Sahara (48 page)

Verenne laughed. “Are you joking? Most of the governments of the industrialized world are only too happy to go along with secretly getting rid of their hazardous garbage without public knowledge. Privately, bureaucratic officials and business executives of nuclear and chemical plants around the world have given us their blessing.”

“They know?” Yerli asked in surprise.

Verenne looked at him with a bemused smile. “Who do you think are Massarde’s clients?”

41

After leaving the truck, Pitt and Giordino walked through the heat of the afternoon and under the cold of the night, wanting to travel as far as possible while they were still reasonably fresh. When they finally stopped and rested, it was the following dawn. By burrowing in the sand and covering their bodies during the heat of the day, they shielded themselves from the blazing sun and reduced their water loss. The gentle pressure from the sand also gave some relief to their tired muscles.

They made 48 kilometers (30 miles) toward their goal the first trek. They actually walked further, meandering across the hard floor valleys between sand dunes. The second night they set out before sunset so Pitt could position the stake and set their course until the stars came out. By sunup the next morning the Trans-Saharan Track was another 42 kilometers closer. Before digging under their daily blanket of sand, they drained the last drops of water from the canister. From now on, until they found a new supply of water, their bodies would begin to wither and die.

The third night of their trek, they had to cross a barrier of dunes that stretched out of sight to the right and left. The dunes, though menacing, were things of beauty. Their delicate, smooth surfaces were sculptured into fragile, ever-moving ripples by the restless wind. Pitt quickly learned their secrets. After a gentle slope, the dune usually dropped sharply on the other side. They traveled when practical on the razor-edged crests of the dunes to prevent slogging up and down the soft, giving sand. If this proved difficult, they meandered through the hollows where the sand was firmer beneath their feet.

On the fourth day the dunes gradually became lower and finally fell away onto a wide sandy plain, dreary and waterless. During the hottest part of the day the sun beat down on the parched flatland like a blacksmith’s hammer against red hot iron. Though thankful to be crossing a level surface, they found the walking difficult. Two kinds of ripples covered the sandy ground. The first being small, shallow ridges, which presented no problem. But the other, large ripples spaced farther apart, crested at exactly the length of their strides, creating a tiring effect much like walking the ties of a railroad.

Their hiking time became shorter and the rest stops longer and more frequent. They plodded on, their heads down, silent. Talking only made their mouths drier. They were prisoners of the sand, held captive by a cage measured only by distance. There were few distinct landmarks except for the jagged peaks of a low range of rock that reminded Pitt of the vertebra of a dead monster. It was a land where each kilometer looked exactly like the last and time ran without meaning as if turning on a treadmill.

After 20 kilometers, the plains met a plateau. The new sun was about to rise when they put it to a vote and decided to climb the steep escarpment to the top before resting for the day. Four hours later, when they finally struggled over the edge, the sun had risen well above the horizon. The effort had taken what little reserves they had left. Their hearts pounded madly after the torturous strain of the strenuous ascent, leg muscles fiery with pain, chests heaving as starving lungs demanded more air.

Pitt was exhausted and afraid to sit down for fear he could never regain his feet again. He stood weakly, swaying on the ledge, and gazed around as if he was a captain on the bridge of a ship. If the plain below was a featureless wasteland, the surface of the plateau was a sun-blasted, grotesque nightmare. A sea of confused, twisted tumbles of scorched red and black rock, interspersed with rusting obelisk-like out-croppings of iron ore, spread out to the east directly in their path. It was like staring at a city destroyed centuries ago by a nuclear explosion.

“What part of Hades is this?” Giordino rasped.

Pitt pulled out Fairweather’s map, now badly wrinkled and beginning to split apart, and flattened it across his knee. “He shows it on the map, but didn’t write in a name.”

“Then from this moment on, it shall be known as Giordino’s hump.”

Pitt’s parched lips cracked into a smile. “If you want to register the name, all you have to do is apply with the International Geological Institute.”

Giordino collapsed on the rocky ground and stared vacantly across the plateau. “How far have we come?”

“About 120 kilometers.”

“Still 60 to go to the Trans-Saharan Track.”

“Except that we ran up against a manifestation of Pitt’s law.”

