darkness he could not actually see the ship. He turned.
“Very well. Who is watching the landing area?”
“Bruno.”
“Take Walther and Otto with you and join him. Once the ship blows we’ll watch with the starlight scopes.”
“How long do you want to wait before we get out of here?” Durenmatt asked. He was a very large bear of a man. His specialty with the STASI had been killing men with his bare hands, slowly and with great relish.
“However long it takes for Mr. McGarvey to come to us,” Spranger said turning back to the open window.
“He’s probably dead out there, or else he will be soon.”
“I don’t think so, Peter. No, I think Mr. McGarvey is more resourceful than that.”
“We can stand off, and when he comes up here … if he comes up here… we can blow this place.”
“No,” Spranger said with finality. “I want to see his face when he knows he’s lost.”
“Insanity,” Durenmatt said, half under his breath.
Spranger looked at the man, his left eyebrow slightly arched, his lips pursed. “Peter,”
he said softly. “If you ever talk to me like that again, I shall have you nailed to a post and skinned alive. Is that clear?”
“Jawohl, Herr General,” Durenmatt said, chastised. Even he realized that he had gone too far. “I am sorry.”
“See to your duties, then.”
“Yes, sir,” the bigger man said. He clicked his heels and left.
Liese came in from the adjacent room that had once been a small chapel. She had overheard everything, and she was smiling.
“What if he doesn’t lose, Ernst?” she asked. “Perhaps he’s coming here not only to free his women, but also to see the look on your face when you know that you’ve lost.”
Spranger didn’t bother rising to her bait.
After a moment or two she chuckled, the sound low and soft. “How long before the ship explodes?”
“Less than three minutes,” Spranger said, and he glanced back at Liese headed for the door. “Where are you going?”
“I want to see the look on Elizabeth’s face. She’s more interesting to me.”
“Stay away from them.”
“No,” Liese said flatly. “We’re going to kill them in any event. Perhaps I’ll do the mother now. I’d like to see the little girl’s reaction.”
A slight flush had come to Liese’s cheeks.
“You’re disgusting.”
She laughed out loud. “Yes, I am, aren’t I?”
Chapter 51
“I count six dead so far,” Lipton said coming out of the crew’s dining area. “Every one of them has been shot in the back of the head at close range. This STASI outfit are a bunch of bastards.”
McGarvey was at the end of the corridor at the stairwell which led to the lower decks and engine room. “There’s at least one more on the bridge. I think you’d better get your people off this ship before it’s too late.”
“They know what they’re doing,” Lipton said crossing the corridor and poking his head into the galley.
“So does Spranger.”
Chief Petty Officer Jules Joslow came around the corner. “All clear in the crews’
quarters,” he reported.
“Any sign of the hostages?” Lipton asked.
“Negative. If they were ever aboard they left no traces that I could see.”
“They’re on the island,” McGarvey said, one ear cocked at the stairway.
“You get that from the one we neutralized?”
“He said they’d been taken to the monastery where Spranger’s waiting for me to show up. I think he was telling the truth.”
“Spranger has got to know that you came out here…?
Lipton said, but then he realized that he and his men had probably walked into the middle of a trap that had been set for McGarvey. A trap that McGarvey was expected to escape from. And for the first time Lipton began to get the feeling that he and his people might be out of their league here.
“Lieutenant,” McGarvey prompted.
“Right,” Lipton said. “I think it’s time we get the hell out of here. There’s no one left alive.” He turned to Joslow. “Get our raft away from this ship. I’ll pull Frank and the others out.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Joslow said.
“Cut the fishing boat loose too,” McGarvey said. “I’m going to need her.”
Lipton hesitated for just an instant, but McGarvey disappeared down the stairwell.
“Do it,” he told Joslow, and he hurried after McGarvey, a sinking feeling in his stomach that somebody was about to get hurt.
It was pitch-black below. Lipton pulled out his flashlight and switched it on, just catching a glimpse of McGarvey’s back rounding a corner on the stairs one deck below.
The man was fifteen years older than the oldest SEAL on his team, but he was just as quick, if not quicker, than any of them.
Lipton followed him, nearly stumbling over another body at the foot of the stairs.
Like the others this one too had been shot in the head at close range. He wore greasy coveralls. He’d probably been one of the engine room crew.
A flashlight beam bobbed from an open hatch aft at the end of a corridor. Lipton started back when a series of four quick explosions from somewhere below rocked the ship, sending him sprawling.
When he scrambled back to his feet the light he’d seen in the open hatch was gone, and he could hear water rushing into the ship. A lot of water!
“Mission red! Mission red!” he shouted the emergency recall signal as he headed in a dead run for the open hatch.
Already the Thaxos was beginning to list hard to port. It would only be a matter of minutes, perhaps less, before she rolled over. They’d all be trapped down here with little or no chance for survival.
Bryan Wasley and Tony Reid, soaked with seawater and diesel oil, clambered through the open hatch just as Lipton reached it.
“The bottom’s gone,” Wasley gasped. He was shook up, but neither of them appeared to be injured.
“Get out of here,” Lipton ordered, shoving them aside.
“Frank is down there with McGarvey.”
“What about Bob?” Lipton demanded.
“He just disappeared,” Wasley answered.
“Go,” Lipton snouted and he braced himself against the list and shined the beam of his flashlight down into the big engine room.
Water was pouring in from the port and starboard bulkheads and from somewhere aft.
Whoever had placed the charges knew what they were doing. There was no possibility of saving the ship.
Frank Tyrell was hanging on the ladder about eight feet below the open hatch. Already the water had risen to the rung he was standing on, and it was coming up fast.
“Frank,” Lipton shouted down to him over the waterfall roar.
Tyrell, who was covered in diesel fuel and engine oil, looked up. “Get away!” he hollered.
“Where’s Bob?”
