The Medusa stone

by Jack Du Brul

  "What now, fearless leader?" Selome asked, her pride in Mercer evident in her eyes and smile.

  Mercer's kit bag bulged with items he thought he might need for the ordeal to come. He dug out one of the lighters. He sparked the wheel and watched the flame until the metal top was too hot to touch. The flame remained in a solid column, not flickering in the slightest. "No air movement, but that doesn't mean we won't find some. It just means we are too far back to feel it. What I want to do is find a place to leave everyone behind, a chamber like the children would have used as a dormitory. Chances are it will be situated near a natural air vent."

  "And then?"

  "You and I find the way out of here. We'll be able to move a lot faster if we don't have to worry about stragglers and our prisoners." Mercer glanced back into the darkness, listening to the coughing fits of the men. The air was rank. "Now you know why I didn't want Habte with us. As much as he smokes, he wouldn't last five minutes in here. By the time we get out, he should have reached Dick Henna and a couple hundred Marines will have landed, taking care of our former Italian slave master."

  "And then we come back for the rest of the miners?"

  "You got it."

  They started out, Mercer in the lead with Selome right behind. They followed the erratic beam of his flashlight as he crawled through the serpentine tunnels on his hands and knees. After an hour, all of them were feeling the effects of the dust their motion kicked up, and the tunnel echoed like a tuberculosis ward. The Eritreans were drinking water at a prodigious rate to salve their burned throats. Mercer was becoming concerned. They needed to find a small chink in the earth's armor that allowed a seep of air to reach the dark maze.

  Another two hours of uninterrupted agony followed as the party oozed through the warren with wormlike slowness. Every few hundred yards, Mercer would test the air for movement, but each time the lighter's flame held steady. He studied the Medusa pictures at many of the major junctures. Their resolution was so poor that the lines on the photos did not correspond with the three-dimensional map he was creating in his mind. After the fourth frustrating time, he angrily tucked them back in his bag. Their only hope lay with Mercer's instincts and his intimate knowledge of mines and mining. He was the only one who could navigate this subterranean realhave ignored.

  They were well into their fourth hour when Mercer sparked his lighter again. The small flames swayed away from him, its movement so slight that had he not been staring, he never would have noticed it. Selome saw the expression on his face and grinned.

  "I think we're going to be okay," he said.

  The chamber they found fifteen minutes later was about twenty feet square, and while the quarters were cramped, everyone fit. Mercer noted that the cavity was a natural formation, one that the child miners had discovered and exploited for themselves. It was like a warm womb deep underground, a sanctuary from the agonizing labor they endured until their young lives ended in the darkness. The ceiling of the cave was about six feet tall and was scarred with hundreds of cracks. Through one of these fissures and through a labyrinthine twist in the living rock, a trickle of air descended into the earth, freshening the atmosphere. After the foul odor of the tunnels, the air in the chamber was sweet and joyously refreshing.

  Selome settled against Mercer's chest as he lay against one wall, taking a much needed break. The men were tangled around them like a litter of exhausted puppies, too tired to sort themselves out. Many minutes would pass before the last coughing spell ended with a wet expectoration of blood.

  "It's all downhill from here," Mercer said.

  "You mean it gets easier?"

  "No." Mercer shook his head. "We've been climbing toward the surface for the past hour so these tunnels will have to slope downward again if we're going to find an exit we can use."

  "Okay, mister." Selome looked at him with mock severity. "You've been giving cryptic answers and telling only half the story since we entered the mine, and every time you pull some trick out of your hat. So what's your trick this time?"

  Mercer laughed. "Found me out, did you? Yes, I have another trick. Remember when we first entered the mine after Gianelli caught us at the monastery? I said I was looking for an escape route." Selome nodded. "I noticed a section of wall a hundred feet from the surface that looked as if it had been rebuilt. The stone was a shade lighter than the blocks used to line the rest of the tunnel. I'm betting our lives that there's another tunnel behind it that had been covered over, hidden."

  "You think these old mine shafts lead to it."

  He nodded. "But if they don't, we are seriously screwed." They rested for another half hour before Mercer decided that if he delayed any longer, he'd be too stiff to continue. He roused Selome and spoke with the gang leaders, again asking her to translate. He laid out his plan and the Eritreans agreed. Their faith in his abilities was an inspiration for Mercer, but also a burden. First it was Harry's life which depended on what he did, then Selome's and Habte's, and now he'd added forty more people, plus the others still in the slave compounds. He cleared his mind of creeping defeatism. It was much too late to doubt his decisions, even if he led them into a possible, and quite literal, dead end.

  "Are you ready?" Mercer asked.

  "Have I ever said no?"

  "That's my girl."

  They started out of the chamber, exiting through one of the larger tunnels. In only a few seconds, they could no longer see the glow from the two flashlights they'd left with the Eritreans. The beam of their own single light seemed puny in the mounting blackness of the unnatural maze. And a kicking sleeping miners as he rushed toward a side tunnel away from where Mercer and Selome had disappeared, screaming unintelligible curses as he went. Mahdi too was in motion, using the other Sudanese as shields as he twisted away from the group, blending himself into the darkness beyond the feeble glow of the single lit flashlight.

