opening debacle from the video telephoto system through the command center monitors. Their confidence badly shaken during their first actual combat with an enemy who shot back at them, the pilots were babbling over the airwaves like frightened children and begging for instructions.
His face flushed with anger, Kazim stepped into the communications cabin and began shouting over the radio. 'Cowards! This is General Kazim. You airmen are my right arm, my executioners. Attack, attack. Any man who does not show courage will be shot when he lands and his family sent to prison.'
Undertrained, overconfident until now, the Malian air force pilots were more adept at swaggering through their streets and pursuing pretty girls than fighting an opponent out to kill them. The French had made a diligent attempt at modernizing and schooling the desert nomads in airfighting tactics, but traditional ways and cultural thinking were too firmly entrenched in their minds to make them an efficient fighting force.
Stung by Kazim's words and more fearful of his wrath than the shot and shell that had blasted their flight leader and his wingman from the sky, they very reluctantly resumed the attack and dove in single file at the still stalwart walls of the old Foreign Legion fort.
As if he thought himself 'unkillable,' Levant stood and observed the attack from between the ramparts with the calmness of a spectator at a tennis match. The first two fighters fired their missiles and banked sharply away before coming anywhere near the fort. All their rockets went high and burst on the other side of the railroad.
They came from all sides in wild, unpredictable maneuvers. Their assaults should have been basic and organized, concentrating on leveling one wall instead of haphazardly attacking the fort from whatever direction suited them. Experiencing no more return fire, they became more accurate. The fort began to take devastating hits now. Gaping holes appeared in the old masonry as the walls began to crumble.
Then, as Levant predicted, the Malian pilots became overconfident and bolder, pressing ever closer before launching their missiles. He rose from behind his small command post and brushed away the dust on his combat suit.
'Captain Pembroke-Smythe, any casualties?'
'None reported, Colonel.'
'It's time for Madeleine and her friends to earn their money again.'
'Manning the gun now, sir.'
'If you plan well, you'll have enough shells left to down two more of the devils.'
The job was made easier when two aircraft raced across the open desert wing tip to wing tip. The Vulcan swung around to engage and open fire. At first it looked as though the gun crew had missed. Then there was a burst of flame and black smoke erupted from the starboard Mirage. The plane didn't explode nor did the pilot seem to lose control. The nose simply fell on a slight angle downward and the fighter descended until it crashed into the sand.
Madeleine was shifted to the port fighter and opened up like a screeching banshee. Seconds later, the last of the rounds left the revolving barrels and she abruptly went silent. But not before her short spurt of fire made the second fighter appear as if it had run into a junkyard scrap grinder. Pieces of the plane split off including the canopy.
Oddly there was no sign of smoke or fire. The Mirage settled onto the desert, bounced once, and then smashed into the east wall, exploding with a deafening roar and hurling stone and flaming debris throughout the parade ground and collapsing the officers' quarters. To those inside it felt as though the tired old fort was lifted clear of the ground by a rippling detonation.
Pitt was whirled around and thrown violently to the ground as the sky tore apart. He felt as if the detonation was almost directly above him when in fact it came on the opposite side of the fort. His breath came as though he was sucking air in a vacuum as the concussion reverberated all around him in a bedlam of compressed air.
He pushed himself to his knees, coughing from the dust that blanketed the interior of the fort. His first concern was the spring bow. It still stood undamaged amid the dust cloud. Then he noticed a body lying near him on the ground.
'My. . . God!' the man uttered in a halting croak.
It was then Pitt recognized Pembroke-Smythe who had been blown off the ramparts by the force of the explosion. He crawled over and peered down into a pair of closed eyes. Only the throbbing pulse in the side of the Lieutenant's neck gave any indication of life.
'How badly are you hurt?' Pitt asked, not thinking of anything else to say.
'Bloody well knocked the wind out of me and ruined my back,' Pembroke-Smythe gasped between clenched teeth.
Pitt glanced up at the section of the parapet that had collapsed. 'You had quite a fall. I don't see any blood and no bones look broken. Can you move your legs?'
Pembroke-Smythe managed to raise his knees and swivel his booted feet. 'At least my spine is still connected.' Then he lifted a hand and pointed behind Pitt across the parade ground. The dust had begun to settle, and his face glowered helplessly as he glimpsed the great mound of rubble that had buried several of his men. 'Dig the poor beggars out!' he implored. 'For God's sake, dig them out!'
Pitt turned suddenly, focusing on the shattered and fallen wall. What had been a massive bulwark of mortar and stone was now a great heap of rubble. No one who was buried under the collapsed wall could have survived without being crushed to death. And those who might miraculously still be alive while trapped inside their dugouts would not last long before succumbing to suffocation. Pitt felt the prickle of horror in the nape of his neck as he realized that nothing less than heavy construction equipment could dig them out in time.
Before he could react, another salvo of missiles bore into the fort, bursting and creating a shambles of the mess hall. The roof support beams were soon ablaze, sending a column of smoke into the climbing heat of the morning. The walls now looked as though a giant had worked them over with a sledgehammer. The north wall had suffered the least; incredibly the main gate remained unscarred. But the other three were severely damaged and their crests breached in several places.
With four of their planes lost, their missiles expended, and low on fuel, the remaining fighters regrouped and set a course back to their base in the south. The surviving UN commandos rose from their underground shelters like dead from the grave and frantically began tearing at the debris for their comrades. In spite of their desperate efforts there was no chance any of those buried under the wall could be rescued with mere human hands.
Levant came down from the parapet and began giving commands. Wounded were sent or carried down to the safety of the arsenal where the medical personnel were ready to receive them, assisted by Eva and the other women who acted as nurses.
The faces on the men and women of the tactical team were filled with anguish as Levant ordered them to cease digging under the wall and tackle the job of filling in the worst breaches. Levant shared their sorrow, but his responsibility was for the living. There was nothing to be done for the dead.
Grinning and bearing the agony radiating from his back, the irrepressible Pembroke-Smythe hobbled around the fort, taking casualty reports and giving words of encouragement. Despite the death and the horror that was engulfing them, he tried to instill a sense of humor to combat their ordeal.
The count came to six dead and three seriously wounded with bones broken from flying stone. Seven others returned to their posts after having assorted cuts and bruises sanitized and bandaged. It could have been worse, Colonel Levant told himself as he surveyed his situation. But he knew the air attacks were only the opening act. After a brief intermission, the second act began as a missile burst under the lee of the south wall, fired from one of four tanks 2000 meters to the south. Then three more line-of-sight wireguided battlefield missiles slammed into the fort in quick succession.
Levant quickly climbed onto the rubble that had once been a wall and lined up his glasses on the tanks. 'French AMX-30-type tanks firing SS-11 battlefield missiles,' he calmly announced to Pitt and Pembroke-Smythe. 'They'll soften us up for a bit before coming on with their infantry.'
Pitt stared around the battered fortress. 'Not much left to soften,' he muttered laconically.
Levant lowered the glasses and turned to Pembroke-Smythe who was standing beside them, hunched over like a man of ninety-five.
'Order everyone into the arsenal. Except for a lookout, we'll weather the storm down there.'
'And when those tanks come knocking at our door?' asked Pitt.
'Then it's up to your catapult isn't it,' said Pembroke-Smythe pessimistically. 'That's all we'll have against
