Vulcan's forge m-1

by Jack Du Brul

“Oh, Jesus,” Tish moaned as Mercer led her past the desk. Pausing for an instant, he found an automatic pistol and a spare clip inside one of the dead men’s jackets. He held the weapon discreetly under his own coat and slipped the clip into a pocket.

  Mercer took Tish’s hand as they went down the stairs to the lobby. A quick scan of the faces there confirmed that the killer upstairs was indeed not alone. Three men stood just outside the automatic door while another trio peered at a glass-covered bulletin board, their eyes watching the room in its reflection.

  The fugitives turned away from the lobby. Mercer led Tish through a set of doors marked NO ADMITTANCE and out onto a loading dock. The man standing on the dock looked at Tish just a bit too critically, so Mercer smashed his knee into the man’s groin. If he was an innocent by-stander, where better to get treated for his injuries, and if he was an assistant to the assassin upstairs, screw him. Mercer and Tish ran to his car.

  The Jaguar V12 burst into life instantly. Mercer had hoped to get away without being seen, but two men were already running toward them from the loading dock. Mercer jammed the gearbox into drive and smoked the Pirelli tires pulling out onto the street. A few cars pounded their horns in anger and a pair of nurses jumped back to the sidewalk for safety. Three identical BMWs were already in pursuit as Mercer turned onto 23rd Street heading toward Washington Circle.

  Mercer took the car around the circle twice, trying to snarl his pursuers in traffic before tearing off down K Street. The maneuver gained him only a second or two.

  Mercer put the borrowed pistol, a Heckler and Koch VP-70, on his lap as he jinked around a Metrobus. The deadly 9mm German-made gun had eighteen rounds inside its wide grip.

  He clicked off the safety, then pressed the button that lowered his window. The sounds of the city whipped into the car. Mercer wished that he had taken the top down to give him better visibility, but there was nothing that he could do about that now.

  The first chase car was pulling up on Mercer’s left. The driver was intent on the road ahead, but the passenger had his eyes glued on Mercer. He threw a sardonic wave and pulled a Beretta model 12 into view. The little Italian submachine gun could fire a blanket of 9mm bullets at a rate of 550 a minute. Just as the man brought his weapon to bear, Mercer lifted his pistol over the windowsill and let loose.

  He fired as fast as he could. The first five rounds tore up the body of the gunman; his torso and head jumped at every impact. As he slumped over, the next five rounds pulverized the head of the driver. The BMW slowed and began to veer off the road. It careened off one of the huge trees that lined K Street and shot back into traffic. In the rearview mirror, Mercer saw the BMW fly into the other lane and slam into the front of a parked garbage truck. The windshield exploded outward as the two bodies smashed through it.

  Tish had turned almost white and kept biting her lower lip. Mercer took one hand off the wheel to grasp her reassuringly on the shoulder. He wished he could do more, but there were still two cars chasing them.

  Mercer ignored a red light as K Street turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue and so did the pursuers. They had just passed the World Bank Building when the first bullets smashed into the Jaguar. Tish slid to the floor and Mercer began weaving the car, but the bullets continued to find their mark.

  Traffic was getting thicker. Once Mercer was forced to stop completely but luckily the two BMWs were stuck several cars back. As they approached the busy intersection at 17th Street, with the Jag doing about forty mph, the light turned yellow. Mercer jammed the transmission into second ignoring the tachometer needle as it arced across the gauge, and mashed the gas pedal to the black-carpeted floorboards. The engine revs peaked with an earsplitting whine before Mercer eased the car back into drive. They passed the point of no return as the light changed to red and the mass of cars started down 17th Street like a steel avalanche.

  Mercer cut the car wide to the right, the tires squealing on the asphalt. Pedestrians dove out of the way as he took the car up onto the sidewalk for a few yards before veering back onto the road nearly in front of the White House. One BMW had tried to follow him, but had smashed into the thick concrete antitank barricades that protected the presidential residence. The other was stuck in traffic.

