snapped Hollis.
"any way you can get there in time to save them and the hostages?" asked Collins.
Hollis shook his head in grim despair. "Not one chance in hell.
Rudi Gunn was thankful for the sudden downpour of heavy rain. It effectively shielded him as he crawled away from the crushing mill under a string of empty ore cars. Once clear of the buildings, he dropped down the mountain below the mine for a few hundred meters, and then circled back.
He found the narrow-gauge tracks and began walking silently on the crossties. He could see only a short distance around him, but within a few minutes of escaping the terrorists' assault on the crushing mill, he froze in position when his eyes distinguished several vague figures through the rain ahead. He counted four sitting and two standing.
Gunn faced a dilemma. He assumed the hostages were resting while the guards stood. But he couldn't shoot and check his assumption later. He would have to rely on his borrowed terrorist clothing to bluff his way close enough to tell mend from foe.
His only drawback, and a vital one, was he only knew two or three words of Arabic.
Gunn took a breath and walked forward. He said, "Sa ," repeating the word two more times in a calm, controlled voice.
The two figures who were standing took on more detail as he approached, and he saw they held machine guns lowered and pointed his way.
One of them replied with words Gunn couldn't interpret. He mentally crossed his fingers and hoped they had asked the Arabic equivalent of
"Who goes there?"
"Muhammad," he mumbled, relying on the prophet's name to carry him through, while lazily holding the Heckler & Koch across his chest with the muzzle aimed off to the side.
Gunn's heartbeat calmed considerably as the two terrorists lowered their guns in unison and turned their attention back to their guard duty. He moved casually until he was standing alongside them so his line of fire would not strike the hostages.
Then, while keeping his eyes aimed at the miserable people sitting on the ground between the track rails, and without even looking at the two guards, he squeezed the trigger.
Ammar and his men were on the verge of total exhaustion when they reached the outskirts of the mine. The persistent downpour had turned their clothes sodden and heavy. They struggled over a long mound of tracks and thankfully entered a shed that once housed mining-equipment parts.
Ammar dropped onto a wooden bench, his head drooped on his chest, his breath coming in labored gasps. He looked up as Ibn entered with another man.
"This is Mustapha Osman," said Ibn. "He says an armed group of commandos have killed their group leader and barricaded themselves in the crushing mill with our helicopter."
Ammar's lips drew back in anger. "How could you let this happen?"
Osman's black eyes registered panic. "We had . . . no warning," he stammered. "They must have come down from the mountain. They subdued the sentries, seized the train and shot up our living quarters. When we launched our counterattack they fired on us from the crushing-mill building."
"Casualties?" Ammar demanded coldly.
"There are seven of us left."
The nightmare was worse than Ammar thought. "How many in their assault party?"
"Twenty, maybe thirty."
"Seven of you have of them under siege," snarled Ammar, his tone heavy with sarcasm. "Their number. This time the truth, or Ibn here will slit your throat."
Osman averted Ammar's eyes. He was frozen in fear. "There is no way of knowing for certain," he mumbled. "Perhaps four or more."
"Four men did all this?" said Ammar, aghast. He was seething but too disciplined to allow his anger to take control. "What of the helicopter?
Is it damaged?"
Osman seemed to brighten a degree. "No, we were careful not to fire at the section of the building where it is parked. I'd stake my father's honor it has not been hit."
"Only Allah knows whether the commandos have sabotaged it," said Ibn.
"We'll all see Allah soon if we don't recapture it in flying condition,"
Ammar said quietly. "The only way we can overpower the defenders is to strike hard and penetrate from all sides and crush them by sheer weight of numbers."
"Perhaps we can use the hostages to bargain our way out," said Ibn hopefully.
Ammar nodded. "A possibility. Americans are weak when it comes to death threats. I'll parley with our unknown scourge while you position the men for the assault."
"Take care, Suleiman Aziz."
"Be ready to attack when I remove my mask."
Ibn gave a slight bow and immediately began giving orders to the men.
