Gunn was right. There was no sound of the Special Operations Forces'
helicopters.
"Let's find the ore train," ordered Pitt. "We'd be smart to put it out of commission and cut all transportation between the mine and the ship."
Gunn nodded, and they moved silently along the wall of the dining hall, ducking under the windows and halting at a corner where they paused to cautiously scan the immediate neighborhood. Then they swung across an open space until they reached the railroad track, stepped across the rails and began sprinting between the ties.
A chill crept up Pitts back as he tailed Gunn, and he clenched his fists around the stock and forward grip of the Thompson with a growing sense of despair. The wind and rain had stopped and the stars were quickly fading in the eastern sky.
Something had gone terribly wrong.
To Hollis, it seemed hours since they had launched the boats.
The compact Carrier Pigeon helicopters had flown low along the rugged coastline and deposited Hollis's team on a small island at the mouth of the fjord without a hitch. The launching was executed smoothly with effortless efficiency, but the swift, four-knot tidal current was far stronger than anyone had anticipated.
Then the silent electric motor on the lead five-man tow boat had mysteriously quit after the first ten minutes. Precious time was lost as the Special Forces men broke out the paddles and put their backs into a desperate race to close on the Lady Flamborough before first light.
Matters had been worsened by the breakdown in communications. To his dismay, Hollis was unable to notify Dillenger or any of the land team.
He had no way of knowing whether Dillenger had boarded the ship or was lost on the glacier.
Hollis paddled and cursed the deceased motor, the current at every stroke. His carefully calculated timetable was down the drain. The attack was far behind schedule, and he couldn't risk calling it off.
His only salvation was the "fog smoke" Findley had described. it swirled around the small boats and the fiercely determined men, cloaking them like a protecting blanket.
The mist and the darkness made it impossible for Hollis to see more than a few meters ahead. He navigated and watched over his tiny fleet through an infrared scope. He kept them tightly grouped within a three-meter radius, quietly giving directions over his miniature radio whenever one began to stray.
He turned the scope on the Lady Flamborough. Her beautiful lines now looked like a grotesque ice carving floating in front of the cracked porcelain wall of an antique bathtub. Hollis judged her to still be a good kilometer away.
After exacting its toll, the tide suddenly began to slacken and their speed soon picked up almost a knot. The welcome relief came almost too late. Hollis could see his men were wearing down under the constant, arduous paddling. They were men hardened by rigid training, and all lifted weights on a regular basis. They dug the paddles into the water noiselessly and heaved against the merciless tide, but their muscles were beginning to stiffen and each stroke became an effort.
The protective mist was beginning to . lift In his mind was the fear that they would become sitting ducks in the water. Hollis looked upward, his confidence ebbing with the tide. Through the mist's open patches he could see a sky that was turning from black to an ever lighter blue.
His boats were in the middle of the fjord, and the nearest shore that offered any degree of cover was half a kilometer farther away than the Lady Flamborough.
"Put your backs into it, men," he urged. "We're in the home stretch. Go for it."
The weary fighters reached deep for their reserve strength and increased the length and speed of their strokes. It felt to Hollis as if the inflatable boats were spurting through the water. He put aside the scope and paddled furiously.
They might make it, just might make it, he thought hopefuly as they began to rapidly close on the ship.
But where was Dillenger? he wondered bitterly. What in hell had happened to the assault team on the glacier?
Dillenger was having no picnic himself. He was even more vague on the situation. Immediately after jumping from the C-140 wmsport, he and his men had been immediately hurle, all over the sky by the heavy, blowing winds.
Tight-faced, Dillenger looked up and around to see how his team was Managing. Each man carried a small blue light, but the driving sleet made it impossible for him to see them. He lost them almost the instant his chute opened.
He reached down and pressed the switch of a little black box strapped to his leg. Then he spoke into his tiny transmitter.
