Deep Fire Rising

by Du Brul, Jack

  Grant me six months, please, he thought as Tisa proudly gave her answer. “Five weeks.”

  Mercer went numb. Five weeks? It wasn’t possible. Tisa couldn’t have cut it so close. She’d said all along that she wanted to warn him with plenty of time. Five weeks was as useless as five minutes. The volcano could erupt in five seconds for all the good he could do with the time she’d given him.

  Still on his knees next to the bed, he deflated and fell into Tisa. The greatest calamity in human history was about to unfold and he no longer had the strength to care. His blank stare turned Tisa’s self-satisfaction into dismay, then fear. She grabbed for his hand. “That’s enough time, isn’t it? You can evacuate the islands and warn people living along the coasts.”

  Mercer raked his fingers through his hair. His skin prickled and he felt like he was going to vomit. He swallowed a mouthful of watery saliva. He looked into Tisa’s eyes. Below her alarm he could see vestiges of her pride that she’d defied the Order to give the world a warning. She’d never thought beyond the warning, what was involved once people knew La Palma was about to erupt. The Order had cast a dismal shadow over her entire life and she’d thought she’d escaped it by divulging her secrets to him. She’d freed herself and now he had to put her in a prison of guilt from which there would be no liberation.

  Even before he spoke, she could sense it. Her entire body began to tremble. Mercer would have given anything, his own life even, to spare her from learning her warning did no good.

  “When the volcano erupts, one side of it is going to crash into the ocean. The waves it creates are going to wash across the Atlantic, destroying most of southern Europe and America’s east coast. Those areas are home to a hundred million people. They can’t be evacuated because there’s no place to put them. And even if they did move away from the shores in time, there would be nothing left for them to return to. They would be permanent refugees. There’s no way to feed and house them. Rather than all of them being killed in one catastrophe, they’d die over time, slowly succumbing to disease, starvation, and the breakdown of social order.

  Tisa had begun to hyperventilate. He stroked her head. “You only learned about the eruption a few months ago, right?” She nodded and tried to speak but gave only a low keen. “Even that isn’t enough time. It would take at least a year for any workable plan to take shape. A couple of extra weeks wouldn’t have made the slightest difference. You can’t blame yourself for something you weren’t aware of. Although I know you will. You’re a lot like me.”

  Sykes had given Mercer and Tisa a few minutes alone at the side of the bed. He cleared his throat to get their attention. “I’m sorry to do this, Miss Nguyen, but we have to get out of here. We still have to find a way to pass your information to the admiral.”

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said flatly.

  “Excuse me?”

  Mercer got to his feet and crossed to where Sykes and his men waited by the secret exit. “We only have five weeks before La Palma blows.”

  “What? Jesus! It’s going to take two just to trek out of the valley.”

  “I know.”

  Sykes thought about that for a minute. “My orders were to get that information to Lasko. It makes me no never mind if the answer’s five weeks or ten minutes.” He yanked the Velcro flap off his watch to check the time. “It’s oh four hundred. Once we get to the surface, we can rest up until noon and then start for Nepal. I’ve got a feeling the secret’s out about this place and pretty soon the Chinese army will come swarming.”

  Mercer nodded. “No matter how bad a mass evacuation is going to be, it’s the best we can do. We need to give Ira every extra second we can. We might want to consider splitting up. I’m in no shape for a trek over the Himalayas. The wound in my back isn’t as bad as it feels but it is going to slow me down.”

  “That’s not a good idea.”

  “Booker, every extra minute you give Admiral Lasko means an additional thousand lives saved. I’m going to hold you up.”

  Sykes said nothing but it was clear he knew Mercer was right. His men, though exhausted by the firefight, were in peak physical condition. They could do the trek out of China in half the time if they didn’t need to worry about Mercer. “What about you two?”

  “I think Tisa should go with you. Maybe I can convince her. I’d follow you as soon as I was ready.”

  “And if the Chinese show up before then?”

  “It’s a risk I have to take.”

