by Pierre Anton Taylor

The faint smell of tear gas greeted them as they stepped out of their lodging at the old colonial hotel and into the heat of early day. There were two Land Rovers parked in the road. One of them was their transport, the other was for their armed escort. There had been demonstrations the previous day in the capitol of Bamako, the radio had announced. Government troops had fired on protesting students and there were reports of casualties. A smaller demonstration in Timbuktu had been dispersed in the twilight hours. The hotel manager assured them that it was just a minor disturbance. Disgruntled youths, he’d explained. They were headed north into the desert’s edge, the Sahel.

Wayne Bruce had accompanied the director of the BATS Lab, Doctor Alfred Fledermann, to the Republic of Mali and the ancient city of Timbuktu on a fact finding mission. Fledermann was retiring and had taken on the job of mentoring Wayne into the responsibilities of the position. It was no secret that the director would have preferred someone with a scientific background to oversee the Lab, not a tabloid fodder daredevil. Yet he was loyal to the old man, Wallace Bruce, who had believed in him as a callow young researcher and appointed him to head the Bruce Battery Works R&D division decades earlier. If it were any consolation, young Bruce was intelligent, and serious, if not a little too earnest. There was the shadow of a cape about him.

The previous evening, in the lounge of the hotel, they had met with the man who would be their guide, a Frenchman named Roland Brebeuf, a holdover from the old colonial days who knew the terrain and the sparse population that peopled it. There were was lithium to be mined in the south, but Fledermann wasn’t interested in lithium. He was after diatomite. Brebeuf had been incredulous. Sand?

There is sand, and there is silica. There are many types of sands and sources, from minerals to vertebrate excretion, Alfred had explained before they’d flown to Africa. Think of the ocean floor as one large litterbox as well as a graveyard. Most beach sand is a combination of rock, bone, and fish excrement. Diatomite is a peculiar type of sand made from microscopic fossilized algae millions of years old. The location of this silica deposit was once part of a vast shallow inland sea whose shore had been the grasslands that were now the Sahara. That’s where they were going.

Wayne was a little young to get excited about sand, but he accepted the scientist’s word that this particular silica had potential for producing a distinctive kind of glass that would be beneficial to Bruce Enterprise. Fledermann had developed a process that gave the compound unique properties advantageous in light harvesting. The future lay in solar energy he’d insisted, no matter what anyone said. “He who controls the production of batteries controls the world. After all, once you’ve harvested the energy of those photons, where are you going to store them? Batteries, of course.” Of course, that succinctly summed up the Bruce Enterprise mission.

Missing his accustomed foil, Brebeuf had hurled an invective at Fledermann. “You wanted sand! There’s your blasted sand!” pointing in the direction of the stranded vehicle.

They would have to be on their guard on this expedition. Brebeuf had warned that there were bandits to the north, antigovernment militias, Tuaregs. As the winding road rose up into the mottled sienna scrub lands sparsely wooded with windshaped acacia, they passed men and donkeys laden with spindly desiccated branches to be sold as fire wood in town. Wayne looked back at the mud and earth edifices receding in the distance. This whole world was made of sand. And discounting the modern accouterments, he marveled that this had been a way of life for centuries, millennia, a place whose environment had shifted from semi tropical to the brittle savannahs of shrubs and anemic grasses. It was a dry eviscerated soil that would not support much life. But at one time it had. And the people who inhabited the Sahel had learned to bend and  survive, adapt to the geological shift.

Once they left the main track, passing through a village that was not much more than sticks and mud and stretches of blue canopied shelters, their progress was slowed by the rough going. The driver, a black man with the welts of scarification across his cheeks, argued with Brebeuf about which rise to take and which wadis to follow. Some of it was in French which Wayne could understand, but otherwise the heated exchange was a spitfire of patois that was much too fast for him. It was like having an old married couple in the front seat. And it could be amusing until it wasn’t. By then the heat of day had intensified. Although most of their effort was to try to stay seated, the exertion made then sweat profusely.

A wrong turn had landed them in a bowl, a dry depression that with an occasional rain became a watering hole. The sides were steep and repeated attempts to climb out had only dug the rear wheels deeper into the soft sand. The driver, whose name was Youssouf, and Brebeuf berated each other all the while the three of them, including elderly Fledermann, set their shoulders to the back of the Rover while their escorts watched from the side of the crater having stopped just in time to avoid the same mistake. They found the drama between the driver and the guide quite entertaining and added their own jibes and taunts. One must have struck a nerve and which caused Youssouf to climb up to the rim where they were standing and confront one of the armed men. Brebeuf had scrambled up the embankment after him, waving his arms to try to defuse the tension, all the while offering mollifying words. There ensued a frantic parlay that eventually resulted in a calming of the hostilities but with the escort telling them they could pack sand, and driving away.

The sun was almost directly overhead and to continue was to only invite heat stroke. Their vehicle offered little shelter and captured the heat like a tin roof. The contention between driver and guide continued but nervously subdued. They of course blamed each other for their predicament. Brebeuf led them to a spindly acacia some distance from the fissure that had swallowed the Rover. They would have to wait out the heat of the day before putting their backs to getting the Rover out of the ravine. In the meantime, Youssouf would head back to the encampment they had passed a dozen or so miles back and try to recruit some help. The heat had visible effect on Fledermann. Wayne had erected a canopy under the acacia from a tattered tarp in the boot of the Rover. It was an unrelentingly hot, the scorching air frying sinuses with every breath, searing the lungs, the shade from the acacia hardly worthy of its name. They had a reserve of water and some food which Brebeuf advised to ration. The supplies for their expedition were in the Rover the armed escort had driven off in. There was no telling how long they would stuck.

Missing his accustomed foil, Brebeuf had hurled an invective at Fledermann. “You wanted sand! There’s your blasted sand!” pointing in the direction of the stranded vehicle. Supine, Fledermann panted, licking his lips, eyes closed, head turned to one side. “Something is not right,” he breathed. Wayne had given him shallow sips from his canteen. “This is not the way it was supposed to happen,” the old man groaned. Wayne had tried to make Albert as comfortable as possible in the oppressive heat that seemed to be squeezing the life out of him. The horizon shimmered in silent exhaustion. Nothing stirred in the feral landscape. It sounded like an echo at first, the gunshot coming from a distance. Brebeuf had stood rigid as if he had been  hit, his hand to his throat. He had given Wayne a quick furtive glance before he’d run off in the direction his driver had gone. “Youssouf!” he called out repeatedly, stumbling in the burning dust.

With Brebeuf gone, he’d been left to care for Dr. Fledermann. He’d only carried a small rucksack for his camera and extra film. The remainder of his gear was gone. Rummaging through the stranded vehicle had been like trying to recover an ice cube from an oven, the chassis and frame searing him several times, upholstery close to molten. He’d managed to retrieve his pack and Alfred’s aluminum field case with documents and maps. The grilling sapping his strength, he’d collapsed under the acacia. Alfred had moved or rolled from where he’d left him, almost as if he was trying to crawl off, but not managing more than a body width. He’d looked up at Wayne through pained half closed eyes. “Save yourself,” he’d said. “I’ve been such a fool.”

Next Time: The Ordeal Continues