Behind him, Klaus Raeder threw up.
Mercer spotted a wave twice the size of anything they’d encountered just before it hit. He whipped the wheel into the surging wall of water and the Riva rocketed up its face in a gut-churning swoop. Launched from the crest in a corkscrew flight, the boat landed with her gunwale almost awash and she would have capsized if Mercer hadn’t jerked the wheel in the opposite direction and slammed the throttles to their stops. Before he could fully recover, the next monster wave hit them broadside and water poured into the cockpit. This time there was nothing he could do but pray the wave passed under them before the Riva floundered.
The speedboat tumbled into the trough and Mercer had enough time to kick her around again so they sluiced through the third large wave in the set. It was a masterful demonstration of driving and Ira gave him a wide-eyed stare of disbelief. Mercer’s matching incredulity showed it had been luck and not skill.
The Riva’s bilge pumps cranked overtime.
With no idea when the next big series would hit, Mercer pointed to the west to tell Raeder to keep watch. The German tapped him on the shoulder in acknowledgment. Settled again on their northerly direction, Mercer throttled back slightly for better control and continued their pursuit.
Five more times they hit high rolling sets of waves, and each time Raeder gave Mercer enough warning for him to steer into them. The ranks of swells between the big ones were still large enough to sink the boat, but Mercer had found their rhythm and kept them safe.
After another hour, what appeared at first to be a pinprick of light ahead and slightly to their left slowly revealed itself as a lighthouse. They were approaching the eastern side of the Reykjanes Peninsula, very close to where Iceland’s Keflavik Airport was located. Mercer racked his brain to remember the geography of the area. As he recalled, the only accessible village on this part of the peninsula was the small fishing community of Grindavik, about ten miles farther along the coast.
Assuming Rath would follow the most direct course to Iceland and would need to steal a truck to complete his escape, he edged the Riva to starboard and increased their speed when they entered the coastline’s protective cover. The twin engines sang.
The dawn grew to a white-and-gold ribbon, and the nature of the coast became more clear, forlorn, and tortured by its volcanic creation. Mercer could see the outline of a couple of volcanoes like elongated triangles on the flat plain beyond.
Also revealed in the growing light was a distant speck of white on the water: the wake of a boat running hard. When the others spotted it too, Raeder passed a machine pistol to Ira Lasko and kept one for himself. The cold and misery of their trip was lost in the desire to see it through.
The Njoerd’s launch seemed to grow in size as they approached. The little town of Grindavik was still dark but visible, and they would be abeam of Rath’s boat at least a mile before they reached it. Swaying in time with the boat’s motion, Ira jacked a round into the chamber of his MP-5.
Mercer steered for the stern of the offshore launch, masking the sound of his approach with the other powerboat’s thundering diesels. They needed only a few seconds in range to disable the steel-hulled craft, and as long as Rath and his crew kept their focus on the town they would never know they’d been spotted. Mercer slowed the Riva, matching the launch’s speed when it was just twenty yards ahead. He could see the name Njoerd painted on her flat transom. Beyond, he saw four heads, one of them with streaming blond hair.
Just as Ira raised the H&K to his shoulder, some instinct made Greta Schmidt look behind her. Mercer couldn’t hear her shouted warning, but her mouth moved in frantic command. Ira squeezed the trigger, and a flat spray of bullets kicked up spray at the spot the launch had been an instant before. Dieter had reacted to Greta’s screams with the exceptional reflexes that made him such a skilled racer. He began slewing the larger boat in a random slalom that was impossible to accurately track with a submachine gun. Ira couldn’t risk randomly firing at Rath’s boat in case he hit one of the hostages. Mercer backed off the throttles, not wanting to overtake the swishing launch. The race would only end when they reached shore.
Greta had disappeared from their view for a moment. When she emerged from the forward part of the launch, she had a pistol in one hand and a hostage in the other. Her greater size and strength all but smothered the struggles of her victim, the scantily dressed Lorna Farquar.
While his life had hardened Mercer to violence, he was not immune to it. There was no way he could brace himself to what he knew was about to happen. Lorna must have realized her fate too because her writhing became desperate. Greta’s expression didn’t change as she clubbed the woman behind the ear with the pistol and shoved her limp form off the back of the boat.
