"What we do," Pitt calmly continued, "is bury them with a slice of ham in their mouth."
The ultimate abhorrence to a devout Muslim is any contact with a pig. They consider them the most unclean of creatures and the mere thought of spending eternity in the grave with so much as a sliver of bacon is enough to cause their worst nightmares. Pitt knew the threat was as good as a wooden stake pressed against a vampire's chest.
For a full five seconds Digna sat immobile, making sounds from his throat as if he was being strangled. The muscles of his face tautened and his teeth bared in uncontrolled rage. Then he leaped to his feet and pulled a long knife from under his robe.
He was two seconds slow and one second too late.
Pitt rammed his fist into Digna's jaw like a piston. The Malian lurched backward, crashing into the table surrounded by men playing dominos and spilling the game pieces before sprawling to the floor in a twisted heap, out for the count. Digna's henchmen all launched themselves against Pitt, circling him warily, three of them drawing nasty-looking curved knives while the fourth came at him with a raised axe.
Pitt grabbed his chair and swung down on his lead attacker, breaking the man's right arm and shoulder. A shout of pain went up as the room erupted in confusion. The stunned customers crushed against each other in their panic to escape through the narrow door to safety outside the bar. Another exclamation of agony exploded from the assailant with the axe as a well-aimed bottle of whiskey thrown by Giordino smashed with a sickening thud into the side of the man's face.
Pitt lifted the table above his head, his hand gripping two of its legs. In the same instant came the sound of shattered glass and Giordino was standing beside him, his hand thrust forward, clutching the jagged neck of a bottle.
The attackers stopped dead in their tracks, the odds now even. They stared dumbly at their two friends, one swaying on his knees, moaning and holding a badly skewed arm, the other sitting cross-legged with hands covering his face, blood streaming through his fingers. Another downward glance at their unconscious leader, and they began backing toward the door. In the blink of an eye they were gone.
"Not much of an exercise," Giordino muttered. "These guys wouldn't last five minutes on the streets of New York."
"Watch the door," said Pitt. He turned to the proprietor who stood completely unperturbed and unconcerned, turning the pages of his newspaper as if he regarded fights on his premises as regular nightly entertainment. "Le garage?" Pitt asked.
The proprietor raised his head, tugged at his moustache, and wordlessly jerked his thumb in a vague direction beyond the south wall of the bar.
Pitt threw several francs on the sagging bar to pay for the damage and said, "Merci."
This place kind of grows on you," said Giordino. "I almost hate to part with it."
"Picture it in your mind always." Pitt checked his watch. "Only four hours before daylight. Off we go before an alarm is turned in."
They exited the dingy bar and skirted the rear of the buildings, hugging the shadows and peering furtively around corners. Their precaution, Pitt realized, was largely an overkill. The almost total lack of street lights and the darkened houses with their sleeping inhabitants voided any chance of suspicion.
They came to one of the more substantial mud brick buildings in town, a large warehouse-like affair with a wide metal gate in the front and double doors at the rear. The chain-link fenced yard in back looked like an automotive junkyard. Nearly thirty old cars were parked in rows, stripped bare with little left of them but body shells and frames. Wheels and grimy engines were stacked in one corner of the yard near several oil drums. Transmissions and differentials leaned against the building, the ground around soaked from years of leaking oil.
They found a gate in the fence that was tied shut by a rope. Giordino picked up a sharp stone and cut through the rope, swinging open the gate. They moved carefully toward the doors, listening for any sound of a guard dog and peering through the darkness for signs of a security system. There must have been little need for theft prevention, Pitt decided. With so few cars in town, anyone stealing a part to repair a private vehicle would have immediately been suspect.
The double doors were latched and sealed with a rusty padlock. Giordino gripped it in his massive hands and gave it a heavy tug. The shackle popped free. He looked at Pitt and smiled.
"Nothing to it really. The tumblers were old and worn."
"If I thought there was the least hope we'd ever get out of this place," Pitt said tartly, "I'd put you in for a medal."
He gently pulled one door open far enough for them to enter. One end of the garage was an open pit for mechanics to work under cars. There was a small office and a room filled with tools and machinery. The rest of the floor space held three cars and a pair of trucks in various stages of disassembly. But it was the car that sat in the open center of the garage that drew Pitt. He reached through one of the windows of a truck and pulled the light switch, illuminating an old pre-World War II automobile with elegant lines and a bright rose-magenta color scheme.
"My God," Pitt muttered in awe. "An Avions Voisin."
"A what?"
"A Voisin. Built from 1919 until 1939 in France by Gabriel Voisin. She's a very rare car."
Giordino walked from bumper to bumper, studying the styling of the quite unique and different car. He noted the unusual door handles, the three wipers mounted on the glass of the windshield, the chrome struts that stretched between the front fenders and radiator, and the tall, winged mascot atop the radiator shell. "Looks weird to me."
"Don't knock it. This classy set of wheels is our ticket out of here."
Pitt climbed behind the steering wheel, which was set on the right side, and sat in the art deco-designed upholstery of the front seat. A single key was in the ignition. He switched it on and stared at the fuel gauge needle as it climbed to the full line. Next he pressed the button that turned over the electrical motor that extended through the bottom of the radiator, and served as both the starter and the generator. There was utterly no sound of the engine being cranked over. The only indication that it was suddenly running was an almost inaudible cough and a slight puff of vapor out the exhaust pipe.
"A quiet old bird," observed Giordino, impressed.
"Unlike most modern engines with poppet valves," said Pitt, "this one is powered by a Knight sleeve-valve engine that was quite popular in its day for silent operation."
Giordino gazed at the old classic car with great skepticism. "You actually intend to drive this old relic across the Sahara Desert?"