Levant smiled. "A polite way of putting it."
Pitt sighed. "I never thought Mrs. Pitt's boy would end up like Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie at the Alamo."
"Taking into account our small number and the enemy's firepower," said Levant, "I'd have to say our odds of surviving are no better and probably worse."
A silence fell so abruptly that it seemed a great blanket was thrown over the underground arsenal. Everyone froze and looked up at the ceiling as if they could see through 3 meters of rock and sand.
Holed up and pounded for six hours, the members of the tactical team who could stilt stand and fight threw aside the rubble that sealed the entrance, poured into the heat and scorching sun, and spread out through the ruins. They found the fort almost unrecognizable. It looked like a warehouse after a demolition crew had finished with it. Black smoke spewed up from the burning personnel carriers and all buildings had been almost completely flattened. Bullets were whining and ricocheting through the heaps of jumbled stone like crazed hornets. . .
The UN team was sweating from the Saharan heat, dirty, hungry, and dead tired, but they were totally devoid of fear and madder than hell at having taken everything the Malians had thrown at them without responding. Short on everything, but not fighting guts, they took up their defensive positions, coldly swearing to make their attackers pay a heavy price before the last of them fell.
"On my command maintain a clear, steady fire," ordered Levant over his helmet radio.
Kazim's battle plan was ridiculously simple, calling for the tanks to break through the battered main gate on the north wall while the assault troops charged from all sides. Every man at his command was to be thrown into battle, all 1470 of them. None would be kept in reserve.
"I expect all-out victory with no quarter," Kazim told his officers. "Shoot down any of the UN commandos who attempt to escape."
"No prisoners?" Colonel Cheik asked in surprise. "Do you think that wise, my General?"
"You see a problem, old friend?"
"When the international community finds out we executed an entire United Nations force, there could be serious countermeasures taken against us."
Kazim drew himself up. "I have no intention of allowing hostile incursion across our borders to go unpunished. The world will soon learn that the people of Mali are not to be treated like desert vermin."
"I agree with the General," said Yerli on cue. "The enemy of your people must be destroyed."
The excitement within Kazim was more than he could contain. He had never led troops into battle before. His rapid advancement and power had come from devious manipulations. He did little more than order others to kill those who presented opposition. Now he pictured himself as a great warrior about to charge foreign infidels.
"Order the advance," he ordered. "This is a historic moment. We engage the enemy."
The assault troops ran across the desert in the classic infantry textbook attack, dropping to provide covering fire for other advancing members of the force, then rising and corning on again. The first wave of elite troops began showing, boldly after they reached within 200 meters of the fort without receiving enemy fire. Ahead of them, the tanks had failed to fan out properly and came on in a staggered formation:
Pitt decided to try for the one bringing up the rear. With: the help of five commandos, he pulled the debris off the spring bow and dragged it to an open area. On the ancient siege engines the tension would have been taken up by a windlass and tackle. But on Pitt's model the forklift was tipped over so that its twin lifting prongs could pull the springs of the bow back on a horizontal line. As one perforated drum of diesel fuel was loaded on the spring bow, five more, consisting of Pitt's entire supply of missiles, were lined up alongside.
"Come on baby," he muttered as the starter kicked over the forklift's balky engine. "Now is not the time to get finicky." Then came a coughing through the carburetor and the exhaust popped and settled in a steady roar.
Earlier, during the predawn darkness, Levant had left the fort and set stakes in the sand around its perimeter for a firing mark. To have waited until the defenders saw the whites of the attackers' eyes would have meant certain death. The odds were simply too overwhelming, to allow closed-in fighting. Levant set the stakes at 75 meters.
Now, as the tactical team waited to open up, every eye was on Pitt. If the tanks could not be stopped, the Malian, assault troops would have little to do but mop up.
Pitt took a knife and cut an elevation mark on the spot where the ends of the bent springs met the launch plank as an indicator to judge tension for distance. Then he climbed on one of the support beams and stared at the tanks again:
"Which one are you aiming for?" asked Levant.
Pitt pointed to the lagging tank on the left end of the line. "My idea is to start at the rear and work forward."
"So the tanks in front don't know what's happening behind," mused Levant. "Let's hope it works. . ."
The blazing heat from the sun radiated on the armored contours of the tanks. Supremely confident they would find nothing but already dead bodies, the tank commanders and their drivers rolled forward with open hatches, their guns throwing shells against the few remaining ramparts of the fort.
When Pitt could almost make out the individual features of the lead tank's driver, he lit a torch and pressed the flaming end against the leaking oil on top of the punctured drum. Flame burst immediately. Then Pitt jammed the torch in the sand and yanked on the line that released the trigger catch he had built from a, door latch. The taut nylon line and cable holding the springs whipped free and the truck springs snapped straight.
The flaming drum of diesel oil flew over the ravaged wall like a fiery meteor and sailed high over the rear tank, striking the ground a considerable distance to its rear before exploding.
