Treasure

Carlos pointed. "Off the port bow. Looks like pieces of a boat.

The old fisherman's eyes were not so sharp at night any more. He squinted and gazed in the direction his son was pointing. Then the running lights began to pick out scattered bits of wreckage. He recognized the bright white paint and varnished debris as coming from a yacht. An explosion, or perhaps a collision, he thought. He settled on a collision. The nearest lights of the port were only two kilometers away. An explosion would have been seen and heard. He saw no sign of navigation lights from rescue boats converging in the channel.

The boat was entering the debris field when his ears caught it again.

What he had thought was a scream now sounded like sobbing. And it came from close by.

"Get Raul, Justino and Manuel from the galley. Quickly. Tell them to make ready to go in the water after survivors."

The boy rushed off as Chavez set the gear lever to "Stop."

He stepped out of the wheelhouse and snapped on a spotlight and slowly swept its beam across the water.

He spotted two huddled shapes lying half across a small splintered section of teak decking and half in the water less than twenty meters away. One, a man, appeared inert. The other, a woman, her face like chalk, stared into the light and frantically waved. Then suddenly, she began yelling hysterically and thrashing at the water.

"Hold on!" Chavez shouted. "Don't panic. We're coming for you."

Chavez turned at the sound of running feet behind him. His crew had rushed out of the deckhouse and quickly crowded around him.

"Can you make anything out?" asked Luis.

"Two survivors floating on some wreckage. Get ready to pull them on board. One of you might have to go in the water and give them a hand."

"No one is going in the water tonight," said one of the crew, his face turning pale.

Chavez turned back to the survivors just as the woman let out a terrified shriek. His heart turned to ice as he saw the tall fin, the ugly head with the ink-spot eye, whipping back and forth with its jaws locked around the woman's lower legs.

"Adored Mary, Mother of Jesus!" muttered Luis, crossing himself as fast as his hand could move.

Chavez shuddered but could not pull his eyes away as the shark draggtd the woman off farther into the water. Other sharks circled, drawn by the blood, bumping against the shattered deck until the body of the man rolled off. One of the fishermen turned and vomited over the side as the scream turned to an ungodly gurgling noise.

Then the night fell silent.

Less than an hour later, Colonel Jos6 Rojas, Uruguayan Chief Coordinator for Special Security, stood ramrod straight in front of a group of officers in battle dress. He had trained with the British Grenadier Guards after graduating from his country's military school, and he had taken up their antiquated habit of carrying a swagger stick.

He stood over a table containing a model diorama of the Punta del Este waterfront and addressed the assembled men. "We will organize into three roving teams to patrol the docks on rotating eight-hour shifts," he began while dramatically slapping the stick in the palm of one hand.

"Our mission is to stand on constant alert as a backup force in the event of a terrorist attack. I realize it's difficult for you to look inconspicuous, but try anyway. Stay in the shadows at night and off the main thoroughfares by day. We don't want to frighten the tourists into thinking Uruguay is an armed state. any questions?"

Lieutenant Eduardo Vazquez raised a hand. "Colonel?"

"Vazquez?"

"If we see someone who looks suspicious, what should we do?"

"You do nothing except report him. He'll probably Turn out to be one of the international security agents."

"What if he appears to be armed?"

Rojas sighed. "Then you'll know he's a security agent. Leave international incidents to the diplomats. Is everyone clear?"

No hands went up.

Rojas dismissed the men and walked to his temporary office in the Harbor Master's building. He stopped at a coffee machine to pour a cup when his aide approached.

"Captain Flores in Naval Affairs asked if you could meet him downstairs."

"Did he say why?"

"Only that it was urgent."

Rojas didn't want to spill his coffee, so he took the elevator instead of the stairs. Flores, impeccable in a white navy dress uniform, greeted him on the first floor but offered no explanations as he escorted Rojas across the street to a large shed that housed the coastal rescue boats. Inside, a group of men were examining several mangled fragments that looked to the Colonel as if they came from a boat.

Captain Flores introduced him to Chavez and his son. "These fishermen have just brought in this wreckage, which they discovered in the channel," he explained. "They say it looked to them like a yacht had been crushed in a collision with a large ship."

"Why should a yachting accident concern special security?"

asked Rojas.

The Harbor Master, a man with cropped hair and a bristling mustache, spoke up. "It may well be a disaster that could cast a cloud on the economic summit." He paused and added, Rescue craft are on the scene now. So far no survivors have been found."

"Have you identified the yacht?"

"One of the scraps Mr. Chavez and his crew fished out of the water bears a nameplate. The craft was called the Lola."

Rojas shook his head. "I'm a soldier. Pleasure boats are not familiar.

Is the name supposed to mean something to me?"

"The yacht was named for the wife of Victor Rivera," answered Flores.

"You know him?"

Rojas stiffened. "I am acquainted with the Speaker of our Chamber of Deputies. The yacht was his?"

Registered in his name," Flores nodded. 'We've already contacted his secretary at her home. Gave her no information of course. Merely inquired as to Mr. Rivera's whereabouts' She said he was on board his yacht hosting a party for Argentinean and Brazilian diplomats."

"How many?" Rojas inquired, a fear growing within him.

"Rivera and his wife, twenty-three guests and five crew members. Thirty in all."

"Names?"

"The secretary did not have the guest list in front of her. I've taken the liberty of sending my aide to Rivera's headquarters for a copy."

"I think it best if I take command of the investigation from this point," stated Rojas officially.

"The Navy stands ready to offer every assistance," said Flores, happy to wash his hands of any authority.

Rojas turned to the Harbor Master. "What ship was involved with the collision?"

"A mystery. No ship has arrived or departed the harbor in the last ten hours."

"Is it possible for a ship to enter port without you knowing?"

"A captain would be stupid to try it without calling for a pilot. "

"Is it possible?" Rojas persisted.

"No," stated the Harbor Master firmly. "No oceangoing ship could dock or moor in the harbor without my being aware of it."

Rojas accepted that. "Suppose one sailed out?"

The Harbor Master considered the question for a few moments. Then he gave a slight nod. "One could not cast off from a dock without my knowledge. But if the vessel was anchored offshore, if her skipper or his officers knew the channel, and if she ran without lights, she might make it out to sea unnoticed. But I must say it would be close to a miracle."

"Can you furnish Captain Flores with a list of moored ships?"

"I'll have a copy in his hands within ten minutes."

"Captain Hores?"

"Colonel?"

"Since a missing ship is a naval operation, I'd like you to take command of the search."

"Gladly, Colonel. I'll begin immediately."

Rojas stared thoughtfully at the wreckage littering the concrete floor.

"There'll be hell to pay before this night is through," he muttered.

Shortly before midnight, after Captain Flores had conducted a thorough search of the harbor and the waters outside the channel, he notified Rojas that the only ship he could not account for was the Lady Flamborough.

Colonel Rojas was stunned when he examined the cruise liner's VIP

passenger list. He demanded a follow-up investigation in the false hope that the Egyptian and Mexican Presidents had disembarked for quarters on shore. Not until it was confirmed that they were missing along with the ship did the horrible specter of a terrorist hijacking become evident.

An extensive air search was launched at dawn. Every aircraft the combined air forces of Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil could put in the air scoured over 400,000 square kilometers of the South Atlantic.

No sign of the Lady Flamborough was found.

It was as though she had been swallowed by the sea.

Two hands were running under his shirt and up his back. He struggled to wake from a sound sleep, dreaming he was deep in the water swimming upward toward the shimmering surface, but never able to reach it. He rubbed his eyes, saw he was still on the couch in his office, and rolled over, his gaze blocked by a pair of shapely legs.

Pitt moved to a sitting position and stared into Lily's beguiling eyes.

He held up his wrist, but he had taken his watch off and placed it on the desk with his keys, change and wallet.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"Five-thirty," she replied sweetly, moving her hands across his shoulders and massaging his neck.

"Night or day?"

"Late afternoon. You only dozed off for three hours."

"Don't you ever drop off.?"

"I can get by with only four hours' sleep out of every twenty-four."

He yawned. "Your next husband has my deepest sympathy."

"Here's some coffee." She set a cup on an end table near his head.

Pitt slipped on his shoes and tucked in his shirttails. Yaeger found anything?"

'Yes .

"The river?"

"No, not yet. Hiram is very mysterious about it, but he claims you were right. Venator sailed across the Atlantic before either the Vikings or Columbus."

He took a sip of the coffee and made a face. "This is almost solid sugar."

Lily looked surprised. "Al said you always take four spoon fuls."

"Al lied. I prefer it pure black with grounds on the bottom of the cup."

"I'm sorry," she said with an unremorseful smile. "I guess I was taken in by a practical joker."

"You're not the first," he said, staring out the door of his office.

Giordino was seated with his feet on Yaeger's desk, devouring the last slice of a pizza while he studied a detailed topographic map of a shoreline.

Yaeger sat with bloodshot eyes aimed at a computer monitor while jotting notes on a pad. He did not have to Turn as Pitt and Lily entered the room. He could see their reflections in the screen.

"We've made a breakthrough," he said with some satisfaction.

Pitt asked, "What have you got?"

"Instead of concentrating on every nook and cranny south from the Serapis's grave in Greenland, I leapfrogged down to Maine and began looking for a match-up of his landing description."

"And it paid off," Pitt said in anticipation.

"Yes. If you'recall, Rufinus wrote that after they deserted Venator, they were battered by storms from the south for thirty-one days before finding a safe bay where they could make repairs to the ship. On the next leg of the voyage more storms blew away the sails and tore off the steering oars. Then the ship drifted for an unspecified number of days before ending up in the Greenland fjord."

Yaeger stopped and called up a chart of the American side of the North Atlantic on the monitor. Next his fingers nimbly punched out a series of codes. A small line formed and began traveling southward from the east coast of Greentand south in a broken, zigzagged path around Newfoundland, past Nova Scotia and New England, ending at a point slightly above Atlantic City.

"New Jersey?" muttered Pitt, puzzled.

"Bamegat Bay, to be exact," said Giordino. He brought over the topographic map and laid it on a table. Then he circled a section of the coast with a red marker.

"Bamegat Bay, New Jersey?" Pitt repeated.

"The shape of the land was quite different back in ninety-one," Yaeger lectured matter-of-factly. "The beach strand was more broken and the bay was deeper and more sheltered. "

"How did you arrive at this exact spot?" asked Pitt.

"In describing the bay, Rufinus mentioned a great sea of dwarflike pines where fresh water seeped from the sand with the jab of a stick. New Jersey has a forest of dwarf pines that fits the description. It's called the Pine Barrens, and it spreads across the southern center of the state bordering on the coast to the east. The water level is just under the surface. During spring runoff or after heavy rains you can literally poke a hole in the sandy soil and strike water."

"Looks promising," said Pitt. "But didn't Rufinus also say they added ballast stone?"

"I admit that had me baffled. So I put in a call to a geologist at the Army Corps of Engineers. He came up with a stone quarry that pinpointed almost the exact site where I believe the Serapis's crew landed."

"Nice job," said Pitt gratefully. "You've put the show on the right track."

"Where do we go from here?" asked Lily.

"I'll continue working south," answered Yaeger. "At the same time I'll have my people compute an approximate trace of Venator's course west from Spain. With hindsight, it seems obvious the islands that made up the fleet's first landfall after leaving the Mediterranean were the West Indies. By continuing the Serapis's path from New Jersey and projecting Venator's track to the Americas, we should arrive at an approximate intersect within five hundred miles of a liver that fits the bill."

Lily looked skeptical. "I fail to see how you expect to trace Venator's track when he censored all accounts of heading, currents, winds and distances."

"No great flash," Yaeger replied dryly. "I'll lift the log data from the voyages of Columbus to the New World,'taking his computed course and adjusting it for differences in hull design and water friction, rigging, and sail area between his ships and the Byzantine fleet a thousand years earlier."

"You make it sound simple."

"Believe me, it's not. We may be homing in on the target, but it's going to take another solid four days of study to get us there."

The weariness and long hours of tedious study seemed forgotten. Yaeger's reddened eyes blazed with determination. Lily appeared to be galvanized with excess energy. They were poised for the starter's gun.

"Do it," said Pitt. "Find the Library."

Pitt thought Sandecker sent for him for a status report on the search, but the instant he saw the somber expression on the Admiral's face, he knew there was a problem. What really bothered Pitt was the soft look in the Admiral's eyes; they were usually as hard as flint.

Then when Sandecker came over and took him by the arm and led him to a couch and sat down alongside, Pitt knew there was a problem.

"I've just received some disturbing news from the White House,"

Sandecker began. "The cruise ship that was hosting Presidents De L4orenzo and Hasan at the economic summit in Uruguay is suspected of being hijacked."

"I'm sorry to hear it," said Pitt, "but how does that affect NUMA?"

"Hala Kamil was on board."

"Damn!"

"And so was the Senator."

"My father?" Pitt muttered in surprise. "I talked to him by phone the night before last. How did he come to be in Uruguay?"

"He was on a mission for the President."

Pitt stood up, paced back and forth and then sat down again. "What's the situation?"

Chve Cuss 'er

"The Lady Flamborough-the name of the British cruise liner-disappeared from the port of Punta del Este last night."

"Where is the ship now?"

"An extensive air search has yet to Turn up a trace of her. The general consensus of the officials on the scene is that the Lady Flamborough lies at the bottom of the sea."

"Without absolute proof, I can't accept that."

"I'm with you."

"Weather conditions?"

"I gather from the report the area was fair with calm seas."

"Ships vanish in storms," said Pitt. "Seldom in calm seas."

Sandecker made an empty gesture with his hands. "Until more details come in we can only speculate."

Pitt could not believe his father was dead. What he heard was too inconclusive. "What is the White House doing about it?"

