Vulcan's Forge

by Jack Du Brul

  Quintana’s office was small, but on a ship which housed more than 5000 men, space was at a premium. The walls were covered in cheap paneling and the carpet on the floor was thin but a definite upgrade from the steel passageways. Quintana’s desk was wooden, standard government issue. In fact, it reminded Mercer of his own desk at the USGS. Since he believed that a clean desk was the sign of a sick mind, he assumed Quintana was indeed touched. The only items on the desk were a lamp, bolted to its surface, and a black, three-line telephone.

  “The head is through that curtain,” Quintana pointed. “You can leave your flight suit in there.”

  “Thanks.” Mercer smiled his gratitude and headed for the bathroom.

  A few minutes later he was seated in front of the commander sipping the coffee that Quintana had thoughtfully poured.

  “The captain would have met you himself, Dr. Mercer, but he really doesn’t like you boys in the CIA. Quite frankly, I don’t like you, either.” The distaste in Quintana’s voice was hard edged.

  “I’m glad we have that cleared up,” Mercer replied with a grin. “I don’t like spies either.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought you’re with . . .”

  “The CIA,” Mercer finished his thought. “No, I’m with the USGS.”

  “I’ve never heard of it,” Quintana said cautiously.

  “The United States Geological Survey, Commander Quintana,” Mercer said with a smile. “I’m a mining engineer.”

  “It’s bad enough using a navy jet to transport civilians, but this is ridiculous,” Quintana said acidly. “You’re just an engineer. What the hell is this all about, Dr. Mercer?”

  The commander’s arrogant attitude triggered Mercer’s temper. “Don’t act as if you had to pay for that flight yourself, Quintana, all right? I’m on a mission so far over your head, the people involved read like a who’s who, and I don’t recall any of them giving you permission to act like some simpering prima donna. As far as I’m concerned, your ship is just an airport where I’m changing planes, so stuff your holier-than-thou attitude, I’m really not in the mood.” Mercer wouldn’t normally have been that short with Quintana, but the tension was building within him and he needed an outlet. Besides, the commander was acting like a prick. “Your job is to get me to the assault ship Inchon, nothing more.”

  Quintana’s eyes narrowed in rancor as Mercer spoke. “Fine, Dr. Mercer. It’s 0430 now, first light in another two hours or so. A helicopter will transfer you over to Inchon then.”

  “That’ll be fine. In the meantime where can I get something to eat?”

  Quintana stood, his anger locked behind clenched teeth. “I’ll take you to the officers’ mess.”

  “By the way, tell the captain that Admiral Morrison sends his regards,” Mercer said lightly as they left the office. The casual remark about the chairman of the Joint Chiefs was puerile, he knew, but the bulging veins on Quintana’s forehead gave him a fiendish pleasure.

  Honolulu

  Evad Lurbud always woke angry, even after a short nap. Anger was an integral part of him as much as his dark eyes or his powerful arms. It was an unfocused emotion, wild, yet so very important to him. It was the only thing that gave his life any meaning. If he could somehow vent just a little of that anger every day, then he knew he was alive.

  As he swung his legs off the cot, he wondered what he would be like if he ever woke and found all the anger had finally left him. It had been his constant companion since the days of brutal beatings by his father and the intimate touches of his mother and aunt. He guessed if he ever woke without it he would put a bullet into his forehead.

  The other bunks in the dim safehouse were occupied by his team. The bed above Lurbud sagged under the weight of Sergeant Demanov. Their snores were almost deafening.

  Because the team had arrived only a day before Lurbud, he knew it was prudent to give the men a chance to acclimate to the Hawaiian time zone. The men had to be fresh this evening when it was time to move out. He glanced at his watch—6:30 p.m. He had been in Hawaii a little over twenty-four hours and now, as he stretched his muscles, he knew he was ready.

  In one corner of the safehouse, two members of the team were playing endless hands of gin, trying in vain to alleviate the boredom between their scheduled two-hour reports to the John Dory. When they saw Lurbud looking at them, they came to immediate attention. Lurbud smiled and waved them back to their seats. He turned back to the bunks of sleeping soldiers.

