"I'll contact the Secretary General and brief her," promised Sandecker. "If Levant moves as fast as he did to save Rudi, I suspect you'll be explaining the situation face-to face with him before breakfast in your time zone."
Ninety minutes after Sandecker's call to Hala Kamil and General Bock, Colonel Levant and his men and equipment were in the air and winging over the Atlantic toward a French air force base outside of Algiers.
General Hugo Bock arranged the maps and satellite photos on his desk and picked up an antique magnifying glass that had been given to him by his grandfather when he collected stamps as a young boy. The glass was highly polished without a flaw, and when adjusted to his eyes, enlarged the image it was trained upon without distortion around the circular edges. The piece had traveled with Bock all during his army career as a kind of good luck charm.
He took a sip of coffee and began examining the area inside the small circles he'd marked on the maps and photographs that indicated the approximate location of Tebezza. Though Pitt's description of the mine site, relayed to Bock from Sandecker by fax, was a rough estimate, the General's eye soon zeroed in on the landing strip and the vague road that led off through the narrow canyon splitting the high, rocky plateau.
This fellow Pitt, he thought, was most observant.
The man must have memorized what few landmarks he had seen during his epic trek across the desert into Algeria and backtracked them in his mind's eye to the mine.
Bock began to study the terrain of the surrounding desert and did not like what he saw. The mission to rescue Gunn from the Gao airport had been relatively simple. Launched from an Egyptian military base near Cairo, the UN force had only to swoop in and seize the Gao airport, retrieve Gunn, and be on their way. Tebezza was a much tougher nut to crack.
Levant's team would have to land at the desert airstrip, travel nearly 20 kilometers to the mine entrance, assault and secure a maze of tunnels and caverns, transport God knows how many prisoners back to the airstrip, load everyone on board, and take off.
The critical problem was too much time on the ground. The transport was a sitting duck and invited attack by Kazim's air force. The time involved in a round trip of 40 kilometers over a primitive desert road considerably raised the odds of failure.
The attack could not rely purely on split-timing. There were too many unknown variables. Preventing any outside communication was critical. Bock could not see how the operation could be accomplished in less than one and a half hours minimum. Two could spell disaster.
His fist cracked the desk. "Damn!" he uttered harshly to himself. "No time for preparation, no time for planning. An emergency mission to save lives. Hell, we'll probably lose more than we save."
After looking at the operation from every angle, Bock sighed and dialed his desk phone. Hala Kamil's secretarial aide put him right through.
"Yes, General," she said. "I did not expect to hear from you so soon. Is there a problem with the rescue mission?"
"A number of them, I'm afraid, Madam Secretary. We're stretched far too thin on this one. Colonel Levant is going to need backup."
"I'll authorize whatever additional UN forces you require."
"We have none to spare," explained Bock. "My remaining forces are on security duty at the Syrian-Israeli border or performing civilian rescue operations during the unrest and rioting inside India. Colonel Levant's backup will have to come from outside the UN."
There was a moment of silence as Hala assembled her thoughts. "This is most difficult," she said finally. "I'm not sure who I can turn to."
"What about the Americans?"
"Unlike his predecessors, their new President is most reluctant to interfere in the problems of third world nations. As a point of fact, it was he who requested that I authorize you to save the two men from NUMA."
"Why was I not informed?" Bock asked.
"Admiral Sandecker could provide us with no intelligence as to their exact whereabouts. While waiting for leads, they escaped on their own, making any rescue attempt unnecessary."
"Tebezza will not be a swift and sure operation," Bock said grimly.
"Can you guarantee me success?" asked Hala.
"I'm confident in the ability of my men, Madam Secretary, but I cannot make any guarantees. If anything, I fear the cost in casualties will be high."
"We cannot sit back and do nothing," Hala said solemnly. "Dr. Hopper and his team of scientists are members of the UN. It is our duty to save our own people."
"I quite agree," said Bock. "But I'd feel more secure if we could count on a backup force should Colonel Levant become trapped by Malian military forces."
