Paul Christopher - The Templar Cross

"Li," said the man, pointing with his sandpaper chin.

They found it a little farther along the bank, half hidden by artfully concealing shrubbery and weeds. It was a sixteen-foot classic drift boat with a high pointed bow and a narrow transom fitted with an oddly shaped outboard motor.

The boat was filthy, with a pile of rancid-looking throw net in the bow and half a dozen long bamboo poles hanging off the sides. The seats were covered in fish scales and the paint on the sides was peeling. There was a pair of scruffily painted oars shipped along the gunwales and a variety of tackle boxes, boat hooks, gaffs and other equipment littering the flat bottom. The boat smelled of dead, rotting fish left too long in the sun.

"Is this somebody's idea of a joke?" Rafi asked, staring at the boat tied up to an overhanging willow branch. "Because I don't think it's very funny."

"It's not a joke," said Holliday. "It's protective coloration. My course in the history of camouflage was the only thing Vince ever got an A in." He grinned broadly. "I always knew the kid would go far even though he got such lousy marks." Holliday shook his head. "It's perfect-what do you do on a river? You fish. That's an electric outboard, a trolling motor, which means it'll be silent. Look at the current out there: the tide is going out; we'll be sucked down the river like a freight train." As if to prove his point a waterlogged tree limb went swirling by in the rushing center of the river.

"How far?" Tidyman asked.

"According to Vince, two miles," answered Holliday. He undid the line from the willow branch. "Climb aboard, gents, this is the endgame. Let's go get Peggy."

"How will we know the place?" Rafi asked, sitting in the bow of the drift boat as they slid rapidly down the ever-widening river.

Tidyman answered the question.

"It's called a chiesetta, a chapel. They're like little fishing cottages on stilts. There's dozens of them built on the breakwaters at the mouth of the river. They've got these purse seine nets they hang into the water at the end of huge pole cranes. The chiesetta we want is the last one nearest the open sea on the left bank. It's bright red with a brand-new sheet-aluminum roof."

As the river broadened the color changed, going from a silty brownish green to a deeper blue as they neared the sea. The terrain on both sides of the river was mostly reclaimed marsh, the land divided into neat fields of grain. The banks of the river were lined with long rows of sailboats and small sport cruisers moored against short-piered docks. There were fishermen in boats like theirs everywhere, mostly following the gentler currents closer to shore. No one paid the three men the slightest bit of attention.

The Tyrrhenian Sea was visible now, a darker shimmering blue against the cloudless sky directly ahead. The banks of the river were lined with huge tumbled rocks used as breakwaters to prevent erosion, the ramshackle chiesetta fishing shacks standing like shabby long-legged insects poised above the boulders. They all looked much the same, standing closely together, each one with a rickety decklike balcony fitted with one, two and occasionally three of the fifty-foot-long cranes dangling over the water, cantilevered, braced with long guy wires connected to the roofs of the shacks. Now, with the tide rushing out, the cranes and their nets had been hauled up. As the tide reversed itself and the water flowed upriver once again the poles and nets would be lowered into the water.

"What do they catch?" Rafi asked.

"According to Vince, mostly mullet and eel, like the old man back there."

"Gross," said Rafi, making a face. "Who eats eels?"

"Eel pie," murmured Tidyman wistfully. "What a treat. Jellied they are very good, too."

Seated in the narrow stern, Holliday started up the little outboard and silently eased the boat out of the main current and to the northern bank of the river, now more than a hundred yards wide.

"Drop the anchor," said Holliday.

Tidyman hauled the pile of netting to one side and uncovered the heavy little Danforth anchor. He eased it overboard, letting out the nylon line slowly and steadily until the anchor flukes bit and held in the silt. The boat swung around to face the current and they were at the mouth of the river, the sea behind them. A thousand feet away across the river was the red chiesetta, its shiny roof flashing in the sun, a red spider with twin pole cranes swung inboard like long antennae.

Tidyman took the binoculars from around his neck and passed them up to Rafi, who handed them on to Holliday.

"Look busy," said Holliday. "I'm going to check the place out."

"Aye, aye, Captain," said Tidyman. He and Rafi pulled long bamboo poles out of the bottom of the boat and they both dropped their hooked and unbaited lines over the side.

Holliday raised the binoculars.

The fishing shack was about twenty by thirty, the narrower end facing the river. There was a wide opening in the front leading out to the balcony deck where the swinging pole cranes were set up. The flat corrugated aluminum roof sloped front to back. The only proper entrance appeared to be from the rear of the shack via a walkway that crossed the boulders to the unpaved street behind. Half hidden by the building Holliday could see part of what appeared to be a compact closed-sided white van parked at the end of the dirt road. The opening facing the sea was lost in shadow. No one appeared to be watching.

He shifted the glasses to look beneath the building. There seemed to be a homemade ladder that dropped down from the floor of the shack to the boulders below, probably used when the net was snagged or there was some other problem that needed attention. He shifted the glasses again. The nearest neighbor was fifty feet away. On the other side of the shack was the stone breakwater and then the open sea.

"We either go in through the trapdoor in the floor or from the back," said Holliday. "I don't see much in the way of options here."

"Why not both?" Rafi asked, trying to keep his attention away from the shack where Peggy was being held. "Why not split up and come in both ways?"

"Too dangerous," said Holliday. "That kind of two-pronged attack almost never works. You wind up shooting each other. Go in that way and it's going to be difficult to tell who is who."

"All of this is dangerous," argued Rafi.

"I'm afraid I agree with our young friend," said Tidyman. "Whatever we do will be dangerous. If we come over the walkway we will lose the element of surprise. If we climb to the trapdoor there will be a bottleneck."

"We have to do something," said Rafi. "We can't stay out here much longer."

Holliday thought for a moment, then looked back over his shoulder.

"There was a little marina back there," he said. "Did anyone notice if it had a gas pump?"

Holliday crouched in the shadows under the fishing shack next to their objective. An onshore breeze thrust in from the sea, making the big pole cranes above him creak and moan. Water lapped against the boulders all around him and the air was full of the rich scent of the sea.

The drift boat had moved on silently and disappeared beyond the end of the breakwater. Holliday checked his watch, frowning. The whole thing was going to depend on perfect timing. If he or Tidyman and Rafi screwed it up, Peggy was as good as dead. Both of the other two had done compulsory military service, Tidyman mostly to get more hours as a military pilot and cement his Egyptian citizenship status, Rafi because that was simply what you did if you were a Sabra-a native-born Israeli. Holliday on the other hand was a professional; he'd react on instinct born of years of experience in hot zones all over the world. He wasn't too sure about his companions.

There was Peggy to consider as well. If she froze up at a critical moment they all would be as good as dead. Hopefully she'd figure out what was happening and put her head down and get herself out of the line of fire in the first few seconds of the action. Holliday closed his eyes for a second and sent up a silent prayer to all the gods of war. Worst of all, they were going in blind; they had no idea how many men were guarding Peggy in the fishing shack a few yards away.