Where was Brady?
Was he one of the passengers who had made a bad decision?
Yuki found it hard to even breathe.
CHAPTER 58
COLD SALT AIR blew the smell of sweat across the several hundred passengers who were packed on the Pool Deck. Yuki shivered as she sat with her back against a bulkhead. She was jammed against that wall, jammed tight.
Yuki scanned the terror-stricken faces of the passengers, who, like her, had been ripped from their sleep and told that they could be murdered at random at any time, pirate’s choice.
And although she’d been told she was the next to be shot, two other people had already been dragged to a railing and, while screaming for help and pleading “no, no, no,” shot in the back of the head, and their bodies had been hoisted over the side.
As far as Yuki could tell, the murdered passengers hadn’t made a break or hit out or started a fight. They’d been sitting on the deck. Whereas she had taken pictures. There was a death penalty for that.
Possibly she’d been forgotten or her location in the middle of the crowd was inconvenient for Jackhammer’s thugs. If they came for her, could she save herself?
She took a visual tour of the Pool Deck, mapping the structures, the doors, and staircases.
At the bow of the boat was the Luna Grill restaurant, with a bandstand outside it, a raised platform for live entertainment outside the pool.
The middle of the deck was all about the swimming pool, with decking between the edges of the pool and the railings. At the back end of the Pool Deck, the ship’s stern, was the Wave Spa, with a wet bar that had been overturned by the terrorists.
Metal stairs began at the base of both the Grill and the Spa, and those outside staircases ran up one flight to the Sun Deck and running track above the pool. The track was open above the Pool Deck, and the terrorists were using the track as a spy’s nest, a shooting platform.
Right now one of the terrorists was standing above her on the metal stairs near the Grill, only ten feet away. He wasn’t tall, but he was muscular and alert and he carried a massive assault rifle with ammo clips on his belt. His mask hid anything that might be human in him. How could she appeal to a man in a mask?
The male passengers had been moved from wherever they had been sequestered to the part of the deck that was opposite the women, at the far end of the unlit swimming pool. Their backs were to the closed doors of the Water Spa.
Yuki searched the silhouetted grouping of men. Some men stood, but more squatted or sat on the deck behind a ragged line of gunmen. She counted about six of them.
A bright flash in the unrelenting dark caught her eye. It was Brady’s hair. She was sure of it.
He was standing toward the back of the crowd, and she wanted to screw everything and just run to him. But she knew that was irrational. She didn’t even dare to draw his attention. She couldn’t put him in danger. Her tears welled up as she thought about how close he was while so far away.
Just then, as if she had summoned him with her fear, Jackhammer walked onto the track above the Pool Deck, that long, hollow rectangle, with its gun’s-eye view of the passengers.
CHAPTER 59
JACKHAMMER CAME DOWN the metal stairs, and when he reached the Pool Deck, he stepped through the shadows and began to cut through the crowd.
He walked to the long side of the pool and raked the passengers left and right with his eyes. His sickening gaze seemed to stop on her and then, having touched her, move on.
Jackhammer cleared his throat and said, “I’m so sorry for the inconvenience, everyone. I know this stinks, but, you know, if it were up to me, you would be back to your vacation. Eating good food. Enjoying the good life.
“But your captain can’t get anywhere with your cruise line. Apparently there is an obstacle, which means more of you will die. If only the cruise line would wire the money we have asked for. Well for now, be happy that unlike the captain and crew you have fresh air, and perhaps by morning some of you will have breakfast. Sound good?”
Jackhammer turned as one of his men came toward him. They bent their heads toward each other, conferring. Were they talking about her? Yuki saw movement from the stern: a gray-haired man in bright-green pajama bottoms was running in bare feet, holding a deck chair over his head.
Oh, my God, this passenger had snapped.
He stretched up and hurled the chair at Jackhammer, who saw the chair coming toward him and stepped aside.
A woman cried out, “No, Larry, no!”
Jackhammer had his gun aimed even before the chair crashed to the deck. He fired on the gray-haired man. His wife broke through arms that were holding her in place and ran toward her fallen and dying husband.
Jackhammer fired again and the woman’s body jerked before she collapsed on her husband’s chest.