Hunt the Fox

Chapter Eighteen

Wearing an elegant royal-blue Versace draped cocktail dress with a low V neckline and an asymmetrical deep V back, Mrs. Girard entered the exclusive Palo dining room on Deck 10 looking like a movie star. Because she was a new passenger, and a woman staying in a deluxe oceanview stateroom, she was immediately shown to the captain’s table.

Captain Ian Hutley wasn’t feeling well, and had chosen to eat in his office. In his place sat First Officer Sven Kalberg, a good-looking man of fifty with wavy blond hair and a sparkling white uniform. The flirtation between the two of them began the moment she sat down by his side.

“You’re happy with your accommodations, Mrs. Girard?” he asked, clearly admiring her smooth skin, high cheekbones, and hourglass figure.

She sipped the cold yogurt-and-leek vichyssoise variation that had been set in front of her, dabbed her lips with her napkin, and answered, “Oh, yes. The ship is so massive. It’s very impressive.”

He smiled into her eyes and saw the possibility of an on-sea romance, which excited him further. Even though he was married with a young son, he considered it one of the perks of the job.

“Mrs. Girard, after dinner allow me to take you on a tour of the ship.”

“How sweet of you. I’d be delighted,” she answered, batting her dark lashes and leaving her lips slightly open. “Can we start at the bridge? I’ve always dreamed of what it must be like to stand at the top of a ship like this with your hands on the wheel.”

His smile took on the aspect of a leer. “Yes. We’ll start at the bridge if you like, and go as far as you like.”

She squeezed his wrist and whispered, “I can’t wait.”

Eight decks below, forty-year-old Scott Russert looked at the clock, turned to his wife, Karen, who was lying on the queen-sized bed beside him, and said, “You hear this nonsense?” referring to the loud EDM emanating from the cabin next door. “It’s bloody one o’clock.”

She lifted a finger to her lips and pointed to their twin sons-Randy and Russell, both red-haired like their father-sleeping peacefully on a sofa bed that almost touched theirs. They were in the next-to-last cabin on Deck 2, which sat at the end of a long narrow corridor beyond the images of Dumbo and other assorted Disney characters painted on the light-blue walls.

Scott had won the trip as part of a raffle to benefit Dogs for the Disabled, a British charity. Three and a half months ago he had stopped at a car park near Frimley after doing his sales calls for Medical Value Company, UK. He’d filled the Nissan Qashqai with gas and bought a chocolate bar and a bottle of water from the female clerk. As she rang him up, she tried to sell him a five-pound ticket to a raffle. She asked so sweetly and seemed so nice that he said yes. Then lost the ticket and forgot all about it until the phone rang one Saturday night as they were cleaning up after dinner. The England versus Ecuador World Cup preliminary match was about to begin on the telly.

“Sorry to bother you, sir. But are you Scott Russert of twenty-two Coronation Place in Putney?”

“That’s me, love. Who’s this?”

“Rachel at the Value Store on the M3.”

He couldn’t recall a Rachel. “Who?”

“Mr. Russert, several months ago you stopped in here and bought a raffle ticket for a Dogs for the Disabled benefit. Do you remember?”

“Vaguely.”

“Well, congratulations, Mr. Scott Russert. You’re the lucky winner!”

Scott, a light sleeper, didn’t feel lucky now. Ever since the ship had docked at Civitavecchia, near Rome, they’d endured four nights of loud music and Middle Eastern-looking men coming and going from the room next door.

He wanted to sleep, relax, and enjoy the ship’s many amenities with his family-the theaters with live shows and movies, the AquaDunk thrill slide, Goofy’s Pool, the Oceaneer Club, and the full array of pubs and restaurants with an endless supply of food and drink.

Now he’d reached his limit. As he reached for the phone to call Security, the music suddenly stopped and he heard what sounded like chanting.

“What the bloody hell are they doing now?” he asked in a whisper.

“Sounds like they’re praying,” Karen answered. “Close your eyes, Scotty. Go to sleep.”

The chanting stopped, and he heard the door open and men leaving. “Rude wankers,” he muttered as he lowered his head to the pillow.

