Sahara

ECHOES OF THE ALAMO

"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."

"Did he explain?" Sandecker asked curiously.

"His voice was too indistinct. Interference broke up our conversation. What little I could make out sounded crazy."

"Crazy, in what manner?" Sandecker demanded.

"He said something about rescuing women and children in a gold mine. His voice sounded strangely urgent."

"That makes no sense at all," said Gunn.

Sandecker stared at Yaeger. "Did Dirk reveal how they escaped from Mali?"

Yaeger looked like a man who was lost in a maze. "Don't quote me, Admiral, but I'd swear he said they sailed across the desert in a yacht with some woman named Kitty Manning or Manncock."

Sandecker sat back in his chair and smiled resignedly. "Knowing Pitt and Giordino as I do, I wouldn't put it past them." Then abruptly his eyes narrowed and his expression turned quizzical. "Could the name have been Kitty Mannock?"

"The name was garbled, but yes, I think that was it."

"Kitty Mannock was a famous aviator back in the twenties," explained Sandecker. "She broke long-distance speed records over half the globe before vanishing in the Sahara. I believe it was back in 1931."

"What could she possibly have to do with Pitt and Giordino?" Yaeger wondered aloud.

"I have no idea," said Sandecker.

Gunn studied his watch. "I checked the air distance between Adrar and Algiers. It's only a little over 1200 kilometers. If they're in the air now, we should be hearing from them in approximately an hour and a half."

"Instruct our communications department to open a direct line to our Algerian embassy," ordered the Admiral. "And tell them to make sure it's secure. If Pitt and Giordino stumbled onto any vital data concerning the red tide contamination, I don't want it leaked to the news media."

When Pitt's call came through to NUMA's worldwide communications network, Sandecker and the others, including Dr. Chapman, were gathered around a phone console that recorded the conversation and amplified Pitt's voice through a speaker system so they could all converse without microphones or telephone receivers.

Most of the questions that had mounted over the past ninety minutes were answered in Pitt's precise, hour-long report. Everyone sat listening intently and making notes as he related the harrowing events and epic struggles he and Giordino endured after parting with Gunn on the Niger River. He described in detail their discovery of the fraudulent operation at Fort Foureau. He shocked them with his revelation that Dr. Hopper and the World Health Organization scientists were alive and suffering as slaves in the mines of Tebezza along with Massarde's French engineers, their wives and children, plus a score of other kidnapped foreigners and political prisoners of General Kazim. He ended his report on the accidental and fortunate finding of Kitty Mannock and her long-lost aircraft as they trekked across the desert. His audience could not help smiling among themselves as he recounted the construction of the land yacht.

The men seated around the console now understood why Pitt demanded to return to Mali with an armed force. The exposure of the gold mines of Tebezza and the hideous, inhuman conditions appalled them. But they were even more stunned to hear of the secret nuclear and toxic waste underground storage at Fort Foureau. Learning that the state-of-the-art solar disposal operation was a fraud brought worried expressions on their faces as they each began to wonder how many other Massarde Enterprises hazardous waste projects around the world were cover-ups.

Pitt followed by setting them straight on the criminal relationship between Yves Massarde and Zateb Kazim. He repeated in detail what he heard during his conversations with Massarde and O'Bannion.

Then the questions came, launched by Chapman. "You've concluded that Fort Foureau is the source of the red tide contamination?" asked Dr. Chapman.

"Giordino and I are no experts on groundwater hydrology," replied Pitt, "but there is little doubt in our minds the toxic waste that is not burned but hidden below the desert is leaking and migrating directly into the groundwater. From there it flows beneath an old riverbed southward until it empties into the Niger."

"How could large excavations be conducted belowground without international environmental inspectors catching on?" asked Yaeger.

"Or discovery by satellite photos?" Gunn added.

"The key is the railroad and the cargo containers," Pitt answered. "The excavation did not begin during construction of the solar reactor, photovoltaic, and concentrator arrays. Only after a large building was erected to shield the operation did trains hauling in nuclear and toxic waste begin returning to Mauritania with rock and dirt from the excavation for a landfill. From what Al and I were able to examine, Massarde took advantage of already existing limestone caverns."

Everyone was silent for a moment, then Chapman said, "When this thing gets out, the scandal and investigations will never end."

"Do you have documented proof?" Gunn asked Pitt.

"We can only tell you what we saw on the site and heard from Massarde. I'm sorry we can't offer you more."

"You've done an incredible job," said Chapman. "Thanks to you the contaminant's source is no longer unknown, and plans can be formed to cut off its leakage into the groundwater."

"Easier said than done," Sandecker reminded him. "Dirk and Al have handed us a gigantic can of worms."

"The Admiral's right," said Gunn. "We can't simply walk into Fort Foureau and close it down. Yves Massarde is a powerful and wealthy man with inside connections to General Kazim and the upper levels of the French government—"

"And a lot of other powerful men in business and government," Gunn added.

"Massarde is a secondary consideration," Pitt cut in. "Our most urgent priority is to save those poor people at Tebezza before they're all killed."

"Are any of them Americans?" asked Sandecker.

"Dr. Eva Rojas is a U.S. citizen."

"She is the only one?"

"As far as I know."

"If no President has ever kicked ass in Lebanon to free our hostages, there's no way our current President will send in a Special Force Team to save one American."

"Won't hurt to ask," proposed Pitt.

"He already turned me down when I made the request to rescue you and Al."

"Hala Kamil offered the UN Critical Response and Tactical Team before," said Gunn. "Surely she'll authorize a rescue mission to save her own scientists."

"Hala Kamil is a lady with high principles," said Sandecker with conviction. "More idealistic than most men I know. I think we can safely rely on her to have Genera Bock send Colonel Levant and his men back into Mali."

"People are dying in the mines like rats," said Pitt, the bitterness of his tone obvious to the men listening. "God only knows how many were murdered since Al and I escaped. Every hour counts."

"I'll contact the Secretary General and brief her," promised Sandecker. "If Levant moves as fast as he did to save Rudi, I suspect you'll be explaining the situation face-to face with him before breakfast in your time zone."

Ninety minutes after Sandecker's call to Hala Kamil and General Bock, Colonel Levant and his men and equipment were in the air and winging over the Atlantic toward a French air force base outside of Algiers.

General Hugo Bock arranged the maps and satellite photos on his desk and picked up an antique magnifying glass that had been given to him by his grandfather when he collected stamps as a young boy. The glass was highly polished without a flaw, and when adjusted to his eyes, enlarged the image it was trained upon without distortion around the circular edges. The piece had traveled with Bock all during his army career as a kind of good luck charm.

He took a sip of coffee and began examining the area inside the small circles he'd marked on the maps and photographs that indicated the approximate location of Tebezza. Though Pitt's description of the mine site, relayed to Bock from Sandecker by fax, was a rough estimate, the General's eye soon zeroed in on the landing strip and the vague road that led off through the narrow canyon splitting the high, rocky plateau.

This fellow Pitt, he thought, was most observant.

The man must have memorized what few landmarks he had seen during his epic trek across the desert into Algeria and backtracked them in his mind's eye to the mine.

Bock began to study the terrain of the surrounding desert and did not like what he saw. The mission to rescue Gunn from the Gao airport had been relatively simple. Launched from an Egyptian military base near Cairo, the UN force had only to swoop in and seize the Gao airport, retrieve Gunn, and be on their way. Tebezza was a much tougher nut to crack.

Levant's team would have to land at the desert airstrip, travel nearly 20 kilometers to the mine entrance, assault and secure a maze of tunnels and caverns, transport God knows how many prisoners back to the airstrip, load everyone on board, and take off.

The critical problem was too much time on the ground. The transport was a sitting duck and invited attack by Kazim's air force. The time involved in a round trip of 40 kilometers over a primitive desert road considerably raised the odds of failure.

The attack could not rely purely on split-timing. There were too many unknown variables. Preventing any outside communication was critical. Bock could not see how the operation could be accomplished in less than one and a half hours minimum. Two could spell disaster.

His fist cracked the desk. "Damn!" he uttered harshly to himself. "No time for preparation, no time for planning. An emergency mission to save lives. Hell, we'll probably lose more than we save."

After looking at the operation from every angle, Bock sighed and dialed his desk phone. Hala Kamil's secretarial aide put him right through.

"Yes, General," she said. "I did not expect to hear from you so soon. Is there a problem with the rescue mission?"

"A number of them, I'm afraid, Madam Secretary. We're stretched far too thin on this one. Colonel Levant is going to need backup."

"I'll authorize whatever additional UN forces you require."

"We have none to spare," explained Bock. "My remaining forces are on security duty at the Syrian-Israeli border or performing civilian rescue operations during the unrest and rioting inside India. Colonel Levant's backup will have to come from outside the UN."

There was a moment of silence as Hala assembled her thoughts. "This is most difficult," she said finally. "I'm not sure who I can turn to."

"What about the Americans?"

"Unlike his predecessors, their new President is most reluctant to interfere in the problems of third world nations. As a point of fact, it was he who requested that I authorize you to save the two men from NUMA."

"Why was I not informed?" Bock asked.

"Admiral Sandecker could provide us with no intelligence as to their exact whereabouts. While waiting for leads, they escaped on their own, making any rescue attempt unnecessary."

"Tebezza will not be a swift and sure operation," Bock said grimly.

"Can you guarantee me success?" asked Hala.

"I'm confident in the ability of my men, Madam Secretary, but I cannot make any guarantees. If anything, I fear the cost in casualties will be high."

"We cannot sit back and do nothing," Hala said solemnly. "Dr. Hopper and his team of scientists are members of the UN. It is our duty to save our own people."

"I quite agree," said Bock. "But I'd feel more secure if we could count on a backup force should Colonel Levant become trapped by Malian military forces."

"Perhaps the British or the French will be more willing—"

"The Americans can mount a more rapid response," Bock interrupted. "If I had my way, I would demand their Delta Force."

Hala went quiet, reluctant to give a concession, knowing the Chief Executive of the United States would prove stubborn and noncommittal. "I will talk with the President and present our case," Hala said resignedly. "I can do no more."

"Then I shall inform Colonel Levant there is no room for misjudgment or error, and that he can expect no help."

"Perhaps he will benefit from luck."

Bock breathed deeply. He could feel a cold chill of apprehension down his spine. "Whenever I banked on luck, Madam Secretary, something always went terribly wrong."

St. Julien Perlmutter was sitting in his immense library that housed thousands of books, most neatly arranged on varnished mahogany shelves. At least two hundred, however, were haphazardly stacked and scattered loosely around the Persian carpet or piled on a badly worn rolltop desk. He sat with slippered feet propped on the untidy desktop reading a seventeenth-century manuscript while dressed in his uniform of the day, silk pajamas under a paisley robe.

Perlmutter was a legendary expert on maritime history. His collection of historical records and literature on ships and the sea was considered the finest in the world. Museum curators around the nation would have happily given any limb he requested or a blank check to obtain his massive library. But money mattered little to a man with a fifty-million dollar inheritance, except to purchase additional rare books about the sea he didn't already own.

Love of women didn't come close to his love of research. If any man or woman could passionately give an hour lecture on any shipwreck ever recorded, it was St. Julien Perlmutter. Every salvager and treasure hunter in Europe and America sooner or later showed up on his doorstep for guidance.

A monster of a man, he weighed nearly 181 kilograms, or 400 pounds. He was a product of gourmet food and drink and little or no exercise beyond picking up a book and opening its pages. He had merry sky-blue eyes and a red face buried under a huge gray beard.

His phone rang, and he pushed aside several opened books to reach it. "Perlmutter here."

"Julien, it's Dirk Pitt."

"Dirk, my boy," he fairly shouted. "A long time since I've heard your voice."

"Can't be more than three weeks."

"Who counts the hours when one is on the track of a shipwreck," he laughed.

"Certainly not you or I"

"Why don't you hop over for a bite of my famous Crepes Perlmutter?"

"I'm afraid they'd get cold by the time I arrived," Pitt replied.

"Where are you?"

"Algiers."

Perlmutter snorted. "What are you doing in that dreadful place?"

"Among other things, I'm interested in a shipwreck."

"In the Med off North Africa?"

"No, in the Sahara Desert."

Perlmutter knew Pitt too well to know he was joking. "I'm familiar with the legend of a ship in the California desert above the Sea of Cortez, but I'm not aware of one in the Sahara."

"I've run across three different references to it," Pitt explained. "One source was an old American desert rat who was looking for a Confederate ironclad called the Texas. He swore it steamed up a now dry river and became lost in the sand. Supposedly it was carrying gold from the Confederate treasury."

"Where do you find them?" Perlmutter laughed. "What sort of desert weed was this fellow smoking?"

"He also claimed that Lincoln was on board."

"Now you've gone from the ridiculous to pure humbug.'"

"Strange as it sounds, I believed him. And then. I found two other sources for the legend. One was an old rock painting in a cave that showed what had to be a Confederate design warship. The other was a reference to a sighting in a log book I found in Kitty Mannock's airplane."

"Hold on a minute," Perlmutter said skeptically. "Whose airplane?"

"Kitty Mannock."

"You found her! My God, she vanished over sixty years ago. You really discovered her crash site?"

"Al Giordino and I stumbled on her body and the wreck of the plane in a hidden ravine while we were crossing the desert."

"Congratulations!" Perlmutter boomed. "You've just cleared up one of aviation's most famous mysteries."

"Pure luck on our part," Pitt admitted.

"Who's paying for this call?"

"The U.S. embassy in Algiers."

"In that case, hold the line. I'll be right back." Perlmutter hefted his bulk from the desk chair, ambled over to a bookshelf, and scanned its contents for a few seconds. Finding the book he was looking for, he pulled it out, returned to the desk, and thumbed through the pages. Then he retrieved the phone. "You did say the name of the ship was the Texas?"

"Yes, that's it."

"An ironclad ram," Perlmutter recited. "She was built at the Rocketts naval yard in Richmond and launched in March of 1865, just a month before the war ended, 190-foot length with a 40-foot beam. Twin engines, twin screws, drawing 11 feet of water, 6-inch armor. Her battery consisted of two 100-pound Blakelys and two 9-inch, 64pounders. Speed, 14 knots." Perlmutter paused. "You get all that?"

"She sounds like a pretty powerful ship for her day."

"Yes indeed, and about twice as fast as any other armored vessel in both the Union and Confederate navies."

"What was her history?"

"Pretty short," answered Perlmutter. "Her one and only appearance in combat was an epic running fight down the James River through an entire Union navy fleet and past the forts in Hampton Roads. Badly damaged, she escaped into the Atlantic and was never seen again."

"Then her disappearance was a reality," said Pitt.

"Yes, but hardly an unnatural phenomenon. Since none of the Confederate ironclads were built for other than river and harbor duty, they were unsafe for ocean passage. It was generally thought she floundered in rough water and sank."

"You think it possible she could have crossed the ocean to West Africa and steamed up the Niger River?"

"The Atlanta is the only other Confederate ironclad I recall that tried to cross open water. She was captured during a fight with two Union monitors on Wassaw Sound in Georgia. About a year after the war she was sold to the King of Haiti for his navy. She left Chesapeake Bay for the Caribbean and vanished. Crews that served on her claimed she took on water even in mild weather."

"And yet the old prospector swore French colonists and natives handed down stories of an iron monster without sails going up the Niger."

"Do you want me to check it out."

"Could you?"

"I'm hooked already," said Perlmutter "I see another little enigma that makes the Texas so interesting."

"What's that?" asked Pitt.

"I'm looking at the bible of Civil War navies," replied Perlmutter slowly. "They all list several or more references for additional research. The poor Texas has no references at all. It's almost as if someone meant for her to be forgotten."

Pitt and Giordino discreetly left the American embassy through the lobby of the passport office, stepped out onto the street, and hailed a taxi. Pitt gave the driver directions written down in French by an embassy aide and settled back as the taxi wove through the main square past the city's picturesque mosques with their towering minarets. Their luck of the draw was a hyper driver who constantly honked and cursed the crowds of pedestrians and heavy auto traffic that flowed blissfully through stop lights and past policemen who showed little interest in controlling the mess.

At the main thoroughfare that paralleled the busy waterfront, the driver swung south and drove to the city's outskirts where he stopped in a winding alley as instructed. Pitt paid him off and waited until the taxi turned out of sight. In less than a minute, a French air force staff car pulled up, a 605 Peugeot diesel sedan. They climbed into the back seat without any acknowledgment from the uniformed driver, who accelerated down the alley before Giordino closed the rear door.

Ten kilometers later, the car stopped at the main gate of a military airfield flying the tricolor over the sentry house. The security guard took one look at the Peugeot and nodded it through as he threw a sharp French salute with the palm facing outward. At the entrance to the tarmac the driver stopped and inserted the staff of a checkered flag into a socket mounted on the left front fender.

"Don't tell me," said Giordino. "I'm keen to guess. We're the grand marshals in a parade."

Pitt laughed. "Have you forgotten your air force days? Any vehicle that drives across the flight line has to fly an authorization flag."

The Peugeot rolled by a long row of Mirage 2000 delta wing fighters being serviced by their ground crews. One end of the flight line held a squadron of AS-332 Super Puma helicopters that looked as if they were designed by a myopic Buck Rogers. Built to carry air-to-surface missiles, they did not have the killer look of most other attack helicopters.

The driver continued to the deserted end of a secondary runway and parked. They sat there waiting, Giordino promptly dozing off under the comfort of the staff car's air conditioning, while Pitt casually read an embassy copy of the Wall Street Journal.

Fifteen minutes later a big airbus silently banked out of the west and touched down. Neither Pitt nor Giordino was aware of the aircraft's approach until they heard the screech of its tires hitting the concrete runway. Giordino came awake and Pitt folded up his paper as the plane braked and then slowly turned on one wheel until it had rotated 180 degrees. As soon as the huge tires rolled to a stop, the driver of the Peugeot shifted in gear and drove up within 5 meters of the rear of the aircraft.

Pitt observed that the entire airbus was painted a light desert tan, and he noted the indistinguishable markings on its surfaces that had been painted over. A woman wearing desert combat fatigues with a patch on one sleeve, signifying the UN world symbol with a sword through it, dropped from a hatch in the aircraft's belly between the huge landing gear. She double-timed over to the staff car and opened the rear door.

"Please to follow me," she said in English heavily coated with Spanish. As the car drove away, the UN tactical team member led them under the bulbous fuselage and gestured for them to climb inside. They entered the lower cargo bay of the airbus and stepped toward a narrow stairwell that rose to the main cabin.

Giordino paused and glanced at three armored personnel carriers that sat in a row, squat and low, topping out at less than 2 meters. Then he stared in rapt fascination at the heavily armed dune buggy used in the rescue of Gunn at Gao.

"Enter an off-road race with this thing," he said admiringly, "and no competitor would dare pass you."

"It does look pretty intimidating," Pitt agreed.

An officer was waiting for them when they surfaced in the main cabin. "Captain Pembroke-Smythe," he introduced himself. "Jolly good of you to come. Colonel Levant is waiting for you in the planning room."

"You're obviously English," said Giordino.

"Yes, you'll find us a rather mixed lot," Pembroke-Smythe said cheerfully as he swung the end of a swagger stick around the cabin at three dozen men and three women engaged in various stages of cleaning and assembling weapons and equipment. "Some creative soul thought the UN should have its own tactical unit to go where international governments fear to tread, so to speak. Secret warriors we're sometimes called. Each highly trained by his own country's special forces. All volunteers. Some are permanent, a few of us are simply attached on a year's tour of duty."

They were as tough and rugged a group as Pitt had ever seen. Bodies hardened through exercise and brutal training, they were quiet, purposeful professionals with all the skills and intelligence demanded by covert actions. There wasn't one that Pitt cared to meet in a dark alley, including the women.

Pembroke-Smythe ushered them into a compartment that was the command center of the aircraft. The area was spacious and filled with an array of electronic systems. One operator monitored communications equipment while another was in the act of programming data for the approaching mission to Tebezza into a computer.

Colonel Levant graciously came from behind a desk and greeted Pitt and Giordino at the door. He wasn't sure what to expect. He had read extensive dossiers on both men, supplied by the United Nations International Intelligence Service, and could not help but be impressed with their accomplishments. He also read a brief report of their trials in the desert after escaping Tebezza and had to admire their tenacity.

Levant had previously expressed deep reservations about taking Pitt and Giordino along but quickly realized that without their guidance into the mines the operation could be in deep jeopardy. They appeared gaunt and showed the results of long exposure to the sun, but seemed in amazingly good condition as he shook their hands.

"After studying your exploits, gentlemen, I've looked forward to meeting you. I am Colonel Marcel Levant."

"Dirk Pitt, and my nasty little friend here is Al Giordino."

"After reading a report of your ordeal I expected you to be carried on board on stretchers, but I'm pleased to see you look quite fit."

"Liquids, vitamins, and plenty of exercise," said Pitt, smiling, "have their benefits."

"Don't forget fun in the sun," muttered Giordino.

Levant did not respond to the humor but stared past them at Pembroke-Smythe. "Captain, please alert the men and order the chief pilot to prepare for immediate takeoff." Then he turned his attention back to the men standing before him. "If what you say is correct, time is measured in lives. We can run over details for the mission while we're in the air."

Pitt nodded in total accord. "I applaud your expediency."

Levant checked his watch. "Flying time is slightly more than four hours. Our time window is very narrow. We can't delay if we intend to make our assault during the prisoners' rest period. Too soon or too late and they will be scattered throughout the mine shafts on work crews and we'd never find and round them up before our scheduled withdraw."

"Four hours will put us over Tebezza at night."

"Twenty hundred hours give or take five minutes."

"You're going in with landing lights?" asked Pitt incredulously. "You might as well add fireworks to let them know we're coming."

Levant twisted one end of his moustache, a gesture Pitt was to see often in the next ten hours. "We land in the dark.

And before I explain, I think you should sit down and faster your seat belts."

His words enforced with the strangely muted roar of the engines as the pilot advanced the throttles. The big airbus began accelerating down the runway with only the slightest rumble of thrust from its engines.

Giordino found Levant a bit too stuffy and arrogant for his taste and acted with polite indifference. Pitt, on the other hand, recognized a savvy and street-smart operator when he saw one. He also sensed a subtle undercurrent of respect from the Colonel that Giordino missed.

During lift-off, Pitt remarked about the unusual silence of the engines. The typical roar was not evident for an aircraft under full power.

"Specially modified silencers for the turbine exhaust," explained Levant.

"They work well," said Pitt admiringly. "When you landed, I didn't hear a thing until the tires touched down.

"You might call it a stealth factor for covert landings in places we're not welcome."

"Do you also sneak in without lights?"

Levant nodded. "Without lights."

"Is your pilot equipped with fancy, high-tech night vision equipment?"

