Page 37

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SEPTEMBER 17, 2022

Nemo

I don’t like this at all.

He jogged beside Gem about a quarter of a mile, keeping his eyes open for the both of them.

“Midas, anything?” he huffed out.

“Nope. No chatter. I don’t like this at all.”

Nemo would have laughed at the fact that his twin was channeling him, but he was too amped up to find the humor right now. “Nothing?”

“Not a goddamn word. I even checked other frequencies to see if they were at least smart enough to move up and down. Dead silence.”

“What time are we at?”

“Oh-six-hundred.”

Nemo grabbed Gem’s arm, stopping her. “Waters, we need to abort.”

Her chest heaved up and down. “Nemo, no! It’s right up here.”

“Gem, this isn’t right. They know we’re here. They knew we were coming. It’s all wrong.”

“We need the video and samples!”

Waters came on the line. “Gem’s right. You’re almost there, Nemo. These guys aren’t high-tech or particularly focused. You should see the topside. It’s just as much of a ghost town.”

“That makes it worse, Waters. In the history of any of our projects, when has there not been security of at least the barest kind?”

“I agree,” Midas said. “It makes no sense that there’s no activity. Traffic to the sex workers is even minimal. Haven’t seen anyone in an hour.”

“How the fuck do they know we’re here?” Nemo whispered. He scanned around. “I’m telling you, Waters. They know .”

There was a pause. He knew Gem was pissed, but he knew to listen to his intuition. It had saved him many times. Somewhere, he’d seen something that didn’t register on his conscious senses, but his brain was processing that they were on someone’s radar.

Gem had lost her patience. “Well, while you boys stand around and debate what isn’t here, I’m going.” She took off.

“Fuck! Gem is proceeding.” Nemo followed her.

Waters made a decision. “Go after Gem. I’m calling Medusa and getting her off the ground. Get the video and samples if you can. You see anything that compromises you, get to the surface, with or without it. Use the elevators. Find a place to take cover until she gets here. We’re going to bump up the timeline. TB, Steel, and Demon. Proceed now.”

“Copy that,” came from TB.

“Cerberus, be prepared to make things go boom. ”

“Waters…”

“I hear you, Nemo.”

“This is not going to go well,” he muttered under his breath.

When he caught up with her, she was already dragging her finger along three lines in the stratum that were running parallel to each other. “These are the veins,” she said, speaking to Waters over the comms. “Diamonds on the bottom. Taaffeite in the middle. Tanzanite on the top.” She followed the veins to a dead end. “They’ve stopped drilling here.” She frowned. “I don’t understand why.”

“Gem, Nemo, I’ve lost video feed,” Midas warned. “Something’s interfering with my systems. You need to fucking hurry and get out of there.”

She glanced around the tunnel floor. Someone had left a pick behind. She grabbed it and began hacking at the wall. Nemo found another and began to hack about six inches to her right. Unspoken, they worked together to remove a piece of the wall as a physical example containing both veins together.

Gem let loose one last mighty hack at the wall, dislodging the rectangle of material they had been working on. She threw the pick to the floor, stuffed the sample into the pouch at her waist, and followed Nemo at a breakneck pace back through the tunnel.

When they reached the main chamber, Nemo unhooked the chain they’d used to swing across the chasm, then grabbed her. “We don’t have time to go single. Hang on, tiny.”

She threw her arms around his neck, then wrapped her legs around his waist. Throwing all of their weight into it, Nemo swung them on the chain back across the canyon. With the weight of their combined momentum, it only took two tries to get them across, and that was only because Nemo didn’t want to take any chances that he’d crush Gem when he let go. Once they landed, they didn’t stop to worry about the chain but ran hell-bent for their climbing gear.

“Nemo!” Gem whisper-yelled. “What about the other tunnel? We need to know!”

Nemo looked at his watch. “No! We’ve got fifteen minutes, kitty cat. We need to get back up those ropes.”

She flipped him off and took off down the other tunnel.

“Dammit! Somebody needs to put a leash on her,” he muttered to himself.

He followed Gem to the corridor’s edge. He watched her sneak a quick peek inside. Whatever was going on was so far down the tunnel she couldn’t see from the entrance. When he caught up to her, all they could see was a curve in the tunnel about a hundred yards down and bright light coming from around that curve.

“What the hell are you two doing?” Waters asked. “I told you to get your shit and get out, not play Sherlock Holmes.”

“Remind me of this conversation the next time Kubrick wants to do something you don’t want her to do,” Nemo sniped.

“Her wanting to jump out of a helicopter is not the same thing,” Waters argued back.

“So you’re saying I should have let Gem go on her own?”

“Boys! Not the time for this argument. We’ve got plenty of time, Waters,” Gem insisted. “I just want to see what’s going on in here that has them ignoring the vein they had been working so hard on and is clearly still producing stones.”

“Nemo, finish up, grab her ass, and get out.”

There was a harumph on the line from Demon. “Should be easy for him. That’s his M.O.”

Nemo rolled his eyes. “Really, dude? You’re going to bring that up now?”

“If the condom fits. ”

Gem glared at Nemo. “Both of you, shut up.” She waved Nemo to follow her.

