Sea Of Terror

Chapter 6

"The deck crew reports the gangway has been secured, Captain," Vandergrift reported.

"Very well," Phillips replied. "Single up all lines, fore and aft, and secure the spring."

"Aye, aye, Captain."

Phillips walked to the port side of the spacious bridge, gazing out through the sloping windows overlooking the bow promenade and, below it and to port, the Atlantis Queen's berth alongside the Royal Sky cruise terminal. With the gangway pulled up and stowed, there were no longer security restrictions along the pier. People spilled out of the terminal to form a dense crowd alongside the ship, families, friends, and well-wishers giving her the traditional bon voyage send-off. Passengers lined the railing of the Promenade Deck, waving back, throwing confetti, and calling down inanities to the people ashore.

Tradition…

To starboard, the two harbor tugs Cornwall and Devonshire signaled their readiness to proceed with short whistle blasts. Southampton occupied the south-pointing arrowhead of land between two rivers, the Itchen to the east, the Test to the west. Where the rivers joined became Southampton Water, a broad, straight channel running southeast toward the coast and the Isle of Wight. The Royal Sky Line terminal was located on the Test, only a few hundred yards from the beginning of the Water. Phillips could see the numerous white triangular sails of pleasure craft beyond the Point, along with the faster-moving specks of powerboats.

Just ahead of the Queen, the harbor pilot boat chugged into position, ready to guide the ninety-thousand-ton behemoth down through Southampton Water, past the Isle of Wight, and out into the English Channel beyond.

The tide had turned and was now in ebb flow. The weather was sunny, with just a hint of haze against the southern horizon. Even the met reports had been more promising this morning.

Omens of a good cruise.

The captain tried not to think of the bad omens… of Darrow's murder, or of the presence of two MI5 people conducting a surreptitious investigation on board his ship. He was just glad things had worked out as they had. He knew how close Royal Sky Line was running financially right now. Had the cruise been canceled or badly delayed, Phillips would have been looking for a new job.. and there just weren't that many openings for cruise ship captains right now. It would have meant going back to piloting the Channel Ferry or skippering supply boats to North Sea oil platforms.

"Engine room reports both Azipods ready and turning," Vandergrift said. "Captain, the Queen is ready in all respects for sea."

He could only just barely feel the hum of the Queen's powerful Sulzer ZA40 diesel plant through the deck beneath his shoes as it cranked out 63.4 megawatts of power. Azipod was the brand name for the ABB Group's azimuth thruster. The Queen had two, electrically powered propellers mounted in pods beneath her stern capable of turning 360 degrees to face any direction. Normally turned with the propellers leading, in a tractor configuration, the Azipods provided the Queen with superb maneuverability.

Captain Phillips was fiercely proud of his vessel.

He glanced at the digital clock above the bridge windows. Two minutes before nine.

"Mr. Vandergrift, you may give the order to cast off fore and aft. Mr. Cardew, signal the tugs that we are ready to put to sea."

"Aye, Captain."

The last slender tethers holding the Queen to the shore were flipped free from their bollards and run on board. Towering above the crowded pier, the ship gave one short, mournful hoot from her whistle… then another… and finally a third long blast. The throngs both ashore and on board cheered and waved.

Urged along by her Azipod thrusters and gently nudged by her tugs, the huge ship edged farther out into open water, the gap between ship and shore steadily widening, the bow swinging out to align with the harbor pilot ahead.

And Captain Phillips breathed a heartfelt sigh of relief.

The Atlantis Queen was under way at last.

At the very stern of the Atlantis Queen, Yusef Khalid stood with another man and watched the crowded pier slowly recede across the water. "Praise be to Allah," the other man said quietly in Arabic. "He has seen fit to bless us with success!"

"Success for the first steps, at any rate," Khalid replied in English. "We have many steps to go, yet."

"Allah will provide!"

"If you say so," Khalid replied with a shrug.

Khalid had little patience with the hyper-religious posturings of some of his fellow, more passionate jihadists. Passion could be a good thing when it came to war, especially when men were asked to sacrifice their lives to carry out a mission such as this one. And it was useful to pretend a passion for the Divine in order to manipulate credulous people.

