The Medusa stone (23 page)
Authors: Jack Du Brul
Her eyes glared. "Don't even consider leaving me out of this, Mercer. I'm even more responsible than you. If you have a plan, count me in."
"Selome, I--"
She cut him off, her voice raised dangerously loud. "I said don't think about it and I mean it. I am coming with you. Like you said, you're the geologist--well, I'm the trained agent. You did pretty well in Asmara, but I have more experience in situations like this."
He was about to list a few of the gunfights he'd been in, but before he could, an unholy scream pierced the night, a sharp keening wail that dropped down the cliff, growing louder and louder until it was suddenly cut off. The silence that followed was more terrible than the scream.
There was no more time to argue.
Mercer led Selome back toward the trail leading up to the monastery. About thirty feet from where the path rose into the rock, a dark shape revealed itself on the ground. They both knew that it was a body. A spray radiated from the corpse like a diffused shadow. The sheer volume of the bloody splashes made it unnecessary to check if the victim had survived the fall.
They crossed the narrow entrance to the ascending path and continued along the cliff, the monastery now behind and above them. Mercer could feel Selome's questioning stare at his back, but he didn't take the time to explain his plan. Keeping a sharp eye for a place they could climb the hundred feet to the plateau above, Mercer considered what he'd do once they were in sight of the monastery. He had no idea how many gunmen had come here, nor how they were positioned. His only advantage was surprise and even that was relatively worthless. By throwing one of the priests off the cliff, the terrorists were telling him they knew he was here. They were expecting him. He could only hope that by coming up behind them rather than climbing the established path, he could gain something.
A quarter mile farther, Mercer found a suitable spot to make their climb. The cliff still soared in a near vertical massif, but its face was scarred with deep fissures and scaly projections that would act as hand and foot holds. And most important, they were out of earshot of the monastery.
"Wait here." He moved away from the cliff so he could study the whole wall, mapping a route to avoid climbing into a dead end. A more experienced climber would have been able to judge the features of the stone in the moonlight and possibly pick a safe route, but Mercer was, at best, a climber by necessity. He'd never had a burning desire to hang hundreds of feet above his death. He allowed himself only a few minutes, his mind absorbing every possible detail before rejoining Selome.
"Well?"
"Have you ever climbed before?"
"No."
"All right, you'll lead. I'm going to be right behind you so I can give you directions." He coulde didn'1em">
The flashlight beam shone along the ground with an untutored randomness. Mercer knew that if the soldier turned it on him, he would have to surrender, but the African seemed more interested in what lay below the cliff edge. The soldier studying the drop was ten paces away when Mercer made his move, hoisting himself into a crouch and rushing forward faster than the startled soldier could react. One swift blow from the hammer was enough to kill, and Mercer dragged the African back into the dust. The entire maneuver had been silent.
The flashlight beam shone along the ground with an untutored randomness. Mercer knew that if the soldier turned it on him, he would have to surrender, but the African seemed more interested in what lay below the cliff edge. The soldier studying the drop was ten paces away when Mercer made his move, hoisting himself into a crouch and rushing forward faster than the startled soldier could react. One swift blow from the hammer was enough to kill, and Mercer dragged the African back into the dust. The entire maneuver had been silent.
He went back to Selome and led her away from the cliff, circling wide around the monastery so they could approach from a less likely direction. If the white man was an Israeli agent, that meant they'd put aside their differences with the Sudanese and pooled their resources. It was an option that he didn't want to consider.
Mercer's sudden appearance in the hallway startled a Sudanese who was walking past. Mercer reacted instinctively and struck out with the butt of the AK-47. The wood cracked against the rebel's jaw, shattering bones and spraying blood and teeth against the wall. Before the unconscious man hit the floor, Mercer was in motion. Easing into the dining room, he could feel Selome at his shoulder.
