attackers tried to take cover behind the burning tanks, but Pembroke-Smythe had expected that tactic and directed an accurate fire that cut them down.
Only one hour after the assault had begun, the crack of gunfire faded and the barren sand around the fort became filled with the cries of the wounded and the moans of the dying. The UN team was stunned and angered to see that no effort was made by the Malians to retrieve their own men. They did not know that an enraged Kazim had given orders to leave the injured to suffer under the blistering Sahara sun.
Amid the debris of the fort, the commandos slowly rose from their rifle pits and began to take count. One dead and three wounded, two seriously, Pembroke-Smythe reported to Levant. 'I'd say we gave them a good drubbing,' he said jauntily.
'They'll be back,' Levant reminded him.
'At least we cut the odds a bit.'
'So did they,' said Pitt, offering the Colonel a drink from his water container. 'We have four less able-bodied men to repel the next attack while Kazim can call in reinforcements.'
'Mr. Pitt is right,' agreed Levant. 'I observed helicopters bringing in two more companies of men.'
'How soon do you reckon they'll try again?' Pitt asked Levant.
The Colonel held up a hand to shield his eyes and squinted at the sun. 'The hottest time of the day, I should think. His men are better acclimated to the heat than we are. Kazim will let us fry for a few hours before ordering another assault.'
'They've been blooded now,' said Pitt. 'Next time there will be no stopping them.'
'No,' said Levant, his face haggard with fatigue. 'I don't guess there will.'
'What do you mean,' Giordino demanded in white hot anger, 'you won't go in there and bring them out?'
Colonel Gus Hargrove was not used to being challenged, especially by a cocky civilian who was a good head shorter than he was. Commander of an Army Ranger covert-attack helicopter task force, Hargrove was a hardened professional soldier, having flown and directed helicopter assaults in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, and Iraq. He was tough and shrewd, respected by his subordinates and superiors alike. His helmet came down and met a pair of blue eyes that blazed with the hardness of tempered steel. A cigar was stuffed in one side of his mouth, which was occasionally removed so he could spit.
'You don't seem to get it, Mr. Giordano.'
'Giordino.'
'Whatever,' Hargrove muttered indifferently. 'There was an information leak, probably through the United Nations. The Malians were waiting for us to cross into their air space. Half their air force is patrolling just beyond the border as we speak. In case you don't know it, the Apache helicopter is a great missile platform but no match for Mirage jet fighters. Certainly not in daylight hours. Without a squadron of Stealth fighters to fly protective cover, we can't go in until after dark. Only then can we take advantage of low terrain and desert gulches to fly under their radar screen. Do you get the picture?'
'Men, women, and children are going to die if you don't reach Fort Foureau within the next few hours.'
'Rushing my unit over here with advance notice to the other side, without backup, and in the middle of the day was bad timing and ill advised,' Hargrove stated firmly. 'We attempt to go into Mali from Mauritania now, and my four choppers will be blasted out of the sky 50 kilometers inside the border. You tell me, sir, just what good would that do your people inside the fort?'
Properly pinned against the wall, Giordino shrugged. 'I stand rebuked. My apologies, Colonel. I wasn't aware of your situation.'
Hargrove softened. 'I understand your concern, but now that we've been compromised and the Malians are chafing at the bit to ambush us, I'm afraid chances of saving your people are out of the question.'
Giordino felt as if his stomach was squeezed by a vise. He turned away from Hargrove and stared across the desert. The sandstorm had passed and he could see the trains standing on the track in the distance.
He turned back. 'How many men under your command?'
'Not counting the chopper crews, I have a fighting force of eighty men.'
Giordino's eyes widened. 'Eighty men to take on half the Malian security force?'
'Yes,' Hargrove grinned as he removed the cigar butt and spit. 'But we have enough firepower to level half of western Africa.'
'Suppose you could cross the desert to Fort Foureau without detection?'
'I'm always open to a good plan.'
'The inbound trains for the Fort Foureau hazardous waste project, have any been allowed through?'
Hargrove shook his head. 'I sent a team leader to check out the situation. He reported that the train crews were instructed by radio to halt at the Mauritania/Mali border. The engineer for the first train said he was told to sit idle until ordered to proceed by the superintendent of the project's rail yard.'
'How strong is the Malian check point on the border?'
'Ten guards, maybe twelve.'
'Could you take them out before they gave an alarm?'
Mechanically, Hargrove's eyes traveled over the train's cargo cars, lingered on the five flatbed cars and the canvas covers that protected new freight vehicles bound for Fort Foureau, and then moved briefly to the Malian border guard, house sitting beside the track before returning to Giordino. 'Could John Wayne ride a horse?'
'We can be there in two and a half hours,' said Giordino. 'Three on the outside.'
Hargrove removed the cigar from his mouth and seemed to be contemplating it. 'I think I've got your slant now. General Kazim would never expect my force to come charging into his playground on a train.'
'Load the men inside the cargo container cars. Your choppers can ride on the flatbed cars undercover. Get to the objective before Kazim sees through the facade, and we have a good chance at evacuating Colonel Levant's people and the civilians and beating it back to Mauritania before the Malians know what hit them.'
Giordino's plan appealed to Hargrove, but he had doubts.
'Suppose one of Kazim's hotshot pilots sees a train ignoring instructions and decides to blow it off the tracks?'
'Kazim, himself, wouldn't dare destroy one of Yves Massarde's hazardous waste trains without absolute proof it had been hijacked.'
Hargrove paced up and down. The daring of the scheme sounded outlandish to him. Speed was essential. He decided to lay his career on the line and go for it.
'All right,' he said briefly. 'Let's get the Wabash Cannonball rolling.'
Zateb Kazim raved like a madman in frustration at failing to bludgeon Levant and his small team from the old Foreign Legion fort. He cursed and ranted at his officers almost in hysteria, like a child who had his toys taken away from him. He dementedly slapped two of them in the face and ordered them all shot on two different occasions before his Chief of Staff, Colonel Cheik, soothingly talked him out of it. Barely under control, Kazim stared at his retreating troops scathingly and demanded they reform immediately for a second assault.
Despairing of Kazim's wrath, Colonel Mansa drove through his retreating force, shouting and berating his officers, accusing them of shame that sixteen hundred attackers could not overrun a pitiful handful of defenders. He harangued them into regrouping their companies for another try. To drive home the message there would be no more failure, Mansa had ten men who were caught trying to desert the battlefield shot on the spot.
Instead of attacking the fort with encircling waves, Kazim massed his forces into one massive column. The reinforcements were formed in the rear and ordered to shoot any man in front of them who broke and ran. The only command from Kazim that was passed down the lines from company to company was 'fight or die.'
By two o'clock in the afternoon, the Malian security forces were reformed and ready for the signal. One look a t his sullen and fearful troops and any good commander would have aborted the attack. Kazim was not a leader his men loved enough to die for. But as they looked out over the body-littered ground around the fort, anger slowly began to replace their fear of death.
This time, they silently vowed between them, the defenders of Fort Foureau were going to their graves.
With an incredible display of casual indifference to sniper bullets, Pembroke-Smythe sat under the torrid sun on a shooting stick, a spiked cane that opens into a seat, and observed the Malian formations as they lined up
