Vulcan's Forge

by Du Brul, Jack

  An instant later, the Metro car slid under the bridge and Mercer rolled back across the roof, holding the pistol by his head, arms tucked close to his body. There was a four-foot gap between the bridge and the entrance to the subway tunnel. As Mercer passed through the gap, he spotted the assassin. Mercer pulled the trigger and saw the gunman fall back just before the Metro plunged into the darkened tunnel.

  The ride through the tunnel was a nightmare. Though the train’s speed was nearly forty miles per hour, in the dark it felt like four hundred. The rattling car threatened to shake Mercer off the roof and he had the constant fear of being smeared against the low ceiling. The noise and vibration were maddening, but he grimly held on, jaw clenched tightly to keep his teeth from jarring loose.

  After a couple of minutes that seemed like an eternity, the train thundered into L’Enfant Plaza, the next station on the yellow line. Mercer moved forward until he was under the pedestrian bridge. No doubt that there would be a backup team in this station by now and probably in all the stations on the line. They had him boxed in. Whoever “they” were.

  The wait in the station dragged on as passengers left and entered the train in the confused ballet called commuting. Mercer feared that the train would be held because of the body he had left in the Archive station. But a moment later the bell chimed and the pneumatic doors hissed closed. The train began to inch along and in a second, Mercer was exposed to another gunman standing on the bridge.

  Mercer raised the VP-70 to take aim just as the other man swung the barrel of a Beretta toward him. Neither man had time to fire before Mercer disappeared into the blackness of the tunnel. Mercer’s raised hand, the one grasping the pistol, smashed into the concrete wall. Instantly numbed fingers sprang open and the weapon slid from his grasp. It bounced against the roof, once, twice, then slipped over the edge, lost forever.

  Mercer flipped back onto his stomach, cursing the pain and his own stupidity. He was now unarmed and facing an unimaginable number of enemies.

  As the Metro climbed above ground just south of the Jefferson Memorial, Mercer realized that he had a chance to escape while the train was crossing the Potomac River. He swore at himself for even thinking it, but knew he had no other option. As soon as the train reached daylight, he sat up and kicked off his shoes. The train sped onto the truss bridge that spanned the sluggish river, rattling and clanging like an old steam locomotive. Mercer stood, the wind whipping his jacket around his body. He shed it quickly and peered at the river below. It was a sapphire blue.

  Mercer jumped.

  The jarring vibration of the Metro vanished as he arrowed toward the water, and for a moment all was quiet except for the wind in his ears. The impact as he hit the choppy water nearly knocked him unconscious, but the cold brought him back quickly. He was deep under the river’s surface. With lungs emptied by the blow, the swim upward was agonizing.

  He finally broke the surface and coughed the water from his lungs. He looked up at the bridge, but the train had already vanished from sight.

  Twenty excruciating minutes later, he dragged himself onto the shore.

  “Welcome to Virginia,” he gasped.

  The Pacific

  By its very nature a modern nuclear submarine makes an optimal platform for sensitive intelligence gathering. With its ability to remain submerged for extended periods and its absolute silence, a sub can maintain station near an unfriendly coast for weeks or even months with relative impunity.

  The sub now lying in wait two hundred miles northwest of Hawaii had been there for seven months and apart from one minor incident had not once come close to detection. There was only about another week or two left of this patrol, so morale, which had been dismal, was finally picking up.

  The crew, mostly northerners, no longer snickered at the captain’s thick Georgian accent. The bickering, which had become an almost daily occurrence even among this highly disciplined crew, had ceased. The men knew that very soon they would feel the warm sun, breathe unrecirculated air, and have the company of their families once again.

  The captain, an unlaughing, hawk-faced man in his midfifties, scanned the control room slowly. The red lights of battle stations, which had glowed continuously since the beginning of the mission, stained the faces of his men and hid every corner of the room in shadow. He too was looking forward to going home. Though he had lost his wife years before, he did have a daughter. A daughter who would have given birth to his first grandchild in his absence.

