Sahara

by Clive Cussler

  Colonel Gus Hargrove was not used to being challenged, especially by a cocky civilian who was a good head shorter than he was. Commander of an Army Ranger covert-attack helicopter task force, Hargrove was a hardened professional soldier, having flown and directed helicopter assaults in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, and Iraq. He was tough and shrewd, respected by his subordinates and superiors alike. His helmet came down and met a pair of blue eyes that blazed with the hardness of tempered steel. A cigar was stuffed in one side of his mouth, which was occasionally removed so he could spit.

  "You don't seem to get it, Mr. Giordano."

  "Giordino."

  "Whatever," Hargrove muttered indifferently. "There was an information leak, probably through the United Nations. The Malians were waiting for us to cross into their air space. Half their air force is patrolling just beyond the border as we speak. In case you don't know it, the Apache helicopter is a great missile platform but no match for Mirage jet fighters. Certainly not in daylight hours. Without a squadron of Stealth fighters to fly protective cover, we can't go in until after dark. Only then can we take advantage of low terrain and desert gulches to fly under their radar screen. Do you get the picture?"

  "Men, women, and children are going to die if you don't reach Fort Foureau within the next few hours."

  "Rushing my unit over here with advance notice to the other side, without backup, and in the middle of the day was bad timing and ill advised," Hargrove stated firmly. "We attempt to go into Mali from Mauritania now, and my four choppers will be blasted out of the sky 50 kilometers inside the border. You tell me, sir, just what good would that do your people inside the fort?"

  Properly pinned against the wall, Giordino shrugged. "I stand rebuked. My apologies, Colonel. I wasn't aware of your situation."

  Hargrove softened. "I understand your concern, but now that we've been compromised and the Malians are chafing at the bit to ambush us, I'm afraid chances of saving your people are out of the question."

  Giordino felt as if his stomach was squeezed by a vise. He turned away from Hargrove and stared across the desert. The sandstorm had passed and he could see the trains standing on the track in the distance.

  He turned back. "How many men under your command?"

  "Not counting the chopper crews, I have a fighting force of eighty men."

  Giordino's eyes widened. "Eighty men to take on half the Malian security force?"

  "Yes," Hargrove grinned as he removed the cigar butt and spit. "But we have enough firepower to level half of western Africa."

  "Suppose you could cross the desert to Fort Foureau without detection?"

  "I'm always open to a good plan."

  "The inbound trains for the Fort Foureau hazardous waste project, have any been allowed through?"

  Hargrove shook his head. "I sent a team leader to check out the situation. He reported that the train crews were instructed by radio to halt at the Mauritania/Mali border. The engineer for the first train said he was told to sit idle until ordered to proceed by the superintendent of the project's rail yard."

  "How strong is the Malian check point on the border?"

  "Ten guards, maybe twelve."

  "Could you take them out before they gave an alarm?"

  Mechanically, Hargrove's eyes traveled over the train's cargo cars, lingered on the five flatbed cars and the canvas covers that protected new freight vehicles bound for Fort Foureau, and then moved briefly to the Malian border guard, house sitting beside the track before returning to Giordino. "Could John Wayne ride a horse?"

  "We can be there in two and a half hours," said Giordino. "Three on the outside."

  Hargrove removed the cigar from his mouth and seemed to be contemplating it. "I think I've got your slant now. General Kazim would never expect my force to come charging into his playground on a train."

  "Load the men inside the cargo container cars. Your choppers can ride on the flatbed cars undercover. Get to the objective before Kazim sees through the facade, and we have a good chance at evacuating Colonel Levant's people and the civilians and beating it back to Mauritania before the Malians know what hit them."

  Giordino's plan appealed to Hargrove, but he had doubts.

  "Suppose one of Kazim's hotshot pilots sees a train ignoring instructions and decides to blow it off the tracks?"

  "Kazim, himself, wouldn't dare destroy one of Yves Massarde's hazardous waste trains without absolute proof it had been hijacked."

  Hargrove paced up and down. The daring of the scheme sounded outlandish to him. Speed was essential. He decided to lay his career on the line and go for it.

  "All right," he said briefly. "Let's get the Wabash Cannonball rolling."

  Zateb Kazim raved like a madman in frustration at failing to bludgeon Levant and his small team from the old Foreign Legion fort. He cursed and ranted at his officers almost in hysteria, like a child who had his toys taken away from him. He dementedly slapped two of them in the face and ordered them all shot on two different occasions before his Chief of Staff, Colonel Cheik, soothingly talked him out of it. Barely under control, Kazim stared at his retreating troops scathingly and demanded they reform immediately for a second assault.

  Despairing of Kazim's wrath, Colonel Mansa drove through his retreating force, shouting and berating his officers, accusing them of shame that sixteen hundred attackers could not overrun a pitiful handful of defenders. He harangued them into regrouping their companies for another try. To drive home the message there would be no more failure, Mansa had ten men who were caught trying to desert the battlefield shot on the spot.