"No, Mr. Pitt, nothing fancy. Four of my men drop by parachute on the Tebezza airstrip, secure it, and then place a series of infrared lights to guide our pilot onto the runway."

"Once down," said Pitt, "covering the ground between the airstrip and mine entrance in the black of night won't be an easy chore."

"That," said Levant grimly, "is the least of our problems."

The plane was in a gradual climb and banking to the south when he unfastened his seat belt and stepped to a table with an enlarged satellite photo of the plateau above the mines. He picked up a pencil and tapped on the photo.

"Landing helicopters onto the plateau and rappeling down the canyon walls to the mine entrance would have greatly simplified our problem and given us a higher level of surprise. Unfortunately, there were other considerations."

"I understand your dilemma," said Pitt. "A round-trip to Tebezza is beyond helicopter range. Setting up fuel depots across the desert would have cost additional delay."

"Thirty-two hours according to our estimates. We considered leapfrogging our small copter squadron, one carrying fuel while the other carried men and supplies, but we ran into complications with that plan too."

"Too complicated and too slow," said Giordino.

"The speed factor also favored the use of this aircraft," said Levant. "Another important factor of using an airliner over a fleet of helicopters is that we can carry our own transportation. We also have space for on-board medical facilities to tend the large number of people you stated in your report that are in dire need of attention."

How many make up your assault team?" asked Pitt.

"Thirty-eight fighters and two medics," Levant answered. "After we land, four will remain to guard the plane. The medical team will accompany the main force to care for the captives."

"That doesn't leave much room in your personnel carriers to transport everyone."

"If some of my people ride on the roofs and hang onto the sides, we can evacuate forty prisoners."

"There may not be that many left alive," Pitt said solemnly.

"We'll do our best for those who are," Levant assured him.

"And the Malians," Pitt asked, "the political dissenters and enemies of General Kazim. What about them?"

"They will have to remain," Levant shrugged. "All food stores in the mines will be opened to them, and they'll be armed with the guards' weapons. Beyond that, there is little we can do for them. They will be on their own."

"Kazim is sadistic enough to demand their mass execution after he's learned his prize slaves have flown the coop."

"I have my orders," Levant stated simply. "And they don't include saving local criminals."

Pitt stared down at the blowup of the desert surrounding the Tebezza plateau. "So you intend to land the airbus in the dead of night on a desert airstrip, drive over a road that's tough to trace in daylight, assault the mine, carry off all foreign prisoners, and then rush back to the strip and take off for the lights of Algiers. We may be biting off more than we can chew with the limited resources at your command."

Levant saw no disapproval in Pitt's expression, nor did he sense sarcastic criticism. "As you say where you come from, Mr. Pitt, what you see is what you get."

"I'm not doubting the fighting quality of your people, Colonel. But I had expected a larger, better equipped force."

"I regret the UN does not lavishly fund our Response and Tactical Team with expansive manpower and ultrasophisticated equipment like most special operations forces. But our budget is tight and we must work within our limits."

"Why a UNICRATT team?" asked Pitt curiously. "Why not a British or French Foreign Legion commando unit or one from American Special Forces?"

"Because no other nation, including yours, wished to risk dirtying their hands on this mission," explained Levant wearily. "We were volunteered by Secretary General Kamil."

The name brought back a fond memory in Pitt's mind of an interlude spent with Hala Kamil on board a ship in the Straits of Magellan. Two years ago, he recalled, during the search for the Alexandria Library treasures.

Levant caught the faraway look and Giordino knowingly smiled. Pitt saw their expressions and refocused his attention to the satellite map. "There is a catch."

"There are several," said Levant evenly. "But they can all be overcome."

"Except two."

"And they are…?"

"We don't know where O'Bannion's communications center and security monitoring rooms are located. If he sends out an alert to Kazim's security forces before you can stop him, we won't stand a bishop's chance in hell of making it back to this aircraft and getting a good headstart to Algeria before one of his fighter squadrons shows up and nails us to the nearest barn door."

"In that case, we have to get in and out of the mine within forty minutes," said Levant. "Not impossible if most of the captives can make it aboveground without help. If many of them have to be carried, we will lose valuable time we cannot spare."

At that moment Captain Pembroke-Smythe appeared with a tray of coffee and sandwiches from the aircraft's galley. "Our fare is filling if not gourmet," he said cheerfully. "You have a choice between chicken salad and tuna fish."

Pitt looked at Levant and grinned. "You weren't kidding when you said you ran on a tight budget."

As the airbus soared over the desert as black as the sea, Pitt and Giordino sketched large diagrams of the mine levels as they remembered them. Levant was amazed at their recollections. Neither professed to photographic memories, but they recalled an enormous amount of detail for the short time they were held prisoner in the mine.

Levant and two other officers interrogated the NUMA men in depth, often repeating questions three or four times in hopes of obtaining details observed but overlooked. The track to the canyon, the layout of the mine, the weapons of the guards, it was all covered over and over.

The data was voice recorded on computer and the sketches of the mine programmed into three dimensions. Nothing was overlooked. The weather forecast for the next several hours, the flight time of Kazim's jet fighters from Gao, alternate escape plans and routes should the airbus be destroyed on the ground. Every possible contingency was given a plan.

An hour before touchdown at Tebezza, Levant assembled his small force of men and women in the main cabin. Pitt led off the briefing by describing the guards, their numbers and arms, and observations of their indolent attitude from living and working beneath the desert.

He was followed by Giordino who gave them a tour of the mine levels with the oversized sketches pinned to a standing easel.

Pembroke-Smythe divided up the UN tactical team that was to execute the assault into four units and passed out individual maps of the underground tunnels printed from the computer. Levant capped the briefing by instructing the teams on their missions.

"I apologize for our lack of intelligence," he began. "We've never attempted such a dangerous mission with so little data. The charts you've been given of the mine show probably less than 20 percent of the existing tunnels and shafts. We have to strike hard and fast by securing the offices and guards' quarters. Once we've eliminated resistance, we will round up the prisoners and begin our withdrawal. Final rendezvous will be at the entrance cavern exactly forty minutes from the time we go in. Any questions so far?"

A hand went up and a man near the front spoke up with a Slavic accent. "Why forty minutes, Colonel?"

"Any more, Corporal Wadilinski, and a Malian fighter pilot at the nearest air force base can close and shoot us down before we're safely back into Algeria. I'm hoping that most of the captives can make it to our transports without help. If many of them have to be carried, we will be delayed."

Another hand. "What if we get lost in the mine and cannot find our way back to the rendezvous in time for the withdrawal?"

"Then you will be left behind," Levant answered conversationally. "Anyone else?"

"Do we get to keep any gold we find?"

The query came from a muscle-bound character in the back, followed by a round of laughter.

"You will all be strip searched at the end of the mission," replied Pembroke-Smythe jovially. "And any gold found will be turned over to my personal account in Switzerland."

"The ladies too?" This from one of the women.

He threw her a wily smile. "Especially the ladies."

Though it did not crack his serious expression, Levant was thankful for the show of humor to relax the tense atmosphere. "Now that we know where the booty goes," he said, "let us wrap this up. I will lead the first unit with Mr. Pitt as our guide. We will clear the offices on the upper level before descending into the mine and releasing the captives from their hellhole. Unit two, under the command of Captain Pembroke-Smythe and led by Mr. Giordino, wilt drop down the elevator and secure the guards' quarters. Lieutenant Steinholm will be in charge of unit three and will follow as backup and take up defensive positions at the side shafts off the main tunnel to prevent flanking movements: Unit four under Lieutenant Morrison will secure the gold ore recovery levels. Except for the medical team, the rest of you will remain to guard the airstrip. Any further questions shall be directed to your unit commanders."

Levant paused and stared around the interior of the cabin at the faces of his men. "I regret we've had so little time to prepare for this operation, but it should not prove beyond the capabilities of a team that has successfully accomplished its last six missions without the loss of a single man or woman. If you should confront the unexpected, improvise. We have to get in, free the captives, and get out fast before we are pursued by the Malian air force. End of speech. Good luck to all of you." Then Levant turned and walked into his command compartment.

The data from satellite positioning systems was downlinked to the navigational computer which fed the course into the automatic pilot and put the UN airbus precisely over the plateau of Tebezza. A slight correction toward a new grid coordinate and the pilot was soon circling the airstrip that showed as a barren strip across the desert on the monitor of the sonar/radar system:

The rear cargo doors swung outward and four of Levant's commandos lined up at the edge of the black void. Twenty seconds later a buzzer sounded and they leaped forward and swiftly dropped into the night. The doors closed and the pilot circled to the north for twelve minutes before banking around on his landing approach.

The pilot peered through night-vision goggles as his copilot scanned the desert below through specially tinted bifocal glasses that enabled him to detect the infrared lights set up by the parachutists while glancing at the instrument readings.

"I have clear ground," announced the pilot.

The copilot shook his head as he detected four lights blinking in unison on the starboard side. "You're picking up a short field for light planes. The main strip is half a kilometer to starboard."

"Okay, I have it. Gear down."

The copilot pulled the lever and the wheels clumped down into position. "Landing gear down and locked."

"How do those Apache helicopter pilots keep from smacking into the ground?" muttered the pilot. "This is like looking through twin toilet paper tubes with green fog inside."

The copilot had no time to smile or reply. He was too busy reading off airspeed, altitude, and course corrections.

The big wheels struck the sand and gravel, throwing up a cloud of dust that obliterated the stars behind the speeding aircraft. The reverse thrusters were amazingly quiet as the plane hurtled down the airstrip. Then the brakes were firmly applied and the airbus settled to a stop less than 100 meters from the end of the strip.

The dust was still billowing in the aircraft's wake when the rear ramp swung down and the vehicles drove out and parked in a convoy, the attack dune buggy at the front. The six-man security team that was to remain behind came next and dispersed around the aircraft. The main force followed and swiftly boarded the personnel carriers. The leader of the parachute team ran up to Colonel Levant as he stepped to the ground and saluted.

"The area is deserted, sir. No sign of guards or electronic security."

"Any facilities?" asked Levant.

"Only a small brick building containing tools and drums of automobile diesel and aircraft jet fuel. Shall we destroy it?"

"Wait until we've returned from the mine." He gestured: to a shadowy figure next to him. "Mr. Pitt?"

"Colonel."

"Mr. Giordino told me you have raced off-road vehicles."

"Yes sir, that is correct…"

Levant motioned him into the driver's seat of the attack vehicle and handed him a pair of night-vision goggles. "You know the way to the mine. Please take the wheel and lead us in." He turned and faced another figure who appeared in the dark. "Captain Pembroke-Smythe."

"Sir."

"We're moving out. Ride in the last carrier and keep a watch to our rear, especially the sky. I don't want an aircraft sneaking up on the column."

"I'll keep a tight eye," Pembroke-Smythe assured him.

If the UNICRATT team operated on a shoestring, Pitt couldn't help wondering how incredibly exotic the equipment must be for U.S. Special Forces with unlimited funding. All of Levant's men and women, including Pitt and Giordino, wore night camouflage-gray and black flame resistant combat suits with bulletproof assault vests, protective night goggles, and helmets containing miniature radio communications gear and carried Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns.

Pitt threw a wave to Giordino, who was climbing beside the driver of the rear personnel carrier, and settled into a cramped seat, his head tucked beneath the six-barrel, Vulcan machine gun. He slipped on the goggles and adjusted his eyes to the sudden light magnification that made the desert for 200 meters in front of the dune buggy look like the green surface of an alien planet. He pointed toward the northwest. "The track to the mine begins about 30 meters ahead and to our right.

Levant nodded, then turned and confirmed that his tactical team was all loaded and ready to roll. He made a forward gesture with his hand and slapped Pitt on the shoulder. "Time is passing, Mr. Pitt. Please go."

Pitt accelerated rapidly as he shifted the dune buggy's five-speed gear box. The vehicle leaped ahead, tailed by the three personnel carriers. The ground soon blurred beneath the widetrack tires. Fine sand particles burst and exploded in its trail, forcing the personnel carriers to drive in a staggered V-formation to escape the blinding dust clouds. It did not take long before the vehicles and their passengers were all caked in a layer of fine brown-gray dust.

"How fast will she go?" Pitt asked Levant.

"On a level surface, 210 kilometers."

"That's around 130 miles an hour," said Pitt. "Not bad considering her lack of aerodynamics and heavy weight."

"Your Navy SEALs came up with the idea of using them during the desert war with Iraq."

Pitt nudged Levant. "Tell your drivers we're going to bear left 30 degrees and then continue straight and steady for about 8 kilometers."

Levant issued the directions over his radio communication system, and a moment later the personnel carriers swung around in formation and followed the dune buggy's lead.

Landmarks were scarce on the faint track running from the airstrip to the canyon carved in the plateau. Pitt relied half on his memory and half on eyesight. Plunging across the desert in the dead of night was nerve-racking enough, even with night-vision goggles. There was no way of seeing or knowing for certain what was behind the next hump in the road, or whether he had strayed off course and was leading the convoy off a cliff into a bottomless pit. Only an occasional stretch of tire track that hadn't been covered by wind-blown sand told him he was dead on the trail.

He stole a quick glance at Levant. The Colonel sat relaxed and incredibly composed. If he felt any fear of Pitt's wild drive over dark ground, he gave not the slightest indication. His only expression of concern came when he turned and checked to see that all three personnel carriers were following behind.

The plateau loomed ahead, its towering mass shutting off the lower curtain of stars to the west. Four minutes later a wave of relief swept Pitt. He had hit the slot right on the money. The opening into the twisting canyon split the plateau's black walls like the blow from an axe. He slowed and stopped.

The entrance cave that leads into the equipment parking cavern is only a kilometer from here," he said to Levant. "Do you wish to send a scouting party ahead on foot?"

Levant shook his head. "Continue on slowly, if you please, Mr. Pitt. At the risk of giving away our approach, we'll go in with the vehicles and save time. Make sense to you?"

"Why not? No one is expecting us. If O'Bannion's guards detect our approach, they'll probably assume we're a new batch of prisoners sent by Kazim and Massarde."

Pitt eased the dune buggy forward. The personnel carriers fell behind the dune buggy in a column. He feathered the accelerator only when he began to lose traction in the sand. He traveled in third gear with the engine turning over at little more than idling speed. The column crawled around the base of the steep walls that were defined in crisp black shadows. The specially modified mufflers on the vehicles could not completely stifle the sound of the exhaust, and the beat of the engines drummed softly across the hard surfaces of the rock like the distant drone of a piston engine aircraft. The night air was cool and there was only a whisper of wind, but the canyon walls still radiated with the memory of the day's heat.

The cave entrance suddenly yawned out of the darkness, and Pitt drove the dune buggy through the tight rock walls and into the main gallery as though it was the most natural thing to do. The interior was lit only by the lights that flooded from the office tunnel and stood empty except for one Renault truck and the expected security guard.

The heavily robed and turbaned Tuareg casually stared at the approaching vehicles more out of curiosity than wariness. Only when the dune buggy had pulled within a few meters did his eyes begin to widen in suspicion. He unslung his machine pistol from around his shoulder and was bringing it level when Levant shot him between the eyes with a silenced Beretta automatic.

"Nice shot," Pitt commented dryly as he braked the attack vehicle to a stop.

Levant checked his watch. "Thank you, Mr. Pitt. You put us here twelve minutes ahead of schedule."

"I aim to please."

The Colonel swung from the dune buggy and made a series of hand signals. Quickly, silently the U N tactical team members jumped to the ground, immediately formed into their respective units, and began moving into the tunnel. Once into the corridor with the fluted walls and tile floor, Levant's men began quietly entering the arched openings and rounding up O'Bannion's startled engineering crew as Giordino led the other three tactical units toward the main freight elevator indicated on Fairweather's map that dropped to the lower levels.

Four of O'Bannion's rogue mining engineers were taken as they were seated around a table playing poker. Before the surprised card players could react to the sudden appearance of armed men in camouflaged combat gear, who surrounded them with gun muzzles aimed at their heads, they were bound and gagged and thrown in a storeroom.

Silently, with only the slightest of pressure, Levant eased open the door marked as security monitoring center. The room inside was lit only by the light coming from an array of television monitors displaying different locations throughout the mines. A European male sat in a swivel chair with his back to the door. He was wearing a designer shirt and Bermuda shorts. He smoked a thin cigar in leisurely unconcern as he scanned the monitors whose video cameras were sweeping the mine shafts.

It was the reflection in one monitor with a dead screen that betrayed them. Alerted by the images of men entering the room behind him, the man shifted slightly to his left as his fingers casually crawled toward a small console containing a row of red switches. Too late Levant leapt at the man, swinging his Heckler & Koch in a vicious chop downward. The security guard went limp in his chair, then slumped unconscious over the console. But not before an alarm system began whooping like an ambulance siren throughout the entire mine.

"Damn the luck!" Levant cursed bitterly. "All surprise is gone." He shoved the guard aside and squeezed off ten rounds into the console. Electrical sparks and smoke erupted from the shattered switches and the whooping abruptly went silent.

Pitt ran down the corridor, throwing open doors until he kicked in the one to the communications room. The operator, a pretty Moorish-featured woman, was not intimidated by the abrupt intrusion and did not even look up from her radio equipment at Pitt's approach. Alerted by the siren, she was shouting rapid French into the microphone of the headset perched on her flowing black hair. He quickly stepped forward and clubbed her with his fist on the back of the neck. But like Levant with the security monitor, he was too late. Before he cut her off and she crumpled to the stone floor, the alarm had been transmitted to General Kazim's security forces.

"Not in time," said Pitt as Levant rushed into the room. "She got off a message before I could stop her."

Levant took in the situation with one quick glance. Then he turned and shouted a command. "Sergeant Chauvel!"

"Sir!" It was almost impossible to tell the Sergeant was a woman under her heavy combat suit.

"Get on the radio," Levant ordered in French, "and tell the Maligns that the alarm was a short circuit. Relieve any suggestion of an emergency. And for God's sake talk them out of taking any responsive action."

"Yes sir," Chauvel snapped purposefully before kicking the former radio operator out of the way and sitting down at the radio.

"O'Bannion's office is at the end of the corridor," said Pitt, pushing by Levant and running down the corridor. He didn't stop until he put his shoulder down and collided with the door. It was unlocked and he barreled into the reception chamber like a defensive tackle blitzing a quarterback.

The receptionist with the purple-gray eyes and buttocks length hair sat calmly at her desk, gripping a wicked-looking automatic pistol in both hands. Pitt's momentum carried him across the room and over the top of the desk, crashing into the woman and taking them both to the blue-carpeted floor in a tangled heap. But not before she ripped off two shots into Pitt's bulletproof assault vest.

Pitt's chest felt as though someone had struck it twice with a hammer. The blows had temporarily knocked the wind out of him but in no way slowed him down. The receptionist tried to extricate herself while shouting what Pitt was certain were obscenities in a language unknown to him. She fired off another shot that went over his shoulder, ricocheting off the rock ceiling into a painting, before he snatched the gun from her hand. Then he jerked her to her feet and flung her onto a couch.

He turned away and stepped between the two bronze sculptures of the Tuaregs and tried the handle to the door of O'Bannion's office. It was locked. He lifted the gun taken from the receptionist, placed it against the lock, and pulled the trigger three times. The gunfire was deafening m the rock room, but there was no longer any need for stealth. He stood around the wall and shoved the door open with his toe.

O'Bannion was leaning with his back against the desk, hands outstretched on the surface. He looked as though he was expecting to greet the corporate executive of a rival company. The eyes that showed through his litham bore a haughty expression without a trace of fear. But they quickly turned to astonishment when Pitt walked into the room and pulled off his helmet.

"I hope I'm not late for dinner, O'Bannion. As I recall, you expressed a wish to dine with me."

"You!" O'Bannion hissed, the color ebbing from the skin showing around his eyes.

"Back to haunt you," Pitt said with a half smile. "And I brought a few friends who don't take kindly to sadists who enslave and murder women and children."

"You should be dead. No one could have crossed the desert without water and lived."

"Neither Giordino nor I died."

"One of General Kazim's search aircraft found the truck overturned in a wadi far to the west of the Trans-Saharan Track. You couldn't have reached the track on foot."

"And the guard we left tied at the wheel."

"Alive, but he was soon shot for allowing you to escape."

"Life is certainly cheap in these parts."

The shock was slowly fading from O'Bannion's eyes, but there was still no fear. "Have you come to rescue your people? Or to steal gold?"

Pitt stared at him. "Right on the first, wrong on the second. We also intend to put you and your scum out of business, permanently."

"Your force has invaded a sovereign nation. You have no rights in Mali or jurisdiction over me and the mine."

"My God! You're lecturing me on jurisdiction? What about the rights of all the people you enslaved and murdered?"

O'Bannion shrugged. "General Kazim would have executed most of them anyway."

"What stopped you from providing them with humane treatment?" Pitt demanded.

"Tebezza is not a resort or a spa. We are here to mine gold."

"For the profit of you, Massarde, and Kazim."

"Yes," O'Bannion nodded. "Our aims are mercenary. " what?"

O'Bannion's cold and ruthless character threw open floodgate of anger in Pitt, released a series of mental pictures of the suffering endured by countless men, women, and children, pictures of the corpses stacked in the underground crypt, memories of Melika beating the helpless laborers with her bloodstained thong, the conviction that three men sick with greed were responsible for untold slaughter. He walked over to O'Bannion and smashed the shoulder stock of his machine gun into the part of the indigo litham covering O'Bannion's mouth.

For a long moment Pitt stared down at the nomad-robed Irish mining engineer who now lay stretched on the carpet, blood spreading through the cloth of his headdress, swore in maddened fury, and then slung the unconscious man over his shoulder. He met Levant in the corridor.

"O'Bannion?" asked the Colonel.

Pitt nodded. "He had an accident."

"So it would seem."

"How do we stand?"

"Unit four has secured the ore recovery levels. Units two and three are meeting little resistance from the guards. It appears they're better suited for beating helpless people than fighting hardened professionals."

"The VIP elevator to the mine levels is this way," said Pitt, setting off down a side corridor.

The carpeted and chromed-wall elevator had been abandoned by its operator as Pitt, Levant, and the members of unit one who were not guarding O'Bannion's engineers and office workers dropped down to the main level. They exited and approached the iron door that was hanging askew on its hinges and whose lock was still shattered from the blast of dynamite.

"Someone beat us to it," mused Levant.

"Giordino and I blew it when we escaped," explained Pitt.

"Looks like they never got around to repairing it."

The shaft reverberated with the sharp explosions of gunfire from somewhere within the bowels of the mine. Pitt hoisted O'Bannion's still limp body onto the shoulder of a big, muscular commando and set off at a run down the shaft in the direction of the cavern holding the prisoners.

