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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.
