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."
The train was down to a crawl now and half the container cars had passed into the project rail yard beyond the security station. "You'd better hurry," Giordino said anxiously.
The sweat trickled into Pitt's eyes, but he shook the drops off while he twisted the dime. Their car moved relentlessly closer to the TV cameras. Three quarters of the train was cleared when Pitt still had three screws to go.
He was down to two, then one. The next car was passing into the station. Out of sheer desperation he gripped the big panel with both hands and tore it from its slot, ripping the last screw from its threads.
"Quick, sit with your back against the air conditioner," he ordered Giordino.
They both shoved their backs as far into the air-conditioning housing as possible and then thrust the panel up in front of them like a shield.
"You think this will fool anybody?" Giordino asked dubiously.
"TV monitors are two-dimensional. So long as they're pointing at us head on, we'll present an illusion to any viewer."
The container car rolled slowly into a sterile white tunnel with TV cameras positioned to view the undercarriage, sides, and roof. Pitt gripped the panel with his fingertips rather than extending them around the edges where they might be seen by the security guard monitoring the train. The makeshift facade may not have reeked with finesse, but the best he could hope for was a guard bored with the monotony of staring at a seemingly endless line of cargo containers on an array of television monitors. Like being forced to watch a hundred reruns of the same program on ten different screens, the mind would soon go into a drugged state and begin to wander.
They huddled there, waiting for the bells and sirens, but no alarm was given. The container car rolled out under the night sky again and was pulled onto a siding next to a long concrete loading dock with large overhead derricks that moved on parallel tracks.
"Oh brother." Giordino mopped his brow again. "I don't look forward to that little scam again."
Pitt grinned, gave Giordino a friendly punch on the shoulder, and turned to the rear of the train. "Don't get carried away just yet. Our friends are still with us."
They remained motionless there on the roof of the container, holding the air-conditioning panel as the guards' armored car was uncoupled and pulled away by a small electric switch engine. The four diesels' locomotives also dropped their rear coupling and chugged off toward a siding where a long row of empty cars was waiting to be hauled back to the port in Mauritania.
Safe for the moment, Pitt and Giordino stayed where they were and calmly waited for something to happen. The dock was lit with big overhead arc lamps and appeared deserted of life. A long line of strange-looking vehicles sat like squat bugs on the loading dock. They each had four wheels with no tires, flat, level cargo beds, and little else except a small box-like unit that extended from the front and contained lights and a bug-eyed lens aimed forward.
Pitt was about to reattach the air-conditioner panel when he caught a movement above his head. Fortunately, he saw the TV camera mounted on a pole by the dock before it swung through its full arc and found them. A quick look around the dock, and he spotted four more cameras.
"Stay put," he alerted Giordino. "They've got remote sensing equipment everywhere."
They ducked back behind the panel and were figuring the next move when the lights on the derricks suddenly flashed on and their electric motors began to hum. None had a cabin for an operator. They were all operated by remote control from a command center somewhere within the project. They moved along the train and dropped horizontal metal shafts that slid into slots on the top edges of the containers. Then a short blast from a horn sounded and the derricks hoisted the big containers from their rail cars, swung over the dock, and lowered them onto one of the flatbed trucks. The lifting shafts were removed and the derricks went on to the next container.
For the next few minutes they remained behind the panel, not moving as the nearest derrick poised directly above them, eased in the shafts, and picked up their container. Pitt was impressed the entire operation went so smoothly without human presence. Once the container was firmly settled on the truck, there was a buzz and it began to silently roll along the dock and then down a long ramp that led into an open shaft that corkscrewed underground.
"Who's driving?" Giordino murmured.
"A robotic transporter," answered Pitt. "Controlled from a command center somewhere in the project."
They quickly replaced the panel and tightened it with just a couple of screws. Next they crawled to the forward edge of the container and studied the scene unfolding around them.
"I've got to admit," said Giordino softly, "I've never seen efficiency like this anywhere."
Pitt had to agree, it was an intriguing sight. The curving ramp, a marvel of engineering, went deep, deep into the bowels of the desert. Already, he reasoned, the transporter and its cargo had traveled over 100 meters straight down, passing four different levels that traveled beyond view into the earth.
Pitt studied the large signs above the passages. They were identified with symbols as well as terminology in French. The upper levels were designated for biological waste, the lower levels for chemical waste. Pitt began to wonder what the container they were riding on carried inside.
He found the mystery intensifying. Why would a reactor that burned waste be buried so deep underground? To his way of thinking it should have been above the surface near the solar concentrators.
