"The devious mind again. It never stops churning."
Pitt briefly stared up at the sickle moon. He would have preferred a full phase, but he was thankful for what little light it sent down as he drove the truck across a terrain equal to a lunar landscape. He shifted gears and strained his eyes on the uneven ground revealed by the headlights. Then suddenly the desert smoothed out and began to sparkle like fireworks.
The Renault rolled onto a huge dry lake with crystal deposits that reflected the twin beams from the headlights like prisms in rainbow colors. Pitt opened the Renault up in high gear and felt exhilarated to be speeding over a firm, flat surface at nearly 90 kilometers an hour.
The desert floor seemed to reach into infinity, the early morning stars falling below the horizon line as if the great brink of a flat world abruptly fell away into space. The sky looked as if it was closing in all around them like the four walls and ceiling of a small room. An unnerving sense of disorientation gripped Pitt. Yet he was following nearly the same parallel as Havana, Cuba, so the big dipper was still above the horizon. He continually used Polaris as a base point to line up a star to the east and then steered toward it.
Hour passed upon monotonous hour as the crystal lake gave way to low, boulder-strewn hills. Pitt could not recall having experienced such a heavy shroud of monotony. His only respite was a small peak off his left to the north that rose like an island in the middle of a vast and sterile sea.
Giordino took over the driving chore as the sun burst from the horizon as if shot from a cannon. There it seemed to hang without moving throughout the day until suddenly falling like a rock shortly before sunset. Shadows stretched far into the distance or did not exist. There was no in-between.
An hour after daylight, Pitt stopped the truck and searched around the cargo bed until he found a loose pipe about a meter in length. Then he stepped to the ground and pushed the pipe into the sand until it stood vertical and cast a shadow. Picking up two small stones, he placed one at the tip of the shadow.
"Is this your poor man's compass?" asked Giordino, studying Pitt's actions from the shade of the truck.
"Observe the master at work." He joined Giordino and waited approximately twelve minutes before marking the distance the shadow had traveled with another stone. Next he drew a straight line from the first stone to the second and extended it about half a meter beyond. He then stood with the toe of his left foot at
the first rock and toe of his right where the line ended. Lifting his left arm and pointing straight ahead, he said, "That's north." Then he extended his right arm to the side. "East to the Trans-Saharan Track."
Giordino sighted down Pitt's outstretched right arm and hand. "I see a dune in that direction we can use as a reference point."
They moved on, repeating the process every hour. At about nine o'clock the wind began to blow from the southeast, swirling the sand in clouds that cut visibility to less than 200 meters. By ten, the heated wind had increased and. was seeping into the cab of the truck despite the rolled-up windows. Swept up in small gusts, the sand rose and twisted' like whirling dervishes.
The mercury jumped and fell like a pogo stick. This day the temperature rose from 15 degrees C (60 degrees F) to 35 degrees C (95 degrees F) in three hours, topping off during the hottest part of the afternoon at 46 degrees C (114 degrees F). Pitt and Giordino felt as if they were driving into a furnace, the air hot and dry in their nostrils as they breathed in and exhaled. Their only relief came from the breeze generated by their speed over the stripped and barren land.
The needle on the temperature gauge wavered and hung a millimeter off the red boiling mark, but the radiator showed no sign of leaking steam. They stopped every half hour now, as Pitt sighted direction from what little sun shone through the dust cloud and allowed the pipe to cast a faint shadow.
He opened one of the canisters of water and offered it to Giordino. "Liquid refreshment time."
"How much?" asked Giordino.
"We'll split it. That will give us half a liter each with one in reserve for tomorrow."
Giordino steered with his knees as he gauged his share of the water and then drank. He passed the canister back to Pitt. "O'Bannion must have set his dogs on the trail by now."
"Driving the same make and model truck, they won't close the gap unless they've got a Formula One, Grand Prix champion driver at the wheel. Their only advantage is having extra fuel on board to continue the chase after we've run dry."
"Why didn't we think of loading on reserves?"
"There were no gas storage drums around the truck parking area. I looked. They must have stored them elsewhere, and we didn't have time to spare for a search."
"O'Bannion just might whistle up a whirlybird," Giordino said as he down-shifted to crawl over a low dune.
"Fort Foureau and the Malian military are his only sources for a helicopter. And my guess is the last people he'll call on for help are Kazim and Massarde. He knows damn well they wouldn't look kindly on his losing public enemies one and two only a few hours after we were placed in his tender and loving care."
"You don't think O'Bannion's posse can hunt us down before we cross into Algeria?"
"They can't follow us through a sandstorm any more than a Mountie can track his man through a blizzard." Pitt tilted a thumb over his shoulder out the rear window. "No tracks."
Giordino looked into a sideview mirror and saw the wind sweep the sand over the tire tracks as if the truck was a small boat on a vast sea that closed over its wake. He relaxed and slouched in his seat. "You don't know what a pleasure it is to travel with a Pollyanna."
"Don't write off O'Bannion just yet. If they reach the Trans-Saharan Track first and patrol back and forth until we appear, the show is over."
Pitt finished off the canister and tossed it in the back with the Tuareg guard who had become conscious and was sitting with his back against the tailgate of the truck, glaring at the men inside the cab.
"How's the gas?" Pitt asked.
"Almost on fumes."