Pitt looked at the driver and smiled. 'What is your name, my friend?'
'Ben Hadi.'
Pitt shook the driver's hand warmly. 'Ben Hadi,' he said softly, 'you don't know it, but by saving our lives you also saved the lives of a hundred others.'
ECHOES OF THE ALAMO
May 26, 1996
Washington, D. C.
'They're out!' Hiram Yaeger shouted as he burst into Sandecker's office with Rudi Gunn at his heels.
Sandecker, his mind lost on the budget of an undersea project, looked up blankly. 'Out?'
'Dirk and AI, they've crossed over the border into Algeria.'
Sandecker suddenly looked like a kid who was told Santa Claus was coming. 'How do you know?'
'They phoned from the airport near a desert town called Adrar,' answered Gunn. 'The connection was bad, but we understood them to say they were catching a commercial flight to Algiers. Once there, they would reestablish contact from our embassy.'
'Was there anything else?'
Gunn glanced at Yaeger and nodded. 'You were on the line with Dirk before I came on.'
'Pill's voice kept fading,' said Yaeger. 'Algeria's desert phone system is only two steps above tin cans tied to waxed string. If I heard him correctly, he insisted that you request a Special Forces Team to return with him to Mali.'
'Did he explain?' Sandecker asked curiously.
'His voice was too indistinct. Interference broke up our conversation. What little I could make out sounded crazy.'
'Crazy, in what manner?' Sandecker demanded.
'He said something about rescuing women and children in a gold mine. His voice sounded strangely urgent.'
'That makes no sense at all,' said Gunn.
Sandecker stared at Yaeger. 'Did Dirk reveal how they escaped from Mali?'
Yaeger looked like a man who was lost in a maze. 'Don't quote me, Admiral, but I'd swear he said they sailed across the desert in a yacht with some woman named Kitty Manning or Manncock.'
Sandecker sat back in his chair and smiled resignedly. 'Knowing Pitt and Giordino as I do, I wouldn't put it past them.' Then abruptly his eyes narrowed and his expression turned quizzical. 'Could the name have been Kitty Mannock?'
'The name was garbled, but yes, I think that was it.'
'Kitty Mannock was a famous aviator back in the twenties,' explained Sandecker. 'She broke long-distance speed records over half the globe before vanishing in the Sahara. I believe it was back in 1931.'
'What could she possibly have to do with Pitt and Giordino?' Yaeger wondered aloud.
'I have no idea,' said Sandecker.
Gunn studied his watch. 'I checked the air distance between Adrar and Algiers. It's only a little over 1200 kilometers. If they're in the air now, we should be hearing from them in approximately an hour and a half.'
'Instruct our communications department to open a direct line to our Algerian embassy,' ordered the Admiral. 'And tell them to make sure it's secure. If Pitt and Giordino stumbled onto any vital data concerning the red tide contamination, I don't want it leaked to the news media.'
When Pitt's call came through to NUMA's worldwide communications network, Sandecker and the others, including Dr. Chapman, were gathered around a phone console that recorded the conversation and amplified Pitt's voice through a speaker system so they could all converse without microphones or telephone receivers.
Most of the questions that had mounted over the past ninety minutes were answered in Pitt's precise, hour-long report. Everyone sat listening intently and making notes as he related the harrowing events and epic struggles he and Giordino endured after parting with Gunn on the Niger River. He described in detail their discovery of the fraudulent operation at Fort Foureau. He shocked them with his revelation that Dr. Hopper and the World Health Organization scientists were alive and suffering as slaves in the mines of Tebezza along with Massarde's French engineers, their wives and children, plus a score of other kidnapped foreigners and political prisoners of General Kazim. He ended his report on the accidental and fortunate finding of Kitty Mannock and her long-lost aircraft as they trekked across the desert. His audience could not help smiling among themselves as he recounted the construction of the land yacht.
The men seated around the console now understood why Pitt demanded to return to Mali with an armed force. The exposure of the gold mines of Tebezza and the hideous, inhuman conditions appalled them. But they were even more stunned to hear of the secret nuclear and toxic waste underground storage at Fort Foureau. Learning that the state-of-the-art solar disposal operation was a fraud brought worried expressions on their faces as they each began to wonder how many other Massarde Enterprises hazardous waste projects around the world were cover-ups.
Pitt followed by setting them straight on the criminal relationship between Yves Massarde and Zateb Kazim. He repeated in detail what he heard during his conversations with Massarde and O'Bannion.
Then the questions came, launched by Chapman. 'You've concluded that Fort Foureau is the source of the red tide contamination?' asked Dr. Chapman.
'Giordino and I are no experts on groundwater hydrology,' replied Pitt, 'but there is little doubt in our minds the toxic waste that is not burned but hidden below the desert is leaking and migrating directly into the groundwater. From there it flows beneath an old riverbed southward until it empties into the Niger.'
'How could large excavations be conducted belowground without international environmental inspectors catching on?' asked Yaeger.
'Or discovery by satellite photos?' Gunn added.
'The key is the railroad and the cargo containers,' Pitt answered. 'The excavation did not begin during construction of the solar reactor, photovoltaic, and concentrator arrays. Only after a large building was erected to shield the operation did trains hauling in nuclear and toxic waste begin returning to Mauritania with rock and dirt from the excavation for a landfill. From what Al and I were able to examine, Massarde took advantage of already existing limestone caverns.'
Everyone was silent for a moment, then Chapman said, 'When this thing gets out, the scandal and investigations will never end.'
'Do you have documented proof?' Gunn asked Pitt.
'We can only tell you what we saw on the site and heard from Massarde. I'm sorry we can't offer you more.'
'You've done an incredible job,' said Chapman. 'Thanks to you the contaminant's source is no longer unknown, and plans can be formed to cut off its leakage into the groundwater.'
'Easier said than done,' Sandecker reminded him. 'Dirk and Al have handed us a gigantic can of worms.'
'The Admiral's right,' said Gunn. 'We can't simply walk into Fort Foureau and close it down. Yves Massarde is a powerful and wealthy man with inside connections to General Kazim and the upper levels of the French government--'
'And a lot of other powerful men in business and government,' Gunn added.
'Massarde is a secondary consideration,' Pitt cut in. 'Our most urgent priority is to save those poor people at Tebezza before they're all killed.'
'Are any of them Americans?' asked Sandecker.
'Dr. Eva Rojas is a U.S. citizen.'
'She is the only one?'
'As far as I know.'
'If no President has ever kicked ass in Lebanon to free our hostages, there's no way our current President will send in a Special Force Team to save one American.'
'Won't hurt to ask,' proposed Pitt.
'He already turned me down when I made the request to rescue you and Al.'
'Hala Kamil offered the UN Critical Response and Tactical Team before,' said Gunn. 'Surely she'll authorize
