Sahara

by Clive Cussler

  Their hiking time became shorter and the rest stops longer and more frequent. They plodded on, their heads down, silent. Talking only made their mouths drier. They were prisoners of the sand, held captive by a cage measured only by distance. There were few distinct landmarks except for the jagged peaks of a low range of rock that reminded Pitt of the vertebra of a dead monster. It was a land where each kilometer looked exactly like the last and time ran without meaning as if turning on a treadmill.

  After 20 kilometers, the plains met a plateau. The new sun was about to rise when they put it to a vote and decided to climb the steep escarpment to the top before resting for the day. Four hours later, when they finally struggled over the edge, the sun had risen well above the horizon. The effort had taken what little reserves they had left. Their hearts pounded madly after the torturous strain of the strenuous ascent, leg muscles fiery with pain, chests heaving as starving lungs demanded more air.

  Pitt was exhausted and afraid to sit down for fear he could never regain his feet again. He stood weakly, swaying on the ledge, and gazed around as if he was a captain on the bridge of a ship. If the plain below was a featureless wasteland, the surface of the plateau was a sun-blasted, grotesque nightmare. A sea of confused, twisted tumbles of scorched red and black rock, interspersed with rusting obelisk-like outcroppings of iron ore, spread out to the east directly in their path. It was like staring at a city destroyed centuries ago by a nuclear explosion.

  "What part of Hades is this?" Giordino rasped.

  Pitt pulled out Fairweather's map, now badly wrinkled and beginning to split apart, and flattened it across his knee. "He shows it on the map, but didn't write in a name."

  "Then from this moment on, it shall be known as Giordino's hump."

  Pitt's parched lips cracked into a smile. "If you want to register the name, all you have to do is apply with the International Geological Institute."

  Giordino collapsed on the rocky ground and stared vacantly across the plateau. "How far have we come?"

  "About 120 kilometers."

  "Still 60 to go to the Trans-Saharan Track."

  "Except that we ran up against a manifestation of Pitt's law."

  "What law is that?"

  "He who follows another man's map comes up 20 kilometers short."

  "You sure we didn't take a wrong turn back there?"

  Pitt shook his head. "We haven't traveled in a straight line."

  "So how much farther?"

  "I reckon another 80 kilometers."

  Giordino looked at Pitt through sunken eyes that were reddened from fatigue and spoke through lips cracked and swollen. "That's another 50 miles. We've already come the last 70 without a drop of water."

  "Seems more like a thousand," Pitt said hoarsely.

  "Well," Giordino muttered. "I have to say the issue is in doubt. I don't think I can make it."

  Pitt looked up from the map. "I never thought I'd hear that from you."

  "I've never experienced total agonizing thirst before. I can remember when it was a daily sensation. Now it's become more of an obsession than a craving."

  "Two more nights and we'll dance on the track."

  Giordino slowly shook his head. "Wishful thinking. We don't have the stamina to walk another 50 miles without water in this heat, not as dehydrated as we are."

  Pitt was haunted by the constant vision of Eva slaving in the mines, being beaten by Melika. "They'll all die if we don't get through."

  "You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip," said Giordino. "It's a miracle we made it this far-" He sat up and shaded his eyes. Then he pointed excitedly toward a jumbled mass of huge rocks. "There, between those rocks, doesn't that look like the small entrance to a cave?"

  Pitt's eyes followed his pointing hand. There was indeed a black opening amid the rocks. He took Giordino's hand and pulled him to his feet. "See, our luck's changing for the better already. Nothing like a nice, cool cave to while away the hottest time of the day."

  Already the heat was suffocating as it reflected off the red-brown rocks and iron outcroppings. They felt as if they were walking through the cinders of a barbecue. Without sunglasses they screwed their eyes up and covered them with the cloth of their makeshift turbans, peering down through tiny slits, seeing only the ground a few meters in front of them.

  They had to climb a pile of loose boulders to the entrance of the cave, careful not to touch the rock with their bare hands or they would be sorely burnt. A small wall of sand had drifted across the floor of the entrance and they knelt and scooped it away with their hands. Pitt had to duck under the overhanging rock to enter the cave while Giordino waded through the sand while standing fully erect.

  They did not have to wait for their eyes to get used to the dim light. There was no dark zone. The cavern had not been carved by wind or water eroding their way through limestone. A huge mass of rocks had been stacked upon one another during a great Paleozoic upheaval of the earth, forming a hollow cavern. The center was lit by the sun's rays that passed through openings in the rocks above.

  As Pitt moved deeper into the interior, two large human figures loomed over him in the shadows. Instinctively, be stepped back, colliding with Giordino.

  "You just stepped on my foot," grunted Giordino.

  "Sorry." Pitt gestured up at a smooth wall where a figure was about to throw a spear at a buffalo. "I didn't expect company."

