The Medusa Stone pm-3

by Jack Du Brul

  Mercer shuffled forward until his body was between the pilots’ seats and both men could see the gun in his hand. He used it to point at the Gulfstream, now a quarter mile away. “Follow that plane,” he said, unable to ignore the absurdity of his order.

  The pilots realized Mercer’s seriousness and the damage the 9mm could do at such a close range. The copilot sat back in his seat, distancing himself from the controls as the pilot applied power to the turbojets.

  “Just stay cool,” the pilot pleaded, his voice tight.

  “Don’t worry about me.” Mercer sounded distant even in his own head. “Just don’t lose that Gulfstream.”

  The Lear closed quickly, its tires strained by the aircraft’s excess speed. The Gulfstream’s hatch was still open, and when one of the gunmen went to close it, he caught sight of the small jet stalking them. Mercer could see the surprised expression on his dusky face and his eyes go wide before the terrorist ducked out of view.

  “Brace yourselves,” Mercer shouted just as the gunman reappeared, holding the AK out the hatch and firing one-handed, the weapon jerking in his fist.

  Lead streaked from the weapon like water from a hose, chunks of concrete exploding from the taxiway. Several rounds pierced the Lear’s thin skin, though the engines continued to pour out thrust.

  “That’s it, pal,” the pilot screamed. “Chase is off.”

  “Keep after them.”

  “We’re hit, man. There’s no way I’m flying without assessing the damage.”

  “You can ram them,” Mercer said more coolly than he felt. “Not hard enough to destroy their plane, but enough to prevent them leaving.”

  “You’re out of your fucking mind.”

  “They just killed four people in the airport and they’re kidnapping a fifth. We’re the only ones who can stop them.”

  The pilots exchanged glances and came to a mutual agreement. The Lear increased speed, careening onto the runway, dipping so hard into the turn that the wing-mounted fuel tank scraped the ground in a shower of sparks. The kidnapper’s Gulfstream came to an abrupt halt fifty yards ahead of the Lear to allow a United 747 to loop in for its landing, its shadow racing along the ground to catch the hurtling jumbo jet.

  The Lear’s pilot saw his opportunity and further increased power. The plane ate the distance to the Gulfstream with the grace of a cheetah on the hunt. From the Gulfstream, a face appeared in the hatch again. Realizing what was about to happen, the terrorist leaped to the tarmac just as his aircraft started rolling again, building up to rotation speed.

  “Oh, shit!” the Lear pilot shouted.

  The gunman raised his AK as he charged, but either the magazine had been emptied earlier or the weapon had jammed. It did not fire. He tried for a frantic half second to clear the chamber, then realized the gun wouldn’t work in the moments before the Lear reached him. He tossed it aside.

  “What the hell is he doing?” the copilot asked.

  Mercer understood. The dead look in the terrorist’s eyes told him exactly what was going to happen. The kidnapper kept running at the low-slung aircraft, judging distances, and at the critical second he leaped. One foot landed on the Lear’s left wing, momentum making him tumble, but he had enough coordination to twist as he rebounded, aligning himself with his intended target. His arm went in first, the titanium blades of the Garrett TFE 731 turbofan having little trouble liquefying both muscle and bone, but when his shoulder and head hit the whirling turbine, the engine came apart, blades exploding off the roller-bearing shaft and blowing through the aluminum nacelle.

  The Lear’s pilot shut down both engines when he realized the gunman’s suicide mission and prevented a spontaneous detonation. The Gulfstream lifted off the macadam a mile down the runaway, trails of exhaust marring the air like angry brush strokes. Mercer gave little thought to the pilots or the man who’d allowed himself to be sucked into the jet engine and watched as Harry’s kidnappers flew off into the distance.

  Because he hadn’t done enough, his friend was gone. He’d been so close, but then again, he’d been only forty yards away when Tory was murdered. His hands began to tremble with rage and frustration. And guilt. He could have done more. He could have driven faster or run harder or shot out a tire rather than allow himself the grim satisfaction of using his last bullet to kill one of them. He wanted to believe he’d given it his best effort, but with these high stakes, it was obvious that his best wasn’t good enough.

