The woman slipped away from his grasp. He turned but she was gone. At first he thought she had lost consciousness and slipped under the water, and he dove for her. But when he came up, he heard her feeble voice already fifteen or twenty yards back the way they had come.
“Brian,” she cried. She was going back for her baby.
The hijackers at the stern heard her cries the same moment McGarvey did. The beam of the halogen spotlight from the small fishing boat stabbed the water to her left. It swept right and had her almost immediately.
She stopped and looked up into the light. “Brian?” she cried.
Someone on the stern of the cruise ship opened fire. At least half a dozen bullets slammed into the poor woman, killing her instantly, driving her riddled body beneath the whitecaps.
Even before the beam of the spotlight started a grid pattern search, centered on where the young woman went down, McGarvey had turned and headed forward toward the starboard anchor chain.
Revenge, pure, sweet, and simple, like the bright flame of a blast furnace, flared deep within his soul. Only Khalil’s death would quench the fire.
SEVENTEEN
“Is there any sign of him?” Kahlil called down to the bow of the Nancy N.
“No, just the woman. But he’s out there, I can feel it,” Zahir warned. “It’s time to leave.”
Khalil glanced at his wristwatch.
It was past their time to leave. In less than four minutes the explosives that Pahlawan and his people had placed in strategic locations deep in the ship’s bilges would automatically arm themselves. From that moment the Spirit would be a gigantic bomb waiting for a hair trigger to send her to the bottom.
According to his chief engineer almost anything could set the charges off: a stray electrical current, a radio signal from a nearby ship or an airplane passing overhead. There were safeties on the triggers. But nothing was perfect.
The moment the explosives were armed, anyone left aboard the cruise ship would be in immediate danger.
All because of one man.
“No one could survive that long in this water,” Pahlawan said. “At the very least the motherless whore is incapacitated.”
“You’d better hope he’s dead or incapacitated,” Katy said softly. She was shivering violently, in part from the cold and in part because she’d witnessed the brutal murders of the young mother and her infant son.
Khalil looked at Katy. She was still defiant, against all odds, and he found that he could almost admire her mujahideen strength and courage. She was unlike any woman he’d ever known. Fascinating and dangerous.
The sooner she was dead and her body destroyed so that it would never be found, the sooner he would breathe easy.
“Very well. We’ll start them down now,” he told Pahlawan. “Mr. Shaw first.” He leaned over the rail to Zahir. “Keep a sharp watch. I want no further surprises.”
Katy was staring intently at him, as if something had just occurred to her. “You’re speaking in English.” She looked at the other terrorists. “Why?”
Shaw stopped at the rail and turned back, a look of defiance on his face. “They’re trying to prove they’re not as stupid as we know they are.”
Khalil raised his pistol to smash the former SecDef in the head, and Katy stepped away from Karen Shaw before any of the terrorists could stop her. She grabbed Khalil’s gun hand, and pulled him around.
“Try me, you bastard,” she shouted.
Khalil looked down at her like he might have been seeing a disagreeable bug at his feet.
“You like to beat up helpless people. Kill innocent women and children,” Katy said into his face. “Try me; why don’t you?”
He reached out with his free hand and took her throat. Before he could squeeze the life out of her, she drove her knee into his groin with every ounce of her strength.
All the air left him in an explosive gasp. He released his hold on her neck and stepped back a pace. His face was red in the dim illumination of the stern observation deck. All his men watched him. Looking for a sign of weakness. Looking for a lack of resolve.
Harden your heart if you wish to avenge the sacrilege. The gates of Paradise are not for the weak of spirit.
The sharp pain deep inside his body between his hips was not as unbearable as the thought of failure.
“Now, go ahead and do your thing if it makes you feel like a man,” Katy said. There was a great deal of fear in her eyes, but even more resolve in her voice.
Before Khalil could raise his pistol, the engineer Pahlawan shoved Shaw aside and came for Katy.
“Over the side with you—” he said, when a pistol shot came from the darkness one deck above. A small black hole appeared in his forehead, and he fell back dead.
Before anyone could react, another shot came from above, the bullet ricocheting off the deck inches from where Khalil stood.
“Everyone settle down,” McGarvey’s authoritative voice called out from one deck up.
One of the terrorists broke left, trying for the protection of the overhang.
“Yu’af,” stop, McGarvey shouted in Arabic.
The man started to raise his RAK when McGarvey fired one shot, catching him in the side of his head, knocking him to the deck.
Everyone on deck stopped in his tracks.
“No one else except for Khalil need die tonight,” McGarvey said. “But everyone else must leave right now.”
To every operation came the dénouement, as the French called it, the moment at which the operation’s success or failure was assured. Beyond that point it became fruitless to try to change the inevitable outcome. In the case of failure the only option was an orderly retreat, with covering fire if possible.
From his pocket Khalil took a small electronic device — what looked like a cell phone or a television remote control — and held it up for McGarvey to see. “I push the button, and the bottom of the ship blows out. All the passengers locked below will die.” His voice was strained because of the pain in his groin.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Katy said softly, “you’re nuts.”
“Dedicated,” Khalil corrected her. “What do you say, Mr. McGarvey: the lives of the passengers, including your wife, for the safe passage off this ship for myself, my operators, and Secretary Shaw?”
“No hostages. Get off this ship now.”
“You won’t risk the lives of the passengers—”
McGarvey fired two shots in rapid succession, one buzzing off the deck a few inches to Khalil’s left, the other to his right. “Don’t tempt me, because I sincerely want to meet you again. Soon.”
Khalil didn’t think the CIA director had it in him, but McGarvey had to play it up for the sake of his wife, who was an extraordinary woman. “Very well,” Khalil said, “it is a fair trade, for now. But you’re right; we will meet again, and I will kill you.”
“Go.”
Khalil turned to Katy and gave her a polite nod. “You will look good in black, madam.”
He turned and climbed down the boarding ladder to the bow of the Nancy N., where he brushed aside Zahir’s helping hand. “As soon as the rest of our people are aboard, get us out of here,” he said, and he made his way aft and below.
EIGHTEEN
McGarvey appeared on the aft observation platform at the same moment the small fishing boat peeled away from the Spirit, and Katy flew into his arms. She shivered almost uncontrollably from the cold, from the horror she had witnessed, and now from the sudden letdown.