Sahara Read online

  Sandecker gave a tired sigh. The horrible consequences of the mushrooming red tide had not totally sunk in. His mission was becoming more grueling, oppressive, and frustrating with every passing hour. He stood up and looked down on the President and Willover. His voice came like the arctic cold.

  "Be prepared for the very worst, because if we can't stop the red tide before it reaches the North Atlantic and spreads into the Pacific and Indian Oceans, our extinction will surely come."

  Then Sandecker turned and quietly left the room.

  Tom Greenwald sat in his office and computer enhanced the images received by a Pyramider spy satellite. Through ground command he had shifted its orbit slightly to pass over the section of the Sahara where he discerned the car and figures of Pitt and Giordino on the old GeoSat photos. No one above him had given him permission, but so long as he could send the satellite back over the Ukrainian civil war in another couple of passes, nobody would be the wiser. Besides, the fighting had fizzled to a few rebel ambushes and only the Vice-President seemed to find the intelligence images interesting. The President's National Security Council had their minds focused elsewhere, like the secret nuclear arms buildup of Japan.

  Greenwald flew against orders purely out of curiosity. He wanted to examine sharper pictures of the two men he had discovered earlier as they boarded the train to enter the project. Using the Pyramider he could now make a positive identification. Now his analysis revealed a tragic reversal of events.

  The images of the two men being led under guard to a helicopter were little short of astounding. Greenwald could easily compare them to identification photos given him by Chip Webster from NUMA files. The images taken from hundreds of kilometers out in space clearly showed the capture of Pitt and Giordino.

  He moved from the viewing monitor to his desk and dialed the phone. After two rings, Chip Webster over at NUMA answered.

  "Hello."

  "Chip? This is Tom Greenwald."

  "What have you got for me, Tom?"

  "Bad news. Your men were captured."

  "Not what I wanted to hear," Webster said. "Damn!"

  "I have excellent images of them being loaded into a helicopter, in chains, and surrounded by a dozen armed security guards."

  "Determine a heading for the copter?" asked Webster.

  "My satellite had passed out of view only a minute after it lifted off. My guess is that it was heading to the northeast."

  "Further into the desert?"

  "Looks that way," answered Greenwald. "The pilot might have made a wide swing in a different direction, but I have no way of knowing."

  "Admiral Sandecker isn't going to like this turn."

  "I'll stay on it," said Greenwald. "If I turn up anything new, I'll call immediately."

  "Thank you, Tom. I owe you a big favor for this one."

  Greenwald hung up and stared at the image on the monitor. "Poor bastards," he muttered to himself. "I wouldn't want to be in their shoes."

  <<36>>

  The welcoming committee at Tebezza stayed home. Pitt and Giordino clearly didn't rate a reception by the local dignitaries. Two Tuaregs greeted them silently from behind automatic rifles as a third locked iron shackles around their hands and ankles. The worn condition of the chains and cuffs gave the impression they had passed through several owners.

  Pitt and Giordino were shoved roughly into the back of a small Renault truck. One Tuareg drove while the other two climbed in the back, held their rifles across their thighs, and kept wary eyes on the prisoners through the slit in their indigo litham headdresses.

  Pitt paid the guards only the slightest attention as the engine was started and the truck moved away from the landing field. The helicopter that had flown them from Fort Foureau quickly lifted into the furnace-baked sir for its return flight. Already Pitt was weighing chances for escape. His eyes were studying the surrounding landscape. No fences stretched anywhere, no guard houses rising from the sand. Any attempt to cross 400 kilometers of open desert while restrained by manacles made security obstacles entirely unnecessary. Successful escape seemed impossible, but he quickly thrust aside thoughts of total hopelessness. Prospects of escape were dim, but not totally gone.

  This was pure desert with not a growing thing in sight. Low brown dunes rose like warts as far as Pitt could see, separated by small valleys of brilliant white sand. Only toward the west did a high plateau of rock rise above the desert floor. It was treacherous country, and yet there was a beauty about it that was difficult to describe. It reminded Pitt of the background scenery in the old motion picture, Song of the Desert.

  Sitting with his back against the side of the truck bed, he tilted his head and peered forward around the cab. The road, if it could be called that, was only tire tracks leading toward the plateau. No structures stood on the barren land; no equipment or vehicles were in evidence. No sign of ore tailings. He began to wonder if mining operations at Tebezza were a myth.

  Within twenty minutes the truck slowed, then turned into a narrow ravine cut into the plateau. So soft was the sand that had drifted into the deep-walled crack that prisoners and guards together had to get out and help push the truck to firmer ground. After nearly a kilometer the driver swung into a cave just large enough for the truck to pass through. Then it entered a long gallery excavated in the rock.

  The driver braked the truck in front of a brightly lighted tunnel. The guards jumped out to the ground. Obeying the silent gestures of the gun muzzles, Pitt and Giordino awkwardly climbed down in their restricting shackles. The guards motioned them into the tunnel and they shuffled off, thankful to be out of the sun and in a cool underground atmosphere.

