Hijack the Pearl by Robert Mitchell

Author:Robert Mitchell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: kidnapping cruise ship passengers, hijacking cruise ship, terrorists seize cruise ship, military ship heist, high seas hijacking terrorism thriller
Publisher: ROBERT MITCHELL
Published: 2019-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

Ten

By the time the sun came up just over four hours later I was almost dead on my feet. It was Saturday and we were somewhere up near Central Queensland. “How far off the reef are we?” I asked the third officer, the other female who had been on the bridge when we had blown the hinges on the door and burst in.

“Nautical miles or kilometres?” she asked, still nervous. I hoped she wasn’t about to faint again.

“Kilometres,” I said fairly pleasantly.

“About three, just over three and a quarter.”

“Okay,” I said, turning to the captain. “Take the ship in a bit closer. Take her in another two kilometres.”

He looked as though he might object. He paused for a moment, realised that he had no option, and then gave the order. Taking the ship closer to the reef also meant that we would be closer to the coast, and that meant we would be much closer if they wanted to send helicopters out from the mainland. But it was a risk I was willing to take. If they attacked us with helicopters and we steered the ship directly at the reef, there would be no way on earth they would be able to stop the destruction that would follow.

“Why don’t you send a message to head office,” I told the captain. “You can tell them what’s happened, although they probably know already. But I want you to impress on them the fact that we are now running along the Great Barrier Reef and that I have ordered you to bring the ship in to within a kilometre of it. You can also tell them that we’ve just about figured out how you steer this ship.”

“That’s it?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied. “That’ll do for now.”

I waited until he had sent his message and then called Hutch and Millsy up to take my place while I went down for a quick bite and some sack-time.

Benny knocked on the door mid-morning, waking me out of a deep sleep.

“The patrol boat’s not shadowing us any longer,” he said. “I thought you’d like to know.”

“Where is it?” I asked.

“According to the bridge, it’s about fifteen kilometres off to the south and moving away from us. What do you reckon that means? Do you think they’re sending something bigger, or maybe a couple of choppers full of our kind of guys?”

“I don’t know, Benny. Maybe, or maybe they’ve just given up until they can think of some smart way to get at us. They’ve seen what we can do and what we’re prepared to do, and they know we’ve got the claymores.”

“So, do you reckon we’ve got them beat, Robbo?”

“I don’t think so, not yet, and probably not by a long shot either.”

But Benny had been right. The message came in at 7.00pm our time. I don’t know what time it was in New York or wherever the head office was. The ship owners had capitulated. They had agreed to pay. I gave the captain the account details for the Panama Bank to send on to his bosses and by 9.

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