Vulcan's Forge

by Jack Du Brul

  “Are you another of Kerikov’s errand boys?” Kenji asked mildly, cracking a hardened foot against Mercer’s ribs.

  Mercer fell against the wall, clutching at the rough stucco to keep himself on his feet. His chest felt as if it had been worked over with a baseball bat.

  “What are you talking about?” he gasped.

  A fist slammed into Mercer’s stomach, doubling him over into Kenji’s knee, which shot upward into his face. Kenji spun away as Mercer went sprawling onto the flagstone floor. “Did Kerikov send you with those assassins at Ohnishi’s house?”

  Mercer retched painfully, a trace of blood in the rancid bile that shot from his mouth and nose. Kenji’s questions had thrown him off as much as the brutal hits he’d taken. Dazed by the punches and kicks, he wasn’t sure he had heard correctly. “I’m not with your Russian allies.”

  Kenji kicked again, but Mercer managed to block the shot with his arm. Kenji was thrown off balance by the move, giving Mercer precious seconds to regain his feet.

  “Where are your Russian sponsors, anyway?” Mercer asked through gritted teeth as Kenji stalked around him.

  Kenji gave a derisive laugh. “As dead as Ohnishi.”

  He threw a combination punch at Mercer, the first blow knocking against Mercer’s skull and the other cracking two more ribs. Despite the pain, Mercer managed a counterpunch, but his fist felt like it merely bounced off the muscled cords of Kenji’s throat.

  “Like Ohnishi, the Russians were pawns to be used and discarded by myself and my true allies.”

  “The Koreans?” Mercer wheezed, understanding a bit.

  “They have backed me for months in a double-cross against both Ivan Kerikov and Ohnishi.” Kenji wasn’t even breathing hard while Mercer was sucking in great draughts of air. “We triggered Ohnishi and Kerikov’s pathetic coup and shifted American interest away from the volcano and its mineral wealth. To Kerikov, the coup was a means to an end; for Ohnishi, it represents a lifelong dream. To us, it was simply a diversion.”

  “You piggybacked onto Kerikov’s plan, took his idea and his agents for yourselves. Then it was you who rescued Tish Talbot from the Ocean Seeker?” Mercer had to keep Kenji talking in a vain hope that a SEAL was still alive to save him.

  “As ordered by Kerikov for the benefit of Valery Borodin, I believe. But she has no use in my plan, so my allies hired some assassins to execute her in Washington.”

  “Not quite.” Mercer managed a wry smile. “She is very much alive and well.”

  “You?”

  “Yes.”

  “No matter, I’ll have her killed later on.”

  “The fuck you will,” Mercer said, hatred giving him a reckless courage.

  He dove at Kenji, slamming a shoulder into his chest. Both men flew backward, pounding into the wall hard enough to break away some of the plaster. Mercer recovered an instant before Kenji and fired three heavy punches into the older man’s muscled torso. Kenji grunted with each blow, but still had the strength to pick Mercer off his feet and toss him away. Mercer scrambled up as quickly as he could, his cracked ribs keeping him slightly doubled over.

  “I thought killing Ohnishi would give me the greatest pleasure, but now I realize your death will be even better,” Kenji said menacingly as he came for Mercer.

  Kenji’s kick contained every ounce of strength in his body. It was a killing blow. Mercer bent backward the instant Kenji’s foot rose, ignoring the pain that exploded in his chest with the movement. As he straightened back up, his hand reached for the Gerber knife suspended from his harness.

  The steel pommel of the knife cracked against Kenji’s foot with all the strength Mercer had left. The blow shattered the delicate bones as though they were glass, checking Kenji’s attack. Mercer whipped the knife upward in a last desperate lunge. The tempered steel parted Kenji’s abdominal muscles, sliced through the tough membrane of his diaphragm, and punctured his left lung.

  Kenji reeled back, yanking the knife from Mercer’s fingers. He stared down at the blade sticking from his chest with crazed and panicked eyes.

  “You,” he sputtered, blood spraying with his word.