  Sykes laughed. “I still haven’t figured out if you’re brave or an idiot.”

  “Sometimes there isn’t much of a difference.”

  “Hoo-yah.”

  Mercer returned to Tisa’s side, dropping to his knees next to her. His back had stiffened and the movement opened the scab. Warm blood trickled into the waistband of his fatigues. “Captain Sykes and his men are going to run for the border. They can make it a lot quicker without me. I want you to go with them. You know these mountains. They need you as a guide.”

  She sniffed. “I’m not leaving you. I can talk to some of the villagers. A couple of them can get Sykes to Nepal. You and I will go together when you’re strong enough.”

  “Tisa, I—”

  “This is an argument you aren’t going to win, so don’t bother fighting it. I’m staying with you.”

  “There’s a good chance the Chinese are going to find Rinpoche-La. The fire could have been spotted by a helicopter patrol.”

  “Mercer, you forget I grew up here. I know where all the hiding places are. I can keep you safe if they come.”

  Just like Sykes knew Mercer was right about leaving him behind, Mercer knew Tisa was correct now. “You’re pretty remarkable, you know that?”

  She touched his face. “So are you. Would you ask Captain Sykes if one of his men could carry my father. I want to see he gets a proper burial.”

  Mercer was about to volunteer for the duty himself, but he was in no condition even if her father weighed no more than ninety pounds. “They’d be honored, I’m sure.”

  Sykes kept point as they returned to the oracle chamber in case they encountered pockets of resistance. The oracle had demolished itself. The outer sheath was split in dozens of places, and much of it had fallen off the machine so now it resembled a shattered eggshell. The mechanisms inside were twisted into unrecognizable shapes. Pipes carrying superheated steam that powered the oracle spewed jets of vapor that were quickly filling the lofty chamber. The walls of the cavern ran with condensation and the temperature had climbed past one twenty. The huge space was becoming a scalding sauna.

  Tisa paused at the base of the ruined machine. “Good,” she said after a moment. “I’m glad it’s gone.”

  “I can understand how you feel,” Mercer agreed. “The temptation to abuse its power is just too great. It’s a testament to your Order that it wasn’t subverted long before now.”

  The hidden entrance that Tisa had found as a child lay on the far side of the cavern. It took forty minutes just to locate it and a further two hours to negotiate the twisting tunnels. She didn’t remember the exact route to the surface and led them down countless dead-end branches.

  They came out in a cave high atop a craggy bluff midway between the village and the monastery. The sun was just rising, a pale wash that barely penetrated the valley. The air was cold and laced with the heavy smell of burned wood. Nothing remained of the monastery except a few upright support timbers and a smoking fifty-foot mound of debris.

  There were maybe two hundred huts in the village clustered around a central square. From their vantage it appeared the people were packing up to leave. They too understood that the fire would eventually attract attention. Their simple life of supporting the monks who tended the oracle was over. Several of the wood buildings were aflame. The villagers would leave nothing for the army when they came.

  “Are they loyal to your father or your brother?” Mercer asked.

  Tisa was helping position her father’s bo
dy for when they came back to get him. “The Lama. I doubt any of them know Luc tried to take over the Order.”

  “So they’ll help us?”

  “I believe so.”

  Sykes shot Grumpy and Happy a look to tell them to stay alert as they descended the trail to the valley floor.

  They were halfway to the village when the eerie morning silence was shattered. The narrow confines of the valley masked the approach of the helicopters until they burst over the rim. There were three of them, two huge Russian-made Hind-D gunships and a French-built Aerospeciale Gazelle in civilian colors. Laboring at the high altitude, the three helos were still as nimble as dragonflies.

  Mercer and his party were caught in the open. The nearest cover was a hundred yards away and one of the Hinds was thundering straight for them. The other swooped low over the village, its multiple missile racks and chin-mounted machine cannon at the ready.

