AllFreeNovel
Share Us
from four hundred meters her designers and shipbuilders would not have recognized the Lady Flamborough. Her funnel had been reconstructed and every square inch of her repainted. To complete the facade, the hull was streaked with simulated rust.
Her once-beautiful superstructure, stateroom windows and promenade deck were now hidden by great sheets of fiberboard assembled to look like cargo containers.
Where the cruise liner's modern, rounded bridge featurrs were impossible to remove or hide, they were squared with wooden frwnework and canvas and painted with fake hatches and portholes.
Before the lights of Punta del Este had dropped astern, every crew member and passenger was drafted into forced labor parties and driven to the point of exhaustion by Ammar's armed hijackers. The ship's officers, cruise directors, the stewards, chefs and waiters, and ordinary deckhands-they all hammered and slaved at assembling the prefabricated containers through the night.
None of the VIP guests was spared. Senator Pitt and Hala Kamfl, Presidents Hasan and De Lorenzo, along with their cabinet members and staff aides, were all pressed into service as carpenters and painters.
By the time the cruise liner rendezvoused with the General Bravo, the counterfeit cargo containers were in place and the ship sported a nearly identical configuration and color scheme.
from the waterline up, the newly disguised Lady Flamborough could have easily passed as the container ship. An overhead inspection from the air would have revealed few discrepancies. Only a close examination from the sea might have detected obvious differences.
Captain Juu Machado and eighteen crewmen from the General Bravo transferred to the cruise liner after opening all seacocks and cargo doors and detonating strategically placed charges throughout the hull.
With a series of muffled explosions the container ship slipped beneath the sea with only a few faint gurgles of protest.
When the eastern sky began to brighten with a new sun, the disguised Lady Flamborough was steaming south toward the advertised destination of the General Bravo. But when the port of San Pablo, Argentina, was forty kilometers off the starboard beam, the liner bypassed the port and continued due south.
Ammar's ingenious scheme had worked. Three days had passed, and the world was still fooled into believing the Lady Flamborough and her distinguished passengers were lying somewhere on the bottom of the sea.
Ammar sat at a chart table and marked the ship's latest position. Then he drew a straight line to his final destination and marked it with an X. Smugly complacent, he dropped the pencil and lit a long Dunhill cigarette, exhaling the smoke across the chart like a bank of mist.
Sixteen hours, he reckoned. Sixteen more hours of sailing time without pursuit and the ship would be securely hidden without the slightest chance of detection.
Captain Machado stepped into the chart room from the bridge, balancing a small tray on one hand. "Would you like a cup of tea and a croissant?"
he asked in fluent English.
"'Thank you, Captain. Come to think of it, I haven't eaten since we departed Punta del Este."
Machado set the tray on the table and poured the tea. "I know you haven't slept since my crew and I came on board."
"There is still much to do."
"Perhaps we should begin by formally introducing ourselves."
"I know who you are, or at least the name you go by," said Ammar indifferently. "I'm not interested in lengthy biographies."
"That's how it is?"
"Yes."
"Mind letting me in on your plans?" said Machado. "I was informed of nothing beyond our transfer to your ship after scuttling the General Bravo. I'd be most interested in hearing about the next step of the mission, especially the part on how our combined crews intend to abandon the ship and evade arrest by international military forces."
"Sorry, I've been too busy to enlighten you."
"Now might be a good time," Machado pressed.
Characteristically, Ammar calmly sipped at his tea and finished off the croissant beneath his mask before answering. Then he looked across the chart table at Machado without expression.
"I don't intend to abandon the ship just yet," he said evenly. "My instructions from your leader and mine are to mark time and delay the final destruction of the Lady Flamborough until they both have time to assess the situation and turn it to their advantage."
Slowly Machado relaxed, looked through the mask into the cold, dark eyes of the Egyptian, and he knew this was a man solidly in control. "I have no problem with that." He held up the pot. "More tea?"
Ammar passed his cup. "What do you do when you're not sinking ships?"
"I specialize in political assassinations," said Machado conversationally. "The same as you, Suleiman Aziz Ammar."
