Achmed nodded and withdrew to another place, embarrassed and shamed by his illness. His commander, he knew, faced death. It had to be cancer, he had so often visited the physician. Whatever it was, the Commander had not let it stop him. There was courage, he thought.

"Break for the night?" Ghosn asked.

Fromm shook his head. "No, let's take another hour or two to assemble the explosive bed. We should be able to get part of it in place before we're too weary." Both men looked up as Qati approached.

"Still on schedule?"

"Herr Qati, whatever arrangements you have in mind, we will be ready a day early. Ibrahim saved us that day with his work on the explosives." The German held one of the small, hexagonal blocks. The squibs were already in place, the wire trailing off. Fromm looked at the other two, then bent down, setting the first block in its nesting place. Fromm made sure the block was exactly in place, then attached a numbered tag on the wire, and draped it into a plastic tray that held a number of dividers, like the trays of a tool box. Qati attached the wire to a terminal, checking three times to make sure the number on the wire was the same as that on the terminal. Fromm watched also. The process took four minutes. The electrical components had already been pre-tested. They could not be tested again. The first part of the bomb was now live.

CHAPTER 27

Data Fusion

I've had my say, Bart." Jones said on the way to the airport.

"That bad?"

"The crew hates him - the training they just went through didn't help. Hey, I was there, okay? I was in with the sonar guys, in the simulator, and he was there, and I wouldn't want to work for him. He almost yelled at me."

"Oh?" That surprised Mancuso.

"Yeah, he said something that I didn't like - something plain wrong, skipper - and I called him on it, and you should have seen his reaction. Shit, I thought he'd have a stroke or something. And he was wrong, Bart. It was my tape. He was hassling his people for not cueing on something that wasn't there, okay? It was one of my trick tapes, and they saw that it was bogus, but he didn't and he started raisin' hell. That's a good sonar department. He doesn't know how to use it, but he sure likes to kibbitz like he does. Anyway, after he left, the guys started talking, okay? That isn't the only bunch he gives a hard time to. I hear the engineers are going nuts, trying to keep this clown happy. Is it true they maxed an ORSE?"

Mancuso nodded, despite the fact he didn't like hearing this. "They came within a whisker of setting a record."

"Well, the guy doesn't want a record, he wants a perfect. He wants to redefine what perfect is. I'm telling you, man, if I was stuck on that boat, after the first cruise the first thing up through the hatch would be my sea bag. I'd fuckin' desert before I worked for that guy!" Jones paused. He'd gone too far. "I caught the signal his XO gave you; I even thought he might have been a little out of line, maybe. I was wrong. That's one very loyal XO. Ricks hates one of his JOs, the kid does tracking-party duty. The quartermaster who's breaking him in - Ensign Shaw, I think his name is - says he's a real good kid, but the skipper's riding him like a broke-down horse."