Wednesday, 25 May

1610 hours (Zulu +3)

Motor yacht Beluga

Indian Ocean, 380 miles southeast of Socotra

They'd crossed the equator in the wee hours of the morning on Tuesday, some thirty-six hours earlier. As they kept motoring north, sails furled, Jean had continued to hammer at Paul about what was happening, but neither Paul nor their hosts seemed to have any idea about what was really going on.

"It must be terrorists," Karl had said time after time. "It must be terrorists." But beyond the mute and tragic testimony of those bodies adrift in the oil slick a week before, there'd been no announcement, no official word of any kind except for continuing stories over the news networks about Yuduki Maru's mysterious change of course. Other news bulletins, from Madagascar and the Seychelles, had reassured Beluga's crew that it was indeed the plutonium ship they were still tracking on their radar, but the only solid reporting had been what they themselves had called in.

And Jean knew just how thin that information really was. For several days now, Paul, Rudi, and Karl had been arguing among themselves about whether or not to take Beluga in close to the Japanese freighter in order to give her a visual inspection and, possibly, hail her crew. Paul and Karl were afraid that if the ship had been hijacked, they would be putting Beluga and all aboard at risk. One burst of machine-gun fire, and the yacht would be transformed into a sinking wreck, with everyone aboard her dead. Rudi continued to argue that terrorists wanted nothing more than a forum where they could air their political grievances and who better to provide such a forum than Rudi Kohler? Although Rudi was Beluga's master, however, he'd held back from simply deciding to take them in. Jean thought that, despite his reporter's zeal, he too was frightened of what they'd stumbled into.

The women, for the most part, kept out of it, though they speculated among themselves endlessly. The sunbathing sessions continued, though for short periods only and never in the middle of the day. In late May, the sun this close to the equator could be ferocious.

Terrorists. Jean wanted nothing to do with terrorists. She was still certain that she'd heard gunfire on Monday night, and the memory haunted her. Rudi insisted that she couldn't possibly have heard anything across thirty miles of open ocean. She'd heard something, though, just before midnight, a low, dull, double boom out of the north that might have been thunder... except that the sky had been perfectly clear.

The final decision had been to get closer, but not too close. According to the latest news reports — overflights by aircraft bearing the world's top news personalities were now daily, almost constant events — Yuduki Maru had suffered some kind of damage to her engines and was limping along now at about ten knots. During the night, Beluga had easily closed some of the distance between the two vessels, and the Yuduki Maru was now periodically visible as a dark speck on the northern horizon. According to Viktor, they were less than ten miles away.

"Jean!" Helga waved to her from the beach blanket she was sharing with Gertrude on Beluga's sun deck. "Jean, come join us!"

Waving back, she climbed the short ladder to the sun deck. She was wearing bikini briefs and nothing else; somehow, during these past few days, she'd lost the shyness that had tormented her through the first couple of weeks of the cruise.

Was it the vague sense of danger focused on the plutonium ship that had changed her? Or had the uncertainty simply let her grow closer to the others, until they were more like family than acquaintances? Dropping cross-legged onto the towel, she accepted a bottle of sun block from Gertrude and began lathering it on.

"So what's the word?" Helga wanted to know. "Anything?"

Jean had just come from Beluga's tiny radio shack, their sole link to the outside world via the sat-comm antenna atop the mainmast.

"CNN just broke a story that American commandos tried to board the plutonium ship the other day and failed," Jean replied. "The Pentagon is denying it."

"What about... them?" Gertrude asked, jerking a thumb forward toward the distant freighter. By now, everyone aboard Beluga was assuming that the Yuduki Maru had been hijacked by terrorists, but no one was quite willing to speak of that possibility openly. The faceless hijackers, whoever they were, remained "them" or "those people."

"Nothing," Jean said. "Though there was one interesting related tidbit. It seems Iran is accusing the United States of hijacking one of its navy ships. An oiler named Hormuz."

"Ach," Helga said, disgusted. "Who is terrorizing who?"

"The White House and the Pentagon have both denied the incident."

"Of course." Gertrude made a face. "Militarists!" She gave the word, which meant the same in German as in English, the full, throaty force of its German pronunciation, turning it into a swear word. "When is your country going to learn that the Cold War is over, that militarism is a thing of the past?"

Jean nodded toward the distant freighter. "Maybe when those people learn it doesn't pay to use terror as a political weapon."

"But what could be the point of capturing an Iranian ship?" Helga wondered. "Did they get the wrong target, perhaps?"

Jean shook her head. "I wish I knew. None of it makes much sense." She was staring thoughtfully toward the north, where something was moving against the ultramarine surface of the sea.

"Jean?" Helga asked. "What is it?"

It was a ship... no... it was too small and much too fast to be a ship. It was bow-on, driving the white mustache of a sweeping wake before it as it slap-slapped across the waves toward the Beluga at high speed. In moments, however, it grew from a toy to a sleek, shark-lean craft at least twenty feet longer than the Beluga, with the huge, white sphere of a radar housing perched atop its deckhouse, and with a single turret on the foredeck sporting a long and wicked-looking cannon. A flag with three horizontal bars, green, white, and red from top to bottom, fluttered at the masthead — the flag of revolutionary Iran.

The women stared at the patrol boat, stunned by the suddenness of its appearance. The men remained motionless as well, all but Viktor, who dashed for the companionway going down to Beluga's lower decks. By the time he reappeared, moments later, a bolt-action rifle in his hands, the Iranian craft had circled about and was drawing close to Beluga's starboard side.

Soldiers, heavily armed and wearing khaki uniforms, lined the patrol boat's rail. When Viktor stepped onto the afterdeck with the rifle, a sharp burst of machine gun fire rattled from the craft's bridge, a warning volley that knocked splinters from Beluga's mainmast and boom.

"Her auf damn!" an amplified voice barked from the Iranian craft. "Drop the weapon!"

Reluctantly, Viktor let the rifle clatter to the afterdeck. Iranian soldiers were already vaulting the rail, boarding the Beluga both aft and forward in a rush of shouting, gun-waving men.

Jean screamed as a soldier grabbed her shoulder and shoved her roughly toward the well deck aft. "Get your hands off me!"

She was answered with a stinging slap across her back. "Akab behraveed!"

She didn't understand, but the meaning was clear. She allowed herself to be dragged along. The yacht's entire crew was herded aft. Resistance, even verbal protest, was met with savage blows from fists or rifle butts. Helga struggled in the grip of two soldiers, one of whom was clutching at her naked breasts, and Karl lurched toward his wife and her attackers, fists clenched. "Bastard! Nicht doch!"

A single gunshot barked, propelling Karl forward. Blood splattered the white paint of Beluga's deckhouse as he crumpled to the deck. "Karl! Nein!" Helga tried to reach her husband, but her captors forced her into line with the others. Karl scrabbled weakly on the deck for a few more moments, clutching the wound in his chest, then lay still.