Sahara

for the assault.

    'I do believe the beggars are about to make another go,' he informed Levant and Pitt.

    A series of flares were shot in the air to signal the advance. There was no dodging with covering fire like the previous assault. The Malian force raced over the flat ground at a dead run. Shouts erupted and echoed over the desert from, nearly two thousand throats.

    Pitt felt like an actor on a stage in a theater-in-the-round: surrounded by a hostile audience. 'Not exactly what you'd call tactical imagination,' he said, standing beside Levant and Pembroke-Smythe while staring at the massed column. 'But it just may do the trick.'

    Pembroke-Smythe nodded. 'Kazim is using his men like a steamroller.'

    'Good luck, gentlemen,' said Levant with a grim smile. 'Perhaps we'll all meet in hell.'

    'Couldn't be hotter than here,' Pitt grinned back.

    The Colonel looked at Pembroke-Smythe. 'Reposition our units to repulse a single frontal assault. Then tell them to fire at will.'

    Pembroke-Smythe shook hands with Pitt and began moving from man to man. Levant took his place atop the remaining parapet as Pitt returned to the little fort he had dug from the rubble. Already bullets were splattering the fortress and ricocheting off the broken stone.

    The forward wall of the attacking force stretched 50 meters wide. With the reinforcements they numbered almost eighteen hundred. Kazim threw them against the side of the fort that had suffered the worst during the later aerial attacks and mortar bombardments. This was the north wall with the shattered main gate.

    The men in the rear ranks were cheered by the certainty that they would be alive to drive inside the fort. The men in the forward wall had different ideas. None expected to cross that open space of death and survive. They knew there was to be no mercy from the defenders ahead or their own forces behind.

    Already gaps began to appear in the first rank as the pitifully few men in the fort laid down an appalling fire. But the Malians pushed forward in their headlong onslaught, leaping over the bodies of those who fell in the first assault. There was no stopping them this time; they could smell the bloody scent of victory.

    Pitt aimed and fired off short bursts at the approaching mass as a man in a dream. Aim and fire, aim and fire, then eject and reload. The routine, it seemed to him, continued endlessly when in fact only ten minutes had passed since the signal for the assault.

    A mortar shell burst somewhere behind him. Kazim had directed the bombardment be kept up until his leading ranks entered the fort. Pitt felt the shrapnel whistle past his head, felt the tiny breeze of its passing. The Malians were so close now they filled up the sights of his machine gun.

    Mortar shell after mortar shell rained down in a maelstrom of fire. Then the barrage ceased as elements of the first rank reached the fallen rubble and began scrambling over the jagged stone. Here they were most vulnerable. The forward ranks melted away as they were raked by the desperate fire of the defenders. There was no place for them to take cover, and they could not climb over the rubble and shoot at the same time at targets that didn't show themselves.

    The defenders, on the other band, couldn't miss. The Malians stumbled and crawled over the broken masonry into a swarm of bullets. The first rank had been swept away at 100 meters, the second by the time it reached the shadow of the fort. Then the rank behind that. All along the north, wall, the attackers and their officers cried out and fell. Their massed fire, however, no matter how wild, could not help but strike some of the defenders.

    There were simply too many for the UN team to stop and their fire began to slacken as one by one they were killed or wounded.

    Levant knew disaster was only moments away. 'Blast them!' he roared over the helmet radios. 'Blast them back off the wall.'

    It seemed impossible but the hail of bullets from the UN team suddenly increased. The head of the Malian column was shot to a standstill. Pitt was out of ammunition but was, throwing grenades as fast as he could activate them. The explosions caused havoc in the struggling crowd. The Malians began to fall back. They were stunned and disbelieving that anyone could fight with such fury and wrath. Only with determined courage did they rally and surge through the splintered remains of the main gate.

    The UN team rose from their dugouts, firing from the hip as they retired across the parade ground and around their smoldering personnel carriers, forming, a new line of defense within the ruins of the former Legion barracks and officers' quarters. Dust, debris, and smoke cut visibility to less than 5 meters. The constant blast of guns had deafened the fighters, to the cries of the wounded.

    The horrible casualties inflicted on the Malians were enough to shatter the morale of any attacking force, but they kept coming and poured into the fort in a human flood. Temporarily exposed on the parade ground, the first company of men through the wall were shredded as they milled around in confusion at not finding a pathetic few survivors caught in the open.

    Pembroke-Smythe took a head count inside the collapsed barracks and officers' quarters as the few wounded they were able to save were carried down into the arsenal. Only Pitt and twelve of the UN Tactical Team were still capable of fighting. Colonel Levant was missing. He was last seen firing from the parapet when the attacking horde broke through the remains of the north gate.

    At recognizing Pitt, Pembroke-Smythe flashed a smile. 'You look positively awful, old man,' he said, nodding at the red stains in Pitt's combat suit that were spreading on the left arm and shoulder. Blood also trickled down the side of one cheek from a cut caused by a shard of flying stone.

    'You're no picture of health yourself,' Pitt replied, pointing at the nasty wound in Pembroke-Smythe's hip.

    'How's your ammo?'

    Pitt held up his remaining submachine gun and let it drop to the ground. 'Gone. I'm down to two grenades.'

    Pembroke-Smythe handed him an enemy machine gun. 'You'd better get down in the arsenal. What's left of us will hold them off until you can. . .' He couldn't bring himself to finish and he stared down at the ground.

    'We hurt them badly,' Pitt said steadily as he ejected the clip and counted the bullets inside. 'They're like mad dogs drooling for revenge. They'll make it hard on whoever of us they find still living.'

    'The women and children cannot fall into Kazim's hands again.'

    'They won't suffer,' Pitt promised.

    Pembroke-Smythe stared up at him, seeing the agony of grief in Pitt's eyes. 'Goodbye, Mr. Pitt. It has indeed been an honor to know you.'

    Pitt shook the Captain's hand as a storm of gunfire burst around them. 'Likewise, Captain.'

    Pitt turned away and scrambled down through the debris choking the stairway into the arsenal. Hopper and Fairweather saw him at the same time and approached.

    'Who's winning?' Hopper asked.

    Pitt shook his head. 'Not our side.'

    'No sense in waiting for death,' said Fairweather. 'Better to make a fight of it. You wouldn't happen to have a spare gun on you?'

    'I could use one too,' added Hopper.

    Pitt handed Fairweather the machine gun. 'Sorry, except for my automatic, it's all I have. There are plenty of weapons topside, but you'll have to snatch one off a dead Malian.'

    'Sounds like good sport,' boomed Hopper. He gave Pitt a mighty slap on the back. 'Good luck, my boy. Take care of Eva.'

    'That's a promise.'

    Fairweather nodded. 'Nice to have known you, old chap.'

    As they went up the stairway together into the fight above, a female medic rose from a wounded man and waved for Pitt's attention.

    'How does it look?' she asked.

    'Prepare for the worst,' Pitt answered quietly.

    'How long?'

    'Captain Pembroke-Smythe and what's left of your team are making a last stand. The end can't be more than ten or fifteen minutes away.'