whaler out and the guard sergeant last night did not make note of it. Yes. It is missing from Wharf Three. My man noticed it first thing this morning. Thank you. Good-bye.'
The guard chuckled. 'You just watch. There are a couple of careless fellows who are going to be sent out to a mujahideen camp to shape them up, eh?'
The sergeant grinned. 'A bit of danger and hardship will serve them right.'
.
THE bodyguards Alif and Taa walked down to the docks, turning toward the Royal Yacht
'Where is he?'
Taa shrugged. 'He must have gone to the toilet. I always dislike that all-night shift. All I think about is having to urinate. And as soon as I try, something interrupts me.'
They reached the gangplank and hurried up, coming to an abrupt stop when they reached the deck. Their pal Baa was sprawled on his side, groaning softly. The two thugs rushed to him, kneeling down and roughly rolling him over on his back. Baa's jaw was at a peculiar angle, and his face was swollen all the way up to the bridge of his nose.
'What happened?' Taa asked.
Baa couldn't speak. He groaned, his eyes silently pleading for help. Alif got to his feet. 'I'll go to the bridge and put in a call to the dispensary.'
Taa stayed with Baa, looking impassively at the man, who was obviously in a great deal of pain.
.
SHEIKH Omar Jambarah toweled himself off after stepping from the large walk-in shower in his quarters. He had washed his thinning hair for the first time with a special brand of American shampoo that was supposed to thicken up fading locks of men suffering from male-pattern baldness. He stood in front of the mirror, running the drier from the front of his head all the way to back, wincing at the heat. After a couple of dozen swipes, he checked his reflection and noticed that his hair did look a bit thicker. Satisfied, he walked from the bathroom into his bedroom, where a valet had laid out a fresh tank top, shorts, briefs, and sandals. After changing, he took another door to reach his dining area, and settled at the table.
A steward poured his coffee, then prepared a plate of scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, and biscuits. After a decade and a half as a schoolboy in England, he swore he would never have another kipper for breakfast. The sheikh preferred the American style except for bacon and sausage. The meat of pigs was one prohibition of the Koran he believed in.
The steward set the plate in front of the sheikh, then stepped back to the serving table to await his master's next summons. Jambarah swept up some scrambled egg on his fork and shoved it in his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully, then said, 'Go fetch Mikael Assad for me. I would like to have his company while I eat.'
'I am sorry, Sheikh Omar,' the steward said. 'I went to his cabin earlier and he was not there. It appears the American brother did not sleep in his bed.'
Jambarah laughed. 'He was on the yacht, that's where he was! I think he has become quite infatuated with that German woman. Ah, well! I shall just have to speak to him later.'
A knock on the door sounded, and the steward responded. Alif the bodyguard stepped into the room. 'A thousand pardons, Sheikh Omar. A disturbing event has occurred.'
The sheikh stopped eating, frowning at the bodyguard. 'This had better be important.'
'Somebody attacked Baa during the night on the yacht,' Alif said. 'He is badly injured and is in the dispensary being treated. Taa is staying with him.'
The sheikh put his fork down. 'Now how could such a thing happen? Is the ship damaged?'
'No,' Alif said. 'Everything is fine. I checked with the watch officer. The crew knew nothing of Baa's predicament.'
Jambarah started to speak again, but was interrupted by yet another knock on the door. The chief of security came into the suite with the usual report he personally delivered to the sheikh each morning. The sheikh turned his attention to him. 'Did you know one of my bodyguards was attacked on the yacht during the night?'
'No, Sheikh Omar,' the man said, then quickly added, 'The yacht is not included in our area of responsibility.'
'I know it is not!' Jambarah snapped. 'But perhaps one of your men heard a noise or something. Surely they are able to see and hear beyond that area of responsibility.'
'Of course, Sheikh Omar,' the security chief said. 'But nothing was reported except that someone took a whaler boat out.'
The sheikh leaned back in his chair. 'Now why would anybody need a whaler boat?'
'I thought to tend to a freighter' the chief of security said. 'But there has not been one here since the Liberian tanker a week ago.'
The sheikh got to his feet. 'Something strange is going on, and I intend to get to the bottom of it.'
.
WHALER BOAT
INDIAN OCEAN
VICINITY OF 5deg NORTH AND 55deg EAST
0900 HOURS LOCAL
MIKE Assad stood at the wheel maintaining a course of due east on the compass. Three things were irritating the hell out of him. The first was that the radio in the boat was not hooked into the vessel's power. Instead, it ran on its own battery, which seemed to be quite low. That meant he could not maintain a continuous attempt to contact American warships. From the way things looked, the commo gear could possibly be completely dead within three or four hours.
The second vexing problem was navigation. Without a chart he could not plot a course to any particular point in the watery world he moved across. The GPS gave him accurate readings on his longitude and latitude, but he did not know the exact coordinates of the nearest landfall or where he might run into a U. S. carrier battle group. As it was, he hadn't seen so much as a single aircraft in the sky to give evidence of a nearby task force.
The third and most aggravating and exasperating part of this escape was his companion. Hildegard Keppler had begun the trip in a high frame of mind in spite of some preliminary nervousness. She'd thought it exciting to run away from the sheikh's fortress, but now her attitude had evolved into a petulant, demanding mood. Mike now realized she was an immature woman who demanded instant gratification for her wants and needs. The temperature was relatively temperate when the sun was on the other side of the world, but now it had been steadily climbing. The heat had increased markedly and without a bimini over the cockpit, the rays beat down on them in perceptible waves of stinging heat.
And it was only nine o'clock in the morning.
Hildegard reached into the tote bag for a bottle of the Evian water. Mike snapped at her. 'Hey! Let's take it easy with that stuff, okay? We don't know how long it will have to last us.'
She pouted. 'But thirsty I am.'
'I don't give a shit if thirsty you are,' Mike said, mocking her in his anger. 'If we drink up all our water in one day, then pretty damn quick it'll be dead we are. Understand?'
'Why you want to bring the water if drink it we are not?'
'We came with a case of that stuff, all right?' Mike said, forcing himself to calm down. 'That's twenty-four half-liter bottles, see? Each of 'em is a little over a pint.'
'A pint I don't know what it is.'
'Look at the godamn bottles!' he growled. 'You can see how big they are, right? Okay. Now we got to each drink no more than one of them a day, see? That gives us twelve frigging days. After that, we better find somebody within sixty to seventy hours or we're gonna die from thirst.'
'Already I am dying of thirst,' she protested.
'You just think you are,' Mike said. 'You ain't near thirsty yet.'
'If a sandwich I eat, it is thirsty I get.'
'That's another thing,' Mike warned her. 'If we eat a sandwich a day, we'll have food for five days. I figure we