"The President's hands are tied."

"That's ridiculous," Pitt said sharply. "He could order all naval units in the area to assist in the search."

"That's the catch," said Sandecker. "Except for an occasional training exercise, none of which is occurring now, there are no United States naval units on station in the South Atlantic. "

Pitt stood again and stared out the window at the lights of Washington.

Then he fixed Sandecker with a penetrating stare. "You're telling me the United States government is in no way involved with the search?"

"It looks that way."

"What's to stop NUMA from searching?"

"Nothing except we lack a fleet of Coast Guard vessels and an aircraft carrier."

"We have the Sounder."

Sandecker stared back thoughtfully for a moment. Then his face took on a questioning expression. "One of our research vessels?"

"She's on a sonar mapping project of the continental slope off southern Brazil."

Sandecker nodded. "All right, I get your drift, but the Sounder is too slow to be of any help on an extensive sea search. What do you expect to accomplish with her?"

"If my father's ship can't be found on the surface, I'll hunt for her below.",

"You could be looking at a thousand square miles, maybe more."

"The Sounder's sonar gear can cut a swath two miles wide, and she carries a submersible. All I need is your permission to take command of her."

"You'll need someone to back you up."

"Giordino and Rudi Gunn. We make a good team."

"Rudi is on a deep-sea mining operation off the Canary Islands."

"He could be in Uruguay in eighteen hours."

Sandecker clasped his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling.

Deep down he felt Pitt was chasing shadows, but he never doubted for an instant what his answer would be.

"Write your own ticket," he said in a level tone. "I'll back YOU."

"Thank you, Admiral," Pitt said. "I'm grateful."

"How does the Alexandria Library project stand?"

"Yaeger and Dr. Sharp are close to a solution. They don't need Al and me getting in the way."

Sandecker rose and placed both his hands on Pitts shoulders. "He may not be dead, you know."

"Dad better not be dead," Pitt said with a grim smile, "I'd never forgive him."

"Dammit, Martin!" the President said abniptly. "Didn't your Middle East people smell a plot to hijack the Lady Flamborough?"

Martin Brogan, the CIA director, shrugged wearily. He was well insulated for taking the blame for every terrorist act that killed Americans or took them hostage. The CIAs successes were rarely heralded, but their mistakes were the stuff of Congressional investigations and hype from the news mecha "The ship, along with its entire passenger list and crew, was snatched from under the noses of the finest security agents in the world," he replied. "Whoever dreamed up the venture and executed it is one shrewd operator. The mere scope is far beyond any terrorist activity we've seen in the past.

"I find it hardly surprising our counterterrorist network was not tipped off in advance."

Alan Merger, the National Security Adviser, removed his glasses and idly wiped the lenses with a handkerchief. "My end struck out too," he said, backing up Brogan. "Analysis of our eavesdropping monitoring systems failed to reveal any hint of a potential cruise-liner hijacking and abduction of two foreign leaders."

"By sending George Pitt to meet with President Hasan, I sentenced an old friend to death," the President said regretfully.

"Not your fault," Merger consoled him.

The President angrily pounded the desk with one fist. "The Senator, Hala Kamil, De Lorenzo and Hasan. I can't believe they're all gone."

"We don't know that for sure," said Merger.

The President stared at him. "You can't hide a cruise liner and all the people on board, Alan. Even a dumb politician like me knows that."

"There is still a chance '

"Chance, hell. It was a suicide mission plain and simple. All those poor people were probably locked up while the ship was scuttled. The terrorists never meant to escape. They went down too."

"All the facts aren't in yet," Merger argued.

"Just what do we know?" demanded the President.

"Our experts are already in Punta del Este working with the Uruguayan security people," explained Brogan. "So far, we only have preliminary conclusions. First, the hijacking has been tied to an Arab group. Two witnesses came forward who were in a passing launch when they saw the Lady Flamborough taking on cargo from a landing barge. They heard crewmen on both vessels speaking Arabic. The landing barge has not been found and is assumed to be scuttled somewhere in the harbor."

"any idea on the cargo?" asked Merger.

"All the witnesses could recall seeing were some drums," answered Brogan. "Second, a phony report was given to the Harbor Master's office from the cruise liner saying its main generator had broken down, and the vessel would only run navigation lights until repairs were carried out.

Then, as soon as it became dark, the unlit ship pulled up its anchor and slipped out of the harbor, colliding with a private yacht carrying important South American businessmen and diplomats. The only fumble in an otherwise flawless execution. Then it disappeared."

"Hardly a slop job," said Merger, "unlike the botched second assassination attempt on Hala Kaniil."

"A different group entirely," Brogan added.

Dale Nichols spoke up for the first time in the meeting. "Which you linked directly to Akhmad Yazid."

"Yes, the assassins were not very careful. Egyptian passports were found on tke bodies. One, the leader, we identified as a mullah and fanatical follower of Yazid."

"Do you think Yazid's responsible for the hijacking?"

"He certainly had the motive," answered Brogan. "With President Hasan out of the way, he has a clear shot at taking over the Egyptian government."

"The same goes for President De Lorenzo, Topiltzin and Mexico," Nichols stated flatly.

"An interesting theory," said Merger.

"What can we do besides send a few CIA terrorist investigators to Uruguay?" asked the President. "What are our options in helping with the search for the Lady Flamborough?"

"To answer the first part of your question," said Brogan, "very little.

The investigation is in good hands. Uruguayan police and security intelligence chiefs were trained here and in Britain. They know the score and are most cooperative in working with our experts." He paused and avoided the President's eyes. "As to the second, again, very little. The Navy Department has no ships patrolling the ocean off South America. The nearest vessel to the area is a nuclear sub on a training exercise off Antarctica. Our Latin friends are doing fine without us.

Over eighty military and commercial aircraft and at least fourteen ships from Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay have been combing the sea off Punta del Este since dawn."

"And they haven't found a clue to the Lady Flamborough's fate," said the President. What little optimism he had before was rapidly eroding into despondency.

"They will," said Merger tersely.

"Wreckage and bodies most certainly will Turn up," said Brogan candidly.

"No ship that size can vanish without leaving some trace behind."

"Has the story broken in the press yet?" asked the President.

"I was informed it came over the wire services an hour ago," Nichols answered.

The President folded his hands and clenched them tightly.

"Holy hell will cut loose in Congress when they find out one of their members is a victim of a terrorist act. No telling what kind of revenge they'll demand."

"The purpose of the Senator's mission alone is enough to cause a major scandal if it leaks out," said Nichols.

"Swinge that terrorists can murder international leaders and diplomats, with an army of innocent victims thrown in, and get off with a few years in prison," mused the President. "But if we play their gwne and go after them with guns blasting, we're branded immoral, blood-thirsty avengers. The news media get on our case and Congress demands investigations."

"It hurts being the good guys," said Brogan. He was beginning to sound tired.

Nichols stood up and stretched. "I don't think we have to worry.

Nothing was put down on paper or recorded on tape. And only the men in this room know why Senator Pitt flew down to Punta del Este to confer with President Hasan."

"Dale's right," said Merger. "We can come up with any number of excuses to explain away his mission."

The President unclasped his hands and rubbed his eyes tiredly. "George Pitt hasn't been dead a day and already we're trying to cover our asses."

"That problem is minor compared to the political disasters we're facing in Egypt and Mexico," said Nichols. "With Hasan and De Lorenzo dead too, Egypt will go the way of Iran and be irretrievably lost for sure, Then with Mexico - - ." He hesitated. "We'll have a time bomb ready to go off along our own border."

"As my Chief of Staff and closest adviser, what measures do you suggest we take?"

Nichols's stomach was attacked by a cramp and his heartbeat quickened.

The President and the two intelligence advisers seemed to be studying his eyes. He wondered if the stress that was twisting his guts came from being put on the spot or the thought of a looming foreign catastrophe.

"I propose we wait for proof the Lady Flamborough and everybody on her lies on the bottom of the ocean.

"And if no evidence is forthcoming?" asked the President. "Do we go on waiting until Egypt and Mexico, their leaders missing and presumed dead, arr taken over by Topiltzin and

Akhmad Yazid, a pair of crazed megalomaniacs? What then?

What course of action is left to stop them before it's too late?"

"Short of assassination, none." Nichols's hand nervously massaged his aching stomach. "We can only prepare for the worst."

"Which is . . . ?"

"We write off Egypt," Nichols said gravely, "and invade Mexico."

A heavy rain soaked Uruguay's capital city of Montevideo as the small jet dropped from the clouds and lined up on the runway. Soon after touchdown it swung away from the commercial terminal and rolled onto a taxi strip toward a cluster of hangars flanked by rows of fighter jets.

A Ford sedan with military markings appeared and led the pilot to a parking area reserved for visiting VIP aircraft.

Colonel Rojas stood inside a hangar office and peered out a water-streaked window. As the aircraft rolled closer he could see the letters NUMA across the aquamarine color scheme running down the fuselage. The sound of the engines died away, and a minute later three men climbed out. They quickly piled into the Ford to escape the deluge and were driven inside the hangar where Rojas waited.

The Colonel stepped to the office door and studied them as they were ushered across the vast concrete floor by a young lieutenant who was his aide.

The short one with a curly jungle of black hair and a battleship chest strutted with an easy vigor. His hands and arms might have been grafted from a bear. His eyes scowled, but his lips showed white, even teeth in a satirical smile.

The slim man with the horn-rinnned glasses, narrow hips and shoulders looked like an accountant who had come to audit the company ledgers. He carried a briefcase and two books under one arm. He also wore a smile, but it seemed more mischievous than plain humorous. Rojas pegged him as a pleasant sort, easily amused yet highly competent.

The tall man who brought up the rear had black wavy hair and heavy eyebrows, his face craggy and tanned. There was an air of indifference about him as though he would have enjoyed a prison sentence with the same expectation as a Tahitian holiday. Rojas was not fooled. The man's penetrating eyes gave him away. While the other two gazed around the hangar as they walked, this man fixed Rojas with a burning stare like the sun through twill magnifying glasses.

Rojas stepped forward and saluted. "Welcome to Uruguay, gentlemen.

Colonel Jose Rojas at your service." Then he addressed himself to the tall man, speaking in perfect English with a slight trace of cockney he'd picked up from the British. "I've looked forward to meeting you since our phone conversation, Mr. Pitt."

Pitt stepped between his friends and shook Rojas's hand. "Thank you for taking the time to see us." He turned and introduced the man with the glasses. "This is Rudi Gunn and the criminal type on my right is Al Giordino."

Rojas gave a slight bow of the head and idly tapped his swagger stick against a neatly pressed pants leg. "Please forgive the Spartan surroundings, but an army of world journalists have invaded our country like the plague since the hijacking. I thought it more convenient to confer away from the horde."

"A sound idea," Pitt agreed. "Would you care to relax a bit after your long flight and dine at our Air Force officers' club?"

"Thank you for the invitation, Colonel," said Pitt graciously, "but if you don't mind, we'd like to get to it."

"Then, if you'll step this way, I'll brief you on our search operations."

Inside the office Ro as introduced Captain Ignacio Flores, who had coordinated the air/sea hunt. Then he motioned the three Americans to gather around a large table covered with nautical charts and satellite-imagery photos.

Before he launched the briefing, Rojas looked at Pitt solemnly. "I am sorry to hear your father was a passenger on board the ship. When we spoke on thephone you didn't mention your relationship."

"You're well informed," said Pitt.

"I've been in hourly communication with your President's security adviser."

"You'll be happy to know that the intelligence people in Washington who briefed me on the situation praised your efficiency."

Rojas's official bearing crumbled. He had not expected such a compliment. He began to loosen up. "I regret I can't give you encouraging news. No new evidence has turned up since you departed the United States. I can, however, offer you a drink of our fine Uruguayan brandy."

"Sounds good to me," Giordino said without hesitation. "Especially on a rainy day."

Rojas nodded to his aide. "Lieutenant, if you will do us the honors."

Then the Colonel leaned over the table and pieced together several enlarged black-and-white satellite images until he had a mosaic of the waters stretching three hundred kilometers off the coast. "I take it you're all familiar with satellite imagery?"

Rudi Gunn nodded. "NUMA currently has three satellite oceanography programs in progress to study currents, eddys, surface winds and sea ice."

"But none are focusing on this section of the South Atlantic," said Rojas. "Most geographic information systems are aimed north."

"Yes, you're quite right." Gunn adjusted his glasses and examined the photo blowups on the table. "I see you've used the Earth Resources Tech Satellite."

"Yes, the Landsat."

"And you used a powerful graphic system to show ships at sea. "

"We had a piece of luck," Rojas continued. "The polar orbit of the satellite takes it over the sea off Uruguay only once every sixteen days. It arrived at a most opportune time.

"The Landsat's primary use is for geological survey," said Gunn. "The cameras are usually shut down when it orbits over the oceans to conserve energy. How did you get the images?"

"Immediately after the search was ordered," explained Rojas, "our meteorological defense section was alerted to provide weather forecasts for the patrol boats and aircraft. One of the meteorologists had an inspiration and checked the Landsat's orbit and found it would pass over the search area. He sent an urgent request to your government to Turn it on. The cameras were engaged with an hour to spare and the signals sent to a receiving station in Buenos Aires."

"Could a target the size of the Lady Flamborough show up on a Landsat image?" asked Giordino.

"You won't see detail like you would in a high-resolution photo from a defense intelligence satellite," replied Pitt, "but she should be as visible as a pinprick."

"You described her perfectly," said Rojas. "See for yourselves."

He set a large magnified viewing lens with an interior light over a tiny section of the satellite photo mosaic. Then he stood back.

Pitt was the first to look. "I can make out two, no, three vessels."

