Corsair

Uniformed sailors barely threw them a glance. They were too preoccupied with saving their ship to gloat over their prize. Fiona fell against a bulkhead when another fury of rounds slammed into the ship’s side. The ferocity of the battle so distracted her for the walk down to another, larger room that she forgot to pray.

But when she saw the black cloth hanging across the back wall, the video camera, and the man holding a massive scimitar, the words fell from her lips. There were others in the room, terrorists, not Libyan sailors. One was standing behind the camera, another near him fiddled with the satellite-uplink controls. The rest of the masked men were here as witnesses. She recognized their khaki utilities from the desert base. The man with the sword wore all-black.

The alarm loudspeaker in the mess hall had been disabled, though it was still audible from other parts of the vessel.

“Far from saving you,” the executioner said in Arabic, “that ship out there has pushed up our timeline by a few minutes.” He stared hard at the Secretary, and she returned his defiance. “Are you ready to die?”

“For the sake of peace,” Fiona replied, her voice as steady as she could keep it, “I was ready to die from the moment I understood the concept.”

They secured her to a chair set before the drape. Plastic sheeting had been placed on the deck at her feet. A gag was tied across her mouth to deny her any parting words.

The executioner nodded to the cameraman and he began to film. The lens stayed focused on Fiona for a moment, to make sure the target audience knew exactly who was about to die. Then the swordsman stepped in front of her, holding the ornate scimitar so it was plainly visible.

“We, the servants of Suleiman Al-Jama, come before you today to rid the world of another infidel.” He was reading from a typewritten script. “This is our answer to the Crusaders’ efforts to thrust their decadence upon us. From this unholy woman has come the worst of their lies, and for that she must die.”

Fiona willed herself to ignore the rant so in her head all she heard was “Our Father who art in heaven . . .”

SEEING HIS MEN HIT sent a lance of concern through Cabrillo’s heart, but there was no chance to go back now. Rather than consider retreat, he went on single-handedly. None of the Libyan sailors paid him the slightest attention. With a handful of Al-Jama’s terrorists using the ship as their base for Fiona Katamora’s execution, an unfamiliar face in their midst wasn’t cause for alarm. The few men moving around inside the ship were too focused on their jobs. When a fire-control team rushed toward him, Juan stopped ru

“Come with us,” the fire team leader shouted without breaking stride.

“Captain’s orders,” Juan replied over his shoulder, and raced away in the opposite direction.

He found the staircase and rushed down three at a time, bowling over a seaman clawing his way topside. On the next deck, he ran unerringly for the crew’s mess. There were two armed guards posted outside the door. One was looking into the room, the other glanced at Cabrillo but dismissed him as part of the crew because of the uniform.

If Juan had needed confirmation he’d been right about a terrorist presence, it was these two, with their kaffiyehs and AKs.

Ten paces from them, Juan could hear a voice inside the mess saying “. . . killed our women and children in their homes, bombed our villages, and defied the very word of Allah.”

It was enough for him. With a cold fury born of fighting for too long—for his entire life, it seemed—he whipped the compact machine pistol into view. The one terrorist’s eyes widened, but that was the only reaction the Chairman allowed him. Cabrillo’s weapon chattered in his hands, stitching both men across their torsos. One round blew off the top of a man’s shoulder, the resulting blood splatter like obscene graffiti on the wall behind him.

Juan was moving so fast he had to push aside the collapsing bodies to get into the mess. Six armed men stood to his right beyond the sweep of a tripod-mounted camera. Two more were near the video equipment and another stood in front of it, a piece of paper in one hand, a curved sword in the other.

Fiona Katamora sat behind him, her mouth gagged but her eyes bright.

Cabrillo took in this tableau in the first half of a second and made his threat evaluation in the next. The executioner would need to move to make his killing stroke, and the men working the camera had left their weapons on the deck.

Juan skidded to his knees for a more stable firing position and then cut into the six terrorists. Two went down before they knew he was in the room. A third died as he tried to sweep his rifle into his hands. Because of the H&K’s notorious barrel rise on full automatic, number five was a double-tap headshot that sent brain tissue spi

Cabrillo had to release the trigger for an instant to adjust. Number six opened fire before he’d drawn a bead. Rounds pinked off the wall to Juan’s right, chipping white paint off the metal and throwing ricochets in every direction.

The Chairman got his sight picture and let fly, drilling the gunman with a steady burst that threw him bodily into a bulkhead. He turned to the swordsman. The guy had the fastest reaction reflex Juan had ever seen. Four seconds had elapsed since he’d fired the first shots. Any normal human would have spent half that processing what his senses were telling him.

But not the swordsman.

He was moving the instant Juan’s eyes had first swept past him. He drew back the sword, pirouetting in a graceful display, and had the blade arcing toward Fiona Katamora’s exposed neck even before the sixth gunmen went down.

Hyped on adrenaline, Juan watched it happen like it was slow motion. He began swinging the H&K’s stubby barrel, knowing it was too late. He fired anyway, and from across the room the videographer pulled a pistol from a holster Cabrillo hadn’t seen.

A line of raging pain creased the side of Juan’s head and his vision went black.

THIRTY-SEVEN

ALI GHAMI GLANCED AT HIS WATCH FOR ABOUT THE DOZENTH time since Qaddafi had started speaking. And he kept looking over at an assistant, who hovered near the front door, a radio bud in his ear. Every time he met the man’s eyes, the aide would shake his head imperceptibly.

Charles Moon’s bodyguard had pointed out the behavior to him, and as he studied the Libyan Minister more closely he saw other signs of his disquiet. Ghami was constantly shifting from foot to foot, or thrusting his hands into his jacket pocket only to remove them an instant later. Many guests were growing tired of the long speech, which was now closing in on a half hour, but Ghami seemed more agitated than bored.

He looked again at his aide. The suited man was turned slightly away, his hand to his ear to listen better over Qaddafi’s droning voice. He turned back a moment later and nodded at Ghami, a smile of triumph spread across his face.

“Showtime,” Moon’s guard said nonchalantly.

Ghami climbed one of the steps to get the Libyan President’s attention. When Qaddafi cut off his rambling praises of Fiona Katamora, the Minister climbed higher and whispered into his ear.

Qaddafi visibly paled. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, his voice, which had been so compassionate and clear moments earlier, quavering. “I have just been given the worst news possible.”

Moon translated for his companion’s sake.

“It appears that the beloved American Secretary of State managed to survive the horrific airplane crash.” This was met with a collective gasp, and conversations sprang up spontaneously all around the room. “Please, ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. This is not what it seems. Following the crash, she was abducted by forces loyal to Suleiman Al-Jama. I have just been given word that they are about to carry out her execution. Minister Ghami also tells me they have a way of communicating with us in this house.”