At last the ramp straightened out into an immense cavern that seemed to stretch on forever. The ceiling was a good four stories high with rock-hewn side tunnels spreading in all directions like spokes on a wheel. It looked to Pitt that a work of nature had been expanded by an enormous excavation project.
P
itt's senses were probing ahead of him like antennae. He was continually surprised to still see no people, no workers or machine operators. Every movement in what he perceived to be a storage cavern was controlled by automation. The electrically powered transporter, like a drone ant, followed the one ahead and turned into one of the side tunnels that was marked by a red sign with a black diagonal slash that hung from the ceiling. Up ahead came various sounds and echoes.
"A land office business," said Giordino, pointing to a number of transporters moving in the opposite direction, the doors of their cargo containers open and revealing empty interiors.
After moving almost a full kilometer the truck began to slow as the noises grew louder. Around a bend it moved into a vast chamber, filled and stacked floor to roof with thousands of box-shaped containers built from concrete, all painted yellow with black markings. A robotic machine was off-loading the barrels from the cargo containers and stacking them with a sea of other containers that rose toward the roof of the cavern.
Pitt's teeth ground softly together. He stared in growing shock and suddenly wished he was somewhere else, any place but in that underground chamber of deadly horror.
The barrels were marked with the symbol for radioactivity. He and Giordino had stumbled on Fort Foureau's secret, an underground dumping ground for nuclear waste on an unheard-of colossal scale.
Massarde took one long comprehensive look at the TV monitor and shook his head in wonderment. Then he turned to his aide, Felix Verenne.
"Those men are incredible," he murmured.
"How did they get through security?" mused Verenne.
"By the same method they escaped my houseboat, stole General Kazim's car, and drove halfway across the Sahara. Cunning and dogged persistence."
"Should we prevent their escape from the storage chamber?" asked Verenne. "Keep them trapped in there until they die of radiation sickness?"
Massarde thought for a moment, and then shook his head. "No, send security to apprehend them. Give them a good scrubbing to remove any contamination and bring them here. I'd like to talk with Mr. Pitt again before I have him disposed of."
Massarde's security guards captured them twenty minutes later, after they rode inside an empty container car up to the surface from the waste storage cavern. They had dropped from the roof of the container and into the emptied interior. A concealed TV camera had caught them in an unguarded moment before they could slip inside.
The door was thrown open moments before the container was to be lifted onto a railroad car. They had no chance of putting up any fight or making an attempt to escape. The surprise was well coordinated and complete.
Ten, Pitt counted them, ten men standing with menacing steadiness, pointing machine guns at the two unarmed men inside the cargo container. Pitt felt the stinging bitterness of failure cut through him like a knife. He could taste the bitterness of defeat on his tongue. To be trapped and caught once by Massarde was a miscalculation. To be caught twice was damned stupid. He stared at the guards feeling no fear, only anger for getting snared. He cursed himself for not being more alert.
They could do nothing now but bide their time and hope they weren't executed before another chance at escape, no matter how slim, appeared. Pitt and Giordino slowly raised their hands and clasped them behind their heads.
"I hope you'll forgive the intrusion," Pitt said quietly. "But we were looking for a bathroom."
"You wouldn't want us to have an accident," Giordino added.
"Still! Both of you!" A voice erupted from a security officer in a smartly creased uniform, a red pillbox cap of the French military perched on his head. The tone was harsh and cold in English with almost no trace of French. "I'm told you are dangerous men. Push all thoughts of escape from your minds. My men are not trained to wound resisting captives."
"What's the big deal?" asked Giordino with an innocent look. "You act like we stole a drum of used dioxin."
The officer ignored Giordino's remark. "Identify yourselves."
Pitt stared at him. "I'm Rocky and my friend is--"
"Bullwinkle," Giordino finished.
A tight smile curled the officer's lips. "No doubt more appropriate than Dirk Pitt and Albert Giordino."
"So if you know, why ask?" said Pitt.
"Mr. Massarde was expecting you."
"The last place they'd expect us to cut and run is the middle of the desert," said Giordino, mimicking Pitt's words in Bourem. "Kind of misguessed, didn't we?"
Pitt lightly shrugged his shoulders. "I read the wrong script."
"How did you men penetrate our security?" asked the officer.
"We took the train," answered Pitt easily, making no attempt to hide the truth.
"The doors to the cargo containers are locked with combinations after loading. You could not have forced your way inside while the train was moving."