"We have identified all three."

Rojas turned and nodded to Captain Flores, who began to read aloud from a sheet of paper, struggling with his English as if reciting in front of a class. "The largest ship is a Chilean ore carrier, the Cabo Gallegos, bound from Punta Arenas to Dakar with a load of coal."

"The northbound vessel, just coming into view on the bottom edge of the image?" asked Pitt.

"Yes," Flores agreed. "That is the Cabo Gallegos. The one opposite on the top is southbound. She's of Mexican registry. A container ship, the General Bravo, carrying supplies and oil-drilling equipment to San Pablo."

"Where's San Pablo?" asked Giordino.

"A small port city on the tip of Argentina," replied Rojas. "There was an oil strike there last year."

"The vessel between them and closer toward shore is the Lady Flamborough. " Flores spoke the cruise liner's name as if he were giving a eulogy.

Rojas's aide appeared with the bottle of brandy and five glasses. The Colonel raised his and said, "Saludos."

"Salute," the Americans acknowledged.

Pitt took a large sip that he swore later incinerated his tonsils and resumed his study of the tiny dot for several seconds before giving up the viewing glass to Gunn. "I can't make out her heading."

"After sneaking out of Punta del Este she sailed due east without a course change."

"You've been in contact with the other ships?"

Flores nodded. "Neither one reported seeing her."

"What time did the satellite pass over?"

"The exact time was 03: 10 hours."

"The imagery was infrared."

'Yes .

"The guy who thought of using the Landsat ought to get a medal," said Giordino as he took his Turn at the viewer.

"A promotion is already in channels," Rojas said, smiling.

Pitt looked at the Colonel. "What time did your aerial reconnaissance get off the ground?"

"Our aircraft began searching at first light. By noon we had received and analyzed the Landsat imagery. We then could calculate the speed and course of the Lady Flamborough and direct our ships and planes to an interception point."

"But they found an empty sea."

"Quite right."

"No wreckage?"

Captain Flores spoke up. "Our patrol boats did run on several pieces of debris."

"Was it identified?"

"Some was pulled on board and examined but quickly discarded. It appeared to have come from a cargo ship rather than a luxury cruise liner."

"What sort of debris?"

Flores checked through a briefcase and removed a thin file. "I have a short inventory received from the Captain of the search vessel. He lists one worn overstaffed chair; two faded life-jackets, at least fifteen years old, with operation instructions stenciled in almost illegible Spanish; several unmarked wooden crates; a bunk mattress; food containers; three newspapers, one from Veracmz, Mexico, the other two from Recife, Brazil '

"Dates?" Pitt interrupted.

Flores looked questioningly at Pitt for a moment and then he averted his gaze. "The Captain did not give them."

"An oversight that will be corrected," said Rojas sternly, immediately picking up on Pitts thoughts.

"If it isn't already too late," Flores came back uneasily. "You must admit, Colonel, the debris appears to be trash, not ship's wreckage."

"Could you plot the coordinates of the ships as they're shown on the satellite photo?" asked Pitt.

Hores nodded and began plotting the positions on to a nautical chart.

"Another brandy, gentlemen?" Rojas offered.

"It's quite vibrant," said Gunn, holding out his glass to the lieutenant. "I detect a very slight coffee flavor."

Rojas smiled. "I can see you're a connoisseur, Mr. Gunn. Quite right.

My uncle distills it on his coffee plantation."

"Too sweet," said Giordino. "Reminds me of licorice .

"It also contains anisette." Rojas turned to Pitt. "And you Mr. Pitt.

How do you taste it?"

Pitt held up the glass and studied it under the light. "I'd say about two hundred proof."

North Americans never ceased to amaze Rojas. All business one moment, complete jesters the next. He often wondered how they built such a superpower.

Then Pitt laughed his infectious laugh. "Only kidding. Tell your uncle if he ever exports it to the U.S., I'll be the first in line to distribute it."

Flores threw down his dividers and tapped a penciled box on the chart.

"They were here at 03:10 yesterday morning."

Everyone moved back to the table and hovered over the chart.

"All three were on converging courses all right," observed Gunn. He took a small calculator from his pocket and began punching its buttons.

"If I make a rough estimate of speeds, say about thirty knots for the Lady Flamborough, eighteen for the Cabo Gallegos, and twenty-two for the General Bravo . . ." his voice trailed off as he made notations on the edge of the chart. After several moments he stood back and tapped the figures with a pencil. "Not surprising the Chilean coal carrier didn't make visual contact. She would have crossed the cruise liner's bow a good sixty-four kilometers to the east."

Pitt stared thoughtfully at the lines across the chart. "The Mexican container ship, on the other hand, looks as if she missed the Lady Flamborough by no more than three or four kilometers."

"Not surprising," said Rojas, "when you consider the cruise liner was running without lights."

Pitt looked at Flores. "Do you'recall the phase of the moon, Captain?"

"Yes, between new moon and first quarter, a crescent."

Giordino shook his head. "Not bright enough if the bridge watch wasn't looking in the right direction."

"I assume you launched the search from this point," said Pitt.

Flores nodded. "Yes, the aircraft flew grids two hundred miles to the east, north and south."

"And found no sign of her."

"Only the container ship and the ore carrier."

"She might have doubled back and then cut north or south," suggested Gunn.

"We thought of that, too," said Flores. "The aircraft cleared all western approaches toward land when they returned for fuel and went out again."

"Considering the facts," said Gunn ominously, "I fear the only place the Lady Flamborough could have gone is down."

"Take her last position, Rudi, and figure how far she might have sailed before the search planes arrived."

Rojas stared at Pitt with interest. "May I ask what you intend to do?

Further search would be useless. The entire surface where she vanished has been swept."

Pitt seemed to stare through Rojas as though the Colonel were transparent. "Like the man just said, 'The only place she could have gone is down." And that's precisely where we're going to look."

"How can I be of service?"

"The Sounder, a NUMA deep-water research ship, should arrive in the general search area sometime this evening. We'd be grateful if you could spare a helicopter to shuttle us out to her. "

Rojas nodded. "I will arrange to have one standing by."

Then he added, "You realize you n-light as well be hunting one particular fish in ten thousand square kilometers of sea. It could take you a lifetime."

"No," said Pitt confidently. "Twenty hours on the outside."

Rojas was a pragmatic man. Wishful thinking was foreign to him. He looked at Giordino and Gunn, expecting to see skepticism mirrored in their eyes. Instead, he saw only complete agreement.

"Surely, you can't believe such a fanciful time schedule?" he asked.

Giordino held up a hand and casually studied his fingernails. "If experience is any judge," he replied placidly, "Dirk has overestimated."

Exactly fourteen hours and forty-two minutes after the Uruguayan army helicopter set them on the landing pad of the Sounder, they found a shipwreck matching the Lady Flamborough's dimensions in 1,020 meters of water.

On the discovery pass the target showed up as a tiny dark speck on a flat plain below the continental slope. As the Sounder moved in closer, the sonar operator decreased the recording range until the shadowy image of a ship became a discernible shape.

The Sounder did not carry the five-million-dollar viewing system Pitt and Giordino had enjoyed on the Polar Explorer. No color video cameras were mounted on the trailing sonar sensor. The mission of her oceanographic scientists was purely to map large sections of the sea bottom. Her electronic gear was designed for distance and not closeup detail of manmade sunken objects.

"Same configuration all right," said Gunn. "Pretty vague. Could be my imagination but she appears to have a sweptback funnel on her stern superstructure. Her sides look high and straight. She's sitting upright, no more than a ten-degree list."

Giordino held back. "We'll have to get cameras on her to make a positive ID."

Pitt said nothing. He kept watching the sonar recording long after the target slipped behind the Sounder's stern. any hope of finding his father alive was draining away. He felt as though he was staring at a coffin as dirt was being thrown on the lid.

"Nice going, pal," Giordino said to him. "You laid us right on the dime."

"How did you know where to look?" asked Frank Stewart, skipper of the Sounder.

"I gambled the Lady Flamborough didn't change her heading after crossing the inside path of the General Bravo," Pitt explained. "And since she wasn't spotted by search aircraft beyond the outside course of the Cabo Gallegos, I decided the best place to concentrate our search was on a track extending east from her last-known heading as shown by the Landsat."

"In short, a narrow corridor running between the General Bravo and the Cabo Gallegos, " said Giordino.

"that about sums it up," Pitt acknowledged.

Gunn looked at him. "I'm sorry it's not an occasion to celebrate. "

"Do you want to send down an ROV?"* asked Stewart.

"We can save time," answered Pitt, "by skipping a remote camera survey and going direct to a manned probe. Also, the submersible's manipulator arms may be useful if we need to lift anything from the wreck."

"The crew can have the Deep Rover ready to descend in half an hour,"

said Stewart. "You going to act as operator?"

Pitt nodded. "I'll take her down."

"At a thousand meters, you'll be right at the edge of its depth rating."

"Not to worry," said Rudi Gunn. "The Deep Rover has a four-to-one safety factor at that depth."

"I'd sooner go over Niagara Falls in a Volkswagen," said the Captain,

"than go down a thousand meters in a plastic bubble."

Stewart, narrow-shouldered, with slicked-down burnt-toast-brown hair, looked like a small-town feed-store merchant and scoutmaster. A seasoned seaman, he could swim but was leery of the deep and refused to learn to dive. He catered to the scientists' requests and whims concerning their oceanographic projects as in any business/client relation 'Remote Operated Vehicle; tetherrd, underwater viewing system.

ship. But the ship operation was his domain, and any aca demic type who played Long John Silver with his crew was cut off at the knees in short order.

"That plastic bubble," said Pitt, "is an acrylic sphere over twelve centimeters thick."

"I'm happy to sit on deck in the sunshine and wave goodbye to anyone who takes the plunge in that contraption," Stewart muttered as he walked through the door.

"I like him," said Giordino moodily. "Utterly lacking in savoir faire, but I like him."

"You two have something in common," Pitt said, grinning.

Gunn froze an image of the wreck on videotape from the sonar recording and studied it thoughtfully. He slid his glasses over his forehead and refocused his eyes. "The hull looks intact. No sign of breakup. Why in hell did she sink?"

"Better yet," mused Giordino, "why no flotsam?"

Pitt stared at the blurred image too. "Remember the Cyclops? She was lost without a trace too."

"How can we forget her?" Giordino groaned. "We still carry the scars."

Gunn looked up at him. "In all fairness, you can't compare a poorly laden ship built around the turn of the century with a modern cruise liner carrying a thousand built-in safety features.

"No storm put her down there," said Pitt.

"Maybe a rogue wave?"

"Or maybe some sand kicker blew her bottom out," said Giordino.

"We'll know soon enough," Pitt said quietly. "In another two hours we'll be sitting on her main deck."

The Deep Rover looked like she'd be more at home orbiting space than cruising the depths of the ocean. She had a shape only a Martian could love. The 240-centimeter sphere was divided by a large O-ring and sat on rectangular pods that held the 120-volt batteries. All sorts of strange appendages sprouted from behind the sphere: thrusters and motors, oxygen cylinders, carbon dioxide removal canisters, docking mechanism, camera systems, scanning sonar unit. But it was the manipulators that extended in the front that would have made any self-respecting robot green with envy. Simply de bed, Vaey were mechanical arms and hands with a canny way of doing everything flesh and bone could do, and then some. A sensory feedback system made it possible to control the hand and arm movements to within thousandths of a centimeter, while force feedback allowed the hands to delicately hold a cup and saucer or grab and lift an iron stove.

Pitt and Giordino patiently circled the Deep Rover while she was fussed over by a pair of engineers. She sat on a cradle inside a cavernous chamber called the "moon pool." The platform holding her cradle was part of the Sounder's hull and could be lowered twenty feet into the sea.

One of the engineers finally nodded. "She's ready when you are."

Pitt slapped Giordino on the back. "After you."

"Okay, i'll handle the manipulators and cameras," he said jovially. "You drive, only mind the rush-hour traffic."

"You tell him," yelled Stewart from an overhead balcony, his voice echoing inside the chamber. "Bring it back in one piece and I'll give you a great big kiss."

"Me too?" Giordino yelled back, going along with the joke.

"You too. ',

"Can I take out my dentures?"

"Take out anything you want."

"You call that an incentive?" Pitt said dryly. He was grateful to the Captain for trying to take his mind off what they might find. "I may make a beeline for Africa rather than come back here."

"You'll need an extra truckload of oxygen," said Stewart.

Gunn walked up, oblivious to the good-natured exchange, a pair of earphones clamped to his head with the cable dangling at his leg.

He tried to keep his instructions businesslike, but compassion crept into his voice. "I'll be monitoring your audio locator beacon and communications. Soon as you see bottom, make a

three-hundred-and-sixty-degree sweep until your sonar picks out the wreck. Then give me your heading. I expect you to keep me informed every step of the way."

Pitt shook Gunn's hand. "We'll stay in touch."

Gunn stared up at his old friend bleakly. "You sure you wouldn't rather stay topside and let me go down?"

"I've got to see for myself."

"Good luck," Gunn murmured, and then he quickly turned away and mounted a ladder leading from the moon pool.

Pitt and Giordino settled into the side-by-side, aircraftstyle armchairs. The engineers swung the top half of the sphere closed against the watertight O-ring and tightened the clamps.

Giordino began going through the predive checklist. "Power?"

"Power on," affirmed Pitt.

"Raho?"

"Are we coming in, Rudi?"

Loud and clear," Gunn answered.

"Oxygen "Twenty-one-point-five percent."

When they finished, Giordino said, "Ready when you are, Sounder."

"You're cleared for takeoff, Deep Rover," Stewart replied in his usual ironic tone. "Bring back a lobster for dinner."