  Mercer stopped the Jag at the corner of Penn and 16th. “Take my wallet,” he said, handing it to Tish. “My address is on the license and there’s enough money for a cab.” He yanked the house key from the ring dangling in the ignition and handed it to her. “There’s a security panel to the right of the door. 36-22-34 will deactivate it. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Will you be okay?” Tish’s eyes were huge with fear.

  “Don’t worry, just go.” She nodded, then leapt out of the car and immediately blended with the flow of people on their lunch breaks.

  The moment the door slammed shut, Mercer took off down 16th Street, past the Hotel Washington. He cut back onto Pennsylvania in front of the Department of Commerce Building. He glimpsed the BMW in the rearview mirror. They were still following him, so he figured Tish was safe for now.

  The Willard Hotel and the Post Office Pavilion blurred past as Mercer used the power and control of the Jaguar to snake through the thick traffic. Suddenly he heard the unmistakable sound of automatic fire again. The first fusillade mangled the coachwork of the Jag and punctured the rear windscreen about a dozen times. The next burst blew out the left rear tire.

  The car flew out of control, the steering wheel like a slippery, living creature in Mercer’s hands. He knew the Jaguar was doomed. The car’s mad lurching had cleared the road quickly, and Mercer exploited this by driving into the oncoming lane, bouncing off stationary cars like a billiard ball. He finally came to a stop at the entrance of the Archive Metro station. In the relative silence following the crash, he could hear the fast approach of police sirens racing from all across downtown.

  Mercer jammed a fresh clip into the pistol and leapt from the car. He flew down the escalator, shouldering people aside as he raced toward the city’s modern subway system. Commuters gasped or complained as he pushed through the crowd and jumped the turnstile. The Metro guard in the glass booth was the last of his worries. As he reached the platform, Mercer was dismayed to see that the two sets of parallel tracks were empty and that there was not enough of a crowd to conceal him. He whirled around to see three men running toward him, weapons barely concealed under their jackets.

  The floor lights lining the near track began to flash, indicating that a train was about to arrive. The station began to rumble as the train approached, pushing a wall of air ahead of it. The far track was still clear. Mercer knew that if he boarded the train he would be cut down instantly — these men obviously had no compunctions about a public murder.

  The noise in the station reached a tactile level as the train burst from the tunnel in a whoosh of air and a squeal of brakes. Mercer’s pursuers were only twenty yards away and already one was reaching into his jacket for his weapon. Mercer had only one chance for escape and he took it without thought. He ran for the edge of the track and leapt, barely two yards in front of the oncoming train.

  The engineer blasted his horn and jammed on the brakes, but Mercer didn’t even notice. He was too intent on the ten-foot jump. If he overshot, he could fly into the next track, land on the current rail, electrocute himself and save his attackers the trouble.

  He landed safely on the low platform between the two tracks. As his body rocked forward from the momentum, he was stunned to see another train rushing toward him from the opposite direction. He windmilled his arms, trying to regain his balance, and almost succeeded.

  The oncoming train glanced into his shoulder, sending him flying back so that he bounced off the first train, which had ground to a halt. Mercer lay between the now-stationary trains for a moment or two, recovering his senses. Finally he stood and, ignoring the shocked faces of passengers on both trains, levered his back against one of the trains and his legs against the other to shinny up to the roof
of the far carriage. Over the shouts and police whistles that echoed through the station, he heard the quiet double ping that indicated the train doors were closing.

  A shot rang out and the roof next to Mercer’s head exploded. He flipped onto his back, extending the H amp;K toward the assassin who stood on the pedestrian bridge which spanned the tracks. Mercer fired just as the train lurched forward; his shot shattered concrete far to the left of his target. The assassin lined up another careful shot. Mercer rolled across the roof until he nearly slipped off, dodging the bullet.

  An instant later, the Metro car slid under the bridge and Mercer rolled back across the roof, holding the pistol by his head, arms tucked close to his body. There was a four-foot gap between the bridge and the entrance to the subway tunnel. As Mercer passed through the gap, he spotted the assassin. Mercer pulled the trigger and saw the gunman fall back just before the Metro plunged into the darkened tunnel.

