Sahara

by Clive Cussler

  "She'll go," Pitt said resolutely.

  "What do you think she weighs?"

  "About 160 kilograms or 350 pounds."

  "What are we going to call her?" asked Giordino.

  "Call her?"

  "A name, she's got to have a name."

  Pitt nodded toward Kitty. "If we make it out of this pressure cooker, we'll owe it to her. How about the Kitty Mannock?"

  "Good choice."

  They babbled vaguely and sporadically, whispered voices in a great void of dead space, until they drifted off into a welcome sleep.

  The bleaching sun was probing the bottom of the ravine when they finally awoke. Just rising to their feet was a monumental task of will. They bid a silent goodbye to Kitty and then staggered to the front of their improvised hope of survival. Pitt tied two lengths of cable to the front of the land yacht and handed one to Giordino.

  "You feel up to it?"

  "Hell no," Giordino spat out of a shriveled mouth.

  Pitt grinned despite the pain from his cracked and bleeding lips. His eyes raked Giordino's, searching for the glow that would see them through. It was there, but very dim. "Race you to the top."

  Giordino swayed as though like a drunk in a wind storm, but he winked and gamely said, "Eat my dust, sucker." And then he slung the cable over his shoulder, leaned forward to take up the strain, and promptly fell on his face.

  The land yacht rolled as easily as a shopping cart across the tile floor of a supermarket and almost ran over him.

  He looked up at Pitt through red eyes, surprise on his sunburned face. "By God she moves light as a feather."

  "Of course, she had a pair of first-rate mechanics."

  With no more talk they pulled their hand-built land yacht down the middle of the wash until they came to a slope that angled 30 degrees up to the surface of the dry lake.

  The climb was only 7 meters, but to men who were staring in the grave only eighteen hours before, the top edge of the slope looked like the summit of Mount Everest. They had not expected to live through another night, and yet here they were confronting what they were certain was the final obstacle between rescue or death.

  Pitt made the attempt first while Giordino rested. He clasped one of the tow cables around his waist and began crawling up the incline like a drunken ant, edging upward a few centimeters at a time. His body was but a terribly worn-out machine serving the demands of a mind that had only the thinnest grip on reality. His aching muscles protested with shooting agony. His arms and legs gave out early in the climb, but he forced them to carry on. His bloodshot eyes were almost closed from fatigue, his face deeply etched in suffering, lungs sucking in air with painful gasps, heart beating like a jackhammer under the inhuman strain.

  Pitt could not let himself stop. If he and Giordino died, all the poor souls slaving their lives away at Tebezza would die too, their true fate unknown to the outside world. He could not give up, collapse, and expire, not now, not this close to beating the old guy with the scythe. He ground his teeth together in a rage of tenacity and kept climbing.

  Giordino tried to shout words of encouragement, but all he could rasp out was an inaudible whisper.

  And then mercifully, Pitt's hands groped over the edge and he summoned the will to pull his battered body onto the dry lake. He lay there a faint shadow away from unconsciousness, aware of only his hoarse gasping breathing and a heart that felt as if it was going to pound its way through his rib cage.

  He wasn't sure how long he lay fully exposed under the baking sun until his breathing and heart slowed to something close to a regular pace. Finally, he pushed to his hands and knees and peered down the slope. Giordino was sitting comfortably in the shade of the wing sail, and managed a weak wave.

  "Ready to come up?" Pitt asked.

  Giordino wearily nodded, took hold of the tow cable, and pressed his body against the slope, feebly working his way upward. Pitt slung his end of the cable over his shoulder and used the leverage of his weight by leaning forward without exerting energy. Four minutes later, half crawling, half dragged by Pitt, Giordino rolled limply onto flat ground like a fish that had been reeled in after a long struggle against hook and line.

  "Now comes the fun part," Pitt uttered weakly.

  "I'm not up to it," Giordino gasped.

  Pitt looked down at him. Giordino already looked dead. His eyes were closed, his face and ten-day beard powdered with white dust. If he could not help Pitt pull the land yacht out of the ravine both of them would die this day.

  Pitt knelt down and struck him sharply across the face. "Don't quit on me now," he muttered harshly. "How do you expect to score with Massarde's gorgeous piano player if you don't get off your butt and pitch in."

  Giordino's eyes fluttered open and he rubbed a hand across his dust-coated cheek. With a supreme effort of will, he hauled himself to his feet and tottered drunkenly. He stared at Pitt without any malice at all, and despite his misery, he managed a grin. "I hate myself for being so predictable."

  "Good thing too."

  Like a team of emaciated mules in harness, they took up the tow cables and pitched forward, their bodies too weak to do much more than take a few plodding steps as their combined weight slowly but immeasurably pulled the land yacht up the slope. Their heads were bowed, backs hunched over, minds lost in the delirium of thirst. Progress was heartbreakingly slow.

