Perlmutter nodded. "Thanks to her endurance, another great mystery may be solved."
"She gave us a ball park," acknowledged Pitt. "All we have to do is follow the ravine south until it opens into an old riverbed and start our search for the ironclad from there."
Two hours later, the Aussie recovery team paused in their task of carefully dismantling the weathered remains of Kitty Mannock's old Fairchild airplane and looked up as a helicopter appeared and circled the ravine containing the wreckage. Smiles broke out as the Hussies recognized the missing wing and landing gear tied to the chopper's landing skids.
Pitt eased back on the cyclic control and brought the craft to a gentle landing on the flat ground above the ravine to avoid covering the recovery workers and their equipment in a tornado of dust and sand. He shut down the engines and checked his watch. It was eight-forty A.M., a few hours shy of the hottest time of day.
St. Julien Perlmutter shifted his bulk in the copilot's seat in preparation for his exit. "I wasn't built for these contraptions," he grumbled as the full blast of the heat hit him upon exiting the air-conditioned cabin.
"Beats the hell out of walking," Giordino said as he surveyed the familiar ground. "Believe me, I know."
A big, brawny Aussie with a ruddy face climbed from the ravine and approached them. "Allo there, you must be Dirk Pitt."
"I'm Al Giordino, he's Pitt." Giordino gestured over his shoulder.
"Ned Quinn, I'm in charge of the recovery operation."
Pitt winced as Quinn's huge paw crushed his hand. Massaging his knuckles, Pitt said, "We brought back the parts of Kitty's aircraft that we borrowed a few weeks ago."
"Much appreciated." Quinn's voice rasped like iron against a grinding wheel. "Amazin' bit of ingenuity, using the wing to sail over the desert."
"St. Julien Perlmutter," said Perlmutter, introducing himself.
Quinn patted an enormous belly that hung over a pair of work pants. "Seems we both take to good food and drink, Mr. Perlmutter."
"You wouldn't happen to have some of that good Aussie beer with you by chance?"
"You like our beer?"
"I keep a case of Castlemaine from Brisbane on hand for special occasions."
"We don't have any Castlemaine," said Quinn, mightily impressed, "but I can offer you a bottle of Fosters."
"I'd be much obliged," Perlmutter said gratefully as his sweat glands began to pour.
Quinn walked over to the cab of a flatbed truck and pulled four bottles from an ice chest. He brought them back and passed them around.
"How soon will you be finishing up?" asked Pitt, moving off the subject of brew.
Quinn turned and stared at the portable crane that was preparing to lift the engine from the ancient aircraft onto the truck. "Another three or four hours before she's snugly tied down and we're on our way back to Algiers."
Pitt pulled the logbook from his shirt pocket and held it out to Quinn. "Kitty's pilot log. She used it to record her final flight and tragic aftermath. I borrowed it for reference on something she found during her ordeal. I hope Kitty wouldn't have minded."
"I'm sure she didn't mind at all," said Quinn, nodding down at the wooden coffin draped in the Australian flag with the cross of St. George and stars of the Southern Cross. "My countrymen are indebted to you and Mr. Giordino for clearing up the mystery of her disappearance so we could bring her home."
"She's been gone too long," said Perlmutter softly.
"Yes," Quinn said with a touch of reverence to his rasping voice. "That she has."
Much to Perlmutter's delight, Quinn insisted on supplying their helicopter with ten bottles of beer before they said their farewells. To a man, the Aussies climbed the steep bank to express their thanks and heartily shake Pitt and Giordino's hands. After he lifted off the helicopter into the air, Pitt circled the wreckage once more in tribute before turning and following Kitty's footsteps toward the legendary ship in the desert.
Flying in a straight line over the meandering ravine that had taken Kitty days of painful struggle to limp through, the jet helicopter reached the ancient riverbed in less than twelve minutes. What had once been a flowing river surrounded by a green belt was now little more than a wide barren wash surrounded by unstable sand.
"The Oued Zarit," announced Perlmutter. "Hard to believe it was a thriving waterway."
"Oued Zarit," Pitt repeated. "That's what the old American prospector called it. He claimed it began to go dry about a hundred and thirty years ago."
"He was right. I did some research on old French surveys of the area. There once was a port near here where caravans traded with merchants who ran a fleet of boats. No telling where it stood now. It was covered over by sand not long after the unending drought began and the water sank into the sand."
"So the theory is the Texas steamed up the river and became landlocked when the river ran dry," said Giordino.
"Not a theory. I found a deathbed statement in the archives from a crewman by the name of Beecher. He swore he was the only survivor of the Texas' crew, and gave a detailed description of the ship's final voyage across the Atlantic and up the tributary of the Niger where it became stranded."
"How can you be sure it wasn't the ravings of a dying man?" asked Giordino.
"His story was too incredibly detailed not to believe," Perlmutter said firmly.
Pitt dropped the helicopter's speed as he stared down at the dry wash. "The prospector also said the Texas was carrying gold from the dying Confederacy's treasury."
Perlmutter nodded. "Beecher mentioned gold. He also gave me a tantalizing clue that led to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton's secret and still unopened papers—"
"I think we have something," interrupted Giordino, pointing down through the windshield. "Off to the right. A large dune that spills out from the west bank."
"The one with a rock embedded on top?" asked Perlmutter, his voice rising in excitement.
"You got it."
"Break out the Schonstedt gradiometer Julien brought from Washington," Pitt ordered Giordino. "As soon as you set it up, I'll make a pass over the dune."
Giordino quickly unpacked the iron-detecting instrument, checked the battery connections, and set the sensitivity reading. "Ready to drop the sensor: "'
"Okay, approaching the dune at an airspeed of 10 knots," replied Pitt.
Giordino lowered the sensor on a cable leading back to the gradiometer until it dangled 10 meters beneath the helicopter's belly. Then he and Perlmutter intently studied the needle on the frequency dial. As the helicopter moved slowly over the dune, the needle wavered and the sound amplifier began to buzz. Suddenly the needle pegged and then shot to the other side of the dial as the sensor passed over the magnetic polarity from positive to negative. In unison the buzz rose to a shrill shriek:
"She's off the scale," Giordino shouted jubilantly. "We've got a king-size iron mass down there."
"Your reading could be coming from that circular brown rock on the dune," cautioned Perlmutter. "The desert around here is teeming with iron ore."
"Not a brown rock!" Pitt whooped. "You're looking at the top of a smokestack coated with rust:"
As Pitt hovered over the mound, no one found the right words to say. Until now, deep down, they had wondered if she existed at all. But there was no uncertainty in their minds now.
The Texas had surely been rediscovered.
The first flush of exhilaration and elation soon died when a survey of the mound showed that with the exception of 2 meters of smokestack, the entire ship was covered by sand. It would take days for them to shovel through the avalanching sand to reach inside.
"The dune has marched over the casemate since Kitty was here sixty-five years ago," muttered Perlmutter. "The wreck is buried too deep for us to penetrate. Nothing but heavy excavation equipment can clear an entrance."