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froners and shipbuilders would not have recognized the Lady Flah Her funnel had been reconstructed and every square inch of her repainted To complete the facade, the hull was streaked with simulated rust

Her once-beautiful superstructure, staterooreat sheets of fiberboard asseo containers

Where the cruise liner's e featurrs were impossible to remove or hide, they were squared ooden frork and canvas and painted with fake hatches and portholes

Before the lights of Punta del Este had dropped astern, every crew er was drafted into forced labor parties and driven to the point of exhaustion by Ammar's armed hijackers The ship's officers, cruise directors, the stewards, chefs and waiters, and ordinary deckhands-they all ha the prefabricated containers through the night

None of the VIP guests was spared Senator Pitt and Hala Ka with their cabinet members and staff aides, were all pressed into service as carpenters and painters

By the time the cruise liner rendezvoused with the General Bravo, the counterfeit cargo containers were in place and the ship sported a nearly identical configuration and color scheme

froh could have easily passed as the container ship An overhead inspection from the air would have revealed few discrepancies Only a close exaht have detected obvious differences

Captain Juu Machado and eighteen crewmen from the General Bravo transferred to the cruise liner after opening all seacocks and cargo doors and detonating strategically placed charges throughout the hull

With a series of muffled explosions the container ship slipped beneath the sea with only a few faint gurgles of protest

When the eastern sky began to brighten with a new sun, the disguised Lady Fla south toward the advertised destination of the General Bravo But when the port of San Pablo, Argentina, was forty kilometers off the starboard beam, the liner bypassed the port and continued due south

Aenious scheme had worked Three days had passed, and the world was still fooled into believing the Lady Fla somewhere on the bottom of the sea

Ammar sat at a chart table and ht line to his final destination and ly coarette, exhaling the smoke across the chart like a bank of mist

Sixteen hours, he reckoned Sixteentime without pursuit and the ship would be securely hidden without the slightest chance of detection

Captain Machado stepped into the chart roo a small tray on one hand "Would you like a cup of tea and a croissant?"

he asked in fluent English