The Medusa Stone - v5

by Jack Du Brul

  He’d mumbled an apology to Fay about needing the rest room and slid from the box at the Kennedy Center, dodging out of the huge theater and into the red-carpeted lobby. His Secret Service escorts seemed equally relieved at their temporary escape from the performance. Next to the bronze bust of the late President Kennedy, which to him was the ugliest statue he’d ever seen, he snapped open his cell phone and dialed Mercer for the hundredth time in the past weeks. It was a fruitless gesture, he knew, but he hadn’t had word from his friend and State Department reports about violence in Asmara had him concerned.

  He was about to cut the connection after the fifth ring, when an unfamiliar voice answered in accented English. “Hello, you have reached the phone of Philip Mercer. He’s been buried alive. May I help you? My name is Habte Makkonen.”

  Their fifteen-minute conversation cut short Henna’s concert. He sent an agent back to his seat to apologize to Fay. Like just about every other husband in the country, he figured he’d spend his retirement making up to his wife for the years of broken promises. The phone in his limo was more secure than his cell phone, and the attached scrambler had the latest in encryption software. He was on it for the entire drive to the Pentagon.

  After alerting Marge Doyle, he called the Pentagon and had them track down C. Thomas Morrison. The limo reached the Department of Defense’s sprawling headquarters just as Admiral Morrison was located.

  “Evening, Dick, how’re you doing?” the Joint Chiefs’ chairman asked jovially.

  “I’ve got a present for you, but you’re going to have to unwrap it,” Henna replied. “Where are you right now?”

  “Home. My son’s in town looking at colleges for his daughter. She wants Howard because it’s a black school, and he wants her at Georgetown because of its reputation.”

  “Tell them they’re going to have to thumb through the catalogs without you. I’m at the Pentagon and you’re going to want to be here too.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “I found your Medusa photographs and we’re going to need some firepower to get them back.”

  Admiral Morrison’s voice went serious the instant he heard the word Medusa. “Say no more. I’m putting on my shoes right now. I should be there in half an hour.”

  Leave it to a military man to know the exact time of his commute no matter what the traffic situation. Twenty-nine minutes later, Morrison strode through the entry doors closest to his E-ring suite of offices, two uniformed aides pacing behind him in an arrowhead formation. He and Henna shook hands and strode to the elevators, arriving at Morrison’s office just an hour after Habte’s call. That hour was the longest delay in the chain of events to follow. Henna quickly outlined his conversation with Habte and the circumstances surrounding it.

  “Northern Eritrea, huh?” Morrison studied the world map behind his desk. He chuckled. “Isn’t that a coincidence. Since our last conversation, a detachment of Force Recon Marines found themselves rotated to an amphibious assault ship off the coast of Somalia. There are two hundred soldiers on that ship who’d been planning a piece-of-cake tour in Italy and are mighty pissed off at their new deployment. I bet they’d love to vent some of that anger.”

  Henna’s reply had the same mocking tone. “Coincidences are compounding as we speak. I called Lloyd Easton at the State Department while I was waiting for you. Right now he’s convincing the president of Eritrea that an American training exercise in his country would be in his best interests.”

  “What about authorization from the president?”

  “As soon as we’re done here, I’ll contact him. In light of our conversation with Israel’s prime minister, he’s been expecting that something like this might happen. He’ll be astounded when he hears Gianelli is involved. Marge pulled his file for me when I was in my limo and it must be a foot thick. Interpol has never been able to directly link him to anything illegal, but if we’re quick here, we’ll nail the bastard to the wall. It’ll be a feather in the president’s cap during the next G-7 summit if we can haul him into a courtroom.”

  “As long as the political end’s covered, I’ll handle the military side. It’ll take some time to get this ball rolling.” Morrison snatched up a phone and ordered a call put through to the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office. He offered Henna a zeppelin-sized Cohiba when he finished. “We’re going to need some photo intelligence of the area, and the Marines are going to need some prep time.”

