Sahara (Dirk Pitt 11)

The chief pilot shook his head. "You took the last of them to the village. The aircraft is empty."

Batutta smiled at the pilot who wore an airline uniform with stripes on the sleeve. "A fine piece of acting, Lieutenant Djemaa. Dr. Hopper took the bait. You fooled him completely into thinking you were a substitute crew."

"Thank you, Captain. And thank my South African mother for teaching me English."

"I must use the radio to contact Colonel Mansa."

"If you will come to the cockpit, I will set the frequency for you."

Stepping into the aircraft cockpit was like stepping into a bucket of molten lead. Though Lieutenant Djemaa left the side windows open for ventilation, the heat still sucked the breath from Batutta. He sat and suffered while the disguised Malian air force pilot hailed Colonel Mansa's headquarters. Once contact was made Djemaa turned over the microphone to Batutta and thankfully left the steamy cockpit.

"This is Falcon-one. Over."

"I'm here, Captain," came the familiar voice of Mansa. "You can dispense with the code. I doubt if enemy agents are listening in. What is your situation?"

"The natives of Asselar are all dead. The Westerners are operating freely in the village. I repeat, all the villagers are dead."

"Those bloody cannibals killed themselves off, did they?"

"Yes, Colonel, down to the last woman and child. Dr. Hopper and his people believe ever

yone was poisoned."

"Do they have proof?"

"Not yet. They're analyzing the water from the well and performing autopsies on the victims now."

"No matter. Play along with them. As soon as they've finished with their little experiments, fly them to Tebezza. General Kazim has arranged a welcoming committee."

Batutta could well imagine what the General had planned for Hopper. He detested the big Canadian; he detested them all. "I shall see they arrive in sound shape."

"Accomplish your mission, Captain, and I can safely promise you a promotion."

"Thank you, Colonel. Over and out."

Grimes set up shop in the house of the dead man Eva had discovered. It was the largest and cleanest of any building in the village. He performed pathology on the corpse found in the bedroom while Eva carried out blood tests. Hopper did chemical analysis of several wells that produced the town's meager water supply. The other members of the team began analyzing tissue and bone samples from a random selection of the dead. In one large storage house behind the market center, they found the trashed Land Rovers from the safari whose members had been massacred. They put the vehicles into service shuttling supplies back and forth between the village and the aircraft while Captain Batutta wandered about, making himself generally useless.

The stench of the dead was too overpowering for sleep, so they worked through the night and into the next evening before taking a break. Camp was set up around the aircraft. After a brief sleep, dinner of packaged, condensed beef stew, the World Health team sat around an oil heater to ward off the 60-degree drop in temperature from the desert's daily high of 44 degrees C (111 degrees F). Batutta played congenial host and brewed them a pungent African tea, listening intently while everyone relaxed and compared notes.

Hopper puffed his pipe to life and nodded at Warren Grimes. "Suppose you begin, Warren. And give us a report of your examination of the only decent body we found."

Grimes took a clipboard from one of his assistants and studied it for a moment under the glare of a Coleman lantern. "In all my years of experience, I've never seen so many complications in one human. Reddish discoloration of the eyes, both the iris and the whites. Skin tissue an extreme flushed, bronze color. Greatly enlarged spleen. Blood clots in the vessels of the heart, the brain, and extremities. Kidneys damaged. Heavy scarring in the liver and pancreas. Very high hemoglobin. Degeneration of fatty tissue. No wonder these people ran amok and ate each other. Put all the disorders together and you could easily produce uncontrolled psychosis."

"Uncontrolled?" asked Eva.

"The victim slowly went mad as the conditions increased, especially damage to the brain, and he eventually went berserk, as evidenced by the signs of cannibalism. In my humble estimation it's a miracle he lived as long as he did."

"Your diagnostic conclusion?" Hopper probed.

"Death by massive polycythemia vera, a disease of unknown cause whose symptoms are increased numbers of red blood cells and hemoglobin in the circulation. In this case a massive infusion of red blood cells that produced irreparable damage to the victim's internal systems. And because blood-clotting factors were not created in enough amounts for heart stoppage and stroke, hemorrhages occurred throughout the body, becoming especially visible in the skin and eyes. It is as though he was injected with massive doses of vitamin B-12, which as you all know is essential in the development of red blood cells."

Hopper turned to Eva. "You did the blood testing. What about the cells themselves? Did they maintain their normal flat, round shapes with depressed centers?"

Eva shook her head. "No, they were formed like none I've ever seen before. Almost triangular with spore-like projections. As Dr. Hopper stated, their number was incredibly high. There are roughly 5.2 million red cells per cubic millimeter of blood in the average adult human. Our victim's blood carried three times that number."

Grimes said, "I might add that I also discovered evidence of arsenic poisoning, which would have also killed him sooner or later."

Eva nodded. "I confirmed Warren's diagnosis. Above normal concentrations of arsenic were found in the blood samples. Also, the cobalt level went off scale."