The Seventh Pillar (6 page)

Ibrahim nodded, pleased.

French military markings were just visible where they’d been painted over. The fixed landing gear had been modified for desert use by adding bigger tires and stripping away the nacelles that once surrounded the wheels. It would be possible to set down on sand.

They walked around the plane. The tires were old and weather checked and full of dry rot. They held pressure but it would be worth your life to take off or land on them. The big turtle canopy reflected tiny pits from the sand. Once the plane had been white, but now the paint was streaked and faded, starting to peel in places. Harmon opened the canopy and looked inside. The cabin looked clean and neat. The leather seats were cracked and dull. The cargo area contained a rolled up stretcher strapped above a rectangular metal box with a red cross marked on it. A medical kit, at least forty years old. Harmon opened it. Empty.

"Let’s look at the engine."

The old man said something in Arabic and Moussa went over to the side of the hanger and rolled a wooden platform toward the plane. Carter gave him a hand and they set it next to the plane. Harmon climbed up and opened the cowl.

The opposed four cylinder Lycoming engine had no oil leaks that he could see. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make it that way. Ibrahim, the blind mechanic.

Ibrahim sighed. "It is an old plane but the engine is good. Perhaps a bit tired, but good. The controls are good, although I never flew the plane." There was a trace of sadness in the old man’s voice. "It belonged to a Frenchman who had a business here, years ago. I maintained it for him. We often traveled together over the desert. When he died this was his gift to me. No one has flown it in almost twenty years, but I have kept it ready."

Twenty years. A long time. Harmon thought about five hundred dollars a day.

"Let’s start her up," he said.

The old man climbed into the cockpit with the ease of long practice. He would never pilot a plane but he knew what he was doing. Nick heard the whine of fuel pumps. Thirty seconds later the engine cranked over and came to life. The wash from the wooden propeller blew eddies of dust around the room. A burst of black and white smoke and the engine settled down to a steady, throaty idle.

Ibrahim worked the pedals and the stick. Everything moved like it should.

Harmon spent the next half hour checking the plane over. The dry climate had done a good job of preservation. Except for the tires, the plane seemed airworthy. They wouldn’t know for sure until they took her up.

"So," Carter asked him, "What do you think?"

"The tires are no good. We need new ones. They'll have to come out of Bamako. It'll take a day or two. I'll need a thousand Euros, maybe more, maybe less."

Carter didn't have to think about it. "Go ahead and get them."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Late the next afternoon Harmon met Carter and Selena in the bar.

"We’ve got the tires. Ibrahim and Moussa will install them. Then I can check her out."

"Never thought I’d be flying in something called a Mouseketeer." Carter sipped his beer.

"Musketeer. Like D’Artagnan and the other guys."

Carter nodded at the door. "Here comes our friend from the airport."

Colonel Samake came through the entrance. He looked around the room and headed for their table. He rolled a little. The Colonel had been drinking.

"I will join you," he said. He smelled sour, of heat and sweat and too much alcohol. He pulled up a chair. The waiter appeared at his side before he could raise a hand.

"Whiskey." Samake belched.

The waiter scurried off and returned with a double shot of something amber. Samake looked at them through piggy, bloodshot eyes. Sweat rolled off his forehead. He drank off the whiskey in one gulp, gestured for another.

"You seem fortunate, Harmon," Samake said. "You have another plane, for the moment. Tell me, where do you plan to go?"

"We've hired Mister Harmon to take us up for a little sightseeing." Carter drank his beer. He remembered Samake's warning about the north. Fuck him. "We want to see what's happening up north."

The next whiskey came. Samake drank.

"I can tell you what is happening there." Samake put down his drink. His arm knocked a beer bottle off the table. "Poverty is happening there. Salt and heat is happening there. Terrorists and drugs are happening there. So why would you go?"

Selena spoke. "We want to visit the salt mines."

Samake turned a bloodshot stare on her. "I am not convinced your story is the reason you are here. How do you say to that?" His tone was hostile.

Carter didn't like his tone. "Wait a minute," he said. Samake turned. It reminded Carter of a snake.