Ammar ripped a tattered curtain from one window. The fabric had once been white, but was now faded to a dingy yellow.
It would have to do, he thought. He tied it to an old broom and stepped from the shed.
He moved along a row of miners' bunkhouses, keeping out of sight of the crushing mill until he was across from it.
Then he extended the curtain around a corner and waved it UP and down.
No gunfire tore through the ragged flag of truce, but nothing else happened either. Ammar tried shouting in English.
"We wish to talk!"
After several moments a voice yelled back. "No hablo inglgs. "
Ammar was taken back momentarily. Chilean secret police? They were far more efficient than he thought. He could speak fluently in English and get by in French, but he knew little Spanish. Hesitation would get him nowhere. He had to see who stood in his way of a successful escape.
He held up the makeshift flag, raised free hand and stepped out onto the road in front of the crushing mill.
The word for peace he knew was paz. So he shouted it several times.
Finally a man opened the main door and slowly limped Onto the road, stopped a few paces away and faced him.
The stranger was tall, with intensely green eyes that never flickered and yet ignored the dozen gunbarrels poking through windows and doorways in his direction. The eyes locked on Ammar only. The black hair was long and wavy, skin weathered a deep copper from long exposure to sun, slightly bushy eyebrows with firm lips fixed in a slight grin-all lent the masculine but not quite handsome face a deceptive look of humorous detachment, with only a trace of cold hardness.
There was a cut in one cheek that oozed blood and a wound on one thigh that was heavily bandaged under the slashed fabric.
The shape might have been lean under the bulky, out-of place ski suit, but Ammar could not e a clear assessment. One hand was bare while the other was gloved and hung loosely beneath one sleeve of the ski jacket.
Three seconds were all Ammar needed to read this devilthree seconds to know he was facing a dangerous man. He searched his mind for the few meager words of Spanish stored there. "Can we talk?" Yes, that would do for openers.
"Podemos hablar?" he shouted.
The suggestion of a grin widened into a casual smile. "Porque no?"
Ammar translated that as Why not? "Hacer capitular usted?"
"Why don't we cut the crap?" Pitt said suddenly in English "Your Spanish is worse than mine. The answer to your question is No, we're not going to surrender."
Ammar was too much a pro not to recover immediately, yet he was confounded by the fact that his adversary wore expensive skiing clothes instead of battle gear. The first possibility that crossed his mind was CIA.
"May I ask your name?"
"Dirk Pitt."
"I am Suleiman Aziz Ammar ,
"I don't really give a damn who you are," Pitt said coldly.
"As you wish, Mr. Pitt," Ammar remarked calmly. Then one of his eyebrows lifted rightly. "You by chance related to Senator George Pitt?"
"I don't travel in political circles."
"But you know him. I can see a resemblance. The son perhaps?"
"Can we get on with this? I had to interrupt a perfectly good champagne brunch to come out here in the rain."
Annnar laughed. The man was
incredible. "You have something of mine.
I'd like it returned in firstrate condition."
"You're speaking, of course, of one ummarked helicopter."
"Of course."
"Finders keepers. You want it, pal, you come and get it."
Ammar clenched and unclenched his fists impatiently. This was not going as he had hoped. He continued in a silky voice.
"Some of my men will die, you will die, and your father will most likely die if you do not turn it over to me."
Pitt didn't blink. "You forgot to throw in Hala Kamfl and Presidents De Lorenzo and Hasan. And don't neglect to include yourself. No reason you shouldn't fertilize the grass too.
Ammar stared at Pitt, his anger slowly rising.
"I can't believe your stubborn stupidity. What will you gain by more bloodletting?"
"To put the skids under scumbags like you," said pitt harshly. "You want a war, you declare it. But don't sneak around butchering women and children and taking innocent hostages who can't fight back. The terror stops here. I'm not bound by any law but my own. for every one of us you murder, we bury five of you."
"I didn't come out here in the wet to discuss our political differences!" said Ammar, fighting to control his wrath. "Tell me if the helicopter has been damaged."
