Captain Juu Machado and eighteen crewmen from the General Bravo transferred to the cruise liner after opening all seacocks and cargo doors and detonating strategically placed charges throughout the hull.
With a series of muffled explosions the container ship slipped beneath the sea with only a few faint gurgles of protest.
When the eastern sky began to brighten with a new sun, the disguised Lady Flamborough was steaming south toward the advertised destination of the General Bravo. But when the port of San Pablo, Argentina, was forty kilometers off the starboard beam, the liner bypassed the port and continued due south.
Ammar's ingenious scheme had worked. Three days had passed, and the world was still fooled into believing the Lady Flamborough and her distinguished passengers were lying somewhere on the bottom of the sea.
Ammar sat at a chart table and marked the ship's latest position. Then he drew a straight line to his final destination and marked it with an X. Smugly complacent, he dropped the pencil and lit a long Dunhill cigarette, exhaling the smoke across the chart like a bank of mist.
Sixteen hours, he reckoned. Sixteen more hours of sailing time without pursuit and the ship would be securely hidden without the slightest chance of detection.
Captain Machado stepped into the chart room from the bridge, balancing a small tray on one hand. "Would you like a cup of tea and a croissant?"
he asked in fluent English.
"'Thank you, Captain. Come to think of it, I haven't eaten since we departed Punta del Este."
Machado set the tray on the table and poured the tea. "I know you haven't slept since my crew and I came on board."
"There is still much to do."
"Perhaps we should begin by formally introducing ourselves."
"I know who you are, or at least the name you go by," said Ammar indifferently. "I'm not interested in lengthy biographies."
"That's how it is?"
"Yes."
"Mind letting me in on your plans?" said Machado. "I was informed of nothing beyond our transfer to your ship after scuttling the General Bravo. I'd be most interested in hearing about the next step of the mission, especially the part on how our combined crews intend to abandon the ship and evade arrest by international military forces."
"Sorry, I've been too busy to enlighten you."
"Now might be a good time," Machado pressed.
Characteristically, Ammar calmly sipped at his tea and finished off the croissant beneath his mask before answering. Then he looked across the chart table at Machado without expression.
"I don't intend to abandon the ship just yet," he said evenly. "My instructions from your leader and mine are to mark time and delay the final destruction of the Lady Flamborough until they both have time to assess the situation and turn it to their advantage."
Slowly Machado relaxed, looked through the mask into the cold, dark eyes of the Egyptian, and he knew this was a man solidly in control. "I have no problem with that." He held up the pot. "More tea?"
Ammar passed his cup. "What do you do when you're not sinking ships?"
"I specialize in political assassinations," said Machado conversationally. "The same as you, Suleiman Aziz Ammar."
Machado could not see the wary frown behind Ammar's mask, but he knew it was there.
"You were sent to kill me?" Ammar asked, casually flicking an ash from his cigarette while lining up a tiny automatic pistol that suddenly appeared in his palm like a magic trick.
Machado smiled and crossed his arms, keeping his hands in open view.
"You can relax. My orders were to work in total harmony with you."
Animar replaced the gun in a spring-operated device under his right sleeve. "How do you know me?"
"Our leaders have few secrets between them."
Damn Yazid, Ammar thought angrily. Yazid had betrayed him by giving away his identity. He wasn't taken in for an instant by Machado's lie.
Once President Hasan was out of the way, the reincarnated Muhammad had no further use for his hired killer. Ammar was not about to reveal his escape plans to the Mexican hit man. He clearly realized his counterpart had no option but to form an alliance of expediency. Ammar was quite comfortable in knowing he could kill Machado at any time, while the Mexican had to wait until survival was assured.
Ammar knew exactly where he stood.
He raised his teacup. "To Akhmad Yazid."
Machado stiffly raised his. "To Topiltzin."
Hala and Senator Pitt had been locked in a suite along with President Hasan. They were grimy and splattered with paint, too exhausted to sleep. Their hands were blistered and their muscles ached from physical labor none had been conditioned for. And they were hungry.
After the frenzied remodeling of the cruise liner's outer structure since leaving Uruguay, the hijackers had not allowed them any food.
Their only liquid intake came from the faucet in the bathroom. And to make their condition worse, the temperature had been steadily dropping and no heat was coming through the ventilators.
President Hasan was stretched out on one of the beds in abject misery.
He suffered from a chronic back problem, and the strain from ten hours of uninterrupted bending and stretching had left him in a torrent of pain which he endured stoically.
for all the movement they made, Hala and the Senator might have been carved from wood. Hala sat at a table with her head lowered in her hands. Even in her disheveled state, she still looked serene and beautffid.
Senator Pitt reclined on a couch, staring pensively at a light fixture in the ceiling. Only his eyes showed that he was alive.
Finally Hala raised her head and looked at him. "If only we could do something," she said, barely above a whisper.
The Senator rose stiffly to a sitting position. for his age, he was still in good physical shape. He was sore from neck to feet, but his he was beat as soundly as if he was twenty years younger.
"That devil with the mask doesn't miss a trick," he said. "He won't feed us so we'll stay weak; everyone is locked away separately so we can't communicate or cooperate in a counter-takeover; and, he and his terrorists have not made any contact with us for two days. All calculated to keep us on edge and in a state of helplessness."
"Can't we at least try to get out of here?"
"There's probably a guard at the end of the hallway waiting to blast the first body that breaks through a door. And even if we somehow got past him, where could we go?"
"Maybe we could steal a lifeboat," Hala suggested wildly.
The Senator shook his head and smiled. "Too late for any attempt now.
Not with the hijacker's force doubled by the crew from that Mexican cargo ship."
"Suppose we break out the window and leave a trail with furniture, bed linen or whatever else we could throw out," Hala persisted.
"Might as well toss bottles with notes inside. The currents would carry them a hundred kilometers from our wake by morning." He paused to shake his head. "Searchers would never find them in time."
"You know as well as I, Senator, no one is looking for us. The outside world thinks our ship sank and everyone died. Search efforts would have been called off by now."
"I know one man who will never give up."
She looked at him questioningly. "Who?"
"My son, Dirk."
Hala rose and Iimped over to the window and stared vacantly at the outside fiberboard that hid her view of the sea. "You must be very proud of him. He's a brave and resourceful man, but only human. He'll never see through the deception-" She paused suddenly and peered down through a tiny crack that showed a brief span of water. "There's something drifting past the ship."
The Senator came over and stood beside her. He could just make out several white objects against the blue of the sea. "Ice," he said, stunned. "That explains the cold. We must be heading into the Antarctic."