"I was not talking to you. Do not interrupt me again."

Harmon laid a hand on Nick's arm. He shook his head, a small motion.

Samake saw the movement and smiled. There was no humor in it.

"Remember something. You are foreigners in my country. I make the rules here. You may leave the city during the day and return at night. You will not land in the desert. If you see vehicles on your flights, you will at once inform me of it. What type, where they were seen, where they were headed. Is that clear?"

"Very clear." Carter looked him in the eye. "You ever hear the expression about honey and flies?"

"Honey and flies?"

"You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Why don’t you think about that?"

"You provide some honey, then. We’ll see what kind of flies I catch."

He stood up, glared at them and left.

Harmon waved for the waiter. "Why is Samake suspicious of you? Me, I understand. But why you?"

"He told us to not to go north. Samake doesn't want us up there for some reason."

"So you told him that's where you wanted to go. Just to piss him off."

"Pretty much."

Harmon shook his head and looked at Selena. "He always like this?"

"Pretty much," she said.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The next afternoon the plane was ready. The new tires were shiny and black, stark contrast against the faded, peeling paint. Carter itched to get things moving. That truck could be far away by now.

Harmon rested his hand on the wing. "I'll take her up."

"I'll go with you." Carter gestured at the plane. "Think of me as test equipment."

He weighed two hundred pounds. He had a point.

Harmon shrugged. "Your funeral if it goes south. Don't touch the controls on your side."

They got in the plane. Ibrahim, Moussa and Selena stood out of the way. The engine coughed into life with a burst of blue smoke and settled to an even idle. Harmon looked at the gauges, tapped them. He always tapped gauges. He'd tapped them on his first car, a beat up Chevy. He'd been tapping gauges ever since. All functioning. Oil pressure, good. Fuel, half full, both tanks. He worked the stick and the pedals, getting a feel for the controls. He watched the flaps and rudder move. He held the brakes and increased revs, watched the tachometer. So far, so good.

Harmon released the brakes and taxied out of the hanger into the bright sun. He lined up on the flat plain behind the building, advanced the throttle and rolled. They lifted into the air.

An hour later they landed. He taxied back, shut down and climbed out of the cabin.

"Well?" Selena stood by the wing.

"She’s good. Like Ibrahim said, a little tired, not as much power as I’d like, but good. We just go a little slower, that’s all."

"So we can go north."

"I don’t see why not. It’s too late today. If we’re going to Taoudenni, we’d better leave at sunrise, give us all day."

"How long will it take?"

"It’s around four hundred and fifty miles. Probably three hours. We’ll need to top off the fuel there." He paused. "Where do you think this truck is?"

"A cave." Selena brushed hair from her forehead. "I came across a manuscript with some landmarks. We want to find it."

"Now we have tea," Moussa said, "before I drive you back to the hotel."

Carter thought about riding with Moussa and wished for something stronger than tea.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The sun exploded over the horizon, an angry red eye shimmering in a vermillion haze. Six in the morning and already over eighty degrees. 

The Musketeer had an 800 mile range. They'd need extra fuel to get to Taoudenni and back. Fifty liters in cans went into the cargo area.

They loaded bottled water and dry rations. A large tarp. A tire pump and repair kit, in case one of the tires went bad. A few tools, a first aid kit, flashlights. A fire extinguisher. Sleeping bags, just in case. You didn't fly unprepared over the Sahara and it got cold at night. Harmon calculated the weight was within the plane's limit. They'd get lighter as they used fuel and flew north.

Ibrahim presented them with a rifle and a dozen rounds of ammunition, a bolt action 8mm German Mauser from the big war. The swastika and palm of Rommel’s Afrika Korps marked the receiver. A collector's item, clean and oiled and lethal.

Selena sat in back. Harmon started the engine and waited for everything to settle down. He taxied out of the hangar, wound up the revs and in a minute they were airborne, north to terrorist country.

They leveled off at three thousand. The big turtle canopy gave everyone a wide view of the earth below and cloudless, luminous blue sky above.

"What’s Taoudenni like?" Carter asked.

"It makes Timbuktu look like Miami. It’s where the salt comes from." Harmon glanced at the gauges.