Pitt stood amazed. "This thing does the job better than I ever imagined," he muttered.
"Down 50 meters and 10 to the right," observed Pembroke-Smythe as nonchalantly as if he was relating a soccer score.
As Levant's men helped hoist another barrel in place, Pitt cut a new mark on the launch plank to adjust for the distance. Next, he engaged the forklift's hydraulics, bending back the spring bow again. The torch was applied, the trigger mechanism was unleashed, and the second oil drum was on its way.
This one struck a few meters in front of the rear tank, bounced, and then rolled underneath and between the treads before exploding. The tank was instantly enveloped in flames. The crew, in their desperation to abandon the vehicle, fought each other to be first to escape through the hatches. Only two out of four made it out alive.
Pitt lost no time in setting up the spring bow again. Another oil drum was manhandled into place and flung at the advancing tanks. Pitt scored a direct hit this time. The drum flew in an arc over the wall and dropped squarely on the next tank's turret where it exploded and turned the vehicle into a blazing incinerator.
"It's working, it's really working," Pitt muttered jubilantly as he readied the spring bow for the next shot.
"Jolly good show!" shouted the normally reserved Pembroke-Smythe. "You hit the bleeding wogs where it hurts most."
Pitt and the commandos who struggled to hoist the next oil drum on the launch plank didn't need any urging. Levant climbed to the only undamaged parapet and surveyed the battlefield. The unexpected destruction of two of Kazim's tanks had temporarily halted the advance. Levant was highly pleased with the initial success of Pitt's machine, but if only one tank survived to reach the fort, it was enough to spell disaster for the defenders.
Pitt triggered the release mechanism for the fourth drum. It flew true but the tank commander, now aware of the fiery onslaught from the fort, ordered his driver to zigzag. His caution paid off as the drum's trajectory carried it 4 meters behind the left rear tread. The drum burst, but only a portion of the blazing liquid splashed on the armored tail of the tank, and the monster relentlessly pressed on toward the fort.
To the fighters crouched
amid the rubble, the approaching horde of Malians looked like an army of migrating ants. There were so many, so bunched together it would be nearly impossible to miss. The Malians, shouting their individual war cries, came on firing steadily.
The first wave was only a few meters from Levant's firing stakes, but he held off giving the order to fire, guardedly hopeful that Pitt could take out the two remaining tanks. His wish was answered as Pitt, anticipating the tank commander's next change in course, adjusted his spring bow accordingly and laid his fifth flaming missile almost into the driver's front hatch.
A sheet of fire covered the front of the tank. And then incredibly, it blew up. The entire advance halted as they all stared in astonishment at the tank's turret that was thrown whirling high into the desert sky before falling and embedding itself in the sand like a leaden kite.
Pitt was down to his last drum of diesel oil. He was so exhausted now with the physical effort in the body-sapping heat, he could hardly stand. His breath came in great heaves and his heart was pounding from the continuous strain of helping manhandle the heavy drums onto the launching plank, and then straining to shift the spring bow and its supports for aiming.
The huge 60-ton tank loomed through the dust and smoke like an immense steel gargoyle searching for victims to consume. The tank's commander could be seen giving orders to his driver and directing his gunner as his machine gun opened up at point blank range.
Everyone in the fort tensed and held their breath as Pitt lined up the spring bow. Many thought the end had come. This was his final shot, the last of the oil-filled containers.
No football place kicker ever had more riding on a field goal in overtime play to win a game. If Pitt misjudged, a lot of people were going to die, including himself and those children down in the arsenal.
The tank came straight on, its commander making no attempt to dodge. It was so close that Pitt had to elevate the rear of the spring bow to depress the launch plank. He kicked the trigger and hoped for the best.
The tank's gunner fired at the same moment. In a fantastic freak of coincidence the heavy shell and the flaming drum met in midair.
In his excitement, the gunner inside the tank had loaded an armor-piercing shell that bored right through the drum, causing a great sheet of fiery oil to spray all over the tank. The steel monster immediately became lost in a curtain of fire. In panic, the driver threw the tank in reverse in a vain attempt to escape the holocaust, colliding with the burning tank behind. Locked together, the great armored vehicles quickly became a raging conflagration, punctuated by the roar of their exploding shells and fuel tanks.
The commandos' cheers rose above the sound of the incoming gunfire. Their worst fears eliminated by Pitt's scratch-built spring bow, their morale at a fever pitch, they became more determined than ever to make a fight of it. Fear did not exist in battered old Fort Foureau this day.
"Pick your targets and commence firing," Levant ordered in a formal tone. "Now it's our turn to make them suffer."
<<55>>
One minute Giordino could make out a long line of four trains stopped dead on the tracks, the next, everything was blanked out by a sudden current of swirling air that whipped up a sandstorm. Visibility went from 20 kilometers to 50 meters.
"What do you think?" asked Steinholm as he idled the dune buggy in third gear, trying to nurse the last precious few drops of fuel. "Are we in Mauritania?"
