Treasure dp-9

by Clive Cussler

  "Well, well, he's back among the living," said First Officer Finney cheerfully. "I'll go and inform the Captain."

  As Finney passed through the door, Pitt moved his eyes without moving his head and found a little baldheaded sitting in a chair beside the bed. The ship's doctor, Pitt recognized, but the name escaped him.

  "I'm sorry, Doctor, but I can't recollect your,

  "Henry Webster," he second-guessed Pitt, smiling warmly. "And if you're wondering where you are, you're in the finest suite on board the Flamborough, which is currently under tow by the Sounder for Punta Arenas."

  "How long have I been unconscious?"

  "While you weremaking your report to Colonel Hollis, I was tending to your wounds. Soon afterward, I put you under heavy sedation. You've been out for about twelve hours."

  "No wonder I'm starving."

  "I'll see our chef personally sends down one of his specialties."

  "How are Giordino and Findley?"

  "Most admirable of you to inquire of your friends before yourself.

  Giordino is a very durable man. I took four bullets from him, none in critical areas. He should be ready to party by New Year's Eve.

  Findley's wounds were far more serious. Bullets entered his right side and lodged in a lung and kidney. I did what I could for him on the ship.

  He and Giordino were airlifted to Punta Arenas and flown to Washington soon after I put you out. Findley will be operated on by bullet-wound specialists at the Walter Reed Medical Center. If there are no complications, he should pull through in fine shape. By the way, your friend Rudi Gunn felt they needed him more than you did, so he accompanied them home."

  Before Pitt could make a reply, a digital thermometer was slipped in and out of his mouth.

  Dr. Webster studied the reading and nodded. "As for you, Mr.

  Pitt-you'll mend nicely. How are you feeling?"

  "I don't think I'm up to entering a triathlon, but except for a throb in my head and a stinging sensation in my neck, I'll manage."

  "You're a lucky man. None of the bullets struck a bone, internal organ or artery. I stitched up your leg and neck, or, more accurately, your trapezius muscle. Also your cheek. Plastic surgery should hide the scar, unless of course your women find it adds to your sex appeal. The smack on your head caused a concussion. X-rays showed no sign of a hairline fracture. My prognosis is that you'll be swimming the English Channel and playing the violin within months."

  Pitt laughed. Almost immediately he tensed as the pain struck from every side. Webster's look became one of quick concern.

  "I am sorry. My bedside manner tends to get a bit too jolly, I'm afraid."

  Pin relaxed and the agony soon subsided. He loved English phrasing and humor. They were a class act, he thought. He smiled grimly and stared at Webster with unconcealed respect. He knew the doctor had down played his skill and labors out of modesty.

  "If that hurt," said Pitt, "I can't wait to get your bill."

  It was Webster's turn to laugh. "Careful, I wouldn't want you to ruin my beautiful needlework."

  Pitt gingerly eased himself to a sitting position and held out his hand.

  "I'm grateful for what you did for the four of us."

  Webster rose and shook Pitts outstretched hand. "An honor doctoring you, Mr. Pitt. I'll take my leave now. It seems you're the man of the hour. I think you have some distinguished visitors gathering outside."

  "Goodbye, Doc, and thank you."

  Webster gave a willk and a nod. Then he walked over to the door, opened it and motioned everyone inside.

  Senator Pitt entered followed by Hala, Colonel Hollis and Captain Collins. The men shook hands, but Hala leaned down and lightly kissed Pitt.

  "I hope you've found our ship's service satisfactory," said Captain Collins jovially.

  "No man ever recuperated in a fancier hospital," Pitt replied. "I'm only sorry I can't bask in such luxury for another month."

  "Unfortunately, your presence is required up north by tomorrow," said Hollis.

  "Oh, no," Pitt moaned.

  "Oh, yes," said the Senator, holding up his watch. "The Sounder will be towing us into dock at Punta Arenas in another ninety minutes. An Air Force transport is waiting to fly you and Ms. Kaniil and me to Washington."

  Pitt made a helpless gesture with both hands. "So much for my luxury cruise."

