Sahara (32 page)

“A quiet old bird,” observed Giordino, impressed.

“Unlike most modern engines with poppet valves,” said Pitt, “this one is powered by a Knight sleeve-valve engine that was quite popular in its day for silent operation.”

Giordino gazed at the old classic car with great skepticism. “You actually intend to drive this old relic across the Sahara Desert?”

“We’ve got a full tank of gas, and it beats riding a camel. Find some clean containers and fill them with water, and see if you can scrounge anything to eat.”

“I doubt seriously,” Giordino said, morosely staring around the run-down garage, “this establishment has a soft drink and candy machine.”

“Do what you can.”

Pitt opened the rear doors of the building and pushed out the yard gate far enough to allow the car to pass through.

Then he checked over the car to ensure the oil and water were filled to capacity and there was air in the tires, particularly the spare.

Giordino came up with half a case of locally produced soft drink and several plastic bottles of water. “We won’t go thirsty for a few days, but the best I could do in the culinary department is two cans of sardines I found in a desk and some gooey stuff that looks like boiled candy.”

“No sense in hanging around. Throw your cache in the backseat and let’s hit the road.”

Giordino obliged and climbed in the passenger’s seat as Pitt pushed the gear lever on the Cotal gearbox, actually a switch on an arm that protruded from the steering column, into low gear, pressed the accelerator pedal, and eased out the clutch. The sixty-year-old Voisin moved forward smoothly and quietly.

Pitt slowly picked his way between the junked cars and passed out the gate, cautiously driving down an alley until he reached a narrow dirt road leading to the west on a parallel course with the Niger River. He turned and followed the faint tracks, creeping along no faster than 25 kilometers an hour until he was out of sight of the town. Only then did he turn on the headlights and pick up speed.

“Might help if we had a road map,” said Giordino.

“A map of camel tracks might be more practical. We can’t risk taking the main highway.”

“We’re okay so long as this cow path runs along the river.”

“Soon as we strike the ravine where Gunn’s instruments detected the contamination, we’ll turn and follow it north.”

“I’d hate to be around when the chauffeur notifies Kazim that his pride and joy has been stolen.”

“The General and Massarde will think we headed for the nearest border, which is Niger,” said Pitt confidently. “The last place they’d expect us to cut and run is the middle of the desert.”

“I must say,” Giordino grumbled, “I’m not looking forward to the trip.”

Neither was Pitt. It was a mad attempt with practically no chance of living to a ripe old age. The headlights showed the land was flat with patches of small, brown-stained rock. The beams caught haunting shadows cast from an occasional manna tree that seemed to flit and dart across the landscape like wraiths.

It was, thought Pitt, a very lonely place to die.

26

The sun rose hot, and by ten o’clock it was already 32 degrees C (90 degrees F). A wind began to blow from the south, and offered a small but mixed blessing for Rudi Gunn. The breeze felt refreshing to his sweating skin, but it swirled sand into his nose and ears. He wrapped his head cloth more tightly to keep out the grit and pressed his dark glasses against his face to protect his eyes. He took a small plastic bottle of water from his backpack and drained half of it. No need to ration, he thought, after spying a dripping tap beside the terminal.

The airport looked as dead as the night before. On the military side, there had been a changing of the guards, but the hangars and flight line were still void of activity. At the commercial air terminal he watched a man ride up on a motorbike and climb to the control tower. Gunn saw that as a good omen. No one with half a brain would willingly suffer in an elevated, glass-enclosed hot box under a blazing sun unless a plane was scheduled to arrive.

A falcon circled above Gunn’s nest in the sand. He gazed at it for a while before cautiously rigging a few weather-worn boards over his body for shade. Then he surveyed the airfield once again. A truck had arrived on the tarmac in front of the terminal. Two men got out and unloaded a set of wooden chocks, which they set on the tarmac to block the aircraft’s tires after landing. Gunn stiffened and began mentally preparing his best strategic approach to where the aircraft would park. He fixed the route in his mind, picking the shallow ravines and scattered growth for cover.