  “Gentlemen,” he said softly.

  With fluid grace, the men woke and slid out of their beds, coming to attention automatically. Their response was so instantaneous that even Lurbud was impressed. Sergeant Demanov broke rank and strode across the room to Evad. He was naked, yet showed no self-consciousness. His chunky body was covered in a thick pelt of hair.

  “Not bad, eh?” Demanov asked, grabbing a cigarette and lighter from a table.

  “Are you talking about your troops or your shriveled manhood?”

  Demanov let out a deep belly laugh, smoke shooting from his nostrils in twin jets. “Best fucking troops in the world, they are.”

  Lurbud smiled. “I think this time even you are not exaggerating, Dimitri. I want them ready to move out by 1930 hours. It will take us at least an hour after that to get into position around Ohnishi’s house.”

  “Have you given any thought to my plan?”

  “Yes, this afternoon when the rest of you were sleeping. I don’t think it would be a good idea to split our forces. We don’t have the communications gear to coordinate a simultaneous attack against Ohnishi and Kenji. We will hit them in turn. With luck, Kenji will be with his master and the second operation won’t be necessary. It is critical that we maintain our scheduled contact with the John Dory. If she’s not waiting for us when we reach the coast, well, you know the consequences.”

  While Sergeant Demanov and his team checked the equipment and weapons that had been smuggled into the safehouse months earlier through the Russian embassy’s diplomatic pouch, Lurbud scanned the reports given to him in Cairo.

  Ohnishi’s mansion was protected by twenty guards, all of whom had military or police training and had attended numerous professional defense schools. These guards were better trained than most nations’ elite defense forces. Lurbud had no doubt that his troops could handle them, but there he would certainly lose men. Ohnishi was old, wheelchair bound, and frail. He would pose no difficulty once the guards had been eliminated.

  Kenji, on the other hand, was different. Lurbud had no plan of his house, no details of his security arrangements; even his personal details were sketchy. He was fifty-four years old, but the attached blurry photograph, though taken only a year earlier, showed a man who appeared twenty years younger. Kenji was a master of kendo, tae kwan do, and several martial arts that Lurbud had never even heard of.

  A note from the KGB compiler who had put the dossier together stated that Kenji had mastered the art of nonweapons. He could use simple household items to kill or maim. The note explained that a similarly trained assassin had once slit the throat of a Hungarian dissident with a sheet of paper torn from a London phone book.

  Lurbud sincerely hoped that they would catch Kenji at Ohnishi’s. Heading into an assassin’s lair without any tactical intelligence was tantamount to suicide.

  At 7:30, Lurbud and his men left the safe house after checking that they had left no incriminating items behind. Despite the curfew, they left the city unmolested in a van that had been stored in a garage nearby. If Honolulu survived the crisis, the only evidence that they had ever been there was an empty barracks-like room and an abandoned van, both rented by Ocean Freight and Cargo months earlier. And since the break-in at the New York offices, OF&C had ceased to exist.

  FORTY-FIVE miles away, the cooling breeze of evening was washing across Takahiro Ohnishi’s glass-and-steel mansion. Ohnishi, seated in his wheelchair on the open balcony high above the rolling lawns, nodded solemnly as Kenji explained the current situ
ation throughout Hawaii.

  “Though it has been four days since he was killed, many of the National Guard units still believe that their orders are still coming from David Takamora; they don’t know that Honolulu’s mayor is now dead. MacArthur Boulevard leading to Pearl Harbor is blockaded by students armed with hunting rifles and fully equipped guardsmen. The airport is now closed to all traffic and the buildings have been evacuated except for mercenary guards I hired. The runways are blocked with airport maintenance vehicles that won’t be moved without orders from either you or me.

  “The microwave relay stations are also closed and guarded and the main phone cables have been seized. Hawaii is essentially isolated.”

  “Has there been any resistance from the media?”

  “Yes,” Kenji replied, glancing at his watch. “The local heads of the networks are demanding some sort of interview with Takamora, preferably live, to calm the fears of the general population. One has threatened to start broadcasting reports about the violence to the mainland if Takamora doesn’t appear soon.”

