by Jack Du Brul
“Did you shit your pants, brave man?” the Russian called down joyfully. “I bet when my men get down there to pull you off the net, they’ll have to hold their noses.”
He hadn’t soiled himself, but it had been a near thing. Lying on the net, Mercer’s breath came in painful draws through his nose, his heart hammering against his ribs. The suddenness of the push had panicked him more than the drop itself. It had been so quick, so unpredictably violent. As two men came to roll him off the netting and onto a narrow catwalk, Mercer knew that before the night was over, he would be going over the edge again, and the next time there would be no safety net.
He was right.
Although the title Tool Pusher connotes a hardened, hands-on type job, one involving the very heart of drilling operations, right at the rotary table and elbow deep in gushing crude and drill mud, it is in fact bestowed on the foreman of the drilling crew. On a rig as large as the Omega, the job was largely bureaucratic in nature. Therefore, the cabin reserved for the Tool Pusher was large and quite comfortable, much like an executive suite in a luxury hotel.
Ivan Kerikov was sitting on a deep green couch with a glass in his hand and a fresh cigar glowing amber in his right fist, when Mercer was brought into the room. The lights in the cabin were harsh compared to the gloom of the helicopter, but it took his eyes only a second to adjust. There was no sign of Jan Voerhoven. Kerikov’s face still registered the pleasure he’d felt pushing Mercer off the platform.
“It’s ironic.” Kerikov waved for one of the guards to unwrap the tape binding Mercer’s mouth. “Had you not identified yourself as a geologist, I would have killed you on the spot, never guessing that the man I wanted most in the world was before me. Granted, I would have lost the pleasure of watching you die slowly, but it would have spared you hours, maybe days of torture. Your humor is going to cost you more pain than you thought possible.”
The tape came away like searing water poured across his lips, and Mercer gasped. While he had wanted to come across Ivan Kerikov again at some point in his life, Mercer would have preferred the circumstances to be reversed. But he wasn’t about to show that his current predicament bothered him much. “Tell me, that rock you crawled out from under, are you sure it didn’t move away from you on its own?”
“Always the wit, eh? Is this to be the great verbal duel between the villain and the hero, the forces of good and evil speaking before the final confrontation?”
“If that’s what you want, I’m game. Me, I’m just stalling until the army arrives with a couple dozen gunships and reduces this oil rig to scrap.”
“Like those choppers I destroyed tonight? I don’t think so.
Not this time.” Kerikov sipped his drink, his face and voice calm, conversational. “You haven’t had enough time to mount even a rudimentary counterattack. Tonight’s minor annoyance was the best you could come up with. Considering your reputation, I expected a little more from you.”
“Give me some credit.” Mercer smiled with mock modesty. “I did dodge two assassination attempts in the past week.”
“Amateurs hired in haste, nothing more,” Kerikov dismissed. “My mother could have handled them in her sleep.”
“Remind me never to piss off your mother,” Mercer muttered quietly. “Does PEAL know that Alyeska will have the line back in service within a few months?”
“Trust me, they won’t. While our little ecologists believe that their acts are designed to clog the pipeline, I assure you it is going to burst in about eighty places and spill around five hundred thousand barrels of oil.” Kerikov paused. “That’s about twenty-one million gallons of crude, roughly double what the Exxon Valdez lost in 1989.”
“Freezing the oil in the line won’t crack the pipe. The steel liner is over a half inch thick, and there’s not enough internal pressure to split it,” Mercer pointed out.
“You’re right, but when I say so, there’s going to be more than enough pressure to see oil scattered a couple of miles from the line.” Kerikov gave him a greasy smile.
