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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Soldier of God
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Liese laid her purse on the table. “Are they up and about at this hour?”
“I saw a light, but it was in the staff wing,” Ziegler said.
“One of them had to take a pee then,” LeFevre suggested. They were both very young and very superior, though Ziegler had already tried to hit on her.
“Any telephone calls overnight?” Liese asked, heading into the tiny kitchen to heat the pot for some tea.
“Just the school,” LeFevre said. “About nine.”
“One of the kids sick?” The prince had a wife and four children—three girls and a boy, all away at boarding school outside Zurich.
“The school didn’t call; the Prince’s wife called them,” LeFevre said.
Liese stopped what she was doing and went back into the great room. “That was late for her to call the school. Who did she talk to? What did she want?”
“The headmaster. She wants her kiddies back home with her. And she sounded as if she was in a great hurry—”
“
Ve
rdammt,” Liese said, going for her phone. “The prince is coming home—either that, or something is about to go bad for them, and they’re circling the wagons. Either way we’re going to need some intercept people up here.”
LeFevre was confused. “What do you mean?”
“It’s the start of term, you idiot. They were supposed to stay there until December break. If she’s called them home, it means she’s talked to her husband.” The operations officer at Nidwalden came on the line, and Liese began issuing her instructions.
On the bridge of the
Spirit of ’98
First Officer Matt LaBlanc studied the overhead multifunction monitor, his pale blue eyes narrowed with puzzlement. He was an excellent, if unimaginative officer, who did everything strictly by the book.
He picked up the ship’s phone and called engineering. “We’re losing speed over the bottom; is there a problem?”
Sterling Granger, the engineering officer on duty, came to the phone. “RPMs are steady at seven hundred. We might have picked up something on one of the props. Stand by.”
Besides LeBlanc, the only other crew on the bridge were Officer-in-Training Scott Abfalter and the helmsperson, Able-Bodied Seaman Nina Lane, who was so tiny she was barely able to see over the top of the ship’s wheel. The weather tonight wasn’t much different than it normally was at this time of year. The
Spirit
was taking the seas in her stride; she was built for these waters, but a couple of minutes earlier she had suddenly lost a half knot of speed over the bottom as registered by their bottomsounding sonar. The present weather was a known, as were the tidal and wind-driven currents, but none of those factors could explain the loss in speed. It was almost as if they were towing a sea anchor.
Granger, whose real name was Babrak Pahlawan, came back. “I’m showing the same thing here. We may have picked up some debris on one of the props.”
“Wouldn’t we be able to feel the vibration if the shafts were out of balance?” LeBlanc asked. This was the first trip he’d made with Granger, and he didn’t have a measure of the man yet.
“Not necessarily. It depends on what we’ve picked up and how it’s streaming, if that’s the problem,” Granger said. “Stand by.”
Something wasn’t right to LeBlanc, who’d been with the company for ten years. He had the hours for the Master of the Oceans certificate, and he would be taking the test in a couple of months. Granger’s explanation
didn’t make any sense to him. “How’s the helm feel?” he asked Lane. “Have you noticed any change in the past few minutes?”
The young woman hesitated a moment. “I’m not sure, sir.”
“You have the wheel; you’re the only one who can tell me,” LeBlanc said, trying to be as reassuring as he could be.
“It feels sluggish,” she said, diffidently, “like there’s something wrong with the steering gear, or the rudder or something.”
Granger came back to the phone. “The shafts are balanced.”
“Could one of our rudders be out of alignment, somehow, or maybe bent?”
“It’s possible,” Granger said, “but there’ve been no collision reports. Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll check on it.”
“Right,” LeBlanc said. He hung up the phone and stood for several long moments staring at the multifunction display. The numbers he was reading and what Granger told him simply did not add up.
The sweeping view from the bridge was nothing short of magnificent during the day, but at night very little could be seen beyond the reflections of the various instruments in the windows and the cast of the ship’s running lights on the waters. They had passed the small settlement of Kake to their starboard several minutes ago. Its airfield beacon was very prominent. Forty minutes earlier they had left the lights of the even smaller settlement of Fanshaw to their port. Out ahead there was nothing except for the occasional blinking green or red channel marker, and the village and airfield of Petersburg fifty miles to the south where they would put in tonight. On moonlit nights the glaciers glowed with an eerie violet cast, and on some special evenings in the fall the aurora borealis flashed and wavered from horizon to horizon as if the entire world were on fire. But tonight all was flat twilight outside the windows of the bridge, and First Officer LeBlanc was concerned, though he couldn’t put his finger on exactly why.
