Sahara Page 44

  "She sounds like a pretty powerful ship for her day."

  "Yes indeed, and about twice as fast as any other armored vessel in both the Union and Confederate navies."

  "What was her history?"

  "Pretty short," answered Perlmutter. "Her one and only appearance in combat was an epic running fight down the James River through an entire Union navy fleet and past the forts in Hampton Roads. Badly damaged, she escaped into the Atlantic and was never seen again."

  "Then her disappearance was a reality," said Pitt.

  "Yes, but hardly an unnatural phenomenon. Since none of the Confederate ironclads were built for other than river and harbor duty, they were unsafe for ocean passage. It was generally thought she floundered in rough water and sank."

  "You think it possible she could have crossed the ocean to West Africa and steamed up the Niger River?"

  "The Atlanta is the only other Confederate ironclad I recall that tried to cross open water. She was captured during a fight with two Union monitors on Wassaw Sound in Georgia. About a year after the war she was sold to the King of Haiti for his navy. She left Chesapeake Bay for the Caribbean and vanished. Crews that served on her claimed she took on water even in mild weather."

  "And yet the old prospector swore French colonists and natives handed down stories of an iron monster without sails going up the Niger."

  "Do you want me to check it out."

  "Could you?"

  "I'm hooked already," said Perlmutter "I see another little enigma that makes the Texas so interesting."

  "What's that?" asked Pitt.

  "I'm looking at the bible of Civil War navies," replied Perlmutter slowly. "They all list several or more references for additional research. The poor Texas has no references at all. It's almost as if someone meant for her to be forgotten."

  <<45>>

  Pitt and Giordino discreetly left the American embassy through the lobby of the passport office, stepped out onto the street, and hailed a taxi. Pitt gave the driver directions written down in French by an embassy aide and settled back as the taxi wove through the main square past the city's picturesque mosques with their towering minarets. Their luck of the draw was a hyper driver who constantly honked and cursed the crowds of pedestrians and heavy auto traffic that flowed blissfully through stop lights and past policemen who showed little interest in controlling the mess.

  At the main thoroughfare that paralleled the busy waterfront, the driver swung south and drove to the city's outskirts where he stopped in a winding alley as instructed. Pitt paid him off and waited until the taxi turned out of sight. In less than a minute, a French air force staff car pulled up, a 605 Peugeot diesel sedan. They climbed into the back seat without any acknowledgment from the uniformed driver, who accelerated down the alley before Giordino closed the rear door.

  Ten kilometers later, the car stopped at the main gate of a military airfield flying the tricolor over the sentry house. The security guard took one look at the Peugeot and nodded it through as he threw a sharp French salute with the palm facing outward. At the entrance to the tarmac the driver stopped and inserted the staff of a checkered flag into a socket mounted on the left front fender.

  "Don't tell me," said Giordino. "I'm keen to guess. We're the grand marshals in a parade."

  Pitt laughed. "Have you forgotten your air force days? Any vehicle that drives across the flight line has to fly an authorization flag."

  The Peugeot rolled by a long row of Mirage 2000 delta wing fighters being serviced by their ground crews. One end of the flight line held a squadron of AS-332 Super Puma helicopters that looked as if they were designed by a myopic Buck Rogers. Built to carry air-to-surface missiles, they did not have the killer look of most other attack helicopters.

  The driver continued to the deserted end of a secondary runway and parked. They sat there waiting, Giordino promptly dozing off under the comfort of the staff car's air conditioning, while Pitt casually read an embassy copy of the Wall Street Journal.

  Fifteen minutes later a big airbus silently banked out of the west and touched down. Neither Pitt nor Giordino was aware of the aircraft's approach until they heard the screech of its tires hitting the concrete runway. Giordino came awake and Pitt folded up his paper as the plane braked and then slowly turned on one wheel until it had rotated 180 degrees. As soon as the huge tires rolled to a stop, the driver of the Peugeot shifted in gear and drove up within 5 meters of the rear of the aircraft.

  Pitt observed that the entire airbus was painted a light desert tan, and he noted the indistinguishable markings on its surfaces that had been painted over. A woman wearing desert combat fatigues with a patch on one sleeve, signifying the UN world symbol with a sword through it, dropped from a hatch in the aircraft's belly between the huge landing gear. She double-timed over to the staff car and opened the rear door.

  "Please to follow me," she said in English heavily coated with Spanish. As the car drove away, the UN tactical team member led them under the bulbous fuselage and gestured for them to climb inside. They entered the lower cargo bay of the airbus and stepped toward a narrow stairwell that rose to the main cabin.

  Giordino paused and glanced at three armored personnel carriers that sat in a row, squat and low, topping out at less than 2 meters. Then he stared in rapt fascination at the heavily armed dune buggy used in the rescue of Gunn at Gao.

