There was a pause. 'Sure you're not looking at a pair of nomads?' asked Webster. 'No way my people could have walked that far across a burning desert in forty-eight hours.'
'Not walked but drove.'
'Like drove a car?' asked Webster in surprise.
'Difficult to make out details. Looks to me as though they cover it with sand during the day as camouflage from searching aircraft and drive by night. It has to be your two guys. Who else can be playing fugitive games where the grass don't grow.'
'Can you tell if they're trying for the border?'
'Not unless they have a lousy sense of direction. They're smack in the center of northern Mali. The nearest border to another country is a good 350 kilometers.'
Webster took a long moment to reply. 'It must be Pitt and Giordino. But where in hell did they find a car?'
'Looks to me like they're resourceful men.'
'They should have given up searching for the contamination source long ago. What madness has overtaken them?'
It was a question Greenwald could not answer. 'Maybe they'll give you a call from Fort Foureau,' he suggested, half serious, half in jest.
'They're heading for the French solar waste project?'
'They've only another 50 kilometers to go. And it's the only slice of Western civilization around.'
'Thank you, Tom,' said Webster sincerely. 'The next favor is mine. How about me taking you and our wives to dinner?'
'Sounds good. Pick any restaurant and call me with day and time.'
Greenwald dropped the receiver in its cradle and refocused his attention on the fuzzy object and the two tiny figures next to it.
'You guys have to be crazy,' he said to the empty room.
Then he closed down the system and went home.
The dawn sun came up and cast a wave of heat across the desert like an oven door thrown open. The cool of the night vanished as quickly as the passing of a cloud. A pair of ravens flew across the oppressive sky, spied something that did not belong on the empty landscape, and began circling in hopes of finding a meal. On closer inspection they saw that a live human offered nothing of taste, and they slowly winged off to the north.
Pitt lay stretched out on the upper slope of a low dune, almost buried in the sand, and stared up at the birds for a few moments. Then he turned his attention back to the immense sprawl of the Fort Foureau solar detoxification project. It was an unreal place. Not simply a man-made edifice to technology but a thriving, productive facility surrounded by a land that had long since died under the onslaught of drought and heat.
Pitt twisted slightly as he heard the soft movement of sand behind him and saw Giordino approaching on his stomach, wiggling up the dune like a lizard.
'Enjoying the scenery?' asked Giordino.
'Come take a look. I guarantee you'll be impressed.'
'The only thing that would impress me right now is a beach with nice cool surf.'
'Don't let your curly locks show,' said Pitt. 'A black tuft of hair against the yellow-white sand stands out like a skunk on a fence post.'
Giordino grinned like the village idiot as he poured a handful of sand into his hair. He moved alongside Pitt, peering over the summit of the dune. 'My, my,' he murmured in awe. 'If I didn't know better, I'd say I was looking at a city on the moon.'
'The sterile landscape is there,' Pitt admitted, 'but there's no glass dome over the top.'
'This place is almost as big as Disney World.'
'I'd estimate 20 square kilometers.'
'We have incoming freight,' said Giordino, pointing to a long train of railroad cars drawn by four diesel engines. 'Business must be booming.'
'Massarde's toxic gravy train,' Pitt mused. 'I estimate about a hundred and twenty cars filled with poisonous garbage.'
Giordino nodded toward a vast field covered with long trough-like basins with concave surfaces that bounced the sun's rays like a sea of mirrors. 'Those look like solar reflectors.'
'Concentrators,' said Pitt. 'They collect solar radiation and concentrate it into tremendous heat and proton intensities. The radiant energy is then focused inside a chemical reactor that completely destroys the hazardous waste.'
'Aren't we the bright one,' said Giordino. 'When did you become an expert on sunlight?'
'I used to date a lady who was an engineer with the Solar Energy Institute. She took me on a guided tour of their research facilities. That was several years ago when they were still in the test stages of developing solar thermal technology for eliminating industrial toxic wastes. It appears Massarde has mastered the techniques.'
'I've missed something,' said Giordino.
'Like what?'
'This whole setup. Why go to the added expense and effort to erect this cathedral to sanitation in the middle of the world's biggest sandbox. Me, I'd have built it closer to a major industrial center. Must cost a bundle just to transport the stuff across half an ocean and 1600 kilometers of desert.'
'A most astute consideration,' Pitt admitted. 'I'm curious too. If Fort Foureau is such a masterpiece of toxic waste destruction, and is judged by hazardous waste experts to be a safe, blue-ribbon operation, it doesn't make sense not to set it in a more convenient location.'
'You still think it's responsible for the contamination leak into the Niger?' Giordino asked.
'We found no other source.'
'That old prospector's story about an underground river may well be the solution.'
'Except there's a flaw,' said Pitt.
'You never were the trusting type,' Giordino muttered.
'Nothing wrong with the underground flow theory. What I don't buy is leaking contamination.'
'I'm with you,' Giordino nodded. 'What's to leak if they're supposed to be incinerating the crap?'
'Exactly.'
'Then Fort Foureau isn't what it's advertised?'
'Not to my way of thinking.'
Giordino turned and looked at him suspiciously. 'I hope you're not thinking of strolling around down there as if we were a couple of visiting firemen.'
'I had cat burglars more in mind.'
'How do you propose we get in? Drive up to the gate and ask for a visitor's pass?'
Pitt nodded at the line of freight cars rolling over a siding that paralleled a long loading dock inside the facility. 'We hop the train.'
'And for a getaway?' Giordino asked suspiciously.
'With the Voisin's fuel gauge knocking on empty, bidding a fond farewell to Mali and driving off into the sunset was the last thing on my agenda. We catch the outward bound express for Mauritania.'
Giordino made a glum face. 'You expect me to ride first class in freight cars that have carried tons of toxic chemicals? I'm too young to melt into sludge.'
Pitt shrugged and smiled. 'You'll just have to be careful not to touch anything.'
Giordino shook his head in exasperation. 'Did you consider the obstacles involved?'
'Obstacles are made to be hurdled,' Pitt answered pontifically.
'Like the electrified fence, the guards with Doberman pinschers, the patrol cars bristling with automatic cannon, the overhead lamps that light up the place like a baseball stadium?'
'Yes, now that you had to go and remind me.'
'Mighty strange,' Giordino reflected, 'that a toxic waste incinerator has to be guarded like a nuclear bomb arsenal.'
'All the more reason to inspect the premises,' said Pitt calmly.
'You won't change your mind and head for home while we're still a team.'
