by Jack Du Brul
“He didn’t make it. Please, Jim, just pull me up. I’ll tell you everything.”
“Ah, okay.”
“And Jim. Find Spirit Williams and keep an eye on her.”
“Why?”
“She wears wooden shoes.” Mercer hoped McKenzie knew the apocryphal story about the origins of the word “sabotage,” which supposedly came from a revolt during the Industrial Revolution in which the French workers threw their wooden shoes, or sabots, into factory machinery to shut it down.
He continued upward like a fish on the end of two hundred feet of line. As soon as he surfaced he’d have them recover the lifting cradle or maybe just cut the thing loose. It didn’t matter.
At fifty feet the water was still as black and ominous as it had been near the vent. The blanket of ash cut all the sunlight and particles seemed to fill the sea. When he reached thirty feet he felt the tow cable slow. The workers were preparing for the delicate operation of slinging him onto the service boat. Mercer still couldn’t tell where the surface began, let alone see the Angel’s outline.
Finally at fifteen feet he could see the vessel’s deep keel and the shadow of something next to the ship, but he lost his vantage as he was drawn ever closer to safety.
He was pulled through an eight-foot-thick layer of volcanic ash and mud, a cloying mess that slowed his progress for a moment as the crane operator adjusted to the added weight. He double-checked that the hydraulic pressure on the claw gripping the cable was at maximum. He chuckled at the irony if the suit fell free. To get this far he’d destroyed the motors, and if he did plummet back into the water he’d have no way to save himself.
His head broke the surface and mud oozed off the suit, obscuring his view entirely. Even when it cleared, he could barely see through his damaged visor. The crane pulled him higher still and started to swing him over the transom. The suit’s grip on the cable felt secure.
He could just make out Jim McKenzie on the deck and Spirit and what looked like Charlie, or at least someone with their head swathed in bandages. There was no sign of Tisa.
His feet came level with the stern railing when he realized Jim, Spirit and Charlie were arguing. And then he saw that there was another boat tied up to the Petromax Angel. He looked down. He didn’t recognize the man operating the winch.
“Mercer!” Tisa’s scream burst over the communications line.
“Tisa?” he shouted back.
She burst from the control van, two men giving chase. Both appeared armed, but Mercer couldn’t tell. His faceplate was too distorted.
Jesus, the Angel had been hijacked. They had just been waiting for the chance. Mercer understood too that they’d recovered the ADS so they could return to the vent and remove the bomb.
One of the men reached Tisa and cut off her charge with a flying tackle. Both tumbled across the deck. The second man rushed to her side. Mercer recognized the way he moved, so much like her lithe rhythm. Luc Nguyen.
Trapped in the armored suit dangling from the crane just inside the railing, there was nothing Mercer could do as Luc helped Tisa to her feet and tenderly wiped her hair off her face.
“Come on, Jim,” Mercer shouted, though he couldn’t be heard. “Do something!”
And Jim did. The argument reached a fever pitch. Charlie and Spirit were screaming. From under his untucked shirt, McKenzie pulled a snub-nosed revolver and pumped three shots into Charlie’s stomach. The bullets were hollow points and the spray of blood from his back was a hovering cloud of carmine mist.
Even inside the NewtSuit, Mercer could hear the triple blasts. He had no idea what he’d just witnessed. Spirit dropped to her knees next to her dead husband. Tisa appeared catatonic. Luc Nguyen left his sister’s side and padded over to Jim. The two embraced like long-separated friends.
The moment their backs were to her, Spirit leapt from where she’d fallen and raced at Mercer, her face a twisted mask of anguish and determination. One of the terrorists who’d boarded the Angel had reactions as quick as hers. He had his rifle up to his shoulder by the time she’d covered ten of the twenty feet separating her from Mercer.
Her strides were impossibly long, like those of a gazelle. She managed two more before the rifle cracked. The shot tore a chunk out of her shoulder and still she came.
The next bullet hit her square in the back and exploded out her stomach, carrying enough velocity to ricochet off the NewtSuit. Her mouth flew open and still she ran, born by momentum until she slammed into the ADS.