  He was sitting on a grassy verge bordering the runway when an airport security car whooped its way to the stationary Lear. There were knotted muscles at the base of his jaw as he tried to keep his mouth firm. Dick Henna jumped from the car and approached slowly. Mercer was as close to breaking down as he had ever seen him, and the sight sent a chill through Henna’s guts.

  “Are you okay?”

  Mercer took a long time to answer, his face blank, but beneath his eyes, rage boiled. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he whispered. “You?”

  “I lost a man in there and another is already on his way to the hospital. Listen, Mercer, I’ve got to get you the hell out of here. Marge has already called for an FBI forensics unit, and they’ll be here shortly. I can explain away this thing as an arrest gone bad, but as a civilian, you can’t be involved.” He held out a hand. Mercer used it to hoist himself to his feet.

  “What about the Gulfstream?”

  “I don’t know. I guess someone has it on radar, but I’m not sure.”

  “What a fuck-up, Dick,” Mercer said. “I am so sorry.”

  They got into the car. “It’s not your fault. Neither of us had any idea the men who took Harry are terrorists lugging machine guns. We had no way of knowing.” Henna’s voice was calm and soothing. “Chances are, that plane’s heading outside the country, and that makes this an international incident. I’m going to call Paul Barnes at the CIA, and if we can figure out where they’re headed, I’ll have him get some agents there to meet it.”

  “Do you think the CIA can get him back?”

  “Frankly, I doubt we’ll have the time to learn where they’re going to land. A jet with extended tanks can be in Europe, Africa, or South America in just a few hours. But, hey, there’s a ton of evidence lying around here and a paper trail for the jet lease, so there is hope of finding them.”

  Mercer didn’t speak until the sedan’s driver circled around the terminal and parked next to his Jaguar. Marge Doyle stood next to Mercer’s car, making sure the airport police didn’t look at it too carefully. Henna forestalled any questions with a sharp look, so Marge gave Mercer’s shoulder a pat and went into the building.

  Her commiseration shook Mercer back to the present. Harry was beyond his reach, and for the time being, there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. “You’re right,” he said. “Maybe you can find these bastards through the abandoned weapons or the guy I capped on the runway. I have to get to Eritrea and help Harry that way. Have you found anything on that front? Anything on Selome Nagast?”

  “You’re not going to believe this one. When I was following your lead about her not working at the Eritrean embassy, I got a call from the ambassador himself. He said that she was in the country under his authority and that she was working without the support of his staff. They know nothing of her or her mission here.”

  “Which is?”

  “According to the ambassador, securing private funding for humanitarian programs within Eritrea. He didn’t get more specific than that, and before I could press, he’d hung up on me.” Henna paused. “I dug a little deeper and things got real interesting. I cross-referenced her name through the CIA database, and within minutes I got an angry call.”

  “Eritrea’s ambassador again?”

  “No. Are you ready for this? Paul Barnes.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. The director of the CIA. Typing her name into the computer sent up all sorts of red flags. Part of our system is indexed with the Mossad’s, and when her name came up, alarms must have screame
d all over Tel Aviv. Barnes’s opposite number in Israel called and read him the riot act about interagency cooperation and a bunch of other shit. The upshot is, Israel did not like me poking into the background of Miss Nagast.”

  “Why in the hell would the Israelis care if you’re researching an Eritrean national?” This was one turn Mercer hadn’t expected.

  “Because she’s not,” Henna said. “Selome Nagast holds duel citizenship, Eritrea and Israel, and she has an officer’s commission in the Israeli Defense Force as well as a position in their government.”

  “I don’t get it.” If Selome was Israeli, that could mean Harry was being held by one of the Jewish state’s legions of enemies.

  “Neither do I. But ten minutes after getting off the phone with Barnes, Lloyd Easton called.”

  “The Secretary of State?” This was going far outside Mercer’s realm, and the implications were beginning to scare him.