They reached the central chamber without meeting resistance and met up with members of unit two that were in the act of disarming a group of O'Bannion's guards who stood fearfully with hands clutched behind their necks. Giordino and two of the tactical team had shot off the lock and were leaning against the great iron gate to the slave laborers' dungeon cavern. Pembroke-Smythe spotted Levant, hurried over, and reported.

"Sixteen guards have been rounded up, Colonel. One or two escaped into the mine shafts. Seven made the mistake of resisting and are dead. We only have two men wounded, neither seriously."

"We have to speed things up a bit," said Levant. "I fear they transmitted an alert before we could cut off communications."

Pitt stepped beside Giordino and added his muscle into heaving open the gate. Giordino turned and looked at him.

"Well, it's about time you made an appearance."

"I paused for a brief chat with O'Bannion."

"Does he need a doctor or a mortician?"

"A dentist actually," Pitt answered.

"Have you seen Melika?"

"No sign of her in the engineering offices."

"I'll find her," said Giordino, a biting fierceness in his voice. "She's mine."

The gate was manhandled against its stops, and the tactical team stepped into the cavern. Through firsthand experience Pitt and Giordino knew what to expect, but they were still sickened at the sight. The commandos froze, their faces gone white at the overpowering stench and the incredible degree of suffering before their eyes. Even Levant and Pembroke-Smythe stood shocked before mustering up the effort to enter.

"Good lord," Smythe mumbled, "this looks as bad as Auschwitz and Dachau."

Pitt rushed through the mass of packed captives who were numbed beyond desperation by the monotonous existence and starved into barely walking skeletons. He found Dr. Hopper sitting on a bunk staring blankly through dazed eyes, his filthy clothes hanging loosely on a body decimated by overwork and lack of food. He broke into a broad smile, lifted himself weakly to his feet, and embraced Pitt.

"Thank God, you and AI made it. It's a miracle."

"I'm sorry we took so long," said Pitt.

"Eva never gave up` on you," said Hopper, his voice choking. "She knew you'd come through."

Pitt looked around. "Where is she?"

Hopper nodded toward a bunk. "You didn't get here a minute too soon. She's in a bad way."

Pitt walked over and knelt beside a statue-like form in a lower bunk. Sadness showed in every line of his face. He couldn't believe how wasted she had become in a week's time. He gently took hold of her shoulders and gave her a light shake. "Eva, I've come back for you."

Slowly she stirred, her eyes fluttered open, and she vaguely stared up at him. "Please let me sleep a little longer," she murmured.

"You're safe now. I'm taking you out of this place."

She recognized him then and her vision became blurred with tears. "I knew you would come for me… for us all."

"We came within a hair of not making it:"

She looked into his eyes and smiled gamely. "I never doubted for a moment."

Then he kissed her, long, soft, and tenderly.

Levant's medical team went to work immediately, treating the captives while the combat units began evacuating those who could walk to the upper level where they were loaded aboard the personnel carriers. Initial fears proved true as the operation went slowly because many were too weak to move on their own and had to be carried out.

After seeing that Eva and the other women and children were cared for and on their way to the surface, Pitt borrowed a satchel of plastic explosives from Levant's demolition expert and then returned to a now conscious O'Bannion who sat beside an ore car under the watchful eye of a tough lady commando.

"Come along, O'Bannion," Pitt ordered. "We're going for a stroll."

O'Bannion's litham had unraveled and fallen away and now revealed a face heavily scarred and disfigured from a premature dynamite explosion during his younger mining days in Brazil. His ugly features were heightened by a mouth leaking blood and the lack of two front teeth, knocked out by the blow from Pitt's gun butt.

"Where?" he asked abruptly through swollen lips.

"To pay our respects to the dead."

The guard stood aside as Pitt roughly pulled O'Bannion to his feet and prodded him along the ore car tracks toward the burial crypt. Neither man spoke as they walked through, the mine, occasionally stepping around the body of a Tuareg guard who had made the mistake of resisting Levant's assault force. When they came to the cavern of the dead, O'Bannion hesitated, but Pitt coldly pushed him inside.

O'Bannion turned and faced Pitt, his eyes still contemptuous. "Why did you bring me here, to lecture me on cruelty to my fellow man before you execute me?"

"Not at all," Pitt replied quietly. "The lesson is obvious without a lecture, and no, I'm not going to execute you. That would be too quick, too clean. A quick flash of pain and then darkness. No, I think you deserve a more appropriate end."

For the first time a flicker of fear danced in O'Bannion's eyes. "What do you have in mind?"

Pitt swung the muzzle of his weapon around the stacks of cadavers. "I'm going to give you time to contemplate your brutality and greed."

O'Bannion looked confused. "Why? You're badly mistaken if you expect me to cry for forgiveness and beg for leniency."

Pitt looked over at a pile of bodies, at the frail, starved frame and open unstaring eyes of a girl no more than ten years old. Anger flamed and seethed within him and he fought desperately to control his emotions.

"You're going to die, O'Bannion, but very slowly, suffering the agony of thirst and hunger you imposed on these pitiful dead around you. By the time your friends Kazim and Massarde find you, providing they even bother to search, you'll have joined the rest of your victims."

"Shoot me, kill me now!" O'Bannion savagely demanded.

Pitt smiled a smile as cold as dry ice and said nothing. He jabbed his gun at O'Bannion, forcing him to retreat to the end of the cavern. Then Pitt stepped into the entrance tunnel, placed the plastic explosives at different intervals, and set the timers on the igniters. He gave O'Bannion one final callous wave and ran out into the shaft, crouching behind a train of ore cars.

Four loud, booming detonations, each fractionally following the other, hurled dust and splintered support timbers from the crypt's entrance tunnel into the main shaft. The explosions echoed through the mines for several moments before an eerie silence took over. Pitt wondered in dumb anger if he had placed the explosives in the wrong positions. But then he heard a faint reverberating sound that amplified into a great rumble as the roof of the tunnel collapsed under hundreds of tons of rock and sealed the entrance to the burial chamber.

Pitt waited until the dust began to settle before he casually shouldered his gun and began walking back to the evacuation area, along the ore car rails, whistling "I've been working on the railroad."

Giordino heard a sound and then saw a movement in a crosscut shaft to his left. He stepped along the train rails until he came to a solitary, empty ore car. Silently edging along the wall, careful his boots did not strike any loose rock, he crept closer. Quick as a cat, he leaped over the rails and rammed the muzzle into the ore car.

"Throw out your gun," he said sharply.

Caught by surprise, the Tuareg guard slowly rose from the empty bucket of the ore car, his machine gun held high over his head. He could not speak English and did not fully comprehend Giordino's command, but he quickly recognized a lost cause. His eyes followed Giordino's gun as it, jabbed at him and moved off to the side. He caught the message and dropped his weapon over the edge of the ore car.

"Melika!" Giordino snapped.

The guard shook his head, but Giordino read the look of abject fear in the eyes. He pressed his gun muzzle against the guard's lips and pushed it into his mouth while flexing his finger on the trigger:

"Melika!" the guard mumbled around the steel barrel jammed halfway down his throat, frantically nodding through the pain.

Giordino pulled back the gun. "Where's Melika?" he demanded in a threatening tone.

The guard appeared as frightened of Melika as he did of Giordino. With widened eyes he silently nodded his head into the depths of the shaft. Giordino motioned for him to move out of the crosscut and into the central shaft. Then he pointed.

"Go back to the main cavern. You understand?"

The Tuareg bowed with his hands over his head and backed out of the crosscut, stumbling and falling across the ore car rails in his haste to comply. Giordino turned and cautiously continued into the dark tunnel that stretched ahead of him, expecting a burst of gunfire with each step.

It was deathly quiet save for the light step of his boots over the rail ties. Twice he paused, every sense of his body warning him of danger. He came to a sharp bend in the shaft and stopped. There was a glimmer of light coming around from the other side. There was also a shadow and the sound of rock against rock. He slipped a tiny signal mirror from one of the many pockets in his combat suit and eased it slowly around a support timber.

Melika was working feverishly stacking ore rocks at the end of the shaft, raising a false wall to hide behind. Her back was to Giordino, but she was still a good 10 meters away, and a gun was propped against the tunnel wall within easy reach. She took no precautions as she worked, having placed her trust in the guard Giordino had already disarmed to warn her. Giordino could have stepped into the center of the shaft and shot her before she sensed his presence. But a quick kill was not in his mind.

Giordino stealthily moved around the bend in the shaft toward Melika, stepping quietly, any sounds of his approach covered by the crunch of the rock as her hiding place was rushed to completion. When he came close enough, he snatched her weapon and threw it over his shoulder into the shaft behind him.

She spun around, took in the situation within two seconds, and rushed Giordino, the deadly thong already in one hand whistling over her shoulder. Unfortunately for her the element of surprise did not exist. Giordino did not flinch. His face was a mask of cold implacability as he calmly pulled the trigger and shot away her kneecaps.

Revenge dominated all of Giordino's emotions. Melika was as mad and vicious as a rabid pit bull. She had maimed and murdered for the pure enjoyment of it. Even now, as she lay twisted across the loose rock, legs grotesquely bent, she stared up at him with bared teeth and pure malignity glaring out of her black eyes. Her crazed sadism welled up from within and overcame the searing pain. She snarled at Giordino like a wounded beast and struggled to lash out at him with the thong while shouting the vilest of obscenities.

Giordino easily stepped back and bemusedly observed her futile assault. "It's a violent, unrelenting world," he said slowly, "but less so now that you're leaving it."

"You sawed-off little bastard," she snarled. "What do you know about a violent world? You've never lived amid filth and suffered the torment and rottenness I have."

Giordino's expression was as hard as the rock in the mine shaft. "That didn't give you a license to inflict agony on others. As judge and executioner, I'm not interested in your life's problems. Maybe you have your reasons for becoming what you are. If you ask me, you were born sick. You've left a long road littered with innocent victims. There is no excuse for you to live."

Melika did not beg. The black hatred and venomous malevolence poured out of her mouth in curses. With calculated efficiency, Giordino shot her in the stomach twice. The blazing eyes took their last look, seeing only Giordino's indifferent expression, and then went vacant as her massive body seemed to shrivel into the rock floor of the shaft.

Giordino looked down at her for several moments before he finally spoke to an unhearing corpse.

"Ding dong," he muttered, "the witch is dead."

"Total count is twenty-five," Pembroke-Smythe reported to Levant. "Fourteen men, eight women, and three children. All half dead from attrition."

"That's one woman and one child less than when Giordino and I left here," said Pitt in solemn anger.

Levant stared at the personnel vehicles that were being loaded with the freed captives and then glanced at his watch. "We're sixteen minutes over our deadline," he said impatiently. "Hurry things along, will you, Captain. We must be on our way."

"Ready to go in a jiff," Pembroke-Smythe said cheerfully as he rushed around the vehicles, urging the tactical team members to speed up the loading effort.

"Where is your friend, Giordino?" Levant asked Pitt. "If he doesn't show soon, he'll be left behind,"

"He had a chore to do."

"He'll be lucky to make his way through the rioting on the lower levels. After the prisoners broke into the food stores and water supply, they began wreaking their vengeance on the guards. The last team to withdraw from the lower levels reported a massacre in progress."

"They can hardly be blamed after the hell they've endured," said Pitt thoughtfully.

"I feel bad having to abandon them," admitted Levant. "But if we don't leave soon they'll come surging up the elevators, and we'll have a devil of a time fighting them off our vehicles."

Giordino came trotting out of the office corridor past a six-man commando team guarding the entrance to the equipment cavern. A very smug expression was settled on his face. He grinned at Pitt and Levant. "Glad to see you held up the show just for little old me."

Levant was not amused. "You're hardly the reason behind our delay."

"Melika?" Pitt asked.

Giordino held up the thong he'd taken as a souvenir. "Signing the guest register in hell. And O'Bannion?"

"Managing the mortuary."

"Ready to push off," Smythe shouted from a personnel vehicle.

Levant nodded. "Mr. Pitt, if you will kindly lead us back to the airstrip."

Pitt made a quick check on Eva, amazed at her rapid revival after drinking nearly a gallon of water and ravenously downing a quick meal provided by the UN medical team. Hopper, Grimes, and Fairweather also looked as if they had been resurrected. Then he ran to the armed dune buggy and swung into the driver's seat.

With only seconds to spare, the rear guard ran toward the last departing vehicle and was pulled aboard as the prisoners flooded out of the mines and rushed through the offices into the equipment cavern. They arrived too late and could only watch in cruel disappointment as the special force that had saved them from a brutal death sped off into the night, leaving them to an uncertain fate.

Pitt saw no need for caution as he accelerated through the canyon. He turned on the narrow-beamed headlights of the desert assault vehicle and kept his foot flat on the floorboard. At Colonel Levant's urging he had left the personnel vehicles far in his wake as they rushed ahead to oversee the preparations for a hasty boarding and fast takeoff. Giordino was driving the lead carrier now and easily tracked the several sets of tire indentations once Pitt and his trailing dust cloud had pulled out of sight.

Levant was edgy on the return trip. Doggedly he checked his watch every few minutes with dire foreboding, disturbed that they were now a tardy twenty-two minutes behind his timetable. With only 5 kilometers to go, he began to feel more at ease. The sky was clear and there was no indication of aircraft. He began to feel a tinge of optimism. Perhaps Kazim's security forces were lulled by Sergeant Chauvel's deceptive excuse for the alert signal after all.

Disillusionment came quickly.

Above the hum of the dune buggy's muted exhaust, they suddenly heard the unmistakable sound of jet engines and caught sight of aircraft navigation lights streaking across the dark sky. Levant was instantly giving orders over his helmet radio for the flight crew and security unit to scramble away from the airbus and take cover.

Pitt slammed on the brakes and threw the assault vehicle into a four-wheel drift sideways, an act that was as automatic as it was immediate, stopping in a swirl of dust behind a small sand dune. He relaxed his grip on the wheel and stared up at the intruding aircraft. "I think we've just attracted a whole lot of unwelcome attention."

"Kazim must have sent a single reconnaissance plane as insurance to check any possibility that the alert was a genuine attack." Levant's voice was hard, but his expression reflected deep apprehension.

"The pilot may not suspect a problem, or he wouldn't soar in here as nice as you please with his wing lights flashing."

Levant stared grimly at the outline of the jet fighter as it circled the airbus on the end of the airstrip. "I fear he's reporting an unidentified aircraft and requesting instructions to attack."

They weren't kept in suspense for long. The fighter, now recognized by Levant as a French Mirage, suddenly banked and swooped toward the airstrip, lining up its laser sights on the airbus that sat as helpless as a sleeping cow in front of a cannon.

"He's beginning his run!" Pitt snapped.

"Open fire!" Levant shouted to the man sitting behind them who was hunched over the Vulcan multi-barreled machine gun. "Bring him down!

The gunner visually tracked the Malian fighter over the lead-computing gun sight, and the instant he established the lead angle and distance he actuated the firing system. Like the Gatling guns of the nineteenth century, the six barrels on the Vulcan spun in a rotational blur as thousands of 20-millimeter rounds sliced the black sky. The shells homed in and began shredding` the Mirage fighter at the exact moment in time that the pilot unleashed two missiles at the helpless airbus on the ground.

The desert became a caldron of noise and flame as both aircraft exploded into simultaneous eruptions of fire. The jet fighter, now a bright orange ball, continued its descending attack angle in a straight line as if pulled by a string until it plunged into the ground, throwing fiery pieces of debris in a great fan across the uncaring desert. The airbus was no longer a plane, just a great mass of flame that licked toward an oily smoke cloud that rose in a huge column into the sky, effectively shutting out the stars.

Mesmerized, Pitt watched what only seconds ago were two solid, intact aircraft. Now he saw only fire and destruction. He and Levant climbed out of the assault vehicle and were riveted where they stood. In the blazing glow of the fiery devastation, Pitt saw the bitter expression of defeat in Levant's face.

"Dammit!" Levant cursed. "This was exactly what I was afraid would happen. Now we're trapped without a chance of rescue."

"Kazim will soon suspect a foreign force has reinvaded his territory," Pitt added severely. "He'll order his entire air force to Tebezza. Then your backup helicopters will be shot to pieces before they can rendezvous."

"There's no alternative but to make a run for the border," Levant conceded.

"We'd never see it. Even if Kazim's planes failed to use us for target practice or his security forces missed dropping across our path and attacking us every step of the way, your vehicles will run out of gas long before we reach a relief force. A few of your toughest commandos might get through, but those poor souls you rescued from death in the mines will surely die in the desert. I know, I've been that route."

"You were forced to go east toward the Trans-Saharan Track," Levant reminded Pitt. "That was close to 400 kilometers. If we head due north, we only have to travel 240 kilometers before crossing into Algeria and meeting up with a relief force from Algiers. Our fuel is ample for the distance."

"You're forgetting Kazim and Massarde have high stakes in the Tebezza mines," said Pitt, looking directly at Levant. "They'll do whatever is necessary to keep the secret of their atrocities from discovery."

"You think they would strike us in Algeria."

"Your rescue operation has forced them to become desperate men," Pitt interrupted. "A little thing like a national border won't stop them from ordering air strikes into a desolate section of Algeria. Once your force is softened up and the rescue craft is destroyed or driven away, they'll follow up by dropping in their elite security forces to ensure our total annihilation. They can't afford even one survivor to escape and unveil their inhuman activities."

Levant turned from the destruction, his face glowing orange from the fire, and stared at Pitt. "You don't sanction my contingency plans?"

"I have an aversion to pursuing the expected."

"Are you being cryptic, Mr. Pitt, or merely modest?"

"Practical," Pitt answered briefly. "I have every reason to believe Kazim won't pull back at the border."

"What do you propose?" Levant asked patiently.

"Head south until we intersect with the railroad out of Fort Foureau," Pitt answered briefly. "Then hijack a train to Mauritania. If we play our cards right, Kazim won't catch on until we reach Port Etienne and the sea."

"Into the lion's den," Levant muttered skeptically. "You make it sound absurdly simple."

"The ground between here and the Fort Foureau hazardous waste project is mostly flat desert with occasional sand dunes. If we maintain an average speed of 50 kilometers an hour, we can reach the railroad before sunup with fuel to spare."

"Then what? We'd be exposed from every side."

"We hide out in an old Foreign Legion fort until dark before stopping and hiding everyone on an outward-bound train."

"The original Fort Foureau. It was abandoned just after World War II. I visited it once."

"The same."

"We'd be tempting suicide without a guide to lead us through the dunes," Levant argued.

"One of the rescued captives is a professional tourist guide. He knows the Malian desert like a nomad."

Levant turned his attention back on the burning airbus for several moments, his mind considering the pros and cons of Pitt's proposal. If he could trade places with General Kazim, he would expect his quarry to run north for the nearest border crossing too. And he would also commit all his mobile fighting forces in an attempt to block them off. Pitt was right, he concluded. There was absolutely no hope of escaping north into Algeria. Kazim would never call off the pursuit until they were all dead. Striking out in the opposite direction just might fool the General and Massarde into a wild goose chase long enough for the tactical team to steal into the clear.

"I didn't tell you, did I, Mr. Pitt? I spent eight years in the desert when I was a member of the Foreign Legion."

"No, Colonel, you didn't."

"The nomads have a fable about a lion with a hunter's spear in his side that walked north from the jungle and swam across the Niger River so he could die in the warm sand of the desert."

"Is there a lesson in it somewhere?" asked Pitt vaguely.

"Not really."

"So what's the meaning?"

Levant turned as the personnel vehicles approached and stopped beside the dune buggy. Then he looked back at Pitt and slowly smiled. "What it means is that I'm going to trust your judgment and push south to the railroad."

Kazim entered Massarde's office at eleven o'clock in the evening. He helped himself to a gin on the rocks and sat down in a chair before Massarde bothered to look up and acknowledge the General's presence.

"I was informed of your unexpected arrival, Zateb," said Massarde. "What brings you to Fort Foureau this time of night?"

Kazim studied his drink as he swirled the ice cubes. "I thought it best I tell you in person."

"Tell me what?" Massarde inquired impatiently.

"Tebezza has been raided."

Massarde frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"About nine o'clock, my communications section received an emergency alert from the mine's security system," explained Kazim. "A few minutes later, the Tebezza radio operator announced an all-clear, saying the alarm went off due to a faulty electrical circuit."

"Sounds innocent enough."

"Only on the surface. I do not trust seemingly innocent situations. I ordered one of my air force fighters to make a reconnaissance flight over the area. The pilot radioed that an unidentified jet transport plane was sitting on Tebezza's airstrip. The same type of French airbus, I might add, that snatched the American from the Gao airport."

Massarde's face turned sober with sudden concern. "Your pilot was positive of this?"

Kazim nodded. "Since no aircraft can land at Tebezza without my authority, I ordered my pilot to destroy it. He acknowledged and launched his attack. He reported a hit on the target in almost the same instant his radio went dead."

"Good God, man, it could have been a commercial airliner that simply made an emergency landing."

"Commercial airliners do not fly the skies without markings."

"I think you're overreacting."

"Then explain why my pilot did not return to his base."

"Mechanical malfunction?" Massarde shrugged. "It could have suffered any number of problems."

"I prefer to believe he was shot down by the force that raided the mines."

"You don't know that."

"Nonetheless, I've ordered a fighter squadron over the area and sent in an elite security force by helicopter to check out the situation."

"What of O'Bannion?" asked Massarde. "Hasn't he contacted you?"

"No response, nothing. Forty minutes after they denied an emergency, all communication with Tebezza went silent."

Massarde mulled over Kazim's report, but was lost for answers. "Why raid the mines?" he asked finally. "For what purpose?"

"Most likely the gold," Kazim replied.

"Stupid to steal ore. We remove all pure gold to our South Pacific depository as soon as it's processed. The last shipment was two days ago. A band of thieves with half a brain between them would attempt to hijack it during transport."

"For the moment, I have no theories," Kazim confessed. He held up his watch. "My forces should be landing on the plateau above the mines about now. We'll have answers within the hour."

"If what you say is true, something strange is happening," Massarde murmured.

"We have to consider the possibility that the same United Nations commando team that struck my air force base in Gao is responsible for the raid on Tebezza."

"Gao was a different operation. Why return and strike Tebezza? Under whose orders?"

Kazim finished off his gin and poured another. "Hala Kamil? Perhaps word leaked out about the abduction of Dr. Hopper and his party. So she sent in her tactical team to rescue them."

"Impossible," said Massarde, shaking his head. "Unless your men talked."

"My men know they would die if they betrayed my trust," Kazim said coldly. "If there was a leak, it came from your end."

Massarde gave Kazim a benign stare. "Stupid of us to argue. We can't alter the past, but we can control the future."

"In what way?"

"You said your pilot claimed a hit on the airliner."

