'We prove our suspicions that Fort Foureau is a facade.'
Pitt said firmly, 'One of us has to escape and alert Sandecker, even if it means sacrificing one for the other.'
A thoughtful expression crossed Giordino's face and he stared at Pitt without saying anything. Then the air horn on the lead diesel locomotive sounded to announce its impending arrival at the security station. He nodded at the tracks. 'We'd better hurry.'
Pitt nodded silently. Then they stepped through the fort's big gate and ran toward the tracks.
An abandoned Renault truck sat forlornly about halfway between the fort and the railroad tracks. Everything that could be stripped from the body and chassis was long gone. Tires and wheels, engine, transmission and differential, even the windshield and doors were removed for parts or sold for scrap, hauled off by camel to Gao or Timbuktu by an enterprising merchant.
To Pitt and Giordino, as they huddled behind the truck to avoid being caught in the glare of the light on the forward diesel engine, the deserted loneliness of an object used by man and then forgotten and discarded was overwhelming. But it made for the perfect cover as the long freight train approached.
The revolving, light above the engine swept across the desert and illuminated every rock and every blade of sparse grass for almost a kilometer. They crouched out of the beam until the engines thundered past at what Pitt estimated as nearly 50 kilometers an hour. The engineers were braking now as they prepared to enter the security station. Pitt waited patiently as the train's speed tapered off. By the time the last cars in line reached the abandoned truck, he estimated, the train's momentum would be down to about I S kilometers, a speed slow enough for them to run alongside and board.
They left the safety of the scrapped truck and dashed the final few meters to the roadbed, hunching down and observing the flatbed cars that carried huge removable cargo containers as they rumbled toward Fort Foureau. The end car was in sight now, not an ordinary-type caboose for the train crew, but an armored car with turreted heavy machine guns manned by corporate security guards. Massarde ran a tight operation, Pitt thought. The escorts were probably professional mercenaries hired out at above average wages.
Why the ironbound security? Most governments looked upon chemical waste as a nuisance. Sabotage or an accidental spill in the middle of the desert would go almost unnoticed in the international media or environmentalist circles. Who were they guarding it from? Certainly not the occasional bandit or terrorist.
If Pitt had formed any character analysis of Yves Massarde, he'd have predicted the French tycoon played both sides against the middle, paying off the Malian rebels at the same time he pumped cash to Kazim.
'Let's go for the second cargo container forward of the armored car,' he said to Giordino. 'Boarding the first might be cutting it too fine if an alert guard was looking down along the track.'
Giordino nodded. 'I'm with you. The cars closest to the guards won't be as thoroughly searched as the ones further forward.' '
They rose swiftly to their feet and began sprinting along the roadbed. Pitt had misjudged the speed: The train was moving nearly twice as fast as either of them could run. There was no thought of stopping or dropping out. If they veered away, the guards would likely spot them under the lights that flashed from the rear of the armored car, spilling in a semicircle around the wheels and gleaming on the rails.
They gave it everything they had. Pitt was taller and had longer arms. He caught a ladder rung, was jerked forward and, using the momentum, swung aboard.
Giordino reached out and missed the rear ladder of the car by only a few centimeters. The roadbed was gravel and difficult to run on. He turned his head for a backward glance. After missing his intended ride, his only hope now was to risk boarding the car directly in front of the one carrying the guards.
The ladder that extended from the flatbed railroad car to the top of the cargo container was approaching at what seemed to Giordino as Mach speed. He glanced down at the steel wheels rolling over the tracks uncomfortably close. This would be his last chance. Miss and fall under the wheels or be shot by the guards. Neither prospect excited him.
He grabbed one rung of the ladder with both hands as it rushed by and was pulled off his feet by the forward motion of the train. He held on desperately, his legs flailing as they struggled to catch up. Releasing his left hand, Giordino used it to grab the next rung. Then his right hand joined it, and he could bend his knees and lift his feet in the air and find them a hold on the lower rung.
Pitt had paused a few seconds to catch his breath before clambering to the top of the cargo container. Not until he turned around did he realize that Giordino wasn't where he should have been-climbing the ladder of the same car. He looked down, saw the dark form clinging to the side of the car behind his, and the white blur of Giordino's grim and determined face.
Pitt watched in helpless frustration as Giordino hung there motionless for several seconds, clutching the ladder of the container as the flatbed car rattled and swayed. He twisted his head and stared down the length of the train. The lead engine was only a kilometer from the security station. Then a tingling sixth sense made Pitt look sharply backward and he froze.
A guard was standing on a small platform that extended out from the rear of the armored car. He was standing with his hands spread on the railing, staring down over the desert flashing past below his feet. He looked to Pitt to be lost in thought, perhaps thinking of something far away or maybe a girl somewhere. He had only to turn and gaze down the length of the train and Giordino was finished.
The guard straightened, then turned and walked back into the cool comfort of his car.
Giordino wasted no more time and scrambled up the ladder to the top of the container where he lay down and pressed his body against the roof. He lay there breathing heavily. The air was still hot and mixed with the exhaust from the diesel engines. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked onto the next car for Pitt.
'Come on across,' Pitt shouted above the noise of the moving freight train.
Cautiously crawling on his hands and knees, Giordino peered down at the blur of concrete ties and rails as they rushed under the cars below. He waited a moment to build courage, and then he stood, took a short run, and then leaped forward. His feet touched down with half a meter to spare before he landed arms outstretched on the roof. When he looked around for a helping hand, there was none.
With utter confidence in his friend's athletic ability, Pitt was calmly studying an air conditioner installed on the top of the cargo container to keep highly combustible chemical waste from igniting under the extreme heat conditions during its journey across the desert. A heavy-duty model especially designed to combat scorching temperatures, its compressor was turned over by a small gas engine whose exhaust popped quietly through a silenced muffler.
As the lights of the security station loomed ahead, Pitt had turned his thoughts to evading detection. He didn't think it likely guards would walk the train in the manner of railroad police carrying clubs, who searched the yards and trains for hobos and bindle stiffs riding the rails during the 1930s depression. Nor would Massarde's security people rely on dogs. No way a hound with a sensitive nose could sniff out a man from the overpowering aroma of chemicals and diesel fumes.
TV cameras, Pitt determined. The train simply passed through and under an array of cameras that were monitored inside the building. No question that Yves Massarde would have relied on modern security technology.
'Have you something to turn screws?' he asked without acknowledging Giordino's approach.
'You're asking me for a screwdriver?' Giordino queried incredulously.
'I want to pull the screws out of this big panel on the side of the air conditioner.'
Giordino reached into his pocket, mostly emptied after the search by Massarde's crewman on board the houseboat. But he found a nickel and a dime. He passed them to Pitt. 'This is the best I can do on the spur of the moment.'
Quickly running his hands over a large side panel on the air conditioner, Pitt found the screw heads that held it in place. There were ten of them, thankfully slotted and not Phillips heads. He wasn't at all sure he could unscrew them in time. The nickel was too large but the dime fit perfectly. He feverishly began removing the screws as fast as his fingers could turn the dime.
'You picked a strange time to repair an air conditioner,' said Giordino curiously.
'I'm banking on the guards using TV cameras to inspect the train for transients like us. They'll spot us up here for sure. Our only chance to ride through without getting caught is to hide behind this panel. It's big enough to cover us both.'
