Sahara (44 page)

Once into the main tunnel, they followed the narrow set of rails up a long sloping grade cut in the bowels of the plateau. An ore train with a guard driving the locomotive rumbled into view, and they had to press their backs against the side of the hewn wall to allow it to pass. A short distance later they reached a hollowed-out cavern where the rails from other cross shafts congregated at a large elevator that could hold four ore cars at one time.

“Where are they taking the ore?” asked Giordino.

“Must go to an upper level where it’s crushed to powder and the gold is recovered and refined.”

The guards led them to a massive iron gate mounted on equally massive hinges and weighing close to half a ton. It was designed to keep more than chickens cooped up. Two other Tuaregs waited on the other side. They nodded and exerted every muscle in pulling open the gate, then silently motioned for Pitt and Giordino to move inside. One guard handed them dirty tin cups half filled with brackish water.

Pitt gazed into the cup, then at the guard. “How creative, water garnished with bat’s vomit.”

The guard couldn’t understand the words but he easily read the savage look in Pitt’s eyes. He snatched back the cup and threw the water in the dirt and kicked Pitt into the chamber.

“That’ll teach you to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Giordino said, smiling broadly as he emptied his cup on the ground too.

Their new home was 10 meters wide by 30 long and lit by four tiny light bulbs. Four-tiered wooden bunks were arranged the length of both walls. The dungeon, for that’s what it was, had no ventilation and the stench of crowded living conditions was ghastly. The only sanitary conveniences were several holes sunk in the rock along the rear wall. In the center were two long eating tables with crude wooden benches. There had to be, Pitt guessed, more than three hundred human beings crammed in the nauseating area.

The bodies slumped in the nearest bunks looked to Pitt as if they were comatose. Their faces looked as expressionless as cabbages. Twenty men were huddled around the table using their hands to eat out of a community pot like starving maggots. None of the faces looked frightened or worried; they were far beyond showing ordinary emotion; they were drawn and haggard from lack of food and exhaustion. They moved mechanically like living cadavers, staring through eyes dead with defeat and submission. None of them gave Pitt and Giordino so much as a glance as they made their way through the sea of human misery.

“Not exactly a carnival atmosphere,” muttered Giordino.

“Humanitarian principles don’t count for much around here,” Pitt said in disgust. “It’s worse than I ever imagined.”

“Much worse,” agreed Giordino, cupping a hand over his nose in a futile effort to ward off the smell. “The Black Hole of Calcutta had nothing on this dump.”

“Feel like eating?”

Giordino winced as he stared at the remains of the slop clinging to the sides of the pot. “My appetite just filed for bankruptcy.”

The nearly unbreathable air and lack of ventilation in the dungeon-like cavern raised the heat and humidity from the packed bodies to unbearable levels. But Pitt suddenly felt himself turn as cold as if he’d stepped onto an iceberg. For a moment all the defiance and anger left him and the horror and suffering seemed to dissolve and fade as he recognized a figure bending over a bunk in a lower tier against the right wall of the cave. He rushed over and knelt beside a woman who was tending a sick child.

“Eva,” he said gently.

She was bone weary from forced labor and lack of food, and her face was pale and marked by welts and bruises, but she turned and stared at him through eyes that gleamed with courage.

“What do you want?”

“Eva, it’s Dirk.”

It didn’t sink in. “Leave me alone,” she muttered. “This little girl is terribly sick.”

He took her hand between his and leaned closer. “Look at me. I’m Dirk Pitt.”

Then her eyes widened in recognition. “Oh Dirk, is it really you?”

He kissed her and gently touched the bruises on her face. “If I’m not, someone is playing a cruel trick on us both.”

Giordino appeared at Pitt’s shoulder. “A friend of yours?’“

Pitt nodded. “Dr. Eva Rojas, the lady I met in Cairo.”

“How did she get here?” he asked in surprise.

“How did you?” Pitt asked her.

“General Kazim hijacked our plane and sent us here to work in the mines.”

“But why?” queried Pitt. “What threat were you to him?”

“Our UN health team, under the supervision of Dr. Frank Hopper, was close to identifying a toxic contaminant that was killing villagers all over the desert. We were on our way back to Cairo with biological samples for analysis.”

