Prepared For Rage

Lastly, and this was the most significant reason, in spite of the intensive training they had all received over some part of the past six months, these men were amateurs. They'd never seen combat. They'd never been under fire, if you didn't count the riot in Dusseldorf, and Akil didn't. Akil's plan depended on secrecy and stealth. The last thing they needed was for an inexperienced soldier of God to let loose with an AK-47 in the act of piracy on the high seas. Especially when Akil was absolutely certain none of them could hit what they were aiming at with a rifle of that size.

"Ready?" he said.

They nodded. They were wearing dark clothes and dark-colored, rubber-soled shoes. Their pistols were in doubled shoulder rigs, with the extra magazines in belt holsters. With jackets on, they looked a little bulky but that was all.

"Very well," Akil said. "Wait for my signal."

He slipped out of the door and down the passage, remembering the way from his earlier sortie even in the dark and even with all the bodies crammed into it. He tripped over some, he kicked others, but no one made a fuss. They were either too seasick to protest or too afraid of drawing attention to themselves to speak up, for fear they'd be put over the side before they reached the promised land. The first lesson had been ably demonstrated, and well learned.

When he got to the pilothouse, the captain was still there, perched on the high wooden chair in front of the wheel as if he hadn't left it in the five days they'd been at sea. "Ah," the captain said, "Mr. Mallah."

Akil had had so many different pseudonyms over the past year that for a surreal moment he wanted to look around to see who the captain was speaking to. Instead, he locked the door to the pilothouse behind him and pulled his pistol. "Captain, I'm afraid I'm taking command of your boat."

"Are you, now," the captain said, unsurprised. He took a leisurely puff on his cigar, and held it out to blow smoke on the lit end. Instead, he flicked the cigar straight at Akil, and rocketed out of his chair after it.

Akil instinctively dodged the cigar and twisted to one side to avoid being tackled. He hit the captain on the head with his pistol butt as he passed by, a glancing blow, not hard enough to knock him out but enough to get his attention. The captain hit the bulkhead hard and tumbled into a clumsy pile. He groaned.

"Shut up," Akil said, and hauled the captain to his feet and heaved him back into his chair. "Alter course to 240, due west."

Either still recovering from the blow to his head or faking it, the captain didn't immediately move. Akil took his left hand-the captain had been smoking with his right, and Akil needed him functional, at least up to a point-and flattened it against the bulkhead. He tossed his pistol up and caught it by the barrel and brought the butt down as hard as he could on the captain's little finger.

The captain screamed, a hoarse, shocked sound muffled by the engines. In Akil's experience, hands were very sensitive appendages for even the strongest of men. He'd met many a man who could barely tolerate a paper cut. "Don't hesitate when I give you an order. Alter course to due west."

"There is land due west," the captain said, cradling his wounded hand in his lap and rocking back and forth.

"I know that," Akil said. "Alter course, due west. If I have to ask you again I'll cut off your hand."

The captain believed him.

CAPE CANAVERAL, ON BOARD SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR

She had to pee.

She was lying on her back in her seat on the flight deck below the cockpit. The Arabian Knight was on her left. He looked pasty and scared, every drop of arrogance leeched out of him. It must finally have sunk in, what four million pounds of propellant could do if there was a problem during launch. He'd seen the fire trucks, and the ambulances, on their drive to the pad that evening.

It was T minus ninety, ninety minutes to launch, barring problems.

Her diaper rustled every time she moved. She could pee if she had to, but she didn't trust the diaper. What if it leaked? She thought she'd squeezed out every last drop of liquid in her body in the pad toilet, and at this point she was more furious at this betrayal of her body than she was terrified of blowing up.

Because she was terrified, of that there was no doubt. However stoic an appearance she presented to the world, the look on the Arabian Knight's face only mirrored what she felt inside.

In preparation for this day, she had worked and trained as hard as she ever had in her life. School, soloing, getting her commercial license, flying Otters full of tourists to go look at grizzly bears, these were as nothing by comparison. She'd flown formation in the T-38s in everything up to and including IFR approaches into the middle of storms that made her understand why the Greeks had made their head god one of thunder. She had rappelled down the side of the orbiter mock-up practicing emergency egress. She'd killed and eaten a rattlesnake during survival training. She practiced on the robot arm simulator until her own arms burned from sheer tension, and in the pool at Houston she'd practiced EVA maneuvers in the three-hundred-pound spacesuit until she thought she would grow gills. She had learned the function of every single one of the switches and knobs and levers and gauges and digital readouts in the cockpit. In a pinch, if Rick and Mike were both somehow incapacitated, she could land the orbiter at KSC or at Dakar International Airport or in Cold Bay, Alaska, or at any one of the designated shuttle emergency landing sites worldwide.

She was ready. She was ready for launch. She was ready for orbit. She was ready to carry out her mission. But she was also very aware of something the men who had flown the planes into the towers and the Pentagon and that field in Pe

Aircraft were nothing more and nothing less than a thin, fragile skin barely containing thousands of pounds of extremely combustible fuel. She was on the inside with the fuel. If there was any kind of a problem, she was going to burn up with it.

And she would kill anyone, including Cal, her friends, her parents, and Joel Almighty God Minster, if they tried to take her off this flying bomb.

"T minus eighty-nine." Mission Control's voice was calm, almost laconic. The beat of her heart, loud and rapid in her ears, almost drowned it out.

No. She wasn't going to blow up. She wasn't going to screw up. At fifty miles high her silver astronaut pin would turn to gold and every dream she had ever had about space flight since she was nine years old and had read Michael Collins's Carrying the Fire for the first time would come true.

But she still had to pee.

"T minus eighty-eight."

A MILE OFFSHORE OF CAPE CANAVERAL,

ON BOARD USCG CUTTER MUNRO

The shuttle stood on its tail, mated to the solid rocket boosters and the massive external fuel tank, a valiant white spear against the night sky. A brilliant cacophony of stars glittered behind it, shouting the man-made lights onshore into a pale echo. A murmur of appreciation rolled down the deck of Munro and up over the bridge.

"My, isn't she pretty," Senator Schuyler said.

Cal agreed with him, but he agreed with him silently. It was a matter of personal policy never to agree out loud with anything his father said.

He was well aware of how childish that was. He didn't care. Agreeing with his father was always a slippery slope, at the bottom of which the senator lurked, waiting.

They were ru