Sahara (Dirk Pitt 11)

"You just stepped on my foot," grunted Giordino.

"Sorry." Pitt gestured up at a smooth wall where a figure was about to throw a spear at a buffalo. "I didn't expect company."

Giordino looked over Pitt's shoulder at the spear thrower, stunned to face rock artwork in the most barren part of the world. He slowly peered around at a massive gallery of prehistoric and ancient art that displayed centuries of artistic styles of successive cultures.

"Is this real?" he muttered.

Pitt moved closer to the mysterious rock paintings and examined a 3-meter-high figure with a mask that sprouted flowers from its head and shoulders. The thirst and fatigue dropped away as he stared in awe. "The art is genuine all right. I wish I was an archaeologist and could interpret the various styles and cultures. The earliest paintings seem to begin at the back of the cave, and then the overlapping cultures work chronologically forward to more recent times."

"How can you tell?"

"Ten to twelve thousand years ago the Sahara had a moist and tropical climate. Plant life blossomed. It was far more livable than it is now." He nodded at a group of figures surrounding and thrusting spears at a giant, wounded buffalo with enormous horns. "This must be the earliest painting because it shows hunters killing a buffalo almost the size of an elephant that's been long extinct."

Pitt moved to another piece of artwork that covered several square meters. "Here you can see herders with cattle," he said, gesturing at the images with his hands. "The pastoral era began about 5000 B.C. This later-style art shows more creative composition and an eye for detail."

"A hippopotamus," said Giordino, staring at a colossal drawing that covered one entire side of a flattened rock. "This part of the Sahara can't have seen one of these for a while."

"Not in three thousand years anyway. Hard to visualize this area once was a vast grassland that supported life from ostrich to antelope to giraffe."

As they moved on, and the passage of time in the Sahara unrolled across the rock, Giordino observed, "About here it looks like the local artists stopped drawing cattle and the vegetation."

"Eventually the rains died away and the land began to dry out," lectured Pitt, recalling a long forgotten course in ancient history. "After four thousand years of uncontrolled grazing the vegetation was gone and the desert began to take over."

Giordino moved from the inner recesses of the cavern toward the entrance, stopping in front of another painting. "This one shows a chariot race."

"People from the Mediterranean introduced horses and chariots sometime before 1000 B.C.," explained Pitt. "But I had no idea they penetrated this deep into the desert."

"What comes next, teacher?"

"The camel period," answered Pitt, standing in front of a long painting of a caravan depicting near

ly sixty camels strung out in an S shape. "They were brought into Egypt after the Persian conquest of 525 B.C. Using camels, the Roman caravans pushed clear across the desert from the coast to Timbuktu. Camels have been here ever since because of their incredible endurance."

In a more recent period in time the paintings with camels became more crude and rudimentary than earlier art styles. Pitt paused in front of another series of paintings in the rich gallery of ancient art, studying a finely drawn battle that was engraved into the rock and then painted in a magnificent red ocher color. Bearded warriors with square beards, lifting spears and shields in the air, rode in two-wheel chariots pulled by four horses, attacking an army of black archers whose arrows rained from the sky.

"Okay, Mr. smart guy," said Giordino, "explain this one."

Pitt stepped over, his eyes following Giordino's gaze. For a few seconds Pitt stared at the drawing on the rock, mystified. The image was drawn in a linear, child-like style. A boat rode on a river bounding with fish and crocodiles. It was hard to imagine the hell outside the cave was once a fertile region where crocodiles once swam in what were now dry riverbeds.

He moved closer, disbelief reflected in his eyes. It was not the crocodiles or the fish that gripped his concentration; it was the vessel floating in swirls that indicated the current of a river. The craft should have been a depiction of an Egyptian-style boat, but it was a totally different design, far more modern. The shape above the water was a truncated pyramid, a pyramid with the top chopped off and parallel to the base. Round tubes protruded from the sides. A number of small figures stood in various poses around the deck under what appeared to be a large flag stiffened by a breeze. The ship stretched nearly 4 meters across the coarse surface of the rock wall.

"An ironclad," Pitt said incredulously. "A Confederate States Navy ironclad."

"It can't be, not here," said Giordino, completely off balance.

"It can and it is," Pitt said flatly. "It must be the one the old prospector told us about."

"Then it isn't a myth."

"The local artists couldn't have painted something they'd never seen. It's even flying the correct Confederate battle ensign that was adopted near the end of the Civil War."

"Maybe a former rebel naval officer wandering the desert after the war painted it."

"He wouldn't have copied local art style," Pitt said thoughtfully. "There is nothing in this painting that reflects Western influence."

"What do you make of the two figures standing on the casemate?" asked Giordino.

"One obviously is a ship's officer. Probably the captain."