They completed the job at three in the morning and then dropped like dead men in the sand. They lay there shivering in the bitter cold, staring at their masterpiece.
'It'll never fly,' Giordino muttered, totally spent.
'She only has to move us across the flats.'
'Have you figured out how we're going to get it out of the gulch?'
'About 50 meters down the valley, the incline of the east bank becomes gradual enough to pull it onto the surface of the dry lake.'
'We'll be lucky to walk that far much less drag this thing up a slope. And at that, there's no guarantee it'll work.'
'All we need is a light wind,' said Pitt, scarcely audible. 'And if the last six days are any indication, we don't have to worry on that score.'
'Nothing like pursuing the impossible dream.'
'She'll go,' Pitt said resolutely.
'What do you think she weighs?'
'About 160 kilograms or 350 pounds.'
'What are we going to call her?' asked Giordino.
'Call her?'
'A name, she's got to have a name.'
Pitt nodded toward Kitty. 'If we make it out of this pressure cooker, we'll owe it to her. How about the Kitty Mannock?'
'Good choice.'
They babbled vaguely and sporadically, whispered voices in a great void of dead space, until they drifted off into a welcome sleep.
The bleaching sun was probing the bottom of the ravine when they finally awoke. Just rising to their feet was a monumental task of will. They bid a silent goodbye to Kitty and then staggered to the front of their improvised hope of survival. Pitt tied two lengths of cable to the front of the land yacht and handed one to Giordino.
'You feel up to it?'
'Hell no,' Giordino spat out of a shriveled mouth.
Pitt grinned despite the pain from his cracked and bleeding lips. His eyes raked Giordino's, searching for the glow that would see them through. It was there, but very dim. 'Race you to the top.'
Giordino swayed as though like a drunk in a wind storm, but he winked and gamely said, 'Eat my dust, sucker.' And then he slung the cable over his shoulder, leaned forward to take up the strain, and promptly fell on his face.
The land yacht rolled as easily as a shopping cart across the tile floor of a supermarket and almost ran over him.
He looked up at Pitt through red eyes, surprise on his sunburned face. 'By God she moves light as a feather.'
'Of course, she had a pair of first-rate mechanics.'
With no more talk they pulled their hand-built land yacht down the middle of the wash until they came to a slope that angled 30 degrees up to the surface of the dry lake.
The climb was only 7 meters, but to men who were staring in the grave only eighteen hours before, the top edge of the slope looked like the summit of Mount Everest. They had not expected to live through another night, and yet here they were confronting what they were certain was the final obstacle between rescue or death.
Pitt made the attempt first while Giordino rested. He clasped one of the tow cables around his waist and began crawling up the incline like a drunken ant, edging upward a few centimeters at a time. His body was but a terribly worn-out machine serving the demands of a mind that had only the thinnest grip on reality. His aching muscles protested with shooting agony. His arms and legs gave out early in the climb, but he forced them to carry on. His bloodshot eyes were almost closed from fatigue, his face deeply etched in suffering, lungs sucking in air with painful gasps, heart beating like a jackhammer under the inhuman strain.
Pitt could not let himself stop. If he and Giordino died, all the poor souls slaving their lives away at Tebezza would die too, their true fate unknown to the outside world. He could not give up, collapse, and expire, not now, not this close to beating the old guy with the scythe. He ground his teeth together in a rage of tenacity and kept climbing.
Giordino tried to shout words of encouragement, but all he could rasp out was an inaudible whisper.
And then mercifully, Pitt's hands groped over the edge and he summoned the will to pull his battered body onto the dry lake. He lay there a faint shadow away from unconsciousness, aware of only his hoarse gasping breathing and a heart that felt as if it was going to pound its way through his rib cage.
He wasn't sure how long he lay fully exposed under the baking sun until his breathing and heart slowed to something close to a regular pace. Finally, he pushed to his hands and knees and peered down the slope. Giordino was sitting comfortably in the shade of the wing sail, and managed a weak wave.
'Ready to come up?' Pitt asked.
Giordino wearily nodded, took hold of the tow cable, and pressed his body against the slope, feebly working his way upward. Pitt slung his end of the cable over his shoulder and used the leverage of his weight by leaning forward without exerting energy. Four minutes later, half crawling, half dragged by Pitt, Giordino rolled limply onto flat ground like a fish that had been reeled in after a long struggle against hook and line.
'Now comes the fun part,' Pitt uttered weakly.
'I'm not up to it,' Giordino gasped.
Pitt looked down at him. Giordino already looked dead. His eyes were closed, his face and ten-day beard powdered with white dust. If he could not help Pitt pull the land yacht out of the ravine both of them would die this day.
Pitt knelt down and struck him sharply across the face. 'Don't quit on me now,' he muttered harshly. 'How do you expect to score with Massarde's gorgeous piano player if you don't get off your butt and pitch in.'
Giordino's eyes fluttered open and he rubbed a hand across his dust-coated cheek. With a supreme effort of will, he hauled himself to his feet and tottered drunkenly. He stared at Pitt without any malice at all, and despite his misery, he managed a grin. 'I hate myself for being so predictable.'
'Good thing too.'
Like a team of emaciated mules in harness, they took up the tow cables and pitched forward, their bodies too weak to do much more than take a few plodding steps as their combined weight slowly but immeasurably pulled the land yacht up the slope. Their heads were bowed, backs hunched over, minds lost in the delirium of thirst. Progress was heartbreakingly slow.
Soon they dropped to their knees and pitifully crawled forward. Giordino noticed that blood was dripping frog Pitt's hands where the cable had burned into his palms, but he was entirely oblivious to it. Then suddenly the cables slackened and the improvised land yacht was over the tore and had bumped into them. Fortunately Pitt had the foresight to tie down the rigging of the wind sail so its trailing edge was now pointing directly into a light wind and did not generate any driving force.
After unclasping the tow cables, Pitt helped Giordino it to the fuselage until he dropped like a sack of potatoes in the forward seat. Then Pitt looked up at the thin strip of tell-tale cloth he'd tied in the rigging and threw a handful of sand in the air to pinpoint the wind direction. It was blowing out of the northwest.
The moment of truth had arrived. He looked down at Giordino who made a listless forward gesture with one hand and spoke in a weak, husky whisper.
'Move it out.'
Pitt leaned on the rear of the fuselage and pushed the craft from a standstill until it was moving slowly across the sand. After a few stumbling steps he fell limply into the rear seat. The wind was to the leeward behind his left shoulder, and he let out the sheet line and eased over the tiller so that he was carried on a downwind tack. He took in a little on the sheet line as the wind built up on the wing sail and the Kitty Mannock began to move on her own. Her speed picked up rapidly as Pitt took in a little more line.
He glanced down at the aircraft compass, took a reading, and set his course, exhaustion and exhilaration flooding through his seemingly dusty arteries at the same time. He trimmed the wing sail as it flexed under the wind