  The Delta commandos had dropped flat at the first sign of the choppers and watched their approach through their gunsights—a purely reflexive action since the 5.56-millimeter rounds from the M-4s were useless against the heavily armored Hind. Mercer and Tisa remained on their feet. After a moment, Sykes and his men realized the futility of their position and also got up, holding their weapons low against their bodies in a nonthreatening pose. There was no place to run and no way to fight their way out.

  “How did they get here so fast?” Grumpy shouted over the helo’s deafening roar, his clothes and hair rippling under the onslaught of the blades’ downdraft.

  “No idea,” Mercer said, keeping his eyes fixed on the pilot hovering twenty feet above him.

  The other Hind wheeled away from the village. With the first gunship providing cover, the second chopper flew within thirty yards of the team and settled on its landing wheels. A side door crashed open and eight Chinese soldiers outfitted for cold-weather combat jumped to the ground. Each carried China’s type-87 assault rifles, a 5.8-millimeter bull-pup design that was so new that only the country’s special forces had been issued them.

  Sykes, Grumpy and Happy slowly unslung their M-4s and let them drop to the ground, keeping their hands in the air. The leader of the Chinese commandos made a gesture with the barrel of his rifle for the team to step away from their weapons.

  “What’s going to happen?” Tisa asked.

  Sykes spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Four armed Americans and a Chinese national caught in a secret valley that housed an ancient monastery the government had not known about? I suspect they’ll congratulate us on our discovery. Then shoot us.”

  The Chinese made no further threatening moves, not that they needed to. There was nothing Mercer or his people could do. The words “dead to rights” ran through Mercer’s head.

  With the Americans covered by soldiers on the ground, the first Hind reared away to make room for the Gazelle. The elegant copter was more befitting an executive helipad atop a skyscraper than these rough surroundings, but like the Hinds it had been modified for high-altitude duty. As soon as the skids took the craft’s weight, a soldier in the copilot’s seat leapt out and opened the rear door.

  Two men stepped to the ground. One was Chinese, a middle-aged man wearing a greatcoat and general’s stars on his cap. The other was a Westerner wearing a blue suit and polished loafers, as if he hadn’t been prepared for the flight. His only concession to the frigid temperature was a garish ski jacket festooned with colorful lift tickets.

  The Gazelle’s turbine spooled down and relative quiet returned to the valley.

  The general stepped ahead of the civilian until he was standing in front of the team. He looked each up and down as though they were soldiers on parade. He paid particular attention to Tisa, though his appraisal was more respectful than sexual. He finally got to Mercer.

  “I suspect you are Dr. Philip Mercer?” The general’s English was passable. His voice grated from a lifetime of harsh unfiltered cigarettes, one of which he lit with a brass windproof lighter. The smoke blew back into his face, forcing him to squint.

  Mercer kept his expression neutral. “That’s correct.”

  “I am General Fan Ji. By order of the chairman of the politburo, I am placing you and your people under arrest for espionage. You have already been found guilty and your punishment has been determined. Immediate execution.”

  Overhead, a hawk screamed.

  “If the guy in the suit’s my lawyer, tell him I won’t take the plea bargain.”

  The general’s smile revealed yellow uneven teeth. “A joke, yes? One of your American sarcasms?”

  “It’s called gallows humor.”

  “Ah, like from your western movies. The man is not your lawyer, Dr. Mercer. He is Hans Bremmer, the German chargé d’affaires from Katmandu, the highest-ranking diplomat we could find on short notice.”

  “Is he here to make sure our blindfolds meet the specifications laid out in the Geneva Convention?”

  “More sarcasm?”

  “Impertinence.”

  “No matter. He is here because the politburo has also decided that your sentence is to be commuted. You are to be flown to the border and released. However if you or any of the others return to the People’s Republic, your death sentence will be reinstated and you will be executed.”

