Paul Christopher - The Templar Cross

"What's the distance?" Holliday asked.

Moustafa leaned across the wheel and adjusted a knob on the radar set. The image jumped, then re-formed.

"One mile," he said. "Less. A thousand meters."

"Are we sure it's the Khamsin?" Holliday asked. "Maybe it's a rock or something."

"No rock. Boat," said Moustafa, staring out into the darkness, guiding the old gunboat through the smooth swells.

"It's where the Khamsin should be," said Tidyman.

"All right," murmured Holliday, thinking hard as they moved slowly forward toward the bright blip on the screen. They had a few weapons, some handguns they'd brought with them from the camp in Germa and Moustafa's RPG. Moustafa also had a World War II-vintage Breda bipodmounted light machine gun, but as Holliday recalled the weapon had been bad news during the war. He wasn't about to trust it more than sixty years later. Not only was it out of date, but the wooden buttstock was cracked and pale with salt stains after years at sea, and the barrel was thick with grime and spotted with rust. It would almost certainly blow up in your face if you tried to fire it.

"You're the soldier," said Rafi to Holliday. "What do we do now?"

Holliday shrugged. "There's two ways, fast and hard or slow and careful. Personally I favor slow and careful." He grinned. "But I'm getting a little old for this kind of thing."

"I am, too," said Tidyman.

"Well, I'm not," Rafi said with a scowl. "Peggy could be on that boat."

"Which is why slow and careful might be the best option," responded Tidyman. "We have no idea who is aboard the ship. We could easily be outnumbered. Your friend could well forfeit her life for a rash action."

"The Khamsin is old, with a wooden hull," said Holliday. "One shot from that RPG is easily capable of sinking her."

"What are you suggesting?" Tidyman asked quietly. On the radar screen the two blips were getting closer and closer.

"Five hundred meters," said Moustafa. "The moon is rising. You will see her at any moment now."

"We have to make a decision. Now," demanded Rafi.

"There's a spotlight up in the bow. We come in fast with a lot of light, blind them," said Holliday. "We hail them. Act like we're official. Customs or coast guard or something. Mr. Tidyman is in the bow with the RPG. We threaten them. Hand over Peggy or we sink her."

"Sounds good to me," said Tidyman. He smiled. "But please, in the future you must call me Emil."

"Let's go," said Rafi. "We're running out of time."

"Two hundred meters, dead ahead," said Moustafa.

They came in at flank speed, engines thundering, bow wave foaming up almost to the gunwales. Tidyman was braced against the forward winch, the RPG balanced on his shoulder, the weapon loaded and primed, his finger curled around the forward trigger mechanism.

Holliday and Rafi crouched behind the Egyptian, half hidden by a stinking pile of fishnet, handguns drawn and ready. Standing in the wheelhouse Moustafa waited until the very last second, then snapped on the floodlight in the bow, wrenching the wheel around at the same time, then hauling back the throttle, throwing the old torpedo boat into a sliding turn that left the Fantasma broadside to its quarry as it came to a roaring stop in a crashing welter of spray.

"Dear God in heaven," whispered Tidyman, staring at the terrible vision before him, the horror of it etched by the floodlight in bright and grotesque detail against the night sky. "What awful thing has happened here?"

The weary old tugboat Khamsin rolled on the dark sea, broken and adrift. Her entire superstructure, including the main deckhouse and the wheelhouse above, looked as though it had been swallowed up by some hellish piece of machinery that had flailed and chewed the vessel into small pieces. The smokestack had completely torn away from its supports and now sagged down on the starboard side, riddled with holes the size of softballs.

The wheelhouse had almost completely vanished, windows demolished, bulkheads destroyed, the companionway stairs nothing but twisted wreckage. It was clear that the boat was taking on water; the portside list was so severe that the deck was awash. The deck itself was a splintered ruin, stitched with dozens more of the fist-sized openings that had turned the wheelhouse into a sieve.

There were several bodies, or at least parts of them, on deck. None was recognizable. There were smears of blood everywhere, great sprays of it against the whitework and more running down in broad streams into the scuppers.

Bizarrely, in the bows, a hand clutched a machine gun, but beyond the shoulder there was no body. Next to the arm a headless corpse hung out of an open hatch, a long ugly tongue of bone scraps and blood and brains spattering back along the decking.

"Peggy!" Rafi moaned, climbing to his feet.

"Wait," said Holliday, standing and putting a cautioning hand on his friend's shoulder.

"What could have done this?" Tidyman asked, standing beside them and surveying the wreckage as they rocked gently on the night waves.

Holliday knew exactly what had done it. He'd first seen it used from a C-47 Spooky in Vietnam and then the Russian version in the early days back in the eighties as an advisor with the mujahideen in Afghanistan.

The Russians called it a Yak- B12, the U.S. Air Force called it a Minigun-a chain-drive, electrically powered modern-day version of a Gatling gun with a rate of fire somewhere around four thousand rounds a minute. Enough to grind a human body to bloody shreds in the blink of an eye.

"Helicopters," said Holliday, staring at the nightmare scene. "Like the ones that attacked Alhazred's camp last night. They hit the boat on the return flight."

"But why?" Rafi said, stunned and horrified by the awful vision in front of them.

"Revenge?" Tidyman said.

"Or cleaning up after themselves," said Holliday coldly. "Silencing their enemies. Maybe our man from the gift shop in Alexandria knew too much."

"You think the Church did this?" Rafi said, staring.

"I think Sodalitium Pianum, the ones who call themselves La Sapiniere, might have done it," answered Holliday. "They're cold-blooded enough; look what they did in the desert last night."

"Terror in the name of God." Tidyman shrugged. "Not so hard to believe these days."

"We have to go aboard," said Rafi, his voice dull. "I have to find out if Peggy…" He stopped, swallowing hard. "I have to find out if Peggy was on the boat."

"Emil and I can go," said Holliday softly. "You don't have to come."

"Better not to," agreed Tidyman. He reached out tentatively and touched Rafi's arm. "Some pain should not be endured, or should at least be borne by others, and not alone."

"No," said Rafi. "I have to see."

A few minutes later Moustafa managed to maneuver the low-hulled torpedo boat close enough to the wreck of the Khamsin for the men to simply step off onto the awkwardly tilting deck. Both armed, Holliday and Rafi went below to check the hold while Tidyman made his way up to the ruins of the wheelhouse.

They bypassed the headless watchman in the hatchway and made their way down the steeply canted ladder into the main hold. The ship's interior was silent except for the creaking of the dying hull and empty of life. A ghost ship.

Once upon a time the small area had probably been used to carry supplies or spare equipment, but now it had been subdivided into plywood-partitioned stalls, each one no bigger than a coffin and lined with straw. In each of the subdivided areas a woman was shackled to a large ringbolt welded to the hull. There were thirty stalls and thirty women, or at least what was left of them. Each of the prisoners was naked and filthy.

They were all dead, some torn to ribbons by the rounds from the helicopter chain guns, others flailed by flying shrapnel. Some of them were very young, no more than eleven or twelve. The majority of them appeared to be Berbers, some with traditional tattoos on their hands and faces. There seemed to be no fear in their faces, as though they'd died in their sleep. Holliday was reasonably sure they'd been drugged for their sea voyage to keep them quiet.