Then the thunder of the engines, the pounding of the screws, suddenly took on a new sound, a sharply rising whine of protest ending in a loud clunk. One of the screws was still turning, but the other had stopped, its shaft fouled by Roselli's line. Rising through the blackness, Roselli broke the surface five meters astern of the boat, mouth open, gulping down a full draught of cold, wonderful air.
Glaros was still moving but circling hard to the left, the Zodiac raft tied to her stern wallowing along in her wake. Beyond, the Greek patrol boat was looming closer, perhaps a hundred meters off, the dazzle of its searchlight bathing the motor yacht in a brilliant, blue-white glare. By the light, Roselli could see a man wearing white boxer shorts leaning over Glaros's transom, a boat hook in his hands as he tried to poke and probe at the fouled starboard screw. Behind him was a dark-haired woman, bare-breasted, screaming in shrill terror. Smoke from the boat's exhaust boiled off the surface of the water. Suddenly, Glaros's second engine whined, shrieked, then ground to a thump and silence, and the yacht went dead in the water. Jaybird surfaced a few meters away, close alongside the Zodiac, gasping for air.
The man with the boat hook shouted something in Greek, and Roselli hoped he wasn't calling for a gun. No… apparently the guy hadn't seen the swimmers yet. He was still trying to reach the screws with the hook, assuming, perhaps, that they'd been fouled by weed or by garbage floating in the harbor, and yelling at his partner up on the boat's flying bridge. He shouted again and Glaros's engines whined, but failed to kick over.
Jackknifing once again, Roselli dove, swimming quickly toward the stern of the boat, passing beneath the Zodiac, then surfacing explosively within touching distance of the transom, looking straight up into the startled face of the man with the boat hook. Rising like a rocket out of the water, Roselli stretched out both arms, grabbed the shaft of the boat hook, and yanked hard. The man, caught off balance and completely by surprise, gave a loud wail as he soared headfirst off the stern of the Glaros and splashed into the sea.
Roselli's movement carried him up, then back under water. Kicking back to the surface, he launched himself toward Glaros's fantail, grabbing the top of the transom and boosting himself up… then muscling himself up and over the top in an untidy somersault. He landed with a loud, wet thump in the boat's after well deck at the feet of the screaming woman.
"Easy! Easy!" Roselli yelled, holding up a hand, wondering if she understood English, but the woman kept screaming, her hands holding her head, her breasts dancing and bobbing wildly as she jumped up and down. Roselli was less interested at the moment in her movements, though, than he was in her safety. Snapping out with one foot and rolling to the side, he swept the girl's long, bare legs out from under her, spilling her to the deck with a startled bump. His boarding technique had been less than stealthy, and he didn't want innocent bystanders hit if the guy up on Glaros's bridge decided to start shooting.
He unknotted the heavy cloth bag still dangling from his makeshift belt. Inside was one of the Smith & Wesson automatics, which he dragged out as he came to his feet. Clicking off the safety, he braced the pistol in both hands, aiming it up the well deck ladder toward the flying bridge, where the boat's pilot was still trying to get the engines started again. "Stamatiste!" he shouted, using his sole word of Greek. Papagos had coached him on it an hour ago. "Stamatiste! Stop!"
Taking the first three rungs of the ladder, Roselli moved halfway up to the flying bridge level, until he could see the entire deck. A man in trousers and an unbuttoned sports shirt stood at the control console, his hair in wild disarray, a .45-caliber Colt automatic clutched in one hand.
"Stama-fucking-tiste, you son of a bitch!"
The man turned and stared into the muzzle of Roselli's Smith & Wesson, and some of the wildness seemed to go out of him. He slumped into the pilot's seat, the Colt spilling from his hand and clattering onto the deck. He raised his hands as Roselli climbed up the rest of the way onto the bridge. Kicking the .45 away, he grabbed the man's collar and forced him facedown onto the deck. Standard takedown. Roselli kicked his legs apart, jammed one foot against his crotch, then kneeled on the guy's buttocks, using his left hand to check for other weapons beneath his shirt.
Where was Jaybird? Roselli didn't see him, but he did hear a frantic splashing and stole a glance aft. The woman, evidently, had recovered enough to make one rational decision, at least, and was swimming toward the promenade in a thrashing flurry of legs and arms. "Wonder what the indecent exposure laws are like in this town," he wondered half aloud. His prisoner rasped something in Greek, and Roselli roughly shoved the muzzle of his pistol against the base of his head to quiet him. Seconds later, the patrol boat, engines throttling back, rumbled slowly up to the Glaros, starboard side to, the searchlight sweeping the yacht from bow to stern. Squinting past the glare, Roselli could see a dozen armed men standing along her rail. A loud-hailer voice boomed something at him in Greek, and with a sharp chill Roselli realized that, so far as those guys were concerned, he was an armed man aboard a hostile craft.
"American!" he yelled as loud as he could. "U.S. Navy!"
"Put down the gun, Mr. Roselli," the loud-hailer voice barked in accented English.
Sailors on the Greek vessel were reaching down with boat hooks to grab Glaros's rail and pull her up alongside. Roselli felt the deck shudder, heard the creak and scrape of the yacht as it bumped across the long, dirty white fenders hanging down the patrol boat's side.
"Roselli!" the voice called again. "Put down your gun or we fire!"
Shit! These guys were supposed to be on his side!
Carefully, ostentatiously, he placed his pistol on the bridge control console, then raised his hands and clasped them behind his head. He stayed on top of his prisoner, however, digging in with his knee to convince the man that it would be wiser not to move. "Don't even think about it, pal," he said, wondering if the man understood English at all.
Greek soldiers in camouflage uniforms began leaping aboard the Glaros, as sailors used boat hooks to draw the two vessels together. In a moment, both Roselli and his prisoner were being herded back down to the well deck at gunpoint.
The woman who'd dived overboard was gone. Some of the soldiers started searching the Glaros, and in moments he heard a piercing shriek from inside the cabin. Seconds later, the laughing soldiers emerged, pulling along a girl — she couldn't have been more than eighteen — wearing nothing but long blond hair and a terrified expression. There was no sign of Sterling, however, or of the man Roselli had tossed over the side. As soldiers roughly handcuffed his wrists behind his back, Roselli grinned.
The Zodiac that had been tied up astern of the Glaros was gone, its mooring line snicked clean through by a SEAL diving knife.
Murdock stood on the promenade below the White Tower, watching as the Greek patrol boat edged closer to the promenade waterfront. Solomos stood beside him, scowling, while Brown and Papagos leaned against the tower wall, under guard.
"Lieutenant," Solomos said quietly, "I am going to take great personal pride in seeing you broken. You have exceeded your authority, abused my hospitality, and threatened the success of my operation here."
Murdock said nothing. There would be no reasoning with Solomos, not now. The man's pride had been injured, and this was a nation that took pride very seriously indeed.