Charon's landing m-2

by Jack Du Brul

  “Right here.” Jan pulled the phone from his shirt pocket, snapping open the mouthpiece. Everything around him seemed unreal. He suddenly felt that he was being dragged into something he no longer wanted to be a part of. Yet he could not stop himself. Kerikov nodded to him to proceed and, as if the Russian actually had control of his fingers, he began to dial.

  Mercer heard only that Voerhoven had the detonator as he crouched at the entrance to the bridge. The Russian was out of sight, and he had no time to determine Kerikov’s position, but Jan was standing right before him, near the central control console. Mercer rushed from his hidden position, closing the gap between himself and Voerhoven. He crashed into the Dutchman with the force of a cannon shot.

  Both men flew over the console, the phone flying from Voerhoven’s hand as he smashed to the deck, ribs cracking as Mercer’s full weight landed on his chest. It took only two powerful punches to knock the activist into unconsciousness, but the delay gave Kerikov enough time to reach for a holstered