"His final words."

"Then we can assume the raiding party's only means of escape from Mali has been eliminated."

"Providing damage to their aircraft was severe enough."

Massarde rose and turned to face a large plaster contour map of the Sahara that stretched on the wall behind his desk. "If you were in command of the raiders and your plane was destroyed, how would you see your situation?"

"All but hopeless."

"What are your options?"

Kazim came over and tapped his glass against the plaster map. "There are no options but one. Cut and run for the Algerian border."

"Can they make it?" asked Massarde.

"Assuming their vehicles are intact and fueled, they should be able to cross over into Algeria sometime around dawn."

Massarde looked at him. "Can you catch and destroy them before they reach the border?"

"Our night fighting systems are limited. I might shave them down a bit, but to wipe them out I would need daylight."

"Then you will be too late."

Kazim took a cigar from a ceramic humidor, lit it, and sipped from his gin. "Let us be practical. We're looking at the Tanezrouft, the most desolate and remote part of the Sahara. The Algerian military rarely sends a patrol into the uninhabited region along the border. And why should they. They have no quarrel with Mali, and we have none with them. My security forces can easily strike 100 miles inside our northern neighbor without detection."

Massarde looked sharply at Kazim. "Should it turn out to be a rescue mission by the UN forces, none of Hopper's people or my engineers and their families can be allowed to escape. If only one gets through to expose Fort Foureau or Tebezza, you and I are finished as business partners."

The beginnings of a smile widened across the General's face. "Not to worry yourself, Yves my friend. We have too good a thing going to allow a few prying samaritans to pull the rug from under us. I promise you that by tomorrow at noon they will all be carrion for the vultures, every last one of them."

After Kazim had left, Massarde spoke briefly into his intercom. A few seconds later Ismail Yerli entered the room.

"You heard and observed on the monitor?" asked Massarde.

Yerli nodded. "Amazing the man can be so cunning and yet so stupid at the same time."

"You read Kazim quite accurately. You can see you won't have an easy time keeping a leash on him."

"When does he expect me to join his entourage?"

"I'll introduce you this evening at a dinner party I'm hosting in honor of President Tahir."

"With the situation at Tebezza in a critical stage, isn't Kazim too occupied to show?"

Massarde smiled. "The great lion of Mali is never too busy to attend an elegant dinner put on by a Frenchman."

Sitting in his small command center office in the UN building in New York, General Bock read the report relayed by a United Nations communications satellite by Colonel Levant. There was a grave expression on his aging face as he picked up a secure phone and called Admiral Sandecker's private number. The Admiral's answering machine beeped and Bock left a terse message. Sandecker was back to him within eight minutes.

"I've just received an unpleasant report from Colonel Levant," Bock announced.

"What's the situation?" Sandecker asked flatly:

"Aircraft of the Malian air force destroyed their transport plane on the ground. They are cut off and trapped."

"What of the rescue operation at the mine?"

"It went off as planned. All foreign nationals still alive were placed under medical care and evacuated. Levant reported his casualties as light."

"Are they currently under attack?"

"Not as yet. But it is only a matter of hours before forces of General Kazim close in."

"Do they have an optional escape route?"

"The Colonel was quite clear in stating their only hope lay in reaching the Algerian border before daylight."

"Not much of a choice," Sandecker said grimly.

"I suspect it was a red herring."

"Why do you say that?"

"He sent his report over an open frequency. Kazim's communications operators were sure to pick it up."

Sandecker paused to take notes. "You think Colonel Levant is heading on a different tack than he advertised?"

"I was hoping you'd tell me," said Bock.

"Clairvoyance is not one of my strong points."

"There was a message to you in Levant's report from your man, Pitt."

"Dirk." There was sudden warmth in Sandecker's voice, and a touch of reverence. Leave it to Pitt to come up with an unthinkable scheme. "What is the message?"

"It reads, `Tell the Admiral that when I return to Washington, I'll take him to see Harvey's girlfriend Judy sing at the AT&S saloon.' Is this a crude joke, or what?"

"Dirk is not known for crude jokes," Sandecker said definitely. "He's trying to tell us something with some sort of riddle."

"Do you know this Harvey?" asked Bock blankly.

"The name isn't familiar," murmured Sandecker. "I've never heard Dirk mention anyone called Harvey."

"Is there such a place in Washington as the AT&S saloon with a singer by the name of Judy?" Bock inquired.

"Not that I've ever been in," Sandecker answered, searching for a clue in the recesses of his mind. "And the only singer I ever knew named Judy was—"

The answer struck Sandecker with all the suddenness of a slap in the face. The ingenious simplicity, the elementary code was obvious to anyone who was an old motion picture buff like the Admiral. He might have known, he might have guessed Pitt would have played on that knowledge. He laughed.

"I fail to see the humor," Bock said sternly.

"They're not running for the border into Algeria," Sandecker stated triumphantly.

"What did you say?"

"Colonel Levant's force is heading south toward the railroad running between the sea and Fort Foureau."

"May I ask what brought you to that conclusion?" Bock asked suspiciously.

"Dirk's thrown us a conundrum, a common riddle that Kazim is unlikely to solve. Judy the singer is Judy Garland and Harvey represents a movie she starred in called The Harvey Girls."

"How does the AT&S saloon fit in the picture?"

"Not a saloon, but a song. The hit song Judy Garland sang in the movie. It was called The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe. The name of a railroad."

Bock said slowly, "That explains why Levant sent a report that Kazim's communications people could easily intercept. He misled them into believing he was heading north into Algeria."

"When in fact they're traveling in the opposite direction," Sandecker finished.

"Levant has rightly assumed that crossing the Mali/ Algeria border did not guarantee safety. Men as ruthless as Kazim have no qualms about ignoring international law. He will pursue our force until they are all slaughtered."

"The next question is what do they do after reaching the railroad?"

"Perhaps steal a train," suggested Bock.

"Makes sense, but in broad daylight?"

"There is more to the message from your man, Pitt."

"Please go on."

"The next part reads, `Also inform the Admiral that Gary, Ray, and Bob are going over to Brian's house for fun and games.' Can you interpret this?"

Sandecker thought a moment. "If Pitt is still coding in movies then Gary must be Gary Cooper. And I'll guess that he means Ray Milland."

"Do you recall a picture they starred in together?"

"I do indeed," Sandecker fairly beamed over the telephone. "Dirk might just as well have hung out a neon sign. They starred with Robert Preston and Brian Donlevy in a 1939 epic called Beau Geste."

"I saw it when I was a boy," said Bock. "The story was about three brothers who served in the French Foreign Legion."

"The reference to Brian's house suggests a fort."

"Certainly not the Fort Foureau hazardous waste facility. That would be the last place Levant would go."

"Is there another fort in the area?"

Bock paused to consult his maps. "Yes, an old Legion outpost several kilometers west of the waste project. The very one, in fact, Massarde named his project after."

"Sounds like they intend to hole up there until dark."

"I would do the same if I was in Colonel Levant's place."

"They're going to need help," said Sandecker.

"Precisely the reason for my call to you," said Bock, becoming brisk and businesslike. "You must persuade the President to send an American special forces group to assist in bringing Levant and the freed captives out of General Kazim's territory."

"Did you discuss this with Secretary General Kamil? She carries more weight with the President than I do."

"Unfortunately, she was suddenly called away to an emergency conference in Moscow. You are the only one I can turn to on rush notice."

"How much time have we got?"

"Virtually none. Daylight will come in their part of the desert within two hours."

"I'll do what I can," promised Sandecker. "I only hope the President hasn't gone to bed yet, or I'll pay hell getting his aides to wake him."

"You must be out of your mind, demanding to see the President this time of night," Earl Willover said angrily.

Sandecker looked at the President's Chief of Staff who was neatly attired in a dark double-breasted wool pin stripe that showed only the slightest sign of creases in the pants. Sandecker wondered if the man ever left his office and slept standing up. "Take my word for it, Earl, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't urgent."

"I won't wake the President unless faced with an international crisis that endangers the security of the nation."

So far Sandecker had held his temper in check, but it began to slip away. "All right, tell him there's a taxpaying voter downstairs in the White House office who's mad as hell."

"You are mad."

"Mad enough to charge up to his bedroom and wake him myself."

Willover looked like he was on the verge of a boiling fit. "You try it, and I'll have the Secret Service take you in custody."

"A lot of innocent people, including women and children, are going to die if the President doesn't act."

"I hear that old story every day of the week," Willover sneered.

"And make jokes about the victims, right?"

Willover finally lost it. "You've got an answer for everything, you arrogant anchor-danker. I can break you any time I want to. You understand?"

Sandecker moved close enough to Willover to smell the man's minty breath. "Listen up, Earl. One day the President's term of office will be over and you'll only be another one of the great unwashed public again. Then I will ring your doorbell and tear out your liver."

"I bet you would too," came a familiar voice.

Sandecker and Willover both turned and faced the President who was standing in a doorway in his pajamas and bathrobe. He was nibbling from a plate of canapés he held in one hand.

"I sneaked down for a late snack from the kitchen refrigerator and overheard heated voices." He stared at Sandecker. "Now suppose you tell me what this is all about, Admiral."

Willover stepped in front of Sandecker. "Please sir, it's a matter of little consequence."

"Why don't you let me be the judge of that, Earl. Okay, Admiral, speak your piece."

"First let me ask you, Mr. President, have you been briefed on the latest developments on the Fort Foureau operation?"

The President looked at Willover. "I was told that your men, Pitt and Giordino, had managed to escape into Algeria and that they provided vital information regarding Yves Massarde's corrupt and unscrupulous hazardous waste operations…"

"May I ask what your response is?"

"We're calling for an international environmental tribunal of European and North African legal representatives to meet and discuss a plan of action," answered Willover.

"Then you don't plan to… I believe you said, Mr. President… `go in and take the place out ourselves'"

"Cooler heads have prevailed," said the President, nodding at Willoven.

"Even now, with proof that chemicals leaking from Fort Foureau are causing the expanding red tide, all anyone is going to do is sit down and talk about it?" Sandecker said, controlling his exasperation.

"We'll discuss this another time," said the President, turning to return to his bedroom upstairs in the White House. "Earl will set up an appointment."

"Did Earl also brief you on the Tebezza gold mines?" asked Sandecker suddenly.

The President hesitated and shook his head. "No, I'm not familiar with the name."

"After Pitt and Giordino were captured at Fort Foureau," Sandecker went on, "they were taken to another one of General Kazim and Yves Massarde's sinister enterprises, a little-known gold mine where opposition and dissident prisoners are enslaved and worked to death under the most barbaric and inhumane conditions. A number of them were French engineers and their families Massarde imprisoned so they couldn't return home and expose Fort Foureau. My men also found the missing World Health Team that was supposedly killed in a plane crash, all horribly starved and exhausted from overwork and little food…"`

The President gave Willover a cold stare. "It seems I'm kept in the dark on a number of matters…"

"I try to do my job fielding priorities," Willover offered hastily.

"So where is this leading?" the President asked Sandecker.

"Knowing it was useless to ask you for a special force," Sandecker continued, "Hala Kamil again came to the rescue and volunteered the United Nations critical response team. With Pitt and Giordino to guide them, Colonel Levant and his force landed in the desert near the mines, conducted a successful raid, and rescued twenty-five foreign national men, women, and children—"

"Children were forced to work the mines?" the President interrupted.

Sandecker nodded. "They belonged to the French engineers and their wives. There was also an American, Dr. Eva Rojas, who was a member of the World Health Team."

"If the raid was successful, what is the urgent problem?" demanded Willover.

"Their transport, the aircraft they flew from Algeria, was destroyed on the ground at the Tebezza airstrip by fighters of the Malian air force. The entire force along with the rescued captives are trapped in the middle of Mali. It's only a matter of hours before Kazim's military finds and attacks them."

"You paint a bleak picture," said the President seriously. "Is there no way they can safely reach the Algerian border?"

"It would matter little if they did," explained Sandecker. "Kazim won't hesitate to run the risk of a confrontation with the Algerian government to stop the captives from exposing the atrocities at Tebezza and dangers of Fort Foureau. He'll send his military deep into Algeria to destroy them and guarantee their silence."

The President went silent, studying the canapés without biting into one. The implications of what Sandecker had told him were not to be brushed aside as he knew Willover was about to advise. But he could not stand by and do nothing while a backwater despot murdered innocent foreign citizens.

"Kazim is as bad as Saddam Hussein," muttered the President. He turned to Willover. "I'm not going to hide under the covers on this one, Earl. Too many lives are at stake including those of three Americans. We've got to lend a hand."

"But Mr. President," Willover protested.

"Contact General Halverson at Special Forces Command in Tampa. Alert him for an immediate operation." The President stared at Sandecker. "Who do you suggest to coordinate this thing, Admiral?"

"General Bock, commander of the UN Critical Response and Tactical Team. He's in contact with Colonel Levant and can provide General Halverson with constant updates on the situation."

The President set the canapés aside on a credenza and. placed his hands on Willover's shoulders. "I value your advice, Earl, but I've got to act on this one. We can kill two birds with one stone and take half the flak if the operation goes sour. I want our Special Forces to secretly infiltrate Mali, rescue the UN tactical team and the captives. Then get the hell out before Kazim and Massarde know what hit them. Afterward, perhaps we can figure a way to neutralize the Fort Feureau waste project."

"You get my endorsement," Sandecker smiled broadly.

"I guess nothing I can say will change your mind," Willover said to the President.

"No, Earl," said the President, retrieving his canapé tray, "we're going to close our eyes and bet the bankroll on an inside straight."'

"And if we lose?"

"We can't lose."

Willover looked at him curiously. "Why not, sir?"

The President matched Sandecker's smile. "Because I'm dealing the hand, and I have the greatest confidence in our Special Operations Forces to kick slime like Kazim and Massarde into the bog where they belong…"

Several miles west of Washington, D.C., in the Maryland countryside, a large hill rises above the flat surrounding farmland. Passing motorists who take the time to notice the anomaly think of it as merely a geological trick of nature. Almost none know that it was secretly man-made from soil that was excavated for a command center and shelter for the capital city's politicians and military leaders in World. War II.

During the cold war, work never stopped, and the subterranean spread was enlarged into a vast storeroom for the nation's records and artifacts dating back to the first pioneers who settled the eastern coastline in the 1600s. The interior space is so expansive it is not measured in meters or acres but in square miles or kilometers. To those few who are aware of its existence it is known as ASD (Archival Safekeeping Depository).

Thousands of secrets are buried away in the seemingly unending archival storage bins of the depository. For some strange reason, known only to certain very few bureaucrats, entire sections of the depository hold classified material and objects that will never be revealed to the public. The bones of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan and Japanese records of their execution on Saipan, the secret conspiracy files of both Kennedy assassinations, the intelligence of Soviet sabotage behind American space rocket and shuttle accidents and the retaliation at Chernobyl, staged films of the Apollo moon landing hoax, and much, much more-it was all filed and stored away, never to see the light of day.

Since St. Julien Perlmutter didn't drive, he took a cab to the small Maryland town of Forestville. After waiting on a bus stop bench for nearly half an hour, he was finally picked up by a Dodge van.

"Mr. Perlmutter," asked the driver, a government security agent wearing regulation mirrored sunglasses.

"I am him."

"Please get in."

Perlmutter did as he was told, thinking to himself that all this subterfuge was a childish game. "Don't you want to see my driver's license," he said acidly.

The driver, a dark brown-skinned African-American, shook his head. "No need. You're the only one in this town who fits the description."

"Do you have a name?"

"Ernie Nelson."

"What agency you with? National Security? Federal Bureau? Special Secrets?"

"I'm not at liberty to say," answered Nelson officially.

"Aren't you going to blindfold me?"

Nelson gave a quick shake of his head. "No need. Since your request to search through historical files was approved by the President, and you once held a Beta-Q clearance, I think you can be trusted not to reveal what you see today."

"If you had dug deeper into my file, you'd have seen that this is my fourth research trip to ASD."

The agent did not respond and remained silent for the rest of the trip. He turned o$' the main highway and drove down a paved road to a security gate, showed his credentials, and entered. They passed through two more guard stations before the road led into a small barn-like structure in the middle of a farm complete with pigs and chickens and wash hanging on a line. Once inside the barn they rolled down a wide concrete ramp that dropped deep underground. They finally arrived at a security station where the agent parked the car.

Perlmutter knew the routine. He exited the car and walked over to a waiting electric vehicle that looked similar to a golf cart. An archivist/curator wearing a white lab coat shook Perlmutter's hand.

"Frank Moore," he introduced himself. "Good to see you again."

"A pleasure, Frank. How long has it been?"

"Three years since you were last here. You were doing research on the Sakito Maru."

"The Japanese passenger-cargo ship that was sunk by the U.S. submarine Trout."

"As I recall, she was carrying German V-2 rockets to Japan."

"You have a good memory."

"I refreshed it while digging out the records of your previous visits," Moore admitted. "What can I do for you this trip?"

"Civil War," answered Perlmutter. "I'd like to study any records that might throw some light on the mysterious loss of a Confederate ironclad."

"Sounds interesting." Moore motioned to a seat in the electric car. "Our Civil War records and artifacts are housed in buildings about 2 kilometers from here."

After a final security check and a brief meeting with the Curator-in-Charge, Perlmutter signed an affidavit stating that he would not publish or make public any of his findings without government approval. Then he and Moore moved off in the electric auto, passing a small crew of men who were unloading mementos and keepsakes people had left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Photographs, old army boots and uniforms, buttons, watches and wedding rings, dog tags, dolls, each object was cataloged, tagged, and placed in plastic wrappers on endless shelves.

The government threw nothing away.

Though he had seen part of the subterranean expanse on his previous visits, Perlmutter could not help but be astounded by the incredible size of the place and the tier upon tier of storage bins full of records and old artifacts, a great many of them from foreign countries. The Nazi section alone covered the size of four football fields.

The Civil War memorabilia was housed in four three-story buildings-the concrete ceilings of the depository were 15 meters high. Placed in neat rows in front of the structures, different types of cannon from the Civil War stood as pristine and immaculate as when they were sent to fields of battle. They were mounted on their carriages and hitched to limbers that still held shot and shell. Immense naval cannon from such famous ships as the Hartford, the Kearsage, the Carondelet, and the Merrimack were also on display as if for inspection.

"The records are kept in Building A," explained Moore. "Buildings B, C, and D hold weapons, uniforms, medical relics, and furniture once belonging to Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Lee, Grant, and other famous people from the war between the states."

They stepped from the vehicle and entered Building A. The ground floor was one vast sea of filing cabinets. "Any papers pertaining to the Confederacy are on the ground floor," Moore said, sweeping his hands around the cavernous room. "All Union records are filed on the second and third. Where would you like to begin?"

"Anything you have on the Texas."

Moore paused to thumb through several pages of a directory he had carried in from the vehicle. "Confederate naval records are kept in the blue files along the far wall."

Despite the fact that no one had been through the files in years, and many cases never since storage, there was surprisingly little dust. Moore helped Perlmutter zero in on a packet containing the known history on the ill-fated ironclad.

Moore pointed to a table and chair. "Make yourself comfortable. You're familiar with the regulations regarding the care of records and know that I'm required to remain close by to monitor your research."

"I'm fully aware of the rules," Perlmutter acknowledged.

Moore held up his watch. "Your permit to conduct research at ASD ends after eight hours. Then we must return to the curator's office where you will be driven back to Forestville. Do you understand?"

Perlmutter nodded. "Then I had best get started."

"Go ahead," said Moore, "and good luck."

Within the first hour, he had cleaned out two gray metal file cabinets before he found an ancient yellow file folder containing records of the Confederate steamship Texas. The papers inside revealed little historic information that wasn't already known and published. Specifications of the warship's construction, eyewitness reports of her appearance, one sketch by her chief engineer, and a list of her officers and crew. There were also several contemporary accounts of her running battle with Union warships during her historic dart: into open seas. One of the articles, written by a northern reporter on board a Union monitor that took hits from the Texas, had two lines cut out. Why the censorship, wondered Perlmutter curiously. It was the first time in all his years of researching on Civil War shipwrecks that he had come across a display of censor's scissors.

Then he found a brittle news clipping and carefully unfolded it on the table. It was a deathbed statement given by a man named Clarence Beecher to a British reporter in a small hospital outside of York. Beecher claimed he was the only survivor of the mysterious disappearance of the C.S.S. Texas. Beecher's dying words described the voyage across the Atlantic and up a large African river. The ship steamed comfortably past hundreds of miles of lush shorelines before entering the outskirts of a great desert. Because the pilot was unfamiliar with the uncharted river, he mistakenly turned off the main channel into a tributary. They steamed on another two days and nights before the Captain realized the mistake. When coming about to return downriver, the ironclad grounded, and no amount of effort could set her free.

The officers conferred and decided to wait out the summer until the fall rains raised the river again. There was a limited supply of food on board but the river would provide the necessary water. The Captain also bought goods from passing tribes of Tuaregs, paying with gold. On two occasions large bands of desert bandits made the mistake of attempting to attack and loot the grounded warship of its seemingly inexhaustible gold supply.

By August, typhoid, malaria, and a starvation diet had ravaged the crew, decimating their numbers until there were only two officers, the president, and ten seamen who could still walk.

Perlmutter stopped and gazed off into space, his curiosity snagged. Who was the president Beecher referred to? He found it most intriguing.

Beecher went on to say that he and four other armed men were selected to row down the river in one of the ironclad's boats to try and find help from the outside world. Only Beecher barely survived to reach the mouth of the Niger River. Nursed back to health by merchants at a British trading outpost, he was given free passage to England, where he eventually married and became a farmer in Yorkshire. Beecher said he never returned to his native state of Georgia because he was certain to be hung for the terrible crime committed by the Texas, and he had been too frightened to speak about it until now.

After he breathed his last, the doctor and Beecher's wife shrugged off his final-statement as the demented ravings of a dying man. It appeared that the reporter's editor had only printed the story because of a slow news day and a lack of editorial to fill up that day's paper.

Perlmutter reread the article a second time. He would have liked to accept it at face value despite the skepticism of the wife and doctor, but a quick check of the crew showed there was no Clarence Beecher present during muster immediately before the Texas left the navy yard at Richmond, Virginia. He sighed and closed the file.

"I have all I'm going to find here," he said to Moore. "Now I'd like to hunt through Union navy records."

Moore helpfully returned the files to their respective cabinets and guided him up a steel stairway to the second floor. "What month and year are you interested in?" he asked.

"April 1865."

They threaded their way through narrow aisles stacked to the roof with cabinets on top of cabinets. Moore produced a ladder in case Perlmutter wanted to probe files in the upper stratosphere and directed him to the proper cabinet.