"The miners dig it out of old lake beds with hand held axes. It gets too hot for work in the summer, a hundred and forty or more. This time of year it’s cooling down, but the miners won’t be working yet. All the water up there is contaminated with salt. No one can stay there more than six months if they want to keep living."

"The water kills them?"

"Their kidneys fail."

"How do they get the salt out to sell it?"

"Camels. Like hundreds of years ago. The route from Taoudenni is one of the last caravan routes still going. It's become a tourist attraction. Sometimes four wheel drive vehicles."

They flew over a group of seven or eight camels ridden by men in blue robes. The riders looked up as the plane flew over.

"Those are Tuareg tribesmen," Harmon said. "Tough bastards. You don't want to get on their bad side."

The landscape below was a barren wasteland of sand, stone plateaus and dry valleys. A long time ago it had been a green savannah alive with game. From up here it didn’t look like global warming was anything new.

After a while Harmon said, "If terrorists are using this cave how come no one’s spotted them on satellite, or from the air?"

Carter looked down at the panorama of sand and rock slipping by beneath them. "All Mali has for air patrols are a few old Mig 21s. They’re too fast and most of them don’t work. The whole area is a maze of ravines and escarpments leading into the mountains. The satellite photos are broad passes. Not very specific, unless you know exactly where to look and can target it in. It’s rugged terrain."

Harmon made a slight course correction. "What are the landmarks we're looking for?"

Selena answered. "Two hills that look like kneeling camels. That’s the key."

"Two hills out of what, two thousand?"

"The manuscript talks about salt mines a day’s journey from the cave. That means Taoudenni and the mines there. Those two hills are somewhere in that area. There’s another landmark, a pyramid shaped pillar of rock. If we find that, we could find the camel hills."

For a while they flew in silence.

"How'd you end up out here, Joe?" Carter asked.

"That's a long story. I didn't have much to go back to in the States." Harmon paused. "I was married. I came back from a year in Iraq and she was five months pregnant."

"Oh."

"Yeah, well, shit happens. No way we could save it. So I filed for divorce and signed up for another tour. I had a buddy who knew the African scene and he convinced me to go partners with him and come here. We got a chance at a plane and took it. I figured two, three years over here, make some money, go back and start a charter business. Maybe out west, the Rockies. He gave it up a year ago and I stayed. Another few months, I would have had enough."

"And now?"

"Now you get my passport back and I'm going home. I've had it up to here with Africa." He sliced his hand in front of his throat in a cutting motion.

Two and a half hours later they closed on Taoudenni. To the north, the unforgiving escarpments of the Algerian mountains rose in a rugged blue haze. To the west lay the great spread of the barren Taoudenni Basin.

They came in low over the village, a desolate huddle of small buildings and tents and open air storage for the salt, all set in the midst of a sea of reddish sand. Thousands of holes pitted the salt flats. Carter saw tiny box-like hovels made of salt, flat, ugly slabs fitted and tied together. They flew over a group of blue-robed men clustered next to camels.

They landed on the single paved airstrip. Harmon taxied to the end, turned around and cut the engine. He popped the canopy and the heat scorched them. There were no other planes, no vehicles, no hangers, no buildings. Just a stretch of black asphalt across the desert. LAX, it wasn't. Carter wondered why anyone had bothered to build it.

If Timbuktu was in the middle of nowhere, Taoudenni was at the end of it. Carter had never seen a place so remote and God-forsaken. A dirty, reddish brown desert extended in all directions. Not a tree, not a shrub, not a green thing as far as the eye could see, only sun blasted rock and drifted sand. It made the Mojave look like a golf resort.

Hell on earth.

They got out of the plane. "I don’t see any Dairy Queens," Selena said.

"Mars must look like this," Carter looked at the distant horizon. "Nice place."

"Here comes the welcoming committee." Harmon pointed at two tall figures swathed in blue robes, riding toward them on camels. Dark blue turbans wrapped their heads. A black veil of cloth covered the lower part of their faces. Each rider carried an AK-47 slung over his shoulder and a bandoleer across his chest.