Two divers stood by in full gear as the platform was slowly lowered into the sea. The water surged around the Deep Rover and soon enveloped the sphere. Pitt looked up into the shimmering lights of the moon pool and saw the wavering figures leaning over the balconies. The entire company of oceanographers and crew turned out for the dive, hovering around Gunn and listening to the reports from the sub. Pitt felt like a fish on display in an aquarium.

When they were fully submerged, the divers moved in and unhitched the submersible from its cradle. One of them held up a hand and gave an

"Okay" sign. Pitt smiled and answered with a "Thumbs up," and then pointed ahead.

The handgrips on the end of the amirests guided the manipulators, while the armrests themselves controlled the four sters. Pitt took a Deep breath and controled the rover as if he were a helicopter pilot. A slight pressure on his elbows and she rose off the cradle. Then he pushed his arms forward and the horizontal stablizers eased her ahead.

Pitt moved the little craft off the platform about thirty meters and stopped to assess his compass bearing. Then he engaged the vertical thrusters and began the descent.

Down, down the Deep Rover fell through the dimensionless void, the darkening water burying her in its depths. The vibrant blue-green of the surface soon turned to a soft gray. A small, one-meter blue shark swam effortlessly toward the sub,

circled once and, finding nothing inviting, continued its lonely journey into the fluid haze.

They felt no sense of movement. The only sound came from the soft crackle of the radio and the pinging of the locator beacon. The water became a curtain of black surrounding their small circle of light.

"Passing four hundred meters," Pitt reported as caln-Ay as a pilot announcing his flight altitude.

"Four hundred meters," Gunn repeated.

Ordinarily the wit and the sarcasm would have bounced off the interior of the submersible to pass the time, but this trip Pitt and Giordino were strangely silent. Seldom during the descent did their conversation run more than a few words.

"There's a real sweetheart," said Giordino, pointing.

Pitt saw it at the same time. One of the ugliest of the deep's resident citizens. Long, eel-shaped body, outlined by luminescence like a neon sign. The frozen, gaping jaws were never fully closed, kept apart by long, jagged teeth that were used more for entrapping prey than for chewing them. One eye gleamed nastily while a tube that was attached to a luniinated beard dangled from its lower jaw to lure the next meal.

"How'd you like to stick your arm in that thing?" asked Pitt. Before Giordino could answer, Gunn broke in. "One of the scientists wants to know what you saw."

"A dragonfish," Pitt replied.

"He wants a description," said Giordino.

"Tell him we'll draw a picture when we come home," Pitt grunted.

"I'll pass the word."

"Passing eight hundred meters," Pitt reported.

"Mind you don't smack the bottom," Gunn warned him.

"We'll keep an eye peeled. Neither of us is keen on making a one-way trip."

"Never hurts to have a worrywart on your side. How's your oxygen?"

"On the money."

"You should be getting close."

Pitt slowed the Deep Rover's descent with a light touch of the sliding armrest. Giordino peered downward, his eyes watchful for a sign of rocks. Pitt could have sworn his friend never blinked in the next eight minutes it took for the seabed to gradually materialize below.

"We're down," Giordino announced. "Depth one,thousand fifteen meters."

Pitt applied extra power to the vertical sters, bringing the submersible to a hovering stop three meters above the gray silt. Due to the water pressure, the weight of the craft had increased during the descent. Pitt turned one of the ballast tank valves, keeping an eye on the pressure gauge, and filled it with just enough air to achieve neutral buoyancy.

"Making our sweep," he notified Gunn.

"The wreck should bear approximately one one zero degrees," Gunn's voice crackled back.

"Affirmative, I read you," said Pitt. "We have a sonar target two hundred twenty meters, bearing one one two degrees."

"I copy, Deep Rover."

Pitt turned to Giordino. "Well, let us see what we shall see.

He increased the power on the horizontal thrusters and executed a sweeping bank, studying the barren seascape ahead as Giordino kept him on track by reading off the compass heading.

"Come left a couple of points. Too much. Okay, you've got it. Keep her straight."

There was not a flicker of emotion in Pitts eyes. His face was strangely still. He wondered with a growing fear what he might find.

He recalled the haunting story of a diver salvaging a ferry that had sunk after a collision. The diver was working the wreck at one-hundred meters when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He swung around and was confronted by the body of a beautiful girl who was staring at him through sightless eyes, one arm extended and touching him as if asking to take her hand. The diver had nightmares for years afterward.

Pitt had seen bodies before, frozen as the crew of the Serapis; bloated and grotesque as the crew of the Presidential yacht Eagle; decayed and half-dissolved in sunken airplanes off Iceland and a lake in the Colorado rockies. He could still close his eyes and visualize them all.

He hoped to God he wouldn't see his father as a floating corpse. He shut his eyes for a few moments and almost ran the Deep Rover into the bottom. Pitt wanted to remember the Senator as alive and vibrant-not as a ghostly thing in the sea or a ridiculously made up stiff in a casket.

"Object in the silt to the right," Giordino said, jolting Pitt from his morbid thoughts.

Pitt leaned forward. "A two-hundred-liter drum. Three more off to the left."

"They're all over the place," said Giordino. "Looks like a junkyard down here."

"See any markings?"

"Only some stenciled lettering in Spanish. Probably weight and volume information."

"I'll move closer to the one dead ahead. A trace of whatever was in them is still rising to the surface."

Pitt edged the Deep Rover's sphere to within a few inches of the sunken drum. The lights showed a dark substance curling from the drain hole.

"Oil?" said Giordino.

Pitt shook his head. "The color is more nistlike. No, wait, it's red.

By God, it's an oil-base red paint."

"There's another cylindrical object next to it."

"What do you make of it?"

"I'd say it's a big roll of plastic sheeting."

"I'd say you're right."

"Might not be a bad idea to take it aboard the Sounder for examination.

Hold position. I'll grab it with the manipulators."

Pitt nodded silently and held the Deep Rover steady against the gentle bottom current. Giordino clutched the handgrip controls and curled the arm assemblies around the plastic roll, much like a human would bend both elbows to embrace a friend. Next he positioned the four-function hands so they gripped the bottom edge.

"She's secure," he announced. "Give us a little vertical thrust to pull it out of the sillt."

Pitt complied, and the Deep Rover slowly rose, carrying the roll with her, followed by a swirling cloud of fine silt. for a few moments they couldn't see. Then Pitt eased the submersible ahead until they broke into clear water again.

"We should be coming up on her," said Giordino. "Sonar shows a massive target in front and slightly to the right."

"We show you to be practically on top of her," said Gunn.

Like a ghostly image in a darkened mirror, the ship rose out of the gloom. Magnified by the water distortion, she seemed a staggering sight.

"We have visual contact," Giordino reported.

Pitt slowed the Deep Rover to a stop seven meters from the hull. Then he maneuvered the sub up and alongside the derelict's foredeck.

"What the hell?" Pitt broke off suddenly. Then, "Rudi, what colors were on the Lady Flamborough?"

"Hold on." No more than ten seconds elapsed before Gunn answered. "Light blue hull and superstructure."

"This ship has a red hull with white upperworks."

Gunn did not reply immediately. When he did, his voice sounded old and tired. "I'm sorry, Dirk. We must have stumbled on a missing World War Two ship that was torpedoed by a U-boat. "

"Can't be," muttered Giordino distantly. "This wreck is pristine. No sign of growth or corrosion. I can see oil and air bubbles escaping.

She can't be more than a week old."

"Negative," Stewart's voice came over the radio. "The only ship reported missing during the last six months in this part of the Atlantic is your cruise liner."

"This ain't no cruise ship," Giordino shot back.

"Hold for a minute," said Pitt. "I'm going to come around the stern and see if we can make an identification."

He threw the Deep Rover into a steep bank and glided parali lel to the ship's side. When they reached the stern, he spun sideways to a halt.

The sub hung there motionless only one meter from the name of the ship painted on beaded welding.

"Oh, my God," Giordino whispered in incredulous awe.

"We've been conned."

Pitt did not sit there in stunned disbelief. He grinned like a madman.

The puzzle was far from complete, but the vital pieces had fallen into place. The white raised letters on the red steel plates did not read Lady Flamborough.

They read General Bravo.

from four hundred meters her designers and shipbuilders would not have recognized the Lady Flamborough. Her funnel had been reconstructed and every square inch of her repainted. To complete the facade, the hull was streaked with simulated rust.

Her once-beautiful superstructure, stateroom windows and promenade deck were now hidden by great sheets of fiberboard assembled to look like cargo containers.

Where the cruise liner's modern, rounded bridge featurrs were impossible to remove or hide, they were squared with wooden frwnework and canvas and painted with fake hatches and portholes.

Before the lights of Punta del Este had dropped astern, every crew member and passenger was drafted into forced labor parties and driven to the point of exhaustion by Ammar's armed hijackers. The ship's officers, cruise directors, the stewards, chefs and waiters, and ordinary deckhands-they all hammered and slaved at assembling the prefabricated containers through the night.

None of the VIP guests was spared. Senator Pitt and Hala Kamfl, Presidents Hasan and De Lorenzo, along with their cabinet members and staff aides, were all pressed into service as carpenters and painters.

By the time the cruise liner rendezvoused with the General Bravo, the counterfeit cargo containers were in place and the ship sported a nearly identical configuration and color scheme.

from the waterline up, the newly disguised Lady Flamborough could have easily passed as the container ship. An overhead inspection from the air would have revealed few discrepancies. Only a close examination from the sea might have detected obvious differences.

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."

Hala sagged against him and buried her face in his chest. "We'll never be rescued now," she murmured in helpless resignation. "No one will think to look for us there."

No one knew the Sounder could drive so hard. Her decks trembled with the straining throb of her engines and the hull shuddered as it pounded into the swells.

Launched at a shipyard in Boston during the summer of 1961, she had spent almost three decades chartering out to oceanographic schools for deep-water research projects in every sea of the world. After her purchase by NUMA in 1990, she had been completely overhauled and refitted. Her new 4,000-horsepower diesel engine was designed to push her at a maximum of fourteen knots, but Stewart and his engineers somehow coaxed seventeen out of her.

The Sounder was the only ship on the trail of the Lady Flamborough, and she stood as much chance of closing the gap as a basset hound after a leopard. Warships of the Argentine Navy and British naval units stationed in the Falkjand Islands might have intercepted the fleeing cruise ship, but they were not alerted.

After Pitts coded message to Admiral Sandecker announcing the astonishing discovery of the General Bravo instead of the Lady Flamborough, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the White House intelligence chiefs strongly advised the President to order a tight security lid on the revelation until U.S. Special Operations Forces could reach the area and coordinate a rescue.

So the old Sounder surged through the sea, alone and without any high official authority, her crew of seamen d scientists caught up in the mad excitement of the chase.

Pitt and Giordino sat in the ship's dining room, studying a chart of the extreme South Atlantic Ocean that Gunn had laid out on the table and pinned down with coffee cups.

"You're convinced they headed south?" Gunn said to Pitt.

"A U-turn to the north would have put the liner back in the search grid," explained Pitt. "And there's no way they would have swung west toward the coastline of Argentina."

"They might have made a run for the open sea."

"With a three-day lead they could be halfway to Africa by now," added Giordino.

"Too risky," said Pitt. "Whoever is running the show doesn't lack for gray matter. Turning east across the ocean would have laid the ship open to exposure by search aircraft and any passing vessels. No, his only option to avoid undue suspicion was to continue on the General Bravo's advertised course to San Pablo on Tierra del Fuego."

"But the port authorities would have blown the whistle when the container ship was overdue," insisted Giordino.

"Don't underestimate this guy. What do you want to bet he signaled the San Pablo Harbor Master and said the General Bravo was running late due to engine breakdown?"

"A neat touch," agreed Giordino. "He could easily gain another forty-eight hours."

"Okay," said Gunn. "What's left? Where does he go? There are a thousand uninhabited islands he could get lost in around the Straits of Magellan."

"Or ' Giordino hung on the "or7-"he might sail to the Antarctic, where he figures no one will search."

"We're all talking in the present tense," said Pitt. "for all we know, he's already moored in some deserted cove."

"We're on to his tricks now," said Gunn. "The Landsat cameras will be activated on its next pass over, and the Lady Flamborough, alias General Bravo, will be revealed in all her glory. "

Giordino looked at Pitt for comment, but his old friend was staring off into space. He had picked up on Pitts habit of tuning out and knew the signs all too well.

Pitt was no longer on the Sounder, he was on the bridge of the Lady Flamborough, attempting to get inside the head of his adversary. It wasn't an easy chore. The man who ramrodded the hijacking had to be the shrewdest customer Pitt had ever come up against.

"He's aware of that," Pitt said finally.

"Aware of what?" Gunn asked curiously.

"The fact he can be detected by satellite photographs."

"Then he knows he can run, but he can't hide."

"I think he can."

"I'd like to know how."

Pitt stood and stretched. "I'm going to take a little walk."

"You didn't answer my question." Gunn was anxious now, impatient.

Pitt swayed and balanced his body with the rock of the ship and looked down at Gunn with a half grin. "If I were him," he said as if talking about a man he knew well, "I'd make the ship disappear a second time."

Gunn's mouth dropped open as Giordino gave him an "I told you so" look.

But before he could probe further, Pitt had exited the dining room.

Pitt made his way aft and dropped down a ladder to the moon pool. He walked around the Deep Rover and stopped in front of the large roll of plastic sheeting they had pulled up from the bottom. It stood on end nearly as tall as Pitt and was secured by ropes against a stanchion.

He stared at it for nearly five minutes before he rose and patted it with one hand. Intuition, an intuition that grew into a certainty, put a look that could be best described as pure Machiavellian in his eyes.

