Sahara

    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.

    'I can't stand the taste,' said Pitt, taking the cup of water and wrinkling his nose, 'but it's best we drink at least three quarts every twenty-four hours.'

    'You don't think we should ration it?'

    'Not while we have an ample supply. Dehydration will only come on that much quicker if we hoard and sip it a little at a time. Better to drink as much as we need to quench our thirst and worry when it's gone.'

    'How about a gourmet sardine for dinner?'

    'Sounds jazzy.'

    'The only thing missing is a Caesar salad.'

    'You're thinking of anchovies.'

    'I never could tell the difference.'

    After savoring his sardine, Giordino licked his fingers. 'I feel like an idiot sitting here in the middle of the desert eating fish.'

    Pitt smiled. 'Be thankful you've got them.' Then he tilted his head listening.

    'Hear something?' asked Giordino.

    'Aircraft.' Pitt cupped his hands behind his ears. 'A low-flying jet judging by the sound.'

    He crawled up the side of the ravine on his stomach until he reached the upper edge and moved behind a small tamarisk shrub so his head and face merged with its broken shadow. Then he began a slow, deliberate observation of the sky.

    The throaty roar of a jet turbine exhaust came very clearly now as he peered ahead of the trailing sound waves. He squinted into the blazing blue sky but failed to see anything at first. He dropped his gaze lower, and then spotted a sudden movement against the empty desert terrain about 3 kilometers away. Pitt recognized it as an old American-built Phantom, sporting Malian air force insignia, about 6 kilometers to the south, flying less than 100 meters off the ground. It was like some great vulture, camouflage-brown against the yellow-gray of the landscape, and flying in great lazy arcs as if a sixth sense was telling it there was prey in the neighborhood.

    'See it?' asked Giordino.

    'An F-4 Phantom,' answered Pitt.

    'What direction?'

    'Circling in from the south.'

    'Think he's onto us?'

    Pitt turned and looked down at the palm fronds tied to the bumpers behind the rear wheels that were dragged along to cover the tire tracks. The parallel indentations in the sand that trailed off down the middle of the ravine were almost completely obliterated. 'A search crew in a hovering helicopter might spot our trail but not the pilot of a jet fighter. He has no vision directly below his aircraft and has to bank if he wants to see anything. And he's flying too fast, too close to the ground to detect a vague pair of tire tracks.'

    The jet roared toward the ravine, close enough now so that its desert camouflage markings stained the pure blue of the sky. Giordino wiggled under the car as Pitt pulled the tamarisk shrub's branches over his head and shoulders. He watched as the pilot of the Phantom made a soaring turn, scanning the seemingly blank and empty world of the Sahara below.

    Pitt tensed and held his breath. The aircraft's swing was bringing it directly over their gorge. Then it tore overhead, the air rushing past its wings like a wave cut by a ship's bow, the thrust of its turbine swirling the sand. Pitt felt the heat of its fiery exhaust sweep over him. It seemed almost as if the aircraft had materialized right over the gorge, so low Pitt swore he could have thrown a rock into its intake scoops. And then it was gone.

    He feared the worst as he watched it roaring away. But it continued on its slow, circling search as though the pilot had seen nothing of interest. Pitt watched it until the plane was out of sight over the horizon. He kept watching for a few more minutes, wary that the pilot might have spied something suspicious and entertained the notion of a wide sweep before whipping over the gorge in hope of catching his quarry by surprise.

    But the sound of the jet exhaust finally faded away in the distance, leaving the desert dead and silent once again.

    Pitt slid back down the slope of the gorge and regained the shade of the ancient Voisin as Giordino crawled from beneath its chassis.

    'A near thing,' said Giordino, flicking a small platoon of ants from one arm.

    Pitt doodled in the sand with a small, withered stick 'Either we didn't fool Kazim by heading north or he isn't taking any chances.'

    'Must blow his mind that a car painted a color as loud as this one can't be found in a wasteland against a flat and colorless background.'