by Jack Du Brul
The physics behind Mercer’s plan was simple enough but he wouldn’t know how well they’d carried out the execution until they were sealed inside the tent. A thousand things could go wrong, the worst being a miscalculation about the height of the hills and the top of the tree Lauren was climbing like an electrical lineman. If the mouth of the hose wasn’t high enough, CO would drain down into the tent, replacing the air, and smothering the three of them. He had enough tape to keep the tent airtight but there was nothing they could do if the hose was too low.
Mercer found a dozen candles in Gary’s duffel and set a few of them in a row running down to the shore of the lake, lighting them with one of the lighters Gary had also cached. The candle he placed closest to the lake wouldn’t even light. The next one placed at a slightly higher elevation burned for just a few seconds before it starved for air. The gas was creeping ever closer. Captain Vanik was still at the top of the tree, tying off the thick length of rubber hose.
“Come on, Lauren.” Another candle was snuffed. The CO was just a few feet below the tent.
“Almost got it.” A third candle went dark.
The top of the volcano was filling faster than he thought possible. He could see Miguel start to pant as his lungs sought oxygen. “Now, Lauren.”
As agile as a cat, she scrambled down the nearly branch-less tree. Miguel’s eyes were droopy as Mercer slid him into the tent, his young body succumbing to the narcotic effect of the gas much quicker than those of the adults. Before following Lauren into their cocoon, Mercer threw in a few items from Gary’s duffel and sealed them all inside by taping the plastic-covered flaps of the tent fly. The long day of exploration and the quick exposure to CO had already put Miguel into a deep sleep.
Mercer grabbed the end of the hose dangling through the tight slit he’d cut at the top of the tent. He crimped the rubber around the hand pump’s suction inlet. The pump itself resembled a cheap accordion with a one-way valve at its outlet. Mercer gave it a few squeezes, allowing the air it sucked from the top of the tree to blow across his face. So far, so good. While the tent was designed to hold three people, he still had to crawl over Lauren and Miguel to apply more layers of tape to where the hose entered the roof. He also needed to patch a few small holes. The remaining candles outside blinked out one by one, coils of smoke from their wicks barely discernible through the multiple layers of plastic. With surprising speed, the tent began to sag around its frame as the heavier CO pressed against the lower internal air pressure.
Knowing he’d need to maintain a rhythm for untold hours, Mercer began to work the pump. Once he’d matched pressures, he cut a tiny hole in the tent’s floor to prevent the air becoming fouled by their own breath. As the caldera filled to its maximum level, he’d need to adjust the hole in the floor to maintain equilibrium. After fifteen tense minutes he was satisfied that everything appeared set. By fighting the natural instinct to run, he’d just saved their lives. Not that they were safe by any stretch, but for a few moments he would savor the victory. He looked at Lauren and couldn’t help but grin.
She smiled back. “I saw all this stuff sitting in the boat when we came to the island and I still never would have thought of this in a million years.” She regarded him for a second. “When those explosives went off you’d already figured out a solution. I mean instantly. How?”
Asking Mercer that was the same as asking him to explain his entire thought process, something he himself couldn’t properly define. “I suppose it’s a memory trick.”
Lauren’s eyes widened. “You’ve done this before?”
Mercer laughed. “No, but I’ve read or seen something that triggered this idea. Maybe it was a story about a bathysphere, a biography of William Beebe or something. I honestly don’t know.” But he actually did know. Mercer could even recall the cover of the old National Geographic magazine he’d read as a boy that detailed the inventor of the bathysphere. He’d always considered his near-photographic memory to be his greatest single asset. “When the depth charges blew,” he continued, “I knew how the CO would build up and knew we needed an airtight bubble and a way to supply oxygen. The rest was just putting it all together.”
“Whatever trick you used, I’m grateful. I would have tried to row away.” She chuckled. “Fight my way out rather than think. And I thought I was smarter than that.”
