It was the reflection in one monitor with a dead screen that betrayed them. Alerted by the images of men entering the room behind him, the man shifted slightly to his left as his fingers casually crawled toward a small console containing a row of red switches. Too late Levant leapt at the man, swinging his Heckler & Koch in a vicious chop downward. The security guard went limp in his chair, then slumped unconscious over the console. But not before an alarm system began whooping like an ambulance siren throughout the entire mine.
"Damn the luck!" Levant cursed bitterly. "All surprise is gone." He shoved the guard aside and squeezed off ten rounds into the console. Electrical sparks and smoke erupted from the shattered switches and the whooping abruptly went silent.
Pitt ran down the corridor, throwing open doors until he kicked in the one to the communications room. The operator, a pretty Moorish-featured woman, was not intimidated by the abrupt intrusion and did not even look up from her radio equipment at Pitt's approach. Alerted by the siren, she was shouting rapid French into the microphone of the headset perched on her flowing black hair. He quickly stepped forward and clubbed her with his fist on the back of the neck. But like Levant with the security monitor, he was too late. Before he cut her off and she crumpled to the stone floor, the alarm had been transmitted to General Kazim's security forces.
"Not in time," said Pitt as Levant rushed into the room. "She got off a message before I could stop her."
Levant took in the situation with one quick glance. Then he turned and shouted a command. "Sergeant Chauvel!"
"Sir!" It was almost impossible to tell the Sergeant was a woman under her heavy combat suit.
"Get on the radio," Levant ordered in French, "and tell the Maligns that the alarm was a short circuit. Relieve any suggestion of an emergency. And for God's sake talk them out of taking any responsive action."
"Yes sir," Chauvel snapped purposefully before kicking the former radio operator out of the way and sitting down at the radio.
"O'Bannion's office is at the end of the corridor," said Pitt, pushing by Levant and running down the corridor. He didn't stop until he put his shoulder down and collided with the door. It was unlocked and he barreled into the reception chamber like a defensive tackle blitzing a quarterback.
The receptionist with the purple-gray eyes and buttocks length hair sat calmly at her desk, gripping a wicked-looking automatic pistol in both hands. Pitt's momentum carried him across the room and over the top of the desk, crashing into the woman and taking them both to the blue-carpeted floor in a tangled heap. But not before she ripped off two shots into Pitt's bulletproof assault vest.
Pitt's chest felt as though someone had struck it twice with a hammer. The blows had temporarily knocked the wind out of him but in no way slowed him down. The receptionist tried to extricate herself while shouting what Pitt was certain were obscenities in a language unknown to him. She fired off another shot that went over his shoulder, ricocheting off the rock ceiling into a painting, before he snatched the gun from her hand. Then he jerked her to her feet and flung her onto a couch.
He turned away and stepped between the two bronze sculptures of the Tuaregs and tried the handle to the door of O'Bannion's office. It was locked. He lifted the gun taken from the receptionist, placed it against the lock, and pulled the trigger three times. The gunfire was deafening m the rock room, but there was no longer any need for stealth. He stood around the wall and shoved the door open with his toe.
O'Bannion was leaning with his back against the desk, hands outstretched on the surface. He looked as though he was expecting to greet the corporate executive of a rival company. The eyes that showed through his litham bore a haughty expression without a trace of fear. But they quickly turned to astonishment when Pitt walked into the room and pulled off his helmet.
"I hope I'm not late for dinner, O'Bannion. As I recall, you expressed a wish to dine with me."
"You!" O'Bannion hissed, the color ebbing from the skin showing around his eyes.
"Back to haunt you," Pitt said with a half smile. "And I brought a few friends who don't take kindly to sadists who enslave and murder women and children."
"You should be dead. No one could have crossed the desert without water and lived."
"Neither Giordino nor I died."
"One of General Kazim's search aircraft found the truck overturned in a wadi far to the west of the Trans-Saharan Track. You couldn't have reached the track on foot."
"And the guard we left tied at the wheel."
"Alive, but he was soon shot for allowing you to escape."
"Life is certainly cheap in these parts."
The shock was slowly fading from O'Bannion's eyes, but there was still no fear. "Have you come to rescue your people? Or to steal gold?"
Pitt stared at him. "Right on the first, wrong on the second. We also intend to put you and your scum out of business, permanently."
"Your force has invaded a sovereign nation. You have no rights in Mali or jurisdiction over me and the mine."
"My God! You're lecturing me on jurisdiction? What about the rights of all the people you enslaved and murdered?"
O'Bannion shrugged. "General Kazim would have executed most of them anyway."
"What stopped you from providing them with humane treatment?" Pitt demanded.
"Tebezza is not a resort or a spa. We are here to mine gold."
"For the profit of you, Massarde, and Kazim."
"Yes," O'Bannion nodded. "Our aims are mercenary. " what?"
O'Bannion's cold and ruthless character threw open floodgate of anger in Pitt, released a series of mental pictures of the suffering endured by countless men, women, and children, pictures of the corpses stacked in the underground crypt, memories of Melika beating the helpless laborers with her bloodstained thong, the conviction that three men sick with greed were responsible for untold slaughter. He walked over to O'Bannion and smashed the shoulder stock of his machine gun into the part of the indigo litham covering O'Bannion's mouth.
For a long moment Pitt stared down at the nomad-robed Irish mining engineer who now lay stretched on the carpet, blood spreading through the cloth of his headdress, swore in maddened fury, and then slung the unconscious man over his shoulder. He met Levant in the corridor.
"O'Bannion?" asked the Colonel.
Pitt nodded. "He had an accident."
"So it would seem."
"How do we stand?"
"Unit four has secured the ore recovery levels. Units two and three are meeting little resistance from the guards. It appears they're better suited for beating helpless people than fighting hardened professionals."
"The VIP elevator to the mine levels is this way," said Pitt, setting off down a side corridor.
The carpeted and chromed-wall elevator had been abandoned by its operator as Pitt, Levant, and the members of unit one who were not guarding O'Bannion's engineers and office workers dropped down to the main level. They exited and approached the iron door that was hanging askew on its hinges and whose lock was still shattered from the blast of dynamite.
"Someone beat us to it," mused Levant.
"Giordino and I blew it when we escaped," explained Pitt.
"Looks like they never got around to repairing it."
The shaft reverberated with the sharp explosions of gunfire from somewhere within the bowels of the mine. Pitt hoisted O'Bannion's still limp body onto the shoulder of a big, muscular commando and set off at a run down the shaft in the direction of the cavern holding the prisoners.
They reached the central chamber without meeting resistance and met up with members of unit two that were in the act of disarming a group of O'Bannion's guards who stood fearfully with hands clutched behind their necks. Giordino and two of the tactical team had shot off the lock and were leaning against the great iron gate to the slave laborers' dungeon cavern. Pembroke-Smythe spotted Levant, hurried over, and reported.