Authors: Jack Du Brul
The Medusa stone (16 page)
He rigged a series of pulleys using the metal frame, wrapping the struts with wads of tape and smearing them with oil drained from the Toyota's sump to prevent the sharp metal from fraying the rope. He showed Gibby how to belay the harness Mercer had fashioned and devised a quick series of verbal and tugging signals for communication.
"Remember, Gibby, you're all that's keeping me from a quick drop to hell," Mercer warned, standing at the threshold of the old mine opening. Gibby had proved to be an able assistant, but Mercer still didn't like the idea of trusting his life to the teenager. The black pit seemed to want to suck him into its depths.
Mercer took several breaths and stepped off the crumbling edge, hanging above the hundred-and-sixty-foot void. Gibby struggled for a moment, shifting his grip, so Mercer dropped a few quick inches. "You okay?" Mercer gasped, a sickly smile on his face.
"Yes,
effendi,
" Gibby grinned. "Your rope tangle makes you weigh just a little bit."
effendi,
" Gibby grinned. "Your rope tangle makes you weigh just a little bit."
The pulley system made it so Gibby was supporting only about fifty pounds of actual weight, but Mercer made sure the rope was still secured to the Land Cruiser's winch. When the time came to haul him out, Gibby would need the power of the Toyota to pull him to safety.
"All right, lower away."
Mercer dropped into a black world, the square of light over his head receding almost too fast. He switched on a six-cell flashlight and made certain his mining helmet was planted securely on his head. Bits of debris rained around him, pinging against the helmet and plunging down the vertical shaft. "Slower," he yelled, bracing his feet against the irregular wall to give him just a little slack in the line. He gave two quick tugs to reinforce his verbal command, and his progress slowed dramatically.
Down he went, the makeshift bosun's chair digging painfully into the back of his legs, the flashlight casting a white spot before his eyes. He trained it below his swaying perch, but the light could penetrate only a few feet. There should have been a steel guide rail bolted into the rock face to stabilize the skips and cages but there wasn't, and Mercer could see no evidence that one had ever been installed. It made him wonder just how far the earlier attempt at digging out the diamonds had progressed.
There had been no evidence of a crushing mill or separation facilities at the surface camp. Since they hadn't even installed a proper hoist Yet a shaft this deep would have taken a year or more to dig, considering its age and the quality of equipment available a half century ago.
He came to the first drift roughly eighty feet down. This was a horizontal working passageway the miners had dug off the central shaft in order to tunnel into the mineral-laden ore. From this depth, the shaft's surface opening appeared to be no larger than a storm drain. Mercer twisted himself across the open shaft until his boots landed firmly on the shelf that led off into the living rock. Whoever had opened the mine knew enough not to bore the main shaft straight into the volcanic vent, but rather sink a hole next to it and from there tunnel into the kimberlite ore. Mercer gave the signal for Gibby to hold the line where it was and unhooked himself from his sling, tying it to a wooden support beam so it wouldn't dangle back over the void.
The flashlight cut into the gloom, revealing a long tunnel that was roughly twelve feet wide, six high, and God alone knew how long. Mercer played the light along the ceiling, surprised not to see any bats. In fact, he hadn't noticed the guano smell so typical to abandoned mines. Like the Valley of Dead Children, the mine too was devoid of life. A chill ran up his spine that had nothing to do with the coolness of the subterranean passage.
He walked fifty yards down the drift bemputer to concentrate on his conversation with the South African. If they were going to reopen the mine, they were going to need labor. Mahdi had suggested, and Gianelli agreed, that recruiting able-bodied men from the camps was their best option. These men were desperate for work. They would do anything asked of them, grateful for the first job many of them had ever had. Most of them were second- or third-generation refugees. "How many have you gotten so far?"
"Forty." Hofmyer didn't catch the edge of anxiety in his superior's voice. "Once we get to work, I bet half of them will either take off when they get a taste of real work or die in the mine. The northern, fuzzier,
kaffir
is a delicate creature and can die on you without any warning."
kaffir
is a delicate creature and can die on you without any warning."