But he was not in this for spiritual reasons. Quite the opposite, in fact.

"Your problem," Rashid Abdul Aziz told him, still speaking in Arabic, "is that you have been too long in the World. Your faith in the Almighty and in His Prophet, bless his name, has grown weak!"

"And your problem," Khalid snapped in the same language, "is that you rely too much on God! When you fail, you claim that it must be God's will! It wasn't that you didn't plan enough, or prepare enough, or take the proper precautions, or even that the enemy was too strong, or too smart. No! It must have been God's will! Don't you see that that is the worst kind of blasphemy, that you are blaming God for what has gone wrong?"

Stunned, Aziz shook his heaJ. "You… you are wrong, my brother. All things are in God's hands. Our successes, and our failures as well"

Khalid took a moment to slow his breathing, the pounding of his heart. His own outburst had caught him by surprise. Where had that come from?

"I am… sorry," he told Aziz. It would serve no purpose to berate Aziz for his misplaced faith, or to engage in useless disputation. Let the man believe what he wanted. "I've been under a great strain lately."

And it was true. For months, now, he'd been one of the four team leaders involved in Operation Zarqawi, and the planning, the preparation, had been both intense and exhausting. There'd been a very real possibility that the police would have kept the Atlantis Queen from sailing. Had that happened, his half of the plan would have failed. Operation Zarqawi would have continued — indeed, it could not now possibly be stopped — but the strike against the hated West would be so much more devastating, so much more effective, if the Atlantis Queen could be taken and brought into the unfolding plan.

It had been a close-run thing, but the Queen had sailed despite the murder of the ship's officer, had sailed exactly as he had predicted she would when he'd first laid out his plan for approval in front of the guiding lights of al-Qaeda, in that mountain cavern back in Pakistan's Northwest Territories.

And perhaps Aziz was right. Allah was smiling upon this venture. At least, it would do no harm to allow himself to believe that, to enjoy the warmth that came with the sincere belief that God was with you.

So long as he didn't begin counting on God's blessing. What was it the Westerners said? God helps those who help themselves.

"What was our final count, Rashid?" he asked. "How many did we manage to get on board?"

"Thirty-one, praise Allah!"

"And supplies?"

"Three trucks, Amir." The honorific meant "Commander." "A total of twelve tons of explosives, as well as rifles, ammunition, detonators, hand grenades. And the special weapons. Everything we need!"

"It is good. Remind them to stay out of sight. This ship has security cameras everywhere. We don't want anyone to show himself and give our presence away too soon."

"It will be as you say, Amir."

"Our man in the security office should have passkeys for everyone before tomorrow." He pointed forward with a twitch of his head. "Go, now. Tell them to stay out of sight."

"Yes, Amir Yusef!"

Khalid pulled out his phone with its encrypted satellite link.

It was time to begin coordinating events with the Pacific Sandpiper.

West of Saint David's Head and the coast of Wales, the leviathan plowed forward into rolling seas and a stiff breeze. The blue-and-white-painted PNTL transport had a top speed of eighteen knots, but since leaving Barrow some two hundred nautical miles astern she'd been plodding along at a mere eight, a concession to safety regulations. Sea traffic was heavy within the confined waters between England and Ireland and the chances of a collision markedly higher. The Pacific Sandpiper's stringent insurance contracts required that she move slowly enough within congested waters that even rowboats could avoid her, or so it seemed. She would be required to crawl during her approach to the Panama Canal, and when she entered Japanese waters as well.

High on the ship's spacious bridge, her captain, Neil Jorgenson, stood next to the helm and studied the waters ahead. Their escort, the Ishikari, led the way nearly half a mile off the bow, a narrow gray silhouette rolling alarmingly from side to side in the heavy swell. To starboard rode their second escort, the Royal Navy frigate Campbeltown. The Campbeltown's Sea King helicopter was a speck in the distance to the southwest, scouting ahead for trouble.

"Looks like the Japs'll be feeding the fishes this morning, Captain," the first officer, Roger Dunsmore, said, grinning as he lowered a pair of binoculars.

