The Templar Cross

26

"How will we know the place?" Rafi asked, sitting in the bow of the drift boat as they slid rapidly down the ever-widening river.

Tidyman answered the question.

"It's called a chiesetta, a chapel. They're like little fishing cottages on stilts. There's dozens of them built on the breakwaters at the mouth of the river. They've got these purse seine nets they hang into the water at the end of huge pole cranes. The chiesetta we want is the last one nearest the open sea on the left bank. It's bright red with a brand-new sheet-aluminum roof."

As the river broadened the color changed, going from a silty brownish green to a deeper blue as they neared the sea. The terrain on both sides of the river was mostly reclaimed marsh, the land divided into neat fields of grain. The banks of the river were lined with long rows of sailboats and small sport cruisers moored against short-piered docks. There were fishermen in boats like theirs everywhere, mostly following the gentler currents closer to shore. No one paid the three men the slightest bit of attention.

The Tyrrhenian Sea was visible now, a darker shimmering blue against the cloudless sky directly ahead. The banks of the river were lined with huge tumbled rocks used as breakwaters to prevent erosion, the ramshackle chiesetta fishing shacks standing like shabby long-legged insects poised above the boulders. They all looked much the same, standing closely together, each one with a rickety decklike balcony fitted with one, two and occasionally three of the fifty-foot-long cranes dangling over the water, cantilevered, braced with long guy wires connected to the roofs of the shacks. Now, with the tide rushing out, the cranes and their nets had been hauled up. As the tide reversed itself and the water flowed upriver once again the poles and nets would be lowered into the water.

"What do they catch?" Rafi asked.

"According to Vince, mostly mullet and eel, like the old man back there."

"Gross," said Rafi, making a face. "Who eats eels?"

"Eel pie," murmured Tidyman wistfully. "What a treat. Jellied they are very good, too."

Seated in the narrow stern, Holliday started up the little outboard and silently eased the boat out of the main current and to the northern bank of the river, now more than a hundred yards wide.

"Drop the anchor," said Holliday.

Tidyman hauled the pile of netting to one side and uncovered the heavy little Danforth anchor. He eased it overboard, letting out the nylon line slowly and steadily until the anchor flukes bit and held in the silt. The boat swung around to face the current and they were at the mouth of the river, the sea behind them. A thousand feet away across the river was the red chiesetta, its shiny roof flashing in the sun, a red spider with twin pole cranes swung inboard like long antennae.

Tidyman took the binoculars from around his neck and passed them up to Rafi, who handed them on to Holliday.

"Look busy," said Holliday. "I'm going to check the place out."

"Aye, aye, Captain," said Tidyman. He and Rafi pulled long bamboo poles out of the bottom of the boat and they both dropped their hooked and unbaited lines over the side.

Holliday raised the binoculars.

The fishing shack was about twenty by thirty, the narrower end facing the river. There was a wide opening in the front leading out to the balcony deck where the swinging pole cranes were set up. The flat corrugated aluminum roof sloped front to back. The only proper entrance appeared to be from the rear of the shack via a walkway that crossed the boulders to the unpaved street behind. Half hidden by the building Holliday could see part of what appeared to be a compact closed-sided white van parked at the end of the dirt road. The opening facing the sea was lost in shadow. No one appeared to be watching.

He shifted the glasses to look beneath the building. There seemed to be a homemade ladder that dropped down from the floor of the shack to the boulders below, probably used when the net was snagged or there was some other problem that needed attention. He shifted the glasses again. The nearest neighbor was fifty feet away. On the other side of the shack was the stone breakwater and then the open sea.

"We either go in through the trapdoor in the floor or from the back," said Holliday. "I don't see much in the way of options here."

"Why not both?" Rafi asked, trying to keep his attention away from the shack where Peggy was being held. "Why not split up and come in both ways?"

"Too dangerous," said Holliday. "That kind of two-pronged attack almost never works. You wind up shooting each other. Go in that way and it's going to be difficult to tell who is who."

"All of this is dangerous," argued Rafi.

"I'm afraid I agree with our young friend," said Tidyman. "Whatever we do will be dangerous. If we come over the walkway we will lose the element of surprise. If we climb to the trapdoor there will be a bottleneck."

"We have to do something," said Rafi. "We can't stay out here much longer."

Holliday thought for a moment, then looked back over his shoulder.

"There was a little marina back there," he said. "Did anyone notice if it had a gas pump?"

Holliday crouched in the shadows under the fishing shack next to their objective. An onshore breeze thrust in from the sea, making the big pole cranes above him creak and moan. Water lapped against the boulders all around him and the air was full of the rich scent of the sea.

The drift boat had moved on silently and disappeared beyond the end of the breakwater. Holliday checked his watch, frowning. The whole thing was going to depend on perfect timing. If he or Tidyman and Rafi screwed it up, Peggy was as good as dead. Both of the other two had done compulsory military service, Tidyman mostly to get more hours as a military pilot and cement his Egyptian citizenship status, Rafi because that was simply what you did if you were a Sabra-a native-born Israeli. Holliday on the other hand was a professional; he'd react on instinct born of years of experience in hot zones all over the world. He wasn't too sure about his companions.

There was Peggy to consider as well. If she froze up at a critical moment they all would be as good as dead. Hopefully she'd figure out what was happening and put her head down and get herself out of the line of fire in the first few seconds of the action. Holliday closed his eyes for a second and sent up a silent prayer to all the gods of war. Worst of all, they were going in blind; they had no idea how many men were guarding Peggy in the fishing shack a few yards away.

He looked at his watch again, then leaned down and picked up the five-gallon gas tank of outboard fuel mix he'd bought at the little upstream marina. It was time to go. He listened, his senses at full alert, nerves tingling. He swallowed, feeling his mouth go dry and his heart begin to pound.

The feeling was a familiar one: part fear, part anticipation and part rising bloodlust. It always surprised him that he felt so comfortable with the desperate feeling deep in his gut, and every now and again he wondered if there was a pathological need for it with soldiers-junkies for battle and the dangerous game of jousting with death. He'd known a few like that in his time, soldiers who re-upped again and again because they simply couldn't deal with the sudden withdrawal into the passive routine of life out of the kill zone.

Holliday forced all conscious thought out of his mind, tuning his senses to the world around him, willing every part of himself to fuse his actions into a slow-motion psychedelic dreamscape where everything he did was perfectly synchronized with everything else.

He heard the muffled sound of a man and woman arguing in the fish shack directly overhead, heard the squeak of a cable shifting in the breeze, saw the riffled feathers of a kite as the giant bird soared above the estuary water, heard the chatter of a motorboat far away and the constant pulsing whisper of the sea.

There were no windows on the side wall of the shack, only a rudimentary ventilation grille. If the workers in the shack fished through two turns of the tide per day it probably meant the catch was stored somehow, most likely in galvanized steel tanks. On a hot day like today the tin-roofed huts would be turned into ovens. The stink would be awful.

Carrying the gas can Holliday stepped out of the shadows and made his way between the two chiesettas, moving quickly but carefully beneath the stilts of the last shack in the row. Looking out across the breadth of the river mouth he could see the squat shape of the gray- and-white-striped octagonal lighthouse that gave the rocky beach its name.

The red-walled chiesetta was supported on a total of six stilts, three long, three short. The stilts were made of four-by-fours clewed together to make foot-square columns to support the weight of the floor above. Looking upward Holliday could see that the floor itself was nothing more than sheets of plywood laid over widely spaced fir rafters that were really only two-inch planks turned on end. Flimsy didn't begin to describe it.

He unscrewed the top of the gas can, reversed the spout and screwed it down again. He divided the contents between all three front columns, then set the empty can down beside the center post. He checked the time. Two minutes.

Holliday took out a package of matches and lit the posts one after the other without pause, leapfrogging across the boulders. He watched as the flames took hold, barely visible, little more than rippling heat vapors in the clear air. He turned away, scrambling up the rocks, then started to climb the makeshift ladder up to the trapdoor in the floor.

He reached the top of the ladder a few moments later and suddenly, blindingly, had a terrifying thought. He cursed himself for a fool. What if the trapdoor was bolted from above? It was the kind of stupid oversight that got men killed. He turned on the ladder. The flames had reached the tops of the columns and were starting to lick across the underside of the floor. Any second now. There was a quick, sharp detonation as the vapors in the empty gas can exploded. There was a second or two of almost deafening silence, then the sound of running feet overhead. Black smoke began to billow. A cry went up.

"Cazzo merda! Fuoco! Fuoco!"

One last time check. Thirty seconds. It didn't matter; the flames were rolling his way in long consuming tongues; if he didn't move now he was going to fry. He pulled the Tanfoglio 9mm out of his belt. The Italian weapons Vince Caruso had provided were commercial grade, mostly used for target practice and self-defense. Simple to use with sixteen in the magazine. A total of forty-eight rounds between them. Any second now and there was going to be a hailstorm of bullets upstairs. Holliday winced, thinking about it, then forcing himself not to. Like sticking your head into a hornet's nest. He took a deep breath, then pushed up on the trapdoor.

To Holliday it was like a series of snapshots taken at a billiard table, stuttering stroboscopic images connected like the cars on a freight train. It went far better than they had any right to expect.