  “How do you plan to deal with him?” Ohnishi did not sound too concerned.

  “As soon as he leaves his studio, I have an agent ready to take him out.”

  “Good. How violent are the streets right now?”

  “From my men stationed in the hospitals, it seems maybe two hundred dead, around five hundred injured so far. Most of these are random acts like the ones seen in Los Angeles in 1992. Gangs of youths beating innocent people, vendetta retributions between gang members, that sort of thing. Some of the victims are those we’ve specifically targeted. Of our list of three hundred possible threats, eighty-six are confirmed dead, but many more have probably been eliminated. I don’t have confirmation from our agents yet.”

  “It disturbs me that we have not heard from Suleiman about our arms shipment,” Ohnishi said suddenly.

  Kenji did not reply, but his gaze darted furtively to the face of his Rolex.

  “Those arms are supposed to be here in a few hours, and we don’t know what type of planes will be flying them in or the recognition codes the pilots will transmit. If we don’t get those codes, we can’t clear the runways.

  “We are approaching a critical point. Soon people will begin to lose their fervor and want the violence to end. We must get those weapons and the rest of our mercenaries. The President of the United States will respond soon, I’m sure. The forces at Pearl may be bottled up for now, but they can be unleashed very quickly indeed.”

  “The President wouldn’t dare order those troops to open fire. He’d be risking a sympathetic revolt on the mainland. Every ethnic minority in America would be behind us. Anarchy would reign in every town and street.”

  “He has other options, Kenji, an attack against me, for example. He knows of my involvement in this coup. He could target me alone and wait for the violence to die with me. Mobs like this only stay active with someone to control them. If we don’t stay in contact with our lieutenants around the islands, they will quickly lose their fire.”

  “True,” Kenji agreed, “and we must also think of Kerikov’s response.”

  “I don’t worry about him. His powers are severely limited.”

  “But the coup was his idea and was only supposed to happen on his orders. Surely he has a plan to stop it. We are jeopardizing his control of the volcano. He must have a way of protecting it in such a contingency.”

  Ohnishi smiled paternally. “You have always only thought of my protection, Kenji, and that is most admirable, but I believe that we are quite secure. There is no way Kerikov can stop us.”

  Kenji seemed relieved to hear his master’s confident tone. “What will we do when we can’t produce Takamora to lead the people?”

  “Senator Namura is currently hiding outside Washington, D.C. He was my choice to lead the coup if Takamora had refused, so he will become the new leader. He has already accepted the honor. One of my private jets will fly him here as soon as it’s safe for him to move.”

  “And Takamora’s death?”

  “We’ll blame the U.S. military. Don’t worry so, Kenji, all is working out well. Suleiman’s weapons will arrive along with mercenaries to augment your forces. Namura will probably be here within twenty-four hours to place a stamp of legitimacy on what we’ve started. Neither the President nor Kerikov will have the time or fortitude to launch any major opposition.”

  From the corner of one eye, Kenji noticed a dark figure dart across the lawn toward the main house. The first man was quickly followed by two more racing from the shadowed protection of the jungle. Kenji crossed his legs casually, belying the instinctive tightening of his muscles. His hand rested naturally against his ankle.

  “Maybe all contingencies have been thought of,” he remarked. “I never thought we would actually get this far. Just a few months ago, a coup in Hawaii seemed like such a far-fetched idea.”

  “It really wasn’t so outrageous even then. The state was ripe for it—racism and tension were building. We only heightened it with our acts and now orchestrate its crescendo.”

  The explosion wasn’t strong enough to shatter the thick glass skin of the mansion, but it did rattle the balcony and startle a flock of dark pelicans into flight across the vast lawn. Ohnishi whirled around in his wheelchair, scanning his surroundings for a frightened moment. When he turned to his faithful assistant, Kenji had already sprung to his feet. The snub-nosed revolver from his ankle holster was held firmly in his hand.

  The barrel was pointed directly between Ohnishi’s wide staring eyes. “Don’t move, old man,” Kenji sneered.