Spirit’s impetus pendulumed the five-hundred-pound suit over the rail with her clinging to its body. As soon as it cleared the ship, she mouthed, “Let go.”
At the apex of the swing, Mercer didn’t hesitate. He released the lock holding his pincer closed and the suit plummeted from the ship. Spirit lost her grip as they plunged into the water. Mercer fell through the layer of ash and dropped like a stone into the inky blackness, leaving Spirit to die in the ooze.
He was too stunned for several seconds to do anything but ride the NewtSuit as it sank ever deeper. When he finally broke free of his daze and activated the motors to arrest his descent, he found they didn’t have the power. The battered ADS was out of trim and negatively buoyant.
The fall seemed to go on forever, an endless slow-motion journey into the depths. The NewtSuit could take the pressure of a thousand feet, but Mercer knew the ruined visor would implode long before that. According to his gauge he’d already sunk five hundred feet. He hadn’t forgotten that La Palma was one of the steepest islands in the world. Its submerged buttresses would likely be even sheerer. For all he knew there was a mile of water under his feet.
He passed through eight hundred feet, a tiny figure outlined in the glow of his own lamps. He had been sure Spirit was the saboteur. Her New Age philosophy fit perfectly with the Order’s beliefs, and she had had the opportunity on the Surveyor and here. After being with C.W. for so long, she’d have known how to tinker with an ADS. But what had clinched it for him was how she’d been dressed during the eruption. Moments earlier she’d been arguing with C.W. Mercer had heard them in their cabin. She had run out as soon as she’d heard the blast. Charlie was taking his time getting dressed. He’d already put on his jeans and shoes. Mercer had been certain that was when she’d hit him, to prevent him from making the dive.
But he knew now that wasn’t how it was. She really had just run out. It was Jim who’d gone in when Charlie was dressing and bashed him with something. Her comment about him not being man enough to use C.W.’s suit hadn’t been made in a panic when she’d realized she’d damaged the wrong one. It was a possessive expression of love for C.W. She’d lashed out because she did have feelings for Mercer and hated herself for it.
He checked the gauge. A thousand feet. Around him was nothing but darkness.
Goddamned Jim McKenzie. He’d had more than enough opportunity and an obvious motive if he was a member of the Order. He’d done just enough to gain Mercer’s confidence. He’d stayed close enough to the center of things to make himself indispensable. He’d planned this setup since his admission on the Surveyor about a rogue signal activating the tower.
“Damn!” Mercer shouted aloud. The suit had an emergency lift bag. C.W. had referred to it as the antichute, joking that parachutes slow your descent, the antichute reverses it.
Mercer fumbled with the control pad in his right arm, lifting the safety catch off the antichute’s release button. He hit the switch and shouted with relief as the sounds of the bag inflating over his head filled the helmet. His descent came to a gradual halt.
But that was it. He didn’t start rising as he should have.
“Come on.” He hit the button again. The bag had deployed as far as it would. He’d damaged the cylinder of gas when he’d smashed away the engine back in the vent. Like someone trapped in the basket of a runaway hot air balloon, he started drifting with the benthic currents.
“No. No way.” Mercer put everything out of his mind. He spooled up the few w
orking thrusters and took a compass bearing.
The Petromax Angel had been a mile from shore. Mercer factored in the angle of the undersea cliffs and estimated he was no more than a quarter mile from the island’s submerged flank. He checked the suit’s digital chronograph. He’d set the nuke thirty-two minutes ago, leaving him two hours and twenty-eight minutes before it detonated.
With the half-inflated bag acting as a sail, Mercer worked with the current as best he could and squeezed a half knot from the roughed-up ADS.
For the next thirty minutes Mercer wouldn’t let himself think about anything but keeping his body as still as possible and the pressure on the foot pedal constant, although thoughts of Tisa swirled at the periphery of his concentration.
The ash had yet to penetrate this deep, leaving Mercer almost fifteen feet of visibility even with his warped visor. The cliff seemed to build itself as he approached, first just a suggestion, then a solid segment and finally a towering wall that had no end. He reached out and touched one rocky projection, reassuring himself that it was real. Making it this far was a victory, but now the real work began. He checked his depth. He’d drifted down another two hundred feet, well past the suit’s limit.
