And in hushed voices, they began to discuss the details of their escape.

"Amir!" Jamel Hijazi shouted from the radar display. "They're coming!"

Khalid walked over to the display, which was set now to show everything around the Atlantis Queen and the Pacific Sandpiper out to a radius of 120 nautical miles. The display used computers to integrate the data from several radars mounted on the mast above and behind the bridge in order to show both surface and air targets. Two surface targets had been dogging their wake for two days, now, very slowly closing to a range of less than fifty miles. Their IFF codes had been changed so that the Queen's computers couldn't identify them, but Khalid suspected they were a pair of British destroyers or frigates. Military aircraft were circling a hundred miles out.

But something new had appeared on the display… a tiny double chevron of bright green dots, four in front, four close behind, coming straight toward the Queen and the Sandpiper at 150 knots. Helicopters.

"Tell Ibrahim to stand ready," Khalid said, "and to wait for my signal."

As Hijazi picked up the intercom handset and began speaking rapidly into it, Khalid watched the approaching targets, nodding. It begins…