Instinct told Mercer to ignore the motionless body that bobbed in the launch’s wake and concentrate on Gunther Rath and the last Pandora box. That was what was important. Yet his humanity was a much stronger drive than any personal desire for justice.
There was no hesitation.
He chopped the throttles, holding fast against the steering wheel as the Riva dropped from plane like a head-on collision. Rath’s boat thundered away while Mercer swept the Riva in a tight circle to recover the evangelist’s wife. She lay facedown, her skimpy dress peeled from her body by the impact with the water. Her flesh was white against her translucent panties, already looking lifeless. With the Riva’s Mercruisers burbling, Mercer drew up next to her, edging wheel and throttle so the speedboat pirouetted and Klaus Raeder could grab her. He heaved her across the gunwale.
As soon as her feet cleared the frigid water, Mercer opened the throttles again. He looked over his shoulder in time to see clear water erupt from Lorna’s mouth and her body convulse in a coughing fit that sounded over the throb of the engines. She curled into a ball and retched again. She’d be shivering for the next couple of hours and her head would ache, but she’d be all right.
Rath was a quarter mile ahead, angling in toward the wooden jetties fronting Grindavik. His launch didn’t slow until the last second, its wake slamming fishing boats into each other and the floating docks. The one permanent pier thrusting out in the water was a concrete structure with a high-bowed purse seiner snugged against one side. A battered van was parked on the dock, and five early-morning fishermen talked amiably as they prepared the boat’s lines. Rath ordered Dieter to the other side of the pier, and the driver deftly coasted the last few yards. One of the security men leapt from the launch to secure a rope to the rusted cleats. Another man followed him, his attention on the fishermen, theirs on his gun.
As Mercer brought the Riva in toward the town, two other gunmen appeared at the big launch’s transom and unleashed matching sprays of automatic fire. The range was extreme, and yet Mercer had to sheer away from the stream of bullets, cutting a deep crescent in the sea. Like a shark kept at bay, he cruised just beyond the limit of the weapons, patrolling back and forth restlessly, seeking an opening that would never come. Rath held the superior position, and until he’d loaded his hostages and the Pandora box into the truck, Mercer, Ira, and Raeder could do nothing but wait.
“Get Mrs. Farquar below and wrap her in as many blankets as you can find,” Mercer ordered. “There should be heating vents mounted on the ceiling of the cuddy cabin. Open them wide.”
As Raeder maneuvered the woman into the cabin and Mercer watched the frenzied activity on the dock, Ira Lasko got an inspiration. He flicked on the sat-phone he’d carried and tried to get a signal through. “Damn it! Nothing.”
“What about the cell phone? It doesn’t rely on a satellite. Its signal only has to reach the closest tower, and I think I can see one just inland of the town.”
“Good idea.” He tossed the sat-phone aside and snapped open another telephone no bigger than a wallet. “I’ve got a signal!”
“Call Paul Barnes and get us some help.” Mercer could see that three of the fishermen were being pressed into service to carry the golden box from
the launch to the rear of their van. As Rath directed the transfer, Greta Schmidt covered a rubbery Tommy Joe Farquar, the squat Dalai Lama, and Cardinal Peretti. Farquar still had on his shiny suit while Peretti wore black pants and shirt. The Lama suffered in the cold, wearing nothing more than a red robe and sandals. His eyebrows looked like dark smudges on his nearly bald head.
Ira worked the phone for a minute, speaking in non-sequitur codes until he finally reached his case officer. “Rudy, Ira Lasko . . . shut up and listen. It’s all true . . . yes, the meteorite fragments and Kohl industries and every other damned thing. Klaus Raeder isn’t the man we want. It’s his special-projects director, Gunther Rath. Now listen to me. Rath has a box loaded with an unknown amount of the meteor as well as three hostages, including the Dalai Lama and the number two man at the Vatican. We’re off the coast of Iceland near a town called Grindavik. . . . It doesn’t matter how we got here. We’re here and we need some serious fucking help. Get on the horn and get us a chopper from the Keflavik airbase. Rath’s in a white stretch van and will probably be heading across the peninsula toward the Reykjavik road. I think it’s Route 41.”
