Sahara

by Clive Cussler

  "It's my job," she murmured. "Helping to save lives is all I've ever wanted to do since I was a little girl."

  "Doesn't leave much time for romance, does it?"

  "We're both prisoners of our occupations."

  The lookout came over then. "You'll have to get down below out of sight now," she said as if embarrassed. "We can't be too careful now, can we?"

  Eva pulled Pitt's beard-stubbly face down to hers and whispered again in his ear. "Would you think me wanton if I said I want you?"

  He smiled. "I'm an easy mark for wanton girls."

  She made a small gesture at brushing back her hair and straightening out her dirty and tattered clothing. "But certainly not one who hasn't bathed in two weeks and is as skinny as an underfed alley cat."

  "Oh I don't know. Unwashed skinny women have been known to bring out the animal in me."

  Without another word, Pitt led her down to the parade ground and into a small storeroom off of what was once the kitchen and mess hall. It was empty except for a wooden keg of iron spikes. No one was in sight. He left her for a minute and returned with two blankets. Then he laid the blankets on the dusty floor of the empty storeroom and locked the door.

  They could barely see each other from the light that crept under the door as he squeezed her with his arms again. "Sorry I can't offer you champagne and a king-size bed."

  Eva daintily straightened the blankets and knelt down, looking up at his dim, rugged-looking face. "I'll just close my eyes and imagine I'm with my handsome lover in the most luxurious suite in the finest hotel in San Francisco."

  Pitt kissed her and laughed softly. "Lady, you've got one fantastic imagination."

  <<51>>

  Massarde's chief aide, Felix Verenne, stepped into his boss' office. "A call from Ismail Yerli at Kazim's headquarters."

  Massarde nodded and picked up the phone. "Yes, Ismail, I hope this is good news."

  "I regret to tell you, Mr. Massarde, the news is anything but good."

  "Did Kazim catch the UN combat unit?"

  "No, he has yet to find them. Their plane was destroyed as we thought, but they vanished in the desert."

  "Why can't his patrols follow their tracks?" Massarde demanded angrily.

  "The desert wind has blown sand over them," Yerli answered calmly. "All trace of their trail has been obliterated:"

  "What is the situation at the mine?"

  "The prisoners have rioted, killed the guards, and destroyed the equipment and ravaged the offices. Your engineers are dead too. It will take six months to put the mine back in full operation."

  "What of O'Bannion?"

  "Disappeared. No sign of his body. My men did find his sadistic overseer, however."

  "The American he called Melika?"

  "The prisoners mutilated her body with a vengeance, almost beyond recognition."

  "The raiders must have taken O'Bannion as informant against us," suggested Massarde.

  "Too soon to tell," Yerli replied. "Kazim's officers have just begun interrogating the prisoners. Another bit of news I can pass along that won't sit well with you is that the Americans, Pitt and Giordino, were recognized by one surviving guard. They somehow fled the mines over a week ago, crossed into Algeria, and returned with the UN raiders."

  Massarde was thunderstruck. "Good God, that means they reached Algiers and made outside contact."

  "My thoughts also."

  "Why weren't we informed by O'Bannion they had escaped?"

  "Fear of how you and Kazim would react, obviously. How they traveled over 400 kilometers of desert without food and water is a mystery."

  "If they exposed our operation of the mine with captive labor to their superiors in Washington, they must have also revealed the secret of Fort Foureau."

  "They have no documented proof," Yerli reminded him. "Two foreigners who illegally crossed sovereign borders and committed criminal acts against the Malian government will not be taken seriously in any international court of law."

  "Except that my project will be besieged with news correspondents and world environmental investigators."

  "Not to worry. I will advise Kazim to close the borders to all outsiders, and have them expelled if they do."

  "You're forgetting," said Massarde, trying to remain calm, "the French engineers and scientists I contracted to build the project and threw into Tebezza. Once they reach safety, they will spread the word of their abduction and imprisonment. Even more damaging, they will expose our illegal waste dumping operation. Massarde Enterprises will be attacked on all fronts, and I will face criminal charges in every country I have an office or project."

  "None will live to give evidence," Yerli said as if it was a foregone conclusion.

  "What is the next step?" Massarde asked.

  "Kazim's aerial reconnaissance and motor patrols can find no indication of their crossing into Algeria. That means they're still in Mali, staying undercover and awaiting rescue."

  "Which Kazim's forces will stop."

  "Of course."

  "Could they have headed west for Mauritania?"

  Yerli shook his head to himself. "Not with over 1000 kilometers between them and the first village with water. Also, they couldn't possibly have carried enough fuel for that distance."

  "They must be stopped, Ismail," said Massarde without concealing a note of desperation. "They must be exterminated."