  Mercer had fallen to the floor after his attack. He was too weak to rise, so when Kenji pulled the knife from his body and turned the bloody blade at him, he had no defense. The savagery was draining from Kenji as fast as his life’s blood, but he still had enough time to kill his last victim. Mercer lay sprawled like a temple sacrifice, arms at his sides, legs slightly parted. He could not avoid the blade plunging toward his chest.

  The kinetic energy of the first bullet arrested Kenji’s downward thrust and nearly stood him upright. The second shot tore another hole through his chest, shredding his heart and damaged lung. The final shot blew out the back of his skull.

  Mercer twisted around in time to see one of the SEALs, bloody and battered, fall to the floor. A full sixty seconds passed before Mercer recovered enough to get up and check on the wounded SEAL. When he turned him onto his back, Mercer was staggered. The man who had saved his life wasn’t a SEAL at all.

  Through a mask of dried and caked blood the unknown man opened his one undamaged eye. “Spesivo.”

  The use of Russian shocked Mercer for a second, then he understood.

  “Kerikov.”

  “No.” The man coughed up a bloody ball of phlegm and spat it on the floor. “I am Evad Lurbud, major in the KGB, Department Seven, and Ivan Kerikov’s assistant. Thank you for allowing me to kill that pig.”

  “Where is Kerikov?” Mercer demanded sharply.

  “Last I knew, he was headed toward Europe. Now, who knows? You are a member of the American Special Forces, yes?”

  “I’m the guy who blew your entire operation.”

  Lurbud chuckled painfully. “I doubt that. No man could stop every contingency we laid down.”

  “I bet your men in New York wouldn’t agree with you.”

  “That was you?”

  Mercer smiled modestly. “It was nothing really. But it did lead to all sorts of interesting things, little things like disguised submarines named John Dory, man-made volcanoes, and long-dead scientists who do great Lazarus impressions.”

  Mercer could tell that Lurbud was truly shocked to see how much he knew.

  “You guys made just enough small errors for me to figure out your little caper.” Mercer ticked of each item on a finger. “When Tish Talbot was pulled aboard the John Dory, she saw the design on her stack and heard her crew speaking Russian. Then you used an OF&C ship for her official rescue, which made it easy to find the connection to the Grandam Phoenix, the ship you bastards started the whole operation with. And you didn’t watch Valery Borodin closely enough, since he managed to send off the telegram that got me involved. I guess you can ultimately blame him for your failure. Without that telegram, no one would have ever suspected a thing.

  “Too bad that your agents here in Hawaii turned on you. It’s wise, when picking allies, to be certain of their true motivations. Ohnishi wanted an independent country more than he wanted the volcano, and Kenji, he must have had his reasons for bringing in those Koreans.” Mercer had retrieved his weapons and now had the MP-5 pointed at Lurbud’s chest.

  “You can’t kill me.”

  “Why in the hell not?” Mercer replied casually.

  “If I don’t radio the John Dory in an hour and a half, she will launch a nuclear missile at the volcano.”

  Mercer noticed the black radio pack wedged under Lurbud’s body. He jerked it out by its nylon strap and held it at arm’s length. Letting the Hechler & Koch dangle by its sling, he drew the Beretta, then calmly fired two rounds through the armored plastic shell. The radio sparked and smoked for a moment as it shorted completely.

  He dropped the radio next to Lurbud’s head. “Any other bargaining chips?”

  “I am a major in the KGB. I am worth much to the CIA.”

  “Assuming I work for the CIA must be an infectious disease. You’re the third or fourth person t
o think that. Too bad.” Mercer aimed his pistol. “I’m a geologist,” he said as he fired the last round from the Beretta. “Not a spy.”

  Mercer wearily started back down the gallery toward the main entrance of the house. He believed Lurbud about the nuclear threat from the John Dory. If Kenji and his Korean allies had somehow double-crossed Kerikov, he had no doubt that the Russian spymaster would reap some form of revenge. Destroying the volcano and the bikinium made the best sense. The hour and a half time limit would make things extremely tight.

