Sahara Read online

  Pitt studied the large signs above the passages. They were identified with symbols as well as terminology in French. The upper levels were designated for biological waste, the lower levels for chemical waste. Pitt began to wonder what the container they were riding on carried inside.

  He found the mystery intensifying. Why would a reactor that burned waste be buried so deep underground? To his way of thinking it should have been above the surface near the solar concentrators.

  At last the ramp straightened out into an immense cavern that seemed to stretch on forever. The ceiling was a good four stories high with rock-hewn side tunnels spreading in all directions like spokes on a wheel. It looked to Pitt that a work of nature had been expanded by an enormous excavation project.

  Pitt's senses were probing ahead of him like antennae. He was continually surprised to still see no people, no workers or machine operators. Every movement in what he perceived to be a storage cavern was controlled by automation. The electrically powered transporter, like a drone ant, followed the one ahead and turned into one of the side tunnels that was marked by a red sign with a black diagonal slash that hung from the ceiling. Up ahead came various sounds and echoes.

  "A land office business," said Giordino, pointing to a number of transporters moving in the opposite direction, the doors of their cargo containers open and revealing empty interiors.

  After moving almost a full kilometer the truck began to slow as the noises grew louder. Around a bend it moved into a vast chamber, filled and stacked floor to roof with thousands of box-shaped containers built from concrete, all painted yellow with black markings. A robotic machine was off-loading the barrels from the cargo containers and stacking them with a sea of other containers that rose toward the roof of the cavern.

  Pitt's teeth ground softly together. He stared in growing shock and suddenly wished he was somewhere else, any place but in that underground chamber of deadly horror.

  The barrels were marked with the symbol for radioactivity. He and Giordino had stumbled on Fort Foureau's secret, an underground dumping ground for nuclear waste on an unheard-of colossal scale.

  Massarde took one long comprehensive look at the TV monitor and shook his head in wonderment. Then he turned to his aide, Felix Verenne.

  "Those men are incredible," he murmured.

  "How did they get through security?" mused Verenne.

  "By the same method they escaped my houseboat, stole General Kazim's car, and drove halfway across the Sahara. Cunning and dogged persistence."

  "Should we prevent their escape from the storage chamber?" asked Verenne. "Keep them trapped in there until they die of radiation sickness?"

  Massarde thought for a moment, and then shook his head. "No, send security to apprehend them. Give them a good scrubbing to remove any contamination and bring them here. I'd like to talk with Mr. Pitt again before I have him disposed of."

  <<34>>

  Massarde's security guards captured them twenty minutes later, after they rode inside an empty container car up to the surface from the waste storage cavern. They had dropped from the roof of the container and into the emptied interior. A concealed TV camera had caught them in an unguarded moment before they could slip inside.

  The door was thrown open moments before the container was to be lifted onto a railroad car. They had no chance of putting up any fight or making an attempt to escape. The surprise was well coordinated and complete.

  Ten, Pitt counted them, ten men standing with menacing steadiness, pointing machine guns at the two unarmed men inside the cargo container. Pitt felt the stinging bitterness of failure cut through him like a knife. He could taste the bitterness of defeat on his tongue. To be trapped and caught once by Massarde was a miscalculation. To be caught twice was damned stupid. He stared at the guards feeling no fear, only anger for getting snared. He cursed himself for not being more alert.

  They could do nothing now but bide their time and hope they weren't executed before another chance at escape, no matter how slim, appeared. Pitt and Giordino slowly raised their hands and clasped them behind their heads.

  "I hope you'll forgive the intrusion," Pitt said quietly. "But we were looking for a bathroom."

  "You wouldn't want us to have an accident," Giordino added.

  "Still! Both of you!" A voice erupted from a security officer in a smartly creased uniform, a red pillbox cap of the French military perched on his head. The tone was harsh and cold in English with almost no trace of French. "I'm told you are dangerous men. Push all thoughts of escape from your minds. My men are not trained to wound resisting captives."

  "What's the big deal?" asked Giordino with an innocent look. "You act like we stole a drum of used dioxin."

  The officer ignored Giordino's remark. "Identify yourselves."

  Pitt stared at him. "I'm Rocky and my friend is--"

  "Bullwinkle," Giordino finished.

  A tight smile curled the officer's lips. "No doubt more appropriate than Dirk Pitt and Albert Giordino."

  "So if you know, why ask?" said Pitt.

  "Mr. Massarde was expecting you."

  "The last place they'd expect us to cut and run is the middle of the desert," said Giordino, mimicking Pitt's words in Bourem. "Kind of misguessed, didn't we?"

  Pitt lightly shrugged his shoulders. "I read the wrong script."

  "How did you men penetrate our security?" asked the officer.

  "We took the train," answered Pitt easily, making no attempt to hide the truth.

  "The doors to the cargo containers are locked with combinations after loading. You could not have forced your way inside while the train was moving."