Moving quickly and stealthily, Gem and Nemo went down the corridor. As they got closer and closer to the curve, the noise got louder. There were shouts of men—what sounded like orders of an unfriendly sort. They even heard whip cracks, and there were some moans and crying.

“What the hell is going on down here?” Nemo wondered.

“I’m afraid to look, but we’ve got to.”

When they reached the end of the curve, there were two hallways of earth. The one on the left was dark. The one on the right took a sharp turn back up into the direction they’d come from.

“Oh. My. God,” Gem choked out.

“Am I seeing what I’m seeing?” Nemo asked her.

“What are you seeing?” Waters barked out.

“Kids,” Nemo murmured. “They’ve got fucking kids down here, Waters. Maybe thirty of them, and that’s what I can see. All young, maybe eight to ten years of age. Jesus, Waters, we can’t leave them here.”

“Fuck! Lemme think!”

“We were planning to get the workers out in the trucks, anyway,” TB offered over the line. “What’s the difference?”

“These kids are going to need a lot of help. They’re chained together.”

Nemo saw Gem stand up straight out of the corner of his eye. Then he watched her hands go up in the air like she was being held up in a bank.

Oh fuck!

That’s when he saw the gun poking into her lower back, right at her spinal column. Nemo stood as well, hands up, and he turned with Gem. Standing behind them was an array of guards with guns pointed at them .

“Well, this sucks,” Nemo said in an understated tone.

“Fuck,” Gem whispered.

Nemo, knowing he couldn’t let the guards know they had a way to communicate with people topside, did his best to make it sound like he was only talking to Gem. “You didn’t tell me that your last dozen boyfriends were going to come calling. You’d think they’d have brought flowers instead of guns, at least.”

“Shit,” Waters swore. “I’m sending TB and Steel in.”

Gem tried to warn Waters and the others. “I think, perhaps, it would be better to apologize nicely to them this time rather than run out without so much as a goodbye.”

“Boss?” TB asked.

“Stand down,” Waters ordered.

A voice not previously heard before—Cerberus—came in. “Was my surprise package delivered?”

Gem apologized. “Leave it to us to come to a party and not bring favors to hand out.”

“No party favors are needed, Le Chatte Noire. Your presence is present enough.”

The guards parted down the center, and three men in suits passed between them.

The man in the blue suit smiled at Gem. “You’re looking as lovely as ever.”

“Kent.”

Waters swore again. “Kent. As in Leech? Is that Ka-Bar?”

Gem pretended not to hear him. “I see you’ve made some new friends, Leech.” Her eyes roved to two other men who were in black suits. “Hemeda. Pilis. Looking as ugly as ever.”

Ka-Bar walked up to Gem, holding her gaze the entire way. He pulled her balaclava off when he reached her. “Did you get what you came for, little black cat? See something good?”

“No,” she told him .

Ka-Bar searched Gem’s pockets and pouches. He removed the hunk of rock wall from the pouch she had placed it in. Gem had an intense look on her face, one that Nemo didn’t quite understand.

Ka-Bar stepped over in front of Nemo, ripping the balaclava off him as well. “Sawyer Newton. This is a surprise, considering you died, what? Five years ago? Six? Both you and your twin, I believe. How interesting to see that those reports were in error. How ever did you match up with our little kitten here?”

“Just good luck, I guess,” Nemo snarked.

“Hmm. I don’t think it’s very good luck at all.” With the hand holding the balaclavas, he gestured to the guards behind him. Four stepped forward, two flanking the two thieves on either side. “I hope you enjoyed your tour of the mine. Unfortunately, the rest of your visit is going to be far less pleasant.” He gestured again to four of the guards and gave an order in Shona.

One of the guards nudged Gem with the muzzle of his rifle. She flashed a look at Nemo, then proceeded the guards out into the main cavern.

Ka-Bar stared hard at Nemo.

Nemo returned his stare. “Was it worth it?” he asked.

“Was what worth it?” his captor returned.

“Abandoning Zahra. Betraying your sister. Never seeing your son.”

Nemo swore that he saw a flash of something in Ka-Bar’s eyes, but it was gone so fast he couldn’t be sure. He did not miss the tic in the man’s cheek, however.

“Sometimes choices have to be made.”

Nemo berated him, “There are fucking kids down here, and you’re killing them.”

This time, Nemo did see the flash in the eye, and in his lower peripheral vision, he saw the man clench his fist .

Instead of responding, he turned and headed back up the tunnel.

“He’s all yours,” he told the Kader brothers. “Remember. Pharaoh wants his prize undamaged. For now,” Ka-Bar promised ominously.

The two guards flanking Nemo pushed him out into the cavern and toward a second tunnel on this side of the chasm. He fought their herding, trying to find where they’d taken Gem. She was being escorted up a flight of rickety wooden stairs that had the mine’s main wall structure on one side. So that Waters knew they’d been separated, Nemo called out, “I’ll come for you, Gem!”

Ka-Bar turned on the first platform. He looked at Gem fighting the two guards as she stopped where she was on the stairs. Then he looked at Nemo down below. “I don’t think so, Mr. Newton.” He gave a frosty smile, then he turned again and continued up to Gem and the guards, who were once again working their way up the stairs.