"This is Major Dillenger-I have turned on my marker beacon. have a seven-kilometer glide, so try and stay close to me and home in on my position after you land."
"In this crap we'll be lucky to come down on the island," some malcontent muttered.
"Radio silence except for emergency," Dillenger ordered.
He looked down and saw nothing beyond his survival-and-weapons pack that dangled on a two-meter line beneath his harness-He took his bearings from the luminous dial of a combination compass and altimeter that extended in front of his forehead like the mirror worn by ear, nose and throat physicians.
Without reference points or a homing beacon dropped on the landing zone in advance-a luxury too great to risk alerttng the hiJackers-Dillenger had to try and fly by the seat of his pants and mentally judge glide angle and distance.
His primary concern was overshooting the edge of the glacier and landing m the fjord. He hedged his bet and came down short-nearly a full kilometer too short.
The glacier materialized through the darkness, and Dillenger saw he was descending directly over a crevasse. A sudden side gust caught his rectangular canopy and it began to oscillate. He jockeyed the shrouds to compensate and twisted into a landing attitude just as his dangling pack struck the inner wall of the crevasse and bounced over the lip. A layer of snow cushioned his impact and he made a perfect landing on his feet, only two meters from the ice fracture.
He popped his release and the parachute collapsed before it could be caught by the wind. He didn't bother to roll it up and hide it in the ice for later retrieval. There was no time to waste. The taxpayers would have to eat the lost chute.
"This is Dillenger. I'm down. Home in on my position."
He pulled a plastic whistle from a pocket of his coat and blew through it once every ten seconds while facing in a different direction. for the first few minutes there was nobody to be seen.
Then, slowly, the first of his men appeared and jogged toward him. They had been widely scattered. Their progress across the uneven surface of the glacier took them far longer than Dillenger had anticipated.
Soon the others straggled in. One man had suffered a broken shoulder, another had cracked an ankle. His sergeant favored a wrist Dillenger suspected was broken, but the man carried on as though it was little more than a slight sprain, and Dillenger needed him too badly to write him off.
He turned to the two injured men. "You won't be able to keep up with the rest of us, but follow along in our tracks as best you can. Just make sure your lights are hooded." Then Dillenger nodded at his sergeant, Jack Foster. "Let's rope together and move out, Sergeant.
I'll take the lead."
Foster gave a brief salute and began checking the team.
The going was treacherous across the broken ice surface, yet they moved along at an easy dogtrot. Dillenger had no fear of falling into an open lead; the line around his waist was anchored to enough beef and brawn to lift a truck off the ground. Twice he called for a brief stop to catch his bearings, and then they were off again.
They crawled over jagged ice ridges and one open lead that all but defeated them. They wasted seven minutes before an ice grapnel bit in the opposite side and the lightest man on the team crossed hand over hand to secure the grip. Another ten minutes was gone before the last man made it over.
A sense of urgency mushroomed inside Dillenger. His team was down two seven men and they were falling farther and farther b
ehind the timetable. He sullenly regretted not taking Giordino's unsolicited advice and doubling his estimated time from air drop to attack.
He prayed the dive team wasn't waiting, freezing to death in the water beneath the Flamborough's hull. He tried repeatedly to signal Hollis and apprise the Colonel of his tardy situation, but there was no reply.
The first faint traces of dawn were breaking behind him, revealing the surface of the glacier. There was a numbing desolation about it, a terrifying strangeness. He could also see the faint glimmering of the fjordand suddenly he realized why there was a communications breakdown.
Hollis could see the ship clearly now without the infrared scope. And if a hijacker with a keen eye had looked in the right direction, he'd have spied the shadows of the inflatable boats outlined against the dark gray water. Hollis hardly dared breathe as the distance narrowed.
Hoping against hope, Hollis never let up on his plea for radio communications with Dillenger. "Shark to Falcon, please respond." He was about to try for the hundredth time when Dillenger's voice abruptly boomed through his earpiece.