  The Eritreans came awake, one of them taking aim in the gloom and gave the trigger a quick tap. Three red explosions appeared on the diversionary guerrilla's back, and he pitched forward, his body collapsing against the wall next to the exit. In the confusion, Mahdi rolled away from the group, the rope binding his hands making it difficult to move, but still he managed to grasp the spare light on his way out of the cavern.

  He regained his feet and stumbled on. The tunnel was so dark he walked with his eyes closed, keeping his arms stretched to one side so he could brush along the wall. After passing several side branches, he ducked into another one and snapped on the light. It took him only a moment to pluck the knife from his boot and cut through the hemp securing his wrists. His men would destroy the other flashlight left with the Eritreans in the melee following his escape, so he was now immune from pursuit. He, and he alone, was the hunter in this hellish world, and Mercer would never know what was coming.

  If Mercer thought the early part of their trek was torturous, it was nothing compared to the past couple of hours. It seemed he could do no wrong leading the miners to the fresh air chamber, but since then he'd led Selome up two long blind alleys and had been forced to wriggle through areas that even the children who'd dug these galleries would have trouble negotiating. It was as though they were trapped in the body of some enormous creature not willing to give up its latest meal. As they corkscrewed through the twisting intersections and aimless shafts, Mercer was beginning to think he would get them hopelessly lost. So far their motion had created a trail in the dust, but if they passed a spot that was clean, it would be impossible to backtrack to where the Eritreans waited.

  Finally they entered another tall cavern, one that lacked fresh air but had been mined extensively. The flashlight's beam revealed a sight that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  Unlike the bodies he'd discovered in the Italian mine, these were not neatly laid out. It appeared they had been left where they had died. Their poses were agonizing. There were maybe a dozen of them, desiccated mummies with skin stretched tightly over screams of pain. The corpses were all o
f children, the oldest not more than ten or twelve. Even in death, their suffering transcended the millennia.

  "Oh, God." Selome gagged.

  Mercer said nothing. He looked at the pitiable remains of the slave children, trying to keep emotions from clouding his judgment. By the ore piled around a couple of them, he could see that work had continued without pause next to the bodies. No attempts had been made to give the children any kind of burial. They had been abandoned, worked to death, and left to rot where they'd died. Selome began praying.

  Still in shock, Mercer forced himself to make a closer examination of one of the bodies, wanting to know the exact cause of death. He didn't dare disturb the fragile corpse, but from the areas he could study, he saw no signs of injury; no broken bones or blunt trauma. The only bizarre feature was the unnatural curling of its hands, arms, and feet. They were co the What the hell could have done this? he thought. He noted the child still had its teeth, so he discounted scurvy, but rickets was a possible candidate. Then the clinical side of his brain shut down and he felt pity wash over him in tidal surges. What did it matter how they died? They were gone, murdered by a nameless slave master long ago who'd probably been rewarded for his efficiency. Mercer had to force himself to breathe. He said a silent prayer for the children, and when he raised his eyes and took note of the vein of ore they'd been working, a sickening realization came to him.

  He wanted to escape this macabre cave, but the scientist in him had to be sure, even if he knew the results could be a death sentence for him and Selome. She continued to pray as he crushed down a small sample of the ore left on the footwall. He unclipped the protective steel casing off the boxy flashlight and poured a measure of the ore into it. He ignored the coils of fuse in the bag and withdrew a stick of dynamite. He worked the explosive until he could pour the powder onto the ground beneath the container. Only when he was finished did she notice his efforts and join him.

  "What are you doing?"

  "An experiment," he replied, and Selome recognized the fear in his voice.

  He laid their full canteen onto the metal case so it acted as a lid. "Do you remember what Brother Ephraim said about the children who worked the mine being killed by sin?"

  Without a tight constraint, the explosive burst into flame when he touched it off with his lighter, illuminating the cavern in harsh white light. When the fire burned out, he tapped the canteen several times and stuck it back into his bag. The reddish ore in his makeshift apparatus had darkened considerably. He dumped it onto a jagged rock and waited. It took just a few seconds for silvery beads to ooze out of the ore and pool on the ground next to him.

  "He wasn't warning us about sin with a S, but sin with a C, as in cinnabar, also called red mercuric sulfide. It's the principal ore stone for raw mercury." They both stared at the shimmering pool of liquid metal.

  "But isn't mercury--"

  "One of the most toxic substances on the planet. It can cripple, paralyze, or kill just by breathing its fumes."

  "That's what killed the children?"

  "That's what going to kill us, too, if we don't get out of here. It's so deadly that miners who dig this stuff today only work eight days a month. Every second we delay can have permanent effects." He was already leading Selome down another tunnel.

  "Is there anything we can do?"

  "Yeah, sweat a lot. Believe it or not, perspiration can cleanse the body of mercury if it's not allowed to bond to the cell proteins. After every shift, miners spend time in a room called 'the beach' to sweat out the toxins under powerful heat lamps."

  The mine was stuffy and hot already, so there wasn't a problem keeping their pores open, but they only had that single canteen of water, and when that ran out, their bodies would no longer waste fluids on temperature control. The mercury would then begin its absorption process, and the consequences after that might be irreversible.

  They encountered several more horror chambers as they wound through the mine, one of them containing at least a hundred mummified victims. Mercer could see that many of the children had been exposed to mercury through their mothers when they were in the womb. The poison had done terrible damage to their chromosomes, and they suffered horrifying malformations. Some were barely recognizable as human.

  "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 themceived andd 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 wou
ld 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.