Jorgenson had been a sailor for nearly all of his fifty-two years, starting out as a boy on the family fishing boat in Norway. His parents had immigrated to Great Britain in the early 1970s, and his very first adult job had been as deckhand on board a British Petroleum supply ship in the North Sea. Compared to that, a bit of roll like this was nothing.

"That's what you get when you go to sea in a cockleshell," Jorgenson replied with a shrug. He fished inside the pocket of his jacket, extracting a battered pipe and a tobacco pouch. There were regulations against smoking on board — there were regulations for everything on PNTL vessels — but at sea he was the master. He began filling the pipe. "I imagine they envy us our rock-solid little island now!"

The Sandpiper was superbly stable, ignoring the swell, which broke to either side of the ship's high, rounded bow with scarcely any lift or roll at all. Even in a full gale, being on board the Piper was more like standing on an oil platform anchored to the bottom than being on board a ship. She was an aircraft carrier to IshikarVs canoe, a most comfortable and pleasantly civilized way of going to sea.

"Speaking of Japs, sir," Dunsmore said, "have you seen ours?"

"Wanibuchi and Kitagawa? Not since we left Barrow," Jorgenson replied. "Why?"

"Not sure. They were giving me the creeps when we were taking on our cargo, always underfoot, always watching everything we do."

"It's their plutonium," Jorgenson replied mildly. "They have every right to keep a close eye on it."

"I suppose so, sir. But I swear they crawled through every cubic meter of this ship. Looking at everything. Taking notes. Checking security, measures. Asking questions. Jabbering away at one another like nobody's business."

"It is nobody's business, Number One. They were cleared by the head office. That should be enough for us."

Dunsmore's attitude annoyed the captain. The man was a bigot. He didn't like blacks, he didn't like Asians, and he didn't like the third-world hands who made up the majority of the deck force on board working ships. As the ship's executive officer, Dunsmore was responsible for the thirty men of the Sandpiper's crew — and a good three-quarters of them were Pakistani, Malay, or Filipino. Dunsmore was an elitist of the worst type, a snob and a racist who liked to boast that an ancestor of his had been in the court of the first Queen Elizabeth.

It must, Jorgenson thought wryly, be something of a comedown for Dunsmore, having to work with the riffraff like that.

Jorgenson didn't care what the man thought, so long as he did his job. He was a competent first officer, and that was all that mattered.

PNTL was a British company, the Pacific Sandpiper a British-flagged ship. Their chief client and business partner, however, was Japan. Since 1995, Japan had been shipping radioactive wastes to France and England for reprocessing. The high-level radioactive waste, or HLW, belonged to ten Japanese utility companies using nuclear plants to produce electricity. The waste was processed and vitrified at the Sellafield reactor complex in England, north of Barrow, then returned to Japan for disposal. The last shipment from France had been completed in 2007; shipments from England would be continuing through 2016.

Since 1999, a new twist had been added, when PNTL had begun transporting used fuel rods from Japanese reactors to Sellafield, where useable plutonium was extracted from the waste and mixed with depleted uranium into fresh fuel elements, called MOX. Japan had some fifty-three reactors online that could use these fuel elements, and more were being built. They were building a new processing plant at Rokkasho-mura, in northern Honshu, but there'd been delays. Until that plant was up and running, Japan would rely on Europe for its supply of nuclear fuel.

Pacific Sandpiper and her sisters had been custom-built for transporting radioactive waste halfway around the world, and they'd been very well designed for that task, and that task alone. They'd been called the safest vessels on the seas, and with good reason. With double-hull construction, double collision bulkheads, and redundant power and propulsion systems, she was designed to be as close to unsinkable as a ship could be. She was safe from attack, too. Hidden away inside her superstructure were three 30mm cannons, the first time since World War II that merchant ships had actually been armed. The guns were backed by thirty ex-military British AEF police on permanent assignment to PNTL and by the Sandpiper's two escorts, the Campbeltown, which would escort them out of European waters, and the Ishikari, which would accompany them all the way to Japan.

Jorgenson puffed his pipe alight, discarded the match, and raised his binoculars for a closer look at the Ishikari ahead, then looked to starboard and studied the Campbeltown for a moment. As they left the Irish Sea for the Atlantic Ocean proper, the water grew swiftly rougher, and both escorts were making rather heavy work of it.