  Next came the usual round of solicitous questions concerning his condition. After a few minutes Hollis turned the conversation to his current problem.

  "Would you know Ammar if you saw him again?" he asked Pitt.

  "I could pick him out of a lineup easily enough. Didn't you find him? I gave you a detailed description of his height, weight and looks before Doc Webster knocked me out."

  Hollis handed him a small stack of photos. "Here are pictures taken and processed by the ship's photographer of the hijackers' bodies, including those taken prisoner. Do you see Suleiman Aziz Ammar among them?"

  Pitt slowly sifted through the photographs, studying the closeup features of the dead. They had seemed faceless during the battle, he recalled. He wondered with morbid curiosity which ones were dead by his hands. Finally he looked up and shook his head.

  "He's not in here among the living or the dead."

  "You're sure?" asked Hollis. "The wounds and deathlike expressions can badly alter facial features."

  "I stood closer to him than I am to you under conditions that aren't easily forgotten. Believe me, Colonel, when I say Ammar isn't among those pictures."

  Hollis pulled a larger photo from an envelope and passed it to Pitt without comment.

  After a few seconds, Pitt gave Hollis a questioning look. "What do you want me to say?"

  "Is that Suleiman Aziz Ammar?"

  Pitt handed the photograph back. "You know damn well it is, or you wouldn't magically produce a picture taken of him at a different time in a different place."

  "I think what Colonel Hollis is holding back," said Dirk's father, "is that Anunar or his remains have yet to be found."

  "Then his men must have hidden his body," Pitt said firmly. "I didn't miss. He took a shot in the shoulder and two in the face. I saw one of his men drag him to cover after he fell. No way he's running around."

  "It's possible his body was buried," admitted Hollis. "An extensive air and land search failed to detect any sign of him on the island."

  "So the fox hasn't been run to ground," Pitt said softly to himself.

  The Senator looked at him. "What was that?"

  "Something Ammar said about a coyote and a fox when we met," Pitt replied pensively. Then he looked around at his audience. "I bet he's eluded the net. Anyone care to give me odds?"

  Hollis gave Pitt a dark look instead. "You better hope he's deader than a barracuda in the desert, because if he isn't, the name of Dirk Pitt will head his next hit list."

  Hala swept gracefully to the head of Pitts bed, wearing a gold silk dressing gown with a modernized hieroglyphic design. She placed her hand lightly around his shoulder.

  "Dirk is very weak," she said in an even voice. "He needs a good meal and rest until it comes time to debark the ship. I suggest we leave him alone for the next hour."

  Hollis slipped the photos back in the envelope and rose. "I'll have to say my goodbyes. A helicopter is waiting to take me back to Santa Inez to continue the search for Ammar."

  "Give my best to Major Dillenger."

  "I shall." Hollis seemed uneasy for a moment; then he approached the bed and shook hands. "I apologize, Dirk, to you and your friends. I sadly underrated you all. Anytime you want to transfer from NUMA to Special Operations Forces, I'll be the first to sign a recommendation."

  "I wouldn't fit in too well." Pitt grinned. "I have this allergy to taking orders."

  "Yes, so you've demonstrated," Hollis said, smiling faintly.

  The Senator walked over and squeezed Pitts hand. "See you on deck."

  "I'll bid my farewell there also," said Captain Collins.

&nb
sp; Hala said nothing. She herded the men from the room. Then she slowly closed the door and turned the lock. She walked back until she stood beside the bed. The folds of the gown plunged and there was something in the casual way it draped her body that convinced Pitt she was naked beneath.

  She proved it by loosening the sash and shrugging the gown from her shoulders. He heard the whisper of the silk as it slid down her soft flesh. She posed like a bronze statue, breasts thrust out, hands flattened against her thighs, one leg slightly in front of the otherShe reached down and pulled back the bedcovers.

  "I owe you something," she said huskily.

  Pitt caught his reflection in the mirrors on the closet doors. He wore only white gauze. top of his head and the side of his face were swathed in bandages, as was one side of his neck and the wounded leg. He hadn't shaved in a week and the whites of his eyes were red. In his mind he looked like a derelict any self-respecting bag lady would re-ject.

