Pitt had not moved a centimeter.
It all depended on the unexpected. Pitt planned on the classic double take. He took the gamble that Ibn's first cursory glimpse inside the coffin would cause a delayed reaction followed by a second longer look.
And Ibn did exactly that.
In the Special Operations Forces command truck, parked half a kilometer west of the excavation, Hollis, Admiral Sandecker, Lily and Giordino gazed at a TV monitor, their attention solidly locked into the drama being acted out under Gongora Hill.
Lily stood motionless, her skin eggshell-white, while Sandecker and Giordino fidgeted in frustration like a pair of zoo tigers with a platter of fresh meat just beyond reach of their cage.
Hollis was pacing the small enclosure, nervously clutching a small multi-frequency detonation transmitter in one hand while the other held a phone receiver.
He was shouting at an aide of General Chandler's. "Like hell I'll detonate! Not until the crowd passes the danger perimeter. "
"They've moved too close now," the aide, a colonel, countered.
"Another thirty seconds!" snapped Hollis. "Not before."
"General Chandler wants that hill blown now!" demanded the Colonel, his voice rising. "That's an order that comes from the President."
"You're only a voice over a phone, Colonel," Hollis stalled.
"I want the order direct from the President."
"You're asking for a court-martial, Colonel."
"It won't be the first time."
Sandecker shook his head fearfully. "Dirk will never make it, not now."
"Can't you do something?" pleaded Lily. "Talk to him. He can hear you over the speaker connected to the TV camera."
"We don't dare distract him," answered Hollis "Break his concentration and that Arab will kill him."
"That's it!" Giordino muttered, infuriated. He tore out the command truck door, jumped to the ground and dashed over to Sam Trinity's Jeep.
Before Hollis's men could stop him the car was bouncing through the brush toward Gongora Hill.
In one quick leap, Pitt uncoiled like a rattler and drove the shield against Ibn. The sword blurred and slashed again.
His muscled arm swung with all the strength of his shoulder behind it.
He felt and heard the blade edge clang against metal before it struck something soft. An explosion went off, seemingly in his face. He flinched as the main force of the blast struck the middle of his shield and ricocheted against the rock ceiling. The armored plastic sheeting that had been riveted to the laminated wood by Major Dillenger that afternoon was denied but not penetrated. Pitts sword hand finished the arc, and he launched a murderous backhand swing.
Ibn was fast, but his shock at seeing Yazid cost him a precious second.
He caught Pitts attack out of the corner of one eye and squeezed off a badly aimed snap shot before the sword blade glanced off the breech of the shotgun and sliced through his hand, severing his thumb and fingers just behind the knuckles.
Ibn uttered a ghastly groan. The pistolgripped shotgun fell to the hard limestone floor almost on top of the Colt Python still gripped in Capesterre's severed hand. But Ibn recoiled enough to duck away from Pitts swing. Then, in one violent twisting motion, he lunged at Pitt.
Pitt was ready for the assault, but, as he dodged to one side his right leg folded under him. In a flashing instant he knew that one or two of the shotgun's pellets had missed the shield and struck him in the same leg that had been wounded on Santa Inez Island.
Before he could react and dance away, Ibn dropped on him like a panther.
The black eyes gleamed satanically under the string of lights, the teeth ghoulishly bared. Pitt lost his grip on the sword hilt as Ibn knocked it away. His other arm was trapped under the inside straps of the shield. Then slowly, deliberately, Ibn's good hand closed around Pitts throat.
"Kill him!" Robert Capesterre shrieked repeatedly like a mad man.
"Kill him!"
Pitt heaved in a corkscrew motion and brought his fist up from the floor, striking Ibn in the Adam's apple. With the cartilage of the larynx crushed, most men would have gagged to death-the rest should have at least gone unconscious. Ibn did neither. He simply clutched his throat, made a terrible gurgling voice and reeled backward.
They both struggled drunkidly to their feet, Pitt hopping on one leg, Ibn gasping for air, his mangled right hand hanging useless. They stood there, facing each other like wounded pit bulls catching their breath for the next round, warily eyeing each other to see who would make the first move.
It came from an unexpected quarter. Capesten-e suddenly came to his senses and threw himself on the Colt, fiercely struggling one-handed to pry the frozen fingers from the grip.
The dead hand fell away.
Then, like a game of musical chairs, Capesterre's grab triggered a like response from Ibn and Pitt. They quickly looked around for the weapons nearest them.
Pitt lost. The shotgun was in Ibn's corner. So was the Roman sword.
any port in a storm, Pitt thought. He kicked out wildly with the foot of his wounded leg, connecting with Capesten-e's rib cage, but suffering a grinding pain from the effort. He also hurled the shield like a Frisbee at Ibn, s g the Arab on the stomach and knocking the wind out of him.
A loud wailing cry gushed from Capesterre's lips. He dropped the Colt and Pitt caught it in midair. It was a nearperfect catch-His hand slipped around the bloodied grip and his finger through the trigger guard. Ibn, doubled over by the blow from the shield, was still awkwardly lifting the pistolized shotgun with his left hand when Pitt fired.
Pitt tightened his grip for the next recoil. The Arab stumbled backward against the chamber wall, and then his body fell forward onto the floor and his head struck with a repugnantthud.
Pitt stood panting through clenched teeth. Only then did he hear a familiar voice shout through the speaker.
"Get out of there!" Hollis was yelling. "for Jesus' sake, run for it!"
Pitt was temporarily disoriented. He was so busy fighting Ibn he forgot which passage led to the easier tunnel and which to the more difficult crater exit. He took a last fleeting glimpse of Robert Capesterre.
The face was ashen from the loss of blood but not, Pitt saw, with fear.
Hate filled the eyes of Topiltzin.
"Enjoy your trip to hell," Pitt said.
Capesterre's reply was the smoke bomb. He had somehow pulled the primer pin. Smoke instantly burst and fined the interior of the chamber with a densely packed orange cloud.
"What happened?" the President asked, staring at the strange orange mist that blocked out the camera view of the chamber.
"Capesteffe must have been carrying some kind of a smoke-screening device," Chandler answered.
"Why haven't the explosives gone off?"
"One moment, Mr. President." Chandler looked off-camera and conversed angrily with an aide. Then he turned back. "Colonel Hollis of the Special Operations Forces insists on a direct order from you, sir."
"Is he in charge of the detonation?" demanded Metcalf.
"Yes, General."
"Can you patch him into our communications network?"
"One moment."
Four seconds was all it took before Hollis's face was peering from one of the monitors in the Situation Room.