"Something Ammar said about a coyote and a fox when we met," Pitt replied pensively. Then he looked around at his audience. "I bet he's eluded the net. Anyone care to give me odds?"
Hollis gave Pitt a dark look instead. "You better hope he's deader than a barracuda in the desert, because if he isn't, the name of Dirk Pitt will head his next hit list."
Hala swept gracefully to the head of Pitts bed, wearing a gold silk dressing gown with a modernized hieroglyphic design. She placed her hand lightly around his shoulder.
"Dirk is very weak," she said in an even voice. "He needs a good meal and rest until it comes time to debark the ship. I suggest we leave him alone for the next hour."
Hollis slipped the photos back in the envelope and rose. "I'll have to say my goodbyes. A helicopter is waiting to take me back to Santa Inez to continue the search for Ammar."
"Give my best to Major Dillenger."
"I shall." Hollis seemed uneasy for a moment; then he approached the bed and shook hands. "I apologize, Dirk, to you and your friends. I sadly underrated you all. Anytime you want to transfer from NUMA to Special Operations Forces, I'll be the first to sign a recommendation."
"I wouldn't fit in too well." Pitt grinned. "I have this allergy to taking orders."
"Yes, so you've demonstrated," Hollis said, smiling faintly.
The Senator walked over and squeezed Pitts hand. "See you on deck."
"I'll bid my farewell there also," said Captain Collins.
Hala said nothing. She herded the men from the room. Then she slowly closed the door and turned the lock. She walked back until she stood beside the bed. The folds of the gown plunged and there was something in the casual way it draped her body that convinced Pitt she was naked beneath.
She proved it by loosening the sash and shrugging the gown from her shoulders. He heard the whisper of the silk as it slid down her soft flesh. She posed like a bronze statue, breasts thrust out, hands flattened against her thighs, one leg slightly in front of the otherShe reached down and pulled back the bedcovers.
"I owe you something," she said huskily.
Pitt caught his reflection in the mirrors on the closet doors. He wore only white gauze. top of his head and the side of his face were swathed in bandages, as was one side of his neck and the wounded leg. He hadn't shaved in a week and the whites of his eyes were red. In his mind he looked like a derelict any self-respecting bag lady would re-ject.
"I'm a sorry excuse for Don Juan," he murmured
"You're handsome in my eyes," Hala whispered as she gently lay beside him and gently entwine her fingers through the hairs of his chest. "We must hurry. We have less than an hour."
Pitt let out a long sigh. He would catch hell from Doc Webster if he overexerted and pulled out his stitches. Abject surrender. Why is it, he wondered, men plan more covert schemes than an intelligence agency to seduce women, only to have them Turn on under crazy circumstances when you least expect it? He was more convinced than ever that James Bond really didn't have it all that great.
When Ammar awoke, he saw only blackness. His shoulder felt as though a piece of coal were burning inside his flesh. He tried to lift his hands to his face but one hand exploded with pain. Then he remembered bullets slamming into his wrist and shoulder. He raised his good hand to touch his eyes but the fingertips felt only a tightly bound cloth that wrapped around his head, covering his face from forehead to chin.
He knew his eyes were beyond saving. Not for him a life of blindness, he thought. He groped around for a weapon, anything to kill himself.
All he touched was a damp, flat rock surface.
Ammar became desperate, unable to repress the fear of helplessness. He struggled to his feet, stumbled and fell.
Then two hands gripped his shoulders.
"Do not move or make a cry, Suleiman Aziz," came the whispered words of Ibn. "The Americans are searching for us ."
Ammar clutched Ibn's hands for assurance. He tried to speak, but could no longer utter coherent words. Only animallike guttural sounds came through the blood-caked wrapping supporting his shattered jaw.
"We are in a small chamber inside one of the mine tunnels."
Ibn spoke softly into his ear. "They came very close, but I had time to build a wall that concealed our hiding place."
Ammar nodded and desperately tried to make himself understood.
It was as though Ibn could reach through the pitch ess and read Ammar's thoughts. "You wish to die, Suleiman Aziz? No, you will not die. We will go together but not one minute before Allah decides."
Ammar slumped in despair. He had never felt so disoriented, so completely out of control. The pain was unbearable, and the thought of living out his days in a maximum-security jail cell, blind and mutilated, devastated him. All instinct for self--preservation had deserted him. He could not stand being dependent on anyone for his hourly existence-not even Ibn.
"Rest, my brother," said Ibn gently. "You will need all your strength when it comes time for us to escape the island."
Annnar collapsed and rolled to his side. His shoulders came against the tunnel's uneven floor. It was wet, and the moisture seeped through his clothing, but he was suffering too much pain to notice the added discomfort.
He became more and more despondent. His failure had become a horror. He saw Akhmad Yazid standing over him, smirking; then a curtain slowly formed and parted deep in the recesses of Ammar's mind. A faint glow appeared, a glow that bloomed and then burst in a blinding flash, and in that one chilling moment he glimpsed the future.
He would survive through revenge.
Mentally he spoke the word over and over until at last his self-discipline returned.
The first decision he came to grips with was who should die at his own hands, Yazid or Pitt? He could not act alone. He was no longer physically capable of assassinating both men himself. Already a plan was forming. He would have to trust Ibn to share in the revenge.
Ammar anguished over the decision, but in the end he had no choice.
Ibn would draw the coyote, while Ammar's final act would be to slay the viper.
Pitt refused to fly home on a stretcher. He sat in a comfortable executive chair, leg propped on the seat of a facing chair, and stared out the window at the snowcapped spires of the Andes. Far off to the right he could see the green plateaus that marked the beginning of the Brazilian highlands. Two hours later a distant gray haze advertised the crowded city of Caracas, and then he was gazing at the horizon line where the turquoise of the Caribbean met a cobalt-blue sky. from 12,000
meters the wind-mased water looked like a flat sheet of crepe paper.
The Air Force VIP transport jet was cramped-Pitt could not stand to his full height-but quite luxurious. He felt as though he were sitting inside a rich kid's high-priced toy.
His father was not in a talkative mood. The Senator spent most of the flight working out of a briefcase, making notes for his briefing to the President.
What little conversation took place was one-sided. When Pitt asked how he happened to be on the Lady Flamborough at Punta del Este, the Senator didn't bother to look up when he responded.
"A Presidential mission," he said tersely, closing off any further questions on the subject.
Hala also kept to herself and attended to business. She had the aircraft's in-flight telephone in constant use, firing off in structions to her aides at the United Nations building in New York. Her only acknowledgment of Pitts presence was a brief smile when their eyes happened to meet.
How quickly they forget, Pitt thought idly.
He turned his mind to the search for the Alexandria Library treasures.
He considered cutting in on Hala's phone monopoly for a progress report from Yaeger. But he drowned his curiosity with a dry martini, courtesy of the aircraft steward, instead, deciding to wait and learn whatever there was to learn at first hand from Lily and Yaeger.