Sahara (60 page)

“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 Foureau, 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 its 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
j
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 carry 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 his 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 hundred! 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 into 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 how 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 we’d 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.”