The pump forced enough air into the tent so that Mercer and Lauren didn’t need to keep quiet to conserve oxygen as time trickled by. They also kept a candle lit as an early warning in case an unseen rip allowed CO into the tent. The single steady glow helped to dispel the horror of their predicament and the darkness that enveloped the mountaintop as the sun completed its arc.
At first their conversation was strained by the thought that a few millimeters of plastic were all that protected them from a swift death. As the first hours went by, they became more comfortable with their situation, and each other. Yet their conversation rarely strayed far from what had happened to Gary Barber and Ruben. The theories they batted around gave them more insight into each other than who was behind the helicopter attack. Mercer especially was impressed with what he learned. Lauren Vanik was filled with a sense of duty he thought people no longer had.
Two hours before midnight, the sound of bubbling gas finally stopped. For hours CO had vented explosively from the lake and the noise had become such a constant backdrop that it took several seconds for them to realize it had ceased. In the quiet that followed, Mercer suggested that Lauren finally get some sleep. She agreed only after he promised he would wake her in a few hours so she could spell him at the pump.
Before curling up, her voice took on an uncomfortable edge. “Ah, Mercer, we have a slight problem.”
“H’m?”
“We can go without food or water until morning, but I’ve got to, you know, pee, and I don’t think I’ll be able to hold it.”
“Me too,” Miguel called. He must have been awake for a while, waiting for the adults to bring up a problem he’d been struggling with for some time.
From the supplies Mercer had tossed into the tent, he dug around until he found a large steel saucepan and a lid. Lauren eyed him warily. “Don’t tell me a fine Southern woman such as yourself has never used a chamber pot?”
“I admit Thomasville, Georgia, isn’t the biggest place in the world, but we’ve had indoor plumbing for years and years.” She was still reluctant to take the pan from him.
Mercer turned his back and called to Miguel to sit on his lap. To save Lauren further embarrassment, he whispered in the boy’s ear and they began belting out “Row Row Row Your Boat” at the top of their lungs. The off-key singing covered the metallic purr of Lauren using the pot.
“Thanks, boys,” she shouted over the cacophony after she’d rebuttoned the fly of her fatigues.
Once they’d all used the pan and its lid was held tight with tape, Lauren and Miguel drifted to sleep, leaving Mercer to continue with the pump. With his stomach rumbling from hunger, it was easy to stay awake through the long night. When his arms became too leaden to work, he pressed the bellows with his foot, tapping out a steady rhythm that kept the dark tent safe. His promised wake-up call to Lauren came and went and still he worked. It was only as a faint stroke from the still-distant dawn brushed their intimate cocoon that he roused her.
“It’s past five,” she complained, checking the man’s Rolex she wore on the inside of her wrist. “You were supposed to get me three hours ago.”
“I know. Sorry. I needed the time to think more than I needed to sleep. I can tell from the top of the trees that the wind’s shifted direction. Whatever gas that’s still pooled on the lake’s surface should get blown down the waterfall in a few minutes.”
“Thank God.”
That last quarter hour until Mercer felt it was safe was by far the worst. Fatigue and hunger made Miguel cranky and his petulant whine grated on the headache that had formed behind Mercer’s eyes. Lauren’s attempts to quiet him were futile. Worse
for Mercer, his stomach continued to roil and he began to think it had nothing to do with a lack of food.
The first careful lungful of air tasted sweet when Mercer stuck his nose out of a small cut in the tent, bringing home full force how rancid the interior of their chrysalis had become. With a slash, he enlarged the hole and stepped out. His muscles had cramped from so much sitting. When he stretched his back a sharp stab of pain lanced his side.
“I’d say of the three of us, only you, Lauren, managed to come out of our cocoon looking as good as a butterfly.”
She smiled at his sweet attempt at a compliment. “I’ll give you moth, but not butterfly.”
For a few minutes, each took care of their body’s needs in the first measure of privacy they’d enjoyed in eleven hours and then met back at the skiff for the long row to shore.