Then he lay back, settled in to endure the increasing heat, and stared up at the sky. The falcon had homed in on a plover that was streaking and dodging toward the river. A few cotton puff clouds drifted across the vast blue expanse. He wondered how they could survive much less exist in the searing atmosphere. So intent was he on watching the clouds that he did not at first hear the low hum in the distance that signaled the approach of a jet aircraft. Then a glint caught his eye, and he sat up. The sun had flashed on a tiny speck in the sky. He waited, staring until the glint came again, only this time it was lower against the barren horizon. It was an aircraft on approach for landing but still too far away to be recognized. It had to be commercial, he surmised, or it wouldn’t be expected to stop at the civilian side of the airfield.

He pushed off the boards shielding the sun, pulled on the backpack, and crouched in readiness for his furtive approach. He squinted into the glaring sky until the plane was only a kilometer away, his heart beginning to pound with anxiety. The seconds dragged past until at last he could distinguish the type and markings; a civilian French airbus carrying the light and dark green stripes of Air Afrique.

The pilot flared out just past the end of the runway, touched down, and braked. Then he taxied to the front of the terminal and rolled the big airbus to a halt. The engines were not shut down but kept turning as the two ground crewmen shoved the chocks under the wheels and then rolled a boarding stairway to the main exit door.

They stood and waited at the bottom of the stairway expectantly for passengers to disembark, but the exit door did not immediately open. Gunn began to make his move, scurrying toward the edge of the runway. After covering 50 meters, he paused behind the shelter of a small acacia tree and studied the airliner again.

The forward passenger door was finally sliding to one side, and a female flight attendant came down the boarding steps. She walked past the two Malian ground crewmen without looking at them and set a course for the control tower. The Malians turned their attention from the aircraft and stared at her with rapt curiosity. When she reached the base of the tower, she extracted a small pair of wire cutters from a bag slung over her shoulder and calmly severed the power and communication cables running from the controller’s equipment to the terminal. Then she waved a signal at the plane’s cockpit.

A ramp abruptly dropped from the rear of the fuselage accompanied by the high but muffled revolutions of an automobile engine. Suddenly, what looked to Gunn like an off-road dune buggy flew out of the cavern of the aircraft and down the ramp. The driver threw it into a sideway skid and aimed it toward the guard shack on the military side of the airfield.

Gunn had once been a member of the pit crew for Pitt and Giordino when they had entered a cross-country race in Arizona, but he had never seen an all-terrain vehicle like this one. There was no common body or chassis. The construction was a maze of tubular supports welded together and powered by a supercharged V-8 Rodeck, 541-cubic-inch engine used by American drag racers. The driver sat within a small cockpit at the front of the vehicle, just ahead of the mid-mounted engine. A gunner sat slightly above the driver, manning a wicked-looking six-barrel, lightweight Vulcan-type machine gun. Another gunner sat over the rear axle and faced backward with a 5.56-millimeter Stoner 63 machine gun. This type of vehicle, Gunn recalled, had been most effective during the desert war when used by American special forces teams behind the Iraqi lines.

It was followed down the ramp by a platoon of heavily armed men in unfamiliar uniforms who quickly rounded up the stunned Malian ground crew and secured the terminal building.

The two Malian air force guards on the military side of the airfield watched in fascination as the strange vehicle raced toward them. Only when it was within 100 meters did they recover and recognize it as a threat. They raised their guns to fire but were cut down with a quick burst from the forward gunner and his Vulcan.

Then the driver swung a sharp turn and the gunners began concentrating their fire on the eight Malian jet fighters parked on the tarmac. Unthreatened by a wartime emergency, the aircraft were not dispersed, but lined up in two neat rows as if awaiting inspection. The heavily armed vehicle bored in, lashing out with short, devastating bursts from its automatic weapons. In quick succession, aircraft after aircraft went up in fiery explosions and black storms of smoke as rivers of shells sledgehammered into their fuel tanks. One moment a sleek fighter jet was there, the next it was gone, a burning mass of wreckage.

Gunn observed the drama in genuine astonishment. He cringed behind the acacia as if its slim trunk was one wide concrete shield. The whole operation had taken no more than six minutes. The armed all-terrain vehicle sped back toward the jetliner, taking up a position at the entrance of the terminal. Then a man in an officer’s uniform stepped from the boarding steps, holding what looked to Gunn like a bullhorn.