Methodically, Perlmutter began expanding his search from April 2, 1865, the date the Texas cast off from the pier below Richmond. He had his own system for research investigations and there were few who were better at scratching out leads than him. He used dogged persistence along with instinctive reasoning to narrow down the deadwood from the consequential.

He started with official reports of the battle. When he exhausted those, he went on to eyewitness accounts by civilians who watched along the banks of the James River and crewmen on the Union warships. Within two hours, he had scanned the pertinent contents of nearly sixty letters and fifteen diaries. He transcribed notes on a large legal pad, all the while under the watchful gaze of Frank Moore, who trusted Perlmutter but had caught too many certified researchers trying to steal historical papers and letters not to be conscientious.

Once Perlmutter found the thread, he began to unravel it as one offhand description, one seemingly insignificant bit of information led to revelation after revelation of a story that seemed too incredible to believe. Finally, when he could go no further, he motioned to Moore.

"How much time do I have?"

"Two hours and ten minutes."

"I'm ready to move on."

"Where do you wish to look?"

"Any private correspondence or documents you might have of Edwin McMasters Stanton."

Moore nodded. "Lincoln's crusty old Secretary of War. I've no idea what we have on him. His papers have never been fully cataloged. But it would be upstairs on the U.S. government documents floor."

The Stanton files were voluminous, ten file cabinets full. Perlmutter worked steadily, stopping only once to go to the nearest bathroom. He waded through the documents as swiftly as he could, finding surprisingly little on Stanton's relationship with Lincoln near the end of the war. It was a well-known bit of history that the Secretary of War did not like his President and had destroyed a number of pages from the diary of Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, including a number of papers relating to Booth's co-conspirators. To the frustration of historians Stanton had purposely left many unanswered questions swirling around the assassination at Ford's Theater.

Then, with only forty minutes left on his deadline, Perlmutter struck pay dirt.

Hidden in the extreme back of a cabinet, Perlmutter found a packet yellowed with age that still had an unbroken wax seal on it. He stared at the brown inked writing that gave the date as July 9, 1865, two days after Booth's fellow conspirators, Mary Surratt, Lewis Paine, David Herold, and George Atzerodt, were hanged in the Washington Arsenal's prison yard. Under the date were the words "Not to be opened until one hundred years after my death." It was signed Edwin M. Stanton.

Perlmutter sat down at a study table, broke the seal, opened the packet, and began reading the papers inside with thirty-one years leeway on Stanton's instructions.

As he read he felt as if he was transported back in time. Despite the coolness of the underground facility, beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. When he finished forty minutes later and set the final paper aside, his hands were trembling. He exhaled his breath in a long silent sigh, and shook his head very slowly.

"My God," Perlmutter whispered.

Moore looked across the table at him. "Find something interesting?"

Perlmutter did not answer. He simply stared at the pile of old papers and muttered, "My God," over and over.

They lay together behind the crest of a dune, staring at the empty tracks that stretched across the sand like ghost rails to oblivion. The only signs of life to pierce the predawn darkness were the distant lights of the Fort Foureau hazardous waste site. Across the tracks, less than a kilometer west, the black shadow of the abandoned Foreign Legion fort rose against an ivory black sky like a gloomy castle out of a horror movie.

The mad race across the desert had gone smoothly without detection or mechanical problems. The captives had suffered from the hard springs of the trucks but were too happy to be free to complain. Fairweather accurately guided them over the ancient camel trail that traveled between the old salt mines at Taoudenni south to Timbuktu. He had laid the convoy on the railroad within sight of the fort using only his knowledge of the terrain and a borrowed compass.

Once during their journey, Pitt and Levant had stopped, listening as they detected the engine sounds of an unseen helicopter task force escorted by jet fighters. The aircraft were flying north toward Tebezza and the Algerian border. As Pitt had predicted, the Malian air force pilots flew over the convoy, blissfully unaware their quarry was sitting directly below them.

"Fine work, Mr. Fairweather," complimented Levant. "As good a job of navigating as I've ever seen. You put us right on target."

"Instinct," Fairweather smiled. "Pure instinct mixed with a bleedin' bit of luck."

"Better move out across the tracks and into the fort," said Pitt. "We have less than an hour before daylight to hide the vehicles:

Like strange creatures of the night, the dune buggy and personnel carriers drove on the track bed, bouncing over the concrete ties, until they came even with the fort. Pitt turned past the wreck of the Renault truck, the same one he and Giordino used for cover when they hopped the train to Fort Four eau, and came to a stop at the gate. The high wooden doors were still slightly ajar just as they had left them over a week before. Levant called up a squad of men who pushed them open wide enough to allow the convoy to enter the parade ground.

"If I may suggest, Colonel," Pitt said tactfully, "there's just enough time for a detail of your people to brush away our tire tracks leading from the railroad to the fort. To an inquiring mind it should look like a convoy of Malian military vehicles rolled out of the desert and then continued along the track bed into the waste disposal project."'

"Sound idea," said Levant. "Make them think it was one of their own patrols."

Pembroke-Smythe, tailed by Giordino and Levant's other officers, gathered around their commander for orders.

"Our first priority is to camouflage the trucks and find some sort of shelter for the women and children," said Levant. "Then prepare the fort for attack should the Malians decide they're chasing ghosts and look for any sign of our tracks the wind hasn't covered."

"When do you plan to withdraw from here, sir?" asked an officer with a Swedish accent.

Levant turned to Pitt. "How say you, Mr. Pitt?"

"We stop the first outward-bound train that passes by here after dark," Pitt answered, "and borrow it."

"Trains have communication systems," said Pembroke-Smythe. "The engineer will scream bloody murder if you attempt to abscond with his train."

"Once alerted, the Malians will block the track down the line," finished the Swedish officer.

"Don't give it another thought," Pitt said reproachfully. "Just leave it to old Jesse James Pitt and Butch Cassidy Giordino. We've been practicing the old-fashioned art of silent train hijacking for at least…" He looked at Giordino. "Al?"

"At least a week from last Thursday," Giordino responded.

Pembroke-Smythe looked at Levant forlornly. "One might be advised to increase our insurance premiums."

"Too late for that now," said Levant, surveying the darkened interior of the fort. "These walls were never built to stand up against air-to-ground missiles or heavy artillery. Kazim's forces can reduce this place to rubble in half an hour. So to prevent problems, we have to maintain it's abandoned look."

"The Malians won't be going up against helpless civilians this time," Pembroke-Smythe said resolutely. "The ground is level as a cricket field for 2 kilometers in every direction. No cover for attacking forces. Those of us who survive any air assault will make Kazim pay a heavy price in blood before he takes this place."

"You better hope he hasn't any tanks in the area," Giordino reminded him.

"Post lookouts on the ramparts," Levant ordered. "Then search for an opening leading below-ground. As I recall during my visit there was an arsenal to store shells and ammunition."

As Levant suggested, steps leading underground were quickly found beneath a floor in the barracks. The two small rooms below were empty except for a few open metal boxes that once held clips of rifle cartridges. The captives of Tebezza were quickly unloaded and assisted below, thankful to be out of the personnel vehicles and on firm earth again. The medical team made them as comfortable as possible and tended to those in serious condition.

The tactical team's vehicles were soon hidden and covered over to look like piles of debris. By the time the sun threw its heat against the walls, the old Foreign Legion fort had regained its abandoned appearance. The two overriding dilemmas facing Levant were discovery before nightfall and the vulnerability to air attack. He felt little sense of security. Once caught, there was no place to run. Already, the guards on the ramparts wistfully watched a train leave the waste project for the Mauritania coast, grimly longing to be on it.

Pitt surveyed what had been a motor pool with a collapsed roof. He inspected a dozen steel drums of diesel fuel half buried under a pile of old trash. He tapped the metal containers and found six of them nearly full. He was in the act of unscrewing the spout caps as Giordino strolled under the shelter.

"Planning on making a fire?" he asked.

"Might not be a bad idea if we're hit by armored vehicles," said Pitt. "The UN troops lost their anti-tank missile launchers when their aircraft blew up:"

"Diesel fuel," mused Giordino, "must have been stored here by the construction crew that laid the railroad."

Pitt probed a finger through the spout opening and then held it up. "As pure as the day it came out of the refinery."

"What good is it except for Molotov cocktails?" Giordino asked with a dubious expression. "Unless you want to boil it and play knights of old by pouring it on the enemy when they scale the walls?"

"You're getting warm."

Giordino grimaced at the pun. "Five men and a small boy couldn't lift one of those drums and carry it to the walls, not when it's full to the gills."

"Ever see a torsion spring bow?"

"Not in my lifetime," Giordino grunted. "Will I sound stupid if I ask you to draw a picture?"

To Giordino's surprise Pitt did just that. He hunched down, pulled a double-edged commando knife from a leg sheath, and began sketching a diagram in the dust on the floor. The design was rough, but Giordino recognized what Pitt was attempting to project. When Pitt was finished, he looked up.

"Think we can build one?"

"Don't see why not," said Giordino. "Plenty of beams in the fort to choose from, and the personnel vehicles car; y lengths of nylon line for rock climbing and emergency towing. The catch, as I see it, is we'll need something to provide torsion."

"The leaf springs on the rear axles?"

Giordino pondered a moment, then nodded. "They might work. Yes by God, they should work perfectly."

"Probably a waste of time," said Pitt, studying hip drawing. "No reason to think one of Kazim's patrols will stumble in here and blow the whistle before train time."

"Eleven hours until dark. It will give us something to keep us occupied."

Pitt began moving toward the door. "You start assembling the parts. I've got an errand to run. I'll catch up to you later."

Pitt walked past a group of men who were strengthening the doors of the main gate and made his way around the walls of the fort, careful to cover his footprints. He dropped down into a narrow ravine and walked until he came to a mound rising beside a steep slope.

The Avions Voisin sat in undisturbed solitude.

Most of the sand he and Giordino had hastily thrown over the roof and hood had blown away but enough was left to have kept it difficult to spot by Kazim's air patrols. He opened the door, sat behind the wheel, and pressed the starter button. Almost at once the engine settled into a quiet idle.

Pitt sat there for a few minutes, admiring the workmanship of the old auto. Then he turned off the ignition switch, stepped out, and recovered the body with sand.

Pitt climbed down the stairs into the arsenal. He saw immediately that Eva was on the mend. Although she was still haggard and pale, and her clothing tattered and filthy, she was helping to feed a young boy who was cradled in his mother's arms. She looked up at Pitt with an expression that reflected renewed strength and determination.

"How is he doing?" he asked.

"He'll be playing soccer in no time after he's eaten some solid food and a healthy supply of vitamins."

"I play football," the boy whispered.

"In France?" Eva asked curiously.

"We call it soccer," said Pitt, smiling. "In every country but ours it's known as football."

The father of the boy, one of the French engineers who had constructed the Fort Foureau project, came over and shook Pitt's hand. He looked like a scarecrow. He wore crude leather sandals, his shirt was torn and stained, and his pants were held up by a knotted rope. His face was half hidden under a black beard and one side of his head was heavily bandaged.

"I am Louis Monteux."

"Dirk Pitt."

"On behalf of my wife and boy," Monteux said weakly, "I can't thank you enough for saving our lives."

"We're not out of Mali yet," said Pitt.

"Better a quick death than Tebezza."

"By this time tomorrow we'll be beyond General Kazim's reach," Pitt assured him,

"Kazim and Yves Massarde," Monteux spat, "Murdering, criminals of the first magnitude."

"The reason Massarde sent you and your family to: Tebezza," Pitt questioned him, "it was to keep you from exposing the fraudulent operation at Fort Foureau?"

"Yes, the team of scientists and engineers who originally designed and constructed the project discovered upon completion that Massarde planned to bring in far more toxic waste than the operation was capable of disposing."'

"What was your job?"

"To design and oversee the construction of the thermal reactor for the destruction of the waste,"

"And it's working."

Monteux nodded proudly. "Yes indeed. Extremely well. It happens to be the largest and most efficient detoxification system operating anywhere in the world today. The solar, energy technology of Fort Foureau is the finest in its field."

"So where did Massarde go wrong? Why spend hundreds of millions of dollars for state-of-the-art equipment only to use it as a facade to secretly bury nuclear and excessive train loads of toxic waste?"'

"Germany, Russia, China, the United States, half the world is awash in high-level nuclear waste, the violently radioactive sludge that remains from reprocessed reactor fuel rods and the fissionable material from the production of nuclear bombs. Though it only represents less than one percent of all leftover nuclear material, there are still, millions of gallons of it sitting around with nowhere to go, Massarde offered to dispose of it all."

"But some governments have built disposal repositories."

"Too little, too late," Monteux shrugged. "France's new burial site at Soulaines was almost filled when completed. Then there is the Hanford Reservation waste facility at Richland, Washington, in your country. The tanks that were designed to contain high-level liquid waste for half a century began leaking after twenty years. Close to a million gallons of highly radioactive waste have escaped into the ground to contaminate the groundwater."

"A neat setup," said Pitt thoughtfully. "Massarde makes under-the-table deals with governments and corporations desperate to get rid of their toxic waste. Because Fort Foureau in the western Sahara seemed an ideal dumping ground, he goes into partnership with Zateb Kazim as a buffer against domestic or foreign protest. Then he charges, exorbitant fees and smuggles the waste info the middle of the world's most useless piece of real estate and buries it, under the guise of a thermal detoxification center."

"A simple but reasonably accurate description. But flow, do you know all this?"

"My friend and I penetrated the underground storage chamber and saw the nuclear waste containers."

"Dr. Hopper told us you were captured at the project."

"In your opinion, Mr. Monteux, could Massarde have built a beneficial and reliable project at Fort Foureau to dispose of all the waste that comes in?"°

"Absolutely," Monteux said decisively. "If Massarde had excavated waste storage chambers 2 kilometers deep in stable rock formations immune to seismic activity, he would have been raised to sainthood. But he is a miserly, ruthless businessman interested only in profit and gain. Massarde is a sick man, addicted to power and money that he siphons to a secret hoard somewhere."

"Did you know that it was chemical waste that leaked into the underground water?" Pitt asked.

"A chemical?"

"My understanding is that the compound responsible for thousands of deaths throughout this section of the desert is made up from a synthetic amino acid and cobalt."

"We heard nothing after we arrived at Tebezza," said Monteux. He visibly shuddered. "God, it's already become more horrible than I ever imagined. But the worst has yet to come. Massarde has used inferior canisters to store the nuclear and toxic wastes. It is only a question of time before the whole storage chamber and the land for miles around is swimming in liquid death."

"Something else you don't know," said Pitt. "The compound is seeping through underground streams to the Niger River where it is carried downstream into the ocean. There, it is causing an explosion of the red tides that is consuming all life and oxygen in the water."

Monteux rubbed his face with his hands in saddened shock at the news. "What have we done? If wed only known that Massarde was out to build a cheap and dangerous operation, none of us would have allowed it."

Pitt looked at Monteux. "You must have figured Massarde's scheme early in the construction."

Monteux shook his head. "Those of us imprisoned in Tebezza were all outside consultants and contractors. We were only involved in the design and construction of the photovoltaic array and thermal reactor. We paid little attention to the excavation. That was an altogether separate project under Massarde Enterprises."

"When did your suspicions become aroused?"

"Not at first. If anyone questioned Massarde's workers out of simple curiosity, they were told that the excavation was for temporary storage of incoming waste before detoxification. No one was allowed near the area except the underground construction crew. Only near completion of the project did we begin to see through the lie."

"What finally gave Massarde away?" asked Pitt.

"We all assumed the underground storage chamber was, fully completed about the time the thermal reactor was successfully tested for full operation. At that point the toxic materials began arriving on the railroad Massarde had built with cheap labor provided by General Kazim. One evening an engineer, who had been assembling the parabolic solar collectors, slipped into the storage chamber by stealing an entry badge. He discovered the digging had never ceased and was an ongoing project after he saw excavated dirt being secretly shipped out in the cargo containers that carried in the toxic waste. He also found caverns holding canisters filled with nuclear waste"

Pitt nodded. "My friend and I stumbled on those secrets too, unaware we were on Massarde's security video show."

"The engineer escaped back to our living quarters and spread the word before he could be stopped," Monteux explained. "Shortly after, all of us who were non-Massarde Enterprises consultants and our families were forcibly rounded up and sent to Tebezza to keep the secret from getting back to France."

"How did he cover up your sudden disappearance?"

"A phony story about a disaster at the project, a fire that killed us all. The French government insisted on a full inquiry, but Kazim refused to allow foreign inspectors into Mali, claiming his government would conduct the investigation. Of course, none took place and our supposed cremated bodies were reported as scattered over the desert after a proper ceremony."

The green in Pitt's eyes deepened. "Massarde is a thorough man. But he made a series of mistakes."

"Mistakes?" Monteux said curiously.

"He let too many people live."

"When you were captured, did you meet him?"

Pitt raised his hand and touched one of the scabs that cut across his cheeks. "He also has a nasty disposition…"

Monteux smiled. "Consider yourself lucky that is your only gift from him. When we were assembled and given our death sentence as slave labor in the mines, one woman resisted and spat in Massarde's face. He calmly shot her between the eyes right in front of her husband and ten-year-old daughter."

"The more I hear about the man," Pitt said, his tone cold, "the less he endears himself to me."

"The commandos say we will attempt to capture a train, and then escape into Mauritania tonight."

Pitt nodded. "That's the plan if we're not discovered by Malian military forces before dark."

"We have talked between ourselves," said Monteux solemnly. "None will go back to Tebezza. All would rather die. We have made a pact to kill our wives and children rather than allow them to suffer in the mines again."

Pitt stared at Monteux and then at the women and children resting on the stone floor of the arsenal. His craggy and weathered face took on a look of sorrow tinged with anger. Then he said softly, "Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

Eva was too tired to sleep. She looked up into Pitt's eyes. "A walk under the morning sun with me?"

"No one is allowed to wander in the open. The fort has to appear abandoned to passing trains and any aircraft that might fly over."

"We traveled all last night and I've been locked up underground for nearly two weeks. Isn't there some way I can see the sun?" she implored him.

He said nothing but gave her his best buccaneer grin as he swept her in his arms and carried her up the stairs onto the parade ground. Not stopping, he climbed to the platform that stretched around the fort's ramparts before lightly setting her on her feet.

The sun blinded Eva for a few moments, and she didn't see the approach of a female commando who was on duty as a lookout. "You must stay below out of sight," the guard ordered. "Colonel Levant's orders."

"A couple of minutes," Pitt pleaded. "The lady hasn't seen blue sky for quite a while."

The tactical team fighter may have looked tough as nails in her combat suit, bristling with ammo and weapons, but she possessed twice the compassion and understanding of any man. One look at the wasted woman leaning against Pitt, and her expression softened. "Two minutes," she smiled ever so slightly. "Then you'll have to get back undercover."

"Thank you," said Eva. "I'm very grateful to you."

The scorching temperatures were still an hour away as Pitt and Eva looked out from their vantage point across the nearby railroad tracks toward the endless, unbroken terrain to the north. Strangely, it was Pitt and not the woman who saw a magnificence in the parched and hostile landscape, despite the fact that it had almost killed him:

"I can't wait to see the ocean again," she said:

"Do you dive?" he asked.

"I've always loved water, but never got beyond the snorkel stage.

"Varied sea life abounds around Monterey. Beautiful fish among the kelp forests, and incredible rock formations, especially down the coast past Carmel toward Big Sur. When we get there, I'll give you scuba lessons and take you diving,"

"I'll look forward to it."

She closed her eyes, tilted back her head, and soaked in the sun, her cheeks glowing from the rising heat of the day. He gazed down at her, taking in every lovely detail that had not been affected by her long ordeal. The lookouts stationed around the ramparts faded into the bright sunlight. He wanted to wrap her in his arms, forget the dangers, forget everything but this moment and kiss her.

And he did.

For a long moment she gripped him tightly around the neck and kissed back. He squeezed her around the waist and pulled her to her toes. How long they clung together, neither could remember.

Finally she pushed back and looked up into his opaline green eyes, and felt weakness, excitement, and love wrapped up in one swirling emotion. She whispered, "I knew from that dinner together in Cairo I'd never be able to resist you."

He said softly, "And I thought I'd never see you again."

"Will you be going back to Washington after we escape?" She spoke the words as if reaching safety was a certainty.

He shrugged without letting her go. "I'm sure they'll want me to return and work on stopping the red tides. And you, after a good rest, where will it be? Another mission of mercy to an underdeveloped country to fight disease?"

"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."

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."

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?"

Pitt nodded. "It stands to reason that once Kazim wises up to our end run, and his search patrols spot our wheel tracks traveling south to the railroad, he'll realize our objective was to hijack a train."

"The Malians are smarter than I gave them credit for," Levant admitted. "Now we're trapped with no means of communicating our situation to General Bock."

Pembroke-Smythe cleared his throat. "If I may suggest, sir. I would like to volunteer to make a dash toward the border to meet up with the American Special Forces team and lead them back."

Levant looked at him sternly for a moment. "A suicide mission at best."

"It may well be our only chance at getting anyone out of here. By taking the fast attack vehicle, I can be over the border inside of six hours."

"You're optimistic, Captain," Pitt corrected him. "I've driven over this part of the desert. Just when you're traveling at speed across what looks like a flat dry plain, you drop 50 feet off a slope into a ravine. And there is no traveling through sand dunes if you expect to make time. I'd say you'll be lucky to hit Mauritania by late tomorrow morning."

"I intend to travel as the crow flies by driving on the railroad."

"A dead giveaway. Kazim's patrols will be all over you before you've covered 50 kilometers, if they haven't already set up blockades across the tracks."

"Aren't you forgetting our lack of fuel?" added Levant. "There isn't enough gas to carry you a third of the way."

"We can drain what's left from the tanks of the personnel carriers," Pembroke-Smythe said without a sign of retreat.

"You'll be cutting it a mite thin," said Pitt.

Pembroke-Smythe shrugged. "A dull ride without some risk.

"You can't go it alone," said Levant:

"A night crossing of the desert at high speed can be a risky business," cautioned Pitt. "You'll need a co-driver and a navigator."`

"I have no intention of attempting it alone," Pembroke-Smythe informed them,

"Who have you selected?" asked Levant.

Smythe looked and smiled at the tall man from NUMA, "Either Mr. Pitt or his friend Giordino, since they've already had a crash course in desert survival."

"A civilian won't be of much help in a running fight with Kazim's patrols," warned Levant.

"I plan to lighten the assault vehicle by removing all armor and weapons. We'll carry a spare tire and tools, enough water for the next twenty-four hours, and handguns only.

Levant thought out Pembroke-Smythe's mad plan carefully in his methodical way. Then he nodded. "All right, Captain. Get to work on the vehicle."

"Yes sir."

"There is, however, one other thing."

"Sir?"