Mercer interrupted. “Have him tell the pilot they’ll be on the access road to the Blue Lagoon thermal spa.”
Ira passed on the information, adding, “We’re going to try to get ground transportation and maintain pursuit. Rath has four or five men armed with pistols and subguns. He will not hesitate to fire . . . No! Don’t take the van from the air unless absolutely necessary. He’s got hostages, for Christ’s sake. You’ve got a trace on this line, so call me back at this number when you have Air Force cooperation.” He snapped off the cell phone. “He had a million questions that don’t need to be answered until this shit’s over.”
“How long to get a chopper?” They couldn’t afford a delay. Rath would be miles ahead by the time they stole a vehicle of their own and took up the chase again.
“Only fifteen minutes. Military’s been on alert since I stopped checking in.”
Klaus Raeder clambered up the steep steps from the Riva’s cabin. “She should be fine. The knot on her head is bleeding a bit, but I don’t think her skull is cracked.”
Every time the speedboat drifted toward shore with the rising tide, a burst of machine gun fire erupted from the dock and Mercer jammed the boat into reverse and hauled them out of range again. They used the time to strip out of the restricting wet suits. Wind cut through the clothing but adrenaline insulated them from the chilling effects. Had Grindavik been more than a clutch of white clapboard structures, he would have beached the Riva farther away and tried to flank the fugitives. But there was nothing on either side of the village except miles of barren desolation.
On the dock, Gunther Rath raged at his men. He’d been ensured that there was no way anyone could follow them from the Sea Empress and yet evidence to the contrary lurked a few hundred yards off shore. Granted, even he couldn’t have predicted Mercer would attempt the dangerous open-ocean crossing in such a small boat, but if he’d known about the Riva speedboats in the Jet Ski garage he would have ordered their hulls smashed too.
The petrified fishermen had almost maneuvered the two-hundred-pound golden box into the back of the van. Once it was secure, Rath planned to leave one gunman on the dock to hold Mercer at bay while they made their escape. He needed a half hour to reach Keflavik Airport, where they could trade the hostages for a jet to get away from Iceland.
“Come on!” he shouted and cuffed one of the fishermen. The man staggered and the box fell heavily into the cargo area of the van, rocking its suspension.
Without thought or mercy, Rath pulled his automatic pistol from where it was jammed into his belt and shot two of the fishermen. Two others leapt onto their boat and hid from view and the fifth jumped into the water. “Load up,” he snarled, gesturing at the three hostages with the smoking gun. Mutely, they climbed into the van, the Dalai Lama giving him a look as if he understood what demons drove Rath to murder so callously. Tommy Joe Farquar, while sobered by the long boat ride, simply allowed himself to be maneuvered, too stunned by what happened to his wife to offer any kind of resistance. Cardinal Peretti did nothing to hide his contempt.
“Willie, I want you to stay on the dock,” Rath ordered the youngest of his men. “Keep that boat from landing as long as you can. Buy us thirty minutes and get yourself out of here. Stay away from the Geo-Research office in Reykjavik and get word to the Party’s office in Hamburg. They’ll know how to contact me and we’ll extract you in a couple of days.”
“Ja wohl!” the young neo-Nazi replied, proud to be able to serve his cause.
Greta kept her pistol on the hostages as she entered the van through the side door, reveling in the smell of testosterone and fear filling the cab. She was near a sexual peak and the pressure of her clothing against her breasts sent ripples of energy through her body. Her faith in Gunther was so absolute that she knew they would make it away.
With Dieter behind the wheel and Rath in the passenger seat, the van started rolling down the dock. Once it was on the road, they accelerated quickly. The airport was just thirty miles away.
Frustration filled Mercer as the hostages boarded the van for a ride he doubted any would survive. As soon as the vehicle disappeared into the quiet town, he started for the dock and only realized Rath had left behind a picket when the water around the Riva exploded and bits of her forward deck blew away in bright slivers of precious wood. He cranked the wheel while Ira and Raeder returned fire. The gunman on the dock had cover behind a stack of heavy steel fish traps, and nothing short of a missile would dislodge him.