"Doesn't have a scratch. And I might add that your pilots are still fit to fly. That make you happy?"
"You would be wise to surrender your weapons and Turn over my craft and flight crew."
Pitt shrugged. "Screw you."
Ammar was shaken by his failure to intimidate Pitt. His voice turned abrupt and cold. "How many men do you have, four, perhaps five? We outnumber you eight to one."
Pitt nodded his head at the bodies scattered beside the crushing mill.
"You're going to have to play catch-up ball. The way I see it, you're about nine strikes down on the scoreboard." Then as an afterthought he said, "Before I forget-I give you my word I won't sabotage your chopper.
It's yours in pristine shape providing you can take it. But harm any of the hostages, and I blow it from here to the nearest junkyard. That's the only deal I'll make."
"That is your final word?"
"for now, yes."
A thought crystallized in Ammar's mind, and he was swept by a sudden revelation. "It was you!" he rasped. "You led the American special forces here."
"Luck gets most of the credit," Pitt said modestly. "But after I found the wreck of the General Bravo and a splaced roll of plastic, it all fell into place."
Ammar stood there for a moment in profound astonishment, then recovered and said, "You do your powers of deduction an injustice, Mr. Pitt. I readily concede the coyote has run the fox to ground."
"Fox?" said Pitt. "You flatter yourself. Don't you mean maggot?"
Ammar looked at Pitt through narrowed eyes. "I'm personally going to kill you, Pitt, and I'm going to take great pleasure in seeing your body shot to pieces. What say you to that?"
There was no in Pitts eyes, no hatred etched in his face. He stared back at Ammar with a kind of bemused disgust one might display in exchanging looks with a cobra behind glass at a snake farm.
"Give my regards to Broadway," he said, turning his back on Ammar and walking casually back to the door of the crushing null.
Furious, Animar burled down the flag of truce and strode swiftly in the opposite direction. As he moved he eased an American Ruger P-85
semiautomatic 9-millimeter from the inside pocket of his coat.
Suddenly he whirled, whipped off his mask and went into the classic crouched stance with the Ruger gripped in both hands. The instant the sights lined up dead center on Pitts back, Ammar pulled the trigger six times in quick succession.
He saw the bullets tear into the middle of Pitts ski jacket in a ragged grouping of uneven holes, watched as the concentrated impact knocked his hated enemy stumbling forward into the wall of the crushing mill.
Ammar waited for Pitt to fall. His antagonist, he knew with firm certainty, was dead before hitting the ground.
Gradually Ammar became aware that Pitt was not acting as he should.
Pitt did not fall dead. Instead, he turned, and Animar saw the devil's own smile.
Stunned, Ammar knew he'd been outwitted. He realized now Pitt had expected a cowardly attack from the rear and protected his back with a bulletproof shield under the bulky ski jacket.
And with a numbing shock he saw the gloved hand hanging from the ve was fake. A magician's trick. The real hand had materialized, a hand clutching a big Colt 45 automatic that protruded from the partially unzipped ski jacket.
Ammar aimed the Ruger again but Pitt fired first.
Pitts first shot took Ammar in the tight shoulder and spun him sideways.
The second smashed through his chin and lower jaw. The third shattered one wrist as he threw it up to his face. The fourth passed through his face from side to side, Ammar rolled to the gravel and sprawled on his back, uncaring and oblivious to the gunfire that erupted over him, not knowing that Pitt had leaped uninjured through the door of the crushing mill before Ammar's men belatedly opened fire.
He was only vaguely aware of Ibn dragging him to safety behind a steel water tank as a short burst of fire from inside the crushing mill sprayed the ground around them. Slowly his hand groped up Ibn's arm until he clutched the solid-muscled shoulder. Then he pulled his friend downward.
"I cannot see you," he rasped.
Ibn removed a large surgical pad from a pack on his belt and gently pressed it over the torn flesh that once held Ammar's eyes. "Allah and I will see for you," said Ibn.
