Treasure

It's yours in pristine shape providing you can take it. But harm any of the hostages, and I blow it from here to the nearest junkyard. That's the only deal I'll make."

"That is your final word?"

"for now, yes."

A thought crystallized in Ammar's mind, and he was swept by a sudden revelation. "It was you!" he rasped. "You led the American special forces here."

"Luck gets most of the credit," Pitt said modestly. "But after I found the wreck of the General Bravo and a splaced roll of plastic, it all fell into place."

Ammar stood there for a moment in profound astonishment, then recovered and said, "You do your powers of deduction an injustice, Mr. Pitt. I readily concede the coyote has run the fox to ground."

"Fox?" said Pitt. "You flatter yourself. Don't you mean maggot?"

Ammar looked at Pitt through narrowed eyes. "I'm personally going to kill you, Pitt, and I'm going to take great pleasure in seeing your body shot to pieces. What say you to that?"

There was no in Pitts eyes, no hatred etched in his face. He stared back at Ammar with a kind of bemused disgust one might display in exchanging looks with a cobra behind glass at a snake farm.

"Give my regards to Broadway," he said, turning his back on Ammar and walking casually back to the door of the crushing null.

Furious, Animar burled down the flag of truce and strode swiftly in the opposite direction. As he moved he eased an American Ruger P-85

semiautomatic 9-millimeter from the inside pocket of his coat.

Suddenly he whirled, whipped off his mask and went into the classic crouched stance with the Ruger gripped in both hands. The instant the sights lined up dead center on Pitts back, Ammar pulled the trigger six times in quick succession.

He saw the bullets tear into the middle of Pitts ski jacket in a ragged grouping of uneven holes, watched as the concentrated impact knocked his hated enemy stumbling forward into the wall of the crushing mill.

Ammar waited for Pitt to fall. His antagonist, he knew with firm certainty, was dead before hitting the ground.

Gradually Ammar became aware that Pitt was not acting as he should.

Pitt did not fall dead. Instead, he turned, and Animar saw the devil's own smile.

Stu

And with a numbing shock he saw the gloved hand hanging from the ve was fake. A magician's trick. The real hand had materialized, a hand clutching a big Colt 45 automatic that protruded from the partially unzipped ski jacket.

Ammar aimed the Ruger again but Pitt fired first.

Pitts first shot took Ammar in the tight shoulder and spun him sideways.

The second smashed through his chin and lower jaw. The third shattered one wrist as he threw it up to his face. The fourth passed through his face from side to side, Ammar rolled to the gravel and sprawled on his back, uncaring and oblivious to the gunfire that erupted over him, not knowing that Pitt had leaped uninjured through the door of the crushing mill before Ammar's men belatedly opened fire.

He was only vaguely aware of Ibn dragging him to safety behind a steel water tank as a short burst of fire from inside the crushing mill sprayed the ground around them. Slowly his hand groped up Ibn's arm until he clutched the solid-muscled shoulder. Then he pulled his friend downward.

"I ca

Ibn removed a large surgical pad from a pack on his belt and gently pressed it over the torn flesh that once held Ammar's eyes. "Allah and I will see for you," said Ibn.

Ammar coughed and spit out the blood from the shattered chin that had seeped down his throat. "I want that Satan, Pitt, and the hostages hacked to pieces."

"Our attack has began. Their lives are measured in seconds."

"If I die . . . kill Yazid."

"You will not die."

Ammar went ugh another coughing spasm before he could speak again. "No matter . . . the Americans will destroy the helicopter now. You must escape the island another way. Leave . . . leave me. That is my final request of you."

Wordlessly, without acknowledging the plea, Ibn lifted Ammar in his arms and began walking away from the scene of the battle.

When Ibn spoke, his voice was hoarse but soft. "Be of strong spirit, Suleiman Aziz," he said. "We will return to Alexandria together."

Pitt barely had time to leap through the door, whip off the two bulletproof vests from under the back of his coat, replace one in the front and return the second to Giordino before a hail of concentrated fire drilled through the thin wooden walls.

"Now the jacket is ruined," Pitt grunted, pressing his body into the floor.

"You'd have been dead meat if he'd plugged you in the chest," said Giordino, wiggling into his vest. "How'd you know he was going to shoot when your back was turned?"

"He had bad breath and beady eyes."

Findley began scrambling from window to window, throwing grenades as fast as he could yank the activating pins. "They're here!" he yelled.

Giordino rolled across the plank floor and poured a continuous fire from behind a wheelbarrow full of ore. Pitt snatched up the Thompson just in time to stop two terrorists who had somehow managed to climb into the shattered side office.

Ammar's small army charged the building from all sides with guns blazing. There was no stopping the tide of the savage Onslaught-They swarmed in everywhere. The sharp crackle of the terrorists'

small-caliber AK-74S and the deep stutter of Pitts 45-caliber Thompson were punctuated by the boom of Findley's shotgun.

Giordino fell back to the crushing mill, laying down a covering fire for Pitt and Findley until all three had reached the temporary Protection of their Mickey Mouse fort. The terrorists were momentarily stu

Pitt, Giordino and Findley decimated the first wave. But the Arabs were fanatically brave, and they learned fast. An intensified gunfire and the blast from several grenades engulfed the cavernous room ahead of the next assault.

Bedlam! The dead heaped the floor, and the Arabs took cover behind the bodies of their dead comrades. It was a firefight scene-guns blasting, grenades exploding, the shouts and curses in two languages from two culmms as different as night and day The budding shook from the reverberations of gunfire and the concussions of the grenades. Shrapnel and bullets flayed the sides of the gmt mechanical mill like sparks from a bucket of molten steel. The air was filled with the pungent smell of gunpowder.

Fire broke out in a dozen places and was completely ignored. Giordino threw a grenade that blew off the tail rotor of the helicopter. Even with the last hope of escape gone now, the Arabs irrationally fought all the harder.

Pitts ancient Thompson slammed deafeningly and then stopped. He ejected the fifty-round rotary dnun and inserted another-his last. There was a cold, calculated determination he'd never felt before. He and Giordino and Findley had no intention of throwing in the towel. They had long passed the point of no return and found no fear of death behind it. They hung on grimly, fighting for their very existence, tenaciously giving better than they received.