“That prick,” Yosef spat. “He wants the prime minister’s office, and now that it’s within his reach, I think he wants to cut us loose. I spoke with him about a helicopter extraction, and while he agreed to it, it sounded as though he’s not too enthusiastic.”
“I’ve been reading the papers. It looks like he’s going to win the election in a landslide,” Rachel said. “He really doesn’t need us any longer.” The enormity of her situation crashed in on her. “Do you think he’ll have us killed?”
“No, he still wants what’s at the mine, but afterward? I don’t know.” Yosef paused as he reconsidered. “Levine is an ambitious bastard, but we know enough to force him to honor his commitment. If he kills us, he’ll never be sure we haven’t told what we’ve done to others. Besides, when we’re successful, his position within the government will be secure forever. Our involvement and our actions couldn’t hurt him. There would be no need to kill us.”
“But White will talk.”
“He doesn’t know anything, and when I kill Mercer, there will be no witnesses.”
“That still leaves Selome Nagast,” Rachel reminded.
“I know. She’ll have to die too. I didn’t want to do that. The fallout from Shin Bet will be enormous, but Levine will have to handle it.”
“Yosef, are we right?” Rachel asked. “Is our job important enough for all of these killings?”
“No
He told her about Mercer’s discovery of the Valley of Dead Children and his plans to reach the site the following day. He also told her about Giancarlo Gianelli’s operation and how it likely overlapped with theirs. Yosef had a suspicion that he would find the industrialist had already beaten him to the mine, which forced the Israeli agent to modify his plan. He decided they would approach the valley cautiously and keep it under observation before making their own play. He refocused his attention on Rachel and her plight. “You have to find someplace to hide until after the election and let us worry about what to do next. Don’t contact Levine, I’ll handle him. We’ve got just a few weeks left, and then it will be over. For all of us.” Yosef cut the connection.
Northern Eritrea
The Toyota was a speck in the vastness of the desert, moving just ahead of the billowing dust of its wake. The twin scars of its tire prints ran off to the infinity of the horizon. Other than the truck, nothing moved in the desert — no animal or bird, no lizard or crawling insect ventured out into the torturous heat. While rain fell on the eastern part of the country and angry masses of clouds were visible in the distance, the storms had not yet come to the Hajar region. The desert floor was cracked, split open in a natural process that tripled its surface area and would allow a greater amount of water to be absorbed when it finally did rain. It was as if the soil itself needed the precious water to survive.
Mercer drove recklessly, trusting his own reactions and the vehicle’s speed in case they drove over any of the antipersonnel mines sown on the open plain. If they hit a larger antitank mine, nothing he could do would save their lives. Gibby sat next to him, his hand braced against the dash while Selome grimly gripped a ceiling strap in the back, her eyes riveted out the rear window.
“Do you see them yet?” Mercer shouted over the engine’s roar.
“No, not yet,” Selome replied hoarsely. “Oh shit, I see them now.”
Mercer shifted his gaze to the rearview mirror for a second and spied the pursuing four-wheel drive. At this distance, it was only a sparkling reflection, a jewel pinned to the desert by dust blowing up behind it.
“Sorry, guys,” he called darkly. “I don’t think we’re going to make it.”
They had started their drive from the camp two hours after dawn. Mercer and Habte, with the help of Abebe, had laid the explosive charges Mercer had fashioned during the night by premixing the ammonium nitrate and fuel oil in a dozen one-gallon metal cans. At dawn, the three of them had dug holes into the mountain according to a plan Mercer had devised to maximize the shots and tumble the overhanging walls of their excavation.
Once the holes had been dug and the charges buried, they scrambled back to ground level, moved the vehicles to a safe distance, and waited while Mercer made the final connections to the battery-driven detonator. He called the countdown but gave Gibby the honor of shooting the amfo. The boy had practically begged. The fuses burned at twelve thousand feet per second, so it seemed the detonations were instantaneous, but a cascade compression wave had been created in the rock that built steadily in fractions of seconds.
If Gibby was disappointed by the small geysers of dirt thrown up by the detonation, he was delighted by their final results. The man-made chasm they had laboriously dug into the mountain collapsed inward at the same instant the bulk of material above let go, creating a long-slide avalanche that carried tons of dirt nearly four hundred yards from the slope. Gibby let out a whoop that echoed even as the rumble subsided. Abebe, Habte, and the other driver took up the cry, and even Mercer gave a victorious shout. The blast had been better than even he had anticipated.
“Okay, boys, you know what to do,” Mercer said.
It would take two days to remove the rubble from the blast, but when the arduous task was finished, they could continue to chip away at the mountain to expose the mine entrance without fear of a cave-in. Mercer had set the charges high enough on the hillside to ensure that the blast went outward rather than into the mountain, so he was not concerned with damaging the ancient workings below.
Selome and Gibby had left the Valley of Dead Children with Mercer while Habte and the others tore into the heaps of debris. They had packed for a couple of days in case it took them longer to find the monastery, but Gibby assured Mercer that he could locate it quickly.
It was Selome who had first spotted the other vehicle. She had noticed it when they were no more than half an hour away from the entrance to the valley and immediately alerted Mercer. “This can’t be good,” he said.
“It could be another survey team looking for minerals that just happen to be in the same area,” Selome suggested lamely.
Mercer didn’t waste the time to respond. As soon as he saw the truck cresting a hill behind them, he’d started to accelerate. Immediately, the other vehicle took up the chase. Once, when the other truck had gained enough ground for them to recognize it as a Fiat, a winking light appeared in the passenger-side window. An instant later, feathers of dust exploded in the wake of the fleeing Toyota; mid-caliber machine-gun fire. No matter how hard Mercer pushed their battered Toyota, the pursuing truck was quicker. It was only Mercer’s driving skills and his ability to read the terrain that had kept them out of weapon’s range again.
But now, out in the open, the Fiat was rapidly closing.
“What do you mean, we’re not going to make it?” Selome asked.
“They’ve got a newer, faster four-wheel drive.” A gust of wind nearly tore the steering wheel from his grip. When he was back in control, he continued. “There’s no place to lose them out here because our tire prints and the dust this pig is kicking up are going to give us away.”
Neither Selome nor Gibby could argue.
“Another happy fact,” Mercer said after a minute of silence, “is the land mines. If this region is covered with them, which everyone tells me it is, we’re going to hit one. It’s just a matter of time.” Even an anti-personnel variant would stop the Toyota dead.
“Maybe those guys behind us will hit one first.”
“Not if they drive in our tracks.”
Another blast of wind hit the Toyota. On a horizon that was rushing toward them, the storm clouds piled into towering walls that blocked the distance like dark curtains. It was frightening, an awesome display of natural fury.
“How long before it hits?” Mercer asked quickly.
“I don’t know,” Gibby shouted over the wind whipping through the Toyota’s open windows. “I have seen storms like that stay over one area for days and not move at all.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“It’s true,” Selome yelled from the backseat. “These storms usually hug the ground and can’t get over the