"This is Falcon, go ahead."
"You're late!" Hollis hissed quietly. "Why didn't you respond to my calls?"
"Just now came within range. We were out of horizontal sight of you.
Our signals couldn't penetrate the ice wall."
"Are you in position?"
"Negative," Dillenger said flatly. "We've stumbled on a delicate situation which will take a while to correct."
"What do you call delicate?"
"A string of explosives in an ice fracture behind the glacial front, armed and ready to be detonated by radio signal."
"How long to disarm?"
"Could take an hour just to find them all."
"You've got five minutes," Hollis said quickly. "We can't wait any longer or we'll be dead."
"We'll all be dead if the charges go off and the ice wall falls on the ship."
"We'll gamble on surprise to stop the terrorists from detonating. Make it fast. My boats can be discovered at any moment."
"I can just make out your shadows from the glacial rim."
"Your temn goes in first," Hollis ordered. "Without total darkness to cover our ascent up the hull we badly need the distraction. "
"I'll meet you on the sun deck for cocktails," Dillenger said.
"The tab will be on me," Hollis replied, suddenly buoyant with expectation. "Good luck."
Ibn saw them.
He stood on the old ore-loading pier along with Ammar, their four hostages and twenty men of the Egyptian hijacking force. He peered through binoculars at the figures in all-black gear who were poised on the brink of the glacier. He watched as they slid down ropes, slashed their way through the plastic sheet and vanished inside.
He lowered the glasses slightly and focused on the men in the boats clustered below the hull. He observed them shoot grappling hooks from small launchers, and then climb the attached lines to the main-deck level.
"Who are they?" asked Ammar, standing next to him, also gazing through binoculars.
"I cannot say, Suleiman Aziz. They appear to be an elite force. I hear no battle sounds; their weapons must be heavily silenced. Their assault operation was most efficient."
"Too efficient for any rabble Yazid or Topiltzin could have scraped up on short notice."
"I believe they may be an American Special Operations Force." Ammar nodded in the brightening light. "You may be right, but how in Allah's name did they find us so quickly?"
"We must leave before their support forces arrive."
"Have you signaled for the chopper?"
"It should be here shortly.
"Wat is it?" asked President De Lorenzo. "What is happening?"
Ammar brushed off De Lorenzo. for the first time a flicker of foreboding came through in his voice. "It seems we left the ship at a most appropriate moment. Allah smiles. The intruders are not aware of our presence here."
"In another thirty minutes this island will be crawling with United States fighting men," said Senator Pitt, calmly turning the screw. "You might be well advised to surrender."
Ammar suddenly turned and stared savagely at the politician. "Not necessary, Senator. Don't look for your famed cavalry to charge to the rescue. If and when they arrive, there will be no one left to save."
"Why didn't you kill us on the ship?" Hala asked bravely.
Ammar's teeth showed under the mask in a hideous smile and he did not give her the courtesy of an answer. He nodded at Ibn. "Detonate the charges."
"As you wish, Suleiman Aziz," Ibn replied dutifully.
"What charges?" demanded the Senator. "What, are you talking about?"
"Why, the explosives we placed behind the glacial wall," Ammar said as if it was common knowledge. He gestured toward the Lady Flamborough"Ibn, if you please."
Totally expressionless, Ibn took a small transmitter from a coat pocket and held it out in front of him so the forward end pointed at the glacier.
"In the name of God, man," pleaded Senator Pitt. "Don't do it."
Ibn hesitated, staring at Ammar.
"There are hundreds of people on that ship," said President Hasan, shock showing in every line of his face. "You have no reason to murder them."
"I do not have to justify my actions to anyone here."
"Yazid will be punished for your atrocity," Hala murmured in a tone edged with fury.
"Thank you for making it easier," Ammar said, smiling at Hala, whose face became a study in bewildered incomprehension. "Enough of these maudlin delays. Quickly, Ibn. Get on with it."
