Final Resort. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ sparse information on the fugitives, a bit more on their liberators and two pages on the contact who’d be waiting for the Executioner when he got to Cuba. The short bio told him that Maria Santos was a thirty-three-year-old contract employee of the CIA, whose day job as a tourist guide allowed her contact with outsiders visiting Cuba.

      Her photographs showed Bolan that Santos was a Latina looker, with long dark hair, surprising blue eyes and a body reminiscent of Raquel Welch in her prime.

      Bolan would travel as Matt Cooper of Toronto, on a Canadian passport. Stony Man’s forgeries were impeccable, and he had no worries about clearing Customs. The hassle would come afterward, when he and Santos began seeking their quarry on an island with over eleven million residents.

      That was, assuming the nine fugitives and their surviving liberators were still on the island. If not, as Brognola had stated, the world was their oyster.

      And none of them would be afraid to crack it open, given half a chance.

      2

      Straits of Florida

      “Full speed ahead,” Captain Arnold Bateman said, peering through his binoculars at open sea before the Tropic Princess. From the giant cruise ship’s bridge, he had the vantage of a man standing atop a twelve-story hotel, with no clouds overhead and nothing to obstruct his view to eastward.

      In fact, the Tropic Princess looked like a hotel that had been set adrift somehow, as if by magic, floating on the sea when it should logically be squatting on a corner of Park Avenue or the Las Vegas Strip. The ship measured 960 feet from bow to stern and weighed 115,000 tons. Beneath the captain’s feet, three thousand passengers were anxiously awaiting the vacation of a lifetime, while twelve hundred crew members and entertainers worked around the clock to meet the needs of paying customers—and to keep the behemoth afloat.

      During a classic two-week cruise, the British captain’s passengers were treated to a taste of Cuba, the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Trinidad-Tobago, Venezuela and Jamaica. Shore excursions granted them the opportunity to browse and carouse in each port.

      It was not all island-hopping, though. For those who truly loved to cruise, the ship was self-contained, permitting them to pass the full two weeks in luxury without ever setting foot on dry land. The ship featured seven restaurants, three swimming pools and seven spas, a dinner theater and cabaret, a discotheque, a first-run cinema, three gymnasiums, a fully staffed infirmary and a casino.

      Most days, the captain liked his job. Granted, some passengers were no better than spoiled children, posing as adults, but Bateman managed to avoid them for the most part, choosing only a select few for the honored nightly ritual of dining at the captain’s table. Minors were excluded, and his steward had an eye for younger women, well endowed, whose husbands or companions didn’t mind the captain peering at their cleavage over cocktails and filet mignon.

      On balance, Bateman worried more about his crew than any of his passengers. Despite the smiling photos the cruise line printed in its various brochures, some of the employees were a surly lot, uneducated, and the screening process left a lot to be desired. Substance abuse and petty theft were more or less routine. Some members of the crew engaged in smuggling; others moonlighted as prostitutes or gigolos.

      So far, the present cruise had been smooth sailing, both in terms of weather and the human element. There’d been no quarrels among the passengers or crew, no incidents ashore demanding Bateman’s intervention. If his luck held, they could all relax and—

      Bateman lowered his binoculars and turned, facing two new arrivals on the bridge. He sometimes welcomed passengers topside, by invitation only, but the swarthy men who stood before him now were strangers, neither members of his crew nor anyone whom Bateman would’ve chosen to observe the inner workings of the ship.

      Wearing a corporate smile, he asked, “How may I help you, gentlemen?”

      The guns seemed to appear from nowhere, one of them pointed at Bateman’s face.

      “If you cooperate with us,” its owner said, “perhaps no one aboard this ship will die today.”

      SOHRAB CASPARI THOUGHT, It almost seems too easy. After all the planning, all the risk, the bloody skirmish at Guantanamo, the capture of the Tropic Princess struck him almost as an anticlimax, disappointing in its stark simplicity.

      But it was done.

      Beside him, Osman Zarghona, his Afghani second in command, covered the bridge crew with his AKSU assault rifle, while Caspari kept his Uzi submachine gun leveled at the gray-haired captain. In addition to their main automatic weapons, both hijackers also carried pistols, hand grenades and knives.

      “Is this some kind of joke?” the captain asked.

      “Perhaps I should kill one of your men, to see if we are joking. Yes?” Caspari answered.

      “No. That won’t be necessary,” the captain said. “What, exactly, do you want?”

      “Before we speak of that,” Caspari said, “know that we aren’t alone. I have more men aboard your ship, with weapons and enough explosives to destroy it.”

      “I see.” The captain frowned and said, “How many gunmen—”

      “Freedom fighters!” Zarghona snapped.

      “Yes, of course. How many freedom fighters are there, may I ask?”

      “Enough to do the job,” Caspari told him. Fishing in his left-hand pocket for a cell phone, he explained, “I keep in touch through this. The marvels of technology. You only see them—hear them—if and when I say. Follow instructions, and your passengers may suffer no disturbance.”

      “As to these instructions,” Captain Bateman said, “what might they be?”

      “We have demands,” Caspari answered, “which you will broadcast over your radio. Freedom for comrades wrongfully imprisoned. Reparation payments. Other things. If the Americans defy us, then we will be forced to execute your passengers and crew.”

      “Don’t take offense, old chap,” the captain said, “but you’ve been misinformed. This ship is not American. Its owners are Italians, Greeks—one Saudi, I believe. It’s registered in Panama. I doubt that Washington will care what happens to the Tropic Princess. Certainly, they won’t negotiate with…freedom fighters, like yourselves.”

      “You think me foolish, yes?” Caspari said, sneering. “That is a serious mistake. We know that half your passengers are from the U.S.A. They cannot visit Cuba from America, so rich pigs fly to Mexico and board your ship. All this is public knowledge. Glory to the Internet.”

      “I grant you that we have Americans aboard,” Bateman replied. “I’m simply saying that—”

      “You say too much!” Caspari snapped. “Is time for you to listen, now. You will broadcast our very fair and just demands, or face the consequences of defiance. Must I demonstrate by executing someone here and now? That one, perhaps?”

      Caspari swung his Uzi toward a young man standing frozen, several paces to the captain’s left. The target blanched and trembled in his crisp white uniform.

      “No, please!” the captain blurted. “I’m simply trying to prepare you СКАЧАТЬ