He spoke a single word, uttered under his breath so softly that an engineer standing only a few meters away at a workbench didn't hear him.

"Gotcha!"

A flood of information on what became known as the Flamborough crisis poured through teletype and computer into the Pentagon's Military Command Center, the State Department's seventh floor Operations Center, and the War Games room in the old Executive Office Building.

from each of these strategy tanks, the data were assembled and analyzed with almost lightning speed. Then the condensed version, fused with recommendations, was rushed to the Situation Room located in the White House basement for final assessment.

The President, dressed casually in slacks and a woolen turtleneck, entered the room and sat at one end of the long conference table. After being updated on the situation, he would ask for options from his advisers for appropriate action. Though final decisions were his alone, he was heavily reinforced by crisis-management veterans who labored in search of a policy consensus and stood ready to carry it out once he gave it his stamp of approval despite dissenting opinions.

The intelligence reports from Egypt were mostly all bad. A state of anarrhy was in full swing; the situation was deteriorating by the hour.

The police and military forces remained in their barracks while thousands of Akhmad Yazid's followers staged strikes and boycotts throughout the country. The only shred of good news was that the demonstrations were not marked by violence.

Secretary of State Douglas Oates briefly examined a report that was placed in front of him by an aide. "That's all we need," he muttered.

The President looked at him expectantly in silence.

"The Muslim rebels have just stormed and taken Cairo's major TV

station."

"A-ny appearance by Yazid?"

"Still a no-show." CIA chief Brogan walked over from one of the computer monitors. "The latest intelligence says he's still holed up in his villa outside Alexandria, waiting to form a new government by acclamation."

"Shouldn't be long now." The President sighed wearily. "What stance are the Israeli ministers taking?"

Oates neatly stacked some papers as he spoke. "Strictly a wait-and-see attitude. They don't picture Yazid as an immediate threat."

"They'll change their tune when he tears up the Camp David Peace Accord." The President turned and coldly stared into Brogan's eyes. "Can we take him out?"

"Yes."

Brogan's answer was flat, emphatic.

"How?"

"In the event it comes back to haunt your administration, Mr.

President, I respectfully suggest you don't know."

The President bowed his head slightly in agreement.

"You're probably right. Still, you can't do the job unless I give the order."

"I strongly urge you not to resort to assassination," said Oates.

"Doug Oates is right," said Julius Schiller. "It could boomerang. If word leaked out, you'd be considered fair game by middle East terrorist leaders."

"Not to mention the uproar from Congress," added Dale Nichols, who sat midway down the table. "And the press would murder you."

The President thoughtfully weighed the consequences. Then he finally nodded. "All right, so long as Yazid hates Soviet Premier Antonov as much as he does me, we'll put his demise on the back burner for now. But bear this in mind, gentlemen,

I'm not about to take half the crap from this nut that Khomeini dished out to my predecessors."

Brogan scowled, but an expression of relief was exchanged between Oates and Schiller. Nichols merely puffed contentedly on his pipe.

The actors in the drama were strong men with definite and often conflicting viewpoints. Victory came easy, but defeat smoldered.

The President shifted the agenda. "any late word on Mexico?"

"The situation is uncomfortably quiet," answered Brogan. "No demonstrations, no rioting. Topiltzin appears to be playing the same waiting game as his brother."

The President looked up, puzzled. "Did I hear you correctly? You said

'brother'?"

Brogan tilted his head toward Nichols. "Dale made a good call. Yazid and Topiltzin are brothers who are neither Egyptian nor Mexican by birth."

"You've definitely proven a family connection?" Schiller interrupted in astonishment. "You have proof?"

"Our operatives obtained and matched their genetic codes."

"This is the first I've heard about it," said a stunned President. "You should have informed me sooner."

"The final documentation is still being evaluated and will be sent over from Langley shortly. I'm sorry, Mr. President. At the risk of sounding overly cautious, I didn't want to throw out such a shocking discovery until we had gathered solid evidence."

"How in hell did you get their genetic codes?" asked Nichols.

"Both those guys are vain promoters," explained Brogan. "Our forgery department sent a Koran to Yazid, and a photograph to Topiltzin showing him in full Aztec regalia, along with requests begging them in each to inscribe a short prayer on both items and return them. Actually, it was a bit more complicated, writing the requests in the handwriting of known adoring followers-influential followers with financial and political clout, I might add. Both fell for it. The tricky part was intercepting the return mail before it reached the correct addresses. The next problem was sifting out the several sets of fingerprints which accompanied each object. Aides, secret agents, whoever. One thumbprint on the Koran matched with a known set of Yazid's prints that were on file with Egyptian police when he was arrested several years ago. We then traced his DNA from his fingerprint oils.

"Topiltzin was not so easy. He had no record in Mexico, but the lab matched his code to his brother's from prints pulled from the photo.

Then a chance find in the international criminal records at Interpol's Pahs headquarters dealt us a straight flush. It all came together. What we'd stumbled on was a family organization, a crime dynasty that arose after World War Two. A billion-dollar empire ruled by a mother and father, five brothers and a sister, who spearhead the operations, and run by a network of uncles, aunts, cousins, or whoever is related by blood or marriage. This tight association has made it nearly impossible for international investigators to penetrate. "

Except for the click of the teletype machines and the hushed murmur of aides, a stunned silence settled over the table. Brogan looked from Nichols to Schiller to Oates to the President.

"Their name?" the President asked softly.

"Capesterre," answered Brogan. "Roland and Josephine Capesterre are the father and mother. Their eldest son is Robert, or, as we know him, Topiltzin. The next brother in line is Paul. "

"He's Yazid?"

"Yes."

"I think we'd be interested in hearing all you know," said the President.

"As I've stated," said Brogan, "I don't have all the facts at my fingertips, such as the whereabouts of Karl and Marie, the younger brother and sister, or the names of associate relatives. We've only scratched the surface. from what I recall, the Capesterres are a tradition-bound criminal family that began almost eighty years ago when the grandfather emigrated from France to the Caribbean and launched a smuggling business, moving stolen goods and bootleg booze to the U.S.

during Prohibition. At first he operated out of Port of Spain, Trinidad, but as he prospered he bought a small nearby island and set up business there. Roland took over when the old man died, and along with his wife, Josephine-some claim she's the brain behind the throne-lost no time in expanding into drug traffic-First they built their island into a legitimate banana plantation, making a nice, honest profit. Next they turned inventive and made a real killing by harvesting two crops. The second, marijuana, was cultivated under the banana trees, to avoid detection. They also set up a refining lab on the island. Have I painted a clear picture?"

"Yes . . ." the President said slowly. "We all see it clearly. Thank you, Martin."

"They had it all worked out," murmured Schiller. "The Capesterres produced, manufactured and smuggled in one efficient operation."

"And distributed," Brogan continued. "But interestingly, not in the U.S. They sold the dnigs only in Europe and the Far East."

"Are they still into narcotics?" asked Nichols.

"No." Brogan shook his head. ' enough contacts, they received a tip their private island was about to be raided by the joint West Indies security forces. The family burned the marijuana crop, kept the banana plantation and began buying controlling interests in financially shaky corporations. They became extremely successful in turning businesses around and showing staggering profits. Of course, their unusual method of management might have had something to do with it."

Nichols took the hook. "What was their system?"

Brogan grinned. "The Capesterres relied on blackmail, extortion and murder. any time a competing company got in the way, the corporate executive officers, for some strange reason, initiated merger negotiations with the Capesteffe interests, losing their collective asses on the deal, naturally. Developers who hindered projects, opposing lawyers with lawsuits, unfriendly politicians, they all came to know and love the Capesterres, or one sunny day their wives and kids had accidents, their houses burned to the ground or they just up and vanished."

"Kind of like the Mafia managing General Motors or Gulf and Western,"

said the President sardonically.

"A fair comparison." Brogan nodded politely and continued. "Now the family controls a vast worldwide conglomeration of financial and industrial enterprises worth an estimated twelve billion dollars."

"Billion, as spelled with a 'b'?" Oates mumbled incredulously. "I may never attend church services again."

Schiller shrugged wonderingly. "Who said crime doesn't pay?"

"No wonder they're pulling the strings in Egypt and Mexico," said Oates.

"They must have bought, blackmailed or strong-armed their way into every department of the government and military. "

"I begin to see how their scheme is coming together," said the President. "But what I can't understand is how can the sons pass themselves off as native-born Egyptians or Mexicans? No one can fool millions of people without somebody getting wise."

"Their mother was descended from black slaves, which accounts for their dark skin," Brogan said in a patiently explaining tone. "We can only speculate about their past. Roland and Josephine must have laid the groundwork forty or more years ago. As their children were born, they began a vigorous program of making over the boys into foreign nationals.

Paul was no doubt tutored in Arabic before he could walk, while Robert learned to speak in ancient Aztec. When the boys became older they probably attended private schools in both Mexico and Egypt under assumed names."

"A grand plan," muttered Oates admiringly. "Nothing so mundane as burying intelligence moles, but infiltration at the very highest levels, and with the image of a messiah thrown in for good measure."

"Sounds pretty diabolical to me," said Nichols.

"I agree with Doug," said the President, nodding at Oates. "A grand plan. Training children from birth, using untold wealth and power to set up a national takeover. What we're really looking at here is an incredible display of unbending doggedness and patience."

"You have to give the bastards credit," Schiller admitted. "They stuck to their script until events swung in their favor. Now they're within centimeters of ruling two of the Third World's leading countries."

"We can't allow it to happen," the President said bluntly. "If the brother in Mexico becomes head of state and makes good his threat by driving two million of his countrymen across our borders, I see no choice but to send in our armed forces."

"I must caution against aggressive action," said Oates, speaking like a Secretary of State. "Recent history has shown that invaders do not fare well. Assassinating Yazid and Topiltzin, or whatever their names, and launching an assault on Mexico won't solve the long-range problem."

"Maybe not," grunted the President, "but it will dam well give us time to ease the situation."

"There may be another solution," said Nichols. "Use the Capesterres against themselves."

"I'm ," listening," said the President, stress showing in the lines around his eyes. "Please skip the riddles."

Nichols looked at Brogan for support. "These men were drug ckers. They must be wanted criminals. Is that right?"

"Yes on the first, no on the second," answered Brogan. "They're no petty street crooks. The entire family has been under investigation for years. No arrests. No convictions. They've got a staff of corporate and criminal lawyers that would put Washington's biggest law office to shame. They've got friends and connections that go straight to the top of ten major governments-You want to pick up this bunch and put them on trial? You'd do better tearing down the pyramids with an ice pick."

"Then expose them to the world for the scum they are," pursued Nichols.

"NO good," said the President. "any attempt will surely backlash as a lie and propaganda ploy."

"Nichols might have a direction," said Schiller quietly. He was a man who listened more than he spoke. "All we need is a base that can't be cracked or shattered."

The President looked speculatively at Schiller. "Where are You leading, Julius?"

"The Lady Flamborough," replied Schiller, his face carefully pensive.

"Come up with indisputable proof that Yazid is behind the ship's hijacking and we can crack the Capesterre wall. "

Brogan nodded heavily. "The ensuing scandal would certainly be a step in stripping away Yazid's and Topfltzin's mystiques and opening the door to the family's countless criminal activities. "

"Don't forget the world news media. They'd have a shark feeding frenzy once they bit into the Capesten-es' bloody past." Nichols belatedly winced at his unthinking pun.

"You're all overlooking one important fact," Schiller said with a long sigh. "At the moment, any tie between the ship's disappearance and the Capesterres is strictly circumstantial."

Nichols frowned. "Who else has motives for getting rid of Presidents De Lorenzo and Hasan, and Hala Kamil?"

"No one!" Brogan said heatedly.

"Wait up," the President said patiently. "Julius has a sound point. The hijackers are not acting like typical Middle East terrorists. They have yet to identify themselves. They've made no demands or threats. Nor have they used the crew and passengers as hostages for international blackmail. I'm not ashamed to admit I find the silence nightmarish."

"We're faced with a different breed this time," admitted Brogan. "The Capesten-es are playing a waiting game, hoping De Lorenzo's and Hasan's governments will fall in their absence."

"any word on the cruise ship since George Pitts son discovered the switch?" asked Oates, coolly steering the discussion clear of an impending confrontation.

"Somewhere off the east coast of Tierra del Fuego," replied Schiller.

"Sailing like hell to the south. We're tracking by satellite and should have her cornered by this time tomorrow."

The President didn't look happy. "The hijackers could have murdered everyone on board by then."

"If they haven't already," said Brogan.

"What forces do we have in the area?"

"Virtually none, Mr. President," answered Nichols. "We have no call to maintain a presence that far south. Except for a few Air Force transport planes ferrying supplies to polar research stations, the only U.S. vessel anywhere near the Lady Flamborough is the Sounder, a NUMA deep-water survey ship. "

"The one carrying Dirk Pitt?"

"Yes, sir."

"What about our Special Forces people?"

"I was on the phone with General Keith at the Pentagon twenty minutes ago," Schiller volunteered. "An elite team, along with their equipment, boarded C-140 cargo jets and took off about an hour ago. They were accompanied by a wing of Osprey as ult aircraft."

The President sat back in the chair and folded his hands. "Where will they set up their command post?"

Brogan called up a map displaying the tip of South America on a giant wall monitor. He used a flashlight arrow to indicate a particular spot.

"Unless we receive new information that will alter the tentative plan,"

he explained, "they'll land at an airport outside the small Chilean city of Punta Arenas on the Brunswick Peninsula and use it as a base for operations."

"A long flight," said the President quietly. "When will they arrive?"

"Inside fifteen hours."

The President looked at Oates. "Doug, I leave it to you to handle any sovereignty issues with the Chilean and Argentine governments."