  “No other. He told me that he’d just received a call too, this one from Israel’s foreign minister. We are to back off Selome Nagast or face serious consequences. She’s one of theirs, operating in the United States on a mission — get this—‘not detrimental to America and therefore none of our concern.’ The guy told us to piss off in our own back-yard. He said by investigating her mission, we are jeopardizing our close alliance with his nation.”

  “What the hell is going on here, Dick?”

  “You tell me,” Henna shot back. “I thought this would be a routine inquiry, and the next thing I know, I’ve got shit coming down on me faster than I can shovel. What do you think?”

  Mercer thought for a moment, paying little attention to the ambulances and police vehicles around them. “I didn’t trust her from the beginning. I thought there was something dirty about her — Prescott Hyde, too, for that matter — but this is unbelievable.”

  “Why can’t you be like the rest of my friends?” Henna wasn’t upset, but he was serious. “When they call up for a favor, it’s usually to help paint their garage or put together a gas grill. With you, it always has to be something else, doesn’t it? And it gets worse every time. Harry’s kidnapping has turned into a bloodbath. What is it about you?”

  “Lucky, I guess. What’d you find at Harry’s?”

  “Too early to tell. The team went to his place just as I was heading for the airport. What can you tell me about the night Harry was grabbed? It’ll help sift through the evidence the forensic team picks up.”

  “There’s nothing I can tell you that would help. It was a night like any other. We were drinking at Tiny’s until Selome arrived. We had a couple more after she left, then Harry took off and I headed home too.”

  “I guess there’s nothing we can do unless we can track that plane.” Henna rested an arm on the Jag’s open door as Mercer finally swung into his car. “Except wait for the forensics reports.”

  “When do you think you’ll have something from Harry’s apartment?”

  “A couple hours for a preliminary, I’d think,” Henna replied, watching his friend critically. “After this mess, I won’t be going to California, so why don’t you come over to my place tonight and we’ll go over it? We’ll have a couple of drinks.”

  “I know what you’re trying to do and I appreciate the gesture, but don’t bother. I’ve got too much work. I know my limitations better than anyone.” Mercer fired up the Jag’s throaty V-12. “When I reach the end of my rope, I’ll stop.”

  “I just hope the end of your rope isn’t a noose, you crazy son of a bitch,” Henna muttered at the receding car.

  Venice, Italy

  Giancarlo Gianelli brooded with his back to the windows in the spacious drawing room of his ancestral home located on the Grand Canal. The windows — huge floor-to-ceiling affairs of leaded glass and wrought iron — were over three hundred years old, made at a time when the glassmaker’s art was still being perfected. There was a blister in each of the eight hundred individual panes where the blower’s pipe had once been inserted into the molten glass. The sunlight streaming through them cast a grid shadow on the floor that matched its checker pattern of beige and rose carrera marble.

  The room’s furniture were all antiques, each piece exceptional in its own right but coming alive when blended with the rest of the surroundings. It was a room of extraordinary wealth and was only one of forty-three in the home. Gianelli, too, looked as if he were a furnishing for the house, an elegant addition placed just so. His sports coat had been custom made in Milan, his shirt of Egyptian cotton, and his tie had been given to him personally by the late Gianni Versace. He was the epitome of an Italian merchant prince, comparable with the Renaissance Medicis.

  Today, the planet was a small place. Anyone had global accessibility in just a few hours with jet aircraft or instantly with the telephone and the Internet. Thus the days when men with vision could generate wealth in direct accordance to the risk were all but gone. Only a few still retained the kind of independence to function without the constraints of obfuscating lawyers and miserly bankers. Giancarlo Gianelli was just such a person.

  As the last male heir in a dynasty that stretched back more than six centuries, Gianelli stood at the apex of all his clan had struggled to achieve. In two months the last of his six daughters would be married, and all that would remain to give him succor as he eased into the second half of his fifties was the fabled history of his family. While he had two sons by two separate mistresses, neither of them could ever assume the Gianelli mantle. It was possible that this lack of an heir gave him the recklessness to draw himself away from the legitimate portions of his businesses and delve deeper into the shadows of what his family had created.