  "And they shall be," Yerli promised. "I vow to you, they will not get out of Mali. Every last one of them will be hunted down. They may fool Kazim, but they won't fool me."

  El Haj Ali sat in the sand under the shade of his camel and waited for a train to pass by. He had walked and ridden over 200 kilometers from his village of Araouane to see the wonder of a railroad, described to him by a passing Britisher who was leading a group of tourists across the desert.

  Just past his fourteenth birthday, Ali's father had given him permission to take one of the family's two camels, a superb white animal, and travel north to the shining rails and witness the great steel monster with his own eyes. Though he had seen automobiles and distant aircraft in the sky, other wonders such as cameras, radios, and television sets were a mystery to him. But to actually see and perhaps touch a locomotive would make him the envy of every boy and girl in his village.

  He drank tea and sucked on boiled sweets as he waited. After three hours and no sign of an approaching train, he mounted his camel and set off along the tracks toward the Fort Foureau project so he could tell his family about the immense buildings that rose out of the desert.

  As he passed the long-abandoned Foreign Legion fort, surrounded by high walls, isolated and lonely, he turned off the rails and approached the gate out of curiosity. The big, sun-bleached doors were shut tight. He jumped from his camel and led it around the fort's walls looking for another opening to gain entrance inside, but finding only solid mud and stone, he gave up and walked back toward the railroad.

  He looked to the west, intrigued with the way the silver rails strung out far into the distance and curled under the heat waves rising from the sun-baked sands. His eye caught something as he stood on the ties and stared. A speck appeared and floated through the heat waves. It enlarged and came toward him. The great steel monster, he thought with excitement.

  But as the object drew closer, he could see it was too small for a locomotive. Then he discerned two men riding on it as if it was an open automobile driving on the rails. Ali moved off the track bed and stood next to his camel as the motor cart carrying two section hands who were inspecting the track rolled to a stop in front of him.

  One was a white foreigner, the other, a dark-skinned Moor, greeted him. "Sallam al laikum."

  "Al laikum el sallam, " Ali replied.

  "Where do you come from, boy?" asked the Moor in the Berber language of the Tuareg.

  "From Araouane to see the steel monster."

  "You've come a long way."

  "The trip was easy," Ali boasted.

  "You have a fine
camel."

  "My father loaned me his best."

  The Moor looked at a gold wristwatch. "You don't have long to wait. The train from Mauritania is due in about forty-five minutes."

  "Thank you. I will wait," said Ali.

  "See anything interesting inside the old fort?"

  Ali shook his head. "I could not enter. The gates are locked."

  The two section men exchanged quizzical glances and conversed in French for a few moments.

  Then the Moor asked, "Are you certain? The fort is always open. That is where we keep ties and equipment to repair the track bed."

  "I do not lie. See for yourself. . ."

  The Moor stepped down from the motor cart and walked up to the front of the fort. He returned a few minutes later and spoke to the white man in French.

  "The boy is right. The doors to the main gate are locked from within."

  The face of the French track surveyor turned serious. "We must continue into the waste project and report this."

  The Moor nodded and climbed back on the motor cart. He threw Ali a wave. "Do not stand too close to the tracks when the train comes, and keep a tight grip on your camel."

  The engine's exhaust popped and the motor cart rolled down the rails in the direction of the hazardous waste project, leaving Ali staring after it while his camel gazed stoically at the horizon and spit on the track.

  Colonel Marcel Levant realized he could not prevent the nomad boy and the railroad section hand from inspecting the exterior of the fort. Silently, menacingly, a dozen unseen machine guns had been trained on the curious intruders. They could have easily been shot and dragged into the fort, but Levant did not have the stomach for killing innocent civilians so they were spared.

  "What do you think?" Pembroke-Smythe asked as the motor cart sped down the track toward the waste site's security station.

  Levant studied the boy and his camel, his eyes squinting like those of a sniper. They were still resting beside the tracks waiting for the next passing train. "If those two on the cart tell Massarde's security guards the fort is sealed up, we can expect an armed patrol to investigate."

  Pembroke-Smythe checked the time. "A good seven hours before dark. Let's hope they're slow in responding."

  "Any late word from General Bock?" asked Levant.

  "We've lost contact. The radio was knocked about during the journey from Tebezza and the circuitry became damaged. We can no longer transmit and reception is quite weak. The General's last message came through too garbled to decode properly. The best the operator could make of it was something about an American special operation force team that was going to hook up with us in Mauritania."

  Levant stared incredulously at Pembroke-Smythe. "The Americans are coming, but only as far as Mauritania? Good God, that's over 300 kilometers from here. What in hell good will they do us in Mauritania if we're attacked before we can escape over the border?"

