Jack Du Brul - The Medusa Stone

“Somehow the kimberlite vent came up through a vein of mercuric sulfide. I’ve never heard of a geologic feature like this but I can understand why they thought the Ark of the Covenant may have helped the children,” Mercer said.

“How?”

“Even at the time the Ark was brought to Africa, metallurgists knew that mercury bonded with gold. I think they were hoping it would absorb the mercury vapor and stop its debilitating effects. Remember, apart from any mythical properties it may have had, the Ark was covered with gold.”

“But this much mercury?”

“I didn’t say it was a good idea.”

They continued through more endless passages for another hour until Selome had a disturbing thought. “Mercer, the tunnel leading to the working pit was about a mile and a half long, and even at a slow crawl, we must have covered five times that distance on our way back.” Her voice was muffled by the tight passage as the walls soaked up the sound.

“You noticed that, too?” he replied. “I’m beginning to get a little concerned myself. These tunnels were constructed through softer material to make the mining easier, but it doesn’t seem possible that they’d meander as badly as this. I’m starting to think we may be in another dead end.”

“We’re lost?” She started to panic.

Mercer stopped, twisted around so he could see her with the flashlight. Her face was tiger-striped by beads of sweat cutting runnels through the dust caked to her skin. He could see she was starting to lose confidence. Mercer cupped her chin in his palm. “There are two inevitabilities in life, death and taxes. You have my word that come next April, you’ll be cutting a big check.”

She forced bravery into her voice. “Americans pay taxes in April. I’m Eritrean.”

The next chamber they found was high enough for them to stand, and unlike the others, it was enormous. Their flashlight could penetrate only a fraction of the way across, but by gauging the echoes, Mercer estimated the cavity was nearly the size of a football field. He immediately recognized the mining technique used to excavate the space. Room and pillar mining called for huge spaces to be gouged into the ore while leaving support columns of undisturbed rock to hold up the hanging wall. It was a common technique in coal mining, but not very efficient in a diamond mine, and he was surprised it had been used to work this kimberlite vein. The pillars were so numerous, it felt as if they were walking among the trunks of a dense petrified forest or in the eerie catacombs under an ancient cathedral. He was stunned that the mine overseers had conceived and engineered the system as he led Selome across the expanse. Over their heads, the hanging wall was in terrible shape, cracked and scored by the enormous pressure of the earth bearing down on it. He guessed that in another hundred years or so, the pillars would succumb to the strain and the entire room would collapse.

Halfway to the other side of the room a shadow caught Mercer’s eye, and when he turned to investigate, Selome gave a startled scream and was thrown to the floor. Mercer was flattened by a rushing apparition that materialized out of the darkness. His head cracked against the ground, his mind spinning. It was impossible that anything alive could be down here with them; the mine had been sealed for thousands of years. A vicious kick to his stomach pulled him back to reality. It didn’t matter who or what was with them, they were about to be killed. A knife glinted sharply in the beam of the flashlight that had flown from his stunned hands. The AK-47 lay out of reach beyond the penumbra.

The thing jumped on Mercer as he lay stunned. He managed to raise a hand and deflect the blade plunging at his chest. He twisted his assailant enough for him to counter with a crushing punch, the blow snapping a couple of short ribs. Rather than being slowed by the shot, the attacker went wild, striking Mercer across the jaw with his elbow, and the darkness of the cavern rushed into Mercer’s brain. He would have lost the fight right then had Selome not leaped on the assailant’s back, drawing him off Mercer for a moment.

For her effort, Mercer saw her catch a savage punch in the face that sent her reeling, her body falling like a deflated balloon. He scrambled to find his assault rifle and the attacker was on him again, this time sinking the knife into the fleshy part of Mercer’s thigh. Screaming with the needle-hot pain, Mercer torqued and back-handed the creature across the cheek. To his horror, he felt his hand sink into its putrid face and saw a chunk of flesh fly off. The wound did nothing to deter the assault and Mercer realized he really was fighting some demon who roamed the labyrinth.

He scrambled out of the monster’s reach, dodging around a pillar and into total darkness. From his vantage point he could see the creature shuffling to the abandoned light. The beam caught the apparition in the face, and Mercer recognized Gianelli’s principal henchman, the leader of the rebels, Mahdi. He remembered one of the guards he’d taken prisoner had worn a bandage-that was what he’d wiped off Mahdi’s face.

Mercer had no time to consider how he had escaped the Eritreans or managed to track them. He knew Mahdi would go for the AK next, and he had to get to the gun first. He concentrated on his exact position when Mahdi had first hit him and the most logical direction the gun would have sailed. A glint in the distance caught Mercer’s attention, but it was too far away to be the gun. He struck out boldly, his hands in front of him to avoid slamming into one of the stone columns. In the darkness, Selome was still screaming as if she believed that some specter stalked these galleries.

Both men spotted the weapon when it caught the light’s beam. Mahdi had a shorter distance to run to reach it, but Mercer’s reactions were quicker and they both dove and got a hand on it at the same time.

Mercer had a better grip on the AK and used it to twist the weapon away from the soldier. Mahdi kneed him viciously in the inside of his forearm and Mercer’s entire hand went numb. Suddenly the gun was in Mahdi’s control. Struggling under the man’s weight and only able to use his bad arm to deflect the gloating Sudanese, Mercer reached into the kit bag still slung around his shoulder.

He’d planned to use the high-speed fuse in conjunction with the dynamite he carried if they’d needed to blast any obstacles that got in their way, but now it had a more urgent purpose. Mahdi either didn’t notice or didn’t care as Mercer dropped the two-hundred-foot coil of fuse over his head. The rebel was laughing, knowing he had the advantage, but when he spied a tiny flame shooting from the Zippo in Mercer’s fingers, his eyes went wide with terror. In those last seconds he understood what Mercer had looped over him.

The fuse burned at twenty-two thousand feet per second, so the entire coil cooked off faster than the eye could see. Even under its protective coating, the temperature of the burning chemicals skyrocketed. The smell was almost as bad as the screech when the veins in Mahdi’s throat burst under the pressure of his blood turning to steam. His flesh roasted like a joint of meat.

Mahdi’s finger tightened on the AK’s trigger even as his eyes rolled back into his skull. A full clip arrowed into the ceiling, ricocheting and filling the chamber with deadly lead. The crashing shots and the echoes weakened a section of the scaly hanging wall, and a fifty-ton slab of stone crashed to the floor a short distance away, followed seconds later by several more.

The whole ceiling was giving way! Mercer rolled out from under the struggling terrorist, grabbed up the assault rifle by its hot barrel, and grasped the flashlight in his other hand. More stones let go, huge chunks whose impact loosened even more of the ceiling in a domino effect. It was as if the earth had come alive and they were caught in its jaws. With the weight shifting its balance, one of the pillars exploded like a bomb, crushed beyond its structural tolerance, hurtling rock like grapeshot.