The intercom phone buzzed. It was Granger in engineering. “There may be a slight drag on the starboard rudder post. But it’s nothing serious, and certainly there’s nothing we can do about it until we get to Seattle.”
LeBlanc glanced at the multifunction display. Their speed had increased slightly, but the RPMs had climbed by ten revolutions. That wasn’t
right. “Keep an eye on it,” he told the engineering officer. “If there’s any change let me know.”
“Roger.”
LeBlanc stepped over to the helm. “Excuse me,” he told the young AB. He took the wheel, and slowly moved it a quarter turn to starboard. The ship’s head came right, but sluggishly. He turned the wheel back to port until the ship swung to its original course, and then he neutralized the helm.
Something was definitely amiss. “The helm is yours,” he told Lane and she took the wheel from him.
The captain’s strict rule was that if something appeared to be out of order, he was to be called, no matter the time of day or night, no matter what he was doing. LeBlanc called the chief steward’s alcove adjacent to the Grand Salon.
“With my compliments, ask the captain to come to the bridge.”
“Is there a problem, Mr. LeBlanc?” Chief Steward Tony Bianco asked. LeBlanc had shipped with the man for the past five years. Bianco was a dynamo of an officer whose proudest achievement was serving as number four on the steward’s staff of the
Queen Elizabeth II
.
“No. And it wouldn’t do to alarm the passengers.”
“Yes, sir.”
LeBlanc hung up the intercom phone and glanced up at the multifunction display. Their speed had crept up a little higher, but so had the RPMs.
“Is something wrong, sir?” Abfalter asked. He had come to the Spirit right out of the Merchant Marine Academy.
“If it’s anything at all, it’s just a minor problem in engineering that somebody doesn’t want to answer for,” LeBlanc said. But that didn’t seem right to him.
Captain Bruce Darling, all six feet six of him, arrived a couple of minutes later, his summer white uniform incredibly crisp. He was an even greater stickler for details than his first officer. He took in his bridge crew and the ship’s instruments in one sweep, his gaze lingering for just an extra moment on the multifunction monitor.
“What’s the problem?”
LeBlanc explained his misgivings and the steps he had taken to isolate
the problem. Darling took the helm, moving the wheel to starboard and then back to port exactly as his first officer had done. “We’re towing something,” he said. “Maybe one of the life rafts came adrift, or the stern anchor. Go aft and check it out.”
LeBlanc felt foolish that he had not suggested it. He resolved not to forget the feel of the helm. “Just be a minute, sir,” he said.
He left the bridge, hurried past the owner’s suite, which was occupied by former secretary of defense Shaw and his wife, and took the elevator down three levels to the main deck just forward of the galley. Out on the promenade deck he hurried past the Klondike Dining Room, empty now that dinner was over except for the cleanup crew. The passengers had moved to the Grand Salon forward and up one deck for the evening’s entertainment, but even this far aft, LeBlanc could hear the music and laughing. The beasts, as passengers were called, though never to their faces, were having a good time. But then for the money they paid for these cruises they ought to be having a good time.
The blinds were drawn on Soapy’s Parlor, the farthest aft passenger space, where on nights like these there was usually a poker game going that would last well into the wee hours of the morning. Technically, gambling was not allowed within three miles of the shoreline, but even though the stakes were usually high—often in the thousands of dollars—the ship’s officers were encouraged by the company to turn a blind eye, though that bothered LeBlanc. It would be different once he had his own ship.
As soon as he came around the curve of the aft bulkhead, he knew there was a problem. A one-inch line, leading overboard beneath the lowest rung of the rail, was secured to a port cleat. They were indeed towing something. He crossed the afterdeck and peered over the stern. A fairly large sportfisherman, but with a low-slung bridge deck, its VHF whips laid flat, wallowed in Spirit’s wake. It was no wonder their speed had dropped and steering was sluggish. Whatever fool had set up the towing rig had not used a proper three-point bridle, nor had he given the towline enough scope. Though what the boat was doing attached to them was anyone’s guess, at this point LeBlanc was more curious than alarmed.