  Takahiro Ohnishi’s age-weakened bladder released into his trademark black Armani suit.

  The White House

  Staff Sergeant Harold Tompkins was about as nervous as a human being could get. He was on duty in the Situation Room when the video images from Pearl Harbor faded from the high-definition screen. He fiddled with the satellite feeds under the combined stares of the President, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the secretaries of State and Defense, and the directors of the CIA, NSA, and FBI.

  One moment the image of Pearl Harbor was crisp and vivid and the next, the screen had gone blank. Had this been a commercial transmission, a “Please stand by” sign would have flashed and those assembled gone off for snacks or to use the bathroom. But this was not a commercial transmission; Pearl Harbor had just come under attack when the image had faded and these men expected Tompkins to get the video feed back on line.

  “Anything?” Admiral C. Thomas Morrison asked.

  “No, sir, not yet,” Tompkins managed to squeak.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  The air was thick in the twenty-by-twenty-foot vault buried four floors below the White House. A blue pall of smoke swirled from the cigarettes that these men would never admit to in public. Even the President, where he sat hunched at the head of the large refractory table, had a Marlboro hanging from the corner of his pensive mouth.

  “If my wife sees me like this, she’s going to kill me,” he said to lighten the mood. The answering laughter had a nervous edge.

  Despite the cigarettes, the hands made twitchy by endless cups of coffee and the grizzled stubble that covered their faces, these men were still as sharp as they’d been when called to the situation room twelve hours earlier. An aide entered from the single elevator and walked straight to Sam Becker, the head of the National Security Agency.

  “Sir, here’s the latest from the KH-11 flyby.” He handed over a sheaf of infrared photographs taken by an orbiting spy satellite. “Just like the photos taken from the SR-1 Wraith, I’m afraid the analysts couldn’t make much out of them. The heat signature from the volcano makes it impossible to locate any other thermal images.”

  “Damn,” Becker said, leafing through the photos. “If my men didn’t see a Russian nuclear sub, I don’t see how Mercer could have. The NSA has the best photo interp people in the world. I hope you’re right about him, Dick.”

  Henna looked
up from the fan of papers spread before him. “I’ve got no guarantees, but so far the man hasn’t disappointed. He told me over the phone that he had the John Dory pinpointed at the volcano site.”

  “If that’s true, why didn’t we just order him to tell us where that was?” asked Paul Barnes.

  “Christ, Paul, you met him. Do you think he would have told us anything?”

  “I agree with Dick on this one,” the President remarked, rubbing his bloodshot eyes. “The deft touch is what’s needed here, not a heavy hand.”

  “I think I have it, sirs,” Tompkins interrupted. The men turned to the screen.

  An image came into focus, a handsome Oriental man dressed in jungle camouflage. Behind him, marines were firing at an unseen enemy from the protection of sandbag bunkers. Two Abrams tanks sat squarely on a wide expanse of asphalt, their turrets pointed toward the main gates of Pearl Harbor. Their 120mm cannons were silent, but machine-gun fire spat from their coaxially mounted Brownings. It was a macabre scene because there was no audio.

  Tompkins pressed a few more buttons on his console and the clamor of battle assaulted the room. The ferocity was stunning.

  “Repeat your message, Colonel. We lost your transmission for a few minutes,” Morrison said.

  Over the sound of the battle, words matched the officer’s moving lips. “. . . about ten minutes ago, sir.”

  “Colonel Shinzo, this is Admiral Morrison, please repeat,” the admiral asked a second time.

  “Sir, about ten minutes ago all hell broke loose. Without warning, the guardsmen and locals outside the gate opened fire. Small arms mostly, but the guardsmen do have rocket launchers and TOW antitank missiles. They are not making any move for an assault yet, but it’s only a matter of time, sir.”

  Colonel Shinzo shouted something incomprehensible and ducked behind a sandbag wall. The camera must have been mounted on a tripod because it remained steady as a grenade detonated no more than twenty yards away. The image faded for a moment, then returned. Shinzo was again standing in view.