  He was just passing the last transomed window before the living room when a figure crashed through the remaining glass and fragile mullions. Mercer dove to the side, twisting in the air to bring the MP-5 up to bear. The attacker hit the floor, rolled, and came to his knees in an instant, his gun aimed at Mercer’s head. Mercer was a fraction of a second too slow—the man had him pinned.

  “I’m sorry if I scared you, Dr. Mercer, I wasn’t sure who you were from outside,” the leader of the SEALs apologized and lowered his weapon.

  “Jesus,” Mercer breathed, his heart slamming against his rib cage. “I was too petrified to be scared.”

  The SEAL’s uniform was so tattered it was nearly unrecognizable. A wound in his shoulder bled freely. His face was streaked with dirt and dried blood. Despite the pain he must have felt, his eyes were impassive.

  “What’s the situation?” Mercer asked.

  “All the guards are dead, the building is secure, but I lost my entire squad.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Mercer said, getting to his feet.

  “It’s our duty, sir.”

  “Radio the chopper and have the pilot land in the backyard. I’ve got some more work tonight.”

  While the SEAL made the call, Mercer wandered through the dining room and into the kitchen. Ignoring the two bodies on the floor, he searched through the three large refrigerators until he found something decent to drink. Though Kirin beer was far from his favorite, he gulped two bottles in record time. A minute later he was in the backyard, skirting the edge of the pool.

  Jill Tzu had left the shed when the firing had stopped and was hiding near the guest house when she saw Mercer striding across the back lawn. Behind him, the main house burned in several places, the fiery light making his features appear sharp and uncompromising.

  The Sea King thundered in over the grounds, its blinding searchlight playing across the estate as Eddie Rice searched for a clear place to set her down.

  Reaching Jill, Mercer took her into his arms. She clung to him tightly, unaware that Mercer’s ribs grated against each other as she squeezed. “Everything is all right now. You’re safe. Kenji’s dead.” She nuzzled her head into his shoulder as if she were a small creature burrowing into the earth for protection. “Jill, I have to leave you here with one of my men for a while.”

  Jill looked up into his face with beautiful but frightened eyes. “Can’t you take me with you?”

  “I can’t. There’s still a lot for me to finish,” Mercer said, then kissed her tenderly. “That’s to let you know I would if I could—and that I’m coming back.”

  Mercer untangled her arms from around his body and nodded to the SEAL. “Try to contact the Inchon somehow, maybe through Pearl Harbor, and have another team sent here. Don’t trust any local authorities. Also, guard her with your life.”

  He jogged to the waiting chopper and vaulted into its hold. Eddie lifted off immediately, sweeping the chopper over the dark jungle.

  In the cockpit, Mercer threw on a helmet, keying the mike immediately. “Head north as fast as this bitch can move.”

  Eddie banked the chopper, then turned to Mercer, grinning, “I don’t think you’re gay, so that must have been a woman you were kissing just then. Where the hell did you find a woman in the middle of that fight?”

  “You just gotta know where to look.” Mercer chuckled in the murky light of the cockpit. He opened the last two beers he’d taken from the kitchen and handed one to Eddie.

  “Not when I’m flying,” the pilot demurred.

  “I’m not with the FAA or the navy; don’t worry about it.”

  “Good point,” Eddie replied, and took a long swallow.

  “Did those SEALs have any dive equipment on board?”

  “Yeah. Like you asked, I went through their stuff while I was waiting. There’s air tanks, regulators, masks, the works.”

  “Good.” Mercer pulled a slip of paper from his pants pocket and handed it to Rice.

  “What’s this?”

  “The Loran numbers of a Russian submarine about to start a nuclear war.” Mercer had mentally calculated the position of the John Dory from the infrared pictures provided by the National Security Agency. “Punch them in and follow them.”

  “Problem,” Eddie said after keying the Loran numbers into the Sea King’s navigational computer. “We have enough fuel to get out there, but not enough for the return flight.”

  “There’s a good chance there won’t be a return flight.”

  “Why’d I know you’d say that?” Eddie muttered.

  AN hour later the chopper was thundering over the ocean swells, a driving rain pelting the windscreen of the Sea King like grenade fragments. The wipers were all but useless. Occasionally, a bolt of lightning arced through the sky, casting a brilliant incandescence into the cockpit.