"You should tell whoever monitors your television cameras to study the air conditioners on the roofs. A simple matter to remove a panel and use it as a screen."
"Indeed?" Captain Brunone was highly interested. "Most clever. I'll see that your means of entry is added to our security manual."
"I'm deeply flattered," Pitt grinned.
The officer's eyes narrowed. "You won't be for long, rest assured." He paused and spoke into a portable radio. "Mr. Massarde?"
"I'm here," Massarde's voice rasped through the speaker.
"Captain Charles Brunone, sir, Chief of Security."
"Pitt and Giordino?"
"In my hands."
"Did they resist?"
"No, sir, they gave up quietly."
"Please bring them to my office, Captain."
"Yes, sir, as soon as they've been decontaminated."
Pitt said to Brunone, "Would it help if we said we were sorry?"
"It seems American humor never stops," said Brunone coldly. "You can offer your apologies to Mr. Massarde in person, but since you destroyed his helicopter, I wouldn't expect any pity if I were you."
Yves Massarde didn't smile often, but he was smiling now as Pitt and Giordino were escorted into his vast office. Leaning back in his expensive leather executive's chair, elbows parked on the armrests, fingers entwined under his chin, he smiled benignly like a mortician after a typhoid epidemic.
Felix Verenne stood by a window overlooking the facility. His eyes stared expressionless, like camera apertures, the lines in his face grim, his mouth tight in contempt. A marked contrast to his superior's bemused stare.
"Splendid work, Captain Brunone," Massarde purred. "You collected them uninjured and unmarked." He gazed speculatively at the two men standing before him in clean, white coveralls, at their tanned faces and excellent physical condition, took note of their seemingly unconcerned expressions, and remembered encountering the same indifference on his houseboat. "So they proved cooperative."
"Like schoolchildren beckoned to class," Brunone said formally. "They did as they were ordered."
"Very wise of them," Massarde murmured approvingly. He pushed back his chair and came around the desk and faced Pitt. "I compliment you on your passage across the desert. General Kazim doubted you would last two days. A remarkable accomplishment to have come so far over hostile ground so fast."
"General Kazim is the last man I'd rely on for a prediction," said Pitt pleasantly.
"You stole my helicopter and crashed it in the river, Mr. Pitt. That will cost you dearly."
"You treated us shabbily aboard your houseboat, so we repaid you in kind."
"And General Kazim's valuable old car?"
"The engine seized up so we burned it," Pitt lied.
"You seemed to have developed a nasty habit for destroying other people's expensive possessions."
"I broke all my toys when I was a kid," Pitt said casually. "Drove my Dad up the walls."
"I can always purchase another helicopter, but General Kazim cannot replace his Avions Voisin. Enjoy what time you have left before his sadists work you over in his torture chambers
."
"Lucky for me I'm a masochist," Giordino said, unruffled.
Just for a second Massarde looked amused, then his face turned curious. "What did you find that was so interesting that you drove halfway across the Sahara to Fort Foureau?" he demanded.
"We enjoyed your company so much on your houseboat, we thought we'd pay you another social visit--"
Massarde's hand lashed out as he viciously backhanded Pitt across the face, a large diamond ring cutting a path through the right cheek. Pitt's head twisted from the blow, but his feet remained firmly rooted to the carpet. "Does this mean you're challenging me to a duel?" he muttered through a taut grin.
"No, it means I am going to have you slowly lowered in a drum of nitric acid until you talk."
Pitt looked at Giordino, then back to Massarde, and shrugged. "All right, Massarde, you've got a leak."
Massarde frowned. "Be specific."
"Your hazardous waste, the chemicals you're supposed to be burning, are seeping into groundwater that flows under an ancient riverbed and is polluting every well between here and the Niger. From there it flows to the Atlantic where it's causing a catastrophic disaster that will eventually destroy all sea life. And that's just for starters. We followed the old riverbed and discovered it once flowed directly beneath Fort Foureau."
"We are almost 400 kilometers from the Niger," said Verenne. "Impossible for water to flow that far under the desert's surface."
"How do you know?" asked Pitt. "Fort Foureau is the only project or plant within Mali that receives chemical and biological waste. The compound responsible for the problem can only come from here, the only possible source. There's no question in my mind now that I know that you're hiding waste instead of burning it."
Irritation flickered at the edge of Massarde's mouth. "You're not entirely correct, Mr. Pitt. We do burn waste at Fort Foureau. A considerable amount as a matter of fact. Come into the next room, and I'll show you."
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