Father Ephraim was stooped over the prone form of one of his brothers, blood pooled around the ruined mouth of the other priest. Three more monks stood against one wall, guarded by several soldiers. The Italian stood close to where Mercer remained partially hidden. He faced away from Mercer, and in the fraction of a second it took a Sudanese to spot him, Mercer raised the AK by its pistol grip, grabbed a handful of the Italian's bush shirt, and rammed the barrel of the assault rifle into the man's lower spine, nearly bringing him to his knees with the force.
The Italian shouted a name. "Mahdi!"
One of the Sudanese raised his own pistol, locked back the hammer with his thumb, and leveled it at Mercer's head.
"Selome!" Mercer shouted, and she came into the room, her weapon covering Mahdi with chilling calm. "One more gun goes up, friend, and your guts are going to decorate the walls," Mercer said.
Mercer suspected that his prisoner spoke English, but he twisted the barrel of the AK further into the man's spine for emphasis.
"I think you call this a standoff, yes?" Giancarlo Gianelli said casually, not a trace of fear in his voice. "Let me end it for us now, Dr. Mercer."
A shot rang out, a sharp crack that split the air, and Brother Ephraim was slammed backward against the wall. A tendril of smoke coiled from the pistol Gianelli had kept in front of him, out of Mercer's view. "Go ahead and shoot, Doctor. None of us have anything to gain by standing around."
Ephraim breathed in shallow gulps, his face drained to an unnatural gray. He held his hands over the massive wound in his belly, blood cascading over his fingers.
"There are another dozen priests here," Gianelli continued conversationally. "I give you my word that they will not live five seconds after you kill me."
Gianelli had played the end-game so quickly that Mercer had no choice. He could kill the Italian and would end up killing himself and Selome as well, gaining nothing. Or he could lower his weapon and hope for another opportunity. Since the beginning, he'd felt he was one step behind the other players, and true to form, he was behind again now.
Mahdi sneered when Mercer released Gianelli, a contemptuous twist of his mouth that told Mercer he would have welcomed the suicidal gunfight. Selome lowered her own pistol, letting it drop with a metallic clatter. She moved to Ephraim's side, settling herself so that the priest's limp head lay in her lap. Gianelli showed no interest in restraining Mercer as he joined her on the floor. One of the Sudanese retrieved Selome's gun and the AK.
"I'm sorry," Mercer whispered to the dying man, knowing how empty the apology sounded.
Ephraim was losing his fight as they watched. When he spoke, it was a wet wheeze that brought blood to his lips.
"The children," Selome translated softly. "The children who died in the mine. They were killed by . . ." His last word was not even loud enough to be a whisper.
"What did he say?"
"I'm not sught, and an Ingersoll-Rand rotary drill rig for pulling core samples. The equipment's din echoed and reechoed off the bowl of mountains into a deafening racket that shook the dusty air. Amid this mechanical maelstrom, Mercer saw perhaps fifty Africans--the Eritrean refugees--toiling by hand with shovels, picks, and reed baskets.
He couldn't believe the sheer volume of dirt they had managed to move. The mountain that he and Habte had dynamited had been clawed up by the machines and carted away by the African laborers one basket at a time. The mine that Brother Ephraim had spoken of had been exposed, a dark shaft driven into the side of the mountain. It was wide enough for the skiploader to charge into the earth and return again with its bucket loaded with overburden. The operator would dump it into a mound, and a stream of men attacked it with their hands, filling baskets which they hoisted to their heads and carried away.
Mercer thought about the heavy equipment that would be arriving soon, machinery he had either leased or bought on behalf of the Eritrean government. Alone,centuries until there was an invasion. The people who operated it sealed it entirely rather than see it captured."
"My God, it sounds like King Solomon's Mine," Gianelli gasped.
"Maybe, I don't know." The Italian had gotten too close to the truth, and Mercer had to derail him. "It could be that this was the basis for the legend, but as I'm sure Yappy here can tell you, there are countless spots all over Africa that also claim that distinction."
Joppi Hofmyer growled at the bastardization of his name.
"Fascinating," Gianelli said. It was evident that he was more impressed with his prisoner than with the man he had hired to excavate the mine.
