Batutta smiled at the pilot who wore an airline uniform with stripes on the sleeve. “A fine piece of acting, Lieutenant Djemaa. Dr. Hopper took the bait. You fooled him completely into thinking you were a substitute crew.”
“Thank you, Captain. And thank my South African mother for teaching me English.”
“I must use the radio to contact Colonel Mansa.”
“If you will come to the cockpit, I will set the frequency for you.”
Stepping into the aircraft cockpit was like stepping into a bucket of molten lead. Though Lieutenant Djemaa left the side windows open for ventilation, the heat still sucked the breath from Batutta. He sat and suffered while the disguised Malian air force pilot hailed Colonel Mansa’s headquarters. Once contact was made Djemaa turned over the microphone to Batutta and thankfully left the steamy cockpit.
“This is Falcon-one. Over.”
“I’m here, Captain,” came the familiar voice of Mansa. “You can dispense with the code. I doubt if enemy agents are listening in. What is your situation?”
“The natives of Asselar are all dead. The Westerners are operating freely in the village. I repeat, all the villagers are dead.”
“Those bloody cannibals killed themselves off, did they?”
“Yes, Colonel, down to the last woman and child. Dr. Hopper and his people believe everyone was poisoned.”
“Do they have proof?”
“Not yet. They’re analyzing the water from the well and performing autopsies on the victims now.”
“No matter. Play along with them. As soon as they’ve finished with their little experiments, fly them to Tebezza. General Kazim has arranged a welcoming committee.”
Batutta could well imagine what the General had planned for Hopper. He detested the big Canadian; he detested them all. “I shall see they arrive in sound shape.”
“Accomplish your mission, Captain, and I can safely promise you a promotion.”
“Thank you, Colonel. Over and out.”
Grimes set up shop in the house of the dead man Eva had discovered. It was the largest and cleanest of any building in the village. He performed pathology on the corpse found in the bedroom while Eva carried out blood tests. Hopper did chemical analysis of several wells that produced the town’s meager water supply. The other members of the team began analyzing tissue and bone samples from a random selection of the dead. In one large storage house behind the market center, they found the trashed Land Rovers from the safari whose members had been massacred. They put the vehicles into service shuttling supplies back and forth between the village and the aircraft while Captain Batutta wandered about, making himself generally useless.
The stench of the dead was too overpowering for sleep, so they worked through the night and into the next evening before taking a break. Camp was set up around the aircraft. After a brief sleep, dinner of packaged, condensed beef stew, the World Health team sat around an oil heater to ward off the 60-degree drop in temperature from the desert’s daily high of 44 degrees C (111 degrees F). Batutta played congenial host and brewed them a pungent African tea, listening intently while everyone relaxed and compared notes.