  "You should tell whoever monitors your television cameras to study the air conditioners on the roofs. A simple matter to remove a panel and use it as a screen."

  "Indeed?" Captain Brunone was highly interested. "Most clever. I'll see that your means of entry is added to our security manual."

  "I'm deeply flattered," Pitt grinned.

  The officer's eyes narrowed. "You won't be for long, rest assured." He paused and spoke into a portable radio. "Mr. Massarde?"

  "I'm here," Massarde's voice rasped through the speaker.

  "Captain Charles Brunone, sir, Chief of Security."

  "Pitt and Giordino?"

  "In my hands."

  "Did they resist?"

  "No, sir, they gave up quietly."

  "Please bring them to my office, Captain."

  "Yes, sir, as soon as they've been decontaminated."

  Pitt said to Brunone, "Would it help if we said we were sorry?"

  "It seems American humor never stops," said Brunone coldly. "You can offer your apologies to Mr. Massarde in person, but since you destroyed his helicopter, I wouldn't expect any pity if I were you."

  Yves Massarde didn't smile often, but he was smiling now as Pitt and Giordino were escorted into his vast office. Leaning back in his expensive leather executive's chair, elbows parked on the armrests, fingers entwined under his chin, he smiled benignly like a mortician after a typhoid epidemic.

  Felix Verenne stood by a window overlooking the facility. His eyes stared expressionless, like camera apertures, the lines in his face grim, his mouth tight in contempt. A marked contrast to his superior's bemused stare.

  "Splendid work, Captain Brunone," Massarde purred. "You collected them uninjured and unmarked." He gazed speculatively at the two men standing before him in clean, white coveralls, at their tanned faces and excellent physical condition, took note of their seemingly unconcerned expressions, and remembered encountering the same indifference on his houseboat. "So they proved cooperative."

  "Like schoolchildren beckoned to class," Brunone said formally. "They did as they were ordered."

  "Very wise of them," Massarde murmured approvingly. He pushed back his chair and came around the desk and faced Pitt. "I compliment you on your passage across the desert. General Kazim doubted you would last two days. A remarkable accomplishment to have come so far ov
er hostile ground so fast."

  "General Kazim is the last man I'd rely on for a prediction," said Pitt pleasantly.

  "You stole my helicopter and crashed it in the river, Mr. Pitt. That will cost you dearly."

  "You treated us shabbily aboard your houseboat, so we repaid you in kind."

  "And General Kazim's valuable old car?"

  "The engine seized up so we burned it," Pitt lied.

  "You seemed to have developed a nasty habit for destroying other people's expensive possessions."

  "I broke all my toys when I was a kid," Pitt said casually. "Drove my Dad up the walls."

  "I can always purchase another helicopter, but General Kazim cannot replace his Avions Voisin. Enjoy what time you have left before his sadists work you over in his torture chambers."

  "Lucky for me I'm a masochist," Giordino said, unruffled.

  Just for a second Massarde looked amused, then his face turned curious. "What did you find that was so interesting that you drove halfway across the Sahara to Fort Foureau?" he demanded.

  "We enjoyed your company so much on your houseboat, we thought we'd pay you another social visit--"

  Massarde's hand lashed out as he viciously backhanded Pitt across the face, a large diamond ring cutting a path through the right cheek. Pitt's head twisted from the blow, but his feet remained firmly rooted to the carpet. "Does this mean you're challenging me to a duel?" he muttered through a taut grin.

  "No, it means I am going to have you slowly lowered in a drum of nitric acid until you talk."

  Pitt looked at Giordino, then back to Massarde, and shrugged. "All right, Massarde, you've got a leak."

  Massarde frowned. "Be specific."

  "Your hazardous waste, the chemicals you're supposed to be burning, are seeping into groundwater that flows under an ancient riverbed and is polluting every well between here and the Niger. From there it flows to the Atlantic where it's causing a catastrophic disaster that will eventually destroy all sea life. And that's just for starters. We followed the old riverbed and discovered it once flowed directly beneath Fort Foureau."

  "We are almost 400 kilometers from the Niger," said Verenne. "Impossible for water to flow that far under the desert's surface."

  "How do you know?" asked Pitt. "Fort Foureau is the only project or plant within Mali that receives chemical and biological waste. The compound responsible for the problem can only come from here, the only possible source. There's no question in my mind now that I know that you're hiding waste instead of burning it."

  Irritation flickered at the edge of Massarde's mouth. "You're not entirely correct, Mr. Pitt. We do burn waste at Fort Foureau. A considerable amount as a matter of fact. Come into the next room, and I'll show you."

  Captain Brunone stood back and gestured for Pitt and Giordino to follow Massarde.

  He led them across a hall into a room whose center was filled by a three-dimensional scale, cutaway model of the Fort Foureau hazardous waste disposal project. The layout was elaborate, the detail so meticulous it was like looking at the real thing from a helicopter.

