Sahara (Dirk Pitt 11)

Revenge dominated all of Giordino's emotions. Melika was as mad and vicious as a rabid pit bull. She had maimed and murdered for the pure enjoyment of it. Even now, as she lay twisted across the loose rock, legs grotesquely bent, she stared up at him with bared teeth and pure malignity glaring out of her black eyes. Her crazed sadism welled up from within and overcame the searing pain. She snarled at Giordino like a wounded beast and struggled to lash out at him with the thong while shouting the vilest of obscenities.

Giordino easily stepped back and bemusedly observed her futile assault. "It's a violent, unrelenting world," he said slowly, "but less so now that you're leaving it."

"You sawed-off little bastard," she snarled. "What do you know about a violent world? You've never lived amid filth and suffered the torment and rottenness I have."

Giordino's expression was as hard as the rock in the mine shaft. "That didn't give you a license to inflict agony on others. As judge and executioner, I'm not interested in your life's problems. Maybe you have your reasons for becoming what you are. If you ask me, you were born sick. You've left a long road littered with innocent victims. There is no excuse for you to live."

Melika did not beg. The black hatred and venomous malevolence poured out of her mouth in curses. With calculated efficiency, Giordino shot her in the stomach twice. The blazing eyes took their last look, seeing only Giordino's indifferent expression, and then went vacant as her massive body seemed to shrivel into the rock floor of the shaft.

Giordino looked down at her for several moments before he finally spoke to an unhearing corpse.

"Ding dong," he muttered, "the witch is dead."

"Total count is twenty-five," Pembroke-Smythe reported to Levant. "Fourteen men, eight women, and three children. All half dead from attrition."

"That's one woman and one child less than when Giordino and I left here," said Pitt in solemn anger.

Levant stared at the personnel vehicles that were being loaded with the freed captives and then glanced at his watch. "We're sixteen minutes over our dead

line," he said impatiently. "Hurry things along, will you, Captain. We must be on our way."

"Ready to go in a jiff," Pembroke-Smythe said cheerfully as he rushed around the vehicles, urging the tactical team members to speed up the loading effort.

"Where is your friend, Giordino?" Levant asked Pitt. "If he doesn't show soon, he'll be left behind,"

"He had a chore to do."

"He'll be lucky to make his way through the rioting on the lower levels. After the prisoners broke into the food stores and water supply, they began wreaking their vengeance on the guards. The last team to withdraw from the lower levels reported a massacre in progress."

"They can hardly be blamed after the hell they've endured," said Pitt thoughtfully.

"I feel bad having to abandon them," admitted Levant. "But if we don't leave soon they'll come surging up the elevators, and we'll have a devil of a time fighting them off our vehicles."

Giordino came trotting out of the office corridor past a six-man commando team guarding the entrance to the equipment cavern. A very smug expression was settled on his face. He grinned at Pitt and Levant. "Glad to see you held up the show just for little old me."

Levant was not amused. "You're hardly the reason behind our delay."

"Melika?" Pitt asked.

Giordino held up the thong he'd taken as a souvenir. "Signing the guest register in hell. And O'Bannion?"

"Managing the mortuary."

"Ready to push off," Smythe shouted from a personnel vehicle.

Levant nodded. "Mr. Pitt, if you will kindly lead us back to the airstrip."

Pitt made a quick check on Eva, amazed at her rapid revival after drinking nearly a gallon of water and ravenously downing a quick meal provided by the UN medical team. Hopper, Grimes, and Fairweather also looked as if they had been resurrected. Then he ran to the armed dune buggy and swung into the driver's seat.

With only seconds to spare, the rear guard ran toward the last departing vehicle and was pulled aboard as the prisoners flooded out of the mines and rushed through the offices into the equipment cavern. They arrived too late and could only watch in cruel disappointment as the special force that had saved them from a brutal death sped off into the night, leaving them to an uncertain fate.

Pitt saw no need for caution as he accelerated through the canyon. He turned on the narrow-beamed headlights of the desert assault vehicle and kept his foot flat on the floorboard. At Colonel Levant's urging he had left the personnel vehicles far in his wake as they rushed ahead to oversee the preparations for a hasty boarding and fast takeoff. Giordino was driving the lead carrier now and easily tracked the several sets of tire indentations once Pitt and his trailing dust cloud had pulled out of sight.

Levant was edgy on the return trip. Doggedly he checked his watch every few minutes with dire foreboding, disturbed that they were now a tardy twenty-two minutes behind his timetable. With only 5 kilometers to go, he began to feel more at ease. The sky was clear and there was no indication of aircraft. He began to feel a tinge of optimism. Perhaps Kazim's security forces were lulled by Sergeant Chauvel's deceptive excuse for the alert signal after all.

Disillusionment came quickly.