  A boy or a girl? he mused. And if it was a boy will she name him after me or that idiot husband of hers?

  “Captain, contact bearing two-oh-five degrees range fifteen miles,” the sonar operator barked.

  The bridge was galvanized with anticipation, each pair of eyes riveted on the captain. He checked his watch and decided that this might be the ship they were expecting.

  “Sonar, scrub the target’s signature please,” the Old Man said calmly.

  “Range too far, sir, we have to wait. Range thirteen miles. Single screw turning thirteen knots.”

  The captain picked up the hand mike. “Fire control, plot a solution to target and give me a lock. Torpedo room, flood tubes one and two but do not open outer doors.”

  Even on the bridge, thirty yards from the torpedo room, the captain could hear the water flooding into the tubes. He just hoped that there was no one else out there to hear as well.

  “Sonar, can you scrub the signature yet?”

  “Affirmative, sir, working now.”

  The boat’s multimillion-dollar acoustical computer was analyzing the sounds coming from the approaching ship, digitally washing out the grinding rotation of her screw, the liquid friction of her hull cutting through the waves, and the omnipresent background noise of the living sea, until . . .

  “We have our target, her signal is coming in strong. Repeat, she is our ship.” Amid the ambient noise of the vessel, an ultrasonic generator pulsed a signal through the water to be picked up by only those listening for it. It was this signal for which the computer searched and the captain waited.

  The captain picked up the microphone again. “Torpedo room, stand down.”

  “Shit!” the sonarman screamed and ripped off his headphones.

  “What is it?” the captain demanded.

  There was a thin trickle of blood from the man’s ears. He spoke unnaturally loudly. “Another underwater explosion, sir. Much more powerful than any other.”

  “You are relieved,” the captain said.

  The sensitive sonar gear was designed with a fail-safe acoustical buffer to shield the hearing of the men who listened in, yet his four top operators now suffered permanent hearing damage due to the buffer’s inability to screen out the nearby subsurface explosions. The equipment simply wasn’t designed for this kind of abuse. And neither were the men.

  Arlington, Virginia

  Mercer tapped the cabdriver on his shoulder and handed the young African immigrant a twenty. “Keep the change and I’m sorry about the seat.”

  The cloth-backed seat of the yellow Ford Taurus was soaking wet, just like Mercer’s suit. He walked toward his house in stocking feet, his socks making an obscene sound against the concrete with every step.

  The front door of the house was unlocked. Mercer breathed a heavy sigh once the door was closed behind him. It had taken him nearly an hour and a half to get home after he’d pulled himself from the river near the Pentagon. His first act, after wringing the water from his clothes behind a derelict bus, was to phone a friend with the metro police.

  The friend promised that Mercer’s shot-up Jaguar would be towed to an auxiliary lot in Anacostia, not to the city’s main impound. He also assured Mercer that the paperwork on the car would be “lost” for at least a couple of days. It would take some time to trace him through his destroyed car.

  He now had a little breathing space to figure out what in the hell had just happened and why.

  Mercer heard the sound of the television and knew th
at Tish Talbot had made it here safely. He walked through the house, not caring about the water he was getting on the tile or the antique stairs. Tish was asleep in the bar, stretched out on the couch under a steamer rug that Mercer had bought in an auction of ocean liner memorabilia. The name SS Normandie was embroidered in gold silk on the thick dark wool.

  Tish woke slowly, extending her hands over her head in a decidedly feline gesture.

  “How do you feel?” Mercer asked. Making a quick decision between keeping his floor dry and his need for a drink, he gingerly stepped behind the bar.

  “I’m not sure,” Tish responded, then noticed his appearance. “My God, are you okay?”

  “Let’s just say, I’m not ready to do that again.” Mercer pulled two beers from the antique fridge and popped the lids.

  “No, thanks,” Tish said. “I took the liberty of opening a bottle of wine.” She indicated the half-filled glass on the coffee table.