Before the stunned hostages could utter further protests, fbn flicked the power switch of the transmitting unit to "on" and pressed the button that activated the detonators.
The explosion came like a curiously muffled clap of thunder. The forward mass of the glacier creaked and groaned ominously. Then nothing appeared to happen. The ice cliff remained firm and upright.
Detonations should have occurred at eight different locations inside the fracture, but Major Dillenger and his men had discovered and disarmed all but one charge before their search was cut off.
The distant thump came just as Pitt and Gunn were closing in on the two hijackers who were busily firing up the old mine locomotive. The hijackers paused, listening for a few moments, exchanging words in Arabic. Then they laughed between themselves and turned back to their work.
"Whatever caused the boom," whispered Gunn, "came as no surprise to those guys. They act as if they expected it."
"Sounded like a small explosion," Pitt replied sourily.
"Definitely not the glacier breaking away. We'd have felt tremors in the ground."
Pitt stared at the small narrow-gauge locomotive, which was coupled to a coal tender and five ore cars. It was a type used around plantations, industrial plants and mining operations. Quaint, stout and sturdy, with a tall stovepipe smokestack and round porthole windows in the cab, it looked like the Little Engine That Could, standing there puffing wisps of steam around its running gear.
A railroad man would have classed the wheel arrangement as an 00, indicating no leading truck wheels followed by four drive wheels with no trailing truck beneath the cab.
"Let's give the engineer and his fireman a warm sendoff," Pitt murmured wryly. "It's the friendly thing to do."
Gunn looked at Pitt queerly and shook his head in bewilderment before crouching and running toward the end of the train. They split up and approached from opposite sides, taking cover under the ore cars. The cab was brightly illuminated i by the open firebox, and Pitt gestured with an upturned palm, signaling Gunn to wait.
The Arab who acted as engineer was busy turning valves and watching the steam-pressure gauges. The other shoveled coal from the tender across the platform into the flames. He fed a load of the black lumps onto the fiercely burning firebox, paused to mop his sweating face, and then slammed the door to the firebox shut with his shovel, sending the cab into a state of semi
darkness.
Pitt pointed at Gunn and then at the engineer. Gunn waved an acknowledgment, grasped the grab irons and leaped up the steps into the cab.
Pitt arrived first. He calmly approached the fireman head-on and said pleasantly, "Have a nice day."
Before the confused and astonished fireman could respond, Pitt had swiftly snatched the shovel out of the Arab's hands and beat him over the head with it.
The engineer was in the act of turning around when Gunn whipped him across the jaw with the heavy silencer joined to the Heckler & Koch's stubby muzzle. The Arab dropped like a bag of cement.
While Gunn guarded against intruders, Pitt propped both hijackers so they hung half out of the cab's side windows. Next he thoughtfully studied the maze of pipes, levers and valves.
"You'll never do it," Gunn said shaking his head.
"I know how to start and drive a Stanley Steamer," Pitt said indignantly.
"A what?"
"An antique automobile," Pitt answered. "Pull open the door to the firebox. I need some light to read the gauges."
Gunn did as he was asked and held out his hands to warm them from the flames leaping through the opening. "You better figure it out quick,"
he said impatiently. "We're lit up like a Las Vegas chorus line."
Pitt pulled down a long lever and the little engine slipped forward a scant centimeter. "Okay, that's the brake. I think I've figured what handle does what. Now, when we roll past the crushing mill, jump and hustle inside."
"What about the train?"
"The Cannonball Express," Pitt replied with a wide grin, "does not make stops."
Pitt released the ratchet on the forward-reverse lever and pushed it away from him. Next he squeezed the ratchet on the throttle bar and eased it open. The locomotive crept slowly ahead, accompanied by the clanging jerk of the coupled ore cars. He shoved the throttle to its stop. The drive wheels whirled full circle several times before they bit the rusty rails. The train lurched forward and got underway.