They'd be sitting ducks if they tried scrambling up ten feet of broken timber."

"Now might be a ripe oportunity to burn the helicopter and get the hell out of here," Findley said unhappily.

"The news gets worse, and it gets better," Gunn said, dropping from a ladder to the floor. "I saw another twenty of them charging up the railroad track like a prairie fire. They should be here in another seven or eight minutes."

Giordino looked at Gunn suspiciously. "How many?"

"I stopped counting at fifteen."

"The opportunity to flee the coop gets even riper," muttered Findley.

"Hollis and his men?" asked Pitt.

Gunn shook his head wearily. "No sign of them." He paused to draw a deep breath and turned to stare at Pitt.

terrorist reinforcements, they were ed by four hostages with two guards. I could just recognize them through my binoculars. One was your Dad. He and a woman were helping two other men along the tracks."

"Hala Kamil, bless her," Pitt said with vast relief. "Thank God, the old man is alive."

"The other two?" asked Giordino.

"Most likely Presidents Hasan and De Lorenzo."

"So much for early retirement," said Findley gloomily as he placed the final piece of tape over Pitts bandage.

"The terrorists are only keeping the Senator and the others alive to ensure a safe escape," said Pitt.

"And won't hesitate to murder them one by one until we hand over their helicopter," predicted Gunn.

Pitt nodded. "Without a doubt, but if we surrendered, there's no guarantee they wouldn't murder them anywayThey've already tried to assassinate Hala twice and most certainly want Hasan dead too."

"They'll call a truce and negotiate."

Pitt looked at his watch. "They won't haggle for very long. They know their time is running out. But we might gain a few extra minutes."

"So what's the plan?" asked Giordino.

"We stall and fight for as long as it takes." Pitt looked at Gunn. "Were the hostages surrounded by the hijackers?"

"No, they were a good two hundred meters in the rear, trailing the main party up the rail-bed," Gunn replied. "They were herded by only two terrorists." He stared back into Pitts green eyes, and then nodded in slow understanding. "You want me to take out the guards and protect the Senator and the rest until Hollis shows?"

"You're the smallest and the fastest, Rudi. If anybody can get clear of the building undetected and circle around behind those two guards while we distract them, you can."

Gunn threw out his hands and dropped them to his sides. "I'm grateful for the trust. I only hope I can pull it off."

"You can."

"That leaves only three of you to hold the fort."

"We'll have to make do." Pitt awkwardly rose to his feet and limped over to the pile of terrorists' clothing he'd tossed on the floor. He returned and held it out to Gunn. "Wear this.

They'll think you're one of them."

Gunn stood there rooted, reluctant to desert his friends.

Giordino came to his rescue by laying a beefy hand on the smaller man's shoulder and steering him to a maintenance passage that dropped beneath the floor and ran around the giant crushing mill.

"You can get out through here," he said smiling. "Wait until things heat up before you make your break."

Gunn found himself half under the floor in the passage before he could protest. He took one last look at Pitt, the incredibly durable, indestructible Dirk Pitt, who gave him a jaunty wave. Peerrd at Giordino, old steady and reliable, whose concern was masked by a lighthearted expression. And finally Findley, who flashed a sparkling smile and held up both thumbs. They were all part of him and he was heartsick at leaving, not knowing if he would see any of them alive again.

"You guys be here when I get back," he said. "You hear?"

Then he ducked under the flooring and was gone.

Hollis paced beside the postage-stamp-sized landing pad that the Lady Flamborough's crew had hurriedly fabricated over the swimming pool. A Carrier Pigeon helicopter settled onto the pad as a small team of men waited to board.

Hollis stopped when he heard a fresh outburst of gunfire from the direction of the mine, his face reflecting concern.

"Load and get 'em airborne," he shouted impatiently to Dillenger.

"Somebody's alive up there and fighting our battle."

"The mine must have been the hijackers' escape point," said Captain Collins, who paced at Hollis's side.

"And thanks to me, Dirk Pitt and his friends stumbled right into them,"

snapped Hollis.

"any way you can get there in time to save them and the hostages?" asked Collins.

Hollis shook his head in grim despair. "Not one chance in hell.

Rudi Gunn was thankful for the sudden downpour of heavy rain. It effectively shielded him as he crawled away from the crushing mill under a string of empty ore cars. Once clear of the buildings, he dropped down the mountain below the mine for a few hundred meters, and then circled back.

He found the narrow-gauge tracks and began walking silently on the crossties. He could see only a short distance around him, but within a few minutes of escaping the terrorists' assault on the crushing mill, he froze in position when his eyes distinguished several vague figures through the rain ahead. He counted four sitting and two standing.

Gunn faced a dilemma. He assumed the hostages were resting while the guards stood. But he couldn't shoot and check his assumption later. He would have to rely on his borrowed terrorist clothing to bluff his way close enough to tell mend from foe.

His only drawback, and a vital one, was he only knew two or three words of Arabic.

Gunn took a breath and walked forward. He said, "Sa ," repeating the word two more times in a calm, controlled voice.

The two figures who were standing took on more detail as he approached, and he saw they held machine guns lowered and pointed his way.

One of them replied with words Gunn couldn't interpret. He mentally crossed his fingers and hoped they had asked the Arabic equivalent of

"Who goes there?"

"Muhammad," he mumbled, relying on the prophet's name to carry him through, while lazily holding the Heckler & Koch across his chest with the muzzle aimed off to the side.

Gunn's heartbeat calmed considerably as the two terrorists lowered their guns in unison and turned their attention back to their guard duty. He moved casually until he was standing alongside them so his line of fire would not strike the hostages.

Then, while keeping his eyes aimed at the miserable people sitting on the ground between the track rails, and without even looking at the two guards, he squeezed the trigger.

Ammar and his men were on the verge of total exhaustion when they reached the outskirts of the mine. The persistent downpour had turned their clothes sodden and heavy. They struggled over a long mound of tracks and thankfully entered a shed that once housed mining-equipment parts.

Ammar dropped onto a wooden bench, his head drooped on his chest, his breath coming in labored gasps. He looked up as Ibn entered with another man.

"This is Mustapha Osman," said Ibn. "He says an armed group of commandos have killed their group leader and barricaded themselves in the crushing mill with our helicopter."