'Then set me straight.'
'Fair enough,' Pitt nodded. 'Soon as we reach the location where the contamination seeps into the river, we ditch the helicopter.'
Giordino looked at him. 'In the river?'
'Now you're getting the hang of it.'
'Not another swim in this stinking river-not again.' He shook his head in conviction. 'You're nuttier than Woody Woodpecker.'
'Every word a virtue, every move sublime,' Pitt said airily, then, suddenly serious, added 'Every aircraft the Malians can put in the air will be searching for this bird. With it buried under the river, they won't have a starting place to track us down. As it is, the last place Kazim would expect us to run is north into the desert wastes to look for toxic contamination.'
'Sneaky,' said Giordino. 'That's the word for you.'
Pitt reached down and pulled a chart out of a holder attached to his seat. 'Take the controls while I lay out a course.'
'I have her,' Giordino acknowledged as he took hold of the collective control lever beside his seat and the cyclicpitch control column.
'Take us up to 100 meters, maintain course over the river for five minutes, and then bring us about on a heading of two-six-oh degrees.'
Giordino followed Pitt's instructions and leveled off at 100 meters before looking down. He could just discern the surface of the river. 'Good thing the stars reflect on the water or I couldn't see where the hell I was going.'
'Just watch for dark shadows on the horizon after you make your turn. We don't want to spread ourselves over a protruding rock formation.'
Only twenty minutes passed during their wide swing around Gao before they approached their destination. Massarde's fast helicopter flitted through the night sky like a phantom, invisible without navigation lights, with Giordino deftly handling the controls while Pitt navigated. The desert floor below was faceless and flat, with few shadows thrown by rocks or small elevations. It almost came as a relief when the black waters of the Niger River came into view again.
'What are those lights off to starboard?' asked Giordino.
Pitt did not look up, but kept his eyes on the chart.
'Which side of the river?'
'North'
'Should be Bourem, a small town we passed in the boat shortly before we moved out of the polluted water. Stay well clear of her.'
'Where do you want to ditch?'
'Upriver, just out of earshot of any residents with acute hearing.'
'Any particular reason for this spot?' asked Giordino suspiciously.
'It's Saturday night. Why not go into town and check out the action?'
Giordino parted his lips to make some appropriate comeback, gave up, and refocused his concentration on flying the helicopter. He tensed as he scanned the engine and flight gauges on the instrument panel. Approaching the center of the river, he eased back on the throttles as he delicately pushed the collective and tapped right rudder, turning the craft with its nose upriver while in a hover.
'Got your rubber ducky life vest?' asked Giordino.
'Never go anywhere without it,' Pitt nodded. 'Lower away.'
Two meters above the water, Giordino shut down the engines as Pitt closed all the fuel switches and electrical bars. Yves Massarde's beautiful aircraft fluttered like a wounded butterfly, and then fell into the water with a quiet splash. It bobbed long enough for Pitt and Giordino to step out the doors and leap as far away as they could get, before diving into the river with arms and legs furiously stroking to escape the reach of the dying but still slowly spinning rotor blades. When the water reached the open doors and flooded the interior, the craft slipped beneath the smooth black water with a great sigh as the air was expelled from the passenger cabin.
No one heard it come down, no one from shore saw it sink. It was gone with the Calliope, settling into the soft silt of the river that would someday completely cover her airframe and become her burial shroud.
It wasn't exactly the Polo Lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel, but to someone who had been thrown in a river twice, parboiled in a steam bath, and was footsore from stumbling around the desert in the dark for two hours, no watering hole could have offered greater sanctuary. He had never, Pitt thought, seen a dingier dive that looked so good.
They had the feeling of entering a cave. The rough mud walls met a well-trodden dirt floor. A long board propped on concrete bricks that served as the bar sagged in the middle, so much so it seemed that any glass set on its surface would immediately slide to the center. Behind the decrepit bar, a shelf that appeared wedged into the mud brick wall held a weird assortment of pots and valves that brewed coffee and tea. Next to it were five bottles of obscurely labeled liquor in various levels of consumption. They must have been stocked for the rare tourist who ventured in the place, Pitt surmised, since Muslims weren't supposed to touch the stuff.
Against one wall a small stove was throwing out a comforting degree of heat along with a pungent aroma that neither Pitt nor Giordino as yet identified as camel dung. The chairs looked like rejects from both the Goodwill and Salvation Army stores. None of them matched. The tables weren't much better, darkened by smoke, surfaces burned by countless cigarettes and carved with graffiti going back to the French colonial days. What little illumination there was in the closet-size room came from two bare light bulbs hanging from a single wire held up by nails in a roof beam. They glowed dimly, their limited power coming from the town's overworked diesel generator.
Trailed by Giordino, Pitt sat down at an empty table and shifted his attention from the furnishings to the clientele. He was relieved to find that none wore uniforms. The room held a composite of locals, Niger boatmen and fishermen, villagers, and a sprinkling of men whom Pitt took for farmers. No women were in attendance. A few were drinking beer but most sipped at small cups of sweet coffee or tea. After a cursory glance at the newcomers, they all went back to their conversations or refocused their concentration on a game similar to dominos.
Giordino leaned across the table and murmured, 'Is this your idea of a night on the town?'
'Any port in a storm,' said Pitt.
The obvious proprietor, a swarthy man with a massive thicket of black hair and an immense moustache, ambled from behind the makeshift bar and approached the table. He stood and looked down at them without a word, waiting for them to speak first.
Pitt held up two fingers and said, 'Beer.'
The proprietor nodded and walked back to the bar. Giordino watched as he pulled two bottles of German beer from a badly dented metal icebox, then turned and stared at Pitt dubiously.
'Mind telling me how you intend to pay?' asked Giordino.
Pitt smiled, leaned under the table, and slipped off his left Nike and removed something from the sole. Then with a cool, watchful expression his eyes traveled around the room.
None of the other patrons showed the slightest interest in either himself or Giordino. He cautiously opened his hands so only Giordino could see. Between his palms lay a neat stack of Malian currency.
'Confederation of French African francs,' he said quietly. 'The Admiral didn't miss a trick.'
'Sandecker thought of everything all right,' Giordino admitted. 'How come he trusted you and not me with a bankroll?'
'I have bigger feet.'
The proprietor returned and set, more like dropped, the bottles of beer on the table. 'Dix francs,' he grunted.
Pitt handed him a bill. The proprietor held it up to one of the light bulbs and peered at it, then rubbed his greasy thumb over the printing, seeing no smear, he nodded and walked away.
'He asked for ten francs,' Giordino said. 'You gave him twenty. If he thinks you're a big spender we'll probably be mugged by half the town when we leave.'
'That's the idea,' said Pitt. 'Only a matter of time before the village con artist smells blood and circles his victims.'