  The ride through the tunnel was a nightmare. Though the train’s speed was nearly forty miles per hour, in the dark it felt like four hundred. The rattling car threatened to shake Mercer off the roof and he had the constant fear of being smeared against the low ceiling. The noise and vibration were maddening, but he grimly held on, jaw clenched tightly to keep his teeth from jarring loose.

  After a couple of minutes that seemed like an eternity, the train thundered into L’Enfant Plaza, the next station on the yellow line. Mercer moved forward until he was under the pedestrian bridge. No doubt that there would be a backup team in this station by now and probably in all the stations on the line. They had him boxed in. Whoever “they” were.

  The wait in the station dragged on as passengers left and entered the train in the confused ballet called commuting. Mercer feared that the train would be held because of the body he had left in the Archive station. But a moment later the bell chimed and the pneumatic doors hissed closed. The train began to inch along and in a second, Mercer was exposed to another gunman standing on the bridge.

  Mercer raised the VP-70 to take aim just as the other man swung the barrel of a Beretta toward him. Neither man had time to fire before Mercer disappeared into the blackness of the tunnel. Mercer’s raised hand, the one grasping the pistol, smashed into the concrete wall. Instantly numbed fingers sprang open and the weapon slid from his grasp. It bounced against the roof, once, twice, then slipped over the edge, lost forever.

  Mercer flipped back onto his stomach, cursing the pain and his own stupidity. He was now unarmed and facing an unimaginable number of enemies.

  As the Metro climbed above ground just south of the Jefferson Memorial, Mercer realized that he had a chance to escape while the train was crossing the Potomac River. He swore at himself for even thinking it, but knew he had no other option. As soon as the train reached daylight, he sat up and kicked off his shoes. The train sped onto the truss bridge that spanned the sluggish river, rattling and clanging like an old steam locomotive. Mercer stood, the wind whipping his jacket around his body. He shed it quickly and peered at the river below. It was a sapphire blue.

  Mercer jumped.

  The jarring vibration of the Metro vanished as he arrowed toward the water, and for a moment all was quiet except for the wind in his ears. The impact as he hit the choppy water nearly knocked him unconscious, but the cold brought him back quickly. He was deep under the river’s surface. With lungs emptied by the blow, the swim upward was agonizing.

  He finally broke the surface and coughed the water from his lungs. He looked up at the bridge, but the train had already vanished from sight.

  Twenty excruciating minutes later, he dragged himself onto the shore.

  “Welcome to Virginia,” he gasped.

  The Pacific

  By its very nature a modern nuclear submarine makes an optimal platform for sensitive intelligence gathering. With its ability to remain submerged for extended periods and its absolute silence, a sub can maintain station near an unfriendly coast for weeks or even months with relative impunity.

  The sub now lying in wait two hundred miles northwest of Hawaii had been there for seven months and apart from one minor incident had not once come close to detection. There was only about another week or two left of this patrol, so morale, which had been dismal, was finally picking up.

  The crew, mostly northerners, no longer snickered at the captain’s thick Georgian accent. The bickering, which had become an almost daily occurrence even among this highly disciplined crew, had ceased. The men knew that very soon they would feel the warm sun, breathe unrecirculated air, and have the company of their families once again.

  The captain, an unlaughing, hawk-faced man in his midfifties, scanned the control room slowly. The red lights of battle stations, which had glowed continuously since the beginning of the mission, stained the faces of his men and hid every corner of the room in shadow. He too was looking forward to going home. Though he had lost his wife years before, he did have a daughter. A daughter who would have given birth to his first grandchild in his absence.

  A boy or a girl? he mused. And if it was a boy will she name him after me or that idiot husband of hers?

  “Captain, contact bearing two-oh-five degrees range fifteen miles,” the sonar operator barked.

  The bridge was galvanized with anticipation, each pair of eyes riveted on the captain. He checked his watch and decided that this might be the ship they were expecting.

