"Pick your targets and commence firing," Levant ordered in a formal tone. "Now it's our turn to make them suffer."
One minute Giordino could make out a long line of four trains stopped dead on the tracks, the next, everything was blanked out by a sudden current of swirling air that whipped up a sandstorm. Visibility went from 20 kilometers to 50 meters.
"What do you think?" asked Steinholm as he idled the dune buggy in third gear, trying to nurse the last precious few drops of fuel. "Are we in Mauritania?"
"I wish I knew," Giordino conceded. "Looks like Massarde stopped all incoming trains but I can't tell which side of the border they're on."
"What does the navigational computer have to say?"
"The numbers suggest we crossed the border 10 kilometers back."
"Then we might as well approach the track bed and take our chances."
As he spoke, Steinholm threaded the vehicle between two large rocks and drove up the crest of a small hill, then braked to a sudden halt. Both men heard it at the same instant. The sound was unmistakable through the blowing of the wind. It was faint, but there was no mistaking the strange thump. Each second it became clearer, and then seemed to be on top of them.
Steinholm hurriedly twisted the wheel, shoved the accelerator to the firewall, and swung the fast attack vehicle in a wheel-spinning broadside until it had snapped around on a reverse course. Then abruptly, the engine sputtered and died, starved for lack of gas. The two men sat helplessly as the vehicle rolled to a stop.
"Looks to me as if we just bought the farm," grunted Giordino bleakly.
"They must have picked us up on their radar and are coming straight at us," Steinholm lamented as he angrily pounded the steering wheel.
Slowly through the brown curtain of sand and dust, like some huge beastly insect from an alien planet, a helicopter materialized and hovered 2 meters off the ground. Staring into a 30-millimeter Chain gun, two pods of thirty-eight 2.75-inch rockets, and eight laser-guided anti-tank missiles was an unnerving experience. Giordino and Steinholm sat rigid in the dune buggy, braced for the worst.
But instead of a fiery blast and then oblivion, a figure dropped from a hatch in the belly. As he approached they could see he was wearing a desert combat suit laden with high-tech gizmos. The head was covered by a camouflaged cloth-covered helmet and the face with a mask and goggles. He carried a leveled submachine gun as though it was an appendage of his hands.
He stopped beside the dune buggy and looked down at Giordino and Steinholm for a long moment. Then he pulled aside his mask and said, "Where in hell did you guys come from?"
Finished with the swing bow, Pitt grabbed a pair of submachine guns from two badly wounded tactical team fighters and took up a position in a one-man stronghold he'd fashioned from fallen stone. He was impressed with the uniformed nomads from the desert. They were big men who ran and dodged with imposing agility as they swept toward the fort. The closer they got without encountering opposition, the braver they became.
Outnumbered fifty-to-one, the UN tactical team could not hope to hold out long enough for rescue. This was one time the underdog had no chance of pulling off an upset. Pitt quickly realized how the defenders of the Alamo must have felt. He sighted the incoming horde and pressed the trigger at Levant's command to fire.
The first wave of the Malian security force was met with a withering blast of gunfire that ripped into their advance. They made easy targets over ground totally denuded of cover. Hunched down in the rubble, the UN fighters took their time and fired with deadly aim. Like weeds before a scythe, the attackers fell in heaps almost before they knew what hit them. Within twenty minutes, more than two hundred seventy-five lay dead and wounded around the perimeters of the fort.
The second wave stumbled over the bodies of the first, hesitated as their ranks were devastated, and fell back. None, even their officers, had expected anything resembling hard-core resistance. Kazim's hastily planned attack unraveled in chaos. His force began to panic, many in the rear firing blindly into their own men in front.
As the Malians fell back in confusion, most running like animals before a brush fire, a brave few walked slowly backward, continuing to shoot at anything that remotely looked like the head of a fort defender. Thirty of the attackers tried to take cover behind the burning tanks, but Pembroke-Smythe had expected that tactic and directed an accurate fire that cut them down.
Only one hour after the assault had begun, the crack of gunfire faded and the barren sand around the fort became filled with the cries of the wounded and the moans of the dying. The UN team was stunned and angered to see that no effort was made by the Malians to retrieve their own men. They did not know that an enraged Kazim had given orders to leave the injured to suffer under the blistering Sahara sun.
Amid the debris of the fort, the commandos slowly rose from their rifle pits and began to take count. One dead and three wounded, two seriously, Pembroke-Smythe reported to Levant. "I'd say we gave them a good drubbing," he said jauntily.
"They'll be back," Levant reminded him.
"At least we cut the odds a bit."
"So did they," said Pitt, offering the Colonel a drink from his water container. "We have four less able-bodied men to repel the next attack while Kazim can call in reinforcements."
"Mr. Pitt is right," agreed Levant. "I observed helicopters bringing in two more companies of men."
"How soon do you reckon they'll try again?" Pitt asked Levant.
The Colonel held up a hand to shield his eyes and squinted at the sun. "The hottest time of the day, I should think. His men are better acclimated to the heat than we are. Kazim will let us fry for a few hours before ordering another assault."
"They've been blooded now," said Pitt. "Next time there will be no stopping them."
"No," said Levant, his face haggard with fatigue. "I don't guess there will."
"What do you mean," Giordino demanded in white hot anger, "you won't go in there and bring them out?"
Colonel Gus Hargrove was not used to being challenged, especially by a cocky civilian who was a good head shorter than he was. Commander of an Army Ranger covert-attack helicopter task force, Hargrove was a hardened professional soldier, having flown and directed helicopter assaults in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, and Iraq. He was tough and shrewd, respected by his subordinates and superiors alike. His helmet came down and met a pair of blue eyes that blazed with the hardness of tempered steel. A cigar was stuffed in one side of his mouth, which was occasionally removed so he could spit.
"You don't seem to get it, Mr. Giordano."
"Giordino."
"Whatever," Hargrove muttered indifferently. "There was an information leak, probably through the United Nations. The Malians were waiting for us to cross into their air space. Half their air force is patrolling just beyond the border as we speak. In case you don't know it, the Apache helicopter is a great missile platform but no match for Mirage jet fighters. Certainly not in daylight hours. Without a squadron of Stealth fighters to fly protective cover, we can't go in until after dark. Only then can we take advantage of low terrain and desert gulches to fly under their radar screen. Do you get the picture?"
"Men, women, and children are going to die if you don't reach Fort Foureau within the next few hours."
"Rushing my unit over here with advance notice to the other side, without backup, and in the middle of the day was bad timing and ill advised," Hargrove stated firmly. "We attempt to go into Mali from Mauritania now, and my four choppers will be blasted out of the sky 50 kilometers inside the border. You tell me, sir, just what good would that do your people inside the fort?"