There were five men in the shack and the call of Fire! had split them almost evenly, two men running toward the balcony and into the choking cloud of smoke and two men turning toward the sound of the crashing door as Rafi and Tidyman burst in through the rear, rolling left and right as Holliday had instructed. The fifth man, the bald Father Damaso, stayed exactly where he was, seated in a comfortable stuffed chair with a clear field of view toward their hostage, who was chained to an iron U bolt in the corner of the room.

The shack was divided into two areas separated by a flimsy plywood wall, the tank room in the forward area and the living and cooking area in the back. The trapdoor was set into the floor between the two and opened looking forward. Coming through the floor Holliday was facing back toward the river. Partway into the room he leveled the automatic and squeezed off half the clip without aiming, simply swinging the muzzle from right to left in a rapid arc. He hit both men, one in the face, the other in the chest. They both fell without a sound, thrown back into the smoke and flames.

Holliday pushed himself up and out of the opening in the floor, turning away from the fire, then rolled to his left, bringing his weapon to bear but not firing. Rafi was already up on his knees, his body between the guards and Peggy, who had flung herself down on the mattress she had been given by her captors. He had his pistol in one hand and the steel-pointed fish gaff he'd used to pry open the door in the other. Tidyman was directly opposite him on the other side of the room, creating the angled cross fire Holliday had suggested to them.

Both men fired a steady stream of fire into the two guards, both armed with some kind of compact machine pistols they were still struggling to remove from their sling holsters as Rafi and Tidyman began to fire.

Rafi, his clip empty, lunged toward Father Damaso with the fish gaff. The bald priest was unarmed except for what appeared to be a cricket bat balanced across his knees. He brought the bat up defensively as Rafi lunged, screaming obscenities. Damaso swiped at Rafi one-handed, clubbing the younger man aside as he rose out of the chair. Grasping the long flat instrument in both hands, the priest was about to bring it down like an ax on the back of Rafi's skull when Holliday shot him, putting half a dozen rounds into his chest, shredding flesh and bone and sending the dead man tumbling back over the stuffed chair.

The front half of the shack was an inferno and it was getting closer with each passing second. The first two men had been completely consumed and the flames would reach the rear half of the shack in an instant. Holliday rushed forward, retrieving the steel fish gaff, heading for Peggy, who was now curled up on the mattress, arms crossed above her head.

As Rafi groaned and pushed himself to his hands and knees, Holliday got the gaff through the U bolt shackling Peggy to the floor and started to pry it up. He got a good look at his cousin. Her face was streaked with grime and her short dark hair was matted, but under the circumstances she looked better than he'd expected.

"Peg?"

"Doc?" Her voice was parched and cracked.

He pushed the hair gently off her face.

"It's okay, I'm here now, kiddo."

Peggy laughed weakly. "What the hell took you guys so long?"

"Love you too, Peggy-o," Holliday said and grinned. She smiled up at him wearily. Suddenly she looked terribly fragile. Then Rafi took her in his arms and the tears began to flow. A few seconds later Holliday managed to get the U bolt out of the floor and she was free. Tidyman appeared out of the smoke and haze. He had a ring of keys in one hand and his pistol in the other. Suddenly there was a sound like a gunshot going off and the front of the chiesetta lurched and sagged. The flames roared toward them.

"Our chariot awaits," said Tidyman. "Better hurry up unless you want to be part of the fish fry."

They followed the Egyptian out of the burning shack and into the sunlight. There were no sirens yet, and except for the roar of the climbing flames at their back and the cloud of greasy smoke rising into the salt air everything seemed normal. Rafi brought up the rear, supporting a still wobbly Peggy, his arm around her shoulders.

She staggered a little as she walked, leaning into Rafi's side, her head bent to his shoulder. Tidyman unlocked the doors of the old Fiat Ducato van and they climbed in, Rafi and Peggy in the back, Tidyman and Holliday up front. The interior of the van was baking hot, the air close and suffocating. As Tidyman started the engine they heard the first warbling of the fire trucks in the distance ahead of them.

"Bug-out time," said Holliday. Behind them the flames burst through the roof of the shack and boiled into the air. Holliday leaned back in his seat, feeling the adrenaline and the sudden sag of fatigue in a single instant. "They start finding bodies with bullets in that barbecue behind us and we'll be in trouble."

He glanced out the window on Tidyman's side of the van and saw people coming out of their shacks to gawk at the rising flames. Some busy-body would take down the license plate number and there'd be an all- points alert on the airwaves in minutes.

Holliday's cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He dug it out. Tidyman put the van in gear and swung the steering wheel around. They headed up the dusty road, gravel crunching under the wheels. The approaching sirens were getting louder.

"Text message from Caruso," said Holliday.

"What does it say?" Tidyman asked.

Holliday frowned, not understanding. He read out the message.

"Termini Station. Seven forty-five sharp. Dress formal. RSVP."