  "The message was unclear, sir," Pembroke-Smythe shrugged helplessly. "Our radio operator did his best. Perhaps he misunderstood:'

  "Can he somehow rig the radio to our combat communications gear?"

  Pembroke-Smythe shook his head. "He already thought of that angle. The systems are not compatible. . ."

  "We don't even know if Admiral Sandecker deciphered Pitt's code correctly," Levant said wearily. "For all Bock knows we may be wandering around the desert in circles or fleeing for Algeria."

  "I like to think positive, sir."

  Levant sank down heavily and leaned against a rampart. "No chance of making a run for it. Not nearly enough fuel. Getting caught in the open by the Malians is almost a certainty. No contact with the outside world. I'm afraid many of us are going to die in this rat hole, Pembroke-Smythe."

  "Look on the bright side, Colonel. Perhaps the Americans will come charging in here like General Custer's seventh cavalry:"

  "Oh God!" Levant moaned despairingly. "Why did you have to go and mention him?"

  Giordino lay stretched out on his back under a personnel carrier removing a chassis spring when he saw Pitt's boots and legs step into his limited view. "Where've you been?" he grunted while twisting a nut from a shackle bolt.

  "Tending to the weak and infirm," answered Pitt cheerfully.

  "Then tend to the framework of your oddball whatchacallit. You can use the beams from the ceilings in the officers' quarters. They're dry but sound."

  "You've been busy."

  "A pity you can't say the same," Giordino said complainingly. "You'd better start figuring out how you're going to attach it all together."

  Pitt lowered a small wooden keg to the ground in Giordino's line of sight. "Problem solved. I found half a keg of spikes in the mess hall."

  "The mess hall?"

  "Exposed in a storeroom in the mess hall," Pitt corrected himself.

  Giordino pushed himself from under the vehicle and examined Pitt, his eyes traveling from the unlaced boots to the half-opened combat suit to the disheveled hair. When he finally spoke, it was in a voice heavy with sarcasm.

  "I bet that keg wasn't the only thing you exposed in the storeroom."

  <<52>>

  When the report from the railroad section hands came into Kazim's security headquarters from Fort Foureau, it was given a quick read and set aside by Major Sid Ahmed Gowan, Kazim's personal intelligence officer. He saw nothing of value in it, and certainly no reason to pass it on to that Turkish interloper, Ismail Yerli.

  Gowan failed to spot a connection between an abandoned fort and an elusive prey 400 kilometers to the north. The railroad workers who insisted the fort was locked from the inside were haughtily brushed off as a pair of dubious informants attempting to ingratiate themselves with their superiors.

  But as the hours dragged by without any sighting of the UN force, Major Gowan took another look at the account and his suspicions began to grow. He was a thoughtful man, young and highly intelligent, the only officer in General Kazim's security forces who was educated in France and had graduated from Saint Cyr, France's foremost military college. He began to see a possibility of pulling off a coup to please his leader and make Yerli appear an amateur intelligence specialist.

  He picked up the phone and called the commander of the Malian air forces, requesting an aerial reconnaissance of the desert south of Tebezza with special emphasis on vehicle tracks in the sand. As a backup precaution he also advised Fort Foureau to stop all trains from leaving or entering the project. If the UN force had indeed crossed the desert southward without being observed, Gowan speculated, perhaps they had holed up in the old Foreign Legion fort during daylight hours. With their vehicles certain to be low on fuel, they would probably await darkness before attempting to capture an outbound train headed for the Mauritanian border:

  All Gowan needed to confirm his hunch was an aerial sighting of fresh vehicle tracks traveling from Tebezza to the railroad. Positive that he was now on the right trail, $e rang Kazim and explained his new analysis of the search operation.

  Inside the fort the hardest ingredient of suffering was time. Everyone counted the minutes until darkness. Each hour that passed without sign of an attack was considered a gift. But by four o'clock in the afternoon, Levant knew something was terribly wrong.

  He was standing on a rampart studying the hazardous waste project through binoculars when Pembroke-Smythe approached with Pitt in tow.

  "You sent for me, Colonel?" asked Pitt.

  Levant replied without dropping the glasses. "When you and Mr. Giordino penetrated the grounds of the waste project, did you by chance time the passing trains?"

  "Yes, the inbound and outbound trains alternated, one entering three hours after one exited."

  Levant put down the glasses and stared at Pitt. "Then what do you make of the fact that no train has appeared for four and a half hours?"

  "A problem with the track, a derailment, breakdown of equipment. There could be any number of reasons for a slowdown in the schedule."

  "Is that what you believe?"
/>
  "Not for an instant."

  "What is your best guess?" Levant persisted.

  Pitt stared at the empty rails running in front of the old fort. "If I was betting a year's wages, I'd have to say they're on to us."

  "You think the trains were halted to prevent us from escaping?"