Free Sea of Terror by Stephen Coonts Page A

willing to do whatever must be done to achieve our aims. You hear what I am saying?"
    Again, Ghailiani nodded. His moment of rebellion was fast fading. There was no way he could fight men like these.
    "Good." Khalid turned away and walked out from behind the Dumpster. Ghailiani followed. The truck, he saw, was gone. He'd heard one of Khalid's men moving it a few moments ago, and assumed it had been driven onto the ship.
    He wondered what was on the truck. Explosives, possibly. He looked back at the Dumpster. What, he wondered, had been in that briefcase?
    He wouldn't ask. He couldn't. He wanted to know as little as possible about these terrible men, and their plans for the Atlantis Queen.
    He would do everything they told him, praying that they would be satisfied, that they would release Zahra and Nouzha unharmed.
    And then he would die, because he knew these men would never let him live even if they succeeded in their scheme. Khalid had said "if Allah wills" and sworn upon the Qur'an when he'd promised that Ghailiani would be rewarded, which meant it was not a binding oath.
    Not as binding, at least, as Khalid's solemn three-times invocation of Allah, promising what would happen to Ghailiani and to his family if he failed.
    Ghailiani's stomach gave a sudden, sharp twist. He turned away, doubled over, and vomited on the pier.

Atlantis Queen passenger terminal
    Southampton, England
    Thursday, 1505 hours GMT
    Fred Doherty said, stepping through the glass doors onto the Atlantis Queen pier, "Jesus, is that a police car down there?"
    "Flashing lights, anyway," Sandra Ames said, following him outside. "Let's check it out!"
    "We don't have our equipment," James Petrovich said. He hefted the small video camera in its case that he'd just rescued from the conveyor belt at the security checkpoint. "Just this."
    The three of them were a reporter team for Cable News Entertainment. Doherty was the field producer and director, Ames the reporter, and Petrovich the camera and sound man. From here, just outside the terminal door in front of the ship's gangway, they could see the flash of amber and red lights a hundred yards away, toward the right and near the aft end of the ship.
    Technically, they were a part of Gillian Harper's entourage, though neither Harper's people nor CNE outwardly acknowledged the liaison. They'd been assigned to this cruise to shadow the rock diva; Terry Carter, Gillian's publicist, wanted the exposure, while Doherty's bosses at CNE hoped that Harper would have yet another major and public meltdown and provide even more highly profitable sound bites and video clips for their celebrity news broadcasts.
    Not exactly an inspiring way to make a living, Doherty thought, but it was a living, and a pretty good one. The challenge, of course, was getting close enough to Harper at the right time to get the right footage. She was traveling with her entourage, of course, which included several beefy personal security guards. Despite the arrangement CNE had with Harper's support people, the bodyguards seemed to have the impression that the CNE field team were some kind of paparazzi.
    Which, perhaps, they were. Doherty didn't even know if Harper herself knew the news team was dogging her. It was, he decided, all part of the game, a means of titillating CNE's viewers and making them come back for more. How close can we get this time?
    Maybe by the end of the cruise they could arrange a real interview. Carter had promised something of the sort... or at least suggested that an in-depth interview was possible.
    But no matter how that worked out, CNE's viewers expected the hot steaming inside shit on media stars great and small, and Doherty's team was there to give it to them--even if they had to follow the Harper slut around with a pooper-scooper.
    She was also traveling with her latest lover, so at the very least they might manage a telephoto shot or two of the lovebirds lounging by one of the ship's pools in thongs. Show the viewers