"Sorry to put a crimp in your escapade, but as second in command, I require your services here. You'll have to send someone in your place. I suggest Lieutenant Steinholm. If I remember correctly, he once drove in the Monte Carlo Rally"

Pembroke-Smythe did not attempt to conceal the expression of disappointment on his face. He began to say something, but saluted and hurried down the ladder to the parade field without a word of protest.

Levant looked at Pitt. "You'll have to volunteer, Mr. Pitt. I do not have the authority to order you to go:"

"Colonel," Pitt said with the barest of grins, "I've been chased all over the Sahara in the past week, came within a. millimeter of dying of thirst, been shot at, steamed like a, lobster, and cuffed in the face by every unsavory scum I met: This is the last stop for Mrs. Pitt's boy. I'm getting off the train and staying put. Al Giordino will go out with Lieutenant Steinholm."

Levant smiled. "You're a fraud, Mr. Pitt, a sterling, gilt-edged fraud. You know as well as I it's sure death to remain here. Giving your friend a chance to escape in your place is a noble gesture. You have my deepest respect."

"Noble gestures are not part of my act. I have a thing about leaving jobs unfinished." Levant looked down at the strange machine taking shape under the protection of one wall. "You mean your catapult."

"Actually, it's sort of a spring bow."

"Do you actually think it will work against armored vehicles?"

"Oh, she'll do the job," said Pitt in a tone of utter, confidence "The only unknown is how well."

Shortly after sunset, the hurriedly filled sandbags ante makeshift obstructions were removed from the main gate and the massive doors opened. Lieutenant Steinholm, a big, blond, handsome Austrian, strapped himself behind the wheel and received his final instructions from Pembroke-Smythe.

Giordino stood beside the stripped down dune buggy and quietly made his farewells to Pitt and Eva. "So long, old buddy," he said to Pitt, forcing a tight smile. "Not fair me going instead of you."

Pitt gave Giordino a quick bear hug. "Mind the pot holes."

"Steinholm and I'll be back with beer and pizza by lunchtime."

The words were empty of meaning. Neither man doubted for a second that by noon the following day the fort and everybody in it would be only a memory.

"I'll keep a light in the window," said Pitt.

Eva gave Giordino a light kiss on the cheek and handed him a small package wrapped in plastic. "A little something to eat on the road."

"Thank you." Giordino turned away so they couldn't see his watering eyes and climbed in the attack vehicle, his smile suddenly gone, his face taut with sadness. "Put your foot on it," he said to Steinholm.

The Lieutenant nodded, shifted gears, and jammed his foot on the accelerator. The dune buggy leaped forward and shot through the open gate, roaring into the fading orange of the western sky as its rear wheels kicked up twin rooster tails of dust.

Giordino twisted in his seat and looked back. Pitt stood just outside the gate, one arm around Eva's waist. He lifted a hand in a gesture of farewell. Giordino could still see the flash of Pitt's devilish smile before the trailing dust closed off all view.

For a long minute the entire combat team watched the dune buggy speed across the desert. Their reactions ranged all the way from a weary kind of sorrow to resigned acceptance as the vehicle became a faint speck in the gloom of dusk. Every hope they had of surviving went with Giordino and Steinholm. Then Levant gave a quiet command and the commandos pushed the doors closed and barricaded the gate for the final time.

Major Gowan received the report he was expecting from a helicopter patrol that followed the tire tracks of Levant's convoy to the railroad where they disappeared. Further reconnaissance was called off because of darkness. The few aircraft of the Malian air force equipped with night vision equipment were grounded for mechanical repairs. But Gowyan did not require additional search and recon missions. He knew where his quarry was hiding. He contacted Kazim and confirmed his assessment of the situation. His delighted superior promoted him to Colonel on the spot and promised decoration for meritorious service.

Gowan's part in the operation was over. He lit a cigar, propped his feet on his desk, and poured a glass of expensive Remy Martin cognac he kept in his desk for special occasions, and this was indeed a special occasion.

Unfortunately for his Commander-in-Chief, General Kazim, Gowan's canny perception and powers of deduction were turned off for the remainder of the operation. Just when Kazim needed his intelligence chief most, the newly, promoted Colonel had gone home to his villa beside the Niger for a holiday with his French mistress, oblivious to the storm brewing across the desert to the west.

Massarde was on the phone listening to an up-to-date report by Yerli on the progress of the search. "What's the latest word?" he asked anxiously.

"We have them," Yerli announced triumphantly, taking credit for Major Gowan's farsighted intuition. "They thought they could outfox us by reversing their escape route and heading into the Malian interior, but I was not to be fooled. They are trapped in the abandoned Legion fort not far from you."

"I'm very glad to hear it," sighed Massarde, letting out a deep sigh. "What are Kazim's plans?"

"Demand their surrender for openers."

"And if they comply?"

"Put the commandos and their officers on trial for invading his country. After conviction, they'll be held as hostages in exchange for economic demands from the United Nations. The Tebezza prisoners will be taken to his interrogation chambers, where they will be properly dealt with."

"No," Massarde said. "Not the solution I want. The only solution is to destroy them all, and quickly. None must be left alive to talk. We cannot afford any more complications. I must insist you talk Kazim into ending this matter immediately."

His demand came so forcibly, so abruptly, that Yerli was stunned into temporary silence. "All right…" Yerli finally said slowly. "I'll do my best to persuade Kazim to launch the attack at first light with his fighter jets followed by helicopter assault units. Fortunately, he has four heavy tanks and three infantry companies in the vicinity on military maneuvers."

"Can he attack the fort tonight?"

"He will need time to assemble his forces and coordinate an attack. This can't be done before early morning."

"Just see that Kazim does whatever is necessary to prevent Pitt and Giordino from escaping again."

"The very reason I took the precaution of halting all trains in and out of Mauritania," Yerli lied.

"Where are you now?"

"In Gao, about to board the command aircraft that you so generously provided Kazim as a gift. He plans to personally oversee the assault."

"Remember, Yerli," said Massarde as patiently as he could, "no prisoners."

They came just after six o'clock in the morning. The UN tactical team members were bone-tired after digging deep entrenchments beneath the base of the walls, but they were all alert and primed to resist. Most were now holed up like moles in their dugouts for the expected air attack. Deep in the underground arsenal the team medics set up a field hospital while the French engineers and their families huddled on the floor under old wooden tables and furniture to ward off rock and debris that might fall from the ceiling. Only Levant and Pembroke-Smythe, along with the crew panning the Vulcan that had been removed from the assault vehicle, remained on the fort's wall, protected only by the parapets and hastily piled sandbags.

The incoming jet aircraft were heard before they were seen and the alarm was given.

Pitt did not seek cover, but fussed over his spring bow, making frantic last-minute adjustments. The truck springs, mounted vertically within a maze of wooden beams, were bent almost double by the hydraulic lifting gear on the old forklift found stored with the railroad supplies. Attached to the stressed springs, a half-filled drum of diesel oil with perforated holes on the upper side lay on a grooved board that angled sharply toward the sky. After helping Pitt assemble the Rube Goldberg contraption, Levant's men moved away, doubtful the drum of fuel oil could be tossed over the top of the wall without bursting inside the fort and burning everyone on the parade ground.

Levant knelt behind the parapet, his back protected by a pile of sandbags, and peered into a cloudless sky. He spotted the aircraft and studied them through his binoculars as they began circling at no more than 500 meters above the desert only 3 kilometers south of the fort. He noted their apparent unconcern toward surface-to-air missiles. They seemed confident the fort had nothing to offer in the way of air defense.

As with many third world military leaders who preferred glitz over practicality, Kazim had purchased fast Mirage fighters from the French more for show than actual combat. With little to fear from the weaker military forces of his neighboring countries, Kazim's air and ground security forces were created to inspire respect for his ego and instill fear in the minds of any revolutionaries.

The Malian attack force was backed up by a small fleet of lightly armed helicopters whose sole mission was to conduct search patrols and transport assault troops. Only the fighters were capable of unleashing missiles that could knock out armored tanks or fortifications. But unlike the newer laserguided bombs, the Malian pilots had to manually sight and guide their old-type tactical missiles to the target.

Levant spoke into the microphone on his helmet. "Captain Pembroke-Smythe, stand by the Vulcan crew."

"Standing by Madeleine and ready to fire," Pembroke-Smythe acknowledged from the gun emplacement on the opposite rampart:

"Madeleine?"

"The crew have formed an endearing attachment to the gun, sir, and named it after a girl whose favors they enjoyed in Algeria."

"Just see that Madeleine doesn't get fickle and jam."

"Yes sir."

"Let the first plane make its firing run," Levant instructed. "Then blast it from the rear as it banks away. If your timing is right, you should be able to swing back and strike the second plane in line before it can launch its missiles."

"Jolly good, sir."

Almost as Pembroke-Smythe replied, the lead Mirage broke from formation and dropped down to 75 meters, boring in without any attempt at jinking back and forth to avoid ground fire. The pilot was hardly a top jet driver. He came slow and fired his two missiles a trifle late.

Powered by a single-stage solid-propellant rocket motor, the first missile soared over the fort, its high explosive warhead bursting harmlessly in the sand beyond. The second struck against the north parapet and exploded, tearing a 2-meter gouge in the top of the wall and hurling shattered stone in a shower across the parade ground.

The Vulcan's crew tracked the low-flying jet, and the instant it passed over the fort they opened fire. The revolving six-barrel Gatling gun, set to fire a thousand rounds a minute instead of its two thousand maximum to conserve supply, spat a hail of 20-millimeter shells at the fleeing aircraft as it banked into a vulnerable position. One wing broke away as cleanly as if it had been cut by a surgeon's scalpel, and the Mirage violently twisted over on its back and crashed into the ground.

Almost before the impact, Madeleine was swung 180 degrees and cut loose again, her stream of shells walking into the path of the second jet and smashing it head on. There was a black puff and the fighter exploded in a fiery ball and disintegrated, pieces of it splattering into the fort's outer wall.

The next fighter in line launched its missiles far too soon in panic and banked away. Levant watched with a bemused expression as twin explosions dug craters a good 200 meters in front of the fort. Now leaderless, the squadron broke off the attack and began circling aimlessly far out of range.

"Nice shooting," Levant complimented the Vulcan crew. "Now they know we can bite, they'll launch their missiles at a greater distance with less accuracy."

"Only about six hundred rounds left," reported Pembroke-Smythe.

"Conserve it for now and have the men take cover. We'll let them pound us for a while. Sooner or later one will get careless and come in close again."

Kazim had listened to his pilots excitedly calling to one another over their radios, and he watched the opening debacle from the video telephoto system through the command center monitors. Their confidence badly shaken during their first actual combat with an enemy who shot back at them, the pilots were babbling over the airwaves like frightened children and begging for instructions.

His face flushed with anger, Kazim stepped into the communications cabin and began shouting over the radio. "Cowards! This is General Kazim. You airmen are my right arm, my executioners. Attack, attack. Any man who does not show courage will be shot when he lands and his family sent to prison."

Undertrained, overconfident until now, the Malian air force pilots were more adept at swaggering through their streets and pursuing pretty girls than fighting an opponent out to kill them. The French had made a diligent attempt at modernizing and schooling the desert nomads in airfighting tactics, but traditional ways and cultural thinking were too firmly entrenched in their minds to make them an efficient fighting force.

Stung by Kazim's words and more fearful of his wrath than the shot and shell that had blasted their flight leader and his wingman from the sky, they very reluctantly resumed the attack and dove in single file at the still stalwart walls of the old Foreign Legion fort.

As if he thought himself "unkillable," Levant stood and observed the attack from between the ramparts with the calmness of a spectator at a tennis match. The first two fighters fired their missiles and banked sharply away before coming anywhere near the fort. All their rockets went high and burst on the other side of the railroad.

They came from all sides in wild, unpredictable maneuvers. Their assaults should have been basic and organized, concentrating on leveling one wall instead of haphazardly attacking the fort from whatever direction suited them. Experiencing no more return fire, they became more accurate. The fort began to take devastating hits now. Gaping holes appeared in the old masonry as the walls began to crumble.

Then, as Levant predicted, the Malian pilots became overconfident and bolder, pressing ever closer before launching their missiles. He rose from behind his small command post and brushed away the dust on his combat suit.

"Captain Pembroke-Smythe, any casualties?"

"None reported, Colonel."

"It's time for Madeleine and her friends to earn their money again."

"Manning the gun now, sir."

"If you plan well, you'll have enough shells left to down two more of the devils."

The job was made easier when two aircraft raced across the open desert wing tip to wing tip. The Vulcan swung around to engage and open fire. At first it looked as though the gun crew had missed. Then there was a burst of flame and black smoke erupted from the starboard Mirage. The plane didn't explode nor did the pilot seem to lose control. The nose simply fell on a slight angle downward and the fighter descended until it crashed into the sand.

Madeleine was shifted to the port fighter and opened up like a screeching banshee. Seconds later, the last of the rounds left the revolving barrels and she abruptly went silent. But not before her short spurt of fire made the second fighter appear as if it had run into a junkyard scrap grinder. Pieces of the plane split off including the canopy.

Oddly there was no sign of smoke or fire. The Mirage settled onto the desert, bounced once, and then smashed into the east wall, exploding with a deafening roar and hurling stone and flaming debris throughout the parade ground and collapsing the officers' quarters. To those inside it felt as though the tired old fort was lifted clear of the ground by a rippling detonation.

Pitt was whirled around and thrown violently to the ground as the sky tore apart. He felt as if the detonation was almost directly above him when in fact it came on the opposite side of the fort. His breath came as though he was sucking air in a vacuum as the concussion reverberated all around him in a bedlam of compressed air.

He pushed himself to his knees, coughing from the dust that blanketed the interior of the fort. His first concern was the spring bow. It still stood undamaged amid the dust cloud. Then he noticed a body lying near him on the ground.

"My… God!" the man uttered in a halting croak.

It was then Pitt recognized Pembroke-Smythe who had been blown off the ramparts by the force of the explosion. He crawled over and peered down into a pair of closed eyes. Only the throbbing pulse in the side of the Lieutenant's neck gave any indication of life.

"How badly are you hurt?" Pitt asked, not thinking of anything else to say.

"Bloody well knocked the wind out of me and ruined my back," Pembroke-Smythe gasped between clenched teeth.

Pitt glanced up at the section of the parapet that had collapsed. "You had quite a fall. I don't see any blood and no bones look broken. Can you move your legs?"

Pembroke-Smythe managed to raise his knees and swivel his booted feet. "At least my spine is still connected." Then he lifted a hand and pointed behind Pitt across the parade ground. The dust had begun to settle, and his face glowered helplessly as he glimpsed the great mound of rubble that had buried several of his men. "Dig the poor beggars out!" he implored. "For God's sake, dig them out!"

Pitt turned suddenly, focusing on the shattered and fallen wall. What had been a massive bulwark of mortar and stone was now a great heap of rubble. No one who was buried under the collapsed wall could have survived without being crushed to death. And those who might miraculously still be alive while trapped inside their dugouts would not last long before succumbing to suffocation. Pitt felt the prickle of horror in the nape of his neck as he realized that nothing less than heavy construction equipment could dig them out in time.

Before he could react, another salvo of missiles bore into the fort, bursting and creating a shambles of the mess hall. The roof support beams were soon ablaze, sending a column of smoke into the climbing heat of the morning. The walls now looked as though a giant had worked them over with a sledgehammer. The north wall had suffered the least; incredibly the main gate remained unscarred. But the other three were severely damaged and their crests breached in several places.

With four of their planes lost, their missiles expended, and low on fuel, the remaining fighters regrouped and set a course back to their base in the south. The surviving UN commandos rose from their underground shelters like dead from the grave and frantically began tearing at the debris for their comrades. In spite of their desperate efforts there was no chance any of those buried under the wall could be rescued with mere human hands.

Levant came down from the parapet and began giving commands. Wounded were sent or carried down to the safety of the arsenal where the medical personnel were ready to receive them, assisted by Eva and the other women who acted as nurses.

The faces on the men and women of the tactical team were filled with anguish as Levant ordered them to cease digging under the wall and tackle the job of filling in the worst breaches. Levant shared their sorrow, but his responsibility was for the living. There was nothing to be done for the dead.

Grinning and bearing the agony radiating from his back, the irrepressible Pembroke-Smythe hobbled around the fort, taking casualty reports and giving words of encouragement. Despite the death and the horror that was engulfing them, he tried to instill a sense of humor to combat their ordeal.

The count came to six dead and three seriously wounded with bones broken from flying stone. Seven others returned to their posts after having assorted cuts and bruises sanitized and bandaged. It could have been worse, Colonel Levant told himself as he surveyed his situation. But he knew the air attacks were only the opening act. After a brief intermission, the second act began as a missile burst under the lee of the south wall, fired from one of four tanks 2000 meters to the south. Then three more line-of-sight wireguided battlefield missiles slammed into the fort in quick succession.

Levant quickly climbed onto the rubble that had once been a wall and lined up his glasses on the tanks. "French AMX-30-type tanks firing SS-11 battlefield missiles," he calmly announced to Pitt and Pembroke-Smythe. "They'll soften us up for a bit before coming on with their infantry."

Pitt stared around the battered fortress. "Not much left to soften," he muttered laconically.

Levant lowered the glasses and turned to Pembroke-Smythe who was standing beside them, hunched over like a man of ninety-five.

"Order everyone into the arsenal. Except for a lookout, we'll weather the storm down there."

"And when those tanks come knocking at our door?" asked Pitt.

"Then it's up to your catapult isn't it," said Pembroke-Smythe pessimistically. "That's all we'll have against those bloody tanks."

Pitt smiled grimly. "It looks as though I have to make a believer out of you, Captain."

Pitt was proud of his acting. He nicely concealed the apprehension that was swamping him in great trembling waves. He hadn't the slightest clue whether his medieval anti-tank weapon stood a ghost of a chance of actually working or not.

Four hundred kilometers to the west the dawn broke absolutely still; no whisper of wind rustled the air over the empty, shapeless and desolate sands. The only sound came from the muffled tone of the fast attack vehicle's exhaust as it scurried across the desert like a black ant on a beach.

Giordino was studying the vehicle's on-board computer that subtracted the distance traveled in a straight line from the deviations that had forced them to detour around impassable ravines and a great sea of dunes. On two occasions they had to backtrack nearly 20 kilometers before continuing on their course again.

According to the digital numbers that flashed on a small, screen, it had taken Giordino and Steinholm nearly twelve hours to cover the 400 kilometers between Fort Foureau and the Mauritanian border. Staying well clear of the railroad had cost them dearly in time lost. But too much was riding on them to risk encountering armed troops patrolling the tracks or being detected and blown to shreds by roving Malian fighter jets.

The last third of the journey was over hard ground, peppered with rocks that had been polished smooth by tiny grit blown by the wind. The rocks varied in size from marbles to footballs and made driving a horror, but they never gave thought to reducing their speed. They bounced over the uneven ground at a constant rate of 90 kilometers an hour, enduring the choppy, bone-jarring ride with stoic determination.

Exhaustion and suffering were overcome by thinking of what must be happening to the men and women they left behind. Giordino and Steinholm well knew that if there was any hope for them at all, the American Special Operations Forces must be found, and found quickly if a rescue mission was to reach the fort before Kazim massacred everyone inside. Giordino's promise to return by noon came back to haunt him. The prospect looked dim indeed.

"How far to the border?" asked Steinholm in English with an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent.

"No way of telling," Giordino answered. "They don't erect welcome signs to empty desert. For all I know, we've already crossed it."

"At least now it's light enough to see where we're going."

"Makes it easier for the Malians to pick us off too."

"I vote we head north toward the railroad," said Steinholm. "The fuel gauge is touching on empty. Another 30 kilometers and we'll have to walk."

"Okay, you sold me." Giordino checked the computer once more and pointed toward the compass mounted above the instrument panel. "Turn on a heading of 50 degrees northwest and run a diagonal course until we bisect the track bed. That will give us a few more kilometers in case we haven't passed into Mauritania yet."

"The moment of truth," Steinholm said, smiling. He jammed the pedal to the floor, spinning the wheels in the rock and sand, showering the air with pebbles and dust. In unison he twisted the wheel and sent the military version of the dune buggy tearing over the desert toward Massarde's railroad.

The fighters returned at eleven o'clock and resumed devastating the already wrecked fort with their missiles. When they finished their bomb runs, the four tanks took up the bombardment as the desert echoed with the constant rumble of explosives. To the defenders the thunder and devastation never seemed to end as Kazim's ground forces moved to within 300 meters and blasted away at the ruins with mortars and sniper fire.

The concentration of firepower was unlike anything the French Foreign Legion had ever experienced fighting the Tuaregs during their hundred-year occupation of West Africa. Shell after shell rained down, the detonations merging in a never-ending clap of thunder. The remnants of the walls continued to be pulverized from the constant explosions that hurled stone, mortar, and sand high into the air until little of the old fort bore any resemblance to its original shape. It now looked like a ruin from antiquity.

General Kazim's command aircraft had landed at a nearby dry lake. Accompanied by his Chief-of-Staff, Colonel Sghir Cheik, and Ismail Yerli, he was met by Captain Mohammed Batutta. The Captain led them to a four-wheel-drive staff car and drove them to the hastily set up headquarters of his Field Commander, Colonel Nouhoum Mansa, who stepped forward to greet them.

"You have them completely hemmed in?" Kazim demanded.

"Yes, General," Mansa quickly answered. "My plan is to gradually compress our lines around the fort until the final assault:

"Have you attempted to persuade the UN team to surrender?"

"On four different occasions. Each time I was flatly rejected by their leader, a Colonel Levant:"

Kazim smiled cynically. "Since they insist on dying, we'll help them along.

"There cannot be many of them left," observed Yerli as he peered through a telescope mounted on a tripod. "The place looks like a pulverized sieve. They must all be buried under the stone from the fallen walls.

"My men are anxious to fight," said Mansa. "They wish to put on a good show for their beloved leader."

Kazim looked pleased. "And they shall have their opportunity. Give the order to charge the fort in one hour."

There was no pause from the incessant hammering. Down in the arsenal, now crammed with nearly sixty commandos and civilians, the stones supporting the arched roof, their mortar crumbling, began falling on the huddled mass of people below.

Eva was crouched near the stairway, bandaging a female fighter whose shoulder was punctured in several places by small shrapnel, when a mortar shell burst at the head of the upper entrance. Her body shielded the woman she was tending as the blast mauled her with flying rock. She lost consciousness and awoke later to find herself laid out on the floor with the other wounded.

One of the medics was at work on her as Pitt sat and held her hand, his face tired, streaked with sweat, and wearing a stubble of beard turned nearly white with billowing dust, lit up with a loving smile.

