Assault on the Empress (13 page)

“You can see where they got the term horny,” Jenny whispered, giggling a little, as the lights went out.

He got into bed beside her and took care of the stockings, throwing them away, then slipped between her thighs. “Do it now,” she whispered. “There's a lot of night left to do it again. ”

“All right,” and Cross felt her hands guiding him as he kissed her.

Most of his time in the Navy hadn't been spent aboard ship, but he'd spent enough time to know when a vessel the size of the
Empress
stopped. The
Empress
had stopped.

Abe Cross, his right arm asleep under her, slipped his arm from around her shoulders, her head from his chest, and sat up, massaging his arm to get the feeling back. With the porthole curtains closed and because of the constant westward movement of the vessel, he had no real circadian rhythm sense of what time it was. He looked at the luminous black face of the Rolex Sea Dweller on his left wrist and squinted his eyes to get in focus. It was 4:00 A.M.

Unless it had been a faster trip to New York City than anyone had anticipated, there was trouble.

Cross swung his legs over the side of the bed, realized he had to urinate badly, and stood up.

He stumbled across the cabin to the head and hit the light switch. There was no light. He urinated anyway, didn't bother flushing and left. He found the chest of drawers and opened the top drawer, shuffling around inside until he found the two items he wanted, a pocket-sized mini-Maglite and the larger, three D-cell version. He turned on neither but instead walked to the bed.

Cross sat on the edge. “Jenny. Wake up. Do it now. Wake up, darling.”

“Ohh, that sounds nice—‘darlin.' ” She rolled over. He kissed her eyelids and she opened her eyes. “What time—”

“It's about four A.M. The
Empress
is stopped and there's no electrical power. With these cabins so soundproofed, I don't know what's going on. You get dressed in something. I've got a pair of sweat pants and a hooded sweatshirt you can get by with. The pants have a cord you can tighten to adjust the waist. Might look silly with your high-heeled shoes, but a lot more practical than your dress in case there's something up. Now hurry. Will you need a flashlight to find the head?”

“No, no, what—”

“I don't know what's wrong. Go to the bathroom and I'll find your underpants for you and get that sweatsuit. And you were wonderful.”

“So were you,” and she hugged her arms around him tightly for a second, then slipped out from under the sheet, his eyes accustomed to the darkness now, her slender, long-legged body looking like a wraith moving through the darkness.

He cupped his hand around the head of the smaller flashlight until he had the beam focused for pinpoint use and then searched the floor for her underpants, found them and her stockings too in case she wanted them, then put them on the bed. He went to the closet. He took down the sweat pants and hooded sweatshirt and put them on the bed for her as well. He went to the dresser again and found himself a pair of underpants and skinned into them. He took two pairs of socks, put one pair on the bed for her and sat down, pulling on the other pair. “Abe?”

“I've got your things for you—you're probably better off with a pair of my socks. They're on the bed,” Cross told her, patting her fanny as he crossed the cabin again to the closet. He found a pair of Levi's and pulled them on. His track shoes. He stuffed his feet into them, telling himself he'd worry about tying them later. A black knit shirt. He couldn't tell in the dark, except that he owned no other color at the moment.

He pulled it on over his head and went back to the dresser. He took out the one-and-three-quarter-inch Safariland Garrison strap. It had the standard Garrison buckle that could be used in conjunction with the belt as a flail if needed. He started threading it through his belt loops.

There was time now, Jenny still dressing, so he dropped to one knee and tied a shoe, switched knees and tied the other one.

And then there was a knock at the door.

“Probably somebody from the crew. But hide on the other side of the bed, just in case,” Cross ordered.

“All right, what's—”

“I don't know.” He went to the door, took off the chain—they didn't hold against even a moderately powerful person who knew how to use his body weight anyway—and as he opened the door, he shifted the larger aircraft aluminum bodied flashlight into his right hand, ready to use it like a nightstick.

There were panic lights on in the corridor, the kind that ran off batteries, and he could see clearly the face of the man just outside the doorway. “Mr. Cross. I'm afraid I lied the other evening when I said I was a journalist. I'm really with British Intelligence. Is Miss Hall with you?”

“Yes. Come in,” Cross told him. It was Andrew Comstock and there was a flashlight in his right hand and a look on his face that in the grey light seemed to combine both fear and determination. “Jenny. It's Mr. Comstock,” Cross announced, starting for the bed. He grabbed the blanket off it and walked back toward the door, giving it to Comstock. “Roll it up and slide it against the base of the door. It'll block light from getting out under the crack and slow up anyone trying to force the door. Is that part of the problem?”

Comstock—or whoever he was—took the blanket and started stuffing it against the bottom of the cabin door. “That is part of the problem. Are you with CIA, Mr. Cross? I rather suspected you might be.”

“Why?” It was Jenny Hall, coming around the bed, who asked the question.