  “Sonar, scrub the target’s signature please,” the Old Man said calmly.

  “Range too far, sir, we have to wait. Range thirteen miles. Single screw turning thirteen knots.”

  The captain picked up the hand mike. “Fire control, plot a solution to target and give me a lock. Torpedo room, flood tubes one and two but do not open outer doors.”

  Even on the bridge, thirty yards from the torpedo room, the captain could hear the water flooding into the tubes. He just hoped that there was no one else out there to hear as well.

  “Sonar, can you scrub the signature yet?”

  “Affirmative, sir, working now.”

  The boat’s multimillion-dollar acoustical computer was analyzing the sounds coming from the approaching ship, digitally washing out the grinding rotation of her screw, the liquid friction of her hull cutting through the waves, and the omnipresent background noise of the living sea, until…

  “We have our target, her signal is coming in strong. Repeat, she is our ship.” Amid the ambient noise of the vessel, an ultrasonic generator pulsed a signal through the water to be picked up by only those listening for it. It was this signal for which the computer searched and the captain waited.

  The captain picked up the microphone again. “Torpedo room, stand down.”

  “Shit!” the sonarman screamed and ripped off his headphones.

  “What is it?” the captain demanded.

  There was a thin trickle of blood from the man’s ears. He spoke unnaturally loudly. “Another underwater explosion, sir. Much more powerful than any other.”

  “You are relieved,” the captain said.

  The sensitive sonar gear was designed with a fail-safe acoustical buffer to shield the hearing of the men who listened in, yet his four top operators now suffered permanent hearing damage due to the buffer’s inability to screen out the nearby subsurface explosions. The equipment simply wasn’t designed for this kind of abuse. And neither were the men.

  Arlington, Virginia

  Mercer tapped the cabdriver on his shoulder and handed the young African immigrant a twenty. “Keep the change and I’m sorry about the seat.”

  The cloth-backed seat of the yellow Ford Taurus was soaking wet, just like Mercer’s suit. He walked toward his house in stocking feet, his socks making an obscene sound against the concrete with every step.

  The front door of the house was unlocked. Mercer breathed a heavy sigh once the door was closed behind him. It had taken him nearly an hour and a half to get home after he’d pulled himself from the river near the Pentagon. His first act, after wringi
ng the water from his clothes behind a derelict bus, was to phone a friend with the metro police.

  The friend promised that Mercer’s shot-up Jaguar would be towed to an auxiliary lot in Anacostia, not to the city’s main impound. He also assured Mercer that the paperwork on the car would be “lost” for at least a couple of days. It would take some time to trace him through his destroyed car.

  He now had a little breathing space to figure out what in the hell had just happened and why.

  Mercer heard the sound of the television and knew that Tish Talbot had made it here safely. He walked through the house, not caring about the water he was getting on the tile or the antique stairs. Tish was asleep in the bar, stretched out on the couch under a steamer rug that Mercer had bought in an auction of ocean liner memorabilia. The name SS Normandie was embroidered in gold silk on the thick dark wool.

  Tish woke slowly, extending her hands over her head in a decidedly feline gesture.

  “How do you feel?” Mercer asked. Making a quick decision between keeping his floor dry and his need for a drink, he gingerly stepped behind the bar.

  “I’m not sure,” Tish responded, then noticed his appearance. “My God, are you okay?”

  “Let’s just say, I’m not ready to do that again.” Mercer pulled two beers from the antique fridge and popped the lids.

  “No, thanks,” Tish said. “I took the liberty of opening a bottle of wine.” She indicated the half-filled glass on the coffee table.

  “I wasn’t offering,” Mercer replied as he tilted the first bottle to his lips. The beer vanished in seven heavy swallows. “I need a shower and a change. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He left the empty on the bar.

  Ten minutes later, Mercer returned wearing jeans and a Pittsburgh Penguins jersey. Tish had folded the blanket and was sitting at the bar. “Your home is beautiful. I made the mistake of going for cute rather than practical when I bought my condo in San Diego. My whole unit is smaller than this room.”