Sahara (38 page)

“Don’t let your curly locks show,” said Pitt. “A black tuft of hair against the yellow-white sand stands out like a skunk on a fence post.”

Giordino grinned like the village idiot as he poured a handful of sand into his hair. He moved alongside Pitt, peering over the summit of the dune. “My, my,” he murmured in awe. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was looking at a city on the moon.”

“The sterile landscape is there,” Pitt admitted, “but there’s no glass dome over the top.”

“This place is almost as big as Disney World.”

“I’d estimate 20 square kilometers.”

“We have incoming freight,” said Giordino, pointing to a long train of railroad cars drawn by four diesel engines. “Business must be booming.”

“Massarde’s toxic gravy train,” Pitt mused. “I estimate about a hundred and twenty cars filled with poisonous garbage.”

Giordino nodded toward a vast field covered with long trough-like basins with concave surfaces that bounced the sun’s rays like a sea of mirrors. “Those look like solar reflectors.”

“Concentrators,” said Pitt. “They collect solar radiation and concentrate it into tremendous heat and proton intensities. The radiant energy is then focused inside a chemical reactor that completely destroys the hazardous waste.”

“Aren’t we the bright one,” said Giordino. “When did you become an expert on sunlight?”

“I used to date a lady who was an engineer with the Solar Energy Institute. She took me on a guided tour of their research facilities. That was several years ago when they were still in the test stages of developing solar thermal technology for eliminating industrial toxic wastes. It appears Massarde has mastered the techniques.”

“I’ve missed something,” said Giordino.

“Like what?”

“This whole setup. Why go to the added expense and effort to erect this cathedral to sanitation in the middle of the world’s biggest sandbox. Me, I’d have built it closer to a major industrial center. Must cost a bundle just to transport the stuff across half an ocean and 1600 kilometers of desert.”

“A most astute consideration,” Pitt admitted. “I’m curious too. If Fort Foureau is such a masterpiece of toxic waste destruction, and is judged by hazardous waste experts to be a safe, blue-ribbon operation, it doesn’t make sense not to set it in a more convenient location.”

“You still think it’s responsible for the contamination leak into the Niger?” Giordino asked.

“We found no other source.”

“That old prospector’s story about an underground river may well be the solution.”

“Except there’s a flaw,” said Pitt.

“You never were the trusting type,” Giordino muttered.

“Nothing wrong with the underground flow theory. What I don’t buy is leaking contamination.”

“I’m with you,” Giordino nodded. “What’s to leak if they’re supposed to be incinerating the crap?”

“Exactly.”

“Then Fort Foureau isn’t what it’s advertised?”

“Not to my way of thinking.”

Giordino turned and looked at him suspiciously. “I hope you’re not thinking of strolling around down there as if we were a couple of visiting firemen.”

“I had cat burglars more in mind.”

“How do you propose we get in? Drive up to the gate and ask for a visitor’s pass?”

Pitt nodded at the line of freight cars rolling over a siding that paralleled a long loading dock inside the facility. “We hop the train.”

“And for a getaway?” Giordino asked suspiciously.

“With the Voisin’s fuel gauge knocking on empty, bidding a fond farewell to Mali and driving off into the sunset was the last thing on my agenda. We catch the outward bound express for Mauritania.”

Giordino made a glum face. “You expect me to ride first class in freight cars that have carried tons of toxic chemicals? I’m too young to melt into sludge.”

Pitt shrugged and smiled. “You’ll just have to be careful not to touch anything.”

Giordino shook his head in exasperation. “Did you consider the obstacles involved?”

“Obstacles are made to be hurdled,” Pitt answered pontifically.

“Like the electrified fence, the guards with Doberman pinschers, the patrol cars bristling with automatic cannon, the overhead lamps that light up the place like a baseball stadium?”

“Yes, now that you had to go and remind me.”

“Mighty strange,” Giordino reflected, “that a toxic waste incinerator has to be guarded like a nuclear bomb arsenal.”

“All the more reason to inspect the premises,” said Pitt calmly.

“You won’t change your mind and head for home while we’re still a team.”

“Seek and ye shall find.”