  The twentieth century had been good to his family. His grandfather had added not one, but two new fortunes, first at the turn of the century when the manufacturing revolution reached the Italian peninsula and again during the fascist reign of Benito Mussolini, when he switched the Gianelli companies to wartime production under the direct patronage of Il Duce. During the 1930s and early 40s the Gianellis rivaled the Fiat Corporation in size and scope, manufacturing everything from submarines to infantrymen’s mess kits.

  Giancarlo’s father had taken the reins in 1955 and shepherded Gianelli SpA, the principle holding company, through the turbulent but profitable 1960s, the downturn of the 70s, and into the meteoric 1980s. He turned over stewardship to his son, Giancarlo, just weeks before the American stock market crash of October 1987. Though Giancarlo’s first years as CEO were trying, the company remained one of Italy’s largest and most profitable.

  Looking out the windows, Giancarlo could see a few gondolas on the Grand Canal, mostly empty, for the boats were used mainly by the tourists and it was still too early for them. There were several Vaporetti plying the wide waterway, the lumbering old boats acting much like public buses would in any other city. Around them dodged sleek, polished water taxis, many of them occupied by businessmen, again like any other city in the world. In the distance, the sixteenth-century Rialto Bridge arced gracefully across the canal.

  It was April in Venice, a magic time of year. The sun’s rays were warm enough to make strolls along the narrow streets comfortable yet the heat wasn’t enough to turn fetid the sewage that tended to choke the canals later in the summer. The shop owners were happy and expectant, eagerly awaiting the tourists’ imminent arrival. By July, their smiles would be forced, their bonhomie worn a little thin, and by August they would be downright surly because they had made a year’s income and were ready to be rid of the droves.

  The phone chimed.

  “He’s leaving in two days’ time, Mr. Gianelli,” the caller said without preamble.

  “What do you think of his chances?” Giancarlo asked.

  “He’s good. Some say the best, but I don’t believe he can find it.”

  “Why do you say that?” Gianelli wasn’t paying the informer enough to trust his deductions. Raw information was one thing, but Giancarlo would do the interpretations himself.
r />   “Time, Mr. Gianelli.” The response was immediate, as if the question had been expected. “Hyde gave Mercer a six-week window for his exploration, and Mercer himself wants to be in Eritrea by this weekend. He’s really lit some fires here to get things moving. He may be the best mineral prospector in the business, but with only a week to get organized he won’t be able to find his asshole with his hemorrhoid creme.”

  Gianelli grunted with distaste.

  “He’s made a lot of progress securing equipment and material, but he can’t get started for at least another week once he’s in Africa. It’ll take him that long to sort out the logistics of it all.”

  “And then?”

  “Well, Eritrea may be a small country when you look at it on a world map, but when you’re exploring it on foot or from a vehicle, it’s a big, rugged place.”

  “Are you any closer to getting a copy of the Medusa photographs?” Gianelli asked. “Those pictures are a sure way of narrowing our own search.”

  “No,” the caller replied. “I explained to you before. Hyde never lets them out of his sight. I’ve already checked the National Reconnaissance Office’s archives, and there was only that one set created, something to do with the material they are made from being impossible to photocopy or scan.” He paused. “I’m sorry.”

  “Will Hyde give them to Mercer?”

  “I believe so, yes. But he doesn’t have them now. Hyde won’t turn them over until Mercer is ready to leave.”

  “Hyde’s reason being security?”

  “Or paranoia.”

  “We should be able to get those photos from Mercer once he’s in Eritrea.” Gianelli was speaking more for his benefit than his listener’s and realized that this discussion went beyond the caller’s need to know. He changed tack. “When is Selome Nagast going back to Asmara? Will she be with Mercer?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’d guess she’ll be flying with Mercer. When I find out her travel plans, I’ll let you know.”

  “Anything on your suspicions about her?”