  “I’ve got to call Habte Makkonen back and give him a time line. What do you think?”

  “Six hours minimum and even that’s pushing it too hard.”

  “Not from where Mercer’s sitting,” Henna said through a cloud of fragrant cigar smoke.

  The phone rang, and Morrison spoke with the duty officer at the NRO. “There’s a civilian on the ground reporting a heavy cloud cover in the area, but there’s a lot of machinery working at the site. If you can’t get clear pictures, switch to IR and we’ll find the bastards by their heat signature.” He clamped his hand over the mouthpiece and spoke to Henna. “This is going to take a while. If you want, use the phone on my secretary’s desk to brief the Old Man and reach Makkonen. Tell him what to expect and to get his butt under cover when the Marines hit the mine.”

  Henna left Morrison coordinating satellite coverage and planted himself at a desk in the outer office. He figured he could afford a little time, so he placed a call he felt was equally important. He’d personally met the plane carrying Harry White from Israel at Dulles, driving into the city with the octogenarian and seeing him ensconced at an FBI safe house until the situation settled. True to his word, Harry was stone sober and didn’t complain through the subsequent hours of questioning. It wasn’t until after Henna’s agents had finished that Harry demanded to know what had happened to Mercer. His glare had spoken volumes when Henna admitted that they had no idea where he was or what had happened to him.

  “Hello.”

  “Harry, it’s Dick Henna. We’ve found Mercer.”

  Harry heard Henna’s declaration, but it took a few seconds for him to absorb it. “You really found him?” he asked at last.

  “He’s at an abandoned mine in Eritrea. He’s okay.”

  “No, he’s not,” Harry snapped. “He’s in deep shit or you wouldn’t be calling me, he would.”

  “Harry, really, he’s all right.”

  “I’ve been more than cooperative with you. The least you can do is be honest with me. What the hell is really going on?”

  Henna couldn’t fathom how Harry knew he was lying. It was just one of those things, part of that bond that Mercer and Harry shared. He blew out a breath. “Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry. He is in Eritrea, but he’s the prisoner of a group of Sudanese rebels who’re working for an Italian industrialist who’s a known criminal. From what we know so far, he’s buried himself in the mine with some Eritrean refugees as a way to buy us some time to get Marines into the area.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Do you have Marines going in?”

  “I’m at the Pentagon right now with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Harry, we’re moving heaven and earth to get him back.”

  “He’s pulled your asses from the fire a couple of times now. You had goddamned better move a lot more than that or so help me, Christ, by the end of the week I’ll be on every talk show in the country.”

  “Harry—”

  “I’m not fooling around. You get Mercer back or you can kiss your job and this Administration good-bye. I know enough to bury all of you.”

  “Jesus, Harry, it doesn’t need to come to that.”

  “I know it doesn’t because you’ll rescue him. End of discussion.”

  Seven and a half hours later, a swarm of UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters thundered into Eritrean airspace, the Marines on board eager for a good fight.

  King Solomon’s Mine

  At first it wasn’t a noise—merely the absence of the all-consuming si
lence. Mercer strained to listen, his ears ringing with the effort and his eyes watering as he stared into the sable blackness. There! A tiny sound existing only in the deepest level of his consciousness, a hissing like a gentle whisper. He tried to shout, but his mouth was cemented closed by his thirst and he could manage only a hoarse croak.

  Time might have passed, he had no way to tell, but he was sure that the mysterious hiss was growing louder. He wouldn’t let himself hope. He couldn’t do that if he was wrong. Then he saw a light, just a muted flicker. To him, it was like a blinding star burst. He drank it in, his eyes streaming with the joyous pain of it.

  “Hello?” he rasped.

  “Hello yourself,” Selome called cheerily from a short distance away. “I’ll be with you in just a few minutes.”

  “What are you doing?” Mercer’s question was too quiet for her to hear, so there was no response.