“I’m going to beach down the coast and we’ll run back to town to find a car,” he shouted over the engines.
Before he could execute his plan, the gunman suddenly staggered out from his hide, his hands smeared red where they clutched his stomach. The sound of a rifle reached the men on the water a second later, and they all saw a puff of smoke blow from the bridge of the fishing boat tied to the dock. The neo-Nazi looked up to where the shot had come from, and the back of his head erupted as the rifle the fishermen used for sharks blew his brains all over the dock.
Mercer didn’t waste a second. He took them in under nearly full power, not caring that he scrubbed off speed using the side of the $300,000 Riva against the dock. Ira vaulted up to the concrete quay with a line and cinched it tight. Raeder came next and then Mercer, now holding a submachine gun and a Beretta pistol. Two Icelanders stood on the bridge of the boat, their deeply weathered faces and suspicious eyes never leaving the three men. The third survivor of the group had just reached the rocky beach and began walking back to the dock.
“There’s a woman in the cabin.” Mercer pointed at the Riva, hoping that these men spoke English like most Icelanders. “She’s near hypothermic and needs a doctor for a concussion.” The fishermen said nothing. The old bolt-action rifle was leveled at Mercer’s head. “The men who killed your friends dumped her in the sea. We need a car to go after them.”
The wind whistled through the fishing boat’s rigging.
“If you won’t help us, at least don’t stop us,” Mercer pleaded.
The man holding the shark rifle let the barrel fall until it was pointed at the deck of his boat. “How long the woman in the water?”
“Five minutes, maybe eight.”
Gunfights and cold murder were beyond what these men knew. A person sacrificed to the sea was a danger they could understand. “The two men they kill. My cousins,” the captain of the boat said and reached into his pocket. He tossed a wad of keys onto the dock at Mercer’s feet. “You know killing. You kill them. I know sea. I will help woman.” He raised his hand toward the town. “Blue Volvo in front of Vsjomannastofan Restaurant.”
Mercer didn’t thank them. They wouldn’t expect it and he didn’t have the time. He scooped up the keys and raced off the dock, confident that Ira and Klaus would keep up. He was stopping for nothing until Rath was dead.
The Volvo was a beaten four door, rust smeared and so often repaired that little of its original paint remained. The interior reeked of pipe smoke and the seat covers were so shredded they showed more foam padding than black vinyl. The engine belched and snorted and barely settled down when he forced the transmission into first gear with a painful grind. Mercer’s Heckler & Koch was across his lap. Ira’s window refused to roll down, so he smashed it out with his machine pistol.
The road twisted out of town, following the vagaries of the volcanic terrain. As their speed approached sixty, the bald tires and mist-slick macadam tried to throw them in the ditches bordering each curve. Mercer wished he had his Jag right now. They’d be doing a hundred without a chirp from the wheels. Still, he pushed the old Volvo harder, drifting through corners with quick touches of brake and gas, his hand working the stick without regard to the gears’ worthless synchronizers.
In the distance, he could see steam plumes from the Svartsengi power plant rising into the gray dawn like clouds struggling from the black landscape. What he couldn’t see was a white van driving as recklessly as he was. At the end of this road was a branch east to Reykjavik or west to the international airport and Keflavik. Each route held promise for fugitives, and Mercer needed to be close enough to see where Rath was heading.
“Any sign of that chopper?” he asked. The Volvo briefly lifted on two wheels as its tires screamed through a tight bend.
“Ceiling’s only about five hundred feet,” Ira said, referring to the low cloud cover that hung from the tallest peaks like muslin. “We won’t see it until we pass under it.”
The road leveled out and straightened as they neared the geothermal generating station and the adjacent Blue Lagoon spa. A trio of hundred-foot cooling towers rose from the lava field like slender rockets on a moonscape, their tops wreathed in steam. The rest of the sprawling facility was hidden in a dip in the topography. A half mile ahead was the turn for the plant and spa—and just beyond that was the van. Mercer’s jaw tightened. Then he realized something was wrong. The van wasn’t in his lane, it was in the opposite. It wasn’t heading away from them. It was coming closer!
Pandora's Curse Page 43