Pitt looked up at Giordino. “Massarde asked us if we were working with Dr. Hopper and his group.”

Giordino nodded. “I recall. He must have known Kazim had already imprisoned them here.”

She dabbed a wet handkerchief on the little girl’s forehead and suddenly leaned her head against Pitt’s chest and sobbed. “Why did you come to Mali? Now you’re going to die like the rest of us.”

“We have a date, remember?”

Pitt was concentrating his attention on Eva and didn’t see the three men cautiously moving in between the bunks and surrounding them. The leader was a big man with a red face and bushy beard. The other two looked haggard and worn out. They all bore lash marks on their naked backs and chests. The menacing expressions on their faces brought a grin from Giordino as he turned and faced them. Their physical conditions were so pathetic he was confident he could have laid out all three without breathing hard.

“These men bothering you?” the red-faced man said to Eva protectively.

“No, no, not at all,” Eva murmured. “This is Dirk Pitt, the man who saved my life in Egypt.”

“The man from NUMA?”

“The same,” Pitt replied. He turned to Giordino. “This is my friend, Al Giordino.”

“By God, a real pleasure. I’m Frank Hopper and this shabby fellow on my left is Warren Grimes.”

“Eva told me a great deal about you in Cairo.”

“Damned sorry we have to meet under such grim circumstances.” Hopper stared at the deep cuts on both of Pitt’s cheeks and touched the long scab that ran across his own face. “It seems we’ve both angered Melika.”

“Only on the left side. The right one came from another source.”

The third man stepped forward and held out his hand. “Major Ian Fairweather,” he introduced himself.

Pitt shook the outstretched hand. “British?”

Fairweather nodded. “Liverpool.”

“Why were you brought here?”

“I led tourist safaris across the Sahara until one was massacred by plague-crazed villagers. I barely escaped with my life, and after struggling across the desert, was rescued and hospitalized in Gao. General Zateb Kazim arrested me so I couldn’t reveal what I’d seen and sent me here to Tebezza.”

“We did pathology studies on the villagers Major Fair-weather is referring to,” explained Hopper. “All died from a mysterious chemical compound.”

“Synthetic amino acid and cobalt,” said Pitt.

Hopper and Grimes looked peculiarly stunned. “What, what did you say?” demanded Grimes.

“The toxic contamination causing death and sickness throughout Mali is an organometallic compound that’s a combination of an altered synthetic amino acid and cobalt.”

“How could you possibly know that?” asked Hopper.

“While your team was searching in the desert, mine was tracking it up the Niger River.”

“And you identified the stuff,” Hopper said with a look of optimism that wasn’t there before.

Pitt briefly told of the red tide explosion, his expedition up the river, and the presumed flight by Rudi Gunn with their data.

“Thank God, you got your results out,” muttered Hopper.

“The source,” pressed Grimes. “Where is the source?”

“Fort Foureau,” Giordino answered him.

“Not a chance—” Grimes stared dumbly. “Fort Foureau and the contamination sites are hundreds of kilometers apart.”

“It’s carried by underground water movement,” Pitt clarified. “Al and I had a look around inside the project before we were captured. High-level nuclear waste, as well as ten times the hazardous waste that’s being burned, is being buried in underground caverns where it leaks into the groundwater.”

“The world environmental regulation organizations must be told of this,” exclaimed Grimes. “The damage a toxic dump the size of Fort Foureau can produce is inestimable.”

“Enough talk,” said Hopper. “Time is precious. We have to move forward on the escape plan for these men.”

“What about the rest of you?”

“We’re in no shape to cross the desert. Our strength has been sapped and our bodies racked from slaving in the mines, too little sleep, and almost no food or water. No way we can make it. So we did the next best thing. Hoarded supplies and prayed for someone like you to arrive in good physical condition.”

Pitt looked down at Eva. “I can’t leave her.”

“Then stay and die with the rest of us,” Grimes said abruptly. “You’re the only hope for everyone in this hellhole.”

Eva clutched Pitt’s hand. “You must go, and go quickly,” she pleaded. “Before it’s too late.”

“She’s right, you know,” added Fairweather. “Forty-eight hours in the shafts and they break you. Look at us. We’re washed out. None of us could cross 5 kilometers of desert before dropping.”

