man’s voice. He sounded as if he’d been through hell.
“Mercer, you’ve got to find that diamond mine. They’ve told me that if you don’t reach it in the next two weeks, they’re going to start cutting me.” Harry’s voice quavered. “They’re keeping me in a rat hole with some shit that’s worse than Boodles. I don’t know how much of this I can take.” Harry was cut off and the terrorist returned to the phone. “That should satisfy you that your friend is still alive. I’m maintaining our end of the bargain, how about you?”
“What did Harry mean about two weeks? I thought I still had four.”
“Not anymore. You will give us the mine’s location in two weeks or Harry White will be killed.”
“I’m not even close yet,” Mercer lied, looking at the black silhouette of the mine’s head gear in the moon glow. Two weeks? That wasn’t enough time to come up with any sort of workable plan and he knew it.
“That is your and Mr. White’s problem, not mine.”
“I have a lead,” Mercer offered, adding a pleading note to his voice. “From a nomad family I met a couple of days ago, but I need more time. For Christ’s sake, this is a big country! You’ve been reasonable until now. Give me an additional week. In three weeks I’ll have the mine’s location, I swear.”
“You have two.” There was a finality in the reply. “Now, there’s the problem of what happened in Asmara that we have to discuss.”
“I didn’t kill your man.”
“I know that, Dr. Mercer. As we both now realize, there is another party interested in our activities, and it may become necessary for me to protect you and your team. You will tell me where you are right now.”
“Do you really think I am going to trust your sudden concern in our well-being?”
“Our interest in your welfare is well documented. Hence the two dead Africans I left in your hotel room,” the caller said placidly. “I consider you an employee and I want you to succeed. Tell me where you are.”
“No. You want that mine and I want Harry White. That’s our agreement, and you’re going to leave me alone until I find it.” Mercer’s voice hardened.
“And the Sudanese?”
“I’ll worry about them myself.”
“You know I can’t make you tell me,” the other man conceded. “But when we next speak, I will have another tape recording and you’ll hear Harry White losing his left hand.” The phone went dead.
“Shit!” Mercer punched off and then dialed the satellite phone he’d given to Habte.
“
“Habte, it’s me. I think I just screwed up with the kidnappers. They’re making some threats and I believe them.” Mercer was replaying the conversation in his head when he considered something odd Harry had said.
“Yes, the vehicle’s owner has been working here repairing roads, but he told the city’s council that he would have to leave at a moment’s notice.”
“Making a little money on the side?”
“I don’t see anything wrong with that. Nacfa is in disrepair and excavating equipment is rare in Eritrea.”
“As long as he’s got full tanks when you get here,” Mercer cautioned.
“He will. We also have the other equipment you had me pick up before you arrived in Eritrea.”
“Good. We’re going to need that generator and the portable floodlights.” While the sat-phones were not secure from eavesdropping, Mercer felt sure that no one was listening to this particular frequency at this particular time. However, he wasn’t going to take any unnecessary risks by broadcasting their location in clear. He gave Habte map coordinates roughly ten miles from the Valley of Dead Children, planning to send Gibby to guide them in the last few miles. “What’s your ETA?”
“It will take us at least a day. That’s rough country and the Adobha River may already be flooded. It would be best if Gibby met us at noon the day after tomorrow to be certain.”
“Understood,” Mercer said, still thinking about Harry White. Boodles was a brand name of gin. What was he doing with gin if his captors were Muslim and thus forbidden alcohol? Obviously, Harry was trying to tell him something, but Mercer was too tired to put it together.
Mercer woke Gibby as soon as it was light enough to see. He’d gotten just enough sleep to satisfy his body’s immediate needs, but he felt slow and lethargic in the mounting heat of the dawn. Gibby agreed that he could stay in the valley assisting Mercer until the following morning and still make the rendezvous with Habte, Selome, and the bulk of their equipment.
After a quick breakfast, Mercer inspected the head gear’s framework while Gibby unpacked all the rope they had brought with them. The rust on the steel struts was only surface accumulation; the metal underneath still appeared strong. There were only three fifty-foot lengths of rope in the Toyota, but if they attached them to the tow cable on the Land Cruiser, they would have enough to get Mercer to the bottom of the shaft.
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,
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 system, it was possible the mine hadn’t been worked for very long. 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.