  "Enter an off-road race with this thing," he said admiringly, "and no competitor would dare pass you."

  "It does look pretty intimidating," Pitt agreed.

  An officer was waiting for them when they surfaced in the main cabin. "Captain Pembroke-Smythe," he introduced himself. "Jolly good of you to come. Colonel Levant is waiting for you in the planning room."

  "You're obviously English," said Giordino.

  "Yes, you'll find us a rather mixed lot," Pembroke-Smythe said cheerfully as he swung the end of a swagger stick around the cabin at three dozen men and three women engaged in various stages of cleaning and assembling weapons and equipment. "Some creative soul thought the UN should have its own tactical unit to go where international governments fear to tread, so to speak. Secret warriors we're sometimes called. Each highly trained by his own country's special forces. All volunteers. Some are permanent, a few of us are simply attached on a year's tour of duty."

  They were as tough and rugged a group as Pitt had ever seen. Bodies hardened through exercise and brutal training, they were quiet, purposeful professionals with all the skills and intelligence demanded by covert actions. There wasn't one that Pitt cared to meet in a dark alley, including the women.

  Pembroke-Smythe ushered them into a compartment that was the command center of the aircraft. The area was spacious and filled with an array of electronic systems. One operator monitored communications equipment while another was in the act of programming data for the approaching mission to Tebezza into a computer.

  Colonel Levant graciously came from behind a desk and greeted Pitt and Giordino at the door. He wasn't sure what to expect. He had read extensive dossiers on both men, supplied by the United Nations International Intelligence Service, and could not help but be impressed with their accomplishments. He also read a brief report of their trials in the desert after escaping Tebezza and had to admire their tenacity.

  Levant had previously expressed deep reservations about taking Pitt and Giordino along but quickly realized that without their guidance into the mines the operation could be in deep jeopardy. They appeared gaunt and showed the results of long exposure to the sun, but seemed in amazingly good condition as he shook their hands.

  "After studying your exploits, gentlemen, I've looked forward to meeting you. I am Colonel Marcel Levant."

  "Dirk Pitt, and my nasty little friend here is Al Giordino."

  "After reading a report of your ordeal I expected you to be carried on board on stretchers, but I'm pleased to see you look quite fit."

  "Liquids, vitamins, and plenty of exercise," said Pitt, smiling, "have their bene
fits."

  "Don't forget fun in the sun," muttered Giordino.

  Levant did not respond to the humor but stared past them at Pembroke-Smythe. "Captain, please alert the men and order the chief pilot to prepare for immediate takeoff." Then he turned his attention back to the men standing before him. "If what you say is correct, time is measured in lives. We can run over details for the mission while we're in the air."

  Pitt nodded in total accord. "I applaud your expediency."

  Levant checked his watch. "Flying time is slightly more than four hours. Our time window is very narrow. We can't delay if we intend to make our assault during the prisoners' rest period. Too soon or too late and they will be scattered throughout the mine shafts on work crews and we'd never find and round them up before our scheduled withdraw."

  "Four hours will put us over Tebezza at night."

  "Twenty hundred hours give or take five minutes."

  "You're going in with landing lights?" asked Pitt incredulously. "You might as well add fireworks to let them know we're coming."

  Levant twisted one end of his moustache, a gesture Pitt was to see often in the next ten hours. "We land in the dark.

  And before I explain, I think you should sit down and faster your seat belts."

  His words enforced with the strangely muted roar of the engines as the pilot advanced the throttles. The big airbus began accelerating down the runway with only the slightest rumble of thrust from its engines.

  Giordino found Levant a bit too stuffy and arrogant for his taste and acted with polite indifference. Pitt, on the other hand, recognized a savvy and street-smart operator when he saw one. He also sensed a subtle undercurrent of respect from the Colonel that Giordino missed.

  During lift-off, Pitt remarked about the unusual silence of the engines. The typical roar was not evident for an aircraft under full power.

  "Specially modified silencers for the turbine exhaust," explained Levant.

  "They work well," said Pitt admiringly. "When you landed, I didn't hear a thing until the tires touched down.

  "You might call it a stealth factor for covert landings in places we're not welcome."

  "Do you also sneak in without lights?"

  Levant nodded. "Without lights."

  "Is your pilot equipped with fancy, high-tech night vision equipment?"

  "No, Mr. Pitt, nothing fancy. Four of my men drop by parachute on the Tebezza airstrip, secure it, and then place a series of infrared lights to guide our pilot onto the runway."

  "Once down," said Pitt, "covering the ground between the airstrip and mine entrance in the black of night won't be an easy chore."

  "That," said Levant grimly, "is the least of our problems."

  The plane was in a gradual climb and banking to the south when he unfastened his seat belt and stepped to a table with an enlarged satellite photo of the plateau above the mines. He picked up a pencil and tapped on the photo.

