"Murdock! Where are the two men who were with you?"
"What men?"
"Don't give me that! You were seen." He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. "From up there. You and two of your SEALs were walking toward the customs house forty minutes ago. Now you are alone."
"Oh, you must mean Sterling and Roselli. I don't know. Maybe they went on into the city for a drink. Or they could be back at the hotel. Did you check?"
"Don't give me any of your American arrogance." He pointed at the gym bag in Murdock's left hand. "What's in there?"
"Nothing."
Solomos reached for the handle. "Let me-"
Murdock's right hand flashed across and down, thumb and forefinger grasping Solomos's wrist and breaking it back in a lightning move that made the Greek officer gasp, then nearly go to his knees in a vain attempt to relieve the pressure.
"You know, I really thought a warrant was required for that sort of thing."
Solomos gasped again. The three soldiers with him raised their weapons, and Murdock heard the nasty sound of bolts being drawn back. "I… advise… you… to let me… go."
"Well, so much for the land of democracy." He released Solomos, who barked something in Greek at one of the soldiers. The man stepped forward and took the gym bag, unzipped it, and emptied the contents on the ground.
"What is this?"
"Two shirts, two pairs of trousers."
"I can see that. Whose are they?"
"Mine. I was looking for an all-night laundry."
"They are the street clothes your two men were wearing. Solomos, still rubbing his injured wrist, stepped past Murdock and stared for a long moment toward the boats at their harbor moorings. He snapped something unpleasant-sounding half under his breath, then reached under the tail of his jacket and hauled out a walkie-talkie. The soldiers continued to hold Murdock at gunpoint as Solomos spoke rapidly for a few moments, listened to a reply, then spoke again. Had he seen something in the water? Murdock couldn't tell, and he didn't dare turn and look to see if he could see anything himself. If he hadn't seen, though, he'd certainly guessed. The man was delivering a flurry of orders in rapid-fire Greek, and Murdock knew that none of it meant anything good.
That done, Solomos put the radio away and said something else to the soldiers. One of them prodded Murdock in the kidney with the grease gun. "Come," Solomos said. "We had better round up your accomplices at the White Tower."
"Accomplices?"
"Do not play games with me, Murdock. I can be a dangerous man."
"I'm sure."
"Your little game has accomplished nothing but to get you and your people expelled from this country. We wanted no part of your military 'advice' or 'observers' in the first place. Now, perhaps, we can do things without your meddling."
"Uh, Captain, if you don't mind my asking, what's this all about?"
"The DEA is moving tonight, Lieutenant. I've just radioed to my people to move in and arrest the suspects. But where I might have been inclined to permit you to question these people before, now you will just have to wait until my government communicates through channels with your government. I'm sorry that it must end this way, but I will not tolerate further interference in our internal affairs!"
Murdock heard a growl and turned to look toward the harbor, toward the right. There was the source… a big patrol boat, probably a military job, its engines booming in the otherwise quiet night, its searchlight glaring across the black water of the harbor like a great, white lighthouse beacon.
"Really, Captain," he said as one of the soldiers prodded him again. "I'd have thought you could have carried this off with less noise and fuss."
Before Solomos could answer, a burst of automatic gunfire chattered across the water.
11
Roselli was twenty meters from the Glaros when he heard the thunder of a big boat's engines, heard the sharp, barking rattle of automatic weapons fire. Bobbing in the water, he wiped his eyes with his hand, trying to clear them. The guard aboard the target boat had picked up what looked from here like an AKM assault rifle, run up to the craft's sun deck, and begun firing into the night. Roselli dove, expecting to hear the snapping impacts of bullets in the water around him… but when all he heard was the rapidly swelling throb of a boat's engines, he surfaced again.
Katris was aiming the AKM at something farther out in the harbor. Turning in the water, Roselli saw the target… a Dilos-class patrol boat bearing down on the anchorage, its bow rising above the white mustache of its bow wave. A searchlight glared from high up on its superstructure, and Roselli looked away to keep from being blinded.
A Dilos. He'd studied the different ship classes on the Greek Navy lists during the flight from the Nassau to the Jefferson. The Dilos class was a motor patrol craft twenty-nine meters long and displacing seventy-five tons. Armament would be a couple of 20mm machine guns, her top speed about twenty-seven knots. If the Glaros was able to get under way, the pleasure craft would outrun the larger boat easily, especially within this crowded anchorage where maneuverability was as definite a plus as speed.
Jaybird bobbed in the water a few meters to Roselli's left. Which direction… forward or back? The occupants of the Glaros were thoroughly alerted now, and getting onto her deck was not going to be easy. Roselli could see movement on her flying bridge now. Somebody must have emerged from the cabin and be working to get the boat moving.
The Greek patrol boat's engine throttled back, and the piercing ululation of a siren blanketed the harbor. Katris stooped swiftly, tugged at the mooring line which was looped over a cleat on the deck, and tossed it over the side. Glaros was drifting free now.
The guard stood upright again, raising the assault rifle to his shoulder for another burst. The patrol boat was not firing… a good decision, Roselli thought, since the city of Salonika lay directly behind the target. God, what shit-for-brains space cadet had engineered the tactics of this search and seizure?
Then, Katris's head literally exploded in a bloody spray of tissue, blood, and bone. The body went up on its toes, then toppled backward onto Glaros's sun deck, blood fountaining across the forward cabin windows. One of the Delta guys on the White Tower had just reached out and touched someone with that big Haskins rifle. In the same moment, the Glaros's engines coughed, then gunned to life.
Raising his hand from the water, Roselli caught Jaybird's attention with a wave, then vigorously pumped his fist up and down. Jaybird nodded, and the two SEALs plunged beneath the surface, swimming hard toward the thirty-foot boat. In the underwater blackness, the Glaros's engines sounded deafeningly close. Kicking with powerful, scissoring strokes, Roselli swam until he sensed more than saw the hull of the boat just above his head. Moving by touch, he freed the tightly wrapped hank of nylon line that he wore on his belt, tugging the knot loose that held it together, then letting the line unfold.
The thunder of the Glaros's engines pounded through the hull. With a heavy thump-chunk, the boat's pilot put the craft into gear, and the twin screws, motionless until that moment, churned to life. The boat began to move, and the pressure of its passing pummeled Roselli's body.
Turbulence from the spinning screws clawed at him, but he twisted to face them, moving his arm in an arc to spread the tangle of nylon line in front of him like a net. The deadly slice of the screws bore down on him fast; jackknifing, he brought his feet up and kicked, hard, shoving off from the keel of the moving boat. Its bow wave gave him added thrust, pushing him deeper into the water. The prop wash caught him and twisted him violently, but he kept kicking, swimming as hard as he could to get under and behind the churning of Glaros's propellers. With the violent exertion, his body was demanding air, his chest aching, his heart hammering.