  "I'm a sorry excuse for Don Juan," he murmured

  "You're handsome in my eyes," Hala whispered as she gently lay beside him and gently entwine her fingers through the hairs of his chest. "We must hurry. We have less than an hour."

  Pitt let out a long sigh. He would catch hell from Doc Webster if he overexerted and pulled out his stitches. Abject surrender. Why is it, he wondered, men plan more covert schemes than an intelligence agency to seduce women, only to have them Turn on under crazy circumstances when you least expect it? He was more convinced than ever that James Bond really didn't have it all that great.

  When Ammar awoke, he saw only blackness. His shoulder felt as though a piece of coal were burning inside his flesh. He tried to lift his hands to his face but one hand exploded with pain. Then he remembered bullets slamming into his wrist and shoulder. He raised his good hand to touch his eyes but the fingertips felt only a tightly bound cloth that wrapped around his head, covering his face from forehead to chin.

  He knew his eyes were beyond saving. Not for him a life of blindness, he thought. He groped around for a weapon, anything to kill himself.

  All he touched was a damp, flat rock surface.

  Ammar became desperate, unable to repress the fear of helplessness. He struggled to his feet, stumbled and fell.

  Then two hands gripped his shoulders.

  "Do not move or make a cry, Suleiman Aziz," came the whispered words of Ibn. "The Americans are searching for us ."

  Ammar clutched Ibn's hands for assurance. He tried to speak, but could no longer utter coherent words. Only animallike guttural sounds came through the blood-caked wrapping supporting his shattered jaw.

  "We are in a small chamber inside one of the mine tunnels."

  Ibn spoke softly into his ear. "They came very close, but I had time to build a wall that concealed our hiding place."

  Ammar nodded and desperately tried to make himself understood.

  It was as though Ibn could reach through the pitch ess and read Ammar's thoughts. "You wish to die, Suleiman Aziz? No, you will not die. We will go together but not one minute before Allah decides."

  Ammar slumped in despair. He had never felt so disoriented, so completely out of control. The pain was unbearable, and the thought of living out his days in a maximum-security jail cell, blind and mutilated, devastated him. All instinct for self--preservation had deserted him. He could not stand being dependent on anyone for his hourly existence-not even Ibn.

  "Rest, my brother," said Ibn gently. "You will need all your strength when it comes time for us to escape the island."

  Annnar collapsed and rolled to his side. His shoulders came against the tunnel's uneven floor. It was wet, and the moisture seeped through his clothing, but he was suffering too much pain to notice the added discomfort.

  He became more and more despondent. His failure had become a horror. He saw Akhmad Yazid standing over him, smirking; then a curtain slowly formed and parted deep in the recesses of Ammar's mind. A faint glow appeared, a glow that bloomed and then burst in a blinding flash, and in that one chilling moment he glimpsed the future.

  He would survive through revenge.

  Mentally he spoke the word over and over until at last his self-discipline returned.

  The first decision he came to grips with was who should die at his own hands, Yazid or Pitt? He could not act alone. He was no longer physically capable of assassinating both men himself. Already a plan was forming. He would have to trust Ibn to share in the revenge.

  Ammar anguished over the decision, but in the end he had no choice.

  Ibn would draw the coyote, while Ammar's final act would be to slay the viper.

  Pitt refused to fly home on a stretcher. He sat in a comfortable executive chair, leg propped on the seat of a facing chair, and stared out the window at the snowcapped spires of the Andes. Far off to the right he could see the green plateaus that marked the beginning of the Brazilian highlands. Two hours later a distant gray haze advertised the crowded city of Caracas, and then he was gazing at the horizon line where the turquoise of the Caribbean met a cobalt-blue sky. from 12,000

  meters the wind-mased water looked like a flat sheet of crepe paper.

  The Air Force VIP transport jet was cramped-Pitt could not stand to his full height-but quite luxurious. He felt as though he were sitting inside a rich kid's high-priced toy.

  His father was not in a talkative mood. The Senator spent most of the flight working out of a briefcase, making notes for his briefing to the President.