The emergency bag afforded him almost neutral buoyancy, otherwise what he had in mind would have been impossible. He didn’t have the strength and the suit certainly didn’t have the flexibility. He jammed his foot against the cliff, searching for a toehold. Once he was reasonably stable he kicked upward, scrabbling along the rough stones for a place to grip with his pincer. His kick rose him eight feet but he fell back four until the claw found purchase.
He found another foothold and kicked upward again, gaining only six feet but losing nothing when his pincer closed around a narrow ribbon of ancient lava. Just two awkward lunges in the bulky suit already cramped his legs. Mercer checked his oxygen. He had plenty so he made the mix a bit richer, giving his muscles more of what they needed.
In short fits and starts Mercer scaled the cliff. Sometimes he’d gain ten feet with a single lurch; other times he’d lose five. It was frustrating and agonizing. His body ran with sweat and with his arms trapped in the suit he couldn’t wipe the salt from his eyes. His shoulders and thighs were on fire yet he steadily gained. And as he climbed higher the pressure on the gas in the lifting bag decreased. When it expanded it increased his buoyancy, making each halting leap that much easier.
After a half hour he had to rest. He could barely fill his lungs and his heartbeat was out of control, hammering so hard it was almost arrhythmic. His feet were sodden with the sweat that had pooled in the suit’s lower extremities.
Five minutes before he felt he could go on, Mercer leapt again, clambering to find a handhold for his mechanical claw. He didn’t dare look at his depth gauge. He didn’t want the disappointment of discovering he hadn’t climbed as far as he thought or the encouragement that he’d climbed farther. He continued his measured pace, taking the good jumps with the bad but always ascending.
He checked the time again and was dismayed to see another thirty minutes had passed. The surrounding water was still black, the cliff face as featureless. He hadn’t seen a single fish or aquatic plant. He couldn’t stop himself from looking at his depth.
Two hundred fifty feet.
He’d climbed almost a thousand in an hour, but his pace had slowed. Those final two hundred fifty feet would take an hour all by themselves. The damaged bag had expanded as far as it would twenty minutes ago so it wasn’t providing any additional lift. The rest would be up to him.
He kicked off again, gaining a dozen feet, but couldn’t find anything to grab on to. He started to fall away from the cliff and punched up the motors, thrusting the suit back into the mountain. His helmet hit with an ominously soft plink. He’d scratched a deep gouge into the faceplate. Tiny fissures grew off it like crystals under a microscope.
His foot connected with the rock and even before he was sure he had solid footing Mercer thrust himself upward, grabbed an outcrop and used just his arm to keep climbing.
More cracks appeared in his visor.
He found a rhythm, an exhausting series of movements that taxed him and the suit to the extremes of their capabilities. But he did not stop. And when he found a plateau that ran along the cliff in a shallow incline he bounced along it like Neil Armstrong had bunny-hopped on the moon, his boots kicking up gouts of mud with each heavy impact. His cracking visor pinked and tinged with every step.
At fifty feet the shelf petered out and he was tempted to set the emergency release that would open the suit and let him swim free. Instead he turned back to the cliff, methodically planted his foot and kicked upward.
Mercer didn’t sense daylight until he was twenty feet from the surface and his suit was being battered by wave action. It was time.
He found a secure perch on the cliff and locked the claw around a rock. He took a deep breath and in one sudden snap wrenched his left arm out of the suit’s sleeve. The pain of the near dislocation was like a knife under his shoulder blade and across the top of his back.
When the agony turned into numbness, he reached into the pocket of his overalls. By feel he flipped open his cell and dialed Ira’s direct line. He brought the phone as close as he could to his mouth. He was just shallow enough for the signal to bounce off one of the nearby cell towers.
“Ira, listen to me,” he shouted when the ringing stopped. “It’s Mercer.”
“Mercer? Where are you? You sound like you’re talking from the bottom of a barrel.”