Speed, aggression, surprise were their watchwords as the twelve men spread throughout the ship. They moved according to a carefully rehearsed plan, four to take the security station that controlled the hundreds of video monitors, four to the engine room, four to the bridge. They carried grenades, gaffer’s tape, mags, ski masks, and fake beards in their pockets, and in the waistbands of their pants Vertex Standard VX-354 walkie-talkies with coverage of 350,000 square feet and a UV signal that could travel thirty stories through concrete and metal. They held suppressed automatic weapons under their long coats, the serial and model numbers scratched out.

No insignia, IDs, or uniforms. Nothing that could identify them in any way. They looked more like trained special operators than standard-issue terrorists. All were athletic, lean, and strong. Petras, in the lead, was hoping that the gentle rolling of the ship, the calm night, and the unreal beauty of the Aegean had lulled the ship’s security officers into a state of complacency.

He signaled the other three to wait behind him as he knocked on the door of the Security Office on Deck 4.

A man inside asked, “Who is it?”

“Johnny.”

As soon as the door opened, Petras and the others pushed their way in. He grabbed the man at the door by the throat so he couldn’t scream, pushed him against the wall, and shot him in the head. Three of the six officers on duty were asleep before one wall of monitors. The remaining two were so out of it, it took them a few seconds to realize what was happening and reach for their weapons. That was all the time the attackers needed.

A dozen shots, and half a minute later the terrorists were fully in charge of the Security Office. Already almost a third of the ship’s thirty-man security team had been taken out. Petras raised his left thumb to his three associates, left immediately, and climbed eight flights of stairs to the bridge. Once there and barely breathing hard, he texted Mrs. Girard.

She was standing with her hands on the ship’s wheel with First Officer Kalberg pressing into her from behind when the phone in her purse pinged. Turning toward him, she whispered, “I have to return to my cabin to make a call, but would like to see you later.”

“That sounds lovely. When?”

“Say fifteen minutes?”

“We can meet at the Keys piano bar on Deck 3, or I can come to your cabin.”

“I think my cabin will be more private. It’s 832.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” First Officer Kalberg said, leering at her breasts.

“I’ll be waiting.”

As he watched her walk away, fantasies unfolded in his head. He had no idea that her real purpose in leaving was to hold open the secure bridge door for Petras and the four terrorists waiting in the hallway.

They entered forcefully, fake beards, masks, and black headscarves in place. Kalberg saw them coming like a scene out of a horror movie. Before he could open his mouth to shout, a bullet entered his brain and his world turned dark.

The shots they fired were silenced, but when Kalberg spun and crashed against a radar console, one of the two security guards on duty whirled around, saw the masked men, and drew his Glock. The former Scottish Special Air Service operative managed to wound one of the terrorists in the foot before he was cut down in a hail of bullets.

The attackers continued to spray rounds everywhere, tearing up equipment, shattering one of the forward windows, catching the navigation officer in the throat. Bullets hit the first ship security officer in the groin near his femoral artery; multiple rounds ripped into the second security officer’s heart.

Blood and glass everywhere, the air clogged with cordite and smoke, Petras screamed, “Everyone down on the floor! Down on the floor! Hands over your heads!”

Those who didn’t comply immediately were shot. The rest of the crew members hit the floor facedown-two in the cockpit area, another two at the navigation station in the middle of the bridge, the last four near the computer monitors that measured air quality, electricity usage, radio signals, and so on. The two ship security men lay dead as the navigation and first security officers bled out. The remaining officers were seized with a combination of panic, horror, and disbelief.

At this moment Captain Ian Hutley stumbled out of his office, his tunic unbuttoned, his eyes bleary, and a TASER clutched in his right hand.

“What the hell is this?” he shouted, tasing the first armed man he saw. The probe flew twelve feet, pierced the terrorist’s nylon face mask, and entered the skin under his left eye, penetrating a quarter inch and releasing 50,000 volts of energy at 7 watts. The jolt shot through his system like lightning, causing the terrorist to scream and fall to his right, his head smashing against one of the instrument panels and his fully automatic AKM spinning in the air and crashing onto the deck. As he bled from his nose, his colleagues attacked the captain with their fists and rifles, smashing his teeth and destroying his right knee.

Then two of them dragged him to the ship’s PA station, sat him in the leather chair, and showed him the typed-out statement, which he seemed too stunned to read. One of the men pushed it into his bloody face.

“You read! Read now! Tell all passengers to stay in cabins.”

“I can’t fucking see it without my glasses!”

“You read, or I shoot you in the head.”

