Sahara (Dirk Pitt 11)

"Not unless they have a lousy sense of direction. They're smack in the center of northern Mali. The nearest border to another country is a good 350 kilometers."

Webster took a long moment to reply. "It must be Pitt and Giordino. But where in hell did they find a car?"

"Looks to me like they're resourceful men."

"They should have given up searching for the contamination source long ago. What madness has overtaken them?"

It was a question Greenwald could not answer. "Maybe they'll give you a call from Fort Foureau," he suggested, half serious, half in jest.

"They're heading for the French solar waste project?"

"They've only another 50 kilometers to go. And it's the only slice of Western civilization around."

"Thank you, Tom," said Webster sincerely. "The next favor is mine. How about me taking you and our wives to dinner?"

"Sounds good. Pick any restaurant and call me with day and time."

Greenwald dropped the receiver in its cradle and refocused his attention on the fuzzy object and the two tiny figures next to it.

"You guys have to be crazy," he said to the empty room.

Then he closed down the system and went home.

The dawn sun came up and cast a wave of heat across the desert like an oven door thrown open. The cool of the night vanished as quickly as the passing of a cloud. A pair of ravens flew across the oppressive sky, spied something that did not belong on the empty landscape, and began circling in hopes of finding a meal. On closer inspection they saw that a live human offered nothing of taste, and they slowly winged off to the north.

Pitt lay stretched out on the upper slope of a low dune, almost buried in the sand, and stared up at the birds for a few moments. Then he turned his attention back to the immense sprawl of the Fort Foureau solar detoxification project. It was an unreal place. Not simply a man-made edifice to technology but a thriving, productive facility surrounded by a land that had long since died under the onslaught of drought and heat.

Pitt twisted slightly as he heard the soft movement of sand behind him and saw Giordino approaching on his stomach, wiggling up the dune like a lizard.

"Enjoying the scenery?" asked Giordino.

"Come take a look. I guarantee you'll be impressed."

"The only thing that would impress me right now is a beach with nice cool surf."

"Don't let your curly locks show," said Pitt. "A black tuft of hair against the yellow-white sand stands out like a skunk on a fence post."

Giordino grinned like the village idiot as he poured a handful of sand into his hair. He moved alongside Pitt, peering over the summit of the dune. "My, my," he murmured in awe. "If I didn't know better, I'd say I was looking at a city on the moon."

"The sterile landscape is there," Pitt admitted, "but there's no glass dome over the top."

"This place is almost as big as Disney World."

"I'd estimate 20 square kilometers."

"We have incoming freight," said Giordino, pointing to a long train of railroad cars dr

awn by four diesel engines. "Business must be booming."

"Massarde's toxic gravy train," Pitt mused. "I estimate about a hundred and twenty cars filled with poisonous garbage."

Giordino nodded toward a vast field covered with long trough-like basins with concave surfaces that bounced the sun's rays like a sea of mirrors. "Those look like solar reflectors."

"Concentrators," said Pitt. "They collect solar radiation and concentrate it into tremendous heat and proton intensities. The radiant energy is then focused inside a chemical reactor that completely destroys the hazardous waste."

"Aren't we the bright one," said Giordino. "When did you become an expert on sunlight?"