"Perhaps the British or the French will be more willing--"
"The Americans can mount a more rapid response," Bock interrupted. "If I had my way, I would demand their Delta Force."
Hala went quiet, reluctant to give a concession, knowing the Chief Executive of the United States would prove stubborn and noncommittal. "I will talk with the President and present our case," Hala said resignedly. "I can do no more."
"Then I shall inform Colonel Levant there is no room for misjudgment or error, and that he can expect no help."
"Perhaps he will benefit from luck."
Bock breathed deeply. He could feel a cold chill of apprehension down his spine. "Whenever I banked on luck, Madam Secretary, something always went terribly wrong."
St. Julien Perlmutter was sitting in his immense library that housed thousands of books, most neatly arranged on varnished mahogany shelves. At least two hundred, however, were haphazardly stacked and scattered loosely around the Persian carpet or piled on a badly worn rolltop desk. He sat with slippered feet propped on the untidy desktop reading a seventeenth-century manuscript while dressed in his uniform of the day, silk pajamas under a paisley robe.
Perlmutter was a legendary expert on maritime history. His collection of historical records and literature on ships and the sea was considered the finest in the world. Museum curators around the nation would have happily given any limb he requested or a blank check to obtain his massive library. But money mattered little to a man with a fifty-million dollar inheritance, except to purchase additional rare books about the sea he didn't already own.
Love of women didn't come close to his love of research. If any man or woman could passionately give an hour lecture on any shipwreck ever recorded, it was St. Julien Perlmutter. Every salvager and treasure hunter in Europe and America sooner or later showed up on his doorstep for guidance.
A monster of a man, he weighed nearly 181 kilograms, or 400 pounds. He was a product of gourmet food and drink and little or no exercise beyond picking up a book and opening its pages. He had merry sky-blue eyes and a red face buried under a huge gray beard.
His phone rang, and he pushed aside several opened books to reach it. "Perlmutter here."
"Julien, it's Dirk Pitt."
"Dirk, my boy," he fairly shouted. "A long time since I've heard your voice."
"Can't be more than three weeks."
"Who counts the hours when one is on the track of a shipwreck," he laughed.
"Certainly not you or I"
"Why don't you hop over for a bite of my famous Crepes Perlmutter?"
"I'm afraid they'd get cold by the time I arrived," Pitt replied.
"Where are you?"
"Algiers."
Perlmutter snorted. "What are you doing in that dreadful place?"
"Among other things, I'm interested in a shipwreck."
"In the Med off North Africa?"
"No, in the Sahara Desert."
Perlmutter knew Pitt too well to know he was joking. "I'm familiar with the legend of a ship in the California desert above the Sea of Cortez, but I'm not aware of one in the Sahara."
"I've run across three different references to it," Pitt explained. "One source was an old American desert rat who was looking for a Confederate ironclad called the Texas. He swore it steamed up a now dry river and became lost in the sand. Supposed
ly it was carrying gold from the Confederate treasury."
"Where do you find them?" Perlmutter laughed. "What sort of desert weed was this fellow smoking?"
"He also claimed that Lincoln was on board."
"Now you've gone from the ridiculous to pure humbug.'"
"Strange as it sounds, I believed him. And then. I found two other sources for the legend. One was an old rock painting in a cave that showed what had to be a Confederate design warship. The other was a reference to a sighting in a log book I found in Kitty Mannock's airplane."
"Hold on a minute," Perlmutter said skeptically. "Whose airplane?"
"Kitty Mannock."
"You found her! My God, she vanished over sixty years ago. You really discovered her crash site?"
"Al Giordino and I stumbled on her body and the wreck of the plane in a hidden ravine while we were crossing the desert."
"Congratulations!" Perlmutter boomed. "You've just cleared up one of aviation's most famous mysteries."
"Pure luck on our part," Pitt admitted.
"Who's paying for this call?"
"The U.S. embassy in Algiers."
