As he passed the long-abandoned Foreign Legion fort, surrounded by high walls, isolated and lonely, he turned off the rails and approached the gate out of curiosity. The big, sun-bleached doors were shut tight. He jumped from his camel and led it around the fort's walls looking for another opening to gain entrance inside, but finding only solid mud and stone, he gave up and walked back toward the railroad.
He looked to the west, intrigued with the way the silver rails strung out far into the distance and curled under the heat waves rising from the sun-baked sands. His eye caught something as he stood on the ties and stared. A speck appeared and floated through the heat waves. It enlarged and came toward him. The great steel monster, he thought with excitement.
But as the object drew closer, he could see it was too small for a locomotive. Then he discerned two men riding on it as if it was an open automobile driving on the rails. Ali moved off the track bed and stood next to his camel as the motor cart carrying two section hands who were inspecting the track rolled to a stop in front of him.
One was a white foreigner, the other, a dark-skinned Moor, greeted him. "Sallam al laikum."
"Al laikum el sallam, " Ali replied.
"Where do you come from, boy?" asked the Moor in the Berber language of the Tuareg.
"From Araouane to see the steel monster."
"You've come a long way."
"The trip was easy," Ali boasted.
"You have a fine camel."
"My father loaned me his best."
The Moor looked at a gold wristwatch. "You don't have long to wait. The train from Mauritania is due in about forty-five minutes."
"Thank you. I will wait," said Ali.
"See anything interesting inside the old fort?"
Ali shook his head. "I could not enter. The gates are locked."
The two section men exchanged quizzical glances and conversed in French for a few moments.
Then the Moor asked, "Are you certain? The fort is always open. That is where we keep ties and equipment to repair the track bed."
"I do not lie. See for yourself…"
The Moor stepped down from the motor cart and walked up to the front of the fort. He returned a few minutes later and spoke to the white man in French.
"The boy is right. The doors to the main gate are locked from within."
The face of the French track surveyor turned serious. "We must continue into the waste project and report this."
The Moor nodded and climbed back on the motor cart. He threw Ali a wave. "Do not stand too close to the tracks when the train comes, and keep a tight grip on your camel."
The engine's exhaust popped and the motor cart rolled down the rails in the direction of the hazardous waste project, leaving Ali staring after it while his camel gazed stoically at the horizon and spit on the track.
Colonel Marcel Levant realized he could not prevent the nomad boy and the railroad section hand from inspecting the exterior of the fort. Silently, menacingly, a dozen unseen machine guns had been trained on the curious intruders. They could have easily been shot and dragged into the fort, but Levant did not have the stomach for killing innocent civilians so they were spared.
"What do you think?" Pembroke-Smythe asked as the motor cart sped down the track toward the waste site's security station.
Levant studied the boy and his camel, his eyes squinting like those of a sniper. They were still resting beside the tracks waiting for the next passing train. "If those two on the cart tell Massarde's security guards the fort is sealed up, we can expect an armed patrol to investigate."
Pembroke-Smythe checked the time. "A good seven hours before dark. Let's hope they're slow in responding."
"Any late word from General Bock?" asked Levant.
"We've lost contact. The radio was knocked about during the journey from Tebezza and the circuitry became damaged. We can no longer transmit and reception is quite weak. The General's last message came through too garbled to decode properly. The best the operator could make of it was something about an American special operation force team that was going to hook up with us in Mauritania."
Levant stared incredulously at Pembroke-Smythe. "The Americans are coming, but only as far as Mauritania? Good God, that's over 300 kilometers from here. What in hell good will they do us in Mauritania if we're attacked before we can escape over the border?"
"The message was unclear, sir," Pembroke-Smythe shrugged helplessly. "Our radio operator did his best. Perhaps he misunderstood:'
"Can he somehow rig the radio to our combat communications gear?"
Pembroke-Smythe shook his head. "He already thought of that angle. The systems are not compatible…"
"We don't even know if Admiral Sandecker deciphered Pitt's code correctly," Levant said wearily. "For all Bock knows we may be wandering around the desert in circles or fleeing for Algeria."
"I like to think positive, sir."
Levant sank down heavily and leaned against a rampart. "No chance of making a run for it. Not nearly enough fuel. Getting caught in the open by the Malians is almost a certainty. No contact with the outside world. I'm afraid many of us are going to die in this rat hole, Pembroke-Smythe."
"Look on the bright side, Colonel. Perhaps the Americans will come charging in here like General Custer's seventh cavalry:"
"Oh God!" Levant moaned despairingly. "Why did you have to go and mention him?"
Giordino lay stretched out on his back under a personnel carrier removing a chassis spring when he saw Pitt's boots and legs step into his limited view. "Where've you been?" he grunted while twisting a nut from a shackle bolt.
"Tending to the weak and infirm," answered Pitt cheerfully.
"Then tend to the framework of your oddball whatchacallit. You can use the beams from the ceilings in the officers' quarters. They're dry but sound."
"You've been busy."
"A pity you can't say the same," Giordino said complainingly. "You'd better start figuring out how you're going to attach it all together."
Pitt lowered a small wooden keg to the ground in Giordino's line of sight. "Problem solved. I found half a keg of spikes in the mess hall."
"The mess hall?"
"Exposed in a storeroom in the mess hall," Pitt corrected himself.
Giordino pushed himself from under the vehicle and examined Pitt, his eyes traveling from the unlaced boots to the half-opened combat suit to the disheveled hair. When he finally spoke, it was in a voice heavy with sarcasm.
"I bet that keg wasn't the only thing you exposed in the storeroom."
When the report from the railroad section hands came into Kazim's security headquarters from Fort Foureau, it was given a quick read and set aside by Major Sid Ahmed Gowan, Kazim's personal intelligence officer. He saw nothing of value in it, and certainly no reason to pass it on to that Turkish interloper, Ismail Yerli.
Gowan failed to spot a connection between an abandoned fort and an elusive prey 400 kilometers to the north. The railroad workers who insisted the fort was locked from the inside were haughtily brushed off as a pair of dubious informants attempting to ingratiate themselves with their superiors.
But as the hours dragged by without any sighting of the UN force, Major Gowan took another look at the account and his suspicions began to grow. He was a thoughtful man, young and highly intelligent, the only officer in General Kazim's security forces who was educated in France and had graduated from Saint Cyr, France's foremost military college. He began to see a possibility of pulling off a coup to please his leader and make Yerli appear an amateur intelligence specialist.
He picked up the phone and called the commander of the Malian air forces, requesting an aerial reconnaissance of the desert south of Tebezza with special emphasis on vehicle tracks in the sand. As a backup precaution he also advised Fort Foureau to stop all trains from leaving or entering the project. If the UN force had indeed crossed the desert southward without being observed, Gowan speculated, perhaps they had holed up in the old Foreign Legion fort during daylight hours. With their vehicles certain to be low on fuel, they would probably await darkness before attempting to capture an outbound train headed for the Mauritanian border: