Iceberg (Dirk Pitt 3)

The canal the boats circuited through cut between the town buildings, lifting the viewers' eyes from a pair of pirates trying vainly to get a mule to pull a wagonload of their loot on the left to a trio of their shipmates drinking on a pile of wildly swaying wine barrels on the right. But it was the center of the canal that drew Pitts attention. There in a boat almost directly under a bridge that ran over the water were Castile and De C-roix, happily pointing out details of the wondrous scene like two schoolboys playing hookey at a Friday matinee. And, sitting ominously like disinterested statues on the seat directly in back of the South American Presidents, Pitt could make out the two men who had held his arms while Rondheim bad battered him to a pulp only two days before in Reykjavik.

Pitt glanced at the luminous dial of the orange faced Doxa watch on his wrist. Stan an hour and twenty minutes before Kelly's countdown. Too early, far too early, yet there were two of Rondheim's killers sitting not three feet from their intended victims. A very large Piece was missing from the puzzle. He had no doubt that Kelly told the truth about his timetable and that Rondheim would stick to it. But would he?

If Rondheim meant to take over Hermit Limited, it stood to reason that he just might make a change in plans.

This is your show, Dan." Kippmann spoke softly to the security director. "How do we take them?"

"No guns," Lazard said. "The last thing we want is a stray shot killing a child."

"Maybe we'd better wait for reinforcements," Kippmann said.

"No time," Lazard said. "We've kept the boats stopped too long already. Everyone is starting to get edgy, including those two characters in back of Castile and De Croix."

"Then we'll have to take a risk." Kippmann wiped a handkerchief across his damp brow. "Get the boats moving again. Then as soon as the one with our friends begins to cross under the bridge, we'll take them."

"Okay," Lazard agreed. "The bridge will give us cover to close within fifteen feet. I'll work around and come out of that doorway under the gunshop sign.

Kippmann. you hide behind the mule and wagon."

"Need an extra hand?" Pitt asked.

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"Sorry, Major." Lazard gave Pitt a cool stare.

"You're hardly in shape for hand-to-hand combat." He paused and gripped Pitts shoulder. "You could play a vital role though."

"Say the word."

"By standing on the bridge in your wolf costume and miming with the pirates, you could distract those two in the boat long enough to give Kippmann and myself a few more seconds of insurance."

"I guess it beats hell out of matching wits with the three little pigs," Pitt said.

As soon as Lazard found a call phone and ordered the attendant to start the canal boats moving in two minutes, he and Kippmann dropped into the burning village behind the realistic-looking burning fronts and took their positions.

After he stumbled over the stuffed body of a pirate who supposedly had passed out from too much wine, Pitt reached down and relieved the mannequin of its cutlass and was surprised to find that it was a steel replica of the real thing. Even at close range he could only marvel at the true-to-life appearance of the mechanical pirates. The glass eyes set in brown wax faces stared unerringly in whatever direction the head was set, and the eyebrows raised up and down in unison with the lips as the strains of "Sixteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest" boomed from speakers concealed within their aluminum-frame bodies.

Pitt moved to the center of the arched bridge over the canal and joined in the singing amid three merry buccaneers who sat with their legs dangling over the fake stone parapet, swirling their cutlasses around in circles in time with the songfest. Pitt in his Big Bad Wolf suit and the frolicking pirates presented a strange sight to the people in the boat as they waved and sang the famous old seafaring ditty. The children, a girl about ten and a boy, Pitt guessed, no more than seven, ,oon recognized him as the threedimensional cartoon character and began waving back.

Castile and De Croix also laughed and then saluted him in Spanish, pointing and joking to themselves while the tall, bald assassin and his accomplice, the broad-shouldered brute, sat stony-faced, unmoved by the performance. It occurred to Pitt that he was on thin ice, on which not merely a false move, but the tiniest miscalculati

on of any detail could spell death to the men, woman and children who sat innocently enjoying his antics.

Then he saw the boat move.

The bow was just passing under his feet when the shadowy figures of Kippmann and Lazard leaped from their cover, sprinted through the mass of animated figures and dropped into the rear of the boat. The surprise was complete. But Pitt hadn't noticed. No fuss, no elaborate flourish. no token words of warning, he coldly and efficiently shoved the blade of his cutlass under the armpit and into the chest cavity of the pirate sitting nearest him.

A curious thing happened. The pirate dropped his cutlass, his lips contorted into a soundless oval, eyes registering astonishment and shock, a shock almost immediately replaced by a final awareness. Then the eyes turned up in the head and he fell forward splashing into the now empty canal beneath the bridge.

The second pirate failed to react in the split second when he might have parried Pitts swing. He started to say something.

Then, with cutlass still dripping red, Pitt put all his strength into a backhand slash that bit into the base of the pirate's neck at the left shoulder blade.

The man grunted and flung up the opposite arm, made as if to roll clear, but his feet slipped on the uneven flooring of the bridge and he came down on both knees, falling over sideways in a rubbery heap, blood pulsing from his half-opened mouth.

Pitt had one fleeting glimpse of a flashing metallic glint in the fiery light, and the instinctive slight inclination of his head saved his life as the third pirate's cutlass sliced through the crooked top hat that was perched on the wolf mask. Too fir; Pitt had pushed his luck too far. He had caught two of Rondheim's men before they knew what was happening, but the third had gained sufficient time to counter Pitts attack and catch him off balance.

Blindly fending off the lunging thrusts, staggering backward under the fury of the other man's assault, Pitt hurled himself convulsively sideways and over the parapet, and plunged into the cool water of the canal. Even as he dived, Pitt had heard the swish of the pirate's blade as it hissed through the empty air where his body had stood only an instant before. And then there was the sudden shock as his shoulder collided with vicious force against the shallow bottom of the canal. The pain exploded in him and everything seemed to dissolve and stop. 3t "Yo ho ho, sixteen men on a dead man's chest.