  Giordino looked over Pitt's shoulder at the spear thrower, stunned to face rock artwork in the most barren part of the world. He slowly peered around at a massive gallery of prehistoric and ancient art that displayed centuries of artistic styles of successive cultures.

  "Is this real?" he muttered.

  Pitt moved closer to the mysterious rock paintings and examined a 3-meter-high figure with a mask that sprouted flowers from its head and shoulders. The thirst and fatigue dropped away as he stared in awe. "The art is genuine all right. I wish I was an archaeologist and could interpret the various styles and cultures. The earliest paintings seem to begin at the back of the cave, and then the overlapping cultures work chronologically forward to more recent times."

  "How can you tell?"

  "Ten to twelve thousand years ago the Sahara had a moist and tropical climate. Plant life blossomed. It was far more livable than it is now." He nodded at a group of figures surrounding and thrusting spears at a giant, wounded buffalo with enormous horns. "This must be the earliest painting because it shows hunters killing a buffalo almost the size of an elephant that's been long extinct."

  Pitt moved to another piece of artwork that covered several square meters. "Here you can see herders with cattle," he said, gesturing at the images with his hands. "The pastoral era began about 5000 B.C. This later-style art shows more creative composition and an eye for detail."

  "A hippopotamus," said Giordino, staring at a colossal drawing that covered one entire side of a flattened rock. "This part of the Sahara can't have seen one of these for a while."

  "Not in three thousand years anyway. Hard to visualize this area once was a vast grassland that supported life from ostrich to antelope to giraffe."

  As they moved on, and the passage of time in the Sahara unrolled across the rock, Giordino observed, "About here it looks like the local artists stopped drawing cattle and the vegetation."

  "Eventually the rains died away and the land began to dry out," lectured Pitt, recalling a long forgotten course in ancient history. "After four thousand years of uncontrolled grazing the vegetation was gone and the desert began to take over."

  Giordino moved from the inner recesses of the cavern toward the entrance, stopping in front of another painting. "This one shows a chariot race."

  "People from the Mediterranean introduced horses and chariots sometime before 1000 B.C.," explained Pitt. "But I had no idea they penetrated this deep into the desert."

  "What comes next, teacher?"

  "The camel period," answered Pitt, standing in front of a long painting of a caravan depicting near
ly sixty camels strung out in an S shape. "They were brought into Egypt after the Persian conquest of 525 B.C. Using camels, the Roman caravans pushed clear across the desert from the coast to Timbuktu. Camels have been here ever since because of their incredible endurance."

  In a more recent period in time the paintings with camels became more crude and rudimentary than earlier art styles. Pitt paused in front of another series of paintings in the rich gallery of ancient art, studying a finely drawn battle that was engraved into the rock and then painted in a magnificent red ocher color. Bearded warriors with square beards, lifting spears and shields in the air, rode in two-wheel chariots pulled by four horses, attacking an army of black archers whose arrows rained from the sky.

  "Okay, Mr. smart guy," said Giordino, "explain this one."

  Pitt stepped over, his eyes following Giordino's gaze. For a few seconds Pitt stared at the drawing on the rock, mystified. The image was drawn in a linear, child-like style. A boat rode on a river bounding with fish and crocodiles. It was hard to imagine the hell outside the cave was once a fertile region where crocodiles once swam in what were now dry riverbeds.

  He moved closer, disbelief reflected in his eyes. It was not the crocodiles or the fish that gripped his concentration; it was the vessel floating in swirls that indicated the current of a river. The craft should have been a depiction of an Egyptian-style boat, but it was a totally different design, far more modern. The shape above the water was a truncated pyramid, a pyramid with the top chopped off and parallel to the base. Round tubes protruded from the sides. A number of small figures stood in various poses around the deck under what appeared to be a large flag stiffened by a breeze. The ship stretched nearly 4 meters across the coarse surface of the rock wall.

  "An ironclad," Pitt said incredulously. "A Confederate States Navy ironclad."

  "It can't be, not here," said Giordino, completely off balance.

  "It can and it is," Pitt said flatly. "It must be the one the old prospector told us about."

  "Then it isn't a myth."

  "The local artists couldn't have painted something they'd never seen. It's even flying the correct Confederate battle ensign that was adopted near the end of the Civil War."

  "Maybe a former rebel naval officer wandering the desert after the war painted it."

  "He wouldn't have copied local art style," Pitt said thoughtfully. "There is nothing in this painting that reflects Western influence."

  "What do you make of the two figures standing on the casemate?" asked Giordino.

  "One obviously is a ship's officer. Probably the captain."

  "And the other," Giordino whispered, his face set in disbelief.

  Pitt examined the figure next to the captain from head to toe. "Who do you think it is?"

  "I don't trust my sunburned eyes. I was hoping you'd tell me."

  Pitt's mind struggled to adjust to a set of circumstances that was completely foreign to him. "Whoever the artist," Pitt murmured in bewildered fascination, "he certainly painted a remarkable likeness of Abraham Lincoln."

