Sahara (Dirk Pitt 11)

"Of course, she had a pair of first-rate mechanics."

With no more talk they pulled their hand-built land yacht down the middle of the wash until they came to a slope that angled 30 degrees up to the surface of the dry lake.

The climb was only 7 meters, but to men who were staring in the grave only eighteen hours before, the top edge of the slope looked like the summit of Mount Everest. They had not expected to live through another night, and yet here they were confronting what they were certain was the final obstacle between rescue or death.

Pitt made the attempt first while Giordino rested. He clasped one of the tow cables around his waist and began crawling up the incline like a drunken ant, edging upward a few centimeters at a time. His body was but a terribly worn-out machine serving the demands of a mind that had only the thinnest grip on reality. His aching muscles protested with shooting agony. His arms and legs gave out early in the climb, but he forced them to carry on. His bloodshot eyes were almost closed from fatigue, his face deeply etched in suffering, lungs sucking in air with painful gasps, heart beating like a jackhammer under the inhuman strain.

Pitt could not let himself stop. If he and Giordino died, all the poor souls slaving their lives away at Tebezza would die too, their true fate unknown to the outside world. He could not give up, collapse, and expire, not now, not this close to beating the old guy with the scythe. He ground his teeth together in a rage of tenacity and kept climbing.

Giordino tried to shout words of encouragement, but all he could rasp out was an inaudible whisper.

And then mercifully, Pitt's hands groped over the edge and he summoned the will to pull his battered body onto the dry lake. He lay there a faint shadow away from unconsciousness, aware of only his hoarse gasping breathing and a heart that felt as if it was going to pound its way through his rib cage.

He wasn't sure how long he lay fully exposed under the baking sun until his breathing and heart slowed to something close to a regular pace. Finally, he pushed to his hands and knees and peered down the slope. Giordino was sitting comfortably in the shade of the wing sail, and managed a weak wave.

"Ready to come up?" Pitt asked.

Giordino wearily nodded, took hold of the tow cable, and pressed his body against the slope, feebly working his way upward. Pitt slung his end of the cable over his shoulder and used the leverage of his weight by leaning forward without exerting energy. Four minutes later, half crawling, half dragged by Pitt, Giordino rolled limply onto flat ground like a fish that had been reeled in after a long struggle against hook and line.

"Now comes the fun part," Pitt uttered weakly.

"I'm not up to it," Giordino gasped.

Pitt looked down at him. Giordino already looked dead. His eyes were closed, his face and ten-day beard powdered with white dust. If he could not help Pitt pull the land yacht out of the ravine both of them would die this day.

Pitt knelt down and struck him sharply across the face. "Don't quit on me now," he muttered harshly. "How do you expect to score with Massarde's gorgeous piano player if you don't get off your butt and pitch in."

Giordino's eyes fluttered open and he rubbed a hand across his dust-coated cheek. With a supreme effort of will, he hauled himself to his feet and tottered drunkenly. He stared at Pitt without any malice at all, and despite his misery, he managed a grin. "I hate myself for being so predictable."

"Good thing too."

Like a team of emaciated mules in harness, they took up the tow cables and pitched forward, their bodies too weak to do much more than take a few plodding steps as their combined weight slowly but immeasurably pulled the land yacht up the slope. Their heads were bowed, backs hunched over, minds lost in the delirium of thirst. Progress was heartbreakingly slow.

Soon they dropped to their knees and pitifully crawled forward. Giordino noticed that blood was dripping frog Pitt's hands where the cable had burned into his palms, but he was entirely oblivious to it. Then suddenly the cables slackened and the improvised land yacht was over the tore and had bumped into them. Fortunately Pitt had the foresight to tie down the rigging of the wind sail so its trailing edge was now pointing directly into a light wind and did not generate any driving force.

After unclasping the tow cables, Pitt helped Giordino it to the fuselage until he dropped like a sack of potatoes in the forward seat. Then Pitt looked up at the thin strip of tell-tale cloth he'd tied in the rigging and threw a handful of sand in the air to pinpoint the wind direction. It was blowing out of the northwest.

The moment of truth had arrived. He looked down at Giordino who made a listless forward gesture with one hand and spoke in a weak, husky whisper.

"Move it out."

Pitt leaned on the rear of the fuselage and pushed the craft from a standstill until it was moving slowly across the sand. After a few stumbling steps he fell limply into the rear seat. The wind was to the leeward behind his left shoulder, and he let out the sheet line and eased over the tiller so that he was carried on a downwind tack. He took in a little on the sheet line as the wind built up on the wing sail and the Kitty Mannock began to move on her own. Her speed picked up rapidly as Pitt took in a little more line.

He glanced down at the aircraft compass, took a reading, and set his course, exhaustion and exhilaration flooding through his seemingly dusty arteries at the same time. He trimmed the wing sail as it flexed under the wind and soon the land yacht was whipping across the dry lake, her wheels kicking up trails of dust, in glorious silence at nearly 60 kilometers an hour.

The thrill quickly reversed to near panic as Pitt overcorrected and suddenly there was daylight under the windward wheel. Higher it lifted in a condition known among land sailors as hiking. He had moved the sail too far into the wind, increasing power. Now he had to take corrective action to prevent the hike from capsizing the land yacht, a disaster in the making because neither he nor Giordino had the strength to right it again.

He was almost at the point of no return when he eased the sheet lines and gently swung the tiller, sending the craft luffing to windward. He held his course and the hike settled and shallowed until the wheel was barely touching the ground.

Pitt had sailed small boats when he was a boy growing up in Newport Beach, California, but certainly never at this speed. As he headed off the wind on a broad reach angle of 45 degrees, he began fine-trimming his huge wing sail

with the sheet lines and small steering corrections. A quick check of his compass heading told him it was time to tack on a new zigzag course eastward.

As he began to feel more confident, he had to restrain himself from pushing and challenging the outside edge, the high speed line that divides control from an accident. He wasn't about to back off now, but discretion reminded him that the Kitty Mannock was not the most stable of land yachts, and she was held together with little more than sixty-year-old wire, cable, and spit.

He settled back and kept a wary eye on the dust devils that swirled across the desolate lake. A sudden puff or gust out of nowhere and over they'd go, never to continue. Pitt well knew they were riding on luck. Another ravine, unseen until it was too late, or a rock that could tear off a runner, any one of a dozen catastrophes could leap at them from the merciless desert.

She skidded and she yawed but the Kitty Mannock sped across the dry lake at speeds Pitt had not imagined the oddball craft was capable of. The head wind began driving sand into his face like buckshot. With a steadily increasing wind at his back he guessed they were reaching 85 kilometers an hour. After plodding across the desert wastes for days, it seemed as though they were skimming over the ground in a jet. He hoped against hope the Kitty Mannock would hang together.