"In that case, hold the line. I'll be right back." Perlmutter hefted his bulk from the desk chair, ambled over to a bookshelf, and scanned its contents for a few seconds. Finding the book he was looking for, he pulled it out, returned to the desk, and thumbed through the pages. Then he retrieved the phone. "You did say the name of the ship was the Texas?"
"Yes, that's it."
"An ironclad ram," Perlmutter recited. "She was built at the Rocketts naval yard in Richmond and launched in March of 1865, just a month before the war ended, 190-foot length with a 40-foot beam. Twin engines, twin screws, drawing 11 feet of water, 6-inch armor. Her battery consisted of two 100-pound Blakelys and two 9-inch, 64pounders. Speed, 14 knots." Perlmutter paused. "You get all that?"
"She sounds like a pretty powerful ship for her day."
"Yes indeed, and about twice as fast as any other armored vessel in both the Union and Confederate navies."
"What was her history?"
"Pretty short," answered Perlmutter. "Her one and only appearance in combat was an epic running fight down the James River through an entire Union navy fleet and past the forts in Hampton Roads. Badly damaged, she escaped into the Atlantic and was never seen again."
"Then her disappearance was a reality," said Pitt.
"Yes, but hardly an unnatural phenomenon. Since none of the Confederate ironclads were built for other than river and harbor duty, they were unsafe for ocean passage. It was generally thought she floundered in rough water and sank."
"You think it possible she could have crossed the ocean to West Africa and steamed up the Niger River?"
"The Atlanta is the only other Confederate ironclad I recall that tried to cross open water. She was captured during a fight with two Union monitors on Wassaw Sound in Georgia. About a year after the war she was sold to the King of Haiti for his navy. She left Chesapeake Bay for the Caribbean and vanished. Crews that served on her claimed she took on water even in mild weather."
"And yet the old prospector swore French colonists and natives handed down stories of an iron monster without sails going up the Niger."
"Do you want me to check it out."
"Could you?"
"I'm hooked already," said Perlmutter "I see another little enigma that makes the Texas so interesting."
"What's that?" asked Pitt.
"I'm looking at the bible of Civil War navies," replied Perlmutter slowly. "They all list several or more references for additional research. The poor Texas has no references at all. It's almost as if someone meant for her to be forgotten."
Pitt and Giordino discreetly left the American embassy through the lobby of the passport office, stepped out onto the street, and hailed a taxi. Pitt gave the driver directions written down in French by an embassy aide and settled back as the taxi wove through the main square past the city's picturesque mosques with their towering minarets. Their luck of the draw was a hyper driver who constantly honked and cursed the crowds of pedestrians and heavy auto traffic that flowed blissfully through stop lights and past policemen who showed little interest in controlling the mess.
At the main thoroughfare that paralleled the busy waterfront, the driver swung south and drove to the city's outskirts where he stopped in a winding alley as instructed. Pitt paid him off and waited until the taxi turned out of sight. In less than a minute, a French air force staff car pulled up, a 605 Peugeot diesel sedan. They climbed into the back seat without any acknowledgment from the uniformed driver, who accelerated down the alley before Giordino closed the rear door.
Ten kilometers later, the car stopped at the main gate of a military airfield flying the tricolor over the sentry house. The security guard took one look at the Peugeot and nodded it through as he threw a sharp French salute with the palm facing outward. At the entrance to the tarmac the driver stopped and inserted the staff of a checkered flag into a socket mounted on the left front fender.
"Don't tell me," said Giordino. "I'm keen to guess. We're the grand marshals in a parade."
Pitt laughed. "Have you forgotten your air force days? Any vehicle that drives across the flight line has to fly an authorization flag."
The Peugeot rolled by a long row of Mirage 2000 delta wing fighters being serviced by their ground crews. One end of the flight line held a squadron of AS-332 Super Puma helicopters that looked as if they were designed by a myopic Buck Rogers. Built to carry air-to-surface missiles, they did not have the killer look of most other attack helicopters.
The driver continued to the deserted end of a secondary runway and parked. They sat there waiting, Giordino promptly dozing off under the comfort of the staff car's air conditioning, while Pitt casually read an embassy copy of the Wall Street Journal.