“There's at least one American agent aboard this vessel whom I know of. That's why I was sent. I was in the area and your country's people asked my country's people to help out, NATO or something. All I know is the chap's got something stolen from the Russians. On my end, we weren't told if the Americans were sending in another agent to shepherd this chap themselves. I was just ordered to hang around and see if any help needed to be rendered. And now the
Empress
has been stopped. Some sort of terrorist group. Could be Russian-inspired. They have their dirty fingers in a lot of pies these days. There!” And he stood up, the blanket wedged against the bottom of the door fully. Cross turned on the big Maglite.

“Well, you secret agent guys always have guns and stuff in your exploding attache cases, right?”

“I was just about to ask you the same, actually,” Comstock smiled. “Could you avert the light a smidge?”

Cross moved the flashlight's beam downward.

“Terrorists?” Jenny Hall said, incredulous sounding.

“I couldn't sleep and I pulled on these clothes and went for a turn around the deck. Hadn't felt myself all evening. Why I missed your performance, actually. And suddenly I heard some commotion up on the bridge and then searchlights came on going over the water and there was this yacht lying just off the port bow. I heard what sounded like a few silenced shots from the bridge and then I saw some of the people I'd seen the last few days about the ship. A couple of crewspeople and a few passengers and God knows who else. But they had guns and two of them were moving the captain between them and they had guns pressed against him and his hands looked bound behind him and there was a black sack over his head.”

“Aww, shit,” Cross snarled. “Sorry for using the ‘s' word, Jenny.” He sat on the chair, feeling Jenny's dress starting to slip off the back of the chair, catching it. She was beside him, took the dress, folded her arms across her abdomen, hugging it to her. “How many?”

At least a dozen came up over the side from the yacht. Carrying things that looked like explosives.”

“Why did you come here?” Jenny asked.

“I remembered a bit more about Mr. Cross than I let on. The articles that appeared following that airline hijacking. They said the lone survivor, Lieutenant Cross, was suspected of being a Navy SEAL. Frankly, the whole story about being the substitute piano player smelled a bit. So, I put two and two together and assumed Mr. Cross was the CIA chap.”

“I'm not,” Cross told him.

“Damn,” Comstock hissed.

“There's a gun hidden in my cabin, if we can get to it. And we have to find the man traveling as Alvin Leeds.”

Abe Cross just looked at Jenny Hall. “What?”

“It wasn't the piano player thing that was contrived. It was the singer story. Doris Knight was asked to quit so I could take her place.”

Abe Cross just closed his eyes for a moment.

The Englishman seemed to know his stuff; Cross gave this Andrew Comstock devil his due. “They were speaking English, if you call it that. I made them as being Irish. And that could be bad. They're about as fond of we British as the Mid-East terrorists are of Jews. And there're a goodly number of British subjects aboard this vessel.”

“What you said about the Russians,” Cross whispered as the three of them waited at the L of the corridor.

“Russians? Yes?”

“If this CIA guy you mentioned has something the Russians wanted, could they have used the Irish terrorists to get it? I mean, hide behind a terrorist raid?”

“Good point, really, Mr. Cross. But, somehow, I have a gut feeling they didn't in this case. I think we're living through the nightmare of coincidence.”

“I agree,” Jenny Hall added.

Cross peered round the corner and saw nothing. Jenny's cabin was in that direction, about half the length of the corridor down. “Run for it?”

“Agreed.” Comstock nodded.

Cross took Jenny's hand and pulled her with him, breaking into a dead run. He'd made certain that she took her key out of the little beaded bag she'd used as a purse so there'd be no fumbling in front of the cabin door.

They kept running, Cross looking back, Comstock right behind them, running well. “Here! Here it is!” Jenny announced to Cross unnecessarily. She shoved her key into his hand and he thrust the key into the lock, opened it, shoved her inside and waited for Comstock, then pulled the door closed after them.

Cross shone the larger of his two lights low across the floor. Her portholes weren't curtained. “Get those curtains close,” Cross ordered. Jenny took one, Comstock the other. Then Jenny went to the closet, using the mini-Maglite, Comstock packing the bedspread along the crack between the cabin door and floor.

“I'll be just a second. Gotta change and get my gun.”

“Got any other weapons?” Cross asked. He knew of one, her body, and he kept putting down the urge to curse her out or hit her or kiss her. The part about not knowing which was the hardest part.

“I've got a small knife, too. I was supposed to just be around here if the Russians tried anything, never even contact our man unless they did. And he was never told I'd be here, just that this was the ship to take.”

“Wise move,” Cross remarked.

“Tell me, Miss Hall,” Comstock began. “Is Leeds the chap's real name? I was never told, but assumed it was probably false?”

“I think it is,” she answered from half inside the closet, using the darkness like a screen to dress behind, Cross imagined. “I was never given another name. I've been working in Europe for the past eight months and I'm a little out of touch with what's going on back at Langley.”

“Your singing's a cover, then,” Cross started rather than asked. “Kind of like Bob Culp and Bill Cosby used to do on television except you don't play tennis. Right?”

“I guess. That's a little before my time, but I've caught some of the reruns. Funny show. Okay. I'm set.”

