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  Then, as Levant predicted, the Malian pilots became overconfident and bolder, pressing ever closer before launching their missiles. He rose from behind his small command post and brushed away the dust on his combat suit.

  "Captain Pembroke-Smythe, any casualties?"

  "None reported, Colonel."

  "It's time for Madeleine and her friends to earn their money again."

  "Manning the gun now, sir."

  "If you plan well, you'll have enough shells left to down two more of the devils."

  The job was made easier when two aircraft raced across the open desert wing tip to wing tip. The Vulcan swung around to engage and open fire. At first it looked as though the gun crew had missed. Then there was a burst of flame and black smoke erupted from the starboard Mirage. The plane didn't explode nor did the pilot seem to lose control. The nose simply fell on a slight angle downward and the fighter descended until it crashed into the sand.

  Madeleine was shifted to the port fighter and opened up like a screeching banshee. Seconds later, the last of the rounds left the revolving barrels and she abruptly went silent. But not before her short spurt of fire made the second fighter appear as if it had run into a junkyard scrap grinder. Pieces of the plane split off including the canopy.

  Oddly there was no sign of smoke or fire. The Mirage settled onto the desert, bounced once, and then smashed into the east wall, exploding with a deafening roar and hurling stone and flaming debris throughout the parade ground and collapsing the officers' quarters. To those inside it felt as though the tired old fort was lifted clear of the ground by a rippling detonation.

  Pitt was whirled around and thrown violently to the ground as the sky tore apart. He felt as if the detonation was almost directly above him when in fact it came on the opposite side of the fort. His breath came as though he was sucking air in a vacuum as the concussion reverberated all around him in a bedlam of compressed air.

  He pushed himself to his knees, coughing from the dust that blanketed the interior of the fort. His first concern was the spring bow. It still stood undamaged amid the dust cloud. Then he noticed a body lying near him on the ground.

  "My. . . God!" the man uttered in a halting croak.

  It was then Pitt recognized Pembroke-Smythe who had been blown off the ramparts by the force of the explosion. He crawled over and peered down into a pair of closed eyes. Only the throbbing pulse in the side of the Lieutenant's neck gave any indication of life.

  "How badly are you hurt?" Pitt asked, not thinking of anything else to say.

  "Bloody well knocked the wind out of me and ruined my back," Pembroke-Smythe gasped between clenched teeth.

  Pitt glanced up at the section of the parapet that had collapsed. "You had quite a fall. I don't see any blood and no bones look broken. Can you move your legs?"

  Pembroke-Smythe managed to raise his knees and swivel his booted feet. "At least my spine is still connected." Then he lifted a hand and pointed behind Pitt across the parade ground. The dust had begun to settle, and his face glowered helplessly as he glimpsed the great mound of rubble that had buried several of his men. "Dig the poor beggars out!" he implored. "For God's sake, dig them out!"

  Pitt turned suddenly, focusing on the shattered and fallen wall. What had been a massive bulwark of mortar and stone was now a great heap of rubble. No one who was buried under the collapsed wall could have survived without being crushed to death. And those who might miraculously still be alive while trapped inside their dugouts would not last long before succumbing to suffocation. Pitt felt the prickle of horror in the nape of his neck as he realized that nothing less than heavy construction equipment could dig them out in time.

  Before he could react, another salvo of missiles bore into the fort, bursting and creating a shambles of the mess hall. The roof support beams were soon ablaze, sending a column of smoke into the climbing heat of the morning. The walls now looked as though a giant had worked them over with a sledgehammer. The north wall had suffered the least; incredibly the main gate remained unscarred. But the other three were severely damaged and their crests breached in several places.

  With four of their planes lost, their missiles expended, and low on fuel, the remaining fighters regrouped and set a course back to their base in the south. The surviving UN commandos rose from their underground shelters like dead from the grave and frantically began tearing at the debris for their comrades. In spite of their desperate efforts there was no chance any of those buried under the wall could be rescued with mere human hands.

  Levant came down from the parapet and began giving commands. Wounded were sent or carried down to the safety of the arsenal where the medical personnel were ready to receive them, assisted by Eva and the other women who acted as nurses.

  The faces on the men and women of the tactical team were filled with anguish as Levant ordered them to cease digging under the wall and tackle the job of filling in the worst breaches. Levant shared their sorrow, but his responsibility was for the living. There was nothing to be done for the dead.

  Grinning and bearing the agony radiating from his back, the irrepressible Pembroke-Smythe hobbled around the fort, taking casualty reports and giving words of encouragement. Despite the death and the horror that was engulfing them, he tried to instill a sense of humor to combat their ordeal.

  The count came to six dead and three seriously wounded with bones broken from flying stone. Seven others returned to their posts after having assorted cuts and bruises sanitized and bandaged. It could have been worse, Colonel Levant told himself as he surveyed his situation. But he knew the air attacks were only the opening act. After a brief intermission, the second act began as a missile burst under the lee of the south wall, fired from one of four tanks 2000 meters to the south. Then three more line-of-sight wireguided battlefield missiles slammed into the fort in quick succession.