Mercer saw this and started to make it work to his advantage. "If I may make a suggestion. You mentioned bringing explosives into this chamber. I wouldn't. The dome may look solid, but unless you have blast mats to deflect the shock of a detonation down the tunnel, you may find yourself proving the hard way that it's not."
"Do we have blast mats?" Giancarlo demanded of Joppi.
"No, sir, but it would only take a few days to get them from Khartoum." Hofmyer seethed at being so easily undercut.
"And while you're at it," Mercer continued, taking an almost casual command of the conversation, "I saw outside that you're about to resift the original tailings for diamonds that might have been missed by the original workers. Don't bother. The tailings I checked had been crushed down so fine that unless you brought a portable fluoroscope with you, it'll be a complete waste of time and manpower that I doubt you can spare."
Hofmyer shot Mercer such a scathing look that it appeared he would physically attack him. Sorting through the tailings had been his idea.
"Sounds logical," Giancarlo said, enjoying the frustration on his overseer's face. "If I had gone through the difficult task of mining the ore, I imagine that I would also make certain not a single stone had been overlooked." He smiled. "Fetching you back here was a good idea. I think it would be another good idea if I kept you around for a while longer. For the time being, you will be my chief among slaves."
For a fraction of a second, Mercer's thoughts played openly across his face, but fortunately Gianelli had looked away. Mercer didn't want the Italian to see the hatred or the resolve that flashed in his eyes. Those he was keeping to himself, knowing that they would help him when the time came. Slave, he'd been called. And slave he would be. Right up to the moment he would slip his hands around Gianelli's throat and squeeze until the son of a bitch was dead.
The Mine
Two weeks passed. Two weeks in which Mercer saw a man beaten to death. Two weeks in which he saw others drop dead from exhaustion. Two weeks in which men and machine toiled endlessly to yank the kimberlite from the womb of the earth, tearing it free with picks and pneumatic drills and bare hands. Two weeks in which his own body was pushed mercilessly.
Gianelli and Joppi Hofmyer worked the male refugees, including Mercer and Habte, in twelve-hour shifts, allowing just ten minutes every two hours for a little food and a meager water ration. The pace wasn't enough to kill a healthy adultr his shift, watched over by one of Hofmyer's South Africans, a man named du Toit. At least ten armed Sudanese also guarded the work. The pit echoed with the machine-gun rattle of compressed air drills and jackhammers, a deafening roar of man's fight against earth's strength. It was impossible to look across the workings. The air was thick with dust and fumes, and the miners were covered with so much grit that it was difficult to tell white from black. A flexible ventilator tube with high-speed fans had been rigged along the tunnel leading to the work, but it did little to alleviate the dust or the incredible heat in the chamber.
Taking a lesson from the British prisoners of war who had built the Kwai River bridge, Mercer dedicated himself to mining the kimberlite to the best of his ability. He selected those refugees with the strength and stamina to work the drills and jackhammers, teaching them the basics and a few tricks to make their task easier. Others he employed as pick men and priers, and still others to haul the ore back to the surface, where more people hammered it apart to search for the elusive diamonds.
But the stones weren't that elusive. The kimberlite here was the richest Mercer had ever seen. While he was not allowed in the secure area near the mine's entrance where the ore was crushed and the diamonds were stored in a safe, he learned enough to guess that the mine was paying out better than twelve carats a ton, an astronomically high value. He did have the opportunity to see a few stones that were found right in the mine. At first the Eritreans were dumbfounded at the value placed on the small symmetrical lumps of crystal when Mercer pointed them out, because there is little of a diamond's hidden fire to be seen before the stone is cut and polished. The biggest stone Mercer saw for himself was a nice twenty carats, but he'd heard rumors about a monster stone, some said the size of a man's fist, that had been found by one of the women sorting the ore.
It was in the pit that one of the guards beat an Eritrean to death. It wasn't known if the refugee had broken one of Hofmyer's numerous rules or if the young Sudanese had just done it for the thrill. The reason didn't matter to the victim, nor did it really matter to those who witnessed the Sudanese using the butt of his AK-47 to split open the man's head.
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