The Templar Cross

20

The weary old tugboat Khamsin rolled on the dark sea, broken and adrift. Her entire superstructure, including the main deckhouse and the wheelhouse above, looked as though it had been swallowed up by some hellish piece of machinery that had flailed and chewed the vessel into small pieces. The smokestack had completely torn away from its supports and now sagged down on the starboard side, riddled with holes the size of softballs.

The wheelhouse had almost completely vanished, windows demolished, bulkheads destroyed, the companionway stairs nothing but twisted wreckage. It was clear that the boat was taking on water; the portside list was so severe that the deck was awash. The deck itself was a splintered ruin, stitched with dozens more of the fist-sized openings that had turned the wheelhouse into a sieve.

There were several bodies, or at least parts of them, on deck. None was recognizable. There were smears of blood everywhere, great sprays of it against the whitework and more running down in broad streams into the scuppers.

Bizarrely, in the bows, a hand clutched a machine gun, but beyond the shoulder there was no body. Next to the arm a headless corpse hung out of an open hatch, a long ugly tongue of bone scraps and blood and brains spattering back along the decking.

"Peggy!" Rafi moaned, climbing to his feet.

"Wait," said Holliday, standing and putting a cautioning hand on his friend's shoulder.

"What could have done this?" Tidyman asked, standing beside them and surveying the wreckage as they rocked gently on the night waves.

Holliday knew exactly what had done it. He'd first seen it used from a C-47 Spooky in Vietnam and then the Russian version in the early days back in the eighties as an advisor with the mujahideen in Afghanistan.

The Russians called it a Yak- B12, the U.S. Air Force called it a Minigun-a chain-drive, electrically powered modern-day version of a Gatling gun with a rate of fire somewhere around four thousand rounds a minute. Enough to grind a human body to bloody shreds in the blink of an eye.

"Helicopters," said Holliday, staring at the nightmare scene. "Like the ones that attacked Alhazred's camp last night. They hit the boat on the return flight."

"But why?" Rafi said, stunned and horrified by the awful vision in front of them.

"Revenge?" Tidyman said.

"Or cleaning up after themselves," said Holliday coldly. "Silencing their enemies. Maybe our man from the gift shop in Alexandria knew too much."

"You think the Church did this?" Rafi said, staring.

"I think Sodalitium Pianum, the ones who call themselves La Sapiniere, might have done it," answered Holliday. "They're cold-blooded enough; look what they did in the desert last night."

"Terror in the name of God." Tidyman shrugged. "Not so hard to believe these days."

"We have to go aboard," said Rafi, his voice dull. "I have to find out if Peggy…" He stopped, swallowing hard. "I have to find out if Peggy was on the boat."

"Emil and I can go," said Holliday softly. "You don't have to come."

"Better not to," agreed Tidyman. He reached out tentatively and touched Rafi's arm. "Some pain should not be endured, or should at least be borne by others, and not alone."

"No," said Rafi. "I have to see."

A few minutes later Moustafa managed to maneuver the low-hulled torpedo boat close enough to the wreck of the Khamsin for the men to simply step off onto the awkwardly tilting deck. Both armed, Holliday and Rafi went below to check the hold while Tidyman made his way up to the ruins of the wheelhouse.

They bypassed the headless watchman in the hatchway and made their way down the steeply canted ladder into the main hold. The ship's interior was silent except for the creaking of the dying hull and empty of life. A ghost ship.

Once upon a time the small area had probably been used to carry supplies or spare equipment, but now it had been subdivided into plywood-partitioned stalls, each one no bigger than a coffin and lined with straw. In each of the subdivided areas a woman was shackled to a large ringbolt welded to the hull. There were thirty stalls and thirty women, or at least what was left of them. Each of the prisoners was naked and filthy.

They were all dead, some torn to ribbons by the rounds from the helicopter chain guns, others flailed by flying shrapnel. Some of them were very young, no more than eleven or twelve. The majority of them appeared to be Berbers, some with traditional tattoos on their hands and faces. There seemed to be no fear in their faces, as though they'd died in their sleep. Holliday was reasonably sure they'd been drugged for their sea voyage to keep them quiet.

"Who are they?" Rafi asked. "How did they get here? Not by choice surely."

"Probably from Mauritania," said Holliday, looking down at the pitiful remains of the women. "Chattel slavery is big business there. The men work on farms or in the mines, the women and girl children are sold as sex slaves. Alhazred is just a middleman between the slave dealers in Mali and the Sudan and the end users from La Santa."

"How could any normal human being be involved in something like this? This is madness."

"No, just business," said Holliday, his voice cold with barely contained fury. "It's not much different from privately run prisons in the U.S. The inhumanity is irrelevant; in the end it's only the bottom line that counts." He shook his head. "There's nothing we can do here," he said at last. "At least Peggy wasn't on board."

"Thank God for that," said Rafi.

"I don't think God is part of the equation here," muttered Holliday. "Come on."

They made their way back up to the deck again. Tidyman was waiting for them.

"Did you find anything?" Holliday asked.

"The only chart still intact at all was for the Tyrrhenian Sea."

"Naples?" Holliday said. "Not Corsica?"

"Maybe Naples, maybe somewhere else." He held up a shattered piece of electronic gear. "What's left of a Garmin deck unit. If we're lucky I'll be able to figure out what charts they had loaded into it." He glanced quickly at Rafi and then back to Holliday. "Any luck?"

"Peggy wasn't on board," said Holliday. "At least there's no sign of her. There was a cargo of women belowdecks. Sex slaves. They're all dead. Some of them are just kids."

"What shall we do?"

Holliday looked up and down the deck. The wreckage hadn't sunk much lower in the water since they'd come aboard. The boat could easily stay afloat for days. He thought about the bodies down below.

"Those women deserve a little dignity," he said. "Let's give them a proper burial at sea."

Ten minutes later Moustafa put off a dozen yards, well away from the remains of the foundering tugboat. This time it was Holliday who carried the familiar weight of the rocket-propelled grenade launcher on his shoulder. He aimed for the open forward hatch, sent up a brief, heartfelt prayer, then pulled the heavy trigger.

There was a sharp cracking sound as the round took off, the recoil throwing him back on his right leg. The high-explosive charge detonated deep in the hull of the old boat and there was a thunder-clap of sound as the fuel tank exploded.

A gout of flame tore up out of the hold and there was a ghastly wrenching sound as the ancient tug broke her back, the massive oak keelson twisting, then finally splitting along its length. Almost immediately the Khamsin began to sink, rolling once before slipping under the dark swell of the sea, leaving nothing behind but a few flaming pieces of wreckage and a spreading slick of bunker oil. In a little while even that would be gone.

Holliday stood alone on the forward deck of the torpedo boat, staring at the spot where the tug had been only moments before. Briefly he had one of those moments when the past comes back so hard it leaves you breathless, remembering his own father's funeral and seeing his cousin Peggy on the other side of the grave, crying, even though he could not.

Later that day his uncle Henry had taken Holliday aside and reminded him that when he was gone Peggy would be the only family left to him, and that above all else it was Holliday's job to protect her from harm, to keep her safe and see her happy. He'd vowed to do all those things and now he'd failed her. She was somewhere out there, desperate and afraid. It was his job to find her and bring her home.

Rafi appeared beside him on the deck. He held his peace for a moment. Finally Holliday turned to him.

"What?"

"Emil figured out the GPS unit. The Khamsin was headed for the island of Ponza, on the Italian coast."

"How far?"

"Moustafa says he can have us there by sunrise."