e thong whipping through the air, but too late to dock or ward off the blow. It caught him high on the side of the face, and he saw stars in front of his eyes as he staggered back against a shoring timber. The blow struck with such force he came within a speck of blacking out.
"Seems as though everyone is hitting on me today," Pitt said thickly through the agony.
"A short lesson on discipline," she snapped. Then in a lightning movement, incredibly swift for someone of her heavy build, she swung the thong backhanded toward Giordino's head. But she wasn't fast enough. Unlike Pitt, he had warning. He grasped her wrist in an iron grip, stopping the thong in midair. Slowly, as if in a test of wills, the two arms trembled as their muscles exerted every pressure at their command.
Melika had the strength of an ox. She had never imagined that any man could have been capable of gripping her so hard. Surprise showed in her widened eyes, then disbelief, then anger. With his other hand, Giordino tore the thong from her grasp as one would snatch a stick from a snarling dog, and hurled it into an ore car.
"You dirty scum," she hissed. "You'll suffer for this."
Giordino puckered up his lips and blew her a kiss. "Love-hate relationships are the best."
His cockiness cost him. He missed the sudden shift of the eyes, the foot lifting off the ground as the knee bent and thrust into his groin. Giordino released his grip on her wrist, dropped to his knees, and fell to his side, writhing in silent agony.
Melika smiled satanically. "You fools have condemned yourselves to a hell you can't imagine." She wasted no more time with talk. She retrieved the thong and waved it toward an empty ore car and said the single word: "In."
Five minutes later the train of ore cars stopped and then backed into a shaft. Lights strung along the timber trailed into the dark shadows. It looked to be a new working. Men's voices traveled over the noise of the train and a moment later the gleam of their lamps flickered around a bend. They were herded along by Tuareg guards with whips and guns, chanting in tired, hoarse voices. All were Africans, some southern tribesmen, some desert people. Zombies in old horror movies looked in better health than these poor dregs. They moved slowly, dragging their feet. Most were dressed only in ragged shorts. Sweat covered their bodies that were also heavily coated with rock dust. The glazed look in their eyes and the ribs showing through their chests told of a starvation diet. All were scarred by lash marks and a number of them were missing fingers; a few had dirty bandages around the stumps that once were attached to hands. Their weak chanting faded as the light from their lamps was lost around the next bend.
The tracks ended at a pile of rock that had been blasted by the explosive crew they had passed in the shaft. Melika unhitched the locomotive. "Out!" she ordered.
Pitt helped Giordino climb over the bucket edge of the car and half supported him as they stood staring ferociously at the barrel-shaped slave driver.
Her huge lips spread in a Novocain grin. "You'll soon look like those scum."
"You should pass out vitamins and steel gloves," said Giordino, suddenly straightening, his face pale with, pain.
Melika raised her thong and slashed him across the chest. Giordino did not blink or flinch. These men weren't yet cowed, she thought. It was only a question of days before she reduced them to animals. "The blasting crew has accidents," she said matter-of-factly. "Lost limbs go with the job."
"Remind me not to volunteer," muttered Pitt.
"Load this rock into the cars. When you've finished, you can eat and sleep. A guard will make his rounds at unannounced times. He finds you sleeping, you work extra shifts."
Pitt hesitated. A question was on the tip of his tongue. But it stuck in his throat. It was time to lay low. He and Giordino stared at the tons of ore piled at the end of the shaft and then at each other. It seemed a hopeless, backbreaking task for two men to accomplish in less than forty-eight hours while hampered by shackles.
Melika climbed onto the electric locomotive and nodded at a TV camera mounted on a cross beam. "Don't waste your time thinking of escape. You're under constant surveillance. Only two men made it out of the mines. Their bones were found by nomads."
She gave off a witch's cackle and rode off down the mine shaft. They watched until she had disappeared and all sounds faded. Then Giordino raised his hands and let them drop to his sides. "I think we've been had," he muttered as he sadly counted up to thirty-five empty ore cars.
Pitt lifted the chain attached between his hand and ankle manacles and hobbled over to a large stack of beams, waiting to shore up the tunnel as it was excavated. He paced off one beam and did the same with an ore car. Then he nodded.
"We should be able to wrap this up in six hours."
Giordino gave him a very sour look indeed. "If you believe that, you'd better sign up for a course in elementary physics."
"A little trick I learned picking raspberries one summer in high school," said Pitt curtly.
"I hope it fools the surveillance camera," Giordino groaned.
Pitt grinned insidiously. "Watch and learn."
The guards came and went with irregularity as Melika promised. They seldom stayed but a minute, satisfying themselves that the two prisoners were feverishly loading ore cars as if attempting to set some kind of record. In six and a half hours all thirty-five cars appeared brimming over with ore.
"Giordino eased to a sitting position with his back against a timber. "You load 16 tons and what do you get?" he said, quoting the song.
"Another day older and deeper in debt," Pitt finished.
"So that's how you picked raspberries."