  “I wasn’t offering,” Mercer replied as he tilted the first bottle to his lips. The beer vanished in seven heavy swallows. “I need a shower and a change. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He left the empty on the bar.

  Ten minutes later, Mercer returned wearing jeans and a Pittsburgh Penguins jersey. Tish had folded the blanket and was sitting at the bar. “Your home is beautiful. I made the mistake of going for cute rather than practical when I bought my condo in San Diego. My whole unit is smaller than this room.”

  “One of these days I’ll finally admit that I live here and decorate some of it.”

  “I did notice a definite lack of decorating skills.” Tish smiled warmly. “Oh, my God, your hand!”

  Mercer looked down at the back of his right hand, where the skin had been scraped off by the rough subway tunnel. In the bathroom, he’d awkwardly wound a bandage around it, but the self-ministrations had come apart and the angry cuts had opened again. They were painful and still bled freely, but weren’t serious. He grabbed for a clean bar towel, but Tish snatched it from him.

  “Let me do that,” she said, and began wiping the blood from his skin.

  As soon as her hand touched his, she gasped as if she’d touched something hot. She turned Mercer’s hand over slowly, inspecting it like the scientist she was.

  His hands were exactingly sculpted by labor and pain. His palms were horny callused pads and the backs were criss-crossed with the raised white ridges of old scar tissue. The nails, though neatly tended, were scored and pitted and one nail, on his pinkie, was cracked all the way to the cuticle. Despite the damage, they were beautiful hands, rugged like a new mountain chain yet with a tapered masculine elegance.

  Tish released his hand and looked into his eyes searchingly.

  “I work for a living,” he grinned, “and these are my tools.”

  “Then I guess this scrape doesn’t bother you much?”

  “Hell, yes, I just won’t admit it.”

  Tish looked away and when she spoke, her voice had a serious timbre. “I want to thank you for saving my life today.” She chuckled. “Christ, does that sound like a cliché.”

  Mercer smiled at her. “It’s the least I can do since your father once saved my life. How is Jack?”

  “My father died about a year ago. You didn’t know?” Mercer’s face went ashen. “I tried to tell you back at the hospital, but that man came in.”

  Mercer managed to croak, “How?”

  “He was killed on an oil platform near Indonesia. It capsized in a freak typhoon.”

  A numbness started at the base of his skull and raced through his body in seconds. He almost had to hold onto the bar for support. Without a word, Mercer ran up to his bedroom and returned a moment later holding a soggy scrap of paper, the telegram sent by Jack Talbot. He held it out to Tish, but she seemed reluctant for a moment, fearful of even touching the page. Finally, she took it and read it quickly.

  Bewildered, she looked up at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I,” Mercer said slowly, “neither do I. But someone wants me involved in this, whatever ‘this’ is. And they were right about you being in danger.” He finished the beer and pulled another from the fridge. “You said at the hospital that you had no idea why you were under guard or why your father or whoever sent this telegram might think you’re in danger?”

  “That’s right. Listen, I’m just a marine biologist. Who would want to kill me? And by the way, how did you know that man in my hospital room wasn’t a real doctor?”

  “For one thing, he said he was a urologist, which was the same line I used to get past the FBI guards. One of them would have come to recheck my credentials. Also, no doctor making rounds would wear shoes as uncomfortable-looking as his.” Mercer shrugged. “As to why someone is trying to kill you, that is what we have to find out. It’s obvious that it has to do with the last voyage of the Ocean Seeker. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

  Tish was almost at the point of tears and had to slow her breathing before she could speak. “Do you think all those people were killed because of me?” She sobbed once.

  Mercer came around the bar and took her into his arms. She sagged into him gratefully. Her hair smelled like hospital soap, and was smooth and slippery against his skin. He let thirty seconds go by before straightening up. Looking deeply into her eyes, he spoke softly. “I don’t think anyone was supposed to survive that trip. Now tell me about the last voyage.”

  Tish took a moment to compose herself.

  “A few weeks ago, seven gray whales were found beached just west of Hana on Maui. They were all dead. A biologist from the University of Hawaii performed a necropsy.”