While this was taking place, Petras hurried to the cockpit and pushed a large red button that sent an electric signal to slow the liner. Then he turned a dial that lowered the speed from eight and a half to six knots. Because the ship was moving relatively slowly through the gentle Aegean Sea, only two of its five generators were engaged, each producing 20,000 pounds of horsepower.

Next he flipped a series of switches that shut off the ship’s fire, man overboard, abandon ship, and security alarms.

Petras knew that the ship’s planned destination for 0730 that morning was Mykonos, Greece. On one of the full-color computer screens in front of him, he saw that they were currently ten nautical miles off the coast of the island of Samos, famed since the time of the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens for its muscat grapes.

Before he disabled the ship’s cell-phone repeater, he called a man on a launch waiting near the coast.

“Sinbad, this is Stavros.”

“Yes.”

“We won the tournament. The trophy is all ours.”

This was only partially true, because when the master mariner in the engine room tried to communicate with the bridge to ask why they were changing speeds and why he couldn’t activate any of the primary and secondary communication systems, he alerted the engineers on duty. Following security procedures, the nine men locked themselves in a secure room from which they immediately issued VHF voice, and DSC and Inmarsat distress signals. The DSC (digital selective calling) signal was programmed with the ship’s MMSI (Maritime Mobile Service Identity) and GPS coordinates.

Within seconds both DSC and Inmarsat distress signals coded 39 (maritime emergency) were received by the Turkish Coast Guard Command (Sahil Güvenlik Komutanlığı) in Kuşadası, which alerted its two patrol boats on duty in the Aegean. Crews on the coast guard patrol boats scrambled. Courses were reprogrammed and throttles pulled back.

The closest Turkish patrol boat was within five and three-quarter miles of the liner when a forty-foot launch pulled alongside the Disney Magic. Terrorists inside the ship swung open the starboard cargo door and used pulleys to load the launch’s cargo of sarin canisters and additional weapons onboard. They worked quickly and expertly, as though they had rehearsed this procedure many times.

Petras, on the deck of the Magic, whistled to indicate that the cargo was safely aboard. Then he helped lower a set of aluminum stairs so that Mrs. Girard could climb down into the launch. Jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers had replaced her gown and heels.

As she prepared to climb over the railing and leave the ship, she turned to Petras and said, “As soon as we reach land we’ll issue the proclamation.”

“Good work.”

“You, too. For Syria,” she shouted above the launch’s engine.

“For Syria. Allahu akbar!”

Crocker and company were speeding up the six-lane O-21, halfway to Ankara, when the light on the sat-phone lit up. Mancini was at the wheel, with Akil asleep beside him. Janice snored gently from the back row. Davis, on the middle bench next to Crocker, answered.

He recognized Anders speaking urgently on the other end. “Davis? Where are you?”

“Sir, we just turned onto the Tarsus-Ankara freeway.”

“Put Crocker on the line. I need to talk to him immediately. It’s important.”

“Yes, sir.”

He nudged the team leader’s shoulder, but the half-conscious Crocker didn’t respond. Stan Getz’s version of “Corcovado” lilted through his earbuds, luring him toward a dreamland of tropical foliage and turquoise seas. Ahead he glimpsed a barefoot young woman in a red sarong.

“Boss.”

Crocker partially opened his left eye and waved Davis away. “I’m trying to get some rest.”

“It’s Anders. He says it’s important.”

She was brown-skinned and stunning. He didn’t want to let go of the dream. “Tell him we’ll be there after sunup. We’ll drive straight to the embassy.”

“He needs to talk to you now,” said Davis.

“Why?” he asked, coming out of his fog and wondering what the deputy director of operations wanted. He took the receiver from Davis. “Sir?”

“Crocker, where are you?”

“We’re driving. Maybe…another three hundred miles from Ankara. Should be there by around 0700.”

All he saw out the window was a flat dark landscape-no structures, no signs.

Anders said, “Text me your GPS coordinates immediately.”

“Why do you need our exact location? What’s up?”

“The next field or rest stop you come to, pull over and text me your coordinates. A TAF helicopter is on its way. I’ll be on it. When you see it, flash your emergency lights and prepare to board.”

“Yes, sir. What’s going on?”

“You’ll soon find out.”

The line went dead. As his mind revved up to process the conversation, Crocker handed the receiver back to Davis.

