"Maybe it's a natural by-product of the soil," offered Giordino.
"This ungodly compound can't be produced by nature," muttered Gunn. "I promise you that."
"How about an underground drainage pipe running from a chemical plant beyond the dunes," Pitt speculated.
Gunn shrugged. "Can't tell without further investigation. This is as far as we can go. We've kept our end of the bargain. Now it's up to contamination specialists to pick up the rest of the pieces."
Pitt gazed over the stern at the gunboat that had crept into view. "Our hounds are getting nosy. Not bright of us to show them what devilment we're about. We'd best continue on course as though we're still taking in the scenery."
"Some scenery," grunted Giordino. "Death Valley is a garden spot compared to this."
Pitt pushed the throttles forward, and the Calliope lifted her bow and surged ahead with a mellow roar from her exhaust. In less than two minutes the Malian gunboat was left far in the yacht's spreading wake. Now, he thought, comes the fun part.
General Kazim sat in a leather executive chair at the end of a conference table flanked by two of Mali's cabinet ministers and his military Chief-of-Staff. At first glance the modern paintings on the silk-covered walls and the thick carpet gave the meeting room the look of a posh office in a modern building. The only giveaway was the curved ceiling and the muffled sound of the jet engines.
The elegantly furnished Airbus Industrie A300 was only one of several gifts Yves Massarde had presented to Kazim in return for allowing the Frenchman industrialist to conduct his vast operations in Mali without wasting time on such trifling details as government laws and restrictions. Whatever Massarde wanted, Kazim gave, so long as the General's foreign bank accounts became fat and he was kept in expensive toys.
Besides acting as a private means of transportation for the General and his cronies, the Airbus was electronically fitted out as a military communications command center, mostly to divert any accusations of corruption from the small but vocal opposition party members of President Tahir's parliament.
Kazim listened silently while his Chief-of-Staff, Colonel Sghir Cheik, explained in detail the reports of the destruction of the Benin gunboats and helicopter. He then passed Kazim two photographs taken of the super yacht on her passage up the river from the sea. "In the first photo," Cheik pointed out, "the yacht is flying the French tricolor. But since entering our country, she is sailing under a pirate flag."
"What nonsense is this?" demanded Kazim.
"We don't know," Cheik confessed. "The French ambassador swears the boat is unknown to his government and is not documented under French ownership. As to the pirate flag, it is an enigma."
"You must know where the boat came from."
"Our intelligence sources have been unable to trace its manufacturer or the country of origin. Its lines and style are unfamiliar to the major boat yards in America and Europe."
"Japanese or Chinese perhaps," suggested Mali's Foreign Minister, Messaoud Djerma.
Cheik pulled the hairs of his wedge-shaped beard and adjusted his tinted, designer glasses. "Our agents have also canvassed boat builders in Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan who design premier yachts with speeds exceeding 50 kilometers an hour. None had any record or knowledge of such a boat."
"You have no information about this intrusion at all?" Kazim asked unbelievingly.
"Nothing." Cheik held up his hands. "It's as though Allah dropped her from the heavens."
"An innocent-looking yacht that changes flags like a woman changes dresses sails up the Niger River," Kazim snarled coldly, "destroys half the Benin navy and its commanding Admiral, calmly enters our water without bothering to stop for customs and immigration inspection, and you sit there and tell me my intelligence network can't identify the nationality of the builder or the owner?"
"I'm sorry, my General," said Cheik nervously. His myopic eyes avoided Kazim's icy stare. "Perhaps if I had been permitted to send an agent on board at the dock in Niamey…"
"It cost enough as it was to bribe Niger officials to look the other way when the boat docked for refueling. The last thing I needed was a bumbling agent causing an incident."
"Have they replied to radio contact?" asked Djerma.
Cheik shook his head. "Our warnings have gone unanswered. They have ignored all communications."
"What in Allah's sacred name do they want?" questioned Seyni Gashi. The Chief of Kazim's Military Council looked far more like a camel trader than a soldier. "What is their mission?"
"It seems the mystery is beyond my intelligence people's mentality to solve," said Kazim irritably.
"Now that it's entered our territory," said Foreign Minister Djerma, "why not merely board and take possession?"
"Admiral Matabu tried it, and now he lies at the bottom of the river."
"The boat is armed with missile launchers," Cheik pointed out. "Highly effective judging from the results."
"Surely, we have the necessary firepower-"
"The crew and their boat are trapped on the Niger with nowhere to go," interrupted Kazim. "There is no turning back and running 1000 kilometers to the sea. They must realize any attempt to flee will be cause for our fighter aircraft and land artillery to destroy them. We wait and watch. And when they run out of fuel, their only hope of survival will be to surrender. Then our questions will be answered."
"Can we safely assume the crew will be persuaded to reveal their mission?" inquired Djerma.
"Yes, yes," Cheik quickly answered. "And much more."
The copilot stepped from the cockpit and snapped to attention. "We have the boat in visual sight, sir."
"So at last we can see this enigma for ourselves," said Kazim. "Tell the pilot to give us a good view."
The weariness of the punishing grind and the disappointment of not pinpointing the actual source of the toxin had dulled Pitt's vigilance. His usually sharp powers of perception lagged and his mind sidetracked any vision of the steel pincers that were slowly snapping shut on the Calliope.
It was Giordino who heard the distant whine of jet engines, looked up, and saw ii first-an aircraft flying less than 200 meters above the river, running lights blinking in the blue dusk. It visibly swelled into a large passenger jet with Malian national colors striped along the side of its fuselage. Two or three fighters as escorts would have been enough. This plane was surrounded by twenty. It seemed at first the pilot intended to fly straight down the river and buzz the Calliope, but 2 kilometers away it banked and began to circle, drawing closer in a slow spiral. The fighter escort spun off upward and launched into a series of figure eights overhead.
When the jet— Pitt by now had spotted the huge radar dome on the nose and recognized it as a command center aircraft— came within 100 meters, faces could be distinguished through the ports staring down, taking in every detail of the super yacht.
Pitt exhaled a long, silent sigh and waved. Then he made a theatrical bow. "Step right up, folks, and see the pirate ship with its merry band of river rats. Enjoy the show, but do not damage the merchandise. You could get hurt."
"Ain't it the truth?" Crouched on the ladder to the engine room, poised to leap at his missile launcher, Giordino stared warily at the circling plane. "If he so much as waggles his wings I'll divide, demolish, and disperse him."
Gunn leisurely sat in a deck chair and doffed his cap at the aerial spectators. "Unless you have a method for making us invisible, I suggest we humor them. It's one thing to be an underdog, but it's quite another to be easy pickings."
"We're overmatched all right," Pitt said, shaking off any trace of weariness. "Nothing we do will make any difference. They've got enough firepower to blow the Calliope into toothpicks."