Sahara (Dirk Pitt 11)

"Pure luck on our part," Pitt admitted.

"Who's paying for this call?"

"The U.S. embassy in Algiers."

"In that case, hold the line. I'll be right back." Perlmutter hefted his bulk from the desk chair, ambled over to a bookshe

lf, and scanned its contents for a few seconds. Finding the book he was looking for, he pulled it out, returned to the desk, and thumbed through the pages. Then he retrieved the phone. "You did say the name of the ship was the Texas?"

"Yes, that's it."

"An ironclad ram," Perlmutter recited. "She was built at the Rocketts naval yard in Richmond and launched in March of 1865, just a month before the war ended, 190-foot length with a 40-foot beam. Twin engines, twin screws, drawing 11 feet of water, 6-inch armor. Her battery consisted of two 100-pound Blakelys and two 9-inch, 64pounders. Speed, 14 knots." Perlmutter paused. "You get all that?"

"She sounds like a pretty powerful ship for her day."

"Yes indeed, and about twice as fast as any other armored vessel in both the Union and Confederate navies."

"What was her history?"

"Pretty short," answered Perlmutter. "Her one and only appearance in combat was an epic running fight down the James River through an entire Union navy fleet and past the forts in Hampton Roads. Badly damaged, she escaped into the Atlantic and was never seen again."

"Then her disappearance was a reality," said Pitt.

"Yes, but hardly an unnatural phenomenon. Since none of the Confederate ironclads were built for other than river and harbor duty, they were unsafe for ocean passage. It was generally thought she floundered in rough water and sank."

"You think it possible she could have crossed the ocean to West Africa and steamed up the Niger River?"

"The Atlanta is the only other Confederate ironclad I recall that tried to cross open water. She was captured during a fight with two Union monitors on Wassaw Sound in Georgia. About a year after the war she was sold to the King of Haiti for his navy. She left Chesapeake Bay for the Caribbean and vanished. Crews that served on her claimed she took on water even in mild weather."

"And yet the old prospector swore French colonists and natives handed down stories of an iron monster without sails going up the Niger."

"Do you want me to check it out."

"Could you?"

"I'm hooked already," said Perlmutter "I see another little enigma that makes the Texas so interesting."

"What's that?" asked Pitt.

"I'm looking at the bible of Civil War navies," replied Perlmutter slowly. "They all list several or more references for additional research. The poor Texas has no references at all. It's almost as if someone meant for her to be forgotten."

Pitt and Giordino discreetly left the American embassy through the lobby of the passport office, stepped out onto the street, and hailed a taxi. Pitt gave the driver directions written down in French by an embassy aide and settled back as the taxi wove through the main square past the city's picturesque mosques with their towering minarets. Their luck of the draw was a hyper driver who constantly honked and cursed the crowds of pedestrians and heavy auto traffic that flowed blissfully through stop lights and past policemen who showed little interest in controlling the mess.

At the main thoroughfare that paralleled the busy waterfront, the driver swung south and drove to the city's outskirts where he stopped in a winding alley as instructed. Pitt paid him off and waited until the taxi turned out of sight. In less than a minute, a French air force staff car pulled up, a 605 Peugeot diesel sedan. They climbed into the back seat without any acknowledgment from the uniformed driver, who accelerated down the alley before Giordino closed the rear door.

Ten kilometers later, the car stopped at the main gate of a military airfield flying the tricolor over the sentry house. The security guard took one look at the Peugeot and nodded it through as he threw a sharp French salute with the palm facing outward. At the entrance to the tarmac the driver stopped and inserted the staff of a checkered flag into a socket mounted on the left front fender.

"Don't tell me," said Giordino. "I'm keen to guess. We're the grand marshals in a parade."

Pitt laughed. "Have you forgotten your air force days? Any vehicle that drives across the flight line has to fly an authorization flag."

The Peugeot rolled by a long row of Mirage 2000 delta wing fighters being serviced by their ground crews. One end of the flight line held a squadron of AS-332 Super Puma helicopters that looked as if they were designed by a myopic Buck Rogers. Built to carry air-to-surface missiles, they did not have the killer look of most other attack helicopters.

The driver continued to the deserted end of a secondary runway and parked. They sat there waiting, Giordino promptly dozing off under the comfort of the staff car's air conditioning, while Pitt casually read an embassy copy of the Wall Street Journal.

Fifteen minutes later a big airbus silently banked out of the west and touched down. Neither Pitt nor Giordino was aware of the aircraft's approach until they heard the screech of its tires hitting the concrete runway. Giordino came awake and Pitt folded up his paper as the plane braked and then slowly turned on one wheel until it had rotated 180 degrees. As soon as the huge tires rolled to a stop, the driver of the Peugeot shifted in gear and drove up within 5 meters of the rear of the aircraft.