The Medusa Stone

throwing open the door even before Habte slid the Toyota SUV to a stop.

Selome reacted even quicker than Mercer and jumped into the truck ahead of him. Mercer had just got the door closed when Habte stomped on the accelerator, using the horn again to scatter a group of men trying to calm a dappled bull. A donkey was almost caught by the fender, forcing Habte to crank the wheel to avoid it. Despite the danger surrounding them, his cousin laughed delightedly “Habte hit a donkey. Habte hit a donkey.”

“I did not,” Habte replied sharply, taking a second to glare at the young man. Because of their plodding predictability, it was an insult to say an Eritrean driver hit a donkey. Habte wasn’t going to allow his cousin to get away with even a suggestion of such a gaff.

Mercer extracted himself from the tangle of limbs in the backseat and crawled over to the front of the Toyota, cinching his seat belt as they accelerated over the rough roads. His heart was just now slowing. “What happened?”

“Gunfight in the hotel. A maid caught two Sudanese in your room. When she screamed, two Westerners who were in the bar went up to investigate. I heard shots and the body of one of the Europeans fell from the second- floor balcony. I didn’t wait to see if any more followed. I had to leave much of your clothes and equipment behind.”

Mercer pulled the folded Medusa photographs from the map pocket sown into the back of his khaki photographer’s vest. “Doesn’t matter. They didn’t get what they wanted.”

“You had them with you the whole time?” Selome asked.

“Can’t imagine a safer place,” he chuckled, coming down from the adrenaline high.

“That was one hell of a risk,” she admonished.

“The bigger risk is the Europeans.”

“What do you mean?”

“Habte just said he heard the shots.” Mercer received a nod from the former soldier. “If the men who broke into my room were connected to the Sudanese who just tried for us, they would have had silencers on their weapons. Yet Habte heard unsilenced shots, return fire by the Europeans, not the Sudanese.”

“Who are these Europeans?”

“I don’t know.” Mercer hid his suspicions. “Do you?”

Selome looked right at him when she replied in the negative, though he could see the shadow of a lie behind her eyes.

No one followed them out of the city and traffic was light, only a few lumbering trucks loaded with cotton grinding across the arid landscape. There were signs of the war along the road’s verges, the rusted hulks of military equipment slowly disintegrating back into the soil. Soviet trucks and T-55 tanks, badly damaged by mines or missiles, littered the highway like the decomposing bodies of mechanical dinosaurs.

Mercer had read that the highlands were Eritrea’s most fertile region, yet the land was rocky and nearly barren, wiped clean by scouring winds and left to bake in the unrelenting sun. The little vegetation was predominantly low scrubs, sage, and cactus. He spotted a farmer working behind two draft oxen, his plow not much more advanced than those developed in Egypt at the time of the Pharaohs. The plow dug deep runnels in his field, turning back the soil that was as parched as the surface. It seemed futile, but with a peasant’s patience, he continued on.

They passed through small villages, rough clutches of adobe and brick roofed with thatch or metal. Many of the buildings were round, cone-topped structures called agdos. The few people on the dusty streets were thin and drawn, dressed in long plain shifts similar to Egyptian galabia.

Two hours later, they reached Keren, a city smaller than Asmara but possessing the same colonial charm with low bungalows and palm-lined streets. The majority of the population was Muslim, so many of the women were draped in long black chadors that absorbed the heat brutally. Habte parked the Toyota behind the Keren Hotel, a rambling building with a covered verandah screened by bougainvillea. “We need to get food and fuel here before continuing north.”

“Okay, but I don’t want to be here long.” Mercer unlimbered himself from the truck.

“Agreed,” Habte nodded. “Gibby and I will get what we need in the market. I have a lot of friends here. It shouldn’t take too long.”

Selome turned to Mercer. “No offense, but we’d better keep you out of sight. Whites don’t make it to Keren very often, and it’s best if no one sees you.”

The cargo rack atop the Land Cruiser was loaded with boxes and jerry cans by the time Selome led Mercer back to the steps of the hotel. They’d waited in a nearby alley. Gibby was sitting in the backseat, but there was no sign of Habte. Mercer leapt into the vehicle and asked Gibby to duck into the Keren Hotel’s bar to make a few purchases. Habte was in the driver’s seat when the lad returned.

“I spoke to some people.” Habte cranked the engine. “If any Sudanese come through here from Asmara in the next few days, they’re going to find it difficult to continue.” There was a smirk on his face.

Mercer pulled a map from the glove compartment. “That takes care of one interested party and now it’s time to throw off the other. According to this, there’s an airport in Nacfa and I bet the Europeans may try to leapfrog us and meet us there. Why don’t we swing west?” Mercer pointed to the map for Habte to see. “This road here bypasses Nacfa and meets up with the main tract again at Itaro.”

“The rains haven’t come yet, so it should be passable,” Habte agreed. “But what about the excavator waiting in Nacfa?”

“We won’t need it for a while. Once we’re in open country, no one will be able to find us. If I can pinpoint the pipe’s location in the next few weeks, Selome can use her contacts in the government to get us some proper protection and then we’ll call for the excavator.”

Habte’s military experience made him leery of an enemy who still posed a danger. “It would be wiser to eliminate the Europeans first.”

“Wiser, yes. But not possible. We don’t have any weapons. We’re going to have to trust that the desert that hid your armies during the war can hide us for a few weeks.”

Still unconvinced, Habte agreed, and when the road forked ten miles north of Keren, he steered them westward.

Nacfa, Eritrea

For three days they waited in Nacfa, roughly sixty miles south of the Sudanese border, before accepting that Mercer had slipped by them. When the refugee buses stopped passing through following Sudan’s border closure, activity in the town came to a halt. There was little to do except drink endless cups of coffee and watch work crews repairing the roads. For Yosef’s team, boredom was the most difficult problem they faced while waiting for Mercer and Selome.

Yosef had the added distraction of thinking about what had happened in Asmara. He remembered the maid’s scream while he and one of his men were sitting in the lobby reading a week-old issue of the Profile, Asmara’s only English-language newspaper. Both of them threw aside the meager papers and charged up the stairs. Yosef caught a glimpse of a tall African in Mercer’s room holding a silenced automatic while his partner tore apart one of Mercer’s suitcases. Instinct and training took control, and Yosef jumped aside a fraction of a second before the Sudanese fired. The younger Israeli caught two rounds high in the chest, propelling his lifeless body over the second-floor balcony to the lobby below. Yosef unholstered the big Desert Eagle from under his coat, paused for half a heartbeat, and rolled across the threshold of Mercer’s room, the gun booming three times in a continuous thundering crash. Both Sudanese went down, their bodies leeching blood from massive wounds.

Yosef had scooped up his partner’s weapon before fleeing, meeting up with the rest of his team where they waited in a different hotel. By the time they got reorganized and scouted the Ambasoira again, Mercer’s Toyota Land Cruiser was gone. Yosef had lost him.

In an effort to get ahead of the geologist, the Israelis had chartered a plane in Asmara and flown to the