Mahdi had bided his time. He was not a patient man and the quiet waiting had been frustrating, but now it was all about to pay off. He lay with the three other Sudanese soldiers, men who had been under his command for years, men who would kill or die for him. Just having him with them had given his troops the necessary discipline to wait out the American and his Eritrean whore. Lying amid the stinking pile of humanity, Mahdi congratulated himself for getting this far.
Of course, it was pure chance he’d been in the mine talking with his troops when Mercer appeared. He was the soldier to drop his weapon first, sensing that even with superior firepower, Mercer had taken the tactical advantage by holding the white miner. When he saw the whore appear a moment later, her own weapon leveled, Mahdi knew he’d made the correct choice.
Another element of chance at work tonight was the large bandage that swathed the upper half of his face and dressed his right cheek. He’d been practicing fighting moves against one of his lieutenants with unsheathed knives, as was their habit, when the soldier slipped and the blade slashed Mahdi’s face. The wound would heal nicely, adding a new scar to the older wounds marring his body. The bandage his medic had applied hid enough of his features to prevent anyone from recognizing him, and since neither Mercer nor the Eritreans had looked too closely, they hadn’t realized their prisoner was the commander of the Sudanese guard detail.
Mahdi had allowed himself to be taken, cowed like the rest of his men and shepherded along with this suicide mission for no other reason than to see Mercer choke to death on his tongue when there was the chance to cut it out and feed it to him. Maybe he’d have a piece of the whore before he killed her too. He smiled in the dark chamber, a tightening of his facial muscles that on a normal person would look like a grimace. He wondered if he could work it so Mercer was still alive when he stuck it to the Eritrean slut, but he doubted it. Better to just kill the American and then have his fun.
He needed to get after them first. While it would be easy to track them in the dusty tunnels, he didn’t want them getting too far ahead. Waiting for more of the slave laborers to fall asleep, Mahdi used subtle hand signals to communicate with the other guards, a secret code of gestures that they’d used countless times during the civil war in Sudan. Mahdi ordered one of his men to sacrifice himself in a blatant escape attempt that would give him the opportunity to make a break for it. He’d considered trying to overpower their captors but the Eritreans were armed with the guards’ AK-47s. A silent retreat would work the best, and even if Mahdi got out without one of the Kalishnikovs, he still carried a throwing knife in his boot.
Waiting for the right moment, he glanced at the boots and remembered the fat bald man who had once owned them. That had been a boring hunt but a very satisfying kill, he recalled. Hadn’t his victim said he was an archeologist? Clever cover, but Mahdi had already been warned by Gianelli that the man was searching for the lost mine. Mahdi knew now that the man need not have died; he had been searching fifty miles from the mine. But Mahdi liked the boots.
When three quarters of the Eritreans were asleep, including one of the armed ones, he decided that it was time. Mahdi showed his comrade the old cavalryman’s signal of a closed fist and the waiting soldier gave a sharp nod. Charge.
The trooper didn’t hesitate. He leaped to his feet, 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 of 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 coiled so tightly they looked as if they had no bones in them at all. Mercer noted that the other bodies were all in similar positions.
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.