"Welcome back," he said. "You gave us quite a scare when the stairway caved in."

"Are we trapped?" she murmured.

"No, we can break out when the time comes."

"It seems so dark."

"Captain Pembroke-Smythe and his team cleared an exit only big enough for us to breathe. It doesn't let in much light, but keeps out the shrapnel."

"I feel numb all over. How strange there is no pain."

The medic, a young red-headed Scotsman, grinned at her. "I've heavily sedated you. I couldn't have you waking up on me while I set your lovely bones."

"How bad am I?"

"Except for a broken right arm and shoulder, one or more cracked ribs— I can't tell without X-rays— fractured left tibia and ankle, plus a sea of bruises and possible internal injuries, you're quite all right."

"You're very honest," said Eva, gamely forcing a thin smile at the medic's battlefield whimsy.

The medic patted her good arm. "Forgive my bleak bedside manner, but I think it best you know the cold truth."

"I appreciate that," she said weakly.

"Two months' rest and you'll be ready to swim the channel."

"I'll stick to heated swimming pools, thank you."

Pembroke-Smythe, indefatigable as ever, moved about the crowded arsenal keeping everyone's spirits up. He came over and knelt by Eva. "Well, well, you're one iron lady, Dr. Rojas."

"I'm told I'll survive."

"She won't be engaging in wild and crazy sex for a while," teased Pitt.

Pembroke-Smythe made a comic leer, "What I wouldn't give, to be around when she recovers."

Eva missed the Captain's sly innuendo. Almost before he finished his remark she had slipped back into unconsciousness.

Pitt and Pembroke-Smythe stared over her into each other's eyes, the faces suddenly devoid of humor. The Captain nodded at the automatic pistol slung under Pitt's left arm.

"In the end," he said quietly, "will you do her the honor?"

Pitt nodded solemnly. "I'll take care of hers."

Levant came up, looking grimy and tired. He knew his men and women could not endure this punishment much longer. The added burden of watching the suffering of women and children wrenched at his tough, professional spirit. He hated to see them and his beloved tactical team being mercilessly subjected to such torment. His coldest fear was being overrun when the bombardment stopped, and then watching helplessly as the Malians ran amok in butchery and rape.

His best guess of the force against them was between one thousand and fifteen hundred. The number of his men and women still capable of fighting was down to twenty-nine including Pitt. And then there were the four tanks to contend with. He had no idea how long they could hold out before being overrun. An hour, maybe two, more likely less. They would make a fight of it, that much was certain. The bombardment had oddly worked in their favor. Most of the rubble from the walls had fallen outward, making it difficult for assaulting troops to climb over it.

"Corporal Wadilinski reports the Malians are beginning to form up and move in," he said to Pembroke-Smythe. "The assault is imminent. Widen the entrance to the stairs and have your people ready to move out the instant the firing stops."

"Right away, Colonel."

Levant turned to Pitt. "Well, Mr. Pitt. I believe the time has arrived to test your invention…"

Pitt stood and stretched. "A wonder it hasn't been blown to splinters."

"When I gave a quick look aboveground a few minutes ago it was still sitting in one piece under a section of one wall that was still standing."

"Now that's enough to get me to quit drinking tequila:"

"Nothing so drastic as that I hope."`

Pitt looked into Levant's eyes. "Mind if I ask what your answer was to Kazim's surrender demands?"

"The same reply we French gave at Waterloo and Camerone, merde."

"In other words, crap, " Pembroke-Smythe translated.

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."

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?"

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.

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 had 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."

Pitt was certain the sedatives had caused her mind to wander. There was no way a strange sound could be heard above the din of the fighting. His finger began to tighten on the trigger.

"I don't hear anything," he said.

"No… no, there it is again."

He hesitated as her eyes came alive and reflected a vague sort of anticipation. But he willed himself to go through with it. He leaned down to kiss her lips and distract her as he began to squeeze the trigger again.

She tried to lift her head. "You must hear it?"

"Goodbye, love."

"A train whistle," she said excitedly. "It's Al, he's come back."

Pitt released the pressure on the trigger and cocked his head toward the upper entrance to the stairway. Then he heard it over the sporadic gunfire. Not a whistle, but the faint blare of a diesel locomotive air horn.

Giordino stood beside the engineer and pulled the air horn cord like a crazy man as the train thundered over the rails toward the fighting. He stared and stared at the fort, hardly recognizing the ravaged structure as it grew larger through the windshield of the locomotive cab. The utter devastation, the pall of black smoke rising in the sky, made him sick at heart. From all appearances the relief force was too late.

Hargrove gazed, fascinated. He couldn't believe that anyone could live through such destruction. Most all the parapets were shot away, the ramparts in unbelievable shambles. The front wall where the main gate once stood was nothing but a small mountain of tangled stone. He was astounded at the number of bodies strewn around the perimeter of the fort and the four burned-out tanks.

"God but they put up a hell of a fight," Hargrove muttered in awe.

Giordino pressed the muzzle of a pistol against the engineer's temple. "Lay on the brakes and stop this thing. Now!"

The engineer, a Frenchman, who had been pirated away from operating the superfast TVG train between Paris and Lyons by double the salary from Massarde Enterprises, applied the brakes, stopping the train directly between the fort and Kazim's field headquarters.

With clock-like precision, Hargrove's special operations warriors poured off the train in both directions simultaneously and hit the ground running. One unit launched an immediate attack on the Malian field headquarters, catching Kazim and his staff by complete surprise. The rest of the force began assaulting the Malian army from the rear. The covers were quickly thrown off the Apache helicopters that were tied down on the flatbed cars. Within two minutes they were lifting into the air, swinging into position to fire their hellfire missiles.

In the sudden panic and confusion, Kazim stood rooted at the realization that the American Special Forces had sneaked across the border under the noses of his air screen. He was sick to his stomach in shock and made no effort to direct a defense or run for cover.

Colonels Mansa and Cheik each grabbed Kazim by an arm and hustled him out of his headquarters' tent into a staff car as Captain Batutta quickly jumped behind the wheel. Ismail Yerli shared their love of self-preservation and climbed in the seat beside Batutta.

"Get out of here!" Mansa shouted at Batutta as he and Cheik climbed in the backseat on each side of Kazim. "In the name of Allah, move before we're all killed""

Batutta had no more wish to die than his superiors. Leaving their men to fight out of the trap on their own, the officers had no second thoughts about fleeing the battlefield to save their own skins. Frightened beyond logical thinking, Batutta raced the engine and threw the staff car in gear. Though the vehicle was a four-wheel-drive, he dug the tires deeply in the soft sand, cutting twin trenches without achieving traction. In panic, Batutta kept his foot jammed on the accelerator. The engine shrieked in protest at the excessive revolutions as he stupidly made matters worse by driving the wheels into the ground up to their axle hubs.

Mouthing soundless words, Kazim abruptly returned to reality, and his face twisted in terror. "Save me!" he screamed. "I order you to save me!"

"You fool!" Mansa yelled at Batutta. "Let off the gas or we'll never get away."

"I'm trying!" Batutta snapped back, sweat bursting from his forehead.

Only Yerli sat calmly and accepted his fate. He stared out the side window silently as he watched death approaching in the shape of a big, purposeful-looking man in American desert combat gear.

Master Sergeant Jason Rasmussen of Paradise Valley, Arizona, had led his team off the train and straight at Kazim's headquarters' tents. Their job was to capture the communications section and prevent the Malians from spreading an alarm that would bring on an attack by Kazim's air force. In and out faster than a vampire pisses blood, as Colonel Hargrove had expressed it so picturesquely during the briefing, or else they were all dead meat if the Malian jet fighters caught them before their helicopters could recross the Mauritanian border.

After his team members had swept aside weak resistance from the stunned Malian soldiers and achieved their goal of cutting off all communications, Rasmussen noticed the staff car out of the corner of his eyes and began running after it. From the rear he could make out three heads in the backseat and two in the front. His first thought, when he saw that the car appeared stuck in the sand, was to take the men inside as prisoners. But then the vehicle suddenly leaped forward and bounced onto firm ground. The driver cautiously increased speed and the car began to pull away.

Rasmussen opened up with his machine gun. His fire peppered the doors and windows. Glass shattered and sparkled in the bright sun as bullets stitched across the car doors. After he emptied two clips, the heavily riddled car slowed and rolled to a halt. As he cautiously approached, Rasmussen saw that the driver had slumped lifeless over the wheel. The body of a senior Malian officer was leaning halfway out one window while another officer had fallen from an open door to his back on the ground and stared vacantly into the sky. A third man sat in the middle of the backseat, eyes wide open as if he was peering at some distant object while under hypnosis. The man in the passenger's seat in front, though, had a strange peaceful look in sightless eyes.

To Rasmussen, the officer in the middle looked like some kind of cartoon field marshal. The coat of his uniform was covered in a maze of gold braid, sashes, ribbons, and medals. Rasmussen could not bring himself to believe this character was the leader of the Malian forces. He leaned through the open door and gave the high-ranking officer a nudge with his gun butt. The body sagged sideways on the seat, revealing two neat bullet holes through the spinal cord at the base of the neck.

Sergeant first-class Rasmussen checked to see if the others were beyond medical help. All had suffered fatal wounds. Rasmussen had no idea that he had accomplished his mission far away and above expectations. Without direct orders from Kazim or his immediate staff, there were no subordinate officers willing to call an air strike on their own. Singlehandedly the sergeant from Arizona had changed the face of a West African nation. In the wake of Kazim's death a new political party supporting democratic reform would sweep out the old leaders of Mali and launch a new government. One that was unfavorable toward the manipulations of scavengers like Yves Massarde.

Unaware he had altered history, Rasmussen reloaded his weapon, dismissed the carnage from his mind, and trotted back to help in mopping up the area.

Nearly ten days would pass before General Kazim was buried in the desert beside his final defeat, unmourned, his grave forever unmarked.

Pitt ran up the steps of the arsenal and joined the surviving members of the tactical team who were making their final stand within a small pocket around the underground entrance. They had thrown up hasty barricades and were raking the parade ground with a steady fire. In the sea of devastation and death they still hung on, fighting with an almost insane ferocity to prevent the enemy from entering the arsenal and slaughtering the civilians and wounded before Giordino and the Special Forces could intervene.

Bewildered by a stubborn defense that refused to die, the decimated flood of Malian attackers crested and stalled as Pitt, Pembroke-Smythe, Hopper, Fairweather, and twelve UN fighters moved not back, but leaped forward. Fourteen men charging nearly a thousand. They rushed at the stunned mass, yelling like underworld demons and shooting at everything that stood in front of them.

The wall of Malians parted like the Red Sea before Moses and fell back before the horrific onslaught that punched into their ranks. They scattered in every direction. But not all had been invaded by crippling paralysis. A few of the braver ones knelt and fired into the flying wedge. Four of the UN fighters fell, but the momentum carried the rest forward and the fighting became hand-to-hand.

The report from Pitt's automatic slammed deafening in his ears as a group of five Malians melted away in front of him. There was no retreating or covering up as long as the Malian security forces held their ground.

Face to face with a wall of men, Pitt emptied his pistol and then threw it before he was hit in the thigh and fell to the ground.

At the same moment, Colonel Gus Hargrove's Rangers came pouring into the fort, laying down a murderous fire that took the late General Zateb Kazim's unsuspecting forces by complete surprise. Resistance in front of Pitt and the others seemed to melt away as the stunned Malians became aware of the assault on their rear. All courage and rationality dissolved. On a flat battlefield it would have been a complete rout, but within the fort there was no place to run. As if obeying an unspoken command they 'began throwing down their weapons and clasping their hands behind their heads.

The intense firing quickly became sporadic and finally died away altogether. A strange silence settled over the fort as Hargrove's men began rounding up the Malians and disarming them. It seemed an eerie, disquieting moment for the sudden end of the battle.

"Good Gawd!" one of the American Rangers uttered at seeing the unbelievable amount of carnage. From the time they had burst from the train and charged across the desert separating the fort from the track, they had jumped over and dodged around a vast carpet of dead and wounded, often so many they could not step between them. Now inside the demolished fortress, the bodies were piled three and four deep in some areas of the rubble. None had ever seen so many dead in one place before.

Pitt painfully lifted himself up and hopped on one leg. He tore off a sleeve and wrapped it around the hole in his thigh to stem the flow of blood. Then he looked at Pembroke-Smythe who stood stiffly, gray-faced, and obviously in great pain from several wounds.

"You look even worse than the last time I saw you," said Pitt.

The Captain stared Pitt up and down and casually brushed a thick layer of dust from his shoulder insignia. "They'll never let you in the Savoy Hotel looking as shabby as you do either."

As if resurrected from the grave, Colonel Levant rose from the incredible devastation and limped toward Pitt and Pembroke-Smythe, using a grenade launcher as a crutch. Levant's helmet was gone and his left arm hung limply at his side. He was bleeding from a gash across his scalp and a badly wounded ankle.

Neither man had expected to find him alive. They both solemnly shook hands with him.

"I'm happy to see you, Colonel," said Pembroke-Smythe cheerfully. "I thought you were buried under the wall."

"I was for a time." Levant nodded at Pitt and smiled. "I see you're still with us, Mr. Pitt."

"The proverbial bad penny."

Levant's face took on a saddened look as he saw the pitifully few men of his force that moved forward to surround and greet him. "They whittled us down somewhat."

"We whittled them down too," Pitt muttered grimly.

Levant saw Hargrove and his aides approaching, accompanied by Giordino and Steinholm. He stiffened and turned to Pembroke-Smythe. "Form up the men, Captain."

Pembroke-Smythe found it difficult to keep a steady voice as he assembled the remnant of the UN Tactical Team. "All right, lads…" He hesitated, seeing there was one female corporal helping to hold up a big sergeant. "And ladies. Straighten up the line."

Hargrove stopped in front of Levant and the two colonels exchanged salutes. The American was stunned at seeing the meager number that had fought so many. The international fighting team stood proud, none unscathed, everyone a walking wounded. They looked like statues, they were covered with so much dust. Their eyes were deep-sunk and red, and the faces haggard by their ordeal. The men all wore stubbled beards. Their combat suits were torn and filthy. Some wore crude bandages that were soaked through with blood. And yet they stood undefeated.

"Colonel Jason Hargrove," he introduced himself. "United States Army Rangers."

"Colonel Marcel Levant, United Nations Critical Response Team."

"I deeply regret," said Hargrove, "we couldn't arrive sooner."

Levant shrugged. "It is a miracle you are here at all."

"A magnificent stand, Colonel." Hargrove glanced around the destruction. Then he stared past Levant at the battle-weary fighters lined up behind, an incredulous look on his face. "Is this all of you?"

"Yes, all that's left of my fighting force."

"How many under your command?"

"About forty at the beginning."

As if in a trance, Hargrove again saluted Levant. "My compliments on a glorious defense. I've never seen anything like it."

"We have wounded in the fort's underground arsenal," Levant informed Hargrove.

"I was told you also were originally convoying women and children."

"They are below with my wounded."

Hargrove abruptly turned and shouted to his officers. "Get our medics up here and take care of these people. Bring up those from below and evacuate them onto the transport choppers, double quick. The Malian air force can show up any second."

Giordino walked up to Pitt who was standing off to one side and embraced him. "I thought this time, old friend, you weren't going to make it."

Pitt still tried a grin despite the waves of fatigue and the gnawing pain from the bullet hole in the fleshy part of his thigh. "The devil and I couldn't agree on terms."

"I'm sorry I couldn't have put the show on the road two hours sooner," Giordino lamented.

"No one expected you by train."

"Hargrove couldn't risk flying his choppers through Kazim's fighter defense screen in daylight."

Pitt looked up as an Apache warbird circled the fort, its sophisticated electronics probing over the horizons for intruders. "You made it through without detection," he said. "That's what counts."

Giordino looked into Pitt's eyes guardedly. "Eva?"

"Alive but badly injured. Thanks to you and your air horn, she missed dying by two seconds."

"She came that close to being shot by Kazim's mob?" Giordino asked curiously.

"No, shot by me." Before Giordino could reply, Pitt gestured toward the entrance to the arsenal. "Come along. She'll be happy to see your Quasimodo face."

Giordino's face grew sober at the sight of all the wounded with their bloody bandages and splints lying jammed on the floor of the cramped area. He was surprised by the damage caused by falling stones from the ceiling. But what stunned him most was the incredible silence. None of the wounded uttered a sound, no moan escaped their lips. No one in that crumbling arsenal cellar spoke. The children merely stared at him, totally subdued after hours of fright.

Then, as if on cue, they all broke into weak cheers and applause at recognizing Giordino as the one who brought reinforcements and saved their lives. Pitt was amused by it all. He had never seen Giordino display so much modesty and embarrassment as the men reached out to shake his hand and the women kissed him like a long-lost lover.

Then Giordino spotted Eva as she raised her head and flashed a wide smile. "Al… oh Al, I knew you'd come back."

He crouched beside her, careful not to make contact with her injuries, and awkwardly patted her hand. "You don't know how glad I am to see you and Dirk still breathing."

"We had quite a party," she said bravely. "Too bad you missed it."

"They sent me out for ice."

She glanced around at the others suffering around her. "Can't something be done for them?"

"The medics from the Special Forces are on their way," Pitt explained. "Everyone will be evacuated as soon as possible:"

Another few moments of small talk and the big, tough looking Rangers appeared and began tenderly carrying the children and helping their mothers outside to a waiting transport helicopter that had set down on the parade ground. The Ranger medics, assisted by the exhausted UN medical team, then directed the evacuation of the wounded.

Giordino obtained a stretcher, and with Pitt hobbling on one end, gently carried Eva into the bright afternoon sun.

"I never thought I'd hear myself say the desert heat feels good," she murmured.

Two Rangers reached through the open cargo door of the helicopter. "We'll take her from here," said one.

"Put her in first class," Pitt smiled at the men. "She's a very special lady."

"Eva!" a voice thundered from inside the helicopter. Dr. Hopper sat up on a stretcher, a bandage covering half his bare chest and another across one side of his face. "Let us hope this flight has a more enjoyable destination than the last one."

"Congratulations, Doc," said Pitt. "I'm glad to see you came through."

"Got four of the beggars before one downed me with a hand grenade."

"Fairweather?" asked Pitt, not seeing the Britisher.

Hopper shook his head sadly. "He didn't make it."

Pitt and Giordino helped the Rangers tie down Eva's stretcher next to Hopper's. Then Pitt brushed her hair back with his hands. "You're in good company with the Doc."

She looked up at Pitt, wishing with all her heart that he could sweep her into his arms. "You're not coming?"

"Not this trip."

"But you need medical care," she protested.

"I have some unfinished business."

"You can't stay in Mali," she implored him. "You mustn't, not after all that's happened."

"Al and I came to West Africa to do a job. It isn't finished yet."

"Is this the end of us then?" she asked in a choking voice.

"No, nothing so final."

"When will I see you again?"

"Soon, if all goes well," he said sincerely.

She lifted her head, her eyes gleaming in the sunlight with unshed tears. Then she kissed him lightly on the mouth. "Please hurry."

Pitt and Giordino stepped back as the helicopter's pilot increased the rpms and the craft lifted off the ground, throwing up a maelstrom of dust inside the fort. They watched the chopper as it rose above the crumpled walls and swung toward the west.

Then Giordino turned to Pitt and nodded at his injuries. "We'd better get you patched up if you're about to do what I think you want to do."

Pitt insisted on waiting until all of the more seriously wounded were treated before he allowed a medic to remove the shrapnel from his left arm and shoulder, stitch them up along with the bullet hole in the flesh of his thigh, give him two shots for infection and one for pain, before padding him with bandages. Afterward, he and Giordino bid their goodbyes to Levant and Pembroke-Smythe before the UN officers were airlifted out with the surviving members of the UN team.

"You're not joining us?" asked Levant.

"The one who lies behind all this senseless slaughter cannot be allowed to walk away," Pitt answered cryptically.

"Yves Massarde?"

Pitt nodded silently.

"I wish you luck." He shook their hands. "Gentlemen, I can think of little more to say except to thank you for your services."

"A pleasure, Colonel," said Giordino with a cocky smile. "Call on us anytime."

"I hope they give you a medal," said Pitt, "and promote you to General. No man deserves it more."

Levant surveyed the devastation as if searching for something, perhaps envisioning the men of his command who were still buried under the rubble. "I hope the sacrifices endured by both sides were worth the terrible price in lives."

Pitt shrugged heavily. "Death is paid for by grief and measured only by the depth of the grave."

Pembroke-Smythe, head high, glorious disdain engraved on his handsome face, was the last to board. "Bloody good sport," he said. "We must all get together and do it again some time,"

"We can hold a reunion," muttered Giordino sarcastically.

"If we ever meet in London," said Pembroke-Smythe, unperturbed, "the Dom Perignon is on me. In fact, I'll introduce you to some marvelous girls who oddly find Americans appealing."

"Will we get a ride in your Bentley?" asked Pitt.

"How did you know I drove a Bentley?" replied Pembroke-Smythe in mild surprise.

Pitt grinned. "Somehow it fit."

They turned away without a backward look as the helicopter carrying the last of the UN Tactical Team soared across the desert toward Mauritania and safety. A young black lieutenant trotted across their path and waved them to a stop.

"Pardon me, Mr. Pitt, Mr. Giordino?"

Pitt nodded. "That's us."

"Colonel Hargrove wants you over at the Malian headquarters across the railroad track."

Giordino knew better than to offer Pitt a shoulder as his friend limped across the sand, teeth gritted against the pain shooting from his thigh. The opaline eyes never ceased to gleam with determination from a gaunt face partly covered by a bandage.

The tents making up Kazim's former field headquarters bore desert camouflage markings but were shaped more like stage settings from a production of Kismet. Colonel Hargrove was in the main tent leaning over a table, studying Kazim's military communication codes when they walked inside. A stub of a cigar was pushed between his lips.

Without greeting, he asked, "Do either of you by chance know what Zateb Kazim looks like?"

"We've met him," answered Pitt.

"Could you identify him?"

"Probably."

Hargrove straightened and moved through the tent's opening. "Out here." He led them across a short stretch of level ground to a bullet-riddled car. He removed the cigar and spit in the sand. "Recognize any of these clowns?"

Pitt leaned into the interior of the car. Already hordes of flies were swarming on the blood-coated bodies. He glanced at Giordino who was peering in from the other side. Giordino simply nodded.

Pitt turned to Hargrove. "The one in the middle is the late General Zateb Kazim."

"You're sure," Hargrove demanded.

"Positive," Pitt said firmly.

"And the others must be high-ranking members of his staff," added Giordino.

"Congratulations, Colonel. Now all you have to do is inform the Malian government that you have the General in your custody and are holding him as hostage to ensure the safe return of your force to Mauritania."