  Soon they dropped to their knees and pitifully crawled forward. Giordino noticed that blood was dripping frog Pitt's hands where the cable had burned into his palms, but he was entirely oblivious to it. Then suddenly the cables slackened and the improvised land yacht was over the tore and had bumped into them. Fortunately Pitt had the foresight to tie down the rigging of the wind sail so its trailing edge was now pointing directly into a light wind and did not generate any driving force.

  After unclasping the tow cables, Pitt helped Giordino it to the fuselage until he dropped like a sack of potatoes in the forward seat. Then Pitt looked up at the thin strip of tell-tale cloth he'd tied in the rigging and threw a handful of sand in the air to pinpoint the wind direction. It was blowing out of the northwest.

  The moment of truth had arrived. He looked down at Giordino who made a listless forward gesture with one hand and spoke in a weak, husky whisper.

  "Move it out."

  Pitt leaned on the rear of the fuselage and pushed the craft from a standstill until it was moving slowly across the sand. After a few stumbling steps he fell limply into the rear seat. The wind was to the leeward behind his left shoulder, and he let out the sheet line and eased over the tiller so that he was carried on a downwind tack. He took in a little on the sheet line as the wind built up on the wing sail and the Kitty Mannock began to move on her own. Her speed picked up rapidly as Pitt took in a little more line.

  He glanced down at the aircraft compass, took a reading, and set his course, exhaustion and exhilaration flooding through his seemingly dusty arteries at the same time. He trimmed the wing sail as it flexed under the wind and soon the land yacht was whipping across the dry lake, her wheels kicking up trails of dust, in glorious silence at nearly 60 kilometers an hour.

  The thrill quickly reversed to near panic as Pitt overcorrected and suddenly there was daylight under the windward wheel. Higher it lifted in a condition known among land sailors as hiking. He had moved the sail too far into the wind, increasing power. Now he had to take corrective action to prevent the hike from capsizing the land yacht, a disaster in the making because neither he nor Giordino had the strength to right it again.

  He was almost at the point of no return when he eased the sheet lines and gently swung the tiller, sending the craft luffing to windward. He held his course and the hike settled and shallowed until the wheel was barely touching the ground.

  Pitt had sailed small boats when he was a boy growing up in Newport Beach, California, but certainly never at this speed. As he headed off the wind on a broad reach angle of 45 degrees, he began fine-trimming his huge wing sail
with the sheet lines and small steering corrections. A quick check of his compass heading told him it was time to tack on a new zigzag course eastward.

  As he began to feel more confident, he had to restrain himself from pushing and challenging the outside edge, the high speed line that divides control from an accident. He wasn't about to back off now, but discretion reminded him that the Kitty Mannock was not the most stable of land yachts, and she was held together with little more than sixty-year-old wire, cable, and spit.

  He settled back and kept a wary eye on the dust devils that swirled across the desolate lake. A sudden puff or gust out of nowhere and over they'd go, never to continue. Pitt well knew they were riding on luck. Another ravine, unseen until it was too late, or a rock that could tear off a runner, any one of a dozen catastrophes could leap at them from the merciless desert.

  She skidded and she yawed but the Kitty Mannock sped across the dry lake at speeds Pitt had not imagined the oddball craft was capable of. The head wind began driving sand into his face like buckshot. With a steadily increasing wind at his back he guessed they were reaching 85 kilometers an hour. After plodding across the desert wastes for days, it seemed as though they were skimming over the ground in a jet. He hoped against hope the Kitty Mannock would hang together.

  After half an hour, his stinging eyes swept the unvaried landscape ahead in search of an object to rest upon. Pitt's new worry was passing over the Trans-Saharan Track without recognizing it. An easy proposition since it was only a vague trail in the sand that ran from north to south. Miss it and they would virtually head out into the miraged immensity of the desert and beyond until it was too late to return.

  He saw no sign of vehicles, and the terrain became wanted again with rolling dunes. Had they crossed over the border into Algeria, he wondered. There was no way to tell. Any sign of the great caravans that had marched between the once lush Niger Valley and the Mediterranean with their cargos of gold, ivory, and slaves had long ago vanished into history without leaving debris of their passing. In their place, a few cars with tourists, trucks carrying parts and supplies, and the occasional army vehicle on patrol were all that sometimes rolled through the barren wilderness that God ignored.

  If Pitt had known that in reality the neat red line indicating the track on maps did not exist as such, and was a figment of cartographers' imaginations, he would have been extremely frustrated. The only true indications, if he were lucky enough to spot them, were scattered bones of animals, a solitary stripped vehicle, tire tracks that had not been covered by wind-blown sand, and a string of old oil drums spaced 4 kilometers apart, providing the latter hadn't been borrowed by passing nomads for reuse or resale in Gao.

  Then, near the horizon on his right, he saw a man-made object, a dark speck in a shimmering heat wave. Giordino saw it too and pointed toward it, the first sign of life from him since the land yacht was launched. The air was clear and transparent as glass. They had sailed off the dry lake, and no dust reared from the ground or swirled in the air. They distinguished the object now as the forsaken remains of a Volkswagen bus, stripped of every conceivable part that wasn't part of the body and frame. Only the shell was left, an ironic slogan sprayed on the side with a can of paint that read in English, "Where is Lawrence of Arabia when you need him?"

