Sahara (Dirk Pitt 11)

They reverently left Kitty Mannock's body untouched, working around her without any display of emotion, sometimes addressing her as if she was alive as their thirst-crazed minds wandered in and out of limbo.

Giordino removed the two large landing wheels and small tail wheel, cleaned the grit from the bearings, and relubricated them with sludge from the engine's oil filter. The old rubber tires were cracked and sun-hardened. They still retained their shape, but there was no hope of them holding air, so Giordino removed the brittle innertubes, filled the tire casings with sand, and remounted them on the wheels.

Next he constructed runner extensions for the wheels from ribs he disassembled from the damaged wing. When finished, he cut the longitudinal spars attaching the center fuselage to the bulkhead just behind the cockpit with the hacksaw. Then he did the same with the tail section. After the midsection came free he began fastening the wider cockpit end to the fabricated wing extensions to support the two main landing wheels. The wheels now stretched 2.5 meters from the bottom side of the fuselage at its largest end. The opposite end that had tapered to the tail section was now the front of the land yacht, giving it a primitive aerodynamic appearance. The final touch to what now became the hull of the craft was the building of a runner bolted to the small tail wheel that extended 3 meters out in front. The nearly completed product resembled, to anyone old enough to remember the Our Gang and Little Rascals comedies, a 1930s backyard soapbox racer.

While Giordino was knocking together the hull, Pitt concentrated on the sail. Once the wing had been detached from the plane's fuselage, he stiffened the ailerons and flaps and extended the heavier spar inside the leading edge so that it formed a mast. Together, he and Giordino lifted the wing into a vertical position, stepped the mast into the center of the hull and mounted it, a job made easy by the lightness of the desert-dried wooden spars and fabric covering of the old airfoil. What they had created was a pivoting wind sail. Next Pitt used the aircraft's control cables to attach guy wires from Giordino's side runners, and the bow to the mast as supports. He then fashioned a tiller steering apparatus from the interior of the hull to the front runner and wheel with the aircraft's control cables. Finally, he fitted out a rigging system for the wind sail.

The finishing touches were the removal of the pilot's seats and their placement in the land yacht's cockpit, installing them in tandem. Pitt removed the aircraft's compass from the sand beside Kitty's body and mounted it beside the tiller. The tube he had used as a compass to guide their path this far,

he tied to the mast for a good luck souvenir.

They completed the job at three in the morning and then dropped like dead men in the sand. They lay there shivering in the bitter cold, staring at their masterpiece.

"It'll never fly," Giordino muttered, totally spent.

"She only has to move us across the flats."

"Have you figured out how we're going to get it out of the gulch?"

"About 50 meters down the valley, the incline of the east bank becomes gradual enough to pull it onto the surface of the dry lake."

"We'll be lucky to walk that far much less drag this thing up a slope. And at that, there's no guarantee it'll work."

"All we need is a light wind," said Pitt, scarcely audible. "And if the last six days are any indication, we don't have to worry on that score."

"Nothing like pursuing the impossible dream."

"She'll go," Pitt said resolutely.

"What do you think she weighs?"

"About 160 kilograms or 350 pounds."

"What are we going to call her?" asked Giordino.

"Call her?"

"A name, she's got to have a name."

Pitt nodded toward Kitty. "If we make it out of this pressure cooker, we'll owe it to her. How about the Kitty Mannock?"

"Good choice."

They babbled vaguely and sporadically, whispered voices in a great void of dead space, until they drifted off into a welcome sleep.

The bleaching sun was probing the bottom of the ravine when they finally awoke. Just rising to their feet was a monumental task of will. They bid a silent goodbye to Kitty and then staggered to the front of their improvised hope of survival. Pitt tied two lengths of cable to the front of the land yacht and handed one to Giordino.

"You feel up to it?"

"Hell no," Giordino spat out of a shriveled mouth.

Pitt grinned despite the pain from his cracked and bleeding lips. His eyes raked Giordino's, searching for the glow that would see them through. It was there, but very dim. "Race you to the top."

Giordino swayed as though like a drunk in a wind storm, but he winked and gamely said, "Eat my dust, sucker." And then he slung the cable over his shoulder, leaned forward to take up the strain, and promptly fell on his face.

The land yacht rolled as easily as a shopping cart across the tile floor of a supermarket and almost ran over him.

He looked up at Pitt through red eyes, surprise on his sunburned face. "By God she moves light as a feather."