The officer held the speaker to his lips and spoke, his voice carrying over the flaming destruction on the other side of the airfield. “Mr. Gunn! Will you please step forward. We don’t have much time.”

Gunn was stunned. He hesitated, not knowing whether it was some sort of complex trap. He quickly shook the thought off as stupid. General Kazim would hardly destroy his air force just to capture one man. Yet, he still was reluctant to rush into view of so much firepower.

“Mr. Gunn!” the officer boomed again. “If you are within sound of my voice, I implore you to hurry or I will be forced to leave without you.”

That was all the urging Gunn needed. He leaped from behind the acacia tree and ran over the uneven ground toward the jetliner, waving his hands and shouting like a madman.

“Hold on! I’m coming!”

The unknown officer who had hailed him paced the tarmac like an impatient passenger, irritated at a flight delay. When Gunn jogged up and stopped, he studied the NUMA scientist as one might look at a street beggar. “Good morning. Are you Rudi Gunn?”

“I am,” answered Gunn, panting from exertion and the heat. “Who are you?”

“Colonel Marcel Levant.”

Gunn gazed with admiration at the elite force efficiently guarding the perimeter around the aircraft. They had the appearance of a tough group of men with no qualms about killing. “What group is this?”

“A United Nations tactical team,” replied Levant.

“How did you know my name and where to find me?”

“Admiral James Sandecker received a communication from someone called Dirk Pitt saying you were hiding near the airport, and that it was urgent you be evacuated.”

“The Admiral sent you?”

“With the approval of the Secretary General,” replied Levant. “How do I know you’re Rudi Gunn?”

Gunn gestured around the desolation in the surrounding countryside. “How in hell many Rudi Gunns do you think just happened to be roaming around this part of the desert waiting for your beck and call?”

“You have no papers, no proof of identity?”

“My personal documents are probably on the bottom of the Niger River. You’ll just have to trust me.”

Levant passed the bullhorn to an aide and nodded toward the aircraft. “Recall and board,” he ordered tersely. He turned back to Gunn and regarded him with a marked lack of cordiality. “Step into the plane, Mr. Gunn. We have no more time to waste in idle conversation.”

“Where are you taking me?”

Levant threw a glance of irritation at the sky and said, “To Paris. From there you will be flown to Washington by Concorde where a number of very important people are anxiously waiting to debrief you. That is all you’re required to know. Now please move along. Time is crucial.”

“What’s the rush?” Gunn demanded. “You’ve obviously destroyed their air force.”

“Only one squadron I fear. There are three others based around the capital city at Bamako. Once alerted they can still intercept us before we escape Malian air space.”

The armed dune buggy had already driven on board and was quickly followed by the ground forces. The flight attendant who had bravely cut the control tower cables took Gunn by the arm and hustled him up the boarding ramp.

“We don’t have a first-class cabin with gourmet meals and champagne, Mr. Gunn,” she said brightly. “But we do have cold beer and bologna sandwiches.”

“You don’t know how good that sounds,” Gunn smiled.

He should have felt a great surge of relief as he climbed the boarding stairs, but suddenly he was swept by a wave of anguish. Thanks to Pitt and Giordino he was safely escaping to freedom. They had sacrificed to save him. How on heaven’s earth did they ever manage to find a radio and contact Sandecker, he wondered.

They were mad to stay behind in that scorched land, he thought. Their commitment to finding the contamination was madness. Kazim would unleash his entire security force to hunt them down. If the desert didn’t devour them, the Malians would.

He hesitated before entering the aircraft, turned, and gazed out over the ugly vastness of sand and rock. From his elevated position he could clearly see the Niger River, little more than a kilometer to the west.

Where were they now? What was their situation?

He tore himself from the sight and entered the cabin, the air-conditioned air striking his sweating body like a breaking wave. His eyes were smarting as the aircraft lifted off the runway past the flaming jet fighters.

Colonel Levant sat in the seat next to Gunn and studied the sorrowful expression. He searched Gunn’s eyes for understanding, but found none. “You don’t seem happy to be getting out of this mess.”