"You've worked with Sudanese and Eritreans before?"
"
Ja
, in the Zambia copper mines when the country was still Northern Rhodesia. A few hundred of 'em came down to work the pits, but in five months they were gone again, half of 'em dead and the others willing to starve to death in the big famines up here."
Ja
, in the Zambia copper mines when the country was still Northern Rhodesia. A few hundred of 'em came down to work the pits, but in five months they were gone again, half of 'em dead and the others willing to starve to death in the big famines up here."
"I hadn't realized," Gianelli remarked, sensing a serious problem.
"Don't worry about it. When it's time to go into Eritrea, we'll have enough of the bastards to take up the slack of those that drop or take off. Any word on when we're heading in?"
"Nothing yet." No sooner had he said this than Mahdi appeared at the tent. He was layered with sweat, and his chest heaved in the hot air. "Yes, what is it?"
"Sir," Mahdi panted, "I was just at the refugee camp. About fifty men and their families crossed the border last night with a nomad who came here to recruit them. The rumor is that a great mine has been opened in Eritrea and men are needed to work it. Many other families are packing now to join them. I've learned that the nomad was sent here by a white man."
"That's it!" Gianelli bolted to his feet. "Mercer has found it!"
"Yes, sir, they are talking about a white overseer who knows how to talk to rock."
Emotion filled Gianelli in waves. The Medusa pictures had shown that Enrico had been right all along, and Mercer had used them to find the mine. There was a kimberlite pipe in northern Eritrea, one of the rarest geological features on the planet, and Enrico had found it decades ago without any modern aids. Enrico's Folly was now within Giancarlo's grasp.
Of course, Giancarlo had never known his great-uncle, but a large part of him admired the elder Gianelli for the independent streak that had driven him. Giancarlo had it too, that ceaseless desire to prove the impossible, to follow a belief to its only conclusion. He thought about his plan that followed the diamonds' recovery and smiled wickedly. While restoring Enrico's name was a noble goal, Gianelli had also made provisions to profit handsomely from this adventure. He debated making the call to London now, then decided it was better to wait and see just how many diamonds they could find before the Central Selling System's next meeting. His target was five thousand carats and, getting a sense of Joppi Hofmyer's brutality, he had little doubt they'd reach that goal.
"Mahdi, alert your men. We must move out quickly."
Gianelli's emotions raised his voice to a shout. "The refugees have a head start on us that we'll make up in the trucks, but I don't want them getting too far ahead. Joppi, I think oung packed on the trucks?"
"Ja."
The Africaaner grinned. He was plainly relieved to escape the boredom of the camp. "We repacked them after checking each load."
The Africaaner grinned. He was plainly relieved to escape the boredom of the camp. "We repacked them after checking each load."
"Mahdi, how fast can that refugee caravan walk through the desert?"
"If they left their women and children behind, twenty or more miles a day, but they are bringing their families. That would cut their progress in half."
"Good." The refugees moving so slowly tempered Gianelli's haste and changed his plans slightly. "Send out scouts to track them. It shouldn't be too difficult. We'll remain in camp until they get a few days ahead of us. That way we won't trip over them when we leave. That also gives us more time to get another fuel truck from Khartoum."
"Mr. Gianelli, if there are that many people at the mine, we're going to need more water too," Joppi remarked.
Giancarlo opened his laptop again and began a list. "Water, fuel, what else?"
The three of them worked for an hour, refining the list. By the time they had finished, they had the provisions to sustain the camp for several weeks without resupply. After that, they would start to bring stores from Sudan, which wasn't a problem given Gianelli's influence. In addition to his support to the rebels, he also maintained contacts with the government in Khartoum, working both sides of the civil war.
Gianelli concluded their meeting. "Mahdi, send out those scouts now, have them take a hand radio to report their progress. I'm going to order the rest of the equipment and supplies from Khartoum and make the necessary security arrangements. Joppi, you just make damned sure your men are ready to go."