Giordino threw up his hands. “You’re crazier than that old prospector and his cockamamy story of a Confederate ironclad with Abe Lincoln at the helm that’s buried in the desert.”

“We do have much in common,” Pitt said easily. He rolled on his side and gestured toward a structure about 6 kilometers to the east a short walk from the railroad tracks. “See that old abandoned fort?”

Giordino nodded. “The one with
Beau Geste,
Gary Cooper, and the French Foreign Legion written all over it.’ Yes, I see it.”

“Where Fort Foureau got its name,” said Pitt. “No morel than 100 meters separates its walls from the railroad. As soon as it’s dark we’ll use it for cover until we can hop an incoming train.”

“I’ve already noticed they whip over the rails too fast for| even a professional hobo to board.”

“Prudence and patience,” said Pitt. “The locomotives begin to slow just before they reach the old fort. Then they come to a crawl when they pull into what looks like a security station.”

Giordino studied the station the train had to pass through to enter the heart of the project. “A dime to a dollar an army of guards checks out every freight car.”

“They can’t be too overzealous. Examining over a hundred freight cars filled with drums of toxic waste is not exactly a job a sane man would throw his heart and soul into. Besides, who would be dumb enough to stow away in one?”

“You’re the only one who comes to mind,” Giordino said dryly.

“I’m always open to more practical suggestions for sneaking past your electrified fence, Dobermans, floodlights, and patrol cars.”

Giordino was in the middle of giving Pitt a long solemn look of exasperation when he tensed and twisted his head at the sky in the direction of the oncoming thump of an approaching helicopter.

Pitt looked up too. It was coming from the south and heading directly over them. It was not a military craft but a beautifully streamlined civilian version that was easily identified by the Massarde Enterprises name along the fuselage.

“Damn!” cursed Giordino. He looked back at the mound of sand they had thrown over the Voisin. “Any lower and he’ll blow the sand right off the car.”

“Only if he passes directly over it,” Pitt said. “Burrow down and don’t move.”

An alert eye might have caught them, noticed the suspicious sand dune with its strange shape, but the pilot was concentrating on the landing pad near the Project’s main office building and did not glance down at the disturbed sands or the forms hugging the dune. The helicopter’s sole passenger was occupied with studying a financial report and did not glance out a window.

It swept right over them, banked slightly, sank down toward the pad, hovered for a few moments, and then settled to the concrete. A few seconds later the rotor stopped, the passenger door opened, and a man climbed down to the pad. Even at half a kilometer without binoculars, Pitt correctly guessed the identity of the figure who vigorously strode toward the office complex.

“I think our friend has returned to haunt us,” he said.

Giordino cupped his hands around his eyes and squinted. “Too far to tell for sure, but I do believe you’re right. A shame he didn’t bring the piano player from the houseboat.”

“Can’t you get her out of your mind?”

Giordino looked at Pitt with a hurt expression. “Why would I want to?”

“You don’t even know her name.”

“Love will conquer all,” Giordino said moodily.

“Then conquer your amorous thoughts and let’s rest up until nightfall. Then we’ve got a train to catch.”

They had bypassed the well described by the old prospector when the Oued Zarit’s former riverbed meandered in a different direction. The soft drinks were gone and their supply of water was down to 2 liters, slightly more than 2 quarts. But they divided and drank it all to avoid dehydration, trusting in finding a source near the project.

They parked the Voisin in a small ravine a kilometer south of the abandoned fort that sat beside the railroad, then burrowed into the sand under the car, achieving a small measure of shelter from the sweltering heat. Giordino dropped off quickly, but Pitt’s mind was too restless for sleep.

The night sweeps across the desert quickly. The dusk is short before the darkness. There was a strange stillness, the only sound coming from the faint tick of the Voisin’s engine as it cooled. The dry desert air became cleansed from the heat and blowing sand of the day and magnified the great storm of stars that gleamed in an obsidian sky. They were so sharp and distinct Pitt could actually separate the red stars from the blue and green. He had never seen such a cosmic display, even on the open sea.

