John Gardner: Seafire

A book in the James Bond series, 1994

The cruise ship Caribbean Prince had left St. Thomas, in the United States' Virgin Islands, at just after six in the evening, with its passengers looking forward to two days at sea before reaching Miami.

The act of piracy took place during dinner, just after eight that evening. Later, the company, Tarn Cruise Lines, Inc., maintained that the men involved had slipped aboard at St. Thomas and hidden away until the ship's very wealthy passengers had started dinner. The rest happened quickly. Two of the intruders had gone to the bridge and held the ship's officer of the watch and his men at gunpoint. Two more had secured the areas where most of the crew could be found during dinner. This left six men who charged into the large dining room, their faces covered with ski masks, and their hands holding Uzis and pistols.

Two of the Uzi-toting bandits fired short bursts into the ceiling – which brought screams from the ladies and muttered protests from the men – while their leader shouted loudly, telling people that nobody would get hurt if they did exactly what they were told. This man immediately began to make his way around the tables, demanding that the diners take off all their jewelry and empty their pockets and evening bags of other valuables – Including wallets. Everything was taken and dumped into a big plastic garbage bag, held by the sixth man, and there was no doubt that the intruders meant what they said. Anyone who refused, or tried to be clever, risked death.

The whole operation was carried out with the kind of calmness and planning that signaled careful, military precision.

James Bond and Fredericka von Grüsse were seated on the port side at a table for four people – the other two being a pleasant retired stockbroker and his wife from New Jersey. So, by the time the leader and his bagman reached them. Bond had already signaled to Flicka, using eyes and hands.

The stockbroker's wife was in near hysterics, but her husband stayed calm, telling her to do just as she was told. This caused a small delay, making the gunman more belligerent as he moved behind Bond, sticking his automatic pistol into the back of the agent's neck.

"If you want everything," Bond said calmly, "you'll have to let me stand up. I've a rather valuable fob watch attached to a chain which I can't unfasten while sitting down."

"Well, get on with it. Do it quickly." The leader retreated a pace to let Bond push back his chair and get to his feet. The gunman kept his right arm stretched out, holding the pistol. Wrongly, for it is a golden rule never to leave your weapon too close to the person you are threatening.

Few were actually able to see what Bond did. It was so fast that most of the diners became more agitated, thinking that reprisals were imminent from the men with the Uzis. Bond spun around on the outside of the extended arm, which he caught with both hands and jerked violently. He could feel his back pressed hard against the gunman's back, but it took only a small, vicious chop with the cutting edge of his right hand to grab the pistol, which he tossed, almost nonchalantly, across the table to Flicka. Then, turning again, he twisted the arm high up his victim's back, using his left hand. There was a cry, followed by an unpleasant crack as the arm broke and Bond's right forearm snapped hard around the leader's neck, giving it a lot of pressure, so that the fellow was near to lapsing into unconsciousness.

The bagman dropped the garbage sack and went for the gun that was pushed into his waistband. Bond was a fraction faster. His left hand dropped the thug's broken arm, fingers slipping into his right sleeve. On a voyage like this, he had not brought a gun, but he seldom went anywhere completely unarmed. Strapped to the inside of his right arm, high up and hidden by his sleeve, was a scabbard containing an Applegate Fairbairn fighting knife. Though this knife throws better from the blade, there was no time to waste on such niceties – a split second and the knife appeared in his hand; a quarter of a second later it shot through the space between him and the bagman. Six inches of slicing tempered steel buried itself in the man's throat. He was dead long before he even began to sway.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the Uzi-carrying men turn on the balls of his feet, lifting the muzzle of the weapon, swinging in his direction.

"James!" Flicka shouted, the pistol flicking in the direction of the danger. In the double-handed grip she fired twice. As the Uzi clattered from dead fingers, Bond shouted, "Enough. I don't want anyone else hurt, and I'll kill your leader if you don't drop those weapons."

The remaining three men hesitated for a tense ten seconds before they realized that, while they might kill some of the people in the dining room, they would all end up dead very quickly. None had the stomach for the result of what had begun as simple work for bullyboy tactics. Slowly they dropped the Uzis and raised their hands, Flicka von Grüsse swinging her pistol between the possible targets.

Bond pulled the leader's head close back to him, so that his lips almost touched the man's ear.

"If you want to live, friend," he whispered, "you'd better tell me if there are any other clowns on board."

"On the bridge and in the crew quarters," the man croaked, his voice constricted by Bond's forearm.

"How many?"

"Four. Two on the bridge and two below."

"Good night." Bond squeezed harder, cutting off the blood supply to his victim's brain so that he slumped heavily and unconscious to the deck, helped into a longer sleep by a swift chop to the back of the neck.

He distributed the Uzis to the stunned headwaiters and the sommelier, leaving Flicka in charge as he slipped out, carrying the bagman's pistol, making his way quickly to the bridge. The two men holding the hostages there did not really have too much fight in them. Theirs had been reckoned as an easy job, and they did not expect the fury that Bond unleashed on them – cracking the first one over the head and winging the second armed man in the leg.

The couple who were looking after the crew were taken out by the Captain of Caribbean Prince and two of his officers. The dead were eventually laid out in the small mortuary next to the sick bay, while those left alive were locked in one of the two "Secure Cabins" designed to take any violent or malcontented member of the crew. These two cabins had been on the list of specifications when the ship had undergone a complete refurbishment a couple of years before.

Back in the early 1980s the M/S Caribbean Prince had been one of the flagships of a major cruise line, plowing its way between Miami and the islands that litter the Caribbean. With a gross tonnage of around 18,000, and a capacity for some seven hundred passengers, plus a crew of four hundred, she was an admirable proposition. But as the decade filtered into the '90s, Caribbean Prince had become a liability. With the advent of the larger cruise ships – the huge floating hotels that carry over two thousand passengers – Caribbean Prince was not economically viable. That is, unless you had the entrepreneurial foresight of someone like Max Tarn.

Tarn had purchased Caribbean Prince in 1990, together with two other ships of a similar size, and begun a major overhaul, his sights set on wealthy passengers who longed to experience the kind of cruises they had either read about or experienced during the days when cruises were for the rich and famous only.