Hugo, the precision-forged stiletto in a chamois sheath strapped to the inside of the Killmaster's right forearm. Hugo, an old and dear friend, was the ace up his sleeve.
Roaring boomed in his ears. Darkness clouded his vision, a darkness that deepened with every second the choke hold cut off oxygen to his brain. Colored lights danced in front of his bulging eyes, sparkling rainbow dots on a field of black.
Strangulation wasn't quick enough to suit Elias. He forced Carter's head backward so he could break his neck across the back of the seat.
A twitch of Carter's arm muscles had tripped Hugo's spring-loaded sheath, popping the hilt into his hand. He stabbed up and back over his shoulder, as hard as he could, so hard that his arm tingled up to the elbow from the force of the blow.
There was a hideous crunching sound as the stiletto thrust into the Basque's forehead, penetrating the skull to lodge deep in the brain. Death was instantaneous.
Elias toppled like a poleaxed steer.
Carter grabbed the wheel, bringing the boat back under control. After slowing its speed to a knot or two, he checked to make sure that Elias was really dead this time.
Indeed he was. But he could still render an important service to the Killmaster.
Four
Captain Farmingdale was well aware of his unsavory reputation among seafaring men. That «Jonah» label, hanging around his neck like an albatross, was bosh and nonsense, and damned unfair, too. Every mariner had his share of mishaps during the course of a life spent at sea. Why single out poor old Farmingdale for abuse?
Yes, he'd admit to his share of mishaps and more, but none were really his fault. Any captain might have run one of Her Majesty's naval gunboats around on a sandbar in the Yangtze River, precipitating an international crisis. The incident of the oil tanker that broke up on the rocks off Brittany — befouling the French coast with a mile-wide spill — he blamed on shoddy navigational equipment and criminally inefficient subordinates.
More recently, he commanded a ship ferrying pilgrims across the Red Sea to Mecca. Shunning age-old tradition, when the boat foundered during a squall, he and the crew saved themselves in the only lifeboats while the passengers went down with the ship. Whose fault was that? The ship's owner, for not supplying enough lifeboats? God's, for sending the storm?
The disaster made him persona non grata in those waters, but it had the happy effect of bringing him to the attention of his current employers. Every cloud has a silver lining, and that one enabled him to line his pockets not with silver, but with gold.
The gold had already been deposited in his numbered bank account in Zurich. Payment in advance was his personal insurance policy to prevent his associates from killing him to save the cost of his fee.
His pocket now held a small.32 pistol. Not that he contemplated treachery. But it was folly to go weaponless among armed men.
He went down into the ship's cavernous hold to inspect the arming of the explosives.
The air belowdecks was thick, oppressive, visible as a smoggy haze. Infrequent overhead spotlights cast long columns of light in the vast, dim space.
The explosives came in fifty-gallon canisters boxed four to a crate. The crates were stacked in big cubes, wrapped in chains and binders to prevent their shifting position even a slight degree. Stamped on the crates was the deceptive label, OLIVE OIL.
The armaments came from an old munitions cache left over from one of the frequent outbreaks of Greek-Turkish civil war on the island of Cyprus. The load was bought on the cheap, but it was no bargain.
After baking for a while in the humid hold, the plastique began to sweat. Dewlike beads of condensation, the concentrated liquid essence of C-4, sparkled on the canisters. Each highly volatile bead could generate a mini-blast capable of blowing off a man's hand. Just one could produce a chain reaction exploding the entire load.
The beads were mopped up — carefully. But they kept reappearing.
It seemed superfluous to have Hasim and Ali, the demolitions men, rig detonators to key trigger points in the stacked crates, but unstable explosives are quirky. Nobody wanted to take the chance that the blast might fail to come off on schedule.
The Lebanese youths laughed and joked as they worked. Farmingdale frowned. "Those lads take it rather lightly, don't they?"
"To show fear is unmanly. They are not afraid," Mokhtar said.
"There's nothing unmanly about caution. Not with this load. It's a tinderbox. I don't mind telling you, I wouldn't have taken the job if I'd known the condition of the cargo. Not unless I was paid a damned sight more."
"My principal had been told of their inferior quality. Heads will roll… but that need not concern us."
"I still feel that I deserve a bonus for this extremely hazardous run…"
"Come now, Captain. You were handsomely paid, enough to cover any risk. Besides, my principal holds his contracts to be ironclad."
"By the way, old boy, just who is this mysterious principal of yours? I'm in this just as deep as you. It's only right that I should know who hired me."
"If you knew my principal's identity, old boy, you would soon be very dead," Mokhtar said. And he smiled.
Unnerving smile, that, thought Farmingdale. Was it a trick of the imagination, or were his teeth actually filed into points?
Farmingdale cleared his throat. "Yes. Right. Well, we'll speak no more about it, then. It doesn't matter to me who — good lord!"
Hasim needed a detonator. Ali tossed him one. Hasim caught it, then went back to work.
The detonators were tricky and volatile too. Had Hasim fumbled the catch and dropped it, it all could have ended right there.
Farmingdale paled. "That bloody fool could have blown us all up!"
"Yes, that was quite careless." Mokhtar spoke sharply to the two Shiites. The captain's spotty Arabic wasn't enough to translate the actual words, but their meaning was quite clear. Silly grins melted off the faces of Ali and Hasim. Straight-faced, serious, all clowning put aside, they went back to work.
"I think I'll run along back to the bridge," the captain said, and did.
Chastened, Ali and Hasim finished their task with swift efficiency. Presently, they and Mokhtar emerged from the hold. After its gloomy menace, the bright sunlight was as exhilarating as a stay of execution.
"One moment, please," Mokhtar said.
Ali stared longingly at the getaway boat bobbing astern. "Time grows short, brother. Should we not be gone?"
"Your recklessness endangered our mission."
Hasim's high spirits staged a comeback. "Allah did not will that we die below. Is that not so? Else we would not be here, speaking of it."
"True." Mokhtar reached as if to loosen his collar. "Allah wills that you die here, by my hand."
Mokhtar drew the dagger sheathed in the back of his jacket, between his shoulder blades. Slashing down and across, he cut Hasim's throat with such force that the Lebanese was nearly decapitated.
Gurgling his disbelief, Hasim flopped to the deck.
"No!" Horrified, Ali backed off, spun, and ran.
A deft snap of the wrist shook the blood off the blade. Mokhtar's toss sent it whirling through the air. It thudded home in Ali's broad back.
Ali jerked, staggered forward a few more paces, reaching for the knife. Before he took hold of it, death took hold of him.
As chance would have it, Captain Farmingdale rounded a corner and came on the scene just in time for Ali to fall facedown at his feet. "What… what the devil goes on here?"
Mokhtar wrenched his blade free from the corpse, wiping it clean on Ali's shirt before sheathing it. "Hasim and Ali chose to stay on board."
"Hmmm? Oh, right. Can't say I blame you, old boy. Those laddies took it too lightly for my liking."