  "Is this mock-up true to life or a fantasyland?" asked Pitt.

  "What you see is an exact representation," Massarde assured him.

  "And you're about to give us a no-frills, fact-filled lecture on its operation."

  "A lecture you can take with you to the grave," Massarde said reproachfully. He picked up a long ivory pointer and aimed its tip at a large field on the south side of the project covered with huge flat modules slanted toward the sun. "We are completely energy sufficient," Massarde began. "We produce our own electricity with this photovoltaic grid system of flat-plate solar cell modules made from polycrystalline silicon that covers 4 square kilometers. Are yon: familiar with photovoltaics?"

  "I know that it's rapidly becoming the world's most economical energy source," answered Pitt. "As I understand it, photovoltaics is a solar technology that converts the sun's power into direct current electrical energy."

  "Quite right," said Massarde. "When sunlight, or what scientists refer to as solar photon energy, strikes the surface of these cells after its 115-million-kilometer journey from the sun, a flow of electricity is produced, enough to operate a project three times this size should we wish to expand." He paused and aimed the pointer at a structure near the array of modules. "This building houses the generators powered by the energy converted from the modular field and the battery subsystem where the energy is stored for nighttime use or for days when the sun does not shine, which is a rarity in this part of the Sahara."

  "Efficient," said Pitt. "An efficient power system. But your array of solar concentrators, they do not operate with the same degree of effectiveness?"

  Massarde looked thoughtfully at Pitt. He wondered why this man always seemed a step ahead of him. He swung the pointer toward a field next to the solar cells that held the array of parabolic trough collectors Pitt had observed the day before.

  "They do," he replied icily. "My solar thermal technology for the destruction of hazardous wastes is the most advanced program of any industrial nation. This field of superconcentrators delivers solar concentrations higher than the normal light of eighty thousand suns. This high intensity sunlight, or photon energy, is then focused into the first of two quartz reactors." Massarde paused to touch the pointer against a miniature building. "The first breaks the toxic waste down into harmless chemicals at a temperature of 950 degrees Celsius. The second reactor, at temperatures around 1200 degrees Celsius, incinerates any remaining infinitesimal residue. The destruction of every known manmade toxic chemical is total and complete."

  Pitt looked at Massarde with respect mixed with doubt. "This all sounds very thorough and final. But if your detoxification operation is a state-of-the-art wonder of utility, why are you hiding millions of tons of waste underground?"

  "Very few people are aware of the staggering number of chemicals that are spread around the globe. There are over seven million known man-made chemical compounds. And each week chemists create ten thousand new ones. At current rates, over two billion tons of waste are accumulating around the world every year. Three hundred million alone in the United States. Twice that in Europe and Russia More than double that amount when you throw in South America, Africa, Japan, and China. Some is burned by incinerators; most is illegally dumped in landfills or discharged in water supplies. There is no place for it to go. Here in the Sahara, far from the crowded cities and farmlands, I have provided a safe place for international industries to send their toxic waste. At the moment Fort Foureau can destroy over four hundred million tons of hazardous waste a year. But I cannot destroy it all, not until my solar thermal detoxification projects in the Gobi Desert and Australia are completed to handle waste from China and nations of the Far East. For your interest, I also have a facility only two weeks away from start-up in the United States."

  "Very commendable, but that doesn't excuse you from burying what you can't destroy and charging for it."

  Massarde nodded. "Cost efficiency, Mr. Pitt. It's cheaper to hide toxic waste than destroy it."

  "And you follow the same line of logic for nuclear waste," said Pitt accusingly.

  "Waste is waste. As far as humans are concerned, the only basic difference between nuclear and toxic is that one kills with radioactivity and the other with poison."

  "Dump and forget it, and to hell with the consequences."

  Massarde gave an indifferent shrug. "It has to go somewhere. My country has the largest nuclear energy program in the world second only to the United States in number of reactors in operation to generate electricity. Two radioactive waste repositories are already in operation. One at Soulaines, the other at La Manche. Unfortunately, neither, was designed to dispose of long-life or high-level nuclear waste. Plutonium 239, for example, has a half-life of twenty-four thousand years. There are other radioactive nuclides that have half-lives a hundred times longer. No containment system will last more than ten or twenty years. As you have discov
ered on your uninvited expedition into our storage cavern, we receive and dispose of the high-level waste here."

  "Then despite your holier-than-thou speech on hazardous waste management, your solar detoxification project is a front."

  Massarde smiled thinly. "In a sense, yes. But as I've explained, we actually destroy a high amount of waste."

  "Mostly for appearance's sake," Pitt said, his voice cold and compelling. "I give you credit, Massarde, building this phony project without international intelligence agencies getting wind of it. How did you fool spy satellites while you excavated your storage caverns?"