He turned to call the bridge from one of the deck intercom phones when a dark figure, clad in the dress uniform of a cruise ship captain, stepped out of the deeper shadows. “Who are you—”
A thunderclap burst in LeBlanc’s head, and he did not feel his body fall into the water because he was already dead.
Khalil stood at the open doorway to the darkened Soapy’s Parlor. The five elderly gentlemen who had been playing poker had been shot to death, their bodies hidden out of sight in storage lockers just minutes ago. Two of his operators had just tossed the officer’s body overboard.
“Who was he?” Khalil asked.
“LeBlanc, the first officer,” Adani said. “We’re well rid of him; he could have caused trouble.”
“Who else will be trouble?”
“The captain and the chief engineer. But both of them will be in the Grand Salon—” Adani hesitated. He stared at the stern rail, as if something had just occurred to him. “We might have a slight problem,” he said, turning to Khalil.
“What is it?”
“LeBlanc was on the bridge tonight. The only thing that would bring him back here is if he suspected there was a problem. They might have detected the tow. But before he left the bridge, he would have called Captain Darling.”
“Where’s the problem?”
“The captain carries a satphone wherever he goes.”
Khalil had considered the problem of the satellite phone in the communications shack, and the likelihood that Shaw or his bodyguard would be carrying one. The comm center and the bodyguard were the main preliminary targets. They never guessed that the captain would have a satphone. They figured that they would catch him in the Grand Salon. Once they had control of him, the psychological effect on the crew and passengers would make their jobs much easier. But that was no longer likely.
“We will kill him,” Khalil said, the decision easy. Automatic weapons in the hands of a determined force were all the psychological effect they would need. He glanced at his watch. It was 10:10 P.M. They were dead on schedule.
“Shall I give the word?” Adani asked.
“No, I’ll do it,” Khalil said. “Go back to your station in the Grand Salon, and prepare your people. We strike in five minutes.”
Adani’s eyes were bright with excitement. He nodded to Khalil and the others.
“Insha’allah,”
he said,
God’s will
, and he headed forward.
One man would make his way to the communications shack and disable the radio gear; three would make a quick but thorough sweep of the crew’s quarters and kill any crewmen still in their bunks; and the last man would go with Khalil and Zahir to the bridge, where they would kill all the crew except for the helmsman and disable the captain’s satphone.
When the ship was secure, which Khalil estimated should take no more than four or five minutes, one man would remain on the bridge, one in the communications center, and two in engineering. Everyone else would converge on the Grand Salon and their final objective.
Khalil keyed his walkie-talkie. “Granger, phase one, five minutes.”
Pahlawan, in the engine room, came back at once: “Roger.”
Khalil pocketed his walkie-talkie, checked the load on his Steyr pistol, and looked up at his men, his dark eyes narrowed malevolently. “I want to be off this boat with our prisoner in H-plus-thirty minutes. Do not fail me.”
“Insha’allah,”
they muttered and melted into the darkness.
Khalil led the way forward, past the Klondike Room where two of his operators had already gunned down the four steward’s assistants who’d been cleaning up after dinner. He held up just a moment at the door to the thwartships corridor adjacent to the galley. A man dressed in a steward’s uniform emerged from the intersecting corridor and went into the galley. He was one of Adani’s people. He carried a RAK machine pistol with a large suppressor attached to the end of the short barrel.
Already crewmen all over the ship were dying in their bunks or at their duty stations, while none of the passengers had any idea that the Spirit was under attack. Long before any alarm could be raised, it would be too late. Within a few minutes the ship would no longer be under Cruise West’s control, and Khalil was certain that no power on earth could change the inevitable outcome that was already set in motion.
The only sounds were those of the ship’s engines, the wind in the rigging, and the music and laughter coming from the Grand Salon.
Khalil and his two operators, their machine pistols at the ready, slipped into the corridor, hurried noiselessly to the stairway next to the elevator, and went up three flights to the bridge deck.
The covered area and the sundeck aft were empty, as were the passageways. Zahir quickly checked the owner’s suite to make sure that Shaw hadn’t come back to his cabin for some reason. He came out, shaking his head, and they proceeded down the starboard passageway and up the stairs to the bridge.

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