Suddenly, Mercer was afraid for much more than his own life. There was little doubt that Kerikov was telling the truth. He had a way of bursting the Trans-Alaska Pipeline like an eight-hundred-mile-long balloon. As someone who’d worked in some of the more pristine places on the planet, struggling to balance the needs of mankind with the delicacy of nature, Mercer didn’t want to think about the devastation such a catastrophe would create. The state of Alaska would be bisected by a black line of crude, an ugly stain that would take years to clean, assuming it was possible to fully erase so much damage. He couldn’t believe, no matter how radical and dangerous PEAL was, that they would condone such a heinous act in order to further their cause. This situation made as much sense as a Palestinian terror group using a nuclear bomb on Jerusalem. Groups like PEAL wanted to garner attention to their cause, not destroy the very thing they strove to protect.
They would readily agree to freezing the oil, shutting down the TAPline for a couple of months or forever if that’s what they’d been led to believe. That would be a great victory for their cause. But to actually destroy it? Spill the hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil it contained? They would never agree to it.
He tried to imagine Aggie Johnston being part of something so repugnant, something that went against every law of nature and man, and he felt that she never would. There was no way she would sit idle while her group destroyed Alaska, leading Mercer to believe that she knew nothing about Kerikov’s ultimate goals. And if she, Jan Voerhoven’s girlfriend, knew nothing, then it was certain that the rank and file of the organization had been equally duped. Anger welled within him, anger at Kerikov and anger at himself for not realizing the danger sooner, for not sounding the alarm when he first found the Jenny IV.
Kerikov watched as the change swept through Mercer. He was a good enough judge of moods and character to almost read the thoughts of those around him. It was a gift that had served him well throughout his career in the Soviet Union. “You are just beginning to see the enormity of what I’ve done,” he sneered. “Consider this: What happens here, the destruction of the line and the devastation to the precious ecosystems, is nothing more than a sideshow for my true aims. It’s only one tine in a three-pronged operation. Had Russia ever had the balls to use it, Charon’s Landing would have ended here in Alaska, but I’ve expanded it, adapted it to the world today and made it astronomically profitable. You would be amazed at the number of people who want to see the United States still dependent on imported oil,” he chuckled harshly. “And you’d be surprised to learn that many of them are Americans themselves.”
“Charon’s Landing? That’s the name of this little adventure?”
“Originally it was a Cold War scheme to slow American oil production while our forces launched a lightning attack into Western Europe. The plan called for a combined commando assault against the pipeline and the terminal facility. The planners envisioned the region around Valdez turning into a conflagration of mythic proportions, so they named it after the site where the mythological ferryman, Charon, docked his boat after leading the souls of the dead across the River Styx.”
“Hell.”
“Precisely.”
“Why don’t you tell me your other fronts,” Mercer invited as casually as possible. “What do you have to lose?”
As soon as he’d spoken, Mercer knew he’d made a mistake. Kerikov’s entire carriage changed. No longer did he slouch in his seat. He set his cigar in the glass tray on the table to his left and put down his drink, taking a few seconds to arrange it on a previous water stain. Kerikov’s face, brutal at its best, was absolutely deadly when he turned back to his prisoner, his thick eyebrows pulled tightly together as if to keep his eyes from bursting from their sockets.
“Just because I’ve found you wanting as an adversary doesn’t mean I’m going to get stupid with you.” Kerikov’s voice was chilling, dredged up from some deep well of hatred. “Alam, get in here!” The paneled d
oor swung open and Abu Alam, “Father of Pain,” entered, the Franchi SPAS-12 semi-auto shotgun hanging from its special rig against his lean flank. There was a dangerous edge to him that Mercer could feel from across the room.
“Can I have him now?” Alam asked.
“No. I want him locked up with the other, and I don’t want either of them touched until later. We have a great deal to finish tonight.”
“You promised me, and by the blood of the holymen, I’ll make you pay if I don’t get them.”
Mercer knew that the jittery maniac was afraid that the opportunity to kill him and some other prisoner would be taken away from him. And it was clear he would enjoy the task.
He also saw there was a rivalry between these two. Anyone could tell that the Arab resented taking orders from Kerikov. Without knowing who, Mercer sensed that Alam worked for someone else and that his being with Kerikov was on behalf of this other person. The alliance was one of convenience, nothing more. Not that it really mattered, he thought, considering his circumstances, but Mercer would have loved to know who that other person was.