“Close enough. The bomb is planted. It goes off in, shit, fifty minutes, but I have a problem. Luc Nguyen has taken over the Petromax Angel. They boarded from another boat that either came from the island or broke the quarantine. Jim McKenzie is part of his group. He’s the one that turned on the hydrate pump in the Pacific.”
“Where’s that ship now?”
“I assume they took off. I don’t know. I jumped — well, I was pushed overboard.”
“Are you on La Palma?”
“Not quite. I’m calling you from one of the diving suits. I’m about twenty feet under the surface.”
“What?”
“I don’t have time to explain it. Right now I’m directly above the nuke. You have to get a chopper off that Aegis cruiser you said was standing by.”
“It’s going to take a few minutes to coordinate.”
“I’m not going anywhere. In case we lose this signal I’m going to pop to the surface in exactly thirty minutes. Tell the pilot I’ll be the guy holding the cell phone. Can’t be too many of them around here.”
Ira smiled. “I’ll tell him the model in case there are more than one of you out there. Don’t worry, Mercer. We’re coming for you.”
Ira kept his line open, but as Mercer suspected he lost the signal a few minutes later and couldn’t get it back.
Now that he’d stopped climbing, he shivered in the suit, his sodden clothes and hair sticking to his body like a clammy skin. He played with the climate system but couldn’t get heat. All his exertion had nearly drained the suit’s batteries. He just stood slumped in the aluminum shell and waited for time to trickle by. He was too wasted to even worry about Tisa at the moment.
She’d said she loved him. It wasn’t an ambiguous moan at the height of passion. She’d said the words to his face. Mercer knew he’d get her back, if for no other reason than for him to tell her he loved her too.
When his deadline approached, he began to hyper-extend his lungs, building up oxygen to the point he felt he was going to pass out. Then he hit the emergency release located awkwardly along his right wrist where it couldn’t be accidentally activated.
The suit split along the back and filled in a rush of frigid water that momentarily pinned Mercer. He kicked free and stroked for the surface, allowing a trickle of air to escape his lips as he rose.
Ash formed a thick ceiling at the surface. He hit it and began to claw his way through, kicking frantically as mud closed
in around him. It was like struggling through quicksand. He fought and twisted and was certain he was sinking. His chest burned. There was no way to know if he was one inch or ten feet from the top.
He forced himself to calm and took even, measured strokes. The ash tried to draw him back into the depths but he refused to succumb until at last he shot out of the morass. His first breath drew a mouthful of dust that he coughed and spit back into the sea. He could barely keep his head above the quagmire, but it didn’t matter.
As soon as he’d surfaced, the sharp-eyed pilot of the Seahawk off the cruiser spotted him struggling in the otherwise placid curtain of debris. A few seconds later he had his chopper hovering over Mercer and a pararescue jumper ready to haul him aboard. A basket was lowered.
Mercer was able to use the undulating mass of ash and pumice as a springboard to roll himself into the basket, eliminating the need for the PJ to leap to what would have been a broken leg. Mercer was winched into the chopper even as the pilot opened the throttle. They had seventeen minutes to get clear of the blast and the electromagnetic pulse that would wreck the chopper’s avionics.
The PJ threw a blanket over Mercer’s shoulder. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” Mercer said unconvincingly. “I’m fine.”
“I think you’d better lay back until we get back to the ship.”
Mercer shrugged off the blanket. “I need to speak to the pilot.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir,” the burly PJ advised. “If you don’t mind my saying so, I’ve seen drowned rats who’d win a beauty contest over you.”
Mercer grabbed a headset from the bulkhead dividing the cockpit from the cargo hold. “Any chance you noticed a ship inside the cordon on your way to get me?”
ABOARD THE PETROMAX ANGEL EIGHTEEN MILES EAST OF LA PALMA
They’d come under the cover of the eruption and storm on a sleek powerboat they’d stolen in Santa Cruz. Luc had brought only three men with him, but he hadn’t needed more. The Angel carried a skeleton complement of twenty-five, and only a handful of others were aboard, including Jim McKenzie and his assistant, Ken Bowers, both of whom were armed, both of whom were part of the Order.
