guide. And after just one day, with an unknown number more to go, it was clear that they would die.
“The sun’s almost behind the horizon.” Mercer spoke for the first time in nearly six hours. “It’ll be cooler in just a little while.”
“And I’ll be dead in just a little while, too.” Selome managed a smile, though her voice scratched like an old phonograph record.
“That’s the spirit,” Mercer rasped. “Nothing like a positive attitude.”
His grin cracked his dry lips and a tiny bead of blood quivered at the corner of his mouth. He surveyed the terrain around them. The landscape was spiked by mountainous ramparts that grew from the desert floor with brutal regularity, forcing them to follow a meandering route as they tracked eastward toward the Adobha River.
They continued on, their steps less sure, fatigue and dehydration taking their toll. Just before total darkness set in, Mercer steered Selome to one of the countless kopjes, rocky hillocks similar to the buttes that dot the American Southwest, and led her into one of the hundreds of caves that pocked the cliff, riven out of the stone by eons of erosion. Too exhausted to speak, they tumbled to the floor and soaked up the cave’s chilled air. A full half hour passed before Mercer felt he had the energy to sit up and press his aching back against the rock wall. He tried to use his pack as a pillow but its contents were even harder and more jagged than the stone.
Neither dared remove their boots. Their feet would have swollen immediately and they wouldn’t be able to don them again in the morning. Mercer did loosen his laces to ease the pressure against his tender skin.
“Try it,” he prompted Selome. “It feels better than sex.”
“You must not be very good,” she teased. “How far do you think we’ve come?”
“I’d guess about twenty-five to thirty miles.”
“Then we’re halfway to the Adobha River.”
“Unfortunately no. Because of the terrain and our need to go around these damned hills, I estimate we’ve only walked about fifteen miles due east.” Though he wanted to protect her from their reality, she had a right to know.
“So the river is…”
“Another forty-five miles. If the ground doesn’t flatten out soon, we’ll actually have to cover seventy. And our bodies are going to weaken even more during the night. Our pace will be slower tomorrow, and every second we’re out in the sun, we’re going to dehydrate further. I’m sorry to tell you this, but these are the facts.”
Selome’s body slumped in defeat. “Can we go back and take our chances with the Sudanese?”
“I don’t think we’d make it half the distance to the mine. Remember, we were driving for a couple of hours before the attack.”
“We’re going to die, aren’t we?”
“Sure we are. In about fifty years, when old age catches up to us.” Mercer straightened. “We’re not dead yet, Selome, and I’ve gotten out of worse messes than this.”
Mercer couldn’t specifically recall facing a more desperate situation but Selome took comfort from his words. She crawled to him, laying her head on the hard pads of his stomach muscles. He stroked her hair softly and she mewed before drifting into an exhausted sleep. For Mercer, the respite of oblivion was a long time in coming.
He was almost too tired and sore to sleep. Something about what Selome had told him nagged at the back of his mind, something about Levine’s quest to find King Solomon’s mine. It was an archaeological treasure, the find of the century, but Mercer couldn’t figure out how the Israeli minister planned to use it to gain power or to help him hold it once he’d won the elections. Something didn’t fit. There was another piece to this puzzle that Selome hadn’t mentioned.
Had he not been so exhausted and his mind tortured by the dry thirst, he would have demanded an explanation, but until they were safe again, neither could afford to waste the energy talking about something that was, for the moment, out of their control. Just before sleep claimed him, Mercer had one more thought: the Eritrean refugees he had sent for from Sudan. They were leaving one hell and heading straight into another. He knew their labor would be eagerly accepted by the rebel soldiers who were undoubtedly at the mine at this very moment. Mercer realized that his and Selome’s struggle for survival was also a race against time.
At dawn the next day, Selome woke before Mercer and her feeble stirrings brought him awake. They had snuggled together during the night, their legs twined. It was a position of intimate trust, the nocturnal pose of lovers, and for several seconds they silently enjoyed the touch. It was only when Selome tried to lift herself that they realized how much their muscles had stiffened. She whimpered, her face screwed up with pain.
“Oh, Christ,” Mercer said, his voice barely a hoarse croak.
Moving like arthritics, Mercer followed Selome’s lead as she began stretching her tensed limbs. His joints popped and creaked in the confines of the cave and he knew intimately how Harry White felt every morning of every day.
Thinking of his old friend brought a burst of adrenaline to Mercer’s heart, the natural drug giving him just enough strength to motion for Selome that it was time to continue. It was almost six in the morning, and they would have a couple of hours before the sun’s heat began searing the desert floor.
“Last one in the swimming pool is a rotten egg,” Mercer tried to joke. Selome was too exhausted to respond.
The vastness of the wasteland made their progress seem like that of insects crawling across a huge table. Yet for them, every step was a personal triumph against the ravages of thirst and exhaustion. Selome called for a break after two hours, but Mercer urged her on with just a touch of her shoulder. She moved like an automaton, her gait mechanical, her arms no longer swinging because the effort was too great. After two more hours, Mercer could not dissuade her from stopping, and she plopped to the ground in the shade of a small granite outcropping. Mercer slumped next to her, watching fifteen minutes ratchet by on his Tag Heuer before staggering to his feet and extending his hand. Gamely, she reached up and allowed him to haul her up.
Trying to maintain some sort of steady pace, Mercer began counting footsteps, planning on calling for a halt after two thousand, guessing that they would have covered another mile, but when he reached the number, he knew they had walked half that distance. He abandoned the counting and continued to put one foot before the other, thinking their next rest would come when Selome could go no farther. Yet it was he who needed the break first.
Just after noon, at the edge of one more nameless mountain, Mercer saw a cave similar to the one in which they had spent the previous night and he led Selome to it, intending to wait out the hottest part of the day. The remorseless sun gave him a headache like a thousand migraines, an all-consuming agony that left him dizzy and nauseous. “We’ll get moving again at three,” he managed to say before drifting into an empty torpor that was neither sleep nor wakefulness, but a vacant zone somewhere in between.
Neither was able to stir at their three o’clock goal, so they didn’t start out again until it was nearly dark, their pace so slow that they would have trouble making it to the next sheltering mountain before their strength gave out completely. Death by dehydration would still be another torturous day away. But no amount of determination or will could lessen the possibility that when they stopped for the night, they might never rise again.
“Do you think you can keep going after sunset?”
Selome nodded, then asked after a pause, “Won’t we get lost?”
“We already are,” Mercer admitted, and they walked on in silence. They could cover more ground in the dark, regardless of direction. He had to keep them moving — simply sitting and waiting for the end just was not an option. An hour elapsed before Mercer continued their exchange, not realizing so much time had passed. “We can rest again tomorrow and maybe make it a few more miles the next night, but that’ll be our last.”
Selome’s half-hour delay in her reply went unnoticed in their misery. “Isn’t the monastery on this side of the river?”
A quarter mile later. “That’s what Habte and Gibby said. I don’t know how much closer it is.”
Twenty minutes: “Let’s hope it’s a lot closer.”
Darkness came swiftly, sucking the heat from the desert with a welcome suddenness. When the stars showed, they shone with a cold, indifferent brilliance. With the temperature down twenty degrees, Mercer and Selome found they could cover a greater distance between rest stops, and even those stops were shorter. For the first part of the night, they felt a small degree of hope.
But by midnight what little strength they’d managed to hold in reserve had burned away, and as suddenly as night had stolen the day, exhaustion stole their will. From a starting average of two miles per hour, they were down