"Yes, sir," both men said in unison. In the bizarre twist of Joppi Hofmyer's racism that made him hate the group but not the individuals, he held the tent fly open for Mahdi as they left the screened enclosure.
Valley of Dead Children
It was just before dusk when Habte, Selome, and Gibby arrived in the Valley of Dead Children on the half-loaded tractor trailer. Five minutes after the rig had crossed the secret bowl of land and trundled to the head gear, a bright yellow excavator tracked onto the plain, its hydraulic arm coiled to the boxy, rotatable cab. The operator had been forced to clear away part of the ancient landslide at the valley's entrance to allow the truck access to the mine site. Rather than reload the cumbersome machine, he'd driven it to the former Italian installation.
Wind whipped the dust of their progress across the landscape, eddies and gyres forming and collapsing in their wake. At the camp, both vehicles were shut down, and silence rushed in on them. Habte quickly followed Selome out of the truck, and he dodged into the main bunkhouse. Returning outdoors, he shielded his eyes against the red sun nestled on the western rim of the bowl and scanned for Mercer. The Toyota Land Cruiser was gone and there was no sign of him.
"Gibby," he called, and the boy scrambled off the trailer. "This is the right place. Where's Mercer?"
"I don't know," Gibby admitted. "He said he was going to wait here for us. He was upset that the mine was empty and seemed eager to talk to us. I can't guess where he went."
Habte ignored a creeping sens until I found this spot. The wind whips over the northern wall of the depression, curls back on itself in a vortex that can gust to about twenty miles an hour." Mercer used his finger to draw a crude sketch in the soil. The drawing showed the side of the mountain with a V-shaped symbol pointing at its flank.
"The tricky part comes when you need to channel the air into the shaft, concentrating the flow exactly where you want it. Now, look again on the desert floor right below us."
It was Gibby, with his younger, sharper eyes who saw it first. "There," he pointed. "I see what you drew."
There were two faint lines in the dirt, just a shade darker than the rest of the desert. They were two hundred feet long, angling toward each other so they nearly met below where the party stood. They were too geometrical for nature to be their creator. They were the work of man.
"What are they?"
"All that remains of the foundations of two huge walls. Judging by their width, I'd guess they were at least seventy feet tall, more than enough to catch the wind blowing off the mountains and channel it into a mine entrance. I'm sure there are some vents driven into the mountain to allow an escape outlet for the wind, but I'm not too concerned with those quite yet."
"You mean, we are standing on top of another mine?"
"That's right." Mercer tempered his excitement with difficulty. "A horizontal drift tunneled into the mountain."
"When was this excavated?" asked Habte.
"I don't know. We can check the foundations to get an idea, but it's not really important."
"The question I want answered is, who dug this in the first place?" Selome said.
Mercer glanced at her, feeling she already knew the answer. "We'll find that when we open her up."
An hour later, the excavator was ripping into the side of the hill, clearing away the dirt that had piled against the stone face. Mercer stood next to where the bucket clawed into the ground, using hand gestures to guide the operator. He kept a shovel with him, and every ten minutes or so would descend into the trench dug by the machine. The temperature was again hovering around a hundred degrees, and Mercer worked stripped to the waist. Every trip into the trench was more dangerous than the last. It was already fifteen feet deep and twice as long, its sides loose and crumbling. He used the hand shovel to dig a bit farther into the soil, exposing earth that hadn't seen daylight in who knew how many years. Carrying samples out of the trench, he examined each minutely before motioning for the excavator to continue.
"What are you looking for?" Selome asked when he emerged after the sixth time. Habte, Gibby, and the truck driver were busy unbundling the pallets of equipment secured to the tractor trailer.
"Overburden, the mine's waste rock." Mercer wiped the sweat from his forehead with a saturated bandanna. "When it was first excavated, they would have piled the worthless material at the entrance. It should be easy to detect it from the accumulated surface material."
"But if the mine's at the point of the two walls, why don't we dig into the mountain there?"
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