Fifteen minutes later a big airbus silently banked out of the west and touched down. Neither Pitt nor Giordino was aware of the aircraft's approach until they heard the screech of its tires hitting the concrete runway. Giordino came awake and Pitt folded up his paper as the plane braked and then slowly turned on one wheel until it had rotated 180 degrees. As soon as the huge tires rolled to a stop, the driver of the Peugeot shifted in gear and drove up within 5 meters of the rear of the aircraft.
Pitt observed that the entire airbus was painted a light desert tan, and he noted the indistinguishable markings on its surfaces that had been painted over. A woman wearing desert combat fatigues with a patch on one sleeve, signifying the UN world symbol with a sword through it, dropped from a hatch in the aircraft's belly between the huge landing gear. She double-timed over to the staff car and opened the rear door.
"Please to follow me," she said in English heavily coated with Spanish. As the car drove away, the UN tactical team member led them under the bulbous fuselage and gestured for them to climb inside. They entered the lower cargo bay of the airbus and stepped toward a narrow stairwell that rose to the main cabin.
Giordino paused and glanced at three armored personnel carriers that sat in a row, squat and low, topping out at less than 2 meters. Then he stared in rapt fascination at the heavily armed dune buggy used in the rescue of Gunn at Gao.
"Enter an off-road race with this thing," he said admiringly, "and no competitor would dare pass you."
"It does look pretty intimidating," Pitt agreed.
An officer was waiting for them when they surfaced in the main cabin. "Captain Pembroke-Smythe," he introduced himself. "Jolly good of you to come. Colonel Levant is waiting for you in the planning room."
"You're obviously English," said Giordino.
"Yes, you'll find us a rather mixed lot," Pembroke-Smythe said cheerfully as he swung the end of a swagger stick around the cabin at three dozen men and three women engaged in various stages of cleaning and assembling weapons and equipment. "Some creative soul thought the UN should have its own tactical unit to go where international governments fear to tread, so to speak. Secret warriors
we're sometimes called. Each highly trained by his own country's special forces. All volunteers. Some are permanent, a few of us are simply attached on a year's tour of duty."
They were as tough and rugged a group as Pitt had ever seen. Bodies hardened through exercise and brutal training, they were quiet, purposeful professionals with all the skills and intelligence demanded by covert actions. There wasn't one that Pitt cared to meet in a dark alley, including the women.
Pembroke-Smythe ushered them into a compartment that was the command center of the aircraft. The area was spacious and filled with an array of electronic systems. One operator monitored communications equipment while another was in the act of programming data for the approaching mission to Tebezza into a computer.
Colonel Levant graciously came from behind a desk and greeted Pitt and Giordino at the door. He wasn't sure what to expect. He had read extensive dossiers on both men, supplied by the United Nations International Intelligence Service, and could not help but be impressed with their accomplishments. He also read a brief report of their trials in the desert after escaping Tebezza and had to admire their tenacity.
Levant had previously expressed deep reservations about taking Pitt and Giordino along but quickly realized that without their guidance into the mines the operation could be in deep jeopardy. They appeared gaunt and showed the results of long exposure to the sun, but seemed in amazingly good condition as he shook their hands.
"After studying your exploits, gentlemen, I've looked forward to meeting you. I am Colonel Marcel Levant."
"Dirk Pitt, and my nasty little friend here is Al Giordino."
"After reading a report of your ordeal I expected you to be carried on board on stretchers, but I'm pleased to see you look quite fit."
"Liquids, vitamins, and plenty of exercise," said Pitt, smiling, "have their benefits."
"Don't forget fun in the sun," muttered Giordino.
Levant did not respond to the humor but stared past them at Pembroke-Smythe. "Captain, please alert the men and order the chief pilot to prepare for immediate takeoff." Then he turned his attention back to the men standing before him. "If what you say is correct, time is measured in lives. We can run over details for the mission while we're in the air."
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