  “I don’t—”

  Bremmer came forward. He was in his mid-thirties, with sandy blond hair and the healthy glow of someone who enjoyed the outdoors. He held his hand out to Mercer. “I apologize for this but to secure China’s cooperation, they insisted on your arrest before I was allowed to get you out. I’m sure you understand that diplomatic protocols must be maintained.”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “The situation on the island of La Palma has changed. Your government has been in contact with the Chinese since shortly after you took off from Diego Garcia. I guess you were under radio blackout. I wasn’t cleared for those types of operational details.”

  “What’s happening on La Palma?”

  “I’m sorry, Doctor. I don’t know.” Behind the diplomat, the Chinese soldiers were transferring fuel from drums carried in the hold of the Hind gunship to the Gazelle. “My ambassador ordered me to meet General Ji at the border and accompany him to this location. I am to fly you and your team to Katmandu. An American aircraft will be waiting to take you from there to the Canary Islands. I understand there’s a plan being discussed that requires your expertise.”

  Mercer, Tisa and Sykes exchanged an identical look of disbelief. A few minutes earlier they were facing a death sentence, before that a weeks-long hike to civilization, and before that the understanding that nothing could prevent the impending cataclysm. Mercer shook off his surprise and pumped Bremmer’s hand again, this time with much more feeling. “What the hell are we waiting for?”

  They were airborne ten minutes later, leaving behind the smoldering remains of the monastery and a thousand hapless villagers who were being rounded up by the Chinese.

  “What will happen to them?” Mercer asked Tisa as she stared out the Gazelle’s window long after they lifted out of the valley.

  “They will kill some. Others will be jailed. The rest will be relocated, doubtlessly far from each other.” She looked at him with the same bottomless sorrow she’d shown him so many times before. “The people of Rinpoche-La avoided the Chinese occupation for more than half a century. I guess that’s something to be grateful for.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said lamely.

  “It’s not your fault.” She took his hand, then added so he couldn’t hear, “It is mine.”

  EN ROUTE TO LA PALMA

  The aircraft waiting for Mercer in Katmandu was a Citation executive jet on loan to the government from India’s defense ministry. The plane’s interior was as opulent as a rajah’s palace. The stains Mercer’s uniform left on the picked silk cushions were likely permanent. Unfortunately, the aircraft’s regular passengers were Sikhs and did not drink alcohol. The galley produced a hearty breakfast and
aromatic coffee but not the shot of booze he was dying to lace it with.

  Because the Citation was crammed with every conceivable communications device, he had very little time to enjoy his meal before he was on a video conference call with Ira Lasko and a team of scientists stationed in Washington and others already on La Palma. The Delta commandos were stretched in the plane’s rear bunks and Tisa was curled in the seat next to Mercer, asleep.

  “I think we’re ready to get started,” Ira said as the last participants acknowledged they had video and audio feeds. “For those of you who don’t know him, I want to introduce Dr. Philip Mercer, the president’s special science advisor and the man who first alerted us to the potential eruption along the Cumbre Vieja.”

  Mercer recognized a couple of the scientists, mostly geologists he’d met over the years, as well as Dr. Briana Marie. He greeted them by name, heard the names of the others and promptly forgot them.

  “Mercer, first of all, bring me up to speed. Then I’ll fill you in on what’s been happening on our end.”

  “The only pertinent fact we need to deal with is that the eruption will occur in five weeks, on the eighteenth to be exact.”

  The eight faces on the split computer screen reacted to the news with a gamut of expressions, from disbelief to fear to anger. Then as one they began to talk and debate.

  “Admiral Lasko,” one of them, a stentorian volcanologist from the Smithsonian, clamored over the swelling tide of objections. “You indicated we had months of buildup before the event. Five weeks is not enough time.”

  “It’s going to take five weeks just to determine where to bore the blast holes,” another protested.

  “We might as well issue the evacuation order now,” a third, wearing a paisley bow tie, sniveled.

  “Ladies, gentlemen, please,” Lasko repeated until the scientists quieted. “Mercer, are you sure about the date?”

  “As sure as I can be, Admiral.” Mercer maintained a professional distance from Ira until they could speak privately. “It came from the same source as the Santorini prediction.”