They covered the car in the gulch for the last time and hiked under the stars to the fort, careful to sweep their tracks with a palm frond as they proceeded. They passed by the old Legion graveyard and scouted around the 10-meter-high walls until they came to the main gate. The giant’ wooden doors, solid and bleached white by the sun, stood slightly ajar. They entered and found themselves on the dark and deserted parade ground.

It took little for their imaginations to see a ghostly formation of French Foreign Legion footsloggers standing at attention in their blue tunics, baggy white trousers, and white kepi caps, before marching out onto the burning sands to fight a horde of Tuaregs.

The actual size of the former outpost was small by most Foreign Legion standards. The walls, each 30 meters in length, were formed in a perfect square. They were a good 3 meters thick at the base with staggered bastions at the top to protect the defenders. The entire structure could have easily been manned by no more than fifty men.

The interior showed the usual signs of neglect. Debris left by the departing French troops and bits of trash left by desert wanderers who took advantage of the fort’s walls during sandstorms lay scattered on the ground and in the barracks quarters. Materials left over by construction workers during the building of the railroad were stacked against one wall: concrete railroad ties, various tools, several drums of diesel oil, and a forklift that looked in surprisingly good condition.

“How’d you like to be stationed in this place for a year?” muttered Giordino.

“Not for a week,” said Pitt, surveying the fort.

While they waited for a train, time dragged by with tormenting slowness. The odds were good to excellent that the chemical compound Gunn had discovered as the cause of the exploding red tide was filtering out of the solar detoxification plant. After their run-in with Massarde, Pitt knew that a knock on the door and a cheery request to inspect the property would not be met with open arms and a hearty handshake. They had to worm their way in and find positive evidence.

There was something far more sinister going on at Fort Foureau. To all appearances it was contributing to the battle against the world’s millions of tons of toxic waste. But scratch the surface, Pitt thought, and we shall see what we shall see.

He was calculating their chances of passing through the security station and getting out again as extremely bleak, when his ears picked up a sound in the distance. Giordino came out of a light sleep and heard it too.

They looked at each other wordlessly and came to their feet.

“An inbound train,” said Giordino.

Pitt held up his Doxa dive watch and studied the luminous hands. “Eleven-twenty. Plenty of time to do our inspection act and get out before daylight.”

“Providing there’s a scheduled outbound,” Giordino cautioned.

“So far they’ve been tooting by like clockwork every three hours. Like Mussolini, Massarde keeps them running on time.” Pitt stood and brushed off the sand. “Off we go. I don’t want to be left standing on an empty track.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“Keep low,” Pitt warned. “The desert reflects starlight, and the ground is open between the fort and the tracks.”

“I’ll flit through the night like a bat,” Giordino assured him. “But if a drooling dog with big fangs or beady-eyed guard with an automatic weapon has other ideas?”

“We prove our suspicions that Fort Foureau is a facade.”

Pitt said firmly, “One of us has to escape and alert Sandecker, even if it means sacrificing one for the other.” |

A thoughtful expression crossed Giordino’s face and he stared at Pitt without saying anything. Then the air horn on the lead diesel locomotive sounded to announce its impending arrival at the security station. He nodded at the tracks. “We’d better hurry.”

Pitt nodded silently. Then they stepped through the fort’s big gate and ran toward the tracks:

33

An abandoned Renault truck sat forlornly about halfway between the fort and the railroad tracks. Everything that could be stripped from the body and chassis was long gone. Tires and wheels, engine, transmission and differential, even the windshield and doors were removed for parts or sold for scrap, hauled off by camel to Gao or Timbuktu by an enterprising merchant.

To Pitt and Giordino, as they huddled behind the truck to avoid being caught in the glare of the light on the forward diesel engine, the deserted loneliness of an object used by man and then forgotten and discarded was overwhelming. But it made for the perfect cover as the long freight train approached.

The revolving light above the engine swept across the desert and illuminated every rock and every blade of sparse grass for almost a kilometer. They crouched out of the beam until the engines thundered past at what Pitt estimated as nearly 50 kilometers an hour. The engineers were braking now as they prepared to enter the security station. Pitt waited patiently as the train’s speed tapered off. By the time the last cars in line reached the abandoned truck, he estimated, the train’s momentum would be down to about 15 kilometers, a speed slow enough for them to run alongside and board.