Yes, the crews on board the Piper's escorts were certainly in for a rough ride.

Jerry Esterhausen glowered at the monitor screen, where a beautiful woman's face stared back with a blank-faced lack of emotion. "You electronic bitchl" he said.

"You do know how to sweet-talk a girl," Sandy Markham said.

"She's determined not to be cooperative this morning," Esterhausen said. He pushed his glasses higher up at the bridge of his nose, then began typing furiously at the keyboard in front of him. "I swear sometimes she has a mind of her own."

"Danger, Will Robinson!" Markham said, putting an edge to her voice as she imitated a famous robot from American TV. "Danger! Danger!"

"Yeah, right," Esterhausen said, still typing. He'd only heard that lame old joke a few dozen times in the past year, and it was no funnier now than it had been when he'd started. "Believe me, there'll be plenty of danger for Rosie if she doesn't behave herself."

"Rosie" was the CyberAge Corporation's latest commercial product, a robot that could play blackjack and several other card games. Named for another American TV robot, Rosie looked nothing like her cartoon namesake. She was bolted to the deck, for one thing, a slender, upright pylon capped by a moveable TV monitor that displayed her face and a small video camera. She had broad shoulders supporting a pair of spidery arms ending in finely articulated mechanical hands. Those hands, sold by the Shadow Robot Company in London, possessed a touch delicate enough to handle a wineglass, pick up a feather — or deal playing cards from a deck.

At least, she could deal cards when she was properly working.

CyberAge was an American company, located in Paterson, New Jersey, and Esterhausen was one of their service representatives. Royal Sky Line had purchased one of CyberAge's half-million-dollar machines for the Atlantis Queen's Poseidon Casino, a novelty item to complement the cruise ship's ultra-modern decor. It was a dream assignment, really… a free two-week cruise to the Eastern Mediterranean on board a luxury liner, and all he had to do was make sure Rosie was functioning properly.

Well, she had been working when she'd left the shop… and she'd been working okay after she'd been installed in the ship's casino last week. But an hour ago he'd come down to run some test programs through the infernal contraption and she'd locked up hard. Her debut was supposed to be tonight, and he'd promised Sandy Markham, the Queen's Entertainment Director, that Rosie would be up and dealing by 6:00 p. M.

He hit enter, and Rosie's arms swung protectively across what would have been her breasts if she'd had them. "Please, sir!" she said in a sultry, come-hither voice. "You're making me blush!"

Markham burst out laughing. "Good heavens! What are you doing to her, Jerry?"

"Trying to find out why it's hanging up." He typed in another command.

"Please, sir! You're making me blush!"

"That," Markham said, still giggling, "is funny as hell!"

Esterhausen ignored her and kept working. His boss had promised dire consequences if Rosie screwed up, and Esterhausen was painfully aware that he and his company's card-playing robot were both on display. If Rosie didn't perform as promised — and by showtime tonight — they might both find themselves out of a job.

"Please, sir! You're making me blush!"

Several other ship employees had heard the exchange and were gathering around now — one of the bartenders, a couple of janitorial types sweeping the deck, and a dark, Arabic-looking man with the badge that said he was a Ship's Security officer. "Why does it keep saying that?" the security officer asked.

Esterhauser sighed. "It's designed to banter with the customers," he said. "The program's smart enough to identify if someone is male or female — it reads the tonal qualities of your voice, actually — and to respond to a few hundred different words, phrases, and movements we've programmed into its operating system. It says that in response to four or five different risque comments it might hear, or if a man tries to touch its… its chest. Right at the moment, though, it's stuck in a loop, and I can't… Hang on. Wait just a sec… "

He typed in two more lines of code and hit enter. Rosie's arms came down to the ready position, hands slightly flexed just above the tabletop before her. "Awaiting input," she said in her sexiest voice.

"I'll just bet you are, girl," Markham said, and she laughed again.

"That's obscene," the security officer said, though whether he was referring to Rosie or to Markham's bawdy comment Esterhausen couldn't tell. The man shook his head as he walked off.