“We have more important tasks than to worry about our guests.” Kerikov glanced at Mercer, no longer considering him a threat, then looked again at Abu Alam. “Get a few satchel charges from the stores I brought aboard. After we’re finished tomorrow, I guarantee you’ll be able to enjoy yourself with our esteemed doctor here. The other prisoner, well, we have to wait about that for now.”
“It’s time to do away with the activists?” Alam asked brightly.
“It’s time to make the preparations, yes.” Kerikov’s patience with Alam was wearing thin. It appeared to Mercer that he was having trouble reining in the Arab’s desire for death and his love of pain and suffering. “Now take him below, get the explosives, and meet me back here. I want to be off the rig within the hour.”
To Mercer, it sounded as if part of Kerikov was patronizing Abu Alam while some deeper element was in total accordance with the young assassin. Despite Kerikov’s more sophisticated polish, and his more urbane attitude, he was just as sick as the Arab killer. It was like comparing the madness of Hitler to that of his henchman, Joseph Goebbels — darker and lighter shades of the same evil.
Alam yanked Mercer from his chair and shoved him across the room. Mercer calculated the odds of escape and rejected the idea as suicidal. His hands were still bound, and Alam and his two agents had seven visible guns between them. He knew they would love a chance to draw one or all of them and cut him in two, so he allowed himself to be pushed around. The sinking feeling of defeat was overcoming him. He was facing an optionless situation, a trap with no escape, a puzzle with no solution. But he would not let it end here. At the doorway, Mercer turned to look at Kerikov once more. The Russian quietly sipped his drink as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
“It’s too bad that the computers in Valdez detected a drop in the temperature of the oil moving through the pipeline two weeks ago. One of your nitrogen packs leaked, Kerikov. Alyeska has been following behind your PEAL work crew, removing the packs just as quickly as they were attached.”
Kerikov swiveled around, searching Mercer’s face with an expression bordering on pity. When he spoke he almost sounded sad, as if Mercer’s bluff was too pathetic to warrant a response. “Of course, you’re lying.” He smirked. “I’ve had control of those computers for nearly a month. There hasn’t been a single anomalous reading since I tapped in. I really did expect more from you.”
Gotcha, Mercer said to himself.
Abu Alam jammed the barrel of his shotgun into Mercer’s back, forcing him out into the hallway. For now, his only choice was to allow Alam to lead him into the mechanical decks of the rig, where the brightly lit corridors gave way to a warren of twisting crawl spaces and work shafts whose function Mercer couldn’t even guess.
They walked for nearly fifteen minutes, and even with his strong sense of direction, developed over years of working in labyrinthine mines, Mercer was lost. He knew he was deep within the superstructure of the oil rig, but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly where. The dark serpentine walkways merged from one to another so easily that every new junction resembled the previous. If he had any hope of escape, only Ariadne’s string could save him from this maze.
They stopped in front of a six-foot hatch, its dogging wheel all the way open. It was as unremarkable as the two dozen similar hatches they had passed during their silent march through the Omega. Mercer spun, but his captor had already stepped back, the black SPAS-12 held levelly.
“Open it,” Alam barked, and one of his men heaved at the doorway, revealing a tiny room beyond. Alam had his shotgun ready, as if he expected to see someone standing in the phone booth-sized cabin. Mercer realized that he was looking into an elevator car. The drilling rig was so new that the lubricant used to grease the hatch was still a clear yellow, not yet darkened by dirt and grime.
“Inside.” Alam prodded Mercer again.
He stepped into the small elevator, expecting Alam to disobey Kerikov and shoot him in the back, but the blast did not come. Although he knew it was futile, Mercer tried to reason with Alam. “You know you’re not going to get away with this. You’re going to be caught and killed.”
“I pray for nothing more than a martyr’s death fighting the Great Satan,” Alam said, and his two men nodded in agreement.
