Sahara (Dirk Pitt 11)

"I trust your methods, Zateb. I have no doubt you will have Pitt and Giordino in one of your interrogation cells by this time tomorrow."

"Sooner, I should think."

"That's most reassuring," Massarde said, smiling.

But somehow he knew Pitt and Giordino would not be easy game to run down.

Captain Batutta came to attention and saluted as he stood in front of Colonel Mansa who merely returned the salute with an indifferent wave.

"The UN scientists are imprisoned at Tebezza," Batutta reported.

A slight smile touched Mansa's lips. "I imagine O'Bannion and Melika were happy to obtain new workers for the mines."

Batutta flashed an expression of disgust. "She's one cruel witch, that Melika. I don't envy any man who feels the sting of her quirt."

"Or woman," added Mansa. "She makes no distinction when she metes out punishment. I give Dr. Hopper and his party four months before the last of them lies buried in the sand."

"General Kazim will be the last to shed a tear over their demise."

The door opened, and Lieutenant Djemaa, the Malian air force pilot of the UN scientist's plane, walked in and saluted. Mansa looked up at him. "Did everything go off all right?"

Djemaa smiled. "Yes sir, we flew back to Asselar, dug up the required number of corpses, and loaded them on the plane. Then returned north where my copilot and I bailed out over the designated area of the Tanezrouft Desert, a good 100 kilometers from the nearest camel track."

"The plane burned after it crashed?" asked Manses.

"Yes sir."

"Did you inspect the wreckage?"

Djemaa nodded. "After the driver of the desert vehicle you stationed to pick us up arrived, we drove to the crash site. I had set the controls so it went down in a vertical dive. It exploded on impact, blasting a crater almost 10 meters deep. Except for the engines there wasn't a piece of wreckage larger than a shoe box."

Mansa's face broadened with a smile of satisfaction. "General Kazim will be pleased. Both you men can expect promotions." He looked at Djemaa. "And you, Lieutenant, will be

in command of the search operation to find Hopper's plane."

"But why would I direct a search," asked Djemaa in confusion, "when I already know where it is?"

"Why else would you fill it with dead bodies?"

"Captain Batutta did not inform me of the plan."

"We play our benevolent role in discovering the wreckage," Mansa explained. "And then turn it over to international flight accident investigators, who will not have enough human remains to identify or evidence to provide the cause of the crash." He gave a hard stare at Djemaa. "Providing the Lieutenant has done a complete job."

"I personally removed the flight recorder," Djemaa assured him.

"Good, now we can begin displaying our country's concern over the disappearance of the UN scientists' flight to the international news media and express our deep regret for their loss."

The afternoon heat was suffocating as it reflected off the sun-baked surface. Without proper dark glasses, the immense plain of rock and sand, dazzled by the fiery sun, blinded Pitt's eyes as he sat on the graveled bottom of a narrow gorge under the shade of the Avions Voisin. Except for the supplies they had scrounged from the garage in Bourem, they only, possessed the clothes on their backs.

Giordino was in the midst of using the tools he'd found in the trunk of the car to remove the exhaust pipe and muffler to give the car more ground clearance. They had already reduced the tire pressure for better traction in the sand. So far the old Voisin moved through the inhospitable landscape like an aging beauty queen walking through the Bronx in New York, stylish but sadly misplaced.

They traveled during the cool of night beneath the light of the stars, groping over the barren expanse at no more than 10 kilometers an hour, stopping every hour to raise the hood and let the engine cool. There was no thought of using the headlights. The beams could have been caught by a keen observer from an aircraft far out of earshot. Quite often the passenger had to walk ahead to examine the ground. Once they almost drove into a steep ravine and twice they had to dig and scoop their way out of patches of soft sand.

Without a compass or a map, they relied on celestial navigation to record their location and trail as they followed the ancient riverbed from the Niger River north ever deeper into the Sahara. By day they hid in gulleys and ravines where they covered the car with a thin coating of sand and scrub brush so it would blend in with the desert floor and appear from the air as a small dune sprouting a few pieces of sparse growth.

"Would you care for a cold, sparkling glass of Sahara spring water or the refreshing fizz of a Malian soft drink?" Giordino grinned, holding out a bottle of the local pop and a cup of the warm, sulphur-tasting liquid from the water tap he'd found in the village garage.