  Satisfied they had reached the track, Pitt jibed on a new course and swung north, beating to windward. The terrain had turned sandy with stretches of gravel. Occasionally they struck a soft patch, but the land yacht was too light to sink in and gracefully skimmed right over with only a slight drop in momentum.

  After ten minutes, Pitt spied an oil drum standing starkly on the horizon. Now he was positive they were speeding along the track, and he began a series of 2-kilometer tacks northward into Algeria.

  There was no further movement from Giordino. Pitt reached forward and shook his shoulder, but the head slowly leaned to one side before dropping forward, chin on chest. Giordino had finally lost his grip on consciousness and was drifting away. Pitt tried to shout, roughly shake his friend, but he couldn't find the strength. He could see the blackness growing around the edge of his own vision and knew he was only minutes away from blacking out.

  He heard what he thought was an engine off in the distance but saw nothing ahead and crossed it off to delirium. The sound grew louder and he vaguely recognized it as a diesel engine accompanied by the loud rumble of exhaust. Still there was no sign of the source. He was certain now oblivion was about to wash over him.

  Then came the great blast from an air horn, and Pitt turned his head weakly to one side. A big British-built Bedford truck and trailer was pulling alongside, the Arab driver staring down on the two figures in the land yacht with curious eyes and a wide toothy smile. Unknown to Pitt, the truck had overhauled them from the rear.

  The driver leaned out his window, cupped one hand to his mouth, and shouted, "Do you need help?"

  Pitt could only nod faintly.

  He had made no provisions for braking the boat to a stop. He made a languid attempt to pull the sheet line and bring the sail into the wind, but he only succeeded in turning the boat in a half circle. His senses weren't functioning properly and he badly misjudged a sudden gust. He let the sheet go but was too late. Wind and gravity took the craft away from him and it flipped over, tearing off runners and wind sail and throwing Pitt and Giordino's bodies out across the sand like limp, stuffed dolls in a cloud of dust and debris.

  The Arab driver veered next to them and stopped his truck. He leaped down from the cab and rushed over to the mess and stooped over the unconscious men. He immediately recognized their signs of dehydration and hurried back to the truck, returning with four plastic bottles of water.

  Pitt climbed from the hole of blackness almost immediately as he sensed liquid being splashed on his face and trickled through his half open mouth. The transformation was like a miracle: One minute he was dying and then after downing almost two gallons of water he became a reasonably fit, functioning human being again.

  Giordino's bone-dry body had returned to life too. It seemed incredible they could bounce back from sure death so quickly after soaking up a healthy supply of liquid.

  The Arab driver also offered them salt tablets and some dried dates. He had a dark and intelligent face and wore an unmarked baseball cap on his head. He sat on his haunches and watched the rejuvenation with great interest,

  "You sail your machine from Gao?" he asked.

  Pitt shook his head. "Fort Foureau," he lied. He still was not positive they were in Algeria. Nor could he trust the truck driver not to turn them into the nearest security police if he knew they had escaped from Tebezza. "Where exactly are we?"

  "In the middle of the Tanezrouft wasteland."

  "What country?"

  "Why Algeria, of course. Where did you think you were?"

  "Anywhere so long as it wasn't Mali."

  The Arab made a sour expression. "Bad people live in Mali. Bad government. They kill many people."

  "How far to the nearest telephone?" asked Pitt.

  "Adrar is 350 kilometers north. They have communications."

  "Is it a small village?"

  "No, Adrar is a large town, much progress. They have an airfield with regular passenger service to Algiers."

  "Are you heading in that direction?"

  "Yes, I drove a load of canned goods to Gao, and now I'm deadheading back to Algiers."

  "Can you give us a lift to Adrar?"

  "I would be honored."

  Pitt looked at the driver and smiled. "What is your name, my friend?"

  "Ben Hadi."

  Pitt shook the driver's hand warmly. "Ben Hadi," he said softly, "you don't know it, but by saving our lives you also saved the lives of a hundred others."

  <4>ECHOES OF THE ALAMO

  May 26, 1996

  Washington, D. C.

  <<44>>

  "They're out!" Hiram Yaeger shouted as he burst into Sandecker's office with Rudi Gunn at his heels.
>
  Sandecker, his mind lost on the budget of an undersea project, looked up blankly. "Out?"

  "Dirk and AI, they've crossed over the border into Algeria."

  Sandecker suddenly looked like a kid who was told Santa Claus was coming. "How do you know?"

  "They phoned from the airport near a desert town called Adrar," answered Gunn. "The connection was bad, but we understood them to say they were catching a commercial flight to Algiers. Once there, they would reestablish contact from our embassy."

  "Was there anything else?"

  Gunn glanced at Yaeger and nodded. "You were on the line with Dirk before I came on."

  "Pill's voice kept fading," said Yaeger. "Algeria's desert phone system is only two steps above tin cans tied to waxed string. If I heard him correctly, he insisted that you request a Special Forces Team to return with him to Mali."