Hargrove stared at Pitt. "But the man is a corpse."

"So who's to know? Certainly not his subordinates in the Malian security forces."

Hargrove dropped his cigar and ground it into the sand. He looked at the several hundred survivors of Kazim's assault force that were now massed in a large circle and guarded by his American Rangers. "I see no reason why it won't work. I'll have my intelligence officer open communications while we wind up the evacuations."

"Since you're no longer in a big rush to dash out of here, there is one other thing."

"That is?" asked Hargrove.

"A favor."

"What exactly is it I can do for you?"

Pitt smiled down at Hargrove who was half a head shorter. "One of your helicopters, Colonel. I'd like to borrow it and several of your best men."

After he communicated with high-level Malian officials and threw them the lie he was holding Kazim hostage, Hargrove was convinced no military action would be taken against his evacuating force. He was no longer filled with trepidation and was highly relieved now that the pressure was off the final stage of his rescue mission. He was also quite amused when the puppet president of Mali begged him to execute General Kazim.

But Hargrove had no intention of loaning his personal Sikorsky H-76 Eagle helicopter, its crew, and six of his Rangers to a pair of smart-ass bureaucrats, certainly not in a combat area. His only concession to Pitt's request was to pass it along to Special Operations Command in Florida over Kazim's captured communications systems, positive his superiors would have a good laugh out of it.

He was dumbstruck when the request came back almost immediately. Not only was it granted, but it was approved by presidential order.

Hargrove said acidly to Pitt, "You must have friends in high places."

"I'm not out for a joyride," Pitt replied, failing to hide the satisfaction in his voice. "You weren't told, but there was far more at stake here than a covert rescue mission."

"Probably just as well," Hargrove sighed heavily. "How long do you require my men and chopper?"

"Two hours."

"And then?"

"If all goes according to my plan, it will be returned to you, along with your men and crew, in pristine condition."

"And you and Giordino?"

"We remain behind."

"I won't bother asking why," said Hargrove, shaking his head. "This whole operation has been a mystery to me."

"Ever heard of a military operation that wasn't?" said Pitt seriously. "What you accomplished here today has a ripple effect beyond anything you can imagine"

Hargrove's eyebrows lifted questioningly. "Think I'll ever know what it is you're talking about?"

"To use the time-honored method of finding out government secrets," Pitt said slyly, "you read about them in tomorrow's newspaper."

After a 20-kilometer detour to an abandoned village where they took contaminated water samples from a well in the marketplace, Pitt directed the Eagle's pilot to fly a leisurely scouting pattern around the Fort Foureau hazardous waste project.

"Let the security guards get a good look at your armament," Pitt said to the pilot. "But stay alert for ground fire."

"Massarde's executive helicopter is sitting on the landing pad with its rotor blades turning," observed Giordino. "He must be planning a hasty departure."

"With Kazim dead, he can't have received word yet on the final outcome of the fight," said Pitt, "but he's canny enough to know something went wrong."

"A shame we have to cancel his flight," Giordino said fiendishly.

"No sign of ground fire, sir," the pilot notified Pitt.

"Okay, let us off on the landing pad,"'

"You don't want us to go in with you?" asked a rugged looking sergeant,

"Now that the security guards are properly impressed, Al and I can take it from here. Hang around the area as a show of force for about thirty minutes to intimidate anyone dumb enough to resist. And stop that helicopter on the ground if it attempts to lift off. Then at my signal head back to Colonel Hargrove's field command."

"You have a welcoming committee," said the pilot, pointing to the landing pad.

"My, my," said Giordino, squinting in the bright sunlight. "It looks like our old pal, Captain Brunone."

"And a squad of his goons," Pitt added. He tapped the pilot on the shoulder. "Keep your firepower aimed at them until we wave you off."

The pilot hovered half a meter from the ground, keeping his rocket launchers and Chain gun pointed at the waiting security guards. Giordino dropped lightly to the concrete pad and then helped Pitt step down to favor his leg. They walked over to Brunone who stiffened as he recognized them and stared in astonishment.

"I did not expect to see you two again," said Brunone.

"I'll bet you didn't," muttered Giordino nastily.

Pitt stared hard at Brunone, reading an expression in the Captain's eyes that Giordino missed, an expression of relief instead of anger or fear. "You almost look happy to see us."

"I am. I was told no one ever escaped from Tebezza."

"Did you send the project engineers and their wives and children there?"

Brunone shook his head solemnly. "No, that travesty occurred a week before I arrived."

"But you knew about their imprisonment."

"I only heard rumors. I tried to investigate the matter, but Mr. Massarde pulled a wall of secrecy around it. Anyone connected with the crime has vanished from the project."

"He probably slit their throats to shut them up," said Giordino.

"You don't much like Massarde, do you?" said Pitt.

"The man is a pig and a thief," Brunone spat. "I could tell you things about this project—"

"We already know," Pitt interrupted. "Why don't you quit and fly home?"

Brunone stared at Pitt. "Those who resign from Massarde Enterprises receive funerals within a week. I have a wife and five children."

In for a penny, in for a pound. Pitt had a hunch he could trust Brunone. The Captain's cooperation could prove valuable. "As of now, you're no longer in the employ of Yves Massarde. You're working for Pitt and Giordino Industries.

Brunone thought over Pitt's proposal, more like a statement of fact, for some time, eyed the hovering helicopter that had enough firepower to level half the project, and then studied the resolute and supremely confident looks on Pitt and Giordino's faces. Then he shrugged. "Consider me hired."

"And your security guard force?"

For the first time Brunone grinned. "My men are loyal to me. They hate Massarde as much as I do. There will be no protest over a change of employers."

"Cement their loyalty by informing them their pay has just been doubled."

"And me?"

"Play your cards right," said Pitt, "and you'll be the next managing director of this establishment."

"Ah, now, a first-class incentive. You can be assured of my full cooperation. What would you like me to do?"

Pitt did a sideways nod of his head toward the project's administration building. "You can begin by escorting us to Massarde so we can give him the sack."

Brunone suddenly hesitated. "Forgotten General Kazim, haven't you? He and Massarde are partners. He won't sit by and see his share of the project go elsewhere without a fight."

"General Zateb Kazim is no longer a problem," Pitt assured him.

"How can that be? What is his present status?"

"Status, status?" Giordino replied in a mocking tone. "The last time anybody saw him he was drawing a lot of flies."

Massarde sat behind his massive desk, the steady, watchful blue eyes reflecting benign displeasure, as if the surprise appearance of Pitt and Giordino was no more than a passing annoyance. Verenne stood behind him like a loyal disciple, face scowling in disgust.

"Like the avenging furies of Greek mythology, you never cease to plague me," Massarde said philosophically. "You even look like you ascended from the underworld."

There was a large antique mirror on the wall behind the desk with a baroque gilded frame crowded with fat cherubs. Pitt looked into it and he could see Massarde had made an accurate assessment. He was in stark contrast to Giordino who was reasonably clean and intact. Combat suit tattered and filthy from smoke and dust. Bloodstained rips and tears revealing bandages on the left arm, shoulder, and right thigh, a gash that ran from cheekbone to chin, face sweatstreaked and haggard, if he could have found a street to lie in, Pitt thought he could pass for a hit-and-run victim.

"Ghosts of the murdered who torment the wicked, that's us," Pitt retorted. "And we've come to punish you for your evil ways."

"Spare me the droll humor," said Massarde. "What do you want?"

"The Fort Foureau hazardous waste project for starters."

"You want the project." He said it as if it were an everyday occurrence. "Then I must assume your brazenness indicates General Kazim failed in recapturing the escapees from Tebezza."

"If you're referring to the families you forced into slavery, yes. As we speak, they're all on their way to safety, thanks to the sacrifices laid down by the UN Tactical Team and the timely arrival of an American Special Operation Force. Once they arrive in France they'll expose your criminal acts. The murders, the hideous atrocities at your gold mine, your illegal waste dumping operation that has caused thousands of deaths among the desert peoples, enough to make you the world's number one criminal."

"My friends in France will shield me," he said firmly.

"Don't count on your high connections in the French government. Once the public outcry hits your political buddies, they won't admit to ever having heard of you. Then it's a nasty trial and off to Devil's Island or wherever the French send their convicted criminals nowadays."

Verenne clutched the back of Massarde's chair, hovering like one of the flying monkeys over the Wicked Witch of the West. "Mr. Massarde will never stand trial or go to prison. He is too powerful; too many world leaders are in his debt."

"His pocket, you mean," said Giordino, moving over to the bar and helping himself to a bottle of mineral water.

"I am untouchable so long as I remain in Mali," said Massarde. "I can easily continue to operate Massarde Enterprises from here."

"I'm afraid that's not possible," said Pitt, circling for the kill. "Particularly in light of General Kazim's well-deserved demise."

Massarde stared at Pitt, his mouth slowly tightening. "Kazim dead?"

"Along with his staff and about half his army."

He looked then at Brunone. "And you, Captain. Do you and your security guards still stand with me?"

Brunone shook his head slowly. "No sir, in light of current events, I have decided to accept Mr. Pitt's more attractive offer."

Massarde exhaled in a long, defeated sigh. "Why on earth would you want control of the project?" he asked Pitt.

"To set it straight and attempt to repair the environmental damage you've caused."

"The Malians will never permit an outsider to take control."

"Oh I think government officials will come around once they're told their country will receive all profits from the operation. Considering Mali ranks as one of the poorest of poor nations, how can they refuse?"

"You'd turn over the world's most technically advanced solar waste project to a bunch of ignorant barbarians to run it into the ground?" asked Massarde in surprise. "You'll lose it all."

"Did you think I slithered in on your slime with the intention of making a financial killing? Sorry, Massarde, there are a few of us around who aren't driven by greed."

"You're an idiot, Pitt," Massarde said, rising from the desk in rage.

"Sit down! You haven't heard the best half of the deal yet."

"What else can you possibly demand besides control of Fort Foureau?"

"The fortune you've got stashed away in the Society Islands."

"What are you talking about?" Massarde demanded angrily.

"The millions, maybe hundreds of millions in liquid assets you've accumulated over the years from your shady manipulations and ruthless business transactions. It's a matter of record you don't trust financial institutions or follow usual investment practices, nor do you have your money socked away in Grand Cayman or the Channel Islands. You could have retired a long time ago and enjoyed a good life and invested in paintings or classic cars or villas in Italy. Or better yet, you might have become a philanthropist and shared your inventiveness with needy charities. But greed begets greed. You can't spend your profits. No matter how much you hoard, it's never enough. You're too sick to live like normal people. What you don't keep in Massarde Enterprises for acquisitions, you hide somewhere on a South Pacific island. Tahiti, Moorea or Bora? My guess is one of the lesser-inhabited islands in the chain. How close to the truth am I, Massarde?"

He had no reply to make on how close to the truth Pitt was.

"That's the deal," Pitt continued. "In return for giving up all control of this project and revealing where you've hidden your ill-gotten gains, I'll let you board your helicopter along with your stooge, Verenne here, and fly free wherever you wish."

"You are an idiot," Verenne snapped hoarsely. "You don't have the authority or power to blackmail Mr. Massarde."

Unnoticed by the others, Giordino stood behind the bar and spoke softly into a small radio transmitter. The timing was near perfect. There were only a few moments of silence before the Eagle helicopter suddenly appeared outside the office window, hanging menacingly in the air with its deadly armament seemingly poised to blow Massarde's office into dust.

Pitt nodded at the hovering aircraft. "Authority no, power yes."

Massarde smiled. He was not a man who could be cornered without a fight. He seemed to have no fear at all. He leaned across the desk and said evenly, "Take the project if you will. Without a despot's backing like Kazim, the stupid government will allow it to deteriorate and become abandoned scrap like every other piece of Western technology that's come to this godforsaken desert. I have other projects, other ventures to replace this one."

"We're halfway home," said Giordino coldly.

"As to my wealth, don't waste your breath. What's mine is mine. But you're right about it being on an island in the Pacific. You and a million other people could search a thousand years and never find it."

Pitt turned to Brunone. "Captain, we still have a few hours of afternoon heat left. Please gag Mr. Massarde and remove his clothes. Then spread-eagle and stake him to the ground, and leave him."

That jolted Massarde badly. He could not comprehend being treated as brutally as he had treated others. "You cannot do this to Yves Massarde," he said savagely. "By God, you're not—"

His words were broken off as Pitt backhanded him across the face. "Tit for tat, pal. Except you're lucky fm not wearing a ring."

Massarde said nothing. For a few moments he stood there motionless, his face masked in hate and turning white from the beginning sensations of fear. He looked at Pitt and saw there was no reprieve, because there was an emotionless coldness about the American, an utter lack of compassion that negated the slightest possibility of escaping the ordeal. Slowly he removed his clothes until he stood white-skinned and naked.

"Captain Brunone," said Pitt. "Do your duty."

"With pleasure, sir," replied Brunone with obvious relish.

After Massarde was gagged and securely staked on the baked ground outside the administration building under the merciless Sahara sun, Pitt nodded to Giordino. "Convey my thanks to the men in the chopper and send them back to Colonel Hargrove."

Upon receiving the message, the pilot of the chopper waved and dipped his craft toward the battlefield. Now they were alone with their own creative devices, relying on an enormous amount of bluff.

Giordino looked down at Massarde and then at Pitt with a curious glint in his eyes. "Why the gag?" he asked.

Pitt smiled. "If it was you roasting in the sun out there, how much would you offer Brunone and his men to escape?"

"A couple of million bucks or more." answered Giordino, admiring Pitt's finesse.

"Probably more."

"Do you honestly believe he's going to talk?"

Pitt shook his head. "No, Massarde will suffer tire tortures of the damned and go to hell before revealing where he's hidden his wealth."

"But if he won't tell you, who will?"

"His closest friend and confidant," said Pitt, gesturing at Verenne.

"Damn you, I don't know!" Verenne's voice was a despairing shout.

"Oh I think you do, maybe not the exact location, but I think you could put us within spitting distance."

The shift of his eyes, the fearful expression was evidence enough that Verenne knew the secret. "I wouldn't tell you anything if I could."

"Al, while I take advantage of Massarde's fancy quarters and clean up, why don't you escort our friend to an empty office and persuade him to sketch out a map to Massarde's private money vault."

"Sounds good to me," Giordino said casually. "I haven't drilled any teeth for nearly a week."

Almost two hours later, after a shower and short nap, Pitt felt almost human again; the biting soreness from his wounds was almost bearable. He was seated at Massarde's desk in a silk robe at least two sizes too small that he'd found in a closet containing enough clothes to open a men's store. He was probing through the drawers of the desk, studying the Frenchman's papers and files when Giordino walked through the door, pushing a white-faced Verenne in front of him.

"You two have a nice chat?" asked Pitt.

"Amazing what a great conversationalist he can be in the right company," Giordino acknowledged.

Verenne looked around through wild unfocused eyes that seemed to have lost all contact with reality. He slowly moved his head from side to side as if he was clearing away a mist. He looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

Pitt studied Verenne curiously. "What did you do to him?" he inquired of, Giordino. "There isn't a mark on him."

"Like I said, we had a nice chat. I spent the time describing in vivid detail how I was going to dismember him millimeter by millimeter."

"That's all?"

"He has a great imagination. I never had to lay a hand on him."

"Did he pinpoint Massarde's island cache?"

"You had the right idea about it being owned by the French, but it's almost 5000 kilometers northeast of Tahiti and 2000 southwest of Mexico. Truly the backside of beyond."

"I don't know of a French island in the Pacific off Mexico."

"In 1979, France assumed direct administration of an atoll named Clipperton Island after the English pirate John Clipperton, who used it as a lair in 1705. According to Verenne, its land mass is only about 5 square kilometers with a 21-meter promontory as its highest point."

"Any habitants?"

Giordino shook his head. "Not unless you count a few wild pigs. Verenne says the only remnant of human activity is an abandoned lighthouse from the eighteenth century."

"A lighthouse," Pitt turned the word over slowly. "Only a slick, wily pirate like Massarde would think of hiding a treasure near a lighthouse on an uninhabited island in the middle of an ocean."

"Verenne claims he doesn't know the exact spot."

"Whenever Mr. Massarde anchored his yacht off the island," murmured Verenne, "he always took a boat ashore alone, and only at night so no one could observe his movements."

Pitt looked at Giordino. "Think he's telling the truth?"

"I am, I swear to God!" Verenne implored.

"Could be he's just a natural-born storyteller," said Giordino.

"I told the truth." His voice came like the pleas of a child. "Oh God, I don't want to be tortured. I can't stand pain."

Giordino stared at Verenne fox-like. "Or then again, he might be a naturally gifted actor."

Verenne looked stricken. "What can I do to make you believe me?"

"I'll be convinced when you inform on your boss. Supply his records, names, and dates of his victims, every filthy business deal he ever created, expose the guts of his entire rotten organization."

"I do that and he'll have me killed," Verenne croaked in a frightened whisper.

"He'll never touch you."

"Oh yes he can. You don't know the power he wields."

"I think I have an idea."

"He won't hurt you half as much as I will," said Giordino menacingly.

Verenne sank into a chair, stared at Giordino with a sweat-moistened face, with fear-widened eyes that carried the faintest flicker of hope as he turned and trained them on Pitt. These men had stripped his chief of all dignity, of all arrogance. If there was a chance of saving his life, he knew he had to choose.

"I'll do as you ask," he moaned softly.

"Let me hear it again," Pitt demanded.

"All records and information on Massarde Enterprises, I will turn them over to you for investigation."

"That includes unrecorded records on illegal and immoral activities as well."

"I will supply what isn't on paper or computerized."

There was a brief silence. Pitt stared out the window at Massarde. Even at that distance he could see the white skin had turned a deep red. He rose stiffly from behind the desk and put a hand on Giordino's shoulder.

"Al, he's your project. Extract every shred of evidence out of him you can."

Giordino put his arm around Verenne, who cringed. "We'll have a real friendly rap session you and I"

"Work on the names of the people Massarde victimized or murdered. Those first."

"Any particular reason?" Giordino asked curiously.

"When the time is right for a voyage to Clipperton Island and a search proves successful, I'd like to set up an organization to use Massarde's stashed wealth to pay back those he hurt and the surviving families of those he killed."

"Mr. Massarde will never permit that," Verenne muttered hoarsely.

"Speaking of our favorite villain," said Pitt, "I think he's baked in the oven long enough."

The front of Massarde's body looked like a shellfish after it had been broiled in a pot. Already he was in excruciating agony, his skin blistering. By the next morning it would begin to peel in huge strips. He stood there without support between Brunone and two impassive guards, motionless, his lips drawn back like a snarling dog, his reddened face contorted in rage and hate:

"You cannot do this to me and live," he hissed. "Even if I'm killed, I have devised methods to make those responsible pay."

"An avenging hit team," said Pitt dryly. "How foresighted of you. After cooking in the sun, you must be tired and thirsty. Please take a chair. AI, bring Mr. Massarde a bottle of his special French mineral water."

Massarde very slowly eased into a soft leather chair, his face suddenly taut from agony. Settled finally in a comfortable position, he took a deep breath. "You are fools if you think you can get away with this. Kazim has ambitious officers who will quickly step into his place, men who are as vicious and cunning as he was, and who will send a force to bury you in the desert before the next sun."

He reached for the bottle of water held out to him by Giordino and swallowed its entire contents within seconds. Without being asked, Giordino handed him another.

Pitt couldn't help but admire Massarde's incomparable nerve. The man acted as if he was in complete control of his situation:

Massarde finished off the second bottle and then looked around his office for his personal secretary. "Where is Verenne?"

"Dead," Pitt said tersely.

For the first time Massarde looked genuinely surprised. "You murdered him?"

Pitt shrugged indifferently. "He tried to stab Giordino here. Stupid of him to attack a man carrying a gun with a letter opener."

"He did that?" Massarde asked warily.

"I can show you the body if you like."

"Not at all like Verenne. He was a coward."

Pitt exchanged glances with Giordino. Verenne had already been put to work and was under guard in an office two floors below.

"I've got a proposition for you," said Pitt.

"What deal could you possibly make with me?" snarled Massarde.

"I've had a change of heart. If you promise to mend your crooked ways, I'll let you walk from this room, board your helicopter, and leave Mali."

"Is this some sort of joke?"

"Not at all. I've decided the sooner you're out of my hair, the better."

"Surely you can't be serious," said Brunone. "The man is a dangerous menace. He'll strike back at his first opportunity."

"Yes, the Scorpion. Is that what you're called, Massarde?"

The Frenchman did not answer, but sat in sullen silence.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" asked Giordino.

"There will be no argument," Pitt said harshly. "I want this scum out of here, and I want him out now. Captain Brunone, escort Massarde to his helicopter and see that it lifts off with him on it."

Massarde rose shakily to his feet; the sunburned skin was tightening and it was with only an agonized effort that he could stand straight. Despite the pain he smiled. His mind was churning again. "I will require several hours to pack my things and personal records."

"You have exactly two minutes to get off the project."

Massarde swore, bitterly and vilely. "Not like this, not without my clothes. My God, man, show some decency."

"What do you know about decency?" Pitt said dispassionately. "Captain Brunone, get this son of a bitch out of here before I kill him myself."

Brunone didn't have to order his two men. He simply nodded and they hustled the wildly cursing Yves Massarde into the elevator. No word passed between the three men in the office as they stood at the window and watched the humiliated mogul roughly shoved aboard his luxury helicopter. The door was closed and the rotors began to thump the hot air. In less than four minutes it had disappeared over the desert to the north.

"He's heading northeast," observed Giordino.

"My guess is Libya," said Brunone. "And then on to hidden exile before recovering his loot."

"His final destination is of no consequence," Pitt said, yawning.

"You should have killed him," Brunone said, his voice sharp with disappointment.

"No need to bother. He won't live out the week."

"How can you say that?" asked an astonished Brunone. "You let him go free. Why? The man has the resilience and lives of a cat. He's not about to die from sunburn."

"No, but he will die." Pitt nodded at Giordino. "Did you make the switch okay?"

Giordino grinned back. "As smoothly as decanting wine."

Brunone looked confused. "What are you talking about?"

"Tying Massarde down out in the sun," explained Pitt, "I wanted to make him thirsty."

"Thirsty? I don't understand."

"Al here, emptied the bottles of mineral water and refilled them with water contaminated by chemicals leaking from the underground storage vault."

"It's called poetic justice." Giordino held up the empty bottles. "He drank almost 3 liters of the stuff."

"As his internal organs disintegrate, his brain will be eaten away and he will go mad." Pitt's tone was ice cold, his face chiseled in stone.

"There is no hope for him?" a dazed Brunone asked.

Pitt shook his head. "Yves Massarde will die strapped to a bed, screaming to escape his torment. I only wish his victims could be there to see it."