"I'll see to it."

"The Lady Flamborough will have to be found before the Special Forces can launch a rescue attempt," said Schiller with remorseless logic.

"We're up the creek on this one." There was a curious acceptance in Brogan's voice. "The closest carrier fleet is almost five thousand miles away. No way a full-scale air and sea search can be mounted."

Schiller stared at the table thoughtfully. "any rescue attempt could take weeks if the hijackers slip the Lady Flamborough in among the barren bays and coves along the Antarctic coast line. Fog, mist and low overcast wouldn't help matters either."

"Satellite surveillance is our only tool," said Nichols. "The predicament is that we have no spy satellites eyeballing that region of the earth."

"Dale is right," Schiller agreed. "The far southern seas are not high on the strategic surveillance list. If we were turn northern hemisphere, we could focus a whole array of listening and imagery gear to tune in conversations on board the ship and read a newspaper on deck."

"What's available?" the President asked.

"The Landsat," answered Brogan, "a few Defense meteorological satellites, and a Seasat used by NUMA for Antarctic ice and sea current surveys. But our best bet is the SR-90 Casper.

"Do we have SR-90 reconnaissance aircraft in Latin America?"

"A tight security airfield in Texas is as close as we come."

"How long to fly one down and back?"

"A Casper is capable of reaching mach five, or just under five thousand kilometers per hour. One can fly to the tip of Antarctica, make a photo run and have the film back in five hours."

The President slowly shook his head in dismay. "Will someone please tell me why the United States government is always caught with our pants down? I swear to God, nobody screws up like we do. We build the most sophisticated detection systems the world has ever known, and when we need them, they're all concentrated in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Nobody spoke, nobody moved. The President's men avoided his eyes and stared uncomfortably at the table, papers, wall, anything but one another's face.

At last Nichols spoke in a quiet, confident voice. "We'll find the ship, Mr. President. If anyone can get them out alive, the Special Forces will."

"Yes," the President drawled softly. "They're highly trained for such a mission. The only question in my mind is whether the crew and passengers will be there to be rescued. Or will the Special Forces find a silent ship filled with corpses?"

Colonel Morton Hollis wasn't overjoyed at leaving his family in the middle of his wife's birthday party. The understanding look in her eyes wrenched his gut. The cost would hit him dearly, he knew. The red coral necklace was about to be enhanced by the five-day cruise to the BAHamas she'd always pestered him about.

He sat at a desk in a specially designed office compartment inside the C-140 transport, flying south over Venezuela. He Puffed away deeply on a large Havana cigar he had purchased at the base store, now that the embargo on Cuban imports had been lifted.

Hollis studied the latest weather reports on the Antarctic peninsula and peered at photographs showing the rugged, icy coastline. He'd already been over the difficulfies in his mind a dozen times since takeoff.

During their brief history the newly formed Special Operations Forces had already achieved a notable record, but they had yet to tackle a major rescue of the magnitude of the Lady Flamborough hijacking.

The orphan child of the Pentagon, the Special Operations Forces were not molded into a single command until the fall of 1989. At that time the Army's Delta Force, whose fighters were drawn from the elite Ranger and Green Beret units and a secret aviation unit known as Task Force 160, merged with the top-of-the-line Navy SEAL Team Six and the Air Force's Special Operations wing.

The unified forces cut across service lines and boundaries and became a separate command, numbering twelve thousand men, headquartered at a tightly restricted base in southeast Virginia. The crack fighters were heavily trained in guerrilla tactics, parachuting, wilderness survival and scuba diving, with special emphasis on storming buildings, ships and aircraft for rescue missions.

Hollis was short-he'd barely met the height requirements of the Special Forces-and almost as wide in the shoulders as he was tall. Forty years old but immensely tough, he had survived a rigorous simulated guerrilla war in the swamps of Florida for three weeks, and parachuted right back in for another exercise. His closely cropped brown hair was dun and graying early. His eyes were a blue-green, the whites slightly yellowed from too much time in the sun without proper glasses.

An astute man who always looked over the next hill and planned accordingly, he left very little to chance. He blew a smoke ring from the cigar with a degree of elation. He couldn't be leading a better team if he'd picked the medal winners of a military Olympics. They were the elite of the elite for fighting low-intensity conflicts. The eighty men of his team, who called themselves the Demon Stalkers, were selected for the Lady Flamborough rescue because they actually had engaged in assault exercises against mock terrorists who had held a ship and crew hostages off the coast of Norway. Forty were "shooters" while the other half acted as logistical and support fighters.

His second in command, Major John Dillenger, rapped on the door and stuck his head in. "You busy, Mort?" he asked in a decided Texas twang.

Hollis waved a casual hand. "My office is your office," he assured Dillenger jovially. "Squeeze in and sit yourself in my new French leather designer couch."

Dillenger, a lean, stringy man with a pinched face, but hard as an anvil, stared dubiously at the canvas seat bolted to the floor and sat down. Forever kidded about being saddled with the same name as the famous bank robber, he was a master of the art of tactical planning and the penetration of almost impossible defenses.

"Covering the bases?" he asked Hollis.

"Going over meteorological forecasts, ice and terrain conditions. "

"See any jazz in your crystal ball?"

"Too early." Hollis raised an eyebrow. "What plans are forming in your perverted mind?"

"I can recite and draw pictures of six different ways to board a ship by stealth. I've already familiarized myself with the design and deck layout of the Lady Flamborough, but until we learn whether we're coming in by parachute, by scuba, or by foot from hard beach or ice, I can only plot an outline."

Hollis nodded solemnly. "Over a hundred innocent people are on that ship. Two Presidents and the SecretaryGeneral of the United Nations.

God help us if one steps in our line of fire."

"We can't go in with blanks," Dillenger said caustically.

"No, and we can't drop from noisy helicopters with all weapons blasting.

We've got to infiltrate before the hijackers know we're there. Complete surprise is crucial."

"Then we hit 'em by 'stealth parachute' at night."

"Could be," Hollis acknowledged tersely.

Dillenger shifted uncomfortably in the canvas seat. "A night landing is dangerous enough, but dropping blindly on a darkened ship can mean slaughter. You know it, and I know it, Mort. Out of forty men, fifteen will miss the target and fall in the sea. Twenty will sustain injuries impacting on hard, protruding surfaces of the ship. I'll be lucky to have five men in fighting trim."

"We can't rule it out."

"Let's wait until more info comes in," suggested Dillenger. "Everything hinges on where the ship is found. Whether she's moored or sailing across the sea makes all the difference in the world. As soon as we receive word on her final status, I'll formulate a tight assault plan and lay it in your hands for final approval. "

"Fair enough," said Hollis agreeably. "How are the men?"

"Doing their homework. By the time we land at Punta Arenas, they'll have memorized the Lady Flamborough well enough to run around her decks blindfolded."

"A lot is riding on them this time out."

"They'll do the job. The trick is to get them on board in one piece.

"There is one thing," Hollis said, a deep apprehension on his face. "The latest estimate from intelligence sources on the strength of the hijackers . . . it just came in from the Pentagon. "

"How many are we talking about, five, ten, maybe twelve?"

Hollis hesitated. "Assuming the crew of the Mexican ore camer that boarded the cruise ship are also armed . . . we could be looking at a total of forty."

Dillenger gaped. "Oh, my gawd. We're going up against an equal number of terrorists?"

"Looks that way." Hollis nodded grimly.

Dillenger shook his head in shocked disapproval and drew a hand across his forehead. Then his eyes burned into Hollis's.

"Some people," he said disgustedly, "are going to get their butts stomped before this caper is over."

Deep in a concrete bunker tunneled into a hill outside Washington, D.C., Lieutenant Samuel T. Jones came rushing into a large office, panting as though he'd just run a two-hundredmeter dash, which indeed he had-only two steps shy of the exact distance from the communications room to the photoanalysis office.

His face was flushed with excitement, and he held a huge photograph spread between his upraised hands.

Jones had often rushed along the corridors during crisis exercise drills, but he, and the other three hundred men and women who worked in the Special Operations Forces Readiness Command, hadn't really put their hearts into it until now. Practice did not make the adrenaline pump like the real thing. After waiting like hibernating groundhogs, they had erupted into life when the alert on the Lady Flamborough hijacking came in from the Pentagon.

Major General Frank Dodge headed up the SOF He and several members of his staff were tensely awaiting the arrival of the latest satellite image depicting the waters south of Tierra del Fuego when Jones burst into the room.

"Got it!"

Dodge gave the young officer a stern look for unmilitary enthusiasm. "Should have been here eight minutes ago," he grunted.

"My fault, General. I took the liberty of trimming the outer perimeters and enlarging the immediate search area before having it computer-enhanced."

Dodge's stern expression softened and he nodded approvingly.

"Good thinking, Lieutenant."

Jones gave a short sigh and quickly clipped the newest satellite image on a long wallboard under a row of hooded spotlights. An earlier image hung nearby, showing the Lady Flamborough's last known position circled in red, her previous course marked in green, and predicted course in orange.

Jones stepped back as General Dodge and his officers crowded around the image, peering anxiously for the tiny dot indicating the cruise ship.

"The last satellite sighting put the ship about one hundred kilometers south of Cape Horn," said a major, tracing the course from the previous chart. "She should be well out into Drake's Passage by now, approaching the islands off the Antarctic peninsula."

After nearly a full minute of appraisal, General Dodge turned to Jones.

"Did you study the photo, Lieutenant?"

"No, sir. I didn't take the time. I rushed it over as quickly as possible."

"You're certain this is the latest transmission?"

Jones looked puzzled. "Yes, sir."

"No mistake?"

"None," Jones replied unhesitatingly. "The NUMA Seasat satellite recorded the area with digital electronic impulses that were sent to ground stations instantaneously. You're seeing an image no more than six minutes old."

"When will the next photo come in?"

"The Landsat should orbit the region in forty minutes."

"And the Casper?"

Jones glanced at his watch. "If she returns on schedule, we should be looking at film in four hours."

"Get it to me the instant it arrives."

"Yes, sir. "

Dodge turned to his subordinates. "Well, gentlemen, the White House ain't going to like this."

He went over and picked up a phone. "Put me through to Alan Merger."

The National Security Adviser's voice came over the line within twenty seconds. "I hope you've got some good news, Frarik.

"Sorry, no," Dodge answered flatly. "It appears the cruise ship-"

"She sank?" Mercier cut him off.

"We can't say with any certainty."

"What are you saying?"

Dodge took a breath. "Please inform the President the Lady Flamborough has vanished again."

By the early 1990s equipment for sending photographs or graphics around the world by nucrowave via satellite or across town by fiber optics became as common in business and government offices as copy machines.

Scanned by laser and then transmitted to a laser receiver, the image could be reproduced almost instantly in living color with extraordinary detail.

So it was that within ten minutes of General Dodge's call, the President and Dale Nichols were hunched over the desk in the Oval Office scrutinizing the Seasat image of waters off the tip of South America.

"She may really be on the bottom this time," said Nichols. He felt tired and confused.

"I don't believe it," the President said, his face a mask of repressed fury. "The hijackers had their chance to destroy the ship off Punta del Este and make a clean getaway on the General Bravo. Why sink her now?"

"Escape by submarine is a possibility."

The President seemed not to hear. "Our inability to deal with this crisis is frightening. Our whole response seems mired in inertia."

"We were caught unprepared and unequipped," Nichols offered lamely.

"An event that occurs too frequently around here," the President muttered. He looked up, fire in his eyes. "I refuse to write those people off. I owe George Pitt. Without his support, I wouldn't be sitting in the Oval Office." He paused for effect. "We're not going to snap at a red herring again."

Sid Green was scrutinizing the satellite images too. A photo-intelligence specialist with the National Security Agency at its headquarters in Fort Meyer, he had projected the last two satellite pictures on one screen. Intrigued, he ignored the most recent photo, the one that failed to reveal the ship, and concentrated on the earlier one. He zoomed in on the tiny blip that represented the Lady Flamborough with a computerized lens.

The outline was fuzzy, too indistinct to make out little more than the ship's profile. He turned to the computer at his left and entered a series of instructions. A few details that were hidden to his eye became apparent now. He could discern the funnel and shape of the superstructure and blurred sections of the upper decks.

He played with the computer keyboard, trying to sharpen the cruise ship's features. He spent nearly an hour at it before he finally sat back, put his arms behind his head and rested his eyes.

The door to the darkened room opened and Green's supervisor, Vic Patton, entered. He stood behind Green for a moment looking at the projections.

"It's like trying to read a newspaper on the street from the roof of the World Trade Center," he observed.

Green spoke without turning. "A 70-by-130 kilometer swath doesn't offer us much resolution, even after enlarged enhancement."

"any sign of the ship on the last linage?"

"Not a hint."

"Too bad we can't drop our KH spy birds that low."

"A KH-15 might get a picture."

"The situation in the Middle East is heating up again. I can't pull one out of orbit until the dust settles."

"Then send in a Casper."

"One is on the way," said Patton. "You should be reading the color of the hijackers' eyes by lunch."

Green motioned at the computer lens. "Take a look and tell me if something looks out of place."

Patton pressed his face against the rubber eyepiece and peered at the speck that was the Lady Flamborough. "Too damned blurred to discern incidentals. What am I missing?"

"Check the bow section."

"How can you tell the back from the front?"

"By the wake behind the stern," Green answered patiently.

Okay, I've got it. The deck behind the bow looks obscured, almost as if it was covered."

"You will first prize at the fair," said Green.

"What are they up to?" Patton mused.

"We'll know when the film from the Casper comes in."

On board the C-140, now cruising over Bolivia, there was an atmosphere of bitter disappointment. The photo minus the cruise ship came over the aircraft's laser receiver and caused as much agitation inside the cramped command center as in Washington's power circles.

