Sahara (Dirk Pitt 11)

when the grenade went off."

"I'm so glad you're here. I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to see you again."

"I hope you have a dress all picked out for our date," he said as he put his arm around her shoulders and gently moved her until her head rested in his lap. Out of sight behind her view, he eased the automatic from his belt and held the muzzle a centimeter behind her right temple.

"I have a restaurant all picked out. . ." She hesitated and tilted her head as if listening. "Did you hear it?"

"Hear what?"

"I'm not sure. It sounded like a whistle."

Pitt was certain the sedatives had caused her mind to wander. There was no way a strange sound could be heard above the din of the fighting. His finger began to tighten on the trigger.

"I don't hear anything," he said.

"No. . . no, there it is again."

He hesitated as her eyes came alive and reflected a vague sort of anticipation. But he willed himself to go through with it. He leaned down to kiss her lips and distract her as he began to squeeze the trigger again.

She tried to lift her head. "You must hear it?"

"Goodbye, love."

"A train whistle," she said excitedly. "It's Al, he's come back."

Pitt released the pressure on the trigger and cocked his head toward the upper entrance to the stairway. Then he heard it over the sporadic gunfire. Not a whistle, but the faint blare of a diesel locomotive air horn.

Giordino stood beside the engineer and pulled the air horn cord like a crazy man as the train thundered over the rails toward the fighting. He stared and stared at the fort, hardly recognizing the ravaged structure as it grew larger through the windshield of the locomotive cab. The utter devastation, the pall of black smoke rising in the sky, made him sick at heart. From all appearances the relief force was too late.

Hargrove gazed, fascinated. He couldn't believe that anyone could live through such destruction. Most all the parapets were shot away, the ramparts in unbelievable shambles. The front wall where the main gate once stood was nothing but a small mountain of tangled stone. He was astounded at the number of bodies strewn around the perimeter of the fort and the four burned-out tanks.

"God but they put up a hell of a fight," Hargrove muttered in awe.

Giordino pressed the muzzle of a pistol against the engineer's temple. "Lay on the brakes and stop this thing. Now!"

The engineer, a Frenchman, who had been pirated away from operating the superfast TVG train between Paris and Lyons by double the salary from Massarde Enterprises, applied the brakes, stopping the train directly between the fort and Kazim's field headquarters.

With clock-like precision, Hargrove's special operations warriors poured off the train in both directions simultaneously and hit the ground running. One unit launched an immediate attack on the Malian field headquarters, catching Kazim and his staff by complete surprise. The rest of the force began assaulting the Malian army from the rear. The covers were quickly thrown off the Apache helicopters that were tied down on the flatbed cars. Within two minutes they were lifting into the air, swinging into position to fire their hellfire missiles.

In the sudden panic and confusion, Kazim stood rooted at the realization that the American Special Forces had sneaked across the border under the noses of his air screen. He was sick to his stomach in shock and made no effort to direct a defense or run for cover.

Colonels Mansa and Cheik each grabbed Kazim by an arm and hustled him out of his headquarters' tent into a staff car as Captain Batutta quickly jumped behind the wheel. Ismail Yerli shared their love of self-preservation and climbed in the seat beside Batutta.

"Get out of here!" Mansa shouted at Batutta as he and Cheik climbed in the backseat on each side of Kazim. "In the name of Allah, move before we're all killed""

Batutta had no more wish to die than his superiors. Leaving their men to fight out of the trap on their own, the officers had no second thoughts about fleeing the battlefield to save their own skins. Frightened beyond logical thinking, Batutta raced the engine and threw the staff car in gear. Though the vehicle was a four-wheel-drive, he dug the tires deeply in the soft sand, cutting twin trenches without achieving traction. In panic, Batutta kept his foot jammed on the accelerator. The engine shrieked in protest at the excessive revolutions as he stupidly made matters worse by driving the wheels into the ground up to their axle hubs.

Mouthing soundless words, Kazim abruptly returned to reality, and his face twisted in terror. "Save me!" he screamed. "I order you to save me!"

"You fool!" Mansa yelled at Batutta. "Let off the gas or we'll never get away."

"I'm trying!" Batutta snapped back, sweat bursting from his forehead.

Only Yerli sat calmly and accepted his fate. He stared out the side window silently as he watched death approaching in the shape of a big, purposeful-looking man in American desert combat gear.

Master Sergeant Jason Rasmussen of Paradise Valley, Arizona, had led his team off the train and straight at Kazim's headquarters' tents. Their job was to capture the communications section and prevent the Malians from spreading an alarm that would bring on an attack by Kazim's air force. In and out faster than a vampire pisses blood, as Colonel Hargrove had expressed it so picturesquely during the briefing, or else they were all dead meat if the Malian jet fighters caught them before their helicopters could recross the Mauritanian border.

After his team members had swept aside weak resistance from the stunned Malian soldiers and achieved their goal of cutting off all communications, Rasmussen noticed the staff car out of the corner of his eyes and began running after it. From the rear he could make out three heads in the backseat and two in the front. His first thought, when he saw that the car appeared stuck in the sand, was to take the men inside as prisoners. But then the vehicle suddenly leaped forward and bounced onto firm ground. The driver cautiously increased speed and the car began to pull away.