The Medusa Stone

Inside the Mine

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.

The South African raised his hands so quickly that his knuckles scraped on the low ceiling. Selome made a tiny scuffing sound as she came up behind du Toit, and if anything, the miner’s hands pressed tighter against the hanging wall.

“Smart choice,” Mercer said softly. “Now, we’re going back to the pit and see if you can convince the guerrillas to do the same thing. Nod if you think that’s a good idea.”

Du Toit bobbed his head vigorously, though his eyes never left the 7.62mm aperture of the AK leveled at his genitals.

“That’s good, because if you aren’t convincing, you’ll be the first to die.”

Mercer stood at the top of the working pit, holding du Toit by the shirt collar, and gave a bellowing, primeval yell. The four Sudanese swiveled their guns to the duo standing ten feet over their heads but held off firing. Selome quickly crawled forward to cover the guards with her own AK.

“Drop your weapons!” she shouted in Tigrinyan, and when one of the Sudanese who understood the language did so, the others followed suit. Eritreans near the guards scrambled to retrieve the assault rifles.

Many of them had been freedom fighters just a few years earlier, and they handled the weapons with easy familiarity, forcing the Sudanese to their knees and asking Selome if they could kill them.

“No,” she called. “We need the ammunition for later, and these dogs may have value when we get out.” She looked at Mercer and repeated what she’d just said in English. “I didn’t think you wanted them dead.”

“Good assumption.” Mercer released du Toit and trotted down the ramp that led to the floor of the mine. He sat at a table used as the underground office, clearing away rock samples and mining gear with a sweep of his arm. “I estimate we have another three hours before Gianelli breaks through, so first we need to put another roadblock in his way. And then we’ve got some serious mining to do.”

“What’s your plan?” Selome joined him.

“First thing is to send some men to drag that safe in here with us. Then we need to drop more of the tunnel hanging wall, close to where it reaches the pit. There’s more than enough explosives here for the job.”

“Didn’t you say something to Hofmyer about needing to channel the explosions away from the chamber to avoid destroying the main dome?”

Mercer chuckled, “Hofmyer might be a miner, but he’s no geologist. That dome’s been here for a billion years, sitting near some of the most active fault lines on the planet. If earthquakes haven’t destroyed it by now, it’d take a nuke to damage it today.”

“So we replug the tunnel. I’m guessing that’s to slow Gianelli again?”

“Correct.”

“And what will we be doing while he’s digging?”

“I told you, we’re going to vanish into thin air.” Mercer slid the Medusa pictures from his kit bag and carefully unfolded them. When he found the one he wanted, he showed it to Selome.

She studied the unintelligible jumble of lines and swirls and splashes of color. “I’m sorry, but those pictures make no sense to me.”

“If Alice had a photograph like these, she never would have gotten lost in Wonderland.” Mercer grinned. “I’ll explain it all in a while, but first we need to get these men working. We’ll split into two teams, so you’ll have to do double duty interpreting for me unless anyone else here speaks English.”

Twenty minutes later, Mercer had a gang of ten men standing in the tunnel. He’d used a can of fluorescent spray to mark where he wanted holes drilled into the ceiling and fashioned a piece of metal wire as a depth gauge. There were about thirty bright orange spots spread along a hundred-foot section of the tunnel. Through Selome’s translations, he explained that he wanted half the holes drilled straight upward and the other half at an angle. Angling the holes would direct the force of their explosives in a more random destructive pattern. The holes didn’t need to be any deeper than the wire gauge. He left instructions to be told when the first fifteen holes had been drilled so he could place the charges needed to bring down the hanging wall.

He watched for several minutes to make certain the men knew what he wanted and was pleased at how proficient they had become with the drills. Each one weighed a hundred pounds and they were as long and unwieldy as railroad ties, yet the Eritreans worked them with the expertise of seasoned professionals. Water from a tank lubricated the drill’s cutting heads, and chips of rock and mud began pouring from the ceiling in a steady drizzle. One of the men paused to wave at Mercer when he removed the drill from the first completed hole.

“Hit it again, man.” Mercer slapped him on the shoulder and the miner started boring into another of the painted marks.

Mercer left them to their task and returned to the table with the Medusa photographs. Selome had laid out some food and water for him and he ate while studying one particular picture. She sat close by, watching him as he worked but he paid her little heed. His face was a mask of concentration, and when he looked up from his task, his eyes were hard and his expression grim.

Without proper tools and measurements, Mercer had set himself a nearly impossible task, and amid the din of the workers rigging the tunnel, he felt the responsibility weighing heavily. He needed a plug that would slow Gianelli, not deter him entirely. Mercer knew there was a chance that when they collapsed more of the tunnel, its entire length would come down. If the Italian abandoned the diamonds Mercer had stolen, there wasn’t enough fuel for the drills or explosives for them to tunnel themselves back out. He’d intentionally buried them alive, and if he continued with his plan, he might seal them in forever, murdering Selome and the other forty people in here with him.

Selome touched Mercer on the back of his scarred hand, and he looked into her dark eyes. “For what it’s worth,” she said, “I believe in you.”

“This time I don’t think it’s going to be enough,” he replied, but hauled himself to his feet and waved over the cluster of miners waiting for instructions.

They walked to one of the deeper shafts that had been dug into the working floor of the mine. The bottom of the fifty-foot hole was lost in the gloom. Mercer scrambled down the ladder, followed by Selome and the Eritrean who was the gang’s leader. He shook the can of spray paint he’d carried with him, the tiny ball bearing clattering like the tail of a rattlesnake. Glancing again at the Medusa picture he’d brought, Mercer painted two bold crisscrossing diagonal lines near the south corner of the shaft.

“X marks the spot.” He tossed the can to the ground. “We dig here faster than Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel, and just maybe we’ll make it out of this mess alive.”

Selome’s next question was lost in the bustle of men lowering equipment into the hole. Minutes later, Mercer had stripped off his shirt and stood poised over one of the big drills, its tip resting on the rock floor. “Our only saving grace is there’s no kimberlite down here. The early miners dug like bastards but didn’t find anything. The rock is a much softer matrix; otherwise my plan would never work.”

“What’s beneath us?”

He looked at her. “The real King Solomon’s Mine.” With that, he opened the compressed air valve on the drill. It was as if the shattering sound alone splintered the stone as the cutter head sank into the earth.