The Medusa Stone

mountains. Often, rain won’t fall from them for days, even weeks.”

“That means the air in front of them compresses against the hills and springs back, creating—” Mercer’s voice was choked off as the air around the truck came alive.

The sandstorm blew up so suddenly and violently that the trio was coughing before they could close the windows. The Land Cruiser filled with a dark amber light that shifted constantly as the storm raged over them. The sky screamed as sand was stripped off the surface of the desert and blown thousands of feet into the air. Mercer slowed the Toyota, his visibility down to zero.

“Jesus,” he muttered as the storm unbelievably intensified. Already the windshield was opaque. Selome gave a little cry from the backseat and Gibby stared goggle-eyed into the maelstrom. The wind shoved the Toyota so hard it felt as if they were still speeding over the broken ground.

“Selome, how far behind was the other truck?” Mercer shouted.

“I don’t remember.”

“Come on,” he prompted. He could see the terror in her eyes when he twisted around to look at her. “Just give me your best guess.”

“Half a mile, maybe.”

“All right. The storm’s going to erase our tire tracks, but we’re still too close to the Fiat. When this mess blows over, they’re going to spot us in a second.”

“What can we do?” Gibby asked.

“We’re going to continue on.” Mercer’s jaw clenched with determination.

“But you can’t see,” Selome cried.

“Sure I can. I just can’t see outside of the truck.” The joke felt flat to Mercer’s ears too.

He replayed the last image of the desert he’d seen before the dust had obscured it, studied it in his mind, and engaged the transmission, gambling that the driver of the other truck wouldn’t budge until after the storm had passed. The Toyota crept forward, Mercer driving from memory. The desert floor had been relatively flat before the storm had hit, so he wasn’t overly worried about any sudden drops or dips, but as the wind pummeled the side of the Land Cruiser, keeping them on a straight course was next to impossible.

Ten minutes trickled by, the Land Cruiser crawling blindly through the twisting slashes of wind and sand, Mercer’s hand slick on the steering wheel, his body attuned to any attitude shifts that would signal a hill or a valley. Then as suddenly as it had started, the storm blew over them and they were in the clear. Even before his eyes could adjust to the sudden burst of sunlight, Mercer floored the accelerator, flinging Gibby and Selome back in their seats. They had a precious few minutes before the sand settled around their pursuers.

“Selome, keep your eye out for that Fiat and tell me the instant you see it.”

There was a series of low hills a half mile ahead, and Mercer was hoping that they would be behind them before she saw the other vehicle. If the three of them were spotted first, it would all be over.

“Anything?”

“No, the storm is still hanging on back there. I can’t see them. I think—”

The Toyota catapulted in the air, throwing off smoking hunks of body work and bits of its undercarriage. The thunder of the explosion drowned out the screams of the passengers. Crashing on its three remaining tires, the Land Cruiser flipped on its side, its front fender plowing a deep furrow into the soil.

A “perfect soldier” had waited decades to strike its deadly blow. Designed as an antipersonnel weapon, the Soviet-built landmine did not have the power to destroy the Toyota, and because of the vehicle’s speed, much of the detonative force was released under the engine rather than below the wheel that had activated its primer. With most of its energy absorbed by the engine block, only a tenth of the charge blasted into the cab. It was more than enough.

The last thing Mercer remembered clearly was the sound of Selome’s voice. Then he was assaulted by a jumbled whirl of images, screams, and pain, the earth erupting under the Land Cruiser and the jarring crush as it slammed into the ground again.

His ears ringing, Mercer wiped his face, and his trembling hand came away covered with blood. His whole body ached as his senses slowly returned. He couldn’t feel the pain that would indicate a wound capable of producing the amount of blood splattered on his clothes. His first thought was Selome. He tried to turn and check on her, but he couldn’t move from where he was wedged under the steering wheel. A heavy weight pressed on him, and he recognized it was Gibby. Or what was left of him.

The explosion had been channeled into the passenger-side foot well, shredding the boy’s legs so badly that only a few stringy bits of flesh kept them attached to his body. Massive tissue trauma had killed him immediately, but ropes of blood still drooled from the ragged wounds, pouring onto Mercer, saturating him. Seeing the dead Eritrean sharpened Mercer’s mind, and vomit flooded his mouth. He choked it back painfully.

“Selome?” he called.

She was sobbing. Thank God! Slowly, he eased Gibby’s body off him. When he stood on the smashed-in door, a wave of nausea nearly dropped him back on top of the corpse. He ignored any injuries he might have and concentrated on Selome. She lay curled on the driver’s-side rear door, her face cupped in her hands, her shoulders heaving. Mercer called her name again and finally she looked up. Her face was filthy, her hair bushed around her head, but he saw no blood, and while her eyes were made enormous by fear, she didn’t appear to be in shock.

“Give me your hand.” He hadn’t forgotten the Fiat still behind them. “We have to get out of here.”

She reached for him tentatively, and as soon as her fingers laced with his, Mercer pulled her to her feet. She winced when her weight pressed against her right foot, the one closest to the explosion. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know.” Her voice was small and frail.

“We have to get moving. That other truck will be on us in no time.” Mercer looked beyond the shattered rear window and saw a plume of dust speeding out of the shifting sandstorm like some questing tentacle. The Fiat was too distant to see yet, but Mercer knew he only had minutes before it reached them.

“Give me your gun,” he demanded quickly.

“What?”

“Your gun, Selome, give it to me.”

“What are you talking about?”

Her acting job was unconvincing. “We have about five minutes before they reach us, and if you want to live beyond then, give me your goddamned gun.”

She stared at him, her face a mixture of fear and confusion, then she reached into her knapsack to retrieve a big automatic. “How did you know?”

Even in this situation, Mercer felt relief that the wall of secrecy between them was starting to come down.

“I’ll tell you later. You know, we could have used this in the cattle pens in Asmara.” Mercer took the Heckler and Koch. Selome shrugged but couldn’t meet his eye. Mercer levered himself out of the destroyed four-wheel drive, twisted on his perch, and lowered his hand back to Selome. “Climb up to me. I’ll help you, but don’t look in the front seat. Gibby didn’t make it.”

The Fiat’s trail of dust no longer merged with the storm dying behind it. Mercer jumped to the ground, held up his arms, and Selome leaped to him. “Stay here.”

At the back of the Toyota, a five-gallon jerry can of gasoline was clamped tightly in a special bracket. Mercer unclipped it from its mounts, grabbed a pair of knapsacks that had been tossed from the roof storage rack, and returned to Selome’s side. The crater left by the landmine looked like a tiny, smoking volcano. He judged that the Land Cruiser had been thrown nearly fifteen feet by the blast.

“What are we going to do? We’re in the middle of a mine field.”

Mercer didn’t answer her question, nor could he ignore it either. The desert here was loose and sandy, the surface raked smooth by the storm. However, there was a rocky outcrop about fifty yards away that would be free of mines. The trick was to get from the stranded Toyota to the rocks without blowing themselves up and doing it quickly enough so the pursuing Fiat didn’t discover their escape. He twisted the lid off the gas can and began dumping its contents onto the Land Cruiser.

“Mercer, I need to get—”

He cut her off. “No time. I’m sorry.”

The Fiat was about a half mile away; its roof was visible as it drove in a shallow depression. Mercer scanned