Treasure (Dirk Pitt 9)

"Then take a good look in the coffin."

"Do not even think of making a move, Mr. Pitt," said Ibn. His eyes hung warily on Pitt as he shuffled toward the coffin. When his right hip touched the pallbearer's handle he stopped and took a quick glance inside, and then back at his quarry.

Pitt had not moved a centimeter.

It all depended on the unexpected. Pitt planned on the classic double take. He took the gamble that Ibn's first cursory glimpse inside the coffin would cause a delayed reaction followed by a second longer look.

And Ibn did exactly that.

In the Special Operations Forces command truck, parked half a kilometer west of the excavation, Hollis, Admiral Sandecker, Lily and Giordino gazed at a TV monitor, their attention solidly locked into the drama being acted out under Gongora Hill.

Lily stood motionless, her skin eggshell-white, while Sandecker and Giordino fidgeted in frustration like a pair of zoo tigers with a platter of fresh meat just beyond reach of their cage.

Hollis was pacing the small enclosure, nervously clutching a small multi-frequency detonation transmitter in one hand while the other held a phone receiver.

He was shouting at an aide of General Chandler's. "Like hell I'll detonate! Not until the crowd passes the danger perimeter. "

"They've moved too close now," the aide, a colonel, countered.

"Another thirty seconds!" snapped Hollis. "Not before."

"General Chandler wants that hill blown now!" demanded the Colonel, his voice rising. "That's an order that comes from the President."

"You're only a voice over a phone, Colonel," Hollis stalled.

"I want the order direct from the President."

"You're asking for a court-martial, Colonel."

"It won't be the first time."

Sandecker shook his head fearfully. "Dirk will never make it, not now."

"Can't you do something?" pleaded Lily. "Talk to him. He can hear you over the speaker connected to the TV camera."

"We don't dare distract him," answered Hollis "Break his concentration and that Arab will kill him."

"That's it!" Giordino muttered, infuriated. He tore out the command truck door, jumped to the ground and dashed over to Sam Trinity's Jeep.

Before Hollis's men could stop him the car was bouncing through the brush toward Gongora Hill.

In one quick leap, Pitt uncoiled like a rattler and drove the shield against Ibn. The sword blurred and slashed again.

His muscled arm swung with all the strength of his shoulder behind it.

He felt and heard the blade edge clang against metal before it struck something soft. An explosion went off, seemingly in his face. He flinched as the main force of the blast struck the middle of his shield and ricocheted against the rock ceiling. The armored plastic sheeting that had been riveted to the laminated wood by Major Dillenger that afternoon was denied but not penetrated. Pitts sword hand finished the arc, and he launched a murderous backhand swing.

Ibn was fast, but his shock at seeing Yazid cost him a precious second.

He caught Pitts attack out of the corner of one eye and squeezed off a badly aimed snap shot before the sword blade glanced off the breech of the shotgun and sliced through his hand, severing his thumb and fingers just behind the knuckles.

Ibn uttered a ghastly groan. The pistolgripped shotgun fell to the hard limestone floor almost on top of the Colt Python still gripped in Capesterre's severed hand. But Ibn recoiled enough to duck away from Pitts swing. Then, in one violent twisting motion, he lunged at Pitt.

Pitt was ready for the assault, but, as he dodged to one side his right leg folded under him. In a flashing instant he knew that one or two of the shotgun's pellets had missed the shield and struck him in the same leg that had been wounded on Santa Inez Island.

Before he could react and dance away, Ibn dropped on him like a panther.

The black eyes gleamed satanically under the string of lights, the teeth ghoulishly bared. Pitt lost his grip on the sword hilt as Ibn knocked it away. His other arm was trapped under the inside straps of the shield. Then slowly, deliberately, Ibn's good hand closed around Pitts throat.