Sahara (Dirk Pitt 11)

"Can't leave these guys laying around where they'll be found."

"Dump them in one of the ore cars and cover them with rock. They won't wake up for at least two hours. More than enough time for us to be well on our way across the desert."

"Providing a repairman doesn't rush to repair the camera."

As Giordino went to work disposing of the guards, Pitt consulted Fairweather's diagram of the mine shafts. There was no way he could retrace his steps to the engineer's private elevator by memory, not with a maze of mine shafts honeycombing in every direction, and without a compass, picking the correct course was all but impossible.

Giordino finished his chore and picked up the automatic rifles and studied them. "All plastic and fiberglass five-five-six-millimeter French-manufacture general military issue. Nice little piece."

"No shooting if we can help it," said Pitt. "We have to be discreet before Melika realizes we're missing."

Once outside their work shaft they went straight across the main tunnel into the opening directly opposite. Fifty meters later, carefully ducking the TV cameras marked on Fairweather's map, they had reached another cavern without seeing anyone. No one challenged them, no one attacked them. They were alone for the first part of their escape.

They followed the railroad track that had carried them into the mines from the elevator, stopping at cross tracks for Pitt to recheck the map. Those precious seconds wasted seemed like years.

"Got any idea where we are?" asked Giordino quietly.

"I wished I sprinkled bread crumbs when we came in," Pitt murmured, holding up the map to a light bulb coated with dust. Suddenly, the approaching metal scraping against metal sounds of an ore train reverberated some distance behind in the tunnel.

"Freight coming," said Giordino.

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Pitt pointed to a natural fissure in the rock just 10 meters away on the far side of the tracks. "In there till it passes."

They darted into the fissure and stopped suddenly. A terrible sickly stench came through the crack in the rock, a putrid stench of nauseating vileness. Carefully, with great apprehension they moved through the fissure until it opened into a larger chamber. Pitt felt as if he was entering a dank catacomb. The chamber was pitch black, but the groping hand he ran along the wall touched an electrical switch. He pressed the switch upward and a vast cavern was illuminated in a ghostly light.

It was a catacomb, a subterranean cemetery for the dead. They had stumbled into the burial cave where O'Bannion and Melika stored the bodies of the laborers who were beaten and starved and overworked until death came as a welcome parole. The dead showed little sign of decomposition in the dry atmosphere. No ceremony here. The stiffened bodies were stacked crudely like timbers, nearly thirty to a pile. It was a ghastly, unnatural, and sorrowful sight.

"My God," Giordino gasped. "There must be over a thousand stiffs in here."

"Most convenient," Pitt said as a white flame of anger burnt within him. "O'Bannion and Melika don't have to bother with digging graves."

A chilling vision passed before Pitt's eyes, a vision of Eva, Dr. Hopper, and the rest heaped like all the other corpses, their sightless eyes staring at the rock ceiling. He closed his eyes, but the scene remained.

Only when the ore train clattered by the entrance to the crypt did he shake off the terrible image in his mind. When he spoke his voice came in a rasping whisper he scarcely recognized as his.

"Let's get to the surface."

The sound of the ore train faded into the distance as they paused and peered from the fissure leading to the catacomb, checking to see that there were no guards patrolling close by. The tunnel was clear and they ran into a side shaft that Fairweather's map indicated as a shortcut to the engineer's elevator. Then came an incredible piece of luck. This shaft was dripping damp and floored with duckboard.

Pitt tore up one of the duckboards and stared almost joyously at the puddle of water underneath. "Happy hour," he said. "Drink your gut full so we can save the canisters Hopper gave us."

"I don't have to be told," said Giordino, dropping to his knees and downing the cool water from cupped hands.

They had just taken their fill and were dropping the duckboard back in place when they heard the sound of voices at the rear end of the passage followed almost at once by the clank of chains.

"A work crew coming up behind us," Giordino murmured softly.

They hurried on, refreshed and with building optimism. Another minute and they reached the iron door leading to the elevator. They paused as Giordino shoved the small stick of dynamite in the keyhole and connected the cap. Then he moved back as Pitt picked up a rock and hurled it at the cap. He missed.

"Just pretend you're trying to drop a pretty girl into a water tank at a carnival," suggested Giordino wryly.

"Let's just hope the bang doesn't arouse the guards or alert the elevator operator," said Pitt, picking up another rock.

"They'll think it's only an echo from the blasting crew."

This time Pitt's throw was true and the cap burst, detonating the dynamite. The resulting detonation came as a sharp thud as the lock was blown apart. They rushed forward and pulled the iron door open, quickly entering the short passage to the elevator.