Through the haze he recalled a great booming sound and vibration. The sixteen-inch guns, he figured. But how often had they fired? How long had he been out? Sounds of small-arms fire rattled from outside. Who was fighting whom? He dismissed the thoughts almost as they occurred: they really didn’t matter. He had his own problems to solve.

He moved twenty feet down the passageway, stopped, and pulled a flashlight from one pocket and a folded paper containing the Iowa’s deck plans from another. It took him nearly two full minutes to pinpoint his exact location. Looking at the maze that made up the internal arrangement of a battleship was like looking at a cutaway view of a skyscraper lying on its side.

Tracking out a path to the forward shell magazines, he moved soundlessly along the passageway. He had covered but a short distance when the ship rocked under a barrage of solid blows. Dust accumulated during the Iowa’s long years in mothballs erupted in smothering clouds. Pitt flung out his arms to maintain his balance, lurched, and grabbed the frame of a door that had opportunely swung open. He stood there choking back the dust while the tremors subsided.

He almost missed it, would have missed it if an indefinable curiosity hadn’t tugged at his mind. Not a curiosity, really; rather an incongruity caught within his peripheral vision. He beamed the flashlight on a brown shoe-an expensive, handcrafted brown shoe-and saw it was attached to the leg of a black man stylishly attired in a business suit with vest. His hands were tied wide apart by ropes wrapped to overhead pipes.

61

Hiram Lusana could not distinguish the features of the man standing in the doorway of his prison. He looked large, but not as large as Fawkes. That was all Lusana could tell; the flashlight in the stranger’s hands blinded him.

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“I take it you lost the ship’s popularity contest,” came a voice that sounded more friendly than hostile.

The dark form behind the light moved closer and Lusana felt his bonds being loosened. “Where are you taking me?”

“Nowhere. But if you value social security in your old age, I suggest you get the hell off this boat before it’s blown to pieces.”

“Who are you?”

“Not that it matters, the name’s Pitt.”

“Are you part of Captain Fawkes’s crew?”

“No, I’m free-lance.”

“I don’t understand.”

Pitt untied Lusana’s left hand and started on the other without answering.

“You are an American,” said Lusana, more confused than ever. “Have you taken the ship from the South Africans?”

“We’re working on it,” said Pitt, sorely wishing he’d brought along a knife.

“Then you don’t know who I am.”

“Should I?”

“My name is Hiram Lusana. I am the leader of the African Army of Revolution.”