"We've got a full tank of gas, and it beats riding a camel. Find some clean containers and fill them with water, and see if you can scrounge anything to eat."
"I doubt seriously," Giordino said, morosely staring around the run-down garage, "this establishment has a soft drink and candy machine."
"Do what you can."
Pitt opened the rear doors of the building and pushed out the yard gate far enough to allow the car to pass through. Then he checked over the car to ensure the oil and water were filled to capacity and there was air in the tires, particularly the spare.
Giordino came up with half a case of locally produced soft drink and several plastic bottles of water. "We won't go thirsty for a few days, but the best I could do in the culinary department is two cans of sardines I found in a desk and some gooey stuff that looks like boiled candy."
"No sense in hanging around. Throw your cache in the backseat and let's hit the road."
Giordino obliged and climbed in the passenger's seat as Pitt pushed the gear lever on the Cotal gearbox, actually a switch on an arm that protruded from the steering column, into low gear, pressed the accelerator pedal, and eased out the clutch. The sixty-year-old Voisin moved forward smoothly and quietly.
Pitt slowly picked his way between the junked cars and passed out the gate, cautiously driving down an alley until he reached a narrow dirt road leading to the west on a parallel course with the Niger River. He turned and followed the faint tracks, creeping along no faster than 2 5 kilometers an hour until he was out of sight of the town. Only then did he turn on the headlights and pick up speed.
"Might help if we had a road map," said Giordino.
"A map of camel tracks might be more practical. We can't risk taking the main highway."
"We're okay so long as this cow path runs along the river."
"S
oon as we strike the ravine where Gunn's instruments detected the contamination, we'll turn and follow it north."
"I'd hate to be around when the chauffeur notifies Kazim that his pride and joy has been stolen."
"The General and Massarde will think we headed for the nearest border, which is Niger," said Pitt confidently. "The last place they'd expect us to cut and run is the middle of the desert."
"I must say," Giordino grumbled, "I'm not looking forward to the trip."
Neither was Pitt. It was a mad attempt with practically no chance of living to a ripe old age. The headlights showed the land was flat with patches of small, brown-stained rock. The beams caught haunting shadows cast from an occasional manna tree that seemed to flit and dart across the landscape like wraiths.
It was, thought Pitt, a very lonely place to die.
The sun rose hot, and by ten o'clock it was already 32 degrees C (90 degrees F). A wind began to blow from the south, and offered a small but mixed blessing for Rudi Gunn. The breeze felt refreshing to his sweating skin, but it swirled sand into his nose and ears. He wrapped his head cloth more tightly to keep out the grit and pressed his dark glasses against his face to protect his eyes. He took a small plastic bottle of water from his backpack and drained half of it. No need to ration, he thought, after spying a dripping tap beside the terminal.
The airport looked as dead as the night before. On the military side, there had been a changing of the guards, but the hangars and flight line were still void of activity. At the commercial air terminal he watched a man ride up on a motorbike and climb to the control tower. Gunn saw that as a good omen. No one with half a brain would willingly suffer in an elevated, glass-enclosed hot box under a blazing sun unless a plane was scheduled to arrive.
A falcon circled above Gunn's nest in the sand. He gazed at it for a while before cautiously rigging a few weatherworn boards over his body for shade. Then he surveyed the airfield once again. A truck had arrived on the tarmac in front of the terminal. Two men got out and unloaded a set of wooden chocks, which they set on the tarmac to block the aircraft's tires after landing. Gunn stiffened and began mentally preparing his best strategic approach to where the aircraft would park. He fixed the route in his mind, picking the shallow ravines and scattered growth for cover.
Then he lay back, settled in to endure the increasing heat and stared up at the sky. The falcon had homed in on a plover that was streaking and dodging toward the river. A few cotton puff clouds drifted across the vast blue expanse. He wondered how they could survive much less exist in the searing atmosphere. So intent was he on watching the clouds that he did not at first hear the low hum in the distance that signaled the approach of a jet aircraft. Then a glint caught his eye, and he sat up. The sun had flashed on a tiny speck in the sky. He waited, staring until the glint came again, only this time it was lower against the barren horizon. It was an aircraft on approach for landing but still too far away to be recognized. It had to be commercial, he surmised, or it wouldn't be expected to stop at the civilian side of the airfield.
He pushed off the boards shielding the sun, pulled on the backpack, and crouched in readiness for his furtive approach. He squinted into the glaring sky until the plane was only a kilometer away, his heart beginning to pound with anxiety. The seconds dragged past until at last he could distinguish the type and markings, a civilian French airbus carrying the light and dark green stripes of Air Afrique.
The pilot flared out just past the end of the runway, touched down, and braked. Then he taxied to the front of the terminal and tolled the big airbus to a halt. The engines were not shut down but kept turning as the two ground crewmen shoved the chocks under the wheels and then rolled a boarding stairway to the main exit door.
They stood and waited at the bottom of the stairway expectantly for passengers to disembark, but the exit door did not immediately open. Gunn began to make his move, scurrying toward the edge of the runway. After covering 50 meters, he paused behind the shelter of a small acacia tree and studied the airliner again.
The forward passenger door was finally sliding to one side, and a female flight attendant came down the boarding steps. She walked past the two Malian ground crewmen without looking at them and set a course for the control tower. The Malians turned their attention from the aircraft and stared at her with rapt curiosity. When she reached the base of the tower, she extracted a small pair of wire cutters from a bag slung over her shoulder and calmly severed the power and communication cables running from the controller's equipment to the terminal. Then she waved a signal at the plane's cockpit.
A ramp abruptly dropped from the rear of the fuselage accompanied by the high but muffled revolutions of an automobile engine. Suddenly, what looked to Gunn like an off-road dune buggy flew out of the cavern of the aircraft and down the ramp. The driver threw it into a sideway skid and aimed it toward the guard shack on the military side of the airfield.
Gunn had once been a member of the pit crew for Pitt and Giordino when they had entered a cross-country race in Arizona, but he had never seen an all-terrain vehicle like this one. There was no common body or chassis. The construction was a maze of tubular supports welded together and powered by a supercharged V-8 Rodeck, 541-cubicinch engine used by American drag racers. The driver sat within a small cockpit at the front of the vehicle, just ahead of the mid-mounted engine. A gunner sat slightly above the driver, manning a wicked looking six-barrel, lightweight Vulcan-type machine gun. Another gunner sat over the rear axle and faced backward with a 5.56-millimeter Stoner 63 machine gun. This type of vehicle, Gunn recalled, had been most effective during the desert war when used by American special forces teams behind the Iraqi lines.
It was followed down the ramp by a platoon of heavily armed men in unfamiliar uniforms who quickly rounded up the stunned Malian ground crew and secured the terminal building.