  Instead of attacking the fort with encircling waves, Kazim massed his forces into one massive column. The reinforcements were formed in the rear and ordered to shoot any man in front of them who broke and ran. The only command from Kazim that was passed down the lines from company to company was "fight or die."

  By two o'clock in the afternoon, the Malian security forces were reformed and ready for the signal. One look a t his sullen and fearful troops and any good commander would have aborted the attack. Kazim was not a leader his men loved enough to die for. But as they looked out over the body-littered ground around the fort, anger slowly began to replace their fear of death.

  This time, they silently vowed between them, the defenders of Fort Foureau were going to their graves.

  <<56>>

  With an incredible display of casual indifference to sniper bullets, Pembroke-Smythe sat under the torrid sun on a shooting stick, a spiked cane that opens into a seat, and observed the Malian formations as they lined up for the assault.

  "I do believe the beggars are about to make another go," he informed Levant and Pitt.

  A series of flares were shot in the air to signal the advance. There was no dodging with covering fire like the previous assault. The Malian force raced over the flat ground at a dead run. Shouts erupted and echoed over the desert from, nearly two thousand throats.

  Pitt felt like an actor on a stage in a theater-in-the-round: surrounded by a hostile audience. "Not exactly what you'd call tactical imagination," he said, standing beside Levant and Pembroke-Smythe while staring at the massed column. "But it just may do the trick."

  Pembroke-Smythe nodded. "Kazim is using his men like a steamroller."

  "Good luck, gentlemen," said Levant with a grim smile. "Perhaps we'll all meet in hell."

  "Couldn't be hotter than here," Pitt grinned back.

  The Colonel looked at Pembroke-Smythe. "Reposition our units to repulse a single frontal assault. Then tell them to fire at will."

  Pembroke-Smythe shook hands with Pitt and began moving from man to man. Levant took his place atop the remaining parapet as Pitt returned to the little fort he had dug from the rubble. Already bullets were splattering the fortress and ricocheting off the broken stone.

  The forward wall of the attacking force stretched 50 meters wide. With the reinforcements they numbered almost eighteen hundred. Kazim threw them against the side of the fort that h
ad suffered the worst during the later aerial attacks and mortar bombardments. This was the north wall with the shattered main gate.

  The men in the rear ranks were cheered by the certainty that they would be alive to drive inside the fort. The men in the forward wall had different ideas. None expected to cross that open space of death and survive. They knew there was to be no mercy from the defenders ahead or their own forces behind.

  Already gaps began to appear in the first rank as the pitifully few men in the fort laid down an appalling fire. But the Malians pushed forward in their headlong onslaught, leaping over the bodies of those who fell in the first assault. There was no stopping them this time; they could smell the bloody scent of victory.

  Pitt aimed and fired off short bursts at the approaching mass as a man in a dream. Aim and fire, aim and fire, then eject and reload. The routine, it seemed to him, continued endlessly when in fact only ten minutes had passed since the signal for the assault.

  A mortar shell burst somewhere behind him. Kazim had directed the bombardment be kept up until his leading ranks entered the fort. Pitt felt the shrapnel whistle past his head, felt the tiny breeze of its passing. The Malians were so close now they filled up the sights of his machine gun.

  Mortar shell after mortar shell rained down in a maelstrom of fire. Then the barrage ceased as elements of the first rank reached the fallen rubble and began scrambling over the jagged stone. Here they were most vulnerable. The forward ranks melted away as they were raked by the desperate fire of the defenders. There was no place for them to take cover, and they could not climb over the rubble and shoot at the same time at targets that didn't show themselves.

  The defenders, on the other band, couldn't miss. The Malians stumbled and crawled over the broken masonry into a swarm of bullets. The first rank had been swept away at 100 meters, the second by the time it reached the shadow of the fort. Then the rank behind that. All along the north, wall, the attackers and their officers cried out and fell. Their massed fire, however, no matter how wild, could not help but strike some of the defenders.

  There were simply too many for the UN team to stop and their fire began to slacken as one by one they were killed or wounded.

  Levant knew disaster was only moments away. "Blast them!" he roared over the helmet radios. "Blast them back off the wall."

  It seemed impossible but the hail of bullets from the UN team suddenly increased. The head of the Malian column was shot to a standstill. Pitt was out of ammunition but was, throwing grenades as fast as he could activate them. The explosions caused havoc in the struggling crowd. The Malians began to fall back. They were stunned and disbelieving that anyone could fight with such fury and wrath. Only with determined courage did they rally and surge through the splintered remains of the main gate.

  The UN team rose from their dugouts, firing from the hip as they retired across the parade ground and around their smoldering personnel carriers, forming, a new line of defense within the ruins of the former Legion barracks and officers' quarters. Dust, debris, and smoke cut visibility to less than 5 meters. The constant blast of guns had deafened the fighters, to the cries of the wounded.