“What’s the story?”

“I think they located the sarin,” Crocker said.

Scott Russert was on his knees, tying his son’s sneakers and hoping to beat the early line for breakfast at the Lumiere’s dining area on Deck 3 when he heard three loud, sharp blasts over the ship’s alarm system. His entire body tensed and his blood pressure shot up.

“What’s that?” his wife asked as she emerged from the bathroom, drying her hair with a towel.

He was about to reach for the brown binder on the desk that outlined all the ship’s signals and emergency codes when Captain Hutley’s voice came over the PA system. He sounded tense and unsteady. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re currently experiencing a security situation that requires all passengers and nonessential crew to remain in their cabins until further notice. Anyone out on the decks, in the hallways, dining rooms, or other public areas, will be subject to grave danger.”

He repeated the message, then signed off.

In the pregnant silence that followed, Scott’s wife stared at him from across the cabin, her cheeks turning deep pink and her hands trembling. “Does that mean what I think it means, Scotty?”

“No, darling. Don’t go there.”

“Is something wrong, Daddy?” son Randy asked, picking up on his parents’ sudden anxiety.

“Does that mean we can’t go to breakfast now?” asked Russell.

Scott, who had trained himself to focus on practical solutions to immediate problems, started to calculate what they had in the room to feed the boys and keep them occupied until the “security situation” was resolved: a box of animal crackers, several fresh oranges, water, coffee, tea, a flat-screen TV and DVR loaded with dozens of Disney movies and TV specials.

He didn’t notice his wife and two sons surrounding him until he felt Karen’s fingers digging into his arm.

“Oh, Scott!” Her whole body was shaking.

“Daddy.”

“Yes.”

They held on to him as though he were their strength and only possible salvation from whatever danger lurked outside.

“Daddy, can we still get pancakes?”

“Does that mean the ship’s going to crash?”

“The ship’s okay, boys,” Scott said. “We’re fine.”

Someone cried out something from a room down the hall. As he listened for sounds of violence, he felt the ship slowly turning to starboard, and assumed they were returning to Turkey. Scott considered it a good sign. They’d re-dock at Kuşadası, officials would address the problem, and they’d soon be under way again.

He thought of their home back in Putney as the alarm blasted again and Captain Hutley repeated his message for the third time. After the message finished, Scott listened carefully for any sound from the cabin next door. It remained quiet.

In some deep chamber of his mind he started to put two and two together. He looked at Karen, who was wiping tears from her eyes before mouthing “Pirates?”

He shook his head, reached out, wrapped his arms around his wife and sons, and squeezed all of them together. “No, love. Don’t think like that. We’re headed back to Turkey. We’re together. We’re a family. The intrepid Russerts. We’ll be fine.”

“Will we, Dad?” Randy pleaded.

“Yes. I promise.”

The SEALs parked the Suburban in the empty parking lot of what appeared to be an abandoned factory just off the O-21 and waited for the French-made, twin-engine AS532 Cougar helicopter to circle and land. Red lights washed over the surrounding buildings and freeway, and then the landing light came on and turned the asphalt bright white.

Crocker felt adrenaline coursing through his veins as he climbed onboard and strapped himself into a seat between a security man in civilian clothes clutching an M5 and a grim-faced Grissom. The helo lifted off and banked to the right. Anders reached over the seat behind him and handed Crocker a single piece of paper.

As he read the hijackers’ statement in the dim overhead light, his blood started to heat up. Terrorists had seized control of the Disney Magic. They were threatening to release sarin and kill all the passengers unless the U.S. president publicly pledged to withdraw all American troops from the Middle East immediately and deposit two billion dollars in various Cypriote and Dubai bank accounts. The terms had to be accepted within twenty-four hours. The document had been issued at 0700 hours on the eighteenth of June and was signed “The Fox-ISIS.”

Unacceptable. Not fucking happening.

Crocker turned to Anders and shouted over the engine noise, “How many passengers?”

“Some 2,687. Another 857 crew members.”

Jesus.

“How many hijackers?”

“Unclear.”

“Who’s the Fox?”

“Don’t know. But analysts at HQ are narrowing the list of candidates.”

“Where’s the ship now?”

“It’s been turned around and is heading east.”

“It’s clear the terrorists are in charge?”

“Yes.”

“And the sarin is aboard?”

“We believe so, yes.”