  What little conversation took place was one-sided. When Pitt asked how he happened to be on the Lady Flamborough at Punta del Este, the Senator didn't bother to look up when he responded.

  "A Presidential mission," he said tersely, closing off any further questions on the subject.

  Hala also kept to herself and attended to business. She had the aircraft's in-flight telephone in constant use, firing off in structions to her aides at the United Nations building in New York. Her only acknowledgment of Pitts presence was a brief smile when their eyes happened to meet.

  How quickly they forget, Pitt thought idly.

  He turned his mind to the search for the Alexandria Library treasures.

  He considered cutting in on Hala's phone monopoly for a progress report from Yaeger. But he drowned his curiosity with a dry martini, courtesy of the aircraft steward, instead, deciding to wait and learn whatever there was to learn at first hand from Lily and Yaeger.

  What river had Venator sailed before burying the priceless objects? it could be any one of a thousand that course into the Atlantic between the Saint Lawrence in Canada to the Rfo de la Plata of Argentina. No, not quite. Yaeger theorized the Serapes had taken on water and made repairs off what was to become New Jersey. The unknown river had to be south, much further south than the rivers that flow into Chesapeake Bay.

  Could Venator have led his fleet into the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi? Today's stream must be far different from what it was sixteen hundred years ago. Perhaps he had sailed into the OTinoco in Venezuela, which could be navigated for two hundred miles. Or maybe the Amazon?

  He let his mind wander through the irony of it all. If Junius Venator's voyage to the Americas was absolutely proved by the discovery of the buried Library artifacts, history books needed to be revised and new chapters written.

  Poor Leif Eriksson and Christopher Columbus would be relegated to footnotes.

  Pitt was still daydreaming when he was interrupted by the steward telling him to fasten his seat belt.

  It was dusk and the aircraft had dipped its nose and was dropping into the long glide toward Andrews Air Force Base. The twinkling sprawl of Washington slid past, and Pitt soon found himself hobbling down the steps on a cane hastily bent from an aluminum tube and presented by the grateful crew of the Lady Flamborough. He set foot on the concrete at almost exactly the same spot as on his arrival from Greenland.

  Hala came down and bid him goodbye. She was continuing on with the plane to New York.

  "You've becom
e a treasured memory, Dirk Pitt."

  "We never did make our dinner date."

  "The next time you're in Cairo, it's on me."

  The Senator overheard and came over. "Cairo, Ms. Kamil. Not New York?"

  Hala gave him a smile worthy of the beautiful Aphrodite. "I am resigning as SecretaryGeneral and returning home. Democracy is dying in Egypt. I can do more to keep it alive by working in the midst of my people."

  "What of Yazid?"

  "President Hasan has vowed to place him under house arrest."

  A frown crossed Senator Pitts face. "Be careful. Yazid is still a dangerous man."

  "if not Yazid, there is always another maniac waiting in the wings." Her soft dark eyes belied the fear that rode in her heart. She gave him a daughterly hug. "tell your President Egypt will not become a nation of insane fanatics."

  "I'll pass along your words."

  She turned back to Pitt. She was on the brink of falling in love with him but fought her feelings with every bit of will she possessed. Her legs felt weak as she took both his hands and stared upward into his ageless face. for an instant, in her mind's eye, she saw herself entwilled with his body, caressing his muscled skin, and then just as quickly she erased the thought. She had found brief fulfillment with him, long denied, but she knew she could never divide her love for one man with that for Egypt.

  Her life belonged to those who had no life except misery and poverty.

  She kissed him tenderly.

  "Do not forget me."

  Before Pitt could answer, Hala had turned and hurried up the steps into the aircraft. He stood looking at the empty entrance for a long moment.

  The Senator read his thoughts and interrupted them. "They've sent an ambulance to take you to the hospital."

  "Hospital?" Pitt said vacantly, still watching as the door closed. The jet engines whistled as the pilot increased the rpm and began to taxi toward the main strip.

  Pitt tore the bandages from around his head and face and threw them into the jet's exhaust, where they were caught and sent swirling through the air like airborne snakes.