  "Landing helicopters onto the plateau and rappeling down the canyon walls to the mine entrance would have greatly simplified our problem and given us a higher level of surprise. Unfortunately, there were other considerations."

  "I understand your dilemma," said Pitt. "A round-trip to Tebezza is beyond helicopter range. Setting up fuel depots across the desert would have cost additional delay."

  "Thirty-two hours according to our estimates. We considered leapfrogging our small copter squadron, one carrying fuel while the other carried men and supplies, but we ran into complications with that plan too."

  "Too complicated and too slow," said Giordino.

  "The speed factor also favored the use of this aircraft," said Levant. "Another important factor of using an airliner over a fleet of helicopters is that we can carry our own transportation. We also have space for on-board medical facilities to tend the large number of people you stated in your report that are in dire need of attention."

  How many make up your assault team?" asked Pitt.

  "Thirty-eight fighters and two medics," Levant answered. "After we land, four will remain to guard the plane. The medical team will accompany the main force to care for the captives."

  "That doesn't leave much room in your personnel carriers to transport everyone."

  "If some of my people ride on the roofs and hang onto the sides, we can evacuate forty prisoners."

  "There may not be that many left alive," Pitt said solemnly.

  "We'll do our best for those who are," Levant assured him.

  "And the Malians," Pitt asked, "the political dissenters and enemies of General Kazim. What about them?"

  "They will have to remain," Levant shrugged. "All food stores in the mines will be opened to them, and they'll be armed with the guards' weapons. Beyond that, there is little we can do for them. They will be on their own."

  "Kazim is sadistic enough to demand their mass execution after he's learned his prize slaves have flown the coop."

  "I have my orders," Levant stated simply. "And they don't include saving local criminals."

  Pitt stared down at the blowup of the desert surrounding the Tebezza plateau. "So you intend to land the airbus in the dead of night on a desert airstrip, drive over a road that's tough to trace in daylight, assault the mine, carry off all foreign prisoners, and then rush back to the strip and take off for the lights of Algiers. We may be biting off more than we can chew with the limited resources at your command."

  Levant saw no disapproval in Pitt's expression, nor did he sense sarcastic criticism. "As you say where you come from, Mr. Pitt, what you see is what you get."

  "I'm not doubting the fighting quality of your people, Colonel. But I had expected a larger, better equipped force."

  "I regret the UN does not lavishly fund our Response and Tactical Team with expansive manpower and ultrasophisticated equipment like most special operations forces. But our budget is tight and we must work within our limits."

  "Why a UNICRATT team?" asked Pitt curiously. "Why not a British or French Foreign Legion commando unit or one from American Special Forces?"

  "Because no other nation, including yours, wished to risk dirtying their hands on this mission," explained Levant wearily. "We were volunteered by Secretary General Kamil."

  The name brought back a fond memory in Pitt's mind of an interlude spent with Hala Kamil on board a ship in the Straits of Magellan. Two years ago, he recalled, during the search for the Alexandria Library treasures.

  Levant caught the faraway look and Giordino knowingly smiled. Pitt saw their expressions and refocused his attention to the satellite map. "There is a catch."

  "There are several," said Levant evenly. "But they can all be overcome."

  "Except two."

  "And they are. . .?"

  "We don't know where O'Bannion's communications center and security monitoring rooms are located. If he sends out an alert to Kazim's security forces before you can stop him, we won't stand a bishop's chance in hell of making it back to this aircraft and getting a good headstart to Algeria before one of his fighter squadrons shows up and nails us to the nearest barn door."

  "In that case, we have to get in and out of the mine within forty minutes," said Levant. "Not impossible if most of the captives can make it aboveground without help. If many of them have to be carried, we will lose valuable time we cannot spare."

  At that moment Captain Pembroke-Smythe appeared with a tray of coffee and sandwiches from the aircraft's galley. "Our fare is filling if not gourmet," he said cheerfully. "You have a choice between chicken salad and tuna fish."

  Pitt looked at Levant and grinned. "You weren't kidding when you said you ran on a tight budget."

  As the airbus soared over the desert as black as the sea, Pitt and Giordino sketched large diagrams of the mine levels as they remembered them. Levant was amazed at their recollections. Neither professed to photographic memories, but they recalled an enormous amount of detail for the short time they were held prisoner in the mine.

  Levant and two other officers in
terrogated the NUMA men in depth, often repeating questions three or four times in hopes of obtaining details observed but overlooked. The track to the canyon, the layout of the mine, the weapons of the guards, it was all covered over and over.

  The data was voice recorded on computer and the sketches of the mine programmed into three dimensions. Nothing was overlooked. The weather forecast for the next several hours, the flight time of Kazim's jet fighters from Gao, alternate escape plans and routes should the airbus be destroyed on the ground. Every possible contingency was given a plan.