The Medusa Stone

prevent it.

“Try the autonomous flight program,” Kolwicki said to a computer technician who’d been typing furiously, trying to regain control of Medusa.

“No response, sir. The central processor is off-line.”

“Are you getting anything from the damned thing?”

“Positron gun is on stand-by, and all encryption routines are nominal.”

“Great. Medusa is about to burn up in the atmosphere, but it wants to still take pictures and keep the data a secret.” Kolwicki growled at the irony. “How much longer?”

“Medusa will enter the atmosphere in twenty-five seconds. Total loss in thirty seconds at the most.”

“Shit.” A career military man who saw his career burning up in outer space, Kolwicki had no options. “What’s the bird’s position?”

“Over North Africa, tracking southeast. It’ll burn up above the Indian Ocean.”

“Might as well turn on the positron gun as she goes down. Maybe we’ll gain something from this snafu.” Kolwicki felt like a ship’s captain knowing his command was going under and still ordering full steam ahead.

“Sir?”

“Just do it,” he snapped.

Fingers flying in a blur, the tech snapped off several commands. The plutonium reactor keyed up, beaming supercharged positrons back to earth in a swath that cut across northern Africa from Chad, across Sudan and Ethiopia and finally to Djibouti and Somalia. In all, it took “pictures” of two thousand square miles, but its data was incomplete. Several passes over the same area would be necessary to gather enough information to allow analysis of the subsurface topography. It was only after the satellite began entering the atmosphere and the friction-induced heat climbed dangerously that Medusa shut down in an automatic safety mode to prevent a radioactive accident.

In Greek mythology, Medusa was a witch whose stare could turn men into stone. As Medusa fell from space and was enveloped in a white hot fireball of its own immolation, the satellite studied the barren African wasteland. Buried under tons of rock and stone, it saw something that man had hidden more than two thousand years ago in the hope that it would never be allowed to escape. Like its ancient namesake, Medusa’s glance would bring death.

Northern Eritrea January of this year

Jakob Steiner was beyond caring that he was about to die.

Death would be a welcome release from the torture of the past hour. His body was so racked with pain and the effects of dehydration that his will to live had evaporated as quickly as the sweat that had once poured freely from his skin. He had stopped sweating soon after his tormentors took up the chase, pushing him hard across the arid landscape. His khaki bush shirt and pants had once been wet with perspiration but now showed only white circles of dried salt under his arms and at his groin. At first he’d thought he was outpacing the Shifta bandits as they dogged him across the rocky desert, but quickly he realized that his initial burst of speed could not compete with the machine-like endurance of the terrorists. They’d managed to catch him easily and now lagged only a few paces behind. He could hear their boots on the loose soil, smell their unwashed bodies over his own stench.

They were toying with him. They could have killed him earlier with a shot from the AK-47s all four carried. Yet like a pack of hunting dogs, they chased him, hounding him with occasional shouts, pushing him beyond his own level of endurance so he ran on pure instinct, fight or flight. An hour had passed, an hour of unrelenting fear, and Steiner was reaching the point where he could not continue, when fight became a better option than flight.

Steiner hadn’t had a drink of water since just before returning to his camp following another unsuccessful foray into one of the hundreds of box canyons in this part of the country. Zarai, his native guide, had remained in the Spartan camp as ordered whenever the scientist went exploring. Steiner gave no reason to the Eritrean, and custom demanded that Zarai not ask.

This morning marked the eighth day the two men had spent in the desolate region, a barren section of Eritrea’s lowlands consisting of jagged ridges and mountains too steep and dry to be inhabited. Because there was nothing in these formidable canyons and plateaus to attract the agrarian Eritreans, the duo were almost certain to be the first explorers in the region since the Italian occupation prior to the Second World War.

Steiner had come into the camp shortly before eleven. A shrieking wind had picked up, throwing grit in his eyes and clogging his nose and mouth so he’d walked the last few miles with a bandanna tied around his face and his expedition hat pulled low. He could hear the nylon of his and Zarai’s two tents snapping like the sails of a racing yacht.

For the first time since Jakob had begun his explorations, Zarai was not waiting for him in his usual position, hunkered over the low smokeless fire he used to brew endless cups of tea. In fact, the fire had been kicked out. The circle of stones ringing the pit was scattered across the space between the two tents, and Zarai’s treasured teakettle lay haphazardly on the smooth sand. Steiner was too tired to sense any danger until he was pulling off his boots on the camp stool in front of his tent.

It was the smell that drew his attention first. The fine hairs on the back of his hands rose. He could feel the premonition of danger like a thousand centipedes marching up his arms to his chest. Jakob stood, his filthy, sweat- smeared socks whispering on the sand as he spun in place, sensing that he was being watched.

Without warning, Zarai came flying through Jakob’s tent, propelled by some unseen force. Steiner staggered back, tripping over his own feet so that he fell heavily, his eyes unable to tear away from the sight of his guide dying just a pace away.

Zarai’s face was covered with blood that had leaked from the sockets where his eyes had been. Fat black flies buzzed quickly back to their sanguinous meal, blanketing his head only seconds after his body came to rest. Zarai moaned weakly, brushing his curled hand along the sand in an effort to reach his mutilated face.

Jakob screamed, a high-pitched keen not unlike a young girl’s, his stomach turning to oil. He crabbed across the ground in an effort to distance himself from his companion’s pitiable figure.

Zarai clawed weakly at the ground again and went still, his last gasp no more than a whisper in the wind.

Then four greyhound-thin men came into the camp. They were dressed in stained and dusty uniforms, the camouflage pattern all but washed out, the cuffs, collars, and countless pockets showing frayed edges. While the clothing they wore was tattered, all four were in the prime of their lives, which for this part of Africa meant early twenties. Their matching Soviet assault rifles looked well cared for and greased.

The young men stood arrogantly, flat dark eyes regarding the cowering Steiner with contempt. Unlike Zarai, who had lighter skin and Arab features, a reminder of Eritrea’s long association with the Middle East, these men were so black their skin had almost a blue tinge. Their features were classical negroid: high foreheads, thickened lips, and wide, handsome noses. While Steiner’s field of expertise was archaeology, he recognized that these men were from Sudan, born in the ancient lands of Kush. Steiner knew enough of modern politics to know his life could not be measured in minutes.

A civil war had been raging in Sudan for decades, fought between the northern majority of Muslims against the Christians from the south. Sudan’s small but appreciable animist population was caught in the middle. Relief agencies had been granted only sporadic entrance into the country to minister aid, so estimates of those killed were unreliable, but they ranged into the millions. In the past few years, driven by disease and malnutrition, many of those fighting in the south had turned to more mercenary activities — raiding aid shipments, plundering the camps of the quarter-million Eritrean refugees living in the country, and staging cross-border sorties for food or medicine and, more commonly now, to kidnap victims to be held for ransom.

Jakob Steiner lay on the ground, his socks stained the same dun color as his khaki clothes. His eyes were wide and fearful as he looked at the four men towering over him, four men who doubtlessly had perpetrated some of the despicable things Zarai had spoken of during their nights in the camp.

“What do you want from me?” he asked in German, his voice made raw by thirst and fear.