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.
Valley of Dead Children
Within a few minutes of leaving the camp, Habte Makkonen knew that he had been spotted and followed, yet he did not change his pace or direction. Doing so would alert the stalker. The man who shadowed him was good, an expert actually, and the storm made his job that much easier, but Habte hadn’t survived so many years in the front lines of the rebellion without becoming better still.
There were two other problems besides the fact he wasn’t armed and his pursuer most likely was. First, the mountains ringing the valley were steep and too treacherous to climb in the rain, and the valley floor offered little cover. As he moved away from the mine, he was terribly exposed. Second was that the pursuit had been taken up much too quickly for the stalker to be one of the Sudanese guards. The rebels hadn’t had the time to mount an organized search by the time Habte fled the camp. This left only the snipers who’d opened fire moments before the explosives had buried the mine. Habte was also certain his watcher had a pair of night-vision goggles and his rifle’s scope had similar capabilities.
The sniper, certainly an Israeli agent, was interested in the mine — according to what Mercer had said — but Habte could guess at the man’s interest in him now. He had made an earlier, unsuccessful call to Dick Henna on Mercer’s satellite phone. He’d spoken for a few seconds before realizing that the recorded voice he heard was telling him he had a bad connection and to try the call again. The Israeli must have overheard him responding to the unfamiliar device. Habte cursed his own stupidity for not calling farther from the mining site. If he was going to alert Henna quickly, Habte didn’t have much leeway to wait out the sniper. He had to get clear to make that call.
Skirting an ancient landslide, Habte saw something across the plain that gave him an idea, and he wondered if the sniper would allow him to do it. Walking across a thousand yards of open land with a sniper’s scope on his back was not the most brilliant tactical solution he’d ever devised, but he hoped that if he kept his gait even and unthreatening and waited for the sniper to close range every few minutes, he might just make it.
The old head gear sat forlornly on the open expanse, the buildings next to it darker shadows in the night. Lightning illuminated the eerie site every few seconds, outlining the skeletal structure that had once hauled workers and worthless ore out of the Italian-built mine. As casually as a man on a stroll, Habte veered from the hills and made for the old facility. He expected a bullet in the back, but when none came after the first forty yards, he paused to allow the sniper to move into a better shooting position. As long as the sniper felt he wasn’t trying to bolt, Habte prayed that he wouldn’t take the shot.
The mine was far enough from the other workings to ensure that if the sniper wanted, he could pin Habte with a few well-placed shots and close in for an interrogation. That was what Habte was betting his life on: that the sniper was more interested in his intentions than his death. He continued to walk slowly, his pace almost ambling as if the storm didn’t matter. Once he thought he heard the sniper moving along a hillside, the sliding hiss of loose stones betraying both his position and the fact that he was closing.
And then a sudden thought struck Habte and he took off at a full run, legs flying, arms pumping and his breath heaving against years of cigarette smoke. A silenced shot winged by, ricocheting against the ground well behind and to the right. The shot was made in desperation; it was an inaccurate estimation of Habte’s position because the sniper didn’t have him in his sights. Habte then realized that the sudden bursts of brilliant electricity that cut through the storm would blind him if viewed through any light-amplifying device. The sniper couldn’t use the starlite scope or the night-vision goggles! While the Israeli was still armed, the playing field had been leveled by a common atmospheric phenomenon.
Habte dove into the building they had used as a camp when they first arrived at the valley. He had only moments before the pursuer reached the dilapidated structure, and Habte needed all of them to put his plan into motion. He stripped out of his clothing, dumping the soaked garments on the floor and, nude, scrambled back out of the building. His black skin would be shiny in the rain, but for his purpose he was invisible.
The Israeli sniper might have received the finest military training in the world, but his experience was nowhere near Habte’s. As he loped silently toward the head gear, his bare feet silent in the mud, the Eritrean felt the odds were evening out. One of the things that had kept him alive all those years fighting the Ethiopians was an understanding of human nature. He could anticipate what others were going to do long before they knew themselves.
Ignoring the hundred-foot hole beneath the head gear’s lattice of struts, Habte leaped onto one of the supports, scampering up ten feet without pause, ignoring the slashes in his skin made by the scaly surfaces. He nestled the satellite phone into the crotch of two beams and clung tightly, his silhouette hidden in the tangle of metal. He doubted the Israeli had seen this mine before and was certain the sniper would not be able to resist the urge to peer into the stygian mine shaft.
The sniper had shouldered his long rifle and moved slowly, an Uzi rucked hard against his flank, the bulbous night-vision gear resting on the top of his head. His body was shrouded in a ghillie suit, a camouflage garment made of hundreds of sewn-together rags that from a distance of a few feet looked like an innocuous shrub. With the amount of rain that had soaked the suit, Habte estimated the soldier was carrying an additional thirty pounds, and his movements would be slowed by the encumbrance.
A bolt of lightning cast a sizzling light across the sky, and the Israeli rolled to the ground, coming up against the camp building, covering his exposed right side with the machine pistol. Habte’s suspicions were confirmed; the man’s movements appeared lethargic. At this range, there was enough ambient light for Habte to watch the Israeli clip the goggles over his eyes for a moment to peer around the camp and into the building before slipping them off again. He’d studied the head gear for an instant but didn’t notice Habte.