“What law is that?”

“He who follows another man’s map comes up 20 kilometers short.”

“You sure we didn’t take a wrong turn back there?”

Pitt shook his head. “We haven’t traveled in a straight line.”

“So how much farther?”

“I reckon another 80 kilometers.”

Giordino looked at Pitt through sunken eyes that were reddened from fatigue and spoke through lips cracked and swollen. “That’s another 50 miles. We’ve already come the last 70 without a drop of water.” .

“Seems more like a thousand,” Pitt said hoarsely.

“Well,” Giordino muttered. “I have to say the issue is in doubt. I don’t think I can make it.”

Pitt looked up from the map. “I never thought I’d hear that from you.”

“I’ve never experienced total agonizing thirst before. I can remember when it was a daily sensation. Now it’s become more of an obsession than a craving.”

“Two more nights and we’ll dance on the track.”

Giordino slowly shook his head. “Wishful thinking. We don’t have the stamina to walk another 50 miles without water in this heat, not as dehydrated as we are.”

Pitt was haunted by the constant vision of Eva slaving in the mines, being beaten by Melika. “They’ll all die if we don’t get through.”

“You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip,” said Giordino. “It’s a miracle we made it this far—” He sat up and shaded It is eyes. Then he pointed excitedly toward a jumbled mass of huge rocks. “There, between those rocks, doesn’t that look like the small entrance to a cave?”

Pitt’s eyes followed his pointing hand. There was indeed a black opening amid the rocks. He took Giordino’s hand and pulled him to his feet. “See, our luck’s changing for the better already. Nothing like a nice, cool cave to while away The hottest time of the day.”

Already the heat was suffocating as it reflected off the red-brown rocks and iron outcroppings. They felt as if they were walking through the cinders of a barbecue. Without sunglasses they screwed their eyes up and covered them with the cloth of their makeshift turbans, peering down through tiny slits, seeing only the ground a few meters in front of them.

They had to climb a pile of loose boulders to the entrance of the cave, careful not to touch the rock with their bare hands or they would be sorely burnt. A small wall of sand had drifted across the floor of the entrance and they knelt and scooped it away with their hands. Pitt had to duck under the overhanging rock to enter the cave while Giordino waded through the sand while standing fully erect.

They did not have to wait for their eyes to get used to the dim light. There was no dark zone. The cavern had not been carved by wind or water eroding their way through limestone. A huge mass of rocks had been stacked upon one another during a great Paleozoic upheaval of the earth, forming a hollow cavern. The center was lit by the sun’s rays that passed through openings in the rocks above.

As Pitt moved deeper into the interior, two large human figures loomed over him in the shadows. Instinctively, he stepped back, colliding with Giordino.

“You just stepped on my foot,” grunted Giordino.

“Sorry.” Pitt gestured up at a smooth wall where a figure was about to throw a spear at a buffalo. “I didn’t expect company.”

Giordino looked over Pitt’s shoulder at the spear thrower, stunned to face rock artwork in the most barren part of the world. He slowly peered around at a massive gallery of prehistoric and ancient art that displayed centuries of artistic styles of successive cultures.

“Is this real?” he muttered.

Pitt moved closer to the mysterious rock paintings and examined a 3-meter-high figure with a mask that sprouted flowers from its head and shoulders. The thirst and fatigue dropped away as he stared in awe. “The art is genuine all right. I wish I was an archaeologist and could interpret the various styles and cultures. The earliest paintings seem to begin at the back of the cave, and then the overlapping cultures work chronologically forward to more recent times.”

“How can you tell?”

“Ten to twelve thousand years ago the Sahara had a moist and tropical climate. Plant life blossomed. It was far more livable than it is now.” He nodded at a group of figures surrounding and thrusting spears at a giant, wounded buffalo with enormous horns. “This must be the earliest painting because it shows hunters killing a buffalo almost the size of an elephant that’s been long extinct.”

Pitt moved to another piece of artwork that covered several square meters. “Here you can see herders with cattle,” he said, gesturing at the images with his hands. “The pastoral era began about 5000
B.C.
This later-style art shows more creative composition and an eye for detail.”