Ammar coughed and spit out the blood from the shattered chin that had seeped down his throat. "I want that Satan, Pitt, and the hostages hacked to pieces."
"Our attack has began. Their lives are measured in seconds."
"If I die . . . kill Yazid."
"You will not die."
Ammar went ugh another coughing spasm before he could speak again. "No matter . . . the Americans will destroy the helicopter now. You must escape the island another way. Leave . . . leave me. That is my final request of you."
Wordlessly, without acknowledging the plea, Ibn lifted Ammar in his arms and began walking away from the scene of the battle.
When Ibn spoke, his voice was hoarse but soft. "Be of strong spirit, Suleiman Aziz," he said. "We will return to Alexandria together."
Pitt barely had time to leap through the door, whip off the two bulletproof vests from under the back of his coat, replace one in the front and return the second to Giordino before a hail of concentrated fire drilled through the thin wooden walls.
"Now the jacket is ruined," Pitt grunted, pressing his body into the floor.
"You'd have been dead meat if he'd plugged you in the chest," said Giordino, wiggling into his vest. "How'd you know he was going to shoot when your back was turned?"
"He had bad breath and beady eyes."
Findley began scrambling from window to window, throwing grenades as fast as he could yank the activating pins. "They're here!" he yelled.
Giordino rolled across the plank floor and poured a continuous fire from behind a wheelbarrow full of ore. Pitt snatched up the Thompson just in time to stop two terrorists who had somehow managed to climb into the shattered side office.
Ammar's small army charged the building from all sides with guns blazing. There was no stopping the tide of the savage Onslaught-They swarmed in everywhere. The sharp crackle of the terrorists'
small-caliber AK-74S and the deep stutter of Pitts 45-caliber Thompson were punctuated by the boom of Findley's shotgun.
Giordino fell back to the crushing mill, laying down a covering fire for Pitt and Findley until all three had reached the temporary Protection of their Mickey Mouse fort. The terrorists were momentarily stunned to find no enemy throwing up their hands in surrender. Once inside the building they'd expected to inundate their unprotected enemy with sheer numbers. Instead, they found themselves caught naked by
a withering fusillade from the mill and were cut down like milling cattle.
Pitt, Giordino and Findley decimated the first wave. But the Arabs were fanatically brave, and they learned fast. An intensified gunfire and the blast from several grenades engulfed the cavernous room ahead of the next assault.
Bedlam! The dead heaped the floor, and the Arabs took cover behind the bodies of their dead comrades. It was a firefight scene-guns blasting, grenades exploding, the shouts and curses in two languages from two culmms as different as night and day The budding shook from the reverberations of gunfire and the concussions of the grenades. Shrapnel and bullets flayed the sides of the gmt mechanical mill like sparks from a bucket of molten steel. The air was filled with the pungent smell of gunpowder.
Fire broke out in a dozen places and was completely ignored. Giordino threw a grenade that blew off the tail rotor of the helicopter. Even with the last hope of escape gone now, the Arabs irrationally fought all the harder.
Pitts ancient Thompson slammed deafeningly and then stopped. He ejected the fifty-round rotary dnun and inserted another-his last. There was a cold, calculated determination he'd never felt before. He and Giordino and Findley had no intention of throwing in the towel. They had long passed the point of no return and found no fear of death behind it. They hung on grimly, fighting for their very existence, tenaciously giving better than they received.
Three times the Arab terrorists were driven back and times they charged forward in the face of the murderous fire. Their badly diminished force regrouped again and launched a final suicide assault, closing the ring tighter and tighter.
The Arab Mushm could not understand their enemy's ferocity, how they could fight with such bloody-minded precision, why they were so outrageously defiant. The Americans fought desperately only to live, while they themselves sought a blessed death and martyrdom as salvation.
Pitts eyes stung from the smoke, and tears streamed down his cheeks. The whole cnishing mill was vibrating. Bullets ricocheted off the steel sides like angry hornets, four Of them tearing through Pitts sleeve and slightly grazing the skin.