Pitt stared at the dirt floor. “How far do you think Al and I’d get without water? Twenty, maybe 30 kilometers farther than you?”

“We’ve only hoarded enough for one man,” said Hopper. “We’ll leave it to you to decide who makes the attempt and who stays.”

Pitt shook his head. “Al and I go together.”

“Two will never get far enough for rescue.”

“What kind of distance are we talking about?” asked Giordino.

“The Trans-Saharan Motor Track is close to 400 kilometers due east of here, across the border in Algeria,” replied Fairweather. “After 300, you’ll have to trust to luck to get you the rest of the way. Once you reach the track, you should be able to flag down a passing vehicle.”

Pitt tilted his head as if he didn’t hear Fairweather right. “Maybe I missed something. You neglected to explain how we breeze past the first 300 kilometers?”

“You steal one of O’Bannion’s trucks once you reach the surface. It should carry you that far.”

“A little optimistic, aren’t we,” said Pitt. “What if its fuel tank is empty?”

“No one ever keeps an empty petrol tank in the desert,” Fairweather said firmly.

“Just walk out of here, punch an elevator button, ride to the surface, steal a truck, and roll merrily on our way,” Giordino scowled. “Sure we will.”

Hopper smiled. “Do you have a better plan?”

“To be honest,” Pitt laughed, “we don’t even have an outline.”

“We’d hurry things up a bit,” warned Fairweather. “Melika will be dragging everyone back to the mines within the hour.”

Pitt looked around the prisoners’ cave. “Do you all blast and load ore?”

“The political prisoners, which includes us,” answered Grimes, “dig and load the ore after it’s blasted from the rock. The criminal prisoners labor in the rock crusher and recovery levels. They also make up the blasting crew. Poor devils, none of them last long. If they don’t blow themselves to bits with explosives they die from the mercury and cyanide used in the amalgamation and refining of the gold.”

“How many foreign nationals are you?”

“There are five of us left from the original team of six. One was murdered by Melika, who beat her to death.”

“A woman?”

Hopper nodded. “Dr. Marie Victor, a vivacious lady and one of the finest physiologists in Europe.” Hopper’s jovial expression had vanished. “She was the third since we arrived. Two of the wives of the French engineers from Fort Foureau were murdered by Melika too.” He paused to look sadly at the wasted little girl in the bunk. “Their children suffer the worst, and there is nothing we can do.”

Fairweather pointed to a group of people clustered around three of the tiered bunks. Four were women, eight were men. One of the women was holding a little boy about three against her body.

“My God!” Pitt whispered. “Of course, of course! Massarde couldn’t allow the engineers who constructed his project to return to France and spill the truth.”

“How many women and children all told are down here?” Giordino asked with an expression clouded with wrath.

“The current count is nine women with four small children,” Fairweather answered.

“Don’t you see,” Eva said softly. “The sooner you get free and bring help, the more people you’ll save.”

Pitt didn’t need any further convincing. He turned back to face Hopper and Fairweather. “Okay, let’s hear your plan.”

38

It was a plan shot full of holes, the scheme of desperate men with little or no resources, incredibly oversimplified, but just crazy enough to work.

An hour later, Melika and her guards walked through the cavern dungeon and forced the slave laborers into the main chamber where they were assembled in work gangs before moving toward their assigned stations in the mines. It seemed to Pitt as if she took devious delight in wielding her thong right and left against the sea of unprotected flesh, cursing and beating men and women alike who looked as if they belonged in coffins.

“The witch never tires of adding scars to the helpless,” Hopper seethed.

“Melika means queen, a name she gave herself,” Grimes said to Pitt and Giordino. “But we call her the wicked witch of the west because she was a matron in a women’s prison in the United States.”

“You think she’s rotten now,” Pitt muttered. “Wait until she finds the ore cars Al and I covered with a facade of rock.”

Giordino and Hopper hovered beside Pitt as he circled his arm around Eva’s waist and guided her outside. Melika spied Pitt and moved toward him, stopped, and then stared at Eva menacingly. She grinned, knowing she could enrage Pitt not by striking him but laying the thong on Eva.

She swung but Giordino stepped between them and the thong made a sickening slapping sound as it met and bounced off his flexed biceps.