“Be careful what you wish for; it may come true.” The door was slammed in his face, and the car began to drop.
There was no real elevator car, just a cagelike platform guided by a rail on its back side. It fell sedately into one of the rig’s massive hollow support columns, the walls opening up around Mercer, widening and curving like the insides of a huge grain silo. Looking out over the open edge of the car, he guessed the fall to be about one hundred feet. The bottom of the shaft was just a dark circle from his perspective, no larger than a manhole cover.
Down the platform dropped, the guide wheels passing slickly along its rail, the great open void sucking at him. Mercer had never suffered from vertigo before, but it didn’t seem a good time to push his luck. He kept his eyes fixed on the opposite wall of the featureless shaft. The air was chilled and humid, condensation droplets clinging to the pale blue walls like clear, fat leeches. At one point, Mercer could feel that the elevator had passed below the water line, the temperature plummeting a further twenty degrees. He pulled his leather jacket tighter around his body.
When he finally reached the bottom, it took only a few minutes to cut the tape binding his wrists by rubbing it against the accordion gate affixed to the floor. He located the controls that would send the elevator back to the top of the support leg to his right, but they had been sabotaged. The call buttons dangled from their housing on a few blackened wires. Mercer mashed the green button anyway, pressing it with all of his strength as if sheer force would convince the disabled elevator to begin rising.
Nothing happened. It had been shorted so only the upper controls still functioned. He was trapped in a modern-day version of the medieval pit. Without waiting for the full effect of his predicament to sink in, Mercer began to explore for another way out, starting first with the elevator itself. The cable that lowered the car was his best hope, and he scrambled on top of the open-sided car to examine it more closely.
As he expected, the finely braided steel cable was slick with grease. It was so slippery that he was barely able to grasp it and knew it would be impossible to climb. Yet he had to try, and just as he gathered himself to begin pulling himself upward, a voice from the gloom warned him.
“When I tried that, I fell and almost broke my leg.”
“Aggie?” Mercer couldn’t believe he’d heard correctly, but it was her voice echoing inside the huge cylinder. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He looked around the dimly lit space at the bottom of the support leg. The circular room was enormous but spartan. Half of it was occupied by machinery that looked as if it had come from the nightmares of a demented plumber. It
was impossible to completely trace the twisting path of even one of the hundreds of pipes with their countless valves, gauges, and spurs. A low counter with storage doors and a near-empty tool rack stood a little way off from the tangled steel forest. The deck was mostly solid plating, but there were several large grates that would give access to even lower levels.
“Rereading War and Peace — what do you think I’m doing? I’m a prisoner just like you.” Aggie stepped from around a large watertight cabinet and into a dim pool of light given by a low-watt bulb.
Mercer jumped back to the floor, crossing the distance between them in a few quick strides. He gathered her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers, feverishly kissing her as if nothing else mattered or ever would.
A moment later she stepped back, breathless. “Where did that come from?”
“I don’t know,” Mercer replied with a sheepish smile. “But you can’t deny it felt good.”
“You won’t hear me complaining, but you haven’t picked a very romantic spot to demonstrate your affection.” Her eyes were a bright, rich green, although the rest of her was ragged, worn by whatever ordeal she had undergone.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded. Mercer asked how long she’d been on the rig.
“I was grabbed in the parking lot of your hotel just after I left you. Two men attacked me. They killed some poor hotel guest and then drove me away in a van. They drugged me, and when I came to, I was here.” Her voice was strong and filled with determination, but she looked delicate and frail, like a child. At the same time, she was such a woman that Mercer was distracted from his current predicament and stole a minute to just look at her, to drink her in. Aggie became self-conscious almost immediately, raking her hand through her short hair in a nervous gesture.
“What?” she said. “Don’t look at me. I’m a mess.”
“No, you’re not. You’re beautiful,” he breathed, embarrassed by his emotional response to her presence. He broke eye contact, looking around the space quickly. “We’ve got to find a way out of here and stop them. Do you have any idea what your group is about to do?”