The descent to the River of Ruin went much quicker than their trip up to the lake because Mercer carried Miguel for most of the way. Lauren felt that Mercer was trying to make up for the time they’d lost trapped on the island.
She could understand his motivation. The bulk of her military career had been spent in duties that had no set end or beginning. Peacekeeping in the Balkans had taken a year of her life and given back nothing. No sense of accomplishment, no sense of closure. And as a drug liaison in Panama, she felt her job was even more pointless. The Balkans could settle into some sort of peaceful coexistence eventually, but as long as there was despair on America’s streets, drugs would flow north to temporarily dull the pain.
The burned-out liaison officer she’d replaced at the embassy had used the Dutch boy and dike analogy when she’d taken the billet. After her first months on the job she realized that what she did was even more futile than that because no one really wanted the drug problem to end. It kept the disenfranchised medicated, it swelled the budgets of police forces and it gave the government a legitimate excuse to funnel billions of dollars into shaky Third World countries.
Seeing the way Mercer bound down the mountain with Miguel clinging to his back, Lauren could tell that whatever challenge he faced now would have an end. God knew what was really behind the helicopter attack or the attempted mugging in Paris, and yet he eagerly ran down a mountain to face it. That kind of confidence only came from a long record of successes. His victories cost him—she heard that in his voice when he talked about his parents—and still he did not balk from the fight. Her measure of him continued to go up.
She decided right then that she would help Mercer learn what was going on. This was far beyond the scope of her mission, but with such a small American presence in Panama, she felt she had a higher duty to discover the truth. Her instincts, like his, told her that Ruben’s murder and the mutilations were the beginning of something much larger. The drug-related homicides in La Palma she’d been investigating were one more spoke on a wheel of violence without end. Finding that killer would change nothing. In Mercer she saw the chance to end a mission with the kind of fulfillment the rest of her career had always denied her.
Half an hour after reaching the base of the waterfall, they were under way again. Mercer drove Ruben’s cousin’s motorboat down the river at full throttle, barely giving Gary’s camp a glance as they thundered past. He drove in a tight-lipped silence that Miguel and Lauren respected. When they reached El Real at noon, he avoided talking with any of the locals who came down to the wooden pier to meet them. The burial of so many people in the village had raised questions that he didn’t seem willing to answer. Again, Lauren and Miguel followed quietly as he led them to the airstrip where the plane he’d rented for Maria Barber had returned. The pilot was leaning on the wing.
“Give me a second alone,” Mercer asked his companions and climbed onto the plane. Once he and the pilot were in the cockpit, Mercer asked him to have a radio call patched into the phone system so he could call the United States. It took ten minutes and three calls to track down Harry White at Tiny’s Bar.
“Harry, I can’t talk long. Did Tiny get the package I sent to the bar from France?”
“He was hoping you’d include some good European pornography. Imagine his disappointment.”
“Funny. Listen, I don’t have time to go into it now, but I need you to fly down here with that journal.”
“Now you’re the one who’s being funny.”
“No bullshit, Harry. I need that journal and I can’t risk it getting lost by some shipping company. There’s a spare credit card in the center drawer of my desk. Take it and get yourself a plane ticket.” Mercer asked the pilot to name the best hotel in Panama City. “Book a room at the Hotel Caesar Park under your name in case I can’t meet you at the airport.”
“Why can’t you meet me at the airport?”
“Please, Harry, don’t ask me any questions. Just get down here with that journal.”
The seriousness in Mercer’s voice dried up whatever quip Harry had been planning. “You in trouble?”
“Yeah, buddy. I am.”
“I’ll stop by my place for my passport and will be there as quick as I can. For your sake, I’ll even fly coach.”
Mercer crawled out of the plane. The immeasurable relief that Harry would help sapped the last of his resolve. He’d been fighting his body since last night and could do so no longer. He allowed himself to tumble from the aircraft’s wing and barely had time to turn his head before he became violently ill. Lauren was fifty yards away buying Miguel some bananas from a fruit vendor who’d followed them from town. The retching sound drew her attention and she raced to Mercer’s side. His face was streaked with sweat and his lips had gone pale. His hands shook, and when he allowed the muscles in his face to go slack, his teeth chattered as if he were freezing. Lauren placed a hand on his forehead. His fever seemed to scald her hand.
