Sahara (Dirk Pitt 11)

"One of Massarde Enterprises' jets will be waiting at La Guardia Airport. You're to board at six o'clock this evening."

"So I'm to play nursemaid to Kazim to prevent him from making any further blunders."

Bordeaux nodded. "The stakes are too high to allow the madman to run amok."

Yerli reinserted his binoculars in their case and slung it over his shoulder. "I once dreamed I died in the desert," he said quietly. "I pray to Allah that it was just that. . . a dream."

In a typical windowless room somewhere in a little traveled part of the Pentagon building, Air Force Major Tom Greenwald put down the phone after notifying his wife he would be late for dinner. He relaxed for a long minute as he turned his thoughts from the satellite photo analysis of the fighting going on between Chinese army units and democratic rebel forces to the job at hand.

The film from the GeoSat cameras sent by courier from Chip Webster at NUMA was processed and loaded in the military's sophisticated display and enhancing equipment. When all was ready, Greenwald settled himself in a comfortable chair with a console installed in one arm. He opened a can of Diet Pepsi and began turning the dials and knobs on the console as he stared up at a television monitor the size of a small movie theater screen.

The GeoSat photos reminded him of the old spy-in-the-sky images of thirty years ago. Granted, the GeoSat was designed purely for space geological and water current survey, but it came nowhere close to the incredible imagery detail received by the latest intelligence-gathering Pyramider and Houdini satellites sent up by the space shuttles. Yet it was a vast improvement over the old LandSat that mapped the earth for over twenty years. The new model had cameras that could penetrate darkness and cloud cover, and even smoke.

Greenwald made adjustments and corrections with his console as each photo, showing different sections of the Malian northern desert, crossed the viewing screen and was computer-enhanced. He soon began to pick out tiny specks that were flying aircraft and a camel train winding across the desert floor from the salt mines of Taoudenni south to Timbuktu.

As the photo trail moved north from the Niger into the Azaouad, a barren region of dunes and nothingness that made up but one of the many areas of the Sahara, Greenwald found fewer and fewer signs of human presence. He could discern bones of animals, camels most likely, scattered around isolated wells, but a standing human was very difficult to detect, even for his exotic electronics systems.

After nearly an hour, Greenwald rubbed his tired eyes and massaged his temples. He had found nothing that indicated the slightest trace of the two men he had been asked to look for. The photos of the extreme northerly search grid that Webster thought they might have reached on foot were examined unsuccessfully and set aside.

Greenwald had done his bit for the cause and was about to call it a day and go home to his wife, but he decided to give it one final try. Years of experience had taught him that a target was never where he expected to find it. He sifted out the satellite photos revealing the deeper regions of the desolate Azaouad and gave them a fast scan.

The stark void appeared as empty as the Dead Sea.

He almost missed it, he would have missed it but for an indescribable feeling that a tiny object on the landscape did not fit its surroundings. It might have passed as a rock or a small dune, but the shape was not irregular like geology produced by nature. The lines were straight and well defined. His hand moved over a row of knobs, magnifying and enhancing the object.

Greenwald knew he was on to something. He was too much the expert to be fooled. During the war with Iraq, he became something of a legend for his uncanny knack at detecting the Iraqi army's hidden bunkers, tank and artillery emplacements.

"A car," he muttered aloud to himself. "A car covered over with sand to hide its presence."

After tighter study, he could distinguish two tiny specks alongside the car. Greenwald wished he was looking at images received from a military satellite. He could have read the time on the target's wristwatches. But the GeoSat was not built for fine detail. Even with careful tuning he could just make them out as two humans.

Greenwald took a moment to sit back and savor his discovery. Then he walked over to a nearby desk and dialed a phone. He waited patiently, hoping that a taped voice wouldn't come on with an announcement to leave a message. On the fifth ring, a man answered who sounded as if he was out of breath.

"Hello."

"Chip?"

"Yes. This Tom?"

"You been jogging?"

"The wife and I were out in the backyard talking to neighbors," explained Webster. "I ran like hell when I heard the phone ringing."

"I found something I think you'll be interested in."

"My two men, you pulled them from the GeoSat photos?"

"They're over 100 kilometers further north than you reckoned," said Greenwald.

There was a pause. "Sure you're not looking at a pair of nomads?" asked Webster. "No way my people could have walked that far across a burning desert in forty-eight hours."

"Not walked but drove."

"Like drove a car?" asked Webster in surprise.

"Difficult to make out details. Looks to me as though they cover it with sand during the day as camouflage from searching aircraft and drive by night. It has to be your two guys. Who else can be playing fugitive games where the grass don't grow."

"Can you tell if they're trying for the border?"