"Where in hell did it go?" Hollis demanded.

Dillenger could only mutter blankly, "She can't be gone."

"Well, she sure is. See for yourself."

"I did. I can't spot her any more than you can."

"This makes three times in a row we've been shut out at the gate by bad information, lousy weather or equipment breakdown. Now our target ups and plays hide-and-seek."

"She must have sunk," munfoled Dillenger. "I don't see any other explanation."

"I can't see forty hijackers all agreeing on a suicide pact."

"What now?"

"Beyond requesting instructions from Readiness Command, I see little else I can do."

"Shall we abort the misssion?" asked Dillenger.

"Not unless we're ordered to turn back."

"So we keep going."

Hollis nodded dejectedly. "We fly south until ordered otherwise."

The last to know was Pitt. He was sleeping like the dead when Rudi Gunn entered his cabin and shook him awake.

"Come alive," said Gunn briskly. "We've got a big problem."

Pitt popped his eyes open and checked the dial of his watch. "Did we get a speeding ticket coming into Punta Arenas?"

Gunn looked at Pitt in weary despair. Anyone who awoke from a sound sleep in a cheerful mood and instantly made bad jokes had to have come from a broken branch of evolution.

"The ship won't enter the harbor for another hour yet."

"Good, I can doze a while longer."

"Get serious!" Gunn said bluntly. "The latest satellite photo just rolled out of the ship's receiver. The Lady Flamborough has gone missing for the second time."

"She's really dropped out?"

"Enhanced magnification can't find a sign of her. I've just talked. to Admiral Sandecker. The White House and Pentagon are spitting out orders like slot machines gone mad. A Special Operations Force rescue team is on the way, steamed and primed for action, but with no place to go.

They're also sending a spy plane to produce some decent aerial pictures."

"Ask the Admiral if he can arrange a meeting between the SOF team leader and me as soon as they land."

"Why don't you tell him?"

"Because I'm going back to sleep," Pitt replied with a loud yawn.

Gunn was at a loss. "Your father's on that boat. Don't you give a damn?"

"Yes," said Pitt, his eyes flashing a caution light, "I give a damn. But I don't see what I can do about it at the moment."

Gunn backed off. "Anything else the Admiral should know?"

Pitt pulled the blanket under his armpits, rolled over and faced the bulkhead. "Yes, as a matter of fact. You can tell him I know how the Lady Flamborough vanished. And I can make a pretty good guess as to where she hides."

If any other man had spoken those words, Gunn would have called him a liar. But Pitt he didn't doubt for a second.

"Mind giving me a clue?"

Pitt half-turned. "You're an art collector of sorts, aren't you, Rudy?"

"My small collection of abstracts won't match the New York Museum of Modern Art, but it's respectable." He looked at Pitt in uncomprehending curiosity. "What has this got to do with anything?"

"If I'm right, we may be getting into art in a big way."

"Are we on the same frequency?"

"Christo," said Pitt as he turned and refaced the bulkhead.

"We're about to review a Christo-inspired sculpture."

A light snow had turned to a miserable, wind-driven sleet over the southernmost large city in the world. Punta Arenas had flourished as a port of call before the Panama Canal was built, and died afterward. The city gradually returned as a sheepraising center and was now booming after productive oil fields were discovered close by.

Hollis and Dillenger stood on a harbor pier, waiting anxiously to board the Sounder. The temperature had dropped several degrees below freezing; it was a damp, harsh cold that bit at their exposed faces.

They felt like cornels in the Arctic. Through the cooperation of Chilean authorities, they had gone undercover and exchanged their battle dress for the uniforms of immigration officials.

As scheduled, their aircraft had landed at a nearby military airport while it was still dark. The storm came as an added bonus, holding visibility to a few hundred meters and keeping their arrival unobserved.

The Chilean military command was most generous in their hospitality and provided hangar space for Hollis's small flight of C-140s and Ospreys to park out of sight.

They moved from the shelter of a warehouse as the research ship's mooring lines were dropped over the dock bollards and the gangway lowered. Both men flinched as the full force of the icy wind struck them.

A tall man with a craggy face and a friendly grin, wearing a ski jacket, appeared on the bridge wing. He cupped his hands around his mouth.

"Senor L6pez?" he shouted through the sleet.

"Si!" Hollis yelled back.

"Who's your friend?"

"Mi amigo es Sefior Jones," Hollis answered, nodding at Dillenger.

"I've heard better Spanish in a Chinese restaurant," Dillenger muttered.

"Please come on board. After you'reach the main deck, take the ladder to your right and come up to the bridge."

"Gracias.

The two leaders of America's elite fighting force dutifully walked up the slanted gangway and climbed the ladder as directed. Hollis's curiosity was eating him up. An hour before reaching Punta Arenas, he'd received an urgent coded communication from General Dodge ordering him to covertly meet the Sounder when she docked in port. No explanation, no further instructions. He knew only from a hurried briefing in Virginia that the survey ship and its crew were responsible for discovering the deception between the Mexican container ship and the Lady Flamborough. Nothing else. He was most interested in learning why she suddenly appeared in Punta Arenas at almost the same time as his SOF

team.

Hollis did not like being left in the dark, and he was in an intensely testy mood.

The man who hailed him was still standing on the bridge wing. Hollis looked into mesmeric green eyes-very opaque green indeed. They belonged to a lean, broad-shouldered man whose uncovered black hair was speckled with white flakes of ice. He stared at the two officers for all of five seconds, time enough to complete a survey. Then he removed his right hand slowly from a coat pocket and stuck it out.

"Colonel Hollis, Major Dillenger, my name is Dirk Pitt."

"Seems you know more about us than we do you, Mr. Pitt.

"A situation that will be quickly rectified," Pitt said cheerfully.

"Please follow me to the Captain's cabin. The coffee's on, and we can talk where it's warm and private."

They gratefully stepped out of the cold and trailed Pitt down one deck to Stewart's quarters. Once inside, Pitt introduced Gunn, Giordino and Captain Stewart. The SOF officers shook hands all around and gratefully accepted the coffee.

"Please sit down," said Stewart, offering chairs.

Dillenger sank into a chair, but Hollis shook his head.

"Thank you, I'd rather stand." He cast a questioning look at the four men from NUMA. "If I can speak frankly, would you mind telling me what in hell is going on?"

"Obviously it concerns the Lady Flamborough, " said Pitt.

"What's there to discuss? The terrorists have destroyed her. "

"She's still very much afloat," Pitt assured him.

"I've received no word to that effect," said Hollis. "The last satellite photo shows no trace of her."

"Take my word for it."

"Show me your evidence."

"You don't screw around, do you?"

"My men and I flew here to save lives," Hollis said roughly. "No one, not even my superiors, has demonstrated to me that people on board that ship can still be saved."

"You have to understand, Colonel," said Pitt, his voice abruptly cutting like a whip, "we're not dealing with your usual gun-happy terrorists.

Their leader is extremely resourceful. Until now he's outwitted the best security brains in the business. And he keeps right on doing it."

saw through the disguise," said Hollis, throwing a left-handed compliment.

"We were lucky. If the Sounder hadn't been surveying in that part of the sea, our discovery of the General Bravo might have taken a month. As it is, we've cut the hijackers' lead time down to one or two days."

Hollis's pessimism began to melt away. This man wasn't giving an inch.

He wondered if the rescue operation might take place after all.

"Where is the proof?" he asked bluntly.

"We don't know," answered Gunn.

"Not so much as an approximate position?"

"The best we can offer is an educated guess," said Giordino.

"Based on what?"

Gunn looked expectantly at Pitt, who smiled and carried the ball again.

"Intuition.

Hollis's hopes began to crumble. "Are you using tarot cards or a crystal ball?" he asked sardonically.

"Actually, I favor tea leaves," replied Pitt, tit for tat.

There was a brief silence, long and cold. Hollis rightly figured aggression wasn't going to get him anywhere. He finished his coffee and turned the cup round and round,

"All right, gentlemen. I regret coming on a little too strong. I'm not used to dealing with civilians."

There was no malice in Pitts face, just a look of amusement. "If it will make you feel more comfortable, I carry the rank of Major in the Air Force."

Hollis frowned. "May I ask what you're doing on a NUMA vessel?"

"Call it a permanent assignment-a long story we don't have time to get into."

Dillenger caught it first. Hollis should have caught it the minute they were introduced, but his mind was saturated with questions.

"Are you by chance related to Senator George Pitt?" asked Dillenger.

"Father and son,"

A small piece of the curtain lifted atld the two officers saw a shaft of light beneath. Hollis pulled up a chair and settled in. "Okay, Mr.

Pitt, please tell me what you've got."

Dillenger cut in, "The last report showed The Lady Flamborough heading for the Antarctic. You say she's still on the surface. New photos will easily pick her out amid the ice floes. "

"If you're betting on the SR-ninety Casper," said Pitt, "save your money."

Dillenger gave Hollis a bleak look. They were outdistanced. This oddball group of ocean engineers had as much information in hand as they did.

"from a hundred thousand kilometers an SR-ninety can reveal three-dimensional images so sharp that you can distinguish the stitching on a soccer ball," stated Hollis.

"No question. But suppose the ball is camouflaged to look like a rock."

"I still don't know-"

"You'd see more clearly if we showed you," said Pitt. "The crew has set up a demonstration on deck."

The open deck on the stern had been covered over with a large, opaque blanket of white plastic, firmly secured to keep it taut and prevent it from billowing under the constant breeze. Captain Stewart stood by with two crew members who manned a fire hose.

"During our survey of the area around the General Bravo we recovered a roll of this plastic," Pitt lectured. "I believe it accidentally fell off the Lady Flamborough when the two vessels rendezvoused. It was sitting on the seabed among empty barrels of paint the hijackers used to remodel the cruise liner to resemble the Mexican container ship.

Granted, the evidence is inconclusive. You'll have to take my word for that. But it all points to another makeup job. Nothing showed on the last satellite photo because all eyes were searching for a ship. The Lady Flamborough no longer looks like one. The hijack leader must be into art appreciation. He took a page from the controversial sculptor Christo, who's famous for his outdoor sculptures in plastic. He wraps the stuff around buildings, coastlines and islands. He hung a monstrous curtain in Rifle Gap, Colorado, and made a fence running for miles in Mwill County, California. The chief hijacker went one better and wrapped the entire cruise liner. The liner is not a huge ship. The basic outline of her hull could have been altered by props and scaffolding. With the sheets all cut and numbered as to position, a hundred hostages and hijackers might have done the job in ten hours flat. They were working at it when the Landsat orbited overhead. The enhanced blowup was not clear enough to reveal details of the activity.

When the Seasat followed half a day later there was nothing to identify, no features conforming to a ship, any ship. Am I going too fast?"

"No . . ." Hollis said slowly. "But none of it makes a hell of a lot of sense."

"He must be from Missouri," Giordino said wryly. "Shall we show him?"

Pitt gave a brief nod to Captain Stewart.

"Okay, boys," said Stewart to his crewmen. "Once over lightly. "

One man turned the valve while the other aimed the nozzle.

A fine spray was turned on the plastic sheeting. At first the wind carried half the mist over the side. The crewman had ajusted the angle, and soon the plastic was coated with a watery film.

Before a full minute passed, the frigid atmosphere turned the water to ice.

Hollis observed the transformation pensively Then he walked up to Pitt and held out his hand. "My respects, sir. You made a sound call."

Dillenger stared like a rube who'd been suckered at a traveling carnival. "An iceberg," he muttered angrily. ,The sons of bitches made the ship into an iceberg."

Hala awoke cold and stiff. It was midmorning, yet there was still a level of darkness. The cargo container facade, combined with the ice-coated plastic shrouding the cruise liner, shut out most of the light. What little penetrated into the VIP suites was just sufficient to reveal the figures of Presidents Hasan and De Lorenzo on the bed next to her. Under one pitifully inadequate blanket, they huddled against one another for warmth, their frozen breaths hanging in vaporlike clouds above their heads before condensing and freezing on the walls.

The cold itself might have been tolerated, no matter how miserable, but the high humidity made the freezing temperatures unbearable. Their condition was further aggravated by not having had anything to eat since leaving Punta del Este. The hijackers made no effort to provide food for the passengers and crew. Ammar's inhuman callousness took its toll as and fear of the unknown the cold sapped their strength, drugged their minds.

for the first part of the voyage, the prisoners had survived on nothing but water out of the faucets in the bathroom showers and washbasins. But the pipes had frozen, and the torment of thirst was added to the ache of hunger.

The Lady Flamborough had been refitted to sail tropical seas and carried only a minimum supply of blankets. Everyone who came on board in Puerto Rico or Punta del Este had packed for a temperate climate and had left all winter clothing in closets at home. The prisoners bundled up as best they could, wearing several layers of lightweight shirts, pants and socks. They wrapped their heads in towels to retain body heat. The cold-weather gear they sorely missed most was gloves.

There was no warmth anywhere. Animar had refused all pleas to circulate heat throughout the ship. He could not afford the luxury. Interior heat would have melted the ice film on the plastic sheeting and sabotaged the deception.

Hala was not the only prisoner awake. Most had found it impossible to drop off into a sound sleep. They lay as if in a hypnotic trance, aware of their surroundings but unable to make any kind of physical effort.

any thoughts of resistance had rapidly drained away under the onslaught.

Instead of fighting the hijackers, Captain Collins and his crew were reduced to stru gling to stay alive against the numbing cold.

Hala raised to her elbows as Senator Pitt came into the room.

He made a strange appearance, wearing a gray business suit over a blue pinstripe. He gave Hala a smile of encouragement, but it was a pathetic effort. The fatigue of the past five days had taken away his youthful look, and he looked closer to his true age.

