Day of Reckoning

'Absolutely.'

'So if we're talking Iraq, I'm puzzled. I mean, we're off the coast of Syria, so they can't be fired from Iraq.'

'Aldo, you don't get the point. They're very easy to set up and fire. The Fortuna is going to be a gun platform. The entire crew, as you know, is Army of God. All they want to do is take out Tel Aviv. Jerusalem, they're funny about. After all, it's the second most important Muslim city.'

'My God, they're animals, these people.'

'Depends on your point of view. Now let's get moving.'

Anya called her brother on her mobile and relayed the information. Gideon said, 'Right, get out of there now. I'll expect you within the next half hour.'

On the Pamir, Dillon, Blake, Cohen and Levy were sitting under the stern awning having a look at the harbour chart when Anya arrived. She paid off the taxi and stepped over the rail.

'Jesus, woman,' Dillon told her. 'You look like page sixty-four in Vogue magazine. You should be a young Jewish mother having babies and making your husband's life miserable. Instead, you're still going around shooting bad guys.'

'It's my nature, Dillon. Who's your friend?'

'Blake Johnson. Former FBI and works for the President now, so let's have some respect here.'

She shook hands with Blake. 'Nice to meet you,' she said and turned to her brother. 'As I told you, I overheard Fox talking to one of his men on the terrace. The gold is definitely on board, as well as the Hammerheads. The worrying thing is that the boat is to be used as a gun platform, with Tel Aviv a possible target.'

'Not if we blow that thing out of the water.'

'I couldn't put it better myself,' told him.

'And sooner rather than later,' Blake put in. 'The boat's here, and Fox will want it offloaded as soon as possible. We know from Roper that he has a return slot booked for seven o'clock tomorrow.'

'Right, then let's get on with it.' Cohen turned to Dillon. 'How do we do this?'

'Well, you remember in ninety-four in Beirut, when we

blew up the Alexandrene with all that plutonium on board?' 'You mean, you blew up the Alexandrene,' Anya said. 'And how did you do that?' Blake asked.

'Took a shallow dive, went up the anchor chain, created a little mayhem, dropped a block of Semtex in the engine room, and that was that.'

Cohen said, 'Sounds good to me.'

'A one-man show?' Blake said. 'I don't like it.'

'Blake, Vietnam was a long time ago.'

'Stuff that kind of talk, Sean. We go in together.'

Dillon sighed. 'All right, it's your funeral.' He looked out as orange flickered on the horizon, and in the distance the security lights gleamed on the Fortuna. 'Let's get on with it. Time to save the free world again.'

Falcone, Russo and Fox went out to the Fortuna in a water taxi and pulled up to a steel stairway at the side of the ship. Fox told the boatman to wait and led the way up to where Brendan Murphy, Dermot Kelly and Captain Sawar waited. Fox and Brendan embraced.

'You're looking good,' Murphy said.

'And you, old buddy, and you'll have an even broader smile when you know what's on shore and on its way to my plane.'

'Come and have a look.'

Murphy led the way down to the stern saloon, where the two cargo boxes waited.

'Five million, Jack,' he said. 'It makes me feel God is on my side.'

'That's because you're Irish, you daft bastard,' Fox said. 'Let's go and have a drink and then we'll offload this lot. I've got a water taxi waiting.'

Beside the Pamir, an inflatable waited, Dillon and Blake aboard in black dive suits with a single air bottle each, weight belts around their waists. Each had a dive bag with a Browning Hi-Power with a Carswell silencer inside. Dillon also carried two three-pound blocks of Semtex, with three-minute timer pencils.

Gideon Cohen said to his sister and Levy, 'I'll take them out. You wait here and be ready for sea.'

Anya hesitated, then picked up an Uzi submachine gun and stepped in beside Dillon and Blake.

'Not this time. You might need back-up and Moshe is better with the boat than I am.'

Cohen sighed. 'You're a great trial to me. Okay, take the Nightstalker and monitor what happens.'

They moved out into the harbour and floated to a halt a hundred yards from the Fortuna.

Dillon said, 'Here we go,' and pulled down his diving mask and reached for his mouthpiece.

At only ten feet, there was enough illumination from the security lights to give the water a kind of glow. He paused beside the steel stairway, released his jacket and air tank, and took the Browning from his dive bag and cocked it. His face half-covered by his diving hood, he surfaced, Blake beside him, and an Arab seaman appeared at the top of the stairway. Dillon shot him instantly, the Browning near noiseless, tumbling him into the water, and started up. Blake, somewhere behind him, had another problem.

The Arab who crewed the water taxi had been shocked to see Dillon surface and kill the seaman. He tossed his cigarette into the water, stood up, and Blake, with no options, had to shoot him.

On deck, it was quiet only for a moment, then voices called. On the bridge, Captain Sawar moved out onto the flying bridge, a machine gun in his hands.

'Selim, are you there? What is it?'

Dillon called in Arabic, 'It's Mossad, you dog. We've come for you.'

Sawar fired his machine gun blindly down into the darkness of the deck, and Blake, scrambling up beside Dillon, fired back, shattering a window up there. Fox and Falcone and Russo, who were on the bridge, ducked down.

Fox said, 'What the hell gives?'

'Israelis. Someone down there said Mossad.'

'Cover me,' Dillon said to Blake, and ran crouching through the dark to the engine room hatch, pulled it back, took out the two blocks of Semtex from his dive bag, activated the timing pencils, then dropped them down and closed the hatch.

As Dillon ran back to rejoin Blake, who was firing up at the bridge, Sawar made a bad mistake. He switched on more security lights. Dillon and Blake ducked behind a lifeboat, as Sawar fired his machine gun again, and there were cries from members of his crew as they surged onto the aft deck from below, all armed.

Sawar fired repeatedly, Falcone and Russo joining in, and Anya, crouched in the inflatable, sprayed the deck and bridge with fire from her Uzi. Sawar took a bullet in the head and went down. Fox and his two men crouched, Falcone with blood on his face from a glass splinter.

'Now get out of it, Blake,' Dillon said. 'They're three-minute timers, remember. Take the port side. There's another lifeboat there that will give us some protection.'

Anya looked through the Nightstalker. 'I can see them. They're sliding to the port rail,' she said to Moshe Levy.

'Well, they would. Dillon will have planted the Semtex. There's maybe two minutes left.'

'Then get moving.'

He pushed the engine up to top speed, and went round the prow, Anya still firing up on the side deck and bridge, and Dillon and Blake jumped. Fox, peering out of a side window, saw them go, saw the inflatable surge on. Anya tossed a line, Dillon and Blake grabbed it, and the inflatable vanished into the darkness.

'They've jumped ship, Signore,' Falcone said. 'They didn't stay long.'

And Fox, his senses sharpened by years of hard living, jumped to an immediate conclusion.