Paul Christopher - The Templar Cross

"This thing is more than a hundred years old," said Rafi, staring at the oval plate bolted to the deckhouse.

"They built to last back then," said Holliday. "A thousand storms, a couple of world wars. The British were still occupying Egypt when she was built."

Rafi was peering through one of the grimy portholes.

"Looks like the galley," he said. "Nobody there."

Holliday nodded and turned toward the companionway leading up to the wheelhouse. Rafi followed close behind him. They both turned and looked toward the dock. Still deserted. A noon-time siesta in the heat of the day. The sun blazed down and Holliday felt sweat running down in itchy streams under his shirt. The man in the Citroen had looked cool. The Citroen, unlike Faraj's taxi, was almost undoubtedly air-conditioned.

They reached the wheelhouse and stepped inside. The interior was almost primitive. There were slatted wooden scuppers on the floor to let water drain, an amateurish welded aluminum dashboard with a few engine controls and a six-spoked mahogany and brass wheel that looked as though it might have been the original. There was a simple engine room telegraph attached to the right-hand bulkhead marked Full, Half, Slow and Stop. A tall iron braking handle came up from the floor to the right of the ship's wheel. There was a marine radio bolted to a bracket in the roof above the front windscreen, a black plastic compass in a glycerin float, a modern GPS unit and an echo sounder. For a hundred-foot-long vessel it was definitely seat-of-the-pants navigation.

"Whoever drives this bus is either very good at his job or he's insane," said Holliday.

"Or both," commented Rafi. There was a single bulkhead door at the rear of the wheelhouse. It was unlocked. Holliday and Rafi stepped through into a combination chart room and captain's cabin. The briefcase was sitting on a small table beside a porthole. Holliday snapped the latch and pulled it open. It was filled with nautical charts and nothing else.

"Looks like he's getting ready to go somewhere," said Holliday.

"Where?" Rafi asked.

Holliday opened one of the folded charts and laid it out on the table.

"As-Sallum to Al-Iskandariyah," he said, reading the chart legend. "The scale is one to three hundred thousand. About a hundred and forty miles from Alexandria. Looks like some sort of harbor."

"As-Sallum is also the last place anybody heard from Peggy and the expedition," said Rafi. "It was their last staging point before crossing into Libya. It's right on the border."

"It can't be a coincidence," said Holliday. He folded the chart again and put it back in the briefcase. He closed and latched the briefcase and put it back exactly where he'd found it. "Let's see if we can find out why our knickknack salesman is going to this As-Sallum," he said.

They left the wheelhouse through the harbor-side door, screening themselves from anyone on the pier. They went forward on the main deck and then carefully down a lower companionway to the foc'sle, listening as they descended. The only sound was the clicking hum of an automatic bilge pump somewhere below and the faint lapping echo of small waves against the hull.

The foc'sle consisted of two small cabins, six pipe berths against the port and starboard bulkheads, a small galley and a zinc-topped mess table with benches bolted to the floor. Dim pan lights dangled above them, throwing shadows everywhere. The ceiling was low, a forest of cables and conduits hanging on metal brackets. The stuffy little area had obviously been in recent use; there were photographs and pinups above the narrow berths and the unmistakable smell of fried onions in the air.

"No one home," said Rafi.

"Let's not stretch our luck," answered Holliday, a nervous edge in his voice. Being belowdecks and blind to possible attack went against all his military experience, not to mention his basic survival instincts. "Five minutes more and then we're out of here."

They made their way aft down a narrow corridor and then stepped through a bulkhead door into a cargo area between the foc'sle and the engine room farther back. The cargo area was stacked with seventy or eighty long wooden crates. The crates were each secured with lead customs seals and stenciled with arcane numbers and letters. The only clue to their contents was a stenciled logo of a rearing horse and the word DIEMACO.

"All of a sudden I'm getting a bad feeling about this," said Holliday.

"What's DIEMACO?" Rafi asked.

"Die Manufacturing Corporation of Canada. They make machine guns."

"Canada?" Rafi asked with a look of surprise.

"Sixth-largest exporter of small arms in the world. Bigger than Israel."

"You're kidding."

"A billion dollars a year. Don't let the maple leaves and maple syrup fool you. The Green Berets can trace their history back to the Devil's Brigade, a Canada-U.S. commando unit. Nobody mentions it much these days, but it was Canadians from the Second Parachute Battalion who trained the Americans, not the other way around."

"One history lesson after another," Rafi said with a grin.

"Let's open one of these up," said Holliday.

There was a short pry bar on a shelf against the portside bulkhead. Holliday used it to twist off the wire customs seal, then slipped it between the crate and its stapled wooden lid. Inside the crate were half a dozen flat, neutral-colored hard cases. Holliday undid the clasps on the top case and opened it.

"Our man's not smuggling stuff out of Egypt-he's smuggling stuff in," said Holliday, peering into the case. Inside, seated in custom-cut foam niches, was an entire weapons system. The weapon was sand-colored with an odd, flat surface texture.

"What is it?" Rafi asked.

"A Timberwolf sniper rifle. Dead accurate at four thousand yards. And I mean 'dead' accurate."

"That's more than two miles."

"That's right," said Holliday flatly.

There were a dozen much smaller cases fitted into the ends of the crates. He took one of the small cases out and dug even deeper, coming up with a dozen or so parcels wrapped in heavy paper. He opened up one of the small cases. Inside was a squat, dead black handgun with a beavertail grip and a snub barrel shorter than his index finger. The entire gun fit into the palm of his hand.

"A Para-Ordnance Nite Hawg," murmured Holliday. "Another Canadian company. Forty-five automatic." He ripped the paper off one of the smaller packages. Boxes of ammunition. He slipped the handgun into the right-hand pocket of his jacket and stuffed half a dozen boxes of ammunition into the left.

"You get caught with a handgun in Egypt and we'll both go to jail for a very long time."

"We get caught by the bad guys without one and we could wind up dead," responded Holliday. He stuffed the empty gun case and the torn paper from the ammunition package back into the wooden crate.

Suddenly there was an echoing metallic clang as the bulkhead door leading aft crashed open. A thin beardless man wearing a grease-stained light blue boiler suit stepped into the cargo hold, frowning and looking as though he'd just awakened from a nap. He blinked, surprised to find two strange men aboard the tug. He said something in a high, almost girlish voice.

"Maa fee shay jadeed?" Holliday couldn't understand a word but the intent of the question was clear: Who the hell are you and what are you doing on my ship? The man reached into the deep front pocket of the boiler suit and tried to pull something out of his pocket. It looked to Holliday like an enormous Webley service revolver that was standard issue for the British Armed Forces from the Boer War onward. As the thin man hauled the heavy pistol up the front sight got hooked on a tear in the pocket and snagged.

Holliday barely hesitated. Heart beating wildly, adrenaline pumping frantically into his bloodstream, he swept up the steel pry bar from the top of the crate, took two steps forward and ripped a vicious curving swipe at the man's head. The hooked end connected with the left temple with a wet crunching sound, stopping him in his tracks. The man shrieked, eyes bulging, and crumpled to the ground, his arm flung out, his hand still gripping the heavy revolver. He didn't move.