She emerged from the closet, his sweatsuit replaced by a pair of tight-fitting jeans with too-short legs that looked as though they'd been washed a thousand times and run over by a truck—evidently brand new and just in fashion. She had put a long-sleeved pullover sweater on instead of his hooded sweatshirt. And in her hands were her weapons. The pistol was a Colt Officer's ACP .45 in stainless steel. The knife was a Cold Steel Mini-Tanto.

“Let me see the knife, unless either of you are into knives more than I am,” Cross began.

She gave him the knife.

“Any spare magazines for the pistol, Miss Hall?”

“Call me Jenny, Andrew. And yes. Two spares, six rounds in each, just six in the gun. And I'm keeping it.”

Cross looked up from inspecting the knife. “What the hell do you do with this?” There were divers straps attached to each of the two belt slots, the kind that gave with movement.

“I wear it sometimes under a loose shirt, all right?”

“Is Jenny Hall your real name?”

“Yes. And I really do love you,” she told him matter-of-factly. “And I tried to tell you, well, before. But you didn't want to talk.”

He shook his head. “I know. Don't remind me. And I meant what I asked you, before, too. All right!?” He started taking the diving straps off the sheath to pocket them. He had no way of strapping the knife to his leg or his arm, but it would fit nicely inside the trouser band of his Levi's against his skin.

“I'm sorry I interrupted you two,” Comstock said suddenly. “I'd kept trying to tell myself you weren't an item. Oh well,” Comstock exhaled. “Perhaps I'll catch the next pretty girl that comes along.”

Jenny leaned up and kissed Comstock on the cheek. “Sorry, you being an ally and everything.” She laughed. And then her voice was perfectly serious. “Whatever this thing is Alvin Leeds is carrying, it's important and sensitive. We have to find him and quickly before the terrorists have the ship totally under control.”

Cross looked at his watch. “If they don't by now, they will soon enough. They've had plenty of time to do it. What's this Leeds look like?”

“Black chap about your height, and American of course; all I was told,” Comstock volunteered.

“I memorized his face from some photographs,” Jenny Hall announced. “But that doesn't do you guys any good. So, we all stick together.”

“Are you good with that pistol, Jenny?” Comstock asked. “Nothing implied, of course, but I'm on the service pistol team and I've used a gun a time or two before for this sort of work.”

Cross looked at him. “I know. You're in the ‘double O' section and you have a license to—”

Comstock cut him off with a laugh. “Wish we had half the budget the motion-picture johnnies have. We might be able to pull off some of that spectacular derring-do ourselves.”

“I'll keep the gun, thank you, Andrew. I've—ahh—I know Abe better than you. No offense. I mean, all we have to say you are who you say you are is that you say you are.”

Cross just looked at her, shaking his head. “Don't try saying that again.”

“Agreed,” Comstock told them. “And good procedure, as well. Well then, madame? What's next?”

“Abe, any ideas?” She looked at him, her face pretty in the shadows from the flashlight he held.

“Just find the guy. If we meet any bad guys, try for their weapons if we have to brace 'em. But once we do find him, the only way off this tub is that yacht Comstock mentioned,” and he nodded toward the self-proclaimed British agent. “They gotta have a radio. You can call in some help. If these guys are Irish, they'll have taken the
Empress
to put some sort of squeeze on the British. Which means they won't be blowing up the ship right away. Once we have Leeds, you and Leeds,” he said to Jenny, “can get away in the yacht and get help or at least get that whatever it is away to safe hands. And,” and he turned to look at Comstock, “you and I can stay behind to work from inside against the terrs. If we get that far.”

“You leave with me,” Jenny Hall said adamantly.

“No. I walked out on one of these parties once, and they killed everybody they held hostage. I'm never doing that again,” Cross told her.

Her voice was unlike he had ever heard it. “Now I remember, too.”

The memories washed through him in an instant, memories he used to see every time he closed his eyes. The Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists taking over the aircraft, diverting it, brutalizing the Jewish passengers and Arabs sympathetic to Western democracy. He had tried to help. They had found his United States Armed Forces I.D. card, then started beating him to death. He'd made a break for it, killing some of them, pursued, nearly killed again, escaped. By the time he had reached friendly territory, everyone he'd left aboard the aircraft had been murdered. A pregnant girl he had gotten to know a little before everything went bad—Darwin Hughes's daughter-in-law—had been among the ones killed. Hughes's son, her husband, had killed himself in his despair. And Cross had turned to alcohol to try to forget it all when they had told him that there was no way to go after the terrorists, nothing that could be done to get justice for the victims. Out of the gutter of his own despair, Darwin Hughes had called him, recruited Lewis Babcock, a boy named Feinberg and himself to strike at Iran's central training headquarters in the Elburz Mountains along the Soviet border. Feinberg had given his life. The mission had come off. And it was over as quickly as it had begun. And Abe Cross had thought it was out of his life, all of it.

But it was back again. These Irish terrorists were just like any others. Their cause was so glorious and so special and noble that they had a license to bomb department stores, shoot up school buses, kill women and children and old people. And it was all for the good of the people, whoever they were.

Abe Cross looked at Jenny, then Andrew Comstock. “Let's do it.” And he started for the door, the little knife in his palm.