  It took ten more minutes, but he didn’t care. Selome was coming for him. The tears behind his eyes were no longer caused by the light. As he waited in his stone cocoon, he had a thought that tempered his joy. He’d given up on himself. He’d actually believed that he was going to die. He’d never, ever been one to quit until the very end, but this time he’d really thought he was finished. Even as he was about to be rescued, he was furious with himself, and even worse, disappointed.

  Mercer suddenly felt the dirt beneath him begin to shift.

  The constricting pressure against his chest slackened. He could hear Selome more clearly now. She was digging furiously, using some sort of heavy spade, and with every slash into the dirt ahead of him, Mercer felt the tunnel floor sink a fraction of an inch. When he tried to wriggle, he gained ground, his shoulders scraping against the walls, his back no longer squashed to the ceiling.

  Then in a rush like childbirth, he was free, sliding forward dangerously fast, gaining speed as the slope steepened and the ceiling vanished above him. He started to tumble, caught in a cascade of loose soil and rocks that scored his eyes and nose and jammed solidly into his ears. He banged against the walls as he fell, wanting to cry out at the agony of a smashed shin, but there was so much dirt boiling around him that if he opened his mouth, he would suffocate. Then his headlong plunge stopped, and he lay still as more rubble poured over him, the weight of it increasing with every second.

  He was about to black out when the dirt blanketing his body was thrust aside. He felt a hand grasp his belt and shake him. Dirt flew like water from a spaniel and he could breathe again. He cleared the filth from his eyes and peered around. His first sight was of Selome standing over him.

  “I should dig for buried treasure more often. It’s amazing what a girl can find.” She looked radiant even in the glimmer from the flashlight.

  “Gold doubloon I’m not.”

  He couldn’t believe how good it felt to be sore. It meant he was still alive. He swayed to his feet, reaching to brush a tendril of hair from Selome’s face. “I didn’t think you were coming back.” His voice was thick. He wanted to tell her what had happened when she left him alone, but he couldn’t. What he felt went beyond words. He simply stepped into her embrace, soaking up the heat of her body. “Thank you.”

  There was just enough amber incandescence from the flashlight for him to visually explore the chamber they occupied and to understand how she had gotten him out of his tomb. The gallery was roughly rectangular and at least thirty feet tall with a shallow alcove at one end. Its walls had been covered with blocks of dressed stone. Mercer recognized the stones used in the closet-sized niche. He had seen them before. They were the same type as those lining the main tunnel from the surface. This room had been a staging area, a link between the direct path to the kimberlite ore beds and the older, more meandering tunnels. Behind him, a towering pile of dirt reached almost to the ceiling. At its summit, he saw the tiny round hole that led to the rest of the old mine and had held him prisoner for so long.

  When the new, straighter drift had been driven into the mountain, the workers must have back-filled the passageway to the room and pillar mine chamber. In the thousands of years since then, the fill had settled enough for Mercer to crawl almost to the point where it emptied into this room. Of course, Selome had recognized that if she dug into the base of the mountain of dirt, it would collapse into the room and free him.

  “I’m sorry it took so long, but when I fell into this chamber, I cracked my head against the floor and blacked out.” There was an angry bruise above her left eye.

  “You won’t hear me complaining.” Mercer gulped half the remaining water from their canteen and examined the shovel Selome had used to loosen his earthen constraints. “It’s a shame you had to use that. It’s a beautiful example of a bronze-aged tool.”

  “Then I’m glad you’re not an archaeologist. I ruined about five of these things getting you out.”

  There was a collection of primitive tools in one corner of the room, picks and shovels, some scaled for an adult’s use, other miniature versions for the child slaves. Next to them sat rotted piles of leather that had been buckets and water flasks. A little bit off lay stacks of clay lamps.

  “We can bemoan lost artifacts later,” Mercer said. “Right now I want to get us out of here and take care of some business.”

  He rigged the stones blocking the alcove exit with explosives from his kit bag, careful to use just enough to take down a section of the wall and not blow it apart. He had no idea what was happening in the main tunnel beyond the barrier and didn’t want to advertise his presence until he was ready.

