Pitt nudged Levant. "Tell your drivers we're going to bear left 30 degrees and then continue straight and steady for about 8 kilometers."
Levant issued the directions over his radio communication system, and a moment later the personnel carriers swung around in formation and followed the dune buggy's lead.
Landmarks were scarce on the faint track running from the airstrip to the canyon carved in the plateau. Pitt relied half on his memory and half on eyesight. Plunging across the desert in the dead of night was nerve-racking enough, even with night-vision goggles. There was no way of seeing or knowing for certain what was behind the next hump in the road, or whether he had strayed off course and was leading the convoy off a cliff into a bottomless pit. Only an occasional stretch of tire track that hadn't been covered by wind-blown sand told him he was dead on the trail.
He stole a quick glance at Levant. The Colonel sat relaxed and incredibly composed. If he felt any fear of Pitt's wild drive over dark ground, he gave not the slightest indication. His only expression of concern came when he turned and checked to see that all three personnel carriers were following behind.
The plateau loomed ahead, its towering mass shutting off the lower curtain of stars to the west. Four minutes later a wave of relief swept Pitt. He had hit the slot right on the money. The opening into the twisting canyon split the plateau's black walls like the blow from an axe. He slowed and stopped.
The entrance cave that leads into the equipment parking cavern is only a kilometer from here," he said to Levant. "Do you wish to send a scouting party ahead on foot?"
Levant shook his head. "Continue on slowly, if you please, Mr. Pitt. At the risk of giving away our approach, we'll go in with the vehicles and save time. Make sense to you?"
"Why not? No one is expecting us. If O'Bannion's guards detect our approach, they'll probably assume we're a new batch of prisoners sent by Kazim and Massarde."
Pitt eased the dune buggy forward. The personnel carriers fell behind the dune buggy in a column. He feathered the accelerator only when he began to lose traction in the sand. He traveled in third gear with the engine turning over at little more than idling speed. The column crawled around the base of the steep walls that were defined in crisp black shadows. The specially modified mufflers on the vehicles could not completely stifle the sound of the exhaust, and the beat of the engines drummed softly across the hard surfaces of the rock like the distant drone of a piston engine aircraft. The night air was cool and there was only a whisper of wind, but the canyon walls still radiated with the memory of the day's heat.
The cave entrance suddenly yawned out of the darkness, and Pitt drove the dune buggy through the tight rock walls and into the main gallery as though it was the most natural thing to do. The interior was lit only by the lights that flooded from the office tunnel and stood empty except for one Renault truck and the expected security guard.
The heavily robed and turbaned Tuareg casually stared at the approaching vehicles more out of curiosity than wariness. Only when the dune buggy had pulled within a few meters did his eyes begin to widen in suspicion. He unslung his machine pistol from around his shoulder and was bringing it level when Levant shot him between the eyes with a silenced Beretta automatic.
"Nice shot," Pitt commented dryly as he braked the attack vehicle to a stop.
Levant checked his watch. "Thank you, Mr. Pitt. You put us here twelve minutes ahead of schedule."
"I aim to please."
The Colonel swung from the dune buggy and made a series of hand signals. Quickly, silently the U N tactical team members jumped to the ground, immediately formed into their respective units, and began moving into the tunnel. Once into the corridor with the fluted walls and tile floor, Levant's men began quietly entering the arched openings and rounding up O'Bannion's startled engineering crew as Giordino led the other three tactical units toward the main freight elevator indicated on Fairweather's map that dropped to the lower levels.
Four of O'Bannion's rogue mining engineers were taken as they were seated around a table playing poker. Before the surprised card players could react to the sudden appearance of armed men in camouflaged combat gear, who surrounded them with gun muzzles aimed at their heads, they were bound and gagged and thrown in a storeroom.
Silently, with only the slightest of pressure, Levant eased open the door marked as security monitoring center. The room inside was lit only by the light coming from an array of television monitors displaying different locations throughout the mines. A European male sat in a swivel chair with his back to the door. He was wearing a designer shirt and Bermuda shorts. He smoked a thin cigar in leisurely unconcern as he scanned the monitors whose video cameras were sweeping the mine shafts.
It was the reflection in one monitor with a dead screen that betrayed them. Alerted by the images of men entering the room behind him, the man shifted slightly to his left as his fingers casually crawled toward a small console containing a row of red switches. Too late Levant leapt at the man, swinging his Heckler & Koch in a vicious chop downward. The security guard went limp in his chair, then slumped unconscious over the console. But not before an alarm system began whooping like an ambulance siren throughout the entire mine.
"Damn the luck!" Levant cursed bitterly. "All surprise is gone." He shoved the guard aside and squeezed off ten rounds into the console. Electrical sparks and smoke erupted from the shattered switches and the whooping abruptly went silent.
Pitt ran down the corridor, throwing open doors until he kicked in the one to the communications room. The operator, a pretty Moorish-featured woman, was not intimidated by the abrupt intrusion and did not even look up from her radio equipment at Pitt's approach. Alerted by the siren, she was shouting rapid French into the microphone of the headset perched on her flowing black hair. He quickly stepped forward and clubbed her with his fist on the back of the neck. But like Levant with the security monitor, he was too late. Before he cut her off and she crumpled to the stone floor, the alarm had been transmitted to General Kazim's security forces.
"Not in time," said Pitt as Levant rushed into the room. "She got off a message before I could stop her."
Levant took in the situation with one quick glance. Then he turned and shouted a command. "Sergeant Chauvel!"
"Sir!" It was almost impossible to tell the Sergeant was a woman under her heavy combat suit.
"Get on the radio," Levant ordered in French, "and tell the Maligns that the alarm was a short circuit. Relieve any suggestion of an emergency. And for God's sake talk them out of taking any responsive action."
"Yes sir," Chauvel snapped purposefully before kicking the former radio operator out of the way and sitting down at the radio.
"O'Bannion's office is at the end of the corridor," said Pitt, pushing by Levant and running down the corridor. He didn't stop until he put his shoulder down and collided with the door. It was unlocked and he barreled into the reception chamber like a defensive tackle blitzing a quarterback.
The receptionist with the purple-gray eyes and buttocks length hair sat calmly at her desk, gripping a wicked-looking automatic pistol in both hands. Pitt's momentum carried him across the room and over the top of the desk, crashing into the woman and taking them both to the blue-carpeted floor in a tangled heap. But not before she ripped off two shots into Pitt's bulletproof assault vest.
Pitt's
chest felt as though someone had struck it twice with a hammer. The blows had temporarily knocked the wind out of him but in no way slowed him down. The receptionist tried to extricate herself while shouting what Pitt was certain were obscenities in a language unknown to him. She fired off another shot that went over his shoulder, ricocheting off the rock ceiling into a painting, before he snatched the gun from her hand. Then he jerked her to her feet and flung her onto a couch.
He turned away and stepped between the two bronze sculptures of the Tuaregs and tried the handle to the door of O'Bannion's office. It was locked. He lifted the gun taken from the receptionist, placed it against the lock, and pulled the trigger three times. The gunfire was deafening m the rock room, but there was no longer any need for stealth. He stood around the wall and shoved the door open with his toe.