“A hippopotamus,” said Giordino, staring at a colossal drawing that covered one entire side of a flattened rock. “This part of the Sahara can’t have seen one of these for a while.”

“Not in three thousand years anyway. Hard to visualize this area once was a vast grassland that supported life from ostrich to antelope to giraffe.”

As they moved on, and the passage of time in the Sahara unrolled across the rock, Giordino observed, “About here it looks like the local artists stopped drawing cattle and the vegetation.”

“Eventually the rains died away and the land began to dry out,” lectured Pitt, recalling a long forgotten course in ancient history. “After four thousand years of uncontrolled grazing the vegetation was gone and the desert began to take over.”

Giordino moved from the inner recesses of the cavern toward the entrance, stopping in front of another painting. “This one shows a chariot race.”

“People from the Mediterranean introduced horses and chariots sometime before 1000
B.C.
,”
explained Pitt. “But I had no idea they penetrated this deep into the desert.”

“What comes next, teacher?”

“The camel period,” answered Pitt, standing in front of a long painting of a caravan depicting nearly sixty camels strung out in an S shape. “They were brought into Egypt after the Persian conquest of 525
B.C
. Using camels, the Roman caravans pushed clear across the desert from the coast to Timbuktu. Camels have been here ever since because of their incredible endurance.”

In a more recent period in time the paintings with camels became more crude and rudimentary than earlier art styles. Pitt paused in front of another series of paintings in the rich gallery of ancient art, studying a finely drawn battle that was engraved into the rock and then painted in a magnificent red ocher color. Bearded warriors with square beards, lifting spears and shields in the air, rode in two-wheel chariots pulled by four horses, attacking an army of black archers whose arrows rained from the sky.

“Okay, Mr. smart guy,” said Giordino, “explain this one.”

Pitt stepped over, his eyes following Giordino’s gaze. For a few seconds Pitt stared at the drawing on the rock, mystified. The image was drawn in a linear, child-like style. A boat rode on a river bounding with fish and crocodiles. It was hard to imagine the hell outside the cave was once a fertile region where crocodiles once swam in what were now dry riverbeds.

He moved closer, disbelief reflected in his eyes. It was not the crocodiles or the fish that gripped his concentration; it was the vessel floating in swirls that indicated the current of a river. The craft should have been a depiction of an Egyptian-style boat, but it was a totally different design, far more modern. The shape above the water was a truncated pyramid, a pyramid with the top chopped off and parallel to the base. Round tubes protruded from the sides. A number of small figures stood in various poses around the deck under what appeared to be a large flag stiffened by a breeze. The ship stretched nearly 4 meters across the coarse surface of the rock wall.

“An ironclad,” Pitt said incredulously. “A Confederate States Navy ironclad.”

“It can’t be, not here,” said Giordino, completely off balance.

“It can and it is,” Pitt said flatly. “It must be the one the old prospector told us about.”

“Then it isn’t a myth.”

“The local artists couldn’t have painted something they’d never seen. It’s even flying the correct Confederate battle ensign that was adopted near the end of the Civil War.”

“Maybe a former rebel naval officer wandering the desert after the war painted it.”

“He wouldn’t have copied local art style,” Pitt said thoughtfully. “There is nothing in this painting that reflects Western influence.”

“What do you make of the two figures standing on the casemate?” asked Giordino.

“One obviously is a ship’s officer. Probably the captain.”

“And the other,” Giordino whispered, his face set in disbelief.

Pitt examined the figure next to the captain from head to toe. “Who do you think it is?”

“I don’t trust my sunburned eyes. I was hoping you’d tell me.

Pitt’s mind struggled to adjust to a set of circumstances that was completely foreign to him. “Whoever the artist,” Pitt murmured in bewildered fascination, “he certainly painted a remarkable likeness of Abraham Lincoln.”

42

Resting all day in the cool of the cave rejuvenated Pitt and Giordino to the point that they felt physically able to attempt a go for broke, nonstop crossing of the naked and hostile land to the Trans-Saharan Track. All thoughts and conjectures over the legendary ironclad in the desert were shelved temporarily in the recesses of their minds as they mentally prepared themselves for the almost impossible ordeal.