  Mercer sat quietly in a borrowed navy wet suit, content to let Eddie Rice do his job. It had been torture getting himself into the constricting neoprene, but now the tightness around his chest eased the pain from his cracked ribs. Unconsciously, his hand polished the barrel of his machine pistol as if he were at home working on a piece of railroad track. Hundreds of questions roiled in his mind, questions about Kenji, the Koreans, Kerikov, and Lurbud, but he could not allow himself to become distracted by them. He had to remain completely focused on the present and let the past sort itself out later.

  He and Eddie were racing against an imminent nuclear launch. Failing meant not only their deaths but also the loss of one of man’s greatest discoveries. The benefits of the bikinium were too great to let slip away now, and on a personal level, Mercer wouldn’t allow himself to fail; he’d suffered too much in the past week to not see this completed successfully.

  “What’s our ETA?”

  “About another ten minutes.”

  Mercer glanced at the luminous dial of his Tag Heuer. “According to Lurbud’s threat, the John Dory launches in thirty.”

  “I’m already ten knots over the safety limits of this bird in these conditions.”

  “Make it twenty knots over and that Mai Tai you wanted will be on me.”

  “Christ, I could use it now,” Eddie replied miserably as he torqued more power out of the turbofans.

  The chopper rocked and jerked in the storm as Rice fought to keep her below the John Dory’s radar. Her rounded nose nearly skimmed the white spume atop the waves.

  “Bingo,” Eddie nearly shouted a minute later. “Target dead ahead.”

  “What’s the range?”

  “One mile,” Eddie said, glancing again at the neon blue radar screen.

  “That’s got to be her. Take us down. I’ll swim the rest of the way. When I jump out, take off again, but be ready to pick me up when that ship blows. Approach from the stern and make sure no one else gets aboard except me and the man I’ll have with me.”

  “I told you, we don’t have enough fuel to get back to Hawaii.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Someone will figure out we’re here eventually.” Mercer didn’t want to tell Eddie that if the SEAL failed to get through to Pearl Harbor, the President would launch his own nuclear strike against the volcano in just three hours.

  “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  “It’s the main reason I can’t get life insurance.”

  The Sea King’s engines wound down and the rotors whipped the sea into a salty mist as Rice brought her in for a water landing. Mercer waited at the open doorway of the chopper, sw
eating in the wet suit, the two large air tanks bowing his back. Around his waist he wore a leaded belt and a waterproof bag containing some other items borrowed from the SEALs. A razor-sharp dive knife was strapped to his right calf. The whole time Mercer had struggled into the gear, he had wracked his brain trying to recall everything that Spook had taught him about diving all those years ago in that flooded New York mine.

  As soon as the rounded underhull of the Sea King touched the churned-up water, Mercer bit down on his mouthpiece, sucked in a breath of cool air, and launched himself out of the chopper.

  The water was warmer than he expected. At first Mercer sank below the surface, then he adjusted his buoyancy by detaching one of the lead weights. He took a bearing from the compass on his wrist and, still underwater, started swimming toward the John Dory.

  Mercer had made two potentially fatal assumptions when he launched himself from the Sea King. One was that the ship they had picked up on radar was, in fact, the John Dory. There was a definite possibility that the craft ahead of him was an entirely different ship, one innocently steaming through the area. The second assumption concerned the hull of the Soviet submarine/ freighter. If there was no gap between the submarine’s hull and the fake sides of the freighter, he would have no way of gaining access to the vessel. If he was wrong about either guess, he would be dead long before the Russian missile detonated.

  After a few minutes of swimming, Mercer felt a vibration through the water—the pounding engines of a large ship.

  Adding a little air to the compensator, he surfaced on the crest of a swell. Through the rain-lashed night, he made out the running lights of a large freighter about two hundred yards ahead of him. His breath hissed through the regulator, rain and spume splattered against his mask.

  He ducked back under the surface and continued to doggedly swim toward the John Dory. The backs of his legs were beginning to ache and his breathing was labored.