Jack Du Brul - The Medusa Stone

No sooner had the earth stopped trembling than Mercer began smashing the light bulbs that had survived the collapse with the butt of Selome’s AK-47. She took no notice of his peculiar behavior. Instead, she stared down the drive, her eyes misted with emotion. This was only the second time she had seen the interior of the mine, and it filled her mind with wonderment about the people who had built it. She knew it had been dug by slaves, children who were worked to death, but it still represented a tangible piece of her history, and as a Jew, she knew how little physical evidence remained of her faith.

“Selome,” Mercer called.

“What?”

“Get hold of yourself. The guards down in the pit are going to come to investigate, and we need to be ready.” He came up to her in the dark, touching her hand to reassure her of his location in the darkness. “Take this light.” He handed her a small penlight he’d kept in his kit bag and settled them next to the dead skiploader. “When I squeeze your hand, I want you to turn it on and shine it down the tunnel.”

The drive was a mile and a half long, and it took a few minutes for the Sudanese guarding the slave workers to send someone to see what had taken place and for the hapless guard to reach the end of the shaft. Mercer could hear tentative steps shuffling on the dusty foot wall as the rebel drew nearer, crossing into the darkened section of the tunnel where he waited with Selome. When he gauged the guerrilla was about twenty feet away, probing the wall like a blind man in an unfamiliar place, he gave Selome’s fingers a gentle squeeze.

The penlight wasn’t powerful, but after the total blackness, its beam was blinding. Motes of dust hung in the air as thick as a New England blizzard, and at the far reach of the light, a soldier paused, peering into the glow. As soon as Mercer saw the armed figure, he triggered off a single shot.

“One down, four more to go.” Earlier, Gianelli had used ten Sudanese to guard each shift, but the number had dropped to five since there had been no trouble from the slave workers. He stood, handed the rebel’s AK to Selome, and started walking toward the domed chamber.

“Mercer, how are we going to get out of here? There must be a thousand tons of rock blocking the exit.” Selome didn’t know Mercer well enough to appreciate one of his insane plans, so panic put a raw edge to her voice.

“Don’t worry. When we’re done tonight, there’s going to be another thousand tons in this tunnel.”

The light bulbs lining the hanging wall were in little metal cages, and as they moved closer to the working pit, Mercer smashed them to eliminate the chance he and Selome were back-lit to other investigating soldiers. After twenty minutes of quiet walking, they reached a spot about forty feet from the chamber. Still no one had come to see what had befallen their comrade or the mine entrance.

“Damn,” Mercer cursed bitterly. “They’re better disciplined than I thought. I was hoping to catch another of them in the tunnel.”

As usual, the pit was well lit and echoed with the sounds of the generators, which had probably masked Mercer’s earlier rifle shot. The tools, though, were now idled. The Eritreans leaned against the pneumatic drills while their guards looked blankly at each other. All work had stopped while they waited to see what happened next. The South African miner appeared to be the only one not immobilized by the catastrophe. He was shining one of the halogen lamps on the dome arching over the pit, checking to see if it had been damaged by the explosions and avalanche.

“That cave-in may have looked bad,” Mercer whispered, “but Gianelli will get it cleared pretty quickly. We have a lot more work to do.”

“What next?”

“We need to immobilize the rest of the guards, and then we’re going to do a disappearing act.”

“What do you mean, a disappearing act?”

“I’m going to make every one in this chamber vanish into thin air.” He noted the disbelief in her expression and grinned. “Don’t you believe in magic?”

Outside the sealed mine entrance, the men worked feverishly in the rain, pushed on by the brutal prompts of the Sudanese and by the sharp tongues of Joppi Hofmyer and Giancarlo Gianelli. The Italian was frantic, screaming at everyone and kicking piles of dirt like a spoiled child. He yelled at Hofmyer and the other three South Africans not trapped in the mine, and he yelled at the Eritreans and the Sudanese, even though the natives couldn’t understand a word he said. By now he knew what had happened. Mercer was gone from the men’s compound, and only a few of the feebler women remained in theirs. They’d found two corpses under the barbed wire of the men’s enclosure, and a dozen male workers had vanished into the raging storm. Gianelli felt that the avalanche was a diversion on Mercer’s part to redirect interest from the refugees and force a reopening of the mine while they made their escape. However, Gianelli still had more than enough men to both capture the runaways and clear away the avalanche.

In all, Mercer had done little to derail Gianelli from his plan. Hofmyer assured the industrialist that he would have the tunnel reopened in short order. The trapped men should be in good condition, and it was possible that du Toit, who was the overseer inside, would keep them working, confident that his comrades would rescue him.

“I bet we don’t lose more than a few hours because of this,” Hofmyer said. “And Mercer’s trapped in the mountain. Apart from the couple of guards he killed and a little inconvenience, he did nothing to us, I swear.”

“Yes, well, there are a couple thousand carats of rough diamonds in the safe that bastard buried inside this mountain, and this whole operation will be a waste if we don’t recover them. I call that more than a little inconvenience.”

“Mr. Gianelli, I bet that safe is no more than a couple of feet into the tunnel. A guard at the mine entrance said that just before the avalanche, the skiploader was running very rough.”

Gianelli whirled. “You had better well hope so!” Spittle flew from his lips. “Mercer’s satellite phone is missing, which means the government is going to know about us shortly. I need those stones. We still have time, but not much.”

The men and machines continued to rip apart the mounds of dirt and rock that covered the entrance. If anything, Hofmyer’s time estimate was too generous. To Gianelli’s eye, it appeared that the tunnel would be cleared in two hours, maybe less. One of the South African miners had come up with the idea of using the pumps brought to empty the earlier Italian workings and use them to power a water cannon. The apparatus was turned on while Giancarlo watched, water drawn from a rain-created lake that had grown to enormous proportions. The high-pressure jet tore into the debris like a drill, washing away soil and smaller rocks.

Yes , he thought, maybe this won’t be too bad after all . He hoped Mercer had survived the cave-in so he could watch the man die a much slower death. The idea gave him a grim satisfaction.

Mercer didn’t have a good plan for eliminating the four other Sudanese guarding the pit. He wanted to avoid a firefight, since he and Selome had only two guns and a finite amount of ammunition. While waiting for inspiration, providence provided for him. The white miner-Mercer recalled the man’s name was du Toit-started up from the pit floor, heading for the tunnel exit and his own investigation. Hidden as they were, the miner wouldn’t see Mercer and Selome until he was almost on top of them.

Selome read Mercer’s intentions and crossed the tunnel to take up a position to prevent du Toit from bolting. The South African walked between them, his flashlight aimed straight ahead. Mercer stepped from around a large boulders, his AK held low across his belly, the barrel pointed at du Toit’s groin.