"How you holding up?" he asked.

"I'd give my right arm for a cup of hot tea," she said gamely.

"for my part, I'd give more than that."

President De Lorenzo sat up and dropped his feet on the deck. "Did someone say hot tea?"

"Just fantasizing, Mr. President," replied the Senator. "I never thought I'd find myself starving and freezing to death on a luxurious cruise ship."

"Nor I," said Hala.

President Hasan gave a slight moan as he changed position and lifted his head.

"Is your back bothering you?" asked President De Lorenzo, his face reflecting concern.

"I'm too cold to hurt," Hasan said with a tight smile.

"Can I help you up?"

"No, thank you. I think I'll just remain here in bed and conserve whatever strength I have left." Hasan looked at De Lorenzo and smiled thinly. "I wish we had met and become friends under more comfortable circumstances."

"I've heard the Americans say, 'Politics makes strange bedfellows." We seem to be a literal example."

"When we get out of this, you must be my guest in Egypt."

De Lorenzo nodded. "A reciprocal agreement. You must also visit Mexico."

"An honor I gladly accept.

The two Presidents solemnly shook hands on it-no longer pampered heads of state but two men whose lives shared a fate they could not control and were determined to end with dignity.

"The engines have stopped," said Hala suddenly.

Senator Pitt nodded. "The anchors were just dropped. We're moored, and they've shut down the engines."

"We must be near land."

"No way of telling with the port windows hidden."

"Too bad we're blind," said Hasan.

"If one of you will guard the door, I'll make a try at forcing the window," said Pitt. "Once I make a break in the glass without alerting a guard, I'll carve a hole in the fiberboard. With luck we might be able to see where we are."

"I'll listen at the door," Hala volunteered.

"The cold is bad enough without letting more in," said De Lorenzo dispiritedly.

"The temperature is the same outside as in here," the Senator replied bluntly.

He was not about to waste time in debate. He went immediately to the large glass viewing window in the sitting room. The port measured two meters high by one wide. There was no promenade deck running along outside. The staterooms and suite entrances faced the center of the ship. The windowed outer walls rose flush from the hull.

The only open areas patrolled by the hijackers were the pool and lounge decks above and the observation decks fore and aft.

The Senator rapped the glass with his knuckles. The return sound came like a dull thump. The glass was thick. It had to be to withstand the crushing impact of huge waves and hurricane-force winds.

"Anyone wear a diamond ring?" he asked.

Hala slipped her hands out of the pockets of a light raincoat, held them up and wiggled her fingers, displaying two small rings mounted with opals and turquoise. "Muslim suitors are not in the habit of spoiling their women with lavish gifts."

"I could use a full carat."

President Hasan pulled a large ring from one of his pinky fingers. "Here is a three-carat.

The Senator eyeballed the stone in the dim light. "This should do nicely. Thank you."

He worked quickly but carefully, making little noise, cutting an opening just large enough to slip a finger through. He stopped every so often to blow on his hands. When his fingers began to go numb, he held them under his armpits until they limbered up again.

He did not care to contemplate what the hijackers would do to him if they caught him. He could almost envision his bullet-riddled corpse floating in the current.

He cut a circular line around the small center hole, retracing the line until the gouge went deeper and deeper. The tricky thing was to prevent a piece of the glass from falling down the side of the steel hull and tinkling as it fell.

He curled a finger into the hole and pulled. The circle of glass gave way. He slowly eased it backward and set it on the carpet. Not a bad job. Now he had an opening large enough to stick his head through.

The fiberboard making up the false cargo containers stood half an arm's length from the window and covered the entire length of the midship's superstructure. The Senator cautiously slipped his head past the opening, careful not to slice his ears on its razor-sharp edges. He peered from side to side, but saw only the narrow slot between the fake containers and the steel sides of the ship. Upward, he viewed the crack of light that was the sky, but it appeared dimmed as if socked in by fog. He should have seen a thin band of moving water below. Instead his eyes took in an immense sheet of plastic that was attached by bracing along the waterline. He stared at it in amazement, not having the faintest idea of its purpose.

The Senator felt secure. If he couldn't see the hijackers guarding the decks, they couldn't see him. He returned to the bedroom and rummaged through his suitcase.

"What do you need?" asked Hala.

He held up a Swiss Army knife. "I always carry one of these in my shaving kit." He grinned. "The corkscrew comes in handy for impromptu parties."

Senator Pitt took his time and warmed his hands before going back to work. He grasped the red handle, eased his arm through the opening in the glass and began to twist, using the small blade as a drill, and then the large blade to carve away the sides and increase the circumference.

The process went agonizingly slowly. He dared not run the blade more than a scant millimeter past the outer wau of the fiberboard. There was the nagging fear an alert guard might peer over the side and glimpse the tiny metallic movement. He carved very carefully, removing each layer of the fiberboard before attacking the next.

All feeling went out of his hand, but he did not warm it. His fist was frozen stiffly around the red handle. The small knife felt like an extension of his hand.

At last the Senator scraped away enough wood shavings for a hole large enough to observe a fairly large area of sea. He leaned his head through the glass and pressed his cheek against the cold surface of the board.

Something shut off his view. He poked his finger in the eyehole and felt it touch the plastic sheeting. He was more confounded than ever to learn it covered the hollow containers as well as the lower hull.

He cursed under his breath. He needn't have been so afraid of penetrating the wood. No one would have seen his knife blade under the plastic anyway. He threw off caution and quickly cut a slot in the opaque material. Then the Senator looked again.

He did not see the open sea, nor did he find himself viewing a shoreline.

What he saw was a towering cliff of ice that extended far beyond his limited line of sight. The glistening wall was so close he could have touched it with an extended umbrella.

As he stared he heard a deadened bass drumlike sound. It reminded the Senator of the rumble from a minor earthquake.

He stepped back abruptly, reeling at the implication of what he'd discovered.

Hala saw him stiffen. "What is it?" she asked anxiously.

What did you see?"

He turned and looked at her blankly, his mouth working until words finally formed ' "They've anchored us against a huge glacier," he said finally. "The ice wall can break away at any time and crush the ship like paper."

Twenty thousand meters above the Antarctic peninsula, the delta-wing reconnaissance plane slipped through the rarefied air at 3,200

kilometers per hour. She was designed to fly twice that altitude at twice the speed, but her pilot held her at 40 percent throttle to conserve fuel and give the cameras a chance to sharpen earth images under the slower speed.

Unlike her ancestor, the SR-71 "blackbird," whose natural titanium wings and fuselage wore the color of deep indigo, the ,,stealth" technology of the more advanced SR-90 created an incredibly tough, lightweight plastic skin that was tinted graywhite. Nicknamed "the Casper" after the cartoon ghost, she was almost as impossible to detect by eye as she was by radar.

Her five cameras could capture half the length of the United States in one hour with only one pass. Her photographic package filmed in black-and-white, color, infrared, three-dimensional, and a few imagery techniques that were highly classified and totally unknown to commercial photographers Lieutenant Colonel James Slade had little to do. It was a long, boring reconnaissance from his base in California's Mojave Desert.

The only time he took manual control in flight was during refueling operations. The Casper's engines had a heavy thirst. She had to be refueled twice on each leg of the flight by aerial tankers.

Slade examined the instruments with a critical eye. The Casper was a new plane, and she had yet to reveal all her bugs. Thankful to find normal readings across the board, he sighed and pulled a miniature electronic game from a pocket of his flight suit. He began pressing the buttons below a small viewing window, trying to get a tiny diver past a giant octopus to reach a treasure chest.

After a few minutes he tired of the game and gazed ahead and down at the frozen isolation that was Antarctica. Far below, the curved, beckoning finger of the northern peninsula and its adjoining islands sparkled under a diamond-clear sky.

The ice and rock and sea created a beautiful vastness, awesome to the eye, intimidating to the soul. The sight may have looked appealing from twenty kilometers overhead, but Slade knew better. He'd once flown supplies to a scientific station at the South Pole and quickly learned the beauty and the hostility in the permanent domain of cold went hand in hand.

He well remembered the chilling temperatures. He didn't believe it possible to spit and see the saliva freeze before it hit the ground. And he never forgot the ferocious winds that scourge the coldest of all continents. The 160-kilometer gusts were unimaginable until he experienced them for the first time.

Slade could never fathom why some men were so attracted to that frozen hell. He had a facetious urge to call a travel agent after he returned to base and inquire about reservations at a good resort hotel close to the polar center.

Suddenly a female voice spoke over one of the three cockpit speakers.

"Attention, please. You are about to cross the outer limit of your flight path where seventy degrees longitude and seventy degrees latitude intersect. Disengage auto pilot and come around a hundred and eighty degrees beginning . . . now. The new heading for your return is programmed into the computer. Please enter the appropriate code. Have a good trip home."

Slade followed the instructions and made a lazy Turn. As soon as the computer locked on the return heading he went back on auto pilot and shifted to a more comfortable position in his cramped seat.

Like so many other men who flew reconnaissance missions, he fantasized about the face and body that went with the embodied voice. Rumor had it she weighed two-hundred pounds, was sixty years old and a grandmother twelve times. No pilot with a sound imagination could believe such a myt."shattering thought. She had to look like Sigourney Weaver. Maybe it was Sigoumey Weaver. He decided to explore the tantalizing possibility on his return home.

That delicate problem solved, Slade re-checked his instrument panel and then relaxed while the icebound land drifted away behind his tail. Over the sea again, he returned to his little electronic treasure game.

He saw little purpose in continuing to watch the world roll by, especially since Tierra del Fuego was covered by thick blankets of charcoal clouds. He'd studied enough geography to know it was a wretched land of constant wind, rain and snow.

Slade was almost thankful he couldn't see the monotonous landscape. He left it to Casper's infrared camera to penetrate the dark overcast and record the desolate, dead end of the continent.

Captain Collins stared into Ammar's mask and had to force himself not to avert his gaze. There was something evil, something inhuman in the eyes of the urbane leader of the hijackers. Collins could sense a chilling unconcern for mere human life about the man.

"I demand to know when you're going to release my ship," said Collins in a precise tone.

Arnmar set a cup of tea on a saucer, patted his lips with a table napkin and looked at Collins detachedly.

"Can I offer you some tea?"

"Not unless you offer it to my passengers and crew as well," Collins replied dryily. He stood erect in his summer white uniform, bitterly cold and shivering.

"The very answer I expected." Ammar turned the empty cup upside down and leaned back. "You'll be happy to know my men and I expect to leave sometime tomorrow evening. If you give me your word there will be no foolish attempt to retake the ship or escape to the nearby shore before we depart, no one will be harmed and you can resume command."

"I'd rather you heat the ship and feed everyone now. We're desperately short of warm clothing and blankets to ward off the cold. No one has eaten in days. The pipes have frozen, blocking all water. And I don't have to mention the sanitation problems. "

"Suffering is good for the soul," Animar said philosophically.

Collins glared at him. ")"at utter tripe."

Ammar shrugged wearily. "If you say so."

"Good God, man, there are people sick and dying on this ship."

"I doubt seriously whether any of your crew and passengers will die of exposure or from starvation before my departure," said Ammar curtly.

"They'll simply have to survive some discomfort for the next hours or so until you can restart the engines and heat the ship."

"That may be too late for any of us if the wall of the glacier breaks off."

"It looks solid enough."

"You don't realize the danger. A massive ice slab might fall any moment. The weight could smash the Flamborough like a ten-story building collapsing on an automobile. You must move the ship."

"A risk I cannot avoid. The ice film on the plastic would melt, giving away our location, and satellite infrared cameras could detect our radiated heat."

Collins's face was ed with helpless rage. "You're either a fool or you're insane. What good has any of this proven? What profit will you get out of it? Are we being held for ransom or as hostages in return for freeing your fellow terrorists behind bars somewhere? If you're simply walking off and leaving us, I fail to see the purpose."

"You have an irritating degree of curiosity, Captain, but a dedication of purpose after my own heart. You will learn the reasons behind our capture of your ship soon enough."

Ammar rose and nodded at the guard who stood behind Collins. "Return the Captain to confinement."

Collins refused to move. "Why can't you provide hot tea, coffee, soup, anything that will alleviate the suffering?"

Ammar did not bother to Turn as he walked from the dining salon.

"Goodbye, Captain. We won't meet again."

Animar went directly to the communications room. Ibn was standing, watching a teletype hum out the latest wire-service news. His electronics man was seated at the radio, listening to an incoming transmission while a voice recorder copied it on paper. The radio and teletype were powered by a portable generator.

Ibn turned at Ammar's approach, gave a brief nod in recognition and tore a long sheet of paper from the teletype.

"The international news media are still reporting the Lady Flamborough as lost," he reported. "Salvage ships are only now arriving off Uruguay to conduct an underwater search. My compliments, Suleiman; you fooled the world. We'll be safely back in Cairo before the West learns the truth."

"What news of Egypt?" asked Ammar.

"Nothing worth celebrating yet. Hasan's cabinet ministers still control the government. They stubbornly hold on to power. They've played it smart by not sending in security forces to smash the demonstrations. The only bloodshed was caused by our fundamentalist brothers who mistakenly blew up a busload of Algerian firemen attending a convention in Cairo.

it was thought the bus was part of a government police convoy. The Cairo news network is claiming Akhmad Yazid's movement is a front for Iranian fanatics. Many supporters are wavering in their loyalty and there has been no mass demand for Hasan's cabinet to dissolve the government."

"That idiot Khaled Fawzy was behind the bus explosion," snarled Ammar.

"The military, where do the armed forces stand?"

"Defense Minister Abu Han-iid will not commit himself until he views the bodies of President Hasan and Hala Kamil to confirm their deaths."