  The horrible casualties inflicted on the Malians were enough to shatter the morale of any attacking force, but they kept coming and poured into the fort in a human flood. Temporarily exposed on the parade ground, the first company of men through the wall were shredded as they milled around in confusion at not finding a pathetic few survivors caught in the open.

  Pembroke-Smythe took a head count inside the collapsed barracks and officers' quarters as the few wounded they were able to save were carried down into the arsenal. Only Pitt and twelve of the UN Tactical Team were still capable of fighting. Colonel Levant was missing. He was last seen firing from the parapet when the attacking horde broke through the remains of the north gate.

  At recognizing Pitt, Pembroke-Smythe flashed a smile. "You look positively awful, old man," he said, nodding at the red stains in Pitt's combat suit that were spreading on the left arm and shoulder. Blood also trickled down the side of one cheek from a cut caused by a shard of flying stone.

  "You're no picture of health yourself," Pitt replied, pointing at the nasty wound in Pembroke-Smythe's hip.

  "How's your ammo?"

  Pitt held up his remaining submachine gun and let it drop to the ground. "Gone. I'm down to two grenades."

  Pembroke-Smythe handed him an enemy machine gun. "You'd better get down in the arsenal. What's left of us will hold them off until you can. . ." He couldn't bring himself to finish and he stared down at the ground.

  "We hurt them badly," Pitt said steadily as he ejected the clip and counted the bullets inside. "They're like mad dogs drooling for revenge. They'll make it hard on whoever of us they find still living."

  "The women and children cannot fall into Kazim's hands again."

  "They won't suffer," Pitt promised.

  Pembroke-Smythe stared up at him, seeing the agony of grief in Pitt's eyes. "Goodbye, Mr. Pitt. It has indeed been an honor to know you."

  Pitt shook the Captain's hand as a storm of gunfire burst around them. "Likewise, Captain."

  Pitt turned away and scrambled down through the debris choking the stairway into the arsenal. Hopper and Fairweather saw him at the same time and approached.

  "Who's winning?" Hopper asked.

  Pitt shook his head. "Not our side."

  "No sense in waiting for death," said Fairweather. "Better to make a fight of it. You wouldn't happen to have a spare gun on you?"

  "I could use one too," added Hopper.

  Pitt handed Fairweather the machine gun. "Sorry, except for my automatic, it's all I have. There are plenty of weapons topside, but you'll have to snatch one off a dead Malian."

  "Sounds like good sport," boomed Hopper. He gave Pitt a mighty slap on the back. "Good luck, my boy. Take care of Eva."

  "That's a promise."

  Fairweather nodded. "Nice to have known you, old chap."

  As they went up the stairway together into the fight above, a female medic rose from a wounded man and waved for Pitt's attention.

  "How does it look?" she asked.

  "Prepare for the worst," Pitt answered quietly.

  "How long?"

  "Captain Pembroke-Smythe and what's left of your team are making a last stand. The end can't be more than ten or fifteen minutes away."

  "What about these poor devils?" The medic indicated the wounded strewn on the floor of the arsenal.

  "The Malians won't be showing any compassion," Pitt answered her heavily.

  Her eyes widened slightly. "They're not taking prisoners?"

  He shook his head. "It doesn't look that way."

  "And the women and children."

  He didn't answer, but the pained look of sorrow written on his face told her the worst.

  She made a brave effort to smile. "Then I guess those of us who can still pull a trigger will go out with a bang."

  Pitt gripped her by the shoulders for a moment, then released her. She smiled bravely and turned to pass on the dire news to her fellow medic. Before Pitt could step over to where Eva was lying, he was approached by the French engineer, Louis Monteux.

  "Mr. Pitt."

  "Mr. Monteux."

  "Has the time come?"

  "Yes, I'm afraid it has."

  "Your gun. How many shells does it carry?"

  "Ten, but I have another clip with four."

  "We only need eleven for the women and children," Monteux whispered as he held out his hand for the weapon.

  "You may have it after I've taken care of Dr. Rojas," Pitt said with quiet firmness.

  Monteux looked up as the sounds of the fighting above came closer and echoed down the stairway. "Do not take too long."

  Pitt moved away and sat on the stone floor beside Eva. She was awake and looked up at him with an unmistakable expression of affection and concern. "You're bleeding, you're wounded."

  He shrugged. "I forgot to duck
when the grenade went off."

  "I'm so glad you're here. I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to see you again."

  "I hope you have a dress all picked out for our date," he said as he put his arm around her shoulders and gently moved her until her head rested in his lap. Out of sight behind her view, he eased the automatic from his belt and held the muzzle a centimeter behind her right temple.

  "I have a restaurant all picked out. . ." She hesitated and tilted her head as if listening. "Did you hear it?"

  "Hear what?"

  "I'm not sure. It sounded like a whistle."