  “What about fuse? Didn’t you use it against Mahdi?”

  Mercer plucked another coil from his bag and snipped off a length. “Second rule of hard rock mining: you can never have enough fuse.”

  “What’s the first rule?”

  Mercer held up more dynamite. “You can never have enough explosives.”

  The fuse was much slower than the one he’d used to disable Mahdi, so they had plenty of time to make it to the trench redoubt he’d dug with Selome’s help. He covered his head with one arm, keeping his body over Selome. When the charge blew, the concussion pelted them with debris.

  He looked up and blinked. The wall hadn’t crumbled, but there was a three-foot crawl space at its bottom and light from the outside spilled into the chamber. Neither of them had ever thought they would see sunshine again and they embraced in its comforting aura.

  “Now, let’s see this put to an end.” Mercer slung his bag over his shoulder, snatched up the AK-47, and led Selome into the tunnel.

  The echoing sounds of a gun battle reverberated down the length of the shaft, stray tracer rounds winking by. Mercer quickly shoved Selome back into the chamber.

  “Stay here and don’t move until I come for you. You just saved my life. Now it’s my turn.” He stepped out, keeping low to the footwall, the AK at the ready.

  Mercer couldn’t tell who was using the mine as a cover position so he started crawling forward as more rounds streaked over his head. His eyes adjusted to the sunlight filling the shaft, but the haze of cordite smoke was nearly blinding and he had to get close to recognize the men firing out toward the camp. They were Sudanese soldiers. Habte must have made the call because he guessed the return fire ricocheting down the drive was from the Marines.

  The rebels held an unassailable position against the American soldiers as long as they had ammunition. Unless a rocket launcher was used, there was no way to dislodge them. The Marines surely knew Habte’s warning to Henna about the trapped miners, so explosives were not an option. Remembering Mahdi’s sneak attack in the mine and the brutal raping that had taken place outside the women’s stockade, Mercer felt nothing as he brought the AK to his shoulder.

  With controlled double taps on semiautomatic, he shot four Sudanese in the back and the remaining two in the chest when they whirled to face the threat that had come unexpectedly from behind. He scrambled up to their barricade and searched frantically for something white to wave at the Marines st
ill pouring rounds into the tunnel entrance. He had to make do with the well-used handkerchief he found in the pocket of one of the dead man. A second after waving it over the barricade, he heard a command in English to hold fire.

  He stood. “Don’t shoot. I’m an American.”

  “Dr. Mercer?” a Texas drawl asked over the din of a continuing battle farther from the mine.

  “Yeah, I’m Mercer.” The euphoria he should be feeling had been suppressed by his desire to make the Sudanese and especially Gianelli suffer for what had happened in the past weeks. “I’ve got a woman with me, and there are forty miners still trapped in here.” He looked to where he thought the Marines had taken cover, but he couldn’t see them. There were too many places to hide on the desert floor—behind the scattered equipment boxes or near some of the heavy equipment that hadn’t been damaged during the battle or behind one of the countless piles of dirt excavated from the mine.

  “Ya’ll have to hold tight for a spell longer. This is one hot LZ.” The soldier’s comment was drowned by the thundering rotors of an AH-64 Apache gunship as it crabbed across the desert, its chin gun pouring a steady stream of 20mm rounds into the far side of the camp.

  Mercer spotted the cluster of Force Recon Marines huddled next to an overturned and still burning D-4 bulldozer. The soldier in charge saw him, waved in acknowledgment, and led his squad across the camp. Mercer drained the contents of two Sudanese canteens, and when the Marines were out of sight, he bolted from the mine, jinxing around toppled lighting towers and mountains of overburden. Though the rain had stopped, the sky was thick with clouds. The heat and humidity made his dash slow, and his bruised chest protested every breath. The knife wound in his leg was a sharp throb. Suddenly, the sky directly overhead exploded. A pressure wave of air slammed him to the earth, the concussion blasting against his eardrums. He rolled to his back and began scrabbling across the ground.