  Levant quickly climbed onto the rubble that had once been a wall and lined up his glasses on the tanks. "French AMX-30-type tanks firing SS-11 battlefield missiles," he calmly announced to Pitt and Pembroke-Smythe. "They'll soften us up for a bit before coming on with their infantry."

  Pitt stared around the battered fortress. "Not much left to soften," he muttered laconically.

  Levant lowered the glasses and turned to Pembroke-Smythe who was standing beside them, hunched over like a man of ninety-five.

  "Order everyone into the arsenal. Except for a lookout, we'll weather the storm down there."

  "And when those tanks come knocking at our door?" asked Pitt.

  "Then it's up to your catapult isn't it," said Pembroke-Smythe pessimistically. "That's all we'll have against those bloody tanks."

  Pitt smiled grimly. "It looks as though I have to make a believer out of you, Captain."

  Pitt was proud of his acting. He nicely concealed the apprehension that was swamping him in great trembling waves. He hadn't the slightest clue whether his medieval anti-tank weapon stood a ghost of a chance of actually working or not.

  <<54>>

  Four hundred kilometers to the west the dawn broke absolutely still; no whisper of wind rustled the air over the empty, shapeless and desolate sands. The only sound came from the muffled tone of the fast attack vehicle's exhaust as it scurried across the desert like a black ant on a beach.

  Giordino was studying the vehicle's on-board computer that subtracted the distance traveled in a straight line from the deviations that had forced them to detour around impassable ravines and a great sea of dunes. On two occasions they had to backtrack nearly 20 kilometers before continuing on their course again.

  According to the digital numbers that flashed on a small, screen, it had taken Giordino and Steinholm nearly twelve hours to cover the 400 kilometers between Fort Foureau and the Mauritanian border. Staying well clear of the railroad had cost them dearly in time lost. But too much was riding on them to risk encountering armed troops patrolling the tracks or being detected and blown to shreds by roving Malian fighter jets.

  T
he last third of the journey was over hard ground, peppered with rocks that had been polished smooth by tiny grit blown by the wind. The rocks varied in size from marbles to footballs and made driving a horror, but they never gave thought to reducing their speed. They bounced over the uneven ground at a constant rate of 90 kilometers an hour, enduring the choppy, bone-jarring ride with stoic determination.

  Exhaustion and suffering were overcome by thinking of what must be happening to the men and women they left behind. Giordino and Steinholm well knew that if there was any hope for them at all, the American Special Operations Forces must be found, and found quickly if a rescue mission was to reach the fort before Kazim massacred everyone inside. Giordino's promise to return by noon came back to haunt him. The prospect looked dim indeed.

  "How far to the border?" asked Steinholm in English with an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent.

  "No way of telling," Giordino answered. "They don't erect welcome signs to empty desert. For all I know, we've already crossed it."

  "At least now it's light enough to see where we're going."

  "Makes it easier for the Malians to pick us off too."

  "I vote we head north toward the railroad," said Steinholm. "The fuel gauge is touching on empty. Another 30 kilometers and we'll have to walk."

  "Okay, you sold me." Giordino checked the computer once more and pointed toward the compass mounted above the instrument panel. "Turn on a heading of 50 degrees northwest and run a diagonal course until we bisect the track bed. That will give us a few more kilometers in case we haven't passed into Mauritania yet."

  "The moment of truth," Steinholm said, smiling. He jammed the pedal to the floor, spinning the wheels in the rock and sand, showering the air with pebbles and dust. In unison he twisted the wheel and sent the military version of the dune buggy tearing over the desert toward Massarde's railroad.

  The fighters returned at eleven o'clock and resumed devastating the already wrecked fort with their missiles. When they finished their bomb runs, the four tanks took up the bombardment as the desert echoed with the constant rumble of explosives. To the defenders the thunder and devastation never seemed to end as Kazim's ground forces moved to within 300 meters and blasted away at the ruins with mortars and sniper fire.

  The concentration of firepower was unlike anything the French Foreign Legion had ever experienced fighting the Tuaregs during their hundred-year occupation of West Africa. Shell after shell rained down, the detonations merging in a never-ending clap of thunder. The remnants of the walls continued to be pulverized from the constant explosions that hurled stone, mortar, and sand high into the air until little of the old fort bore any resemblance to its original shape. It now looked like a ruin from antiquity.

  General Kazim's command aircraft had landed at a nearby dry lake. Accompanied by his Chief-of-Staff, Colonel Sghir Cheik, and Ismail Yerli, he was met by Captain Mohammed Batutta. The Captain led them to a four-wheel-drive staff car and drove them to the hastily set up headquarters of his Field Commander, Colonel Nouhoum Mansa, who stepped forward to greet them.

  "You have them completely hemmed in?" Kazim demanded.

