Treasure (Dirk Pitt 9)

"She wasn't in water over her head."

"Kamil is an astute lady. She'll do all right."

"Providing Moslem fanatics from her own country don't blow her away,"

replied the pilot in a decided American accent.

The Britisher gave him a strange look indeed but made no further comment as he compared the photo on the I.D. card with the face before him and read the name aloud. "Captain Dale Lemk."

"any problem?"

"No, simply preventing any," the guard replied flatly.

Lemk extended his arms. "Do you want to frisk me too?"

"Not necessary. A pilot would hardly hijack his own airplane. But we must check your credentials, to be certain you're a genuine crew member."

"I'm not wearing this uniform for a costume party."

"May we see your carry bag?"

"Be my guest." He set the blue nylon bag on the floor and opened it. The second agent lifted out and riffled the pages of the standard pilot's aircraft and flight operations manuals and then held up a mechanical device with a small hydraulic cylinder.

"Mind telling us what this is?"

"An actuator arm for an oil-cooling door. It stuck in the open position, and our maintenance people at Kennedy asked me to hand-carry it home for inspection."

The agent poked at a bulky object tightly packed on the bottom of the bag. "Hello, what do we have here?" Then he looked up, a curious expression in his eyes. "Since when do airline pilots carry parachutes?"

Lemk laughed. "My hobby is skydiving. Whenever I have an extended layover, I jump with friends at Croydon."

"I don't suppose you would consider jumping from a jetliner?"

"Not from one flying five hundred knots at thirty-five thousand feet over the Atlantic Ocean."

The agents exchanged satisfied glances. The duffel bag was closed and the I.D. card was passed back.

"Sorry to have delayed you, Captain Lemk."

"I enjoyed the chat."

"Have a good flight to New York."

"Thank you."

Lemk ducked into the plane and entered the cockpit. He locked the door and switched off the cabin lights so any casual observer could not view his movements through the windows from the concourse above. In well-rehearsed sequence, he knelt behind the seats, pulled a small flashlight from his coat pocket and raised a trapdoor leading to the electronics bay below the cockpit, a compartment that was named by some long-forgotten joker as the "hell hole." He dropped down the ladder into pure darkness, underscored by the murmur of the flight attendants'

voices as they prepared the main cabin for boarding and the thump of the luggage being loaded in the rear by the baggage handlers.

Lemk reached up and tugged the duffel bag down after him and switched on the penlight. A glance at his watch told him he had about five minutes before his flight crew arrived. In an exercise he had practiced nearly fifty times, he retrieved the actuator arm from the bag and connected it to a miniature device he had concealed in his flight cap.

He attached the assembled unit to the hinges of a small access door to the outside used by ground/maintenance mechanics. Then he laid out the parachute.

When his first and second officers arrived, Lemk was sitting in the pilot's seat, his face buried in an information manual. They exchanged casual greetings and began running through their preflight check routine. Neither the copilot nor the engineer perceived that Lemk seemed unusually quiet and withdrawn.

Their senses might have been sharper if they had known this was to be their last night on earth.

Inside the crowded lounge, Hala Kamil faced a forest of microphones and glaring camera lights. With seemingly inexhaustible patience, she fielded the barrage of questions thrown at her by the mob of inquisitive reporters.