“Jesus, are you okay? What’s the matter?”
“One second,” Mercer said weakly. He turned his head again and vomited even more copiously. His whole body shook with the fever. He tried to stand but couldn’t straighten because of the cramps. “A few days ago I went swimming in the Paris sewer. I think I picked up a few swim buddies. Dysentery’s my guess.”
“We need to get you to a hospital.”
“We’ve got an hour before my lower G.I. lets loose, so let’s go.”
Miguel sat next to the pilot on the six-passenger plane but the excitement of his first flight couldn’t overcome his worry for Mercer, who sat in the rearmost seat with his face buried in a plastic trash bag. Very soon the smell made him sick too, leaving Lauren to care for two patients, one of whom was dehydrating before her eyes as his body fought the bacterial infection. Mercer shook as if palsied, his skin already appearing desiccated and his eyes haunted.
For him, the flight was both instantaneous and longer than a nonstop from L.A. to Sydney. His misery was like a black hole that warped time. In the moments between his wrenching heaves and the spikes in abdominal agony, he did manage to tell Lauren about Harry White’s arrival in Panama. Other than that the trip was a blur.
The pilot stopped his grumbling about ruined upholstery long enough to radio ahead so an ambulance was parked at the General Aviation ramp when they landed.
Mercer’s struggle to keep his bowels from voiding ended as a pair of orderlies maneuvered him onto the waiting gurney. Too wasted to care he’d fouled himself, he wasn’t even aware that Lauren and Miguel climbed into the ambulance with him, nor did he realize a saline drip was inserted to replace the fluids his body evacuated at an alarming rate. The only thing he held on to as he slid toward the darkness was that a previous bout of dysentery had taught him the worst was yet to come.
Panama City, Panama
It was the alien feeling of crisp sheets that Mercer first noticed when he regained consciousness. He hadn’t lain on a bed since . . . he thought it was Utah . . . no, Paris . . . but how many days ago? The question remained unanswered as sensations overloaded his body again. He slept.
The next time he came awake, he felt a presence ne
arby but couldn’t turn his head or even open his eyes. He smelled something pleasant, a combination of flowers and a sweet odor like mint, before the darkness overwhelmed him.
It wasn’t until the third time he remembered coming awake that he could crank open his eyes. From the fog, he saw a square of light to his left. He thought it might be a window, but he couldn’t make out details. A noise drew his attention to his right. A shape. A figure. He tried to wet his mouth with his tongue.
He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling weaker than he could ever remember. When he opened them again, the shape had moved closer and resolved into a man wearing a dazzling white suit, with a solid red tie and elegant straw Panama hat. The eyes were kindly blue and his skin glowed from the light streaming into the room. Mercer’s vision was too blurry for him to tell if he knew the man. It was only when the mysterious person spoke that Mercer felt the jolt of recognition.
“How’s it going, Mercer?” Normally the voice was like gravel pouring through a rusted steel chute, but Harry White asked the question so gently that Mercer wasn’t sure it was him.
“That you, Harry?”
“In the flesh, so to speak,” Harry replied, lighting a cigarette from the tip of the one he was just finishing.
“You aren’t supposed to smoke in a hospital,” Mercer said after Harry gave him a sip of water through a straw. In the dim background, he could hear the sound of harps being played.
“We’re not in a hospital, but I’ll put it out.” Harry nonchalantly ground his Chesterfield into the palm of his hand.
“Jesus,” Mercer rasped when White dropped the crushed cigarette on the floor.
Harry looked at his watch. “Not for a few minutes.”
Confused by that statement, Mercer tried to shake the fuzziness from his mind. His body seemed to be floating freely under the sheets. “Did you use my credit card to buy the suit? You look like a million bucks.”