Esterhausen typed in "Run Program 1" and hit enter. The hands flexed, stretched in an eerily human way, then picked up a deck of cards nearby. The hands began moving, shuffling the cards too fast for the eye to follow. "That's more like it," Esterhausen said.

"When your lot gets one of these to do the housework," Markham said, "give me a call, okay?"

"When one of these does the housework, Sandy, we'll all be obsolete!" He began packing up the keyboard and the scattered items of testing equipment on the table.

"May I give you a hand with this, then?" Markham offered.

She was holding Rosie's body, a female mannequin torso, complete with generous breasts, and draped in the top of a black ball gown that left the shoulders bare. "Sure," Esterhausen said. "It opens here… snaps shut like this."

The unit closed around the robot's central pylon, creating a bizarre mix of human and machine — a woman's body with mechanical arms and hands and a TV monitor for a head.

"Please, sir!" Rosie said as he straightened the hang of the gown, displaying her plastic cleavage. The monitor swiveled so that the camera and the woman's face peered directly at him. "I'm not that kind of girl!"

"What kind of girl are you, then?" Markham asked, grinning.

"Expensive, ma'am," Rosie told her, rotating her monitor to face Markham with a mechanical hum and a click. "So please keep your hands to yourself!"

Esterhausen felt a wave of relief. Maybe this cruise wasn't going to be so bad after all. When Rosie worked properly, she could utterly charm her audience, holding them spellbound.

Through the broad windows of the Pyramid Casino, he saw the sun dance off the waters of the Solent, the straits tucked in between Southampton Water and the Isle of Wight. Off the aft port quarter, he noticed the towering gray cliff of a Royal Navy aircraft carrier anchored in Stokes Bay, off Gosport and Spithead.

The ship raised some unexpected memories. Damned Navy bastards, he thought.

Carolyn Howorth sat at one of the tables in the elegant Atlantean Club, her laptop before her. The words Charlie: So how's it feel to be a rich bitch now? appeared on her screen.

She grinned, and typed back her response. I could get used to this. I feel pampered. Where R you?

Charlie: Back in my hotel getting ready to check out.

Can't get them to let U stay a few days?

Charlie: It would take that long to fill out the paperwork.

The server brought her the tea she'd ordered. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Will there be anything else?"

"If I think of anything, I'll give 3 yell."

The club offered broad, high windows looking out to both port and starboard. In front of her was the coast of southern England and the city of Portsmouth. Several Navy ships were at anchor off Stokes Bay, and the Solent Express, a hovercraft ferry, made its way across the open water in a haze of spray. From here she could make out the white point of the Spinnaker, the modern-art tower. Rising from the Portsmouth waterfront, designed to look like a mast supporting a billowing spinnaker sail.

Carolyn snuggled back in her padded seat and wiggled her bare toes in the carpet. Yes, she could definitely get used to this.

The ship maintained its own Internet service, connected to the Net by satellite, allowing Carolyn to get her e-mail, exchange text messages with Charlie, and also check in with Peters at work. Vacation this might be, but it was a working vacation, and Carolyn was expected to log in each day to keep up with things. Her laptop ran its own encryption program, so she could use it as a secure link with GCHQ at Menwith Hill — not that she expected to be beaming top secret messages back and forth with the home office. Her job was strictly one of light reconnaissance, checking out the Atlantis Queen's security systems and looking for ways that GCHQ or the American NSA could use them to good advantage.

So when R U leaving? she typed.

Charlie: Flight out of Heathrow at 2115. Red-eye to BWI.

It was an unfamiliar expression. Red-eye?

Charlie: Means I'll be up all night.

Well, make Rubens give you some time off tomorrow.

Charlie: VERY unlikely! Got to run. You enjoy your cruise! I intend to!

Carolyn broke the connection, checked her tea, then poured herself a cup. The lounge was almost deserted at this hour of the morning, but she was aware of the small dark plastic domes worked inconspicuously into the ceiling at various points — surveillance cameras connected with the Ship's Security Office.

That, she decided, would be her first order of business — talking with the head security officer and seeing if she could get a tour.

Carolyn Howorth began typing, opening up the ship's home page and searching the menu for ship's officers.

There he was. David Llewellyn, Director Shipboard Security. She began composing an e-mail to him.