Giordino pushed himself from under the vehicle and examined Pitt, his eyes traveling from the unlaced boots to the half-opened combat suit to the disheveled hair. When he finally spoke, it was in a voice heavy with sarcasm.
"I bet that keg wasn't the only thing you exposed in the storeroom."
When the report from the railroad section hands came into Kazim's security headquarters from Fort Foureau, it was given a quick read and set aside by Major Sid Ahmed Gowan, Kazim's personal intelligence officer. He saw nothing of value in it, and certainly no reason to pass it on to that Turkish interloper, Ismail Yerli.
Gowan failed to spot a connection between an abandoned fort and an elusive prey 400 kilometers to the north. The railroad workers who insisted the fort was locked from the inside were haughtily brushed off as a pair of dubious informants attempting to ingratiate themselves with their superiors.
But as the hours dragged by without any sighting of the UN force, Major Gowan took another look at the account and his suspicions began to grow. He was a thoughtful man, young and highly intelligent, the only officer in General Kazim's security forces who was educated in France and had graduated from Saint Cyr, France's foremost military college. He began to see a possibility of pulling off a coup to please his leader and make Yerli appear an amateur intelligence specialist.
He picked up the phone and called the commander of the Malian air forces, requesting an aerial reconnaissance of the desert south of Tebezza with special emphasis on vehicle tracks in the sand. As a backup precaution he also advised Fort Foureau to stop all trains from leaving or entering the project. If the UN force had indeed crossed the desert southward without being observed, Gowan speculated, perhaps they had holed up in the old Foreign Legion fort during daylight hours. With their vehicles certain to be low on fuel, they would probably await darkness before attempting to capture an outbound train headed for the Mauritanian border:
All Gowan needed to confirm his hunch was an aerial sighting of fresh vehicle tracks traveling from Tebezza to the railroad. Positive that he was now on the right trail, $e rang Kazim and explained his new analysis of the search operation.
Inside the fort the hardest ingredient of suffering was time. Everyone counted the minutes until darkness. Each hour that passed without sign of an attack was considered a gift. But by four o'clock in the afternoon, Levant knew something was terribly wrong.
He was standing on a rampart studying the hazardous waste project through binoculars when Pembroke-Smythe approached with Pitt in tow.
"You sent for me, Colonel?" asked Pitt.
Levant replied without dropping the glasses. "When you and Mr. Giordino penetrated the grounds of the waste project, did you by chance time the passing trains?"
"Yes, the inbound and outbound trains alternated, one entering three hours after one exited."
Levant put down the glasses and stared at Pitt. "Then what do you make of the fact that no train has appeared for four and a half hours?"
"A problem with the track, a derailment, breakdown of equipment. There could be any number of reasons for a slowdown in the schedule."
"Is that what you believe?"
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"Not for an instant."
"What is your best guess?" Levant persisted.
Pitt stared at the empty rails running in front of the old fort. "If I was betting a year's wages, I'd have to say they're on to us."
"You think the trains were halted to prevent us from escaping?"
Pitt nodded. "It stands to reason that once Kazim wises up to our end run, and his search patrols spot our wheel tracks traveling south to the railroad, he'll realize our objective was to hijack a train."
"The Malians are smarter than I gave them credit for," Levant admitted. "Now we're trapped with no means of communicating our situation to General Bock."
Pembroke-Smythe cleared his throat. "If I may suggest, sir. I would like to volunteer to make a dash toward the border to meet up with the American Special Forces team and lead them back."
Levant looked at him sternly for a moment. "A suicide mission at best."
"It may well be our only chance at getting anyone out of here. By taking the fast attack vehicle, I can be over the border inside of six hours."
"You're optimistic, Captain," Pitt corrected him. "I've driven over this part of the desert. Just when you're traveling at speed across what looks like a flat dry plain, you drop 50 feet off a slope into a ravine. And there is no traveling through sand dunes if you expect to make time. I'd say you'll be lucky to hit Mauritania by late tomorrow morning."
"I intend to travel as the crow flies by driving on the railroad."
"A dead giveaway. Kazim's patrols will be all over you before you've covered 50 kilometers, if they haven't already set up blockades across the tracks."
"Aren't you forgetting our lack of fuel?" added Levant. "There isn't enough gas to carry you a third of the way."