  “A what?” Mercer interrupted.

  “Necropsy—an animal autopsy,” Tish replied as if everyone should know the word. “He found that their digestive tracts were clogged with minerals. About fifty-five percent silica, with some magnesium, calcium, and iron, plus traces of gold.”

  “You’re describing lava.”

  “That’s what the biologist thought as well. His theory was the whales had been attracted to the huge schools of plankton that would surround a new undersea volcano for its warmth. The whales, while feeding, would also ingest the particles of lava suspended in the water. Eventually, their digestive tracts would fill with the minerals and they could no longer feed.”

  “So what happened then?”

  “Well, NOAA was called in to investigate. An aerial search of the waters north of Maui showed nothing. No new island, no clouds of ash or even steam. Then some sonar buoys were dropped, and within twelve hours we had found our new volcano, about two hundred miles from the Hawaiian islands.

  “The Ocean Seeker was sent out late last Thursday night.” Tish stopped speaking for several seconds. “Twenty-four hours later, the ship exploded. When I was first rescued, I just assumed that it had been some sort of accident, but now I don’t know what to think.”

  Mercer poured her another glass of wine and opened another beer for himself. The adrenaline rush from a few hours ago was wearing off, leaving him thirsty.

  “Why are all those pins in that map?” Tish said, changing the subject and referring to the map of the world hung behind the bar. It was studded with numerous pushpins in several different colors.

  Mercer felt that the distraction would let Tish calm down enough to answer the dozens of questions he still had for her. “It’s a map of places I’ve been. The different colors indicate why I was there. Green is for pleasure, like most of the Caribbean islands. Red is for work overseas for the U.S. Geological Survey, mostly meetings in Europe and Africa. And blue is for private consulting work that I’ve done for various mining companies.”

  Tish noted that this last category included some pretty exotic places—Thailand, Namibia, South Africa, Alaska, New Guinea and at least fifteen others. “Why is there a clear pin in central Africa? I can’t tell which country.”

  Mercer looked pained as he replied. “The pin’s in Rwanda. I was there for six months in 1994 when the worl
d looked on as 800,000 Tutsi tribesmen were slaughtered by the Hutu majority. I was on a consulting job when the violence erupted, and rather than run away, I joined a band of soldiers trying to defend fleeing villagers.”

  “My God, why would you do something like that? I heard that the fighting was absolutely savage.”

  “I was born in that part of the world. My parents and I lived in Rwanda during the early days of independence. I was too young to remember the massacre of 1964, but I’ve never lost my sense of loyalty to the Tutsi friends I had growing up.”

  Tish knew he was keeping something from her, but she didn’t press. “And what about the clear pin in Iraq?”

  Mercer smiled. “I was never there—and even if I was, I can’t talk about it.”

  She threw him a cheeky grin. “Real James Bond, hush hush.”

  “Sort of.” Mercer still carried scars from that mission. The information he had brought back had been the trigger for Operation Desert Storm. “Now tell me about your rescue.”

  Tish spoke quietly. “The ship exploded late Friday night. I was on the fantail, rigging some acoustical gear. I didn’t hear or even see the explosion. One second, I was standing there, and the next I was in the water. There were a lot of flames. I remember that I couldn’t hear anything. I think I had gone deaf for a moment.”

  “The concussion stunned your ears—it’s common. Go on.”

  “There was an inflatable raft near me and I swam to it.”

  Mercer interrupted again. “It was already inflated?”

  “Yes, it was. Come to think of it, that’s awfully strange. They’re usually stowed in big plastic cylinders. Maybe the explosion released the CO2 used to inflate it.” That sounded a little far-fetched to Mercer, and he made a mental note to come back to it later. “I was in the raft all of the next day until the September Laurel rescued me.”

  “That’s the freighter?”

  “Yes. A couple hours later, a helicopter from the navy came to pick me up. The doctor on board gave me a shot, and when I came to, I was in D.C.”