As for the fight between Jack and the crocodile, it was now a rolling struggle, hidden amid a cloud of roiling bubbles.
Then all of a sudden, Alby saw the croc bite down hard on Jack’s left hand—only to see, two seconds later, Jackextract his hand from the great beast’s jaws!
And just as Alby recalled that Jack’s left hand was made of metal, he saw the crocodile’s head explode underwater and spontaneously become a cloud of red. As it bit him, Jack must have left a grenade in its mouth.
At that moment, Zoe fired a shot through Alby’s handcuff and did likewise with Pooh’s and Astro’s bonds and then Jack was right beside him, sharing his regulator, and Alby found himself being guided to the surface, somehow alive.
They broke the surface together and swam for the rocky island, where Jack pushed Alby up the slope, clear of the waterline, until he could lie safely on the less-steep upper surface.
Pooh and Astro were pushed up next, then Zoe and last of all, Jack, keeping a watchful eye on the crocs—but thankfully, most of them were preoccupied with eating the corpse of their now-headless comrade.
Jack lay on the island, sucking in great heaving breaths.
“How did—how did you get out?” Alby gasped.
“There were crocs in the entry tunnel,” Jack said. “They’d got in by another entrance on the other side, a small cleft in the rock that was probably created by a tremor sometime. We came out through there.”
Then Jack propped himself up on his elbow and looked back out over the lake. “Did they head back for Abu Simbel?”
“Yeah,” Alby said.
“They took Lily?”
“And Wizard. Are you angry, Mr. West?”
West clenched his teeth. “Alby, angry doesn’t even begin to describe how I’m feeling right now.” He keyed his radio. “Vulture! Scimitar! You copy?”
His radio remained silent. No reply.
“I say again! Vulture, Scimitar! You guys still at the dock?”
Again there was no reply. Just silence on the airwaves.
Jack swore. “Where the hell have they got to?”
AT THE SAME TIME this was happening, Lieutenant Colin Ashmont’s stolen Zodiac was arriving back at the docks not far from the great statues of Abu Simbel, flanked by two smaller inflatable speedboats—which had been inflated out on the lake and were now filled with the other eleven members of his squad of Royal Marines.
The first convoy of tourist coaches was just now arriving in a parking lot not far from the docks.
Tourists of all nationalities piled out of the buses—German, American, Chinese, Japanese—and they variously stretched their legs and yawned.
Ashmont shoved Lily and Wizard out of the Zodiac, pushing them toward a couple of white Suburbans with tinted windows parked nearby. Iolanthe led the way, striding quickly, all business, carrying West’s rucksack with the Pillar inside it.
As Lily and Wizard were guided toward the two British Suburbans, some of the tourists from the nearest bus came closer.
They were classic Japanese tourists—four older men with Nikon cameras slung from their necks and wearing bulky camera vests and sandals with white socks.
One of the Japanese called to Ashmont: “Halloo, sir! Excuse me! Where statues?”
Ashmont, now wearing a T-shirt over his wet suit, ignored the man and walked right past him.
Lily wanted to shout to the Japanese men, to scream—
—but then she saw the first Japanese man’s eyes follow Ashmont, glinting with purpose, and she suddenly realized that something was very, very wrong here.
The four old Japanese tourists were arrayed around Ashmont’s cars and team in a perfect semicircle.
Heart thumping, Lily scanned their faces, and saw only steely eyes and grim expressions.
And then, fleetingly, she saw the forearm of one of the Japanese men…and beheld a tattoo on it, a tattoo she had seen before, a tattoo of the Japanese flag with a symbol behind it.
“Tank…” she said aloud. “Oh, no. Oh,no …Wizard! Get down!”
She threw herself into the bewildered old professor, tackling him around the legs, felling him just as the Japanese “tourist” nearest to Ashmont opened his photographer’s vest to reveal six wads of C-4 strapped to his chest. Then the kindly-looking little old man thumbed a switch in his palm and he exploded.
FOUR SHOCKINGLY violent blasts ripped through the air as all four of the Japanese suicide bombers just disappeared in identical outward sprays of smoke, fire, and body parts.
The windows of every car in a sixty-foot radius blew out simultaneously, showering the area with glass.
Ashmont was hit hardest by the blast. He was flung into the side of his Suburban with terrible force and dropped to the ground like a rag doll.
Three of his men, those closest to the Japanese suicide bombers, were killed instantly. All the others were hurled every which way.
