time, but he had lowered his guard, allowing himself to rely on his sense of the boat's silence and emptiness, the way he had initially found it.
That was when a powerful-looking man stepped out from one of the small sleeping cubicles, pointing a pistol at Jon. He had a fez on his head and a nasty look on his beard-stubbled face.
"Who the fuck are you? Where'd you come from?" His English had some kind of Middle Eastern accent. Egyptian?
Exasperated, frustrated, Jon lunged. He grabbed the terrorist's gun wrist with his left hand while he used his right to draw his stiletto.
Taken aback by the suddenness of the assault, the man tried to pull free. He jerked back, off balance. Jon slammed a fist toward his jaw, but the fellow recovered, dodged, and jammed his pistol into Jon's side, his finger on the trigger.
Jon twisted away just in time. The man pulled the trigger, the gunfire like a cannon blast in the confines of the boat. The bullet shot past Jon and into one of the cubicles, where it thudded into a wall. Before his attacker could aim and fire again, Jon plunged his stiletto into the man's chest.
The terrorist went down, landing hard on his knees, his black eyes blazing. With a grunt, he keeled forward onto his face.
As Jon kicked the pistola 9mm Clockout of the man's hand, he drew his Walther from his waistband and stepped back. The man lay motionless, blood trickling out from beneath him.
Jon crouched and felt his pulse. He was dead.
When he stood again, Jon was shaking. After a long bout of forced inactivity, his nerves and muscles had been required to surge into sudden, violent action. He shook the way a racing car did when slammed from high speed to a sudden stop. He had not intended to kill the man. In fact, he did not like to kill at all, but he'd had no choice.
Once his quaking passed, he stepped over the corpse and climbed up the gangway to the deck. Afternoon sunlight came to greet him.
His eyes just above the opening, he surveyed the deck. He could see no one. Built for speed, the boat had few structures to catch the wind. The deck was flat and clear all the way to the bridge, which was unoccupied. The dinghy and rubber raft were gone.
Warily, he crawled up and moved forward to the bridge, from where he could view the rest of the boat. It was empty, too. In the bridge well, he found a pair of binoculars. To the west, the sun was a ball of lemon fire low in the sky. The air was cooling rapidly, but then, according to his watch, it was past six o'clock in Paris. Judging by the amount of time spent on the ride here and the speed at which he guessed the vessel had been traveling, he figured he was likely still in the same time zone or, at the most, one zone over.
Through the binoculars, he scanned the shore, aglow in the cooling light. There was a fine, smooth beach with what looked like plastic greenhouses. Other greenhouses had been built in rows behind it, reaching inland. Nearby, a citrus grove ran from the coast into the distance. He could see oranges ripening in the leafy branches. There was a large promontory, too, that jutted out into the sea. It appeared to be entirely enclosed by a long white wall at least ten feet high. The high height impressed him, and he studied the promontory. Dark olive trees and palms stood stark against the wall, and he could see some kind of domed building behind.
He moved the binoculars. Far to the right, modern cars sped along what looked like a good highway, close to the sea. He moved the binoculars again, this time sweeping the distance. Behind everything rose a line of hills, while taller hills loomed in the distance.
Jon lowered the binoculars, mulling over the clueshellip;. This was not France. It could be southern Spain, but he doubted it. No, this had the feel of North Africa, and from the lushness, the greenhouses, the wide sandy beaches, the palms, the hills, the highway, the newer cars, in fact the prosperous appearance of it all, and the speed and time of the journey, his judgment was that he was anchored off Algeria, probably not far from Algiers.
He raised his binoculars to study the far-off wall again. The rays of the afternoon sun had