  "Yes, General," Mansa quickly answered. "My plan is to gradually compress our lines around the fort until the final assault:

  "Have you attempted to persuade the UN team to surrender?"

  "On four different occasions. Each time I was flatly rejected by their leader, a Colonel Levant:"

  Kazim smiled cynically. "Since they insist on dying, we'll help them along.

  "There cannot be many of them left," observed Yerli as he peered through a telescope mounted on a tripod. "The place looks like a pulverized sieve. They must all be buried under the stone from the fallen walls.

  "My men are anxious to fight," said Mansa. "They wish to put on a good show for their beloved leader."

  Kazim looked pleased. "And they shall have their opportunity. Give the order to charge the fort in one hour."

  There was no pause from the incessant hammering. Down in the arsenal, now crammed with nearly sixty commandos and civilians, the stones supporting the arched roof, their mortar crumbling, began falling on the huddled mass of people below.

  Eva was crouched near the stairway, bandaging a female fighter whose shoulder was punctured in several places by small shrapnel, when a mortar shell burst at the head of the upper entrance. Her body shielded the woman she was tending as the blast mauled her with flying rock. She lost consciousness and awoke later to find herself laid out on the floor with the other wounded.

  One of the medics was at work on her as Pitt sat and held her hand, his face tired, streaked with sweat, and wearing a stubble of beard turned nearly white with billowing dust, lit up with a loving smile.

  "Welcome back," he said. "You gave us quite a scare when the stairway caved in."

  "Are we trapped?" she murmured.

  "No, we can break out when the time comes."

  "It seems so dark."

  "Captain Pembroke-Smythe and his team cleared an exit only big enough for us to breathe. It doesn't let in much light, but keeps out the shrapnel."

  "I feel numb all over. How strange there is no pain."

  The medic, a young red-headed Scotsman, grinned at her. "I've heavily sedated you. I couldn't have you waking up on me while I set your lovely bones."

  "How bad am I?"

  "Except for a broken right arm and shoulder, one or more cracked ribs-- I can't tell without X-rays-- fractured left tibia and ankle, plus a sea of bruises and possible internal injuries, you're quite all right."

  "You're very honest," said Eva, gamely forcing a thin smile at the medic's battlefield whimsy.

  The medic patted her good arm. "Forgive my bleak bedside manner, but I think it best you know the cold truth."

  "I appreciate that," she said weakly.

  "Two months' rest and you'll be ready to swim the channel."

  "I'll stick to heated swimming pools, thank you."

  Pembroke-Smythe, indefatigable as ever, moved about the crowded arsenal keeping everyone's spirits up. He came over and knelt by Eva. "Well, well, you're one iron lady, Dr. Rojas."

  "I'm told I'll survive."

  "She won't be engaging in wild and crazy sex for a while," teased Pitt.

  Pembroke-Smythe made a comic leer, "What I wouldn't give, to be around when she recovers."

  Eva missed the Captain's sly innuendo. Almost before he finished his remark she had slipped back into unconsciousness.

  Pitt and Pembroke-Smythe stared over her into each other's eyes, the faces suddenly devoid of humor. The Captain nodded at the automatic pistol slung under Pitt's left arm.

  "In the end," he said quietly, "will you do her the honor?"

  Pitt nodded solemnly. "I'll take care of hers."

  Levant came up, looking grimy and tired. He knew his men and women could not endure this punishment much longer. The added burden of watching the suffering of women and children wrenched at his tough, professional spirit. He hated to see them and his beloved tactical team being mercilessly subjected to such torment. His coldest fear was being overrun when the bombardment stopped, and then watching helplessly as the Malians ran amok in butchery and rape.

  His best guess of the force against them was between one thousand and fifteen hundred. The number of his men and women still capable of fighting was down to twenty-nine including Pitt. And then there were the four tanks to contend with. He had no idea how long they could hold out before being overrun. An hour, maybe two, more likely less. They would make a fight of it, that much was certain. The bombardment had oddly worked in their favor. Most of the rubble from the walls had fallen outward, making it difficult for assaulting troops to climb over it.

  "Corporal Wadilinski reports the Malians are beginning to form up and move in," he said to Pembroke-Smythe. "The assault is imminent. Widen the entrance to the stairs and have your people ready to move out the instant the firing stops."

  "Right away, Colonel."

  Levant turn
ed to Pitt. "Well, Mr. Pitt. I believe the time has arrived to test your invention. . ."

  Pitt stood and stretched. "A wonder it hasn't been blown to splinters."

  "When I gave a quick look aboveground a few minutes ago it was still sitting in one piece under a section of one wall that was still standing."

  "Now that's enough to get me to quit drinking tequila:"

  "Nothing so drastic as that I hope."`

  Pitt looked into Levant's eyes. "Mind if I ask what your answer was to Kazim's surrender demands?"

  "The same reply we French gave at Waterloo and Camerone, merde."

  "In other words, crap, " Pembroke-Smythe translated.