  <<42>>

  Resting all day in the cool of the cave rejuvenated Pitt and Giordino to the point that they felt physically able to attempt a go for broke, nonstop crossing of the naked and hostile land to the Trans-Saharan Track. All thoughts and conjectures over the legendary ironclad in the desert were shelved temporarily in the recesses of their minds as they mentally prepared themselves for the almost impossible ordeal.

  Late in the afternoon Pitt stepped outside the cave into the unremitting fire from the sun to set up his pipe for another compass reading. Only a few minutes in that open oven and he felt as if he was melting like a wax candle. He picked out a large rock that protruded from the horizon about 5 kilometers due east as a goal for the first hour of walking.

  When he returned to the cool comfort of the cave of murals he did not have to feel the exhaustion and suffering or realize how weak he had become. His misery was all reflected in Giordino's hollow eyes, the filthy clothes, and grizzled hair, but especially in the look of a man who had come to the end of his rope.

  They had endured countless dangers together, but Pitt had never seen Giordino with the look of defeat before. The psychological stress was winning over physical toughness. Giordino was pragmatic to the core. He met setbacks and hard knocks with characteristic stubbornness, assaulting them head-on. Unlike Pitt, he could not use the power of his imagination to banish the torture of thirst and the screaming pain of a body begging to wind down from lack of food and water. He could not bring himself to sink into a dreamworld where torment and despair were substituted with swimming pools, tall tropical drinks, and endless buffet tables piled high with appetizing delicacies.

  Pitt could see that tonight was the last. If they were to beat the desert at its deadly game, they would have to redouble their determination to survive. Another twenty-four hours without water would finish them off. No strength would be left to go on. He was grimly afraid that the Trans-Saharan Track was a good 50 kilometers too far.

  He gave Giordino another hour of rest before prodding him out of a dead sleep. "We have to leave now if we want to make any distance before the next sun."

  Giordino opened his eyes into mere slits and struggled to a sitting position. "Why not stay in here another day and just take it easy?"

  "Too many men, women, and children are counting on us to save ourselves so we can return and save them. Every hour counts."

  The fleeting thought of the suffering women and frightened children down in the Tebezza gold mines was enough to wake Giordino from the heavy fog of sleep and bring him dazedly to his feet. Then at Pitt's urging, they feebly managed a few minutes of stretching exercises to loosen their aching muscles and stiff joints. One last look at the astounding rock paintings, their eyes lingering on the image of the rebel ironclad, and they set out across the great, sloping plateau, Pitt leading off toward the rock he'd pinpointed to the east.

  This was it. Except for short rest stops, they had to forge on until they reached the track and were found by a passing motorist, hopefully one with a hefty supply of water. Whatever happened, searing heat, sand driven by the wind that blasted skin, difficult terrain, they had to keep going until they dropped or found rescue.

  After having done its damage for the day, the sun slipped away and a swollen half moon took its place. Not a breath of air stirred the sand and the desert went profoundly still and silent. The desolate landscape seemed to reach into infinity, and the rocks protruding from the plateau like dinosaur bones still gave off shimmering waves from the day's heat. Nothing moved except the shadows that crept and lengthened behind the rocks like wraiths coming to life in the evening's fading light.

  They walked on for seven hours. The rock used as a compass point came and went as the night wore on and became colder. Dreadfully weak and wasted, they began to shiver uncontrollably. The extreme ups and downs in temperature made Pitt feel as if he was experiencing seasonal changes, with the heat of day as summer, the evening as fall, midnight as winter, morning as spring.

  The change in terrain came so gradually, he didn't realize the rocks and iron outcroppings had grown smaller and vanished completely. Only when he stopped to glance up at the stars for a heading and then looked ahead did he see they had come off the gradual slope of the plateau onto a flat plain cut by a series of wadis, or dry streams, carved out by long dead water flows or forgotten flash floods.

  Their progress slowed with fatigue and tapered to a plodding stumble. The weariness, the sheer exhaustion, were like weights they were forced to carry on their shoulders. They walked and kept on walking, their misery deepening. Yet they made slow and even progress toward the east on what little strength they could spare. They were so weak that after the rest stops they could hardly rise to their feet and take up the struggle again.

  Pitt kept himself going with images of how O'Bannion and Melika were treating the women and children in that hell pit of a mine. He had visions of Melika's tho
ng viciously striking helpless victims and slaves, sick from deprivation and overwork. How many had died in the days since he had escaped? Had Eva been carried to the chamber of corpses? He might have pushed aside such dire thoughts, but be let them linger since they only served to spur him to become a man beside himself, ignoring the suffering and continuing with the cold fortitude of a machine.

  Pitt found it odd that he couldn't remember when he last spit. Though he sucked on small pebbles to relieve the relentless thirst, he could not even recall when he felt saliva in his mouth. His tongue had swelled like a dry sponge and felt as if it was dusted with alum, and yet he found he could still swallow.