"I wish I knew," Giordino conceded. "Looks like Massarde stopped all incoming trains but I can't tell which side of the border they're on."
"What does the navigational computer have to say?"
"The numbers suggest we crossed the border 10 kilometers back."
"Then we might as well approach the track bed and take our chances."
As he spoke, Steinholm threaded the vehicle between two large rocks and drove up the crest of a small hill, then braked to a sudden halt. Both men heard it at the same instant. The sound was unmistakable through the blowing of the wind. It was faint, but there was no mistaking the strange thump. Each second it became clearer, and then seemed to be on top of them.
Steinholm hurriedly twisted the wheel, shoved the accelerator to the firewall, and swung the fast attack vehicle in a wheel-spinning broadside until it had snapped around on a reverse course. Then abruptly, the engine sputtered and died, starved for lack of gas. The two men sat helplessly as the vehicle rolled to a stop.
"Looks to me as if we just bought the farm," grunted Giordino bleakly.
"They must have picked us up on their radar and are coming straight at us," Steinholm lamented as he angrily pounded the steering wheel.
Slowly through the brown curtain of sand and dust, like some huge beastly insect from an alien planet, a helicopter materialized and hovered 2 meters off the ground. Staring into a 30-millimeter Chain gun, two pods of thirty-eight 2.75-inch rockets, and eight laser-guided anti-tank missiles was an unnerving experience. Giordino and Steinholm sat rigid in the dune buggy, braced for the worst.
But instead of a fiery blast and then oblivion, a figure dropped from a hatch in the belly. As he approached they could see he was wearing a desert combat suit laden with high-tech gizmos. The head was covered by a camouflaged cloth-covered helmet and the face with a mask and goggles. He carried a leveled submachine gun as though it was an appendage of his hands.
He stopped beside the dune buggy and looked down at Giordino and Steinholm for a long moment. Then he pulled aside his mask and said, "Where in hell did you guys come from?"
Finished with the swing bow, Pitt grabbed a pair of submachine guns from two badly wounded tactical team fighters and took up a position in a one-man stronghold he'd fashioned from fallen stone. He was impressed with the uniformed nomads from the desert. They were big men who ran and dodged with imposing agility as they swept toward the fort. The closer they got without encountering opposition, the braver they became.
Outnumbered fifty-to-one, the UN tactical team could not hope to hold out long enough for rescue. This was one time the underdog had no chance of pulling off an upset. Pitt quickly realized how the defenders of the Alamo must have felt. He sighted the incoming horde and pressed the trigger at Levant's command to fire.
The first wave of the Malian security force was met with a withering blast of gunfire that ripped into their advance. They made easy targets over ground totally denuded of cover. Hunched down in the rubble, the UN fighters took their time and fired with deadly aim. Like weeds before a scythe, the attackers fell in heaps almost before they knew what hit them. Within twenty minutes, more than two hundred seventy-five lay dead and wounded around the perimeters of the fort.
The second wave stumbled over the bodies of the first, hesitated as their ranks were devastated, and fell back. None, even their officers, had expected anything resembling hard-core resistance. Kazim's hastily planned attack unraveled in chaos. His force began to panic, many in the rear firing blindly into their own men in front.
As the Malians fell back in confusion, most running like animals before a brush fire, a brave few walked slowly backward, continuing to shoot at anything that remotely looked like the head of a fort defender. Thirty of the attackers tried to take cover behind the burning tanks, but Pembroke-Smythe had expected that tactic and directed an accurate fire that cut them down.
Only one hour after the assault had begun, the crack of gunfire faded and the barren sand around the fort became filled with the cries of the wounded and the moans of the dying. The UN team was stunned and angered to see that no effort was made by the Malians to retrieve their own men. They did not know that an enraged Kazim had given orders to leave the injured to suffer under the blistering Sahara sun.
Amid the debris of the fort, the commandos slowly rose from their rifle pits and began to take count. One dead and three wounded, two seriously, Pembroke-Smythe reported to Levant. "I'd say we gave them a good drubbing," he said jauntily.
"They'll be back," Levant reminded him.
"At least we cut
the odds a bit."
"So did they," said Pitt, offering the Colonel a drink from his water container. "We have four less able-bodied men to repel the next attack while Kazim can call in reinforcements."
"Mr. Pitt is right," agreed Levant. "I observed helicopters bringing in two more companies of men."
"How soon do you reckon they'll try again?" Pitt asked Levant.
The Colonel held up a hand to shield his eyes and squinted at the sun. "The hottest time of the day, I should think. His men are better acclimated to the heat than we are. Kazim will let us fry for a few hours before ordering another assault."
"They've been blooded now," said Pitt. "Next time there will be no stopping them."
"No," said Levant, his face haggard with fatigue. "I don't guess there will."
"What do you mean," Giordino demanded in white hot anger, "you won't go in there and bring them out?"
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