  The gallery became a corridor with fluted walls and a tile-glazed floor. They were marched past a series of arched openings cut into the rock and fitted with antique carved doors. The guards stopped at a large double door at the end of the corridor, opened it, and pushed them inside. Both men were surprised to find themselves standing on thick blue carpet in a reception room as luxurious as any inside a New York, Fifth Avenue corporate executive's office. The walls were painted in a light blue to match the carpet and were decorated with photographs of breathtaking desert sunrises and sunsets. The lighting came from tall chrome lamps with soft gray shades.

  Directly in the center was an acacia desk with matching sofa and chairs in gray leather. In the rear corners, as though guarding a door to the sanctum sanctorum, stood two bronze sculptures of a Tuareg man and woman in proud poses. The air in the room was cool but not dank smelling. Pitt was sure he detected a slight aroma of orange blossom.

  A woman sat behind the desk, quite beautiful with glowing purple-gray eyes and long black hair that fell to her buttocks behind the backrest of her chair. Her facial features were Mediterranean, of exactly what national origin, Pitt was unable to tell. She looked up and studied the two men for a moment as nonchalantly as if she was classifying salesmen. Then she rose from a chair, revealing an hourglass body wrapped in a garment draped like an Indian sari, opened the door between the sculptures, and silently held out her hand for them to enter.

  They stepped into a large chamber with high-domed ceiling, lined on all four sides with bookshelves that were niched into solid rock. The entire room was one giant sculpture, chiseled as it was excavated. A huge, horseshoe shaped desk rose from the rock as if it was part of the floor, its top strewn with engineering diagrams and papers. The desk faced two long stone benches separated by an intricately sculpted coffee table. Besides the books and desk litter, the only object not cut from rock was a wooden scale model of a mine gallery shored up with timbers that stood off to one side of the unusual room.

  An extremely tall man was standing in the far corner, absorbed in a book he had pulled from a shelf. He stood in a purple robe of the nomads with a white litham bound around his head. Beneath his robe, a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots protruded incongruously. Pitt and Giordino stood there several moments before he turned and acknowledged their presence with a scant
glance. Then his eyes flicked back to the pages of the book as if his visitors had turned around and departed.

  "Nice place you've got here," Giordino opened loudly, his voice echoing off the stone. "Must have cost you a bundle."

  "Could use some windows," Pitt said, surveying the bookcases. Then he looked up. "A stained-glass skylight might help brighten up things a bit."

  0'Bannion casually inserted the book between two volumes and stared at them with bemused curiosity. "You'd have to drill 120 meters through solid rock to reach the surface and sunlight. Not exactly worth the expense. I have more practical projects for my workers."

  "Don't you mean slaves," said Pitt.

  O'Bannion gave a slight lift to his shoulders. "Slaves, laborers, prisoners, they're all the same at Tebezza." He slid the book back on its shelf and approached them.

  Pitt had never stood that close to someone who stood almost two heads above him. He had to tilt his head sharply backward to stare up into his captor's eyes.

  "And we're the latest edition to your army of drones."

  "As Mr. Massarde no doubt informed you, digging in t' w mines is a less painful option than being tortured by General Kazim's thugs. You should consider yourselves thankful."

  "I don't suppose there's any chance for parole, Mr. . ."

  "My name is Selig O'Bannion. I manage the operation of the mine. And no, there is no parole. Once you go down into the pits, you will not come out."

  "Even for burial?" asked Giordino without a hint of fear.

  "We have an underground vault for those who succumb." answered O'Bannion.

  "You're as murderous as Kazim," said Pitt. "Maybe worse."

  "I've read of your undersea exploits, Mr. Pits," 0'Bannion said, brushing off Pitt's insult. "It will be most enjoyable having another party whose intellect is on a level with mine. I found your reports on deep-sea mining of particuiar interest. You must dine with me from time to lime and tell me of your underwater engineering Operations."

  Pitt's face turned to ice. "Privileges so soon after incarceration? No thanks. I'd rather eat with a camel."

  O'Bannion's lips bent minutely downward "Suit yourself, Mr. Pitt. Perhaps you'll change your mind after a few days of working under Melika."

  "Who?"

  "My overseer. She has an uncommon cruel streak. You two are in good physical condition. So I'd estimate that when we next meet, she will have turned you into a pair of subdued vermin."

  "A woman?" asked Giordino curiously.

  "Like no woman you'll ever meet again."

  Pitt said nothing. The world knew of the notorious salt mines of the Sahara. They had become a byword for blue and white-collar workers everywhere as a job description. But a gold mine manned by slaves that was virtually unknown was a new twist. General Kazim no doubt had his hands in the profits, but the operation smelled like another venture of Yves Massarde. The quasi-solar detoxification project and the gold mine, and God only knew what else. This was a big game, a game that stretched in all directions like octopus tentacles, an international game that spelled more than just money, but inconceivable power.

  O'Bannion stepped over to his desk and pressed a button on a small console. The door opened and the two guards walked into the room and stood behind Pitt and Giordino. Gordino glanced at Pitt, searching for a sign, a nod or movement of the eyes signaling a coordinated attack on the guards. Giordino would have charged an oncoming rhino without hesitation if Pitt had given the word. But Pitt stood there stiffly as if the feel of the manacles on his ankles and wrists had dulled his sense of survival. Somehow, above all else, he had to focus his wits on getting the secret of Fort Foureau into Sandecker's hands or die trying.

  "I'd like to know who I'm working for," Pitt said. "Didn't you know?" asked O'Bannion dryly.

  "Massarde and his pal, Kazim?"

  "Two out of three. Not bad."

  "Who's the third?"

  "Why me, of course," O'Bannion answered patiently. "A most satisfactory arrangement. Massarde Enterprises provides the equipment and arranges for the sale of the gold. Kazim provides the labor, and I direct the mining and ore extraction operation, which is only fair since it was I who discovered the vein of gold."

  "What percentage do the Malian people receive?"

  "Why none," O'Bannion said impassively. "What would a nation of beggars do with riches if they were dropped in their laps? Squander or be fleeced out of them by shrewd foreign businessmen who know every angle for taking advantage of impoverished peoples? No, Mr. Pitt, the poor are better off poor."

  "Have you notified them of your philosophy?"

  O'Bannion's expression was one of pure boredom. "What a dull world this would be if we all were rich."

  Pitt plunged on. "How many men die here in a year?"

  "It varies. Sometimes two hundred, sometimes three, depending on disease epidemic or mine accidents. I really don't keep count."

  "Amazing the workers don't strike," said Giordino idly.

  "No work, no food," O'Bannion shrugged. "And then Melika usually gets them moving by whipping the skin off the ringleaders.

  "I'm lousy with a pick and shovel," Giordino volunteered.

  "You'll quickly become expert. If not, or you cause trouble, you'll be transferred to the extraction section." 0'Bannion paused to check his watch. "Still time for you to work a fifteen-hour shift."

  "We haven't eaten since yesterday," complained Pitt.

  "Nor will you eat today." O'Bannion nodded at the guards as he turned back to his bookshelves. "Take them."

  The guards prodded them out. Apart from the receptionist and two men wearing tan coveralls and hard hats with miners' lamps, speaking in French and examining a piece of ore under a magnifying glass, there were no other people to be seen until they reached an office-type elevator with carpeted floor and chrome walls. The doors opened and the operator, a Tuareg, motioned them inside. The doors rattled shut and the hum of machinery reverberated off the walls of the shaft as they descended.

  The elevator dropped quickly, the ride seemingly neverending. Black caverns flashed past, their circular openings marking the entrance to upper galleries. Pitt judged they had dropped well over a kilometer when the elevator began to slow and finally stopped. The operator opened the door, revealing a narrow, horizontal shaft leading off into the rock. The two guards escorted them to a heavy iron door. One of them took a key ring from his robe, selected a key, and turned the lock. Pitt and Giordino were pushed against the door so that it swung open. Inside was a much larger shaft with narrow rails laid on its floor. The guards closed the door and left them standing there.

  As a matter of routine, Giordino checked the door. It was a good 2 inches thick and there was no handle on the inside, only a keyhole. "We won't be using this exit unless we can steal a key."

  "Not to be used by the hired help," said Pitt. "For O'Bannion and his cronies only."

  "Then we'll have to find another way. They obviously remove the ore through a different vertical shaft."

  Pitt stared at the door thoughtfully. "No, I can't accept that. It's the executive elevator or nothing."

  Before Giordino could reply, the whirring of an electric motor and the clanking sound of steel wheels against the rails came from one end of the shaft. A small generator driven locomotive pulling a long train of empty ore cars appeared and slowed to a stop. A black woman climbed down from the driver's seat and confronted the two men.

  Pitt had never laid eyes on a woman with a body that was almost as wide as it was tall. She was, he decided, the ugliest woman he had ever laid eyes on. She'd have made a fitting gargoyle, he thought, on the eaves of a medieval cathedral. A heavy leather thong extended from her hand as if it had grown there. Without a word she stepped up to Pitt.

  "I am Melika, foreman of the mines. I am to be obeyed and never questioned. Do you understand?"

  Pitt smiled. "A new experience, taking orders from someone who resembles a toad with a weight problem."

  He saw th
e thong whipping through the air, but too late to dock or ward off the blow. It caught him high on the side of the face, and he saw stars in front of his eyes as he staggered back against a shoring timber. The blow struck with such force he came within a speck of blacking out.

  "Seems as though everyone is hitting on me today," Pitt said thickly through the agony.

  "A short lesson on discipline," she snapped. Then in a lightning movement, incredibly swift for someone of her heavy build, she swung the thong backhanded toward Giordino's head. But she wasn't fast enough. Unlike Pitt, he had warning. He grasped her wrist in an iron grip, stopping the thong in midair. Slowly, as if in a test of wills, the two arms trembled as their muscles exerted every pressure at their command.

  Melika had the strength of an ox. She had never imagined that any man could have been capable of gripping her so hard. Surprise showed in her widened eyes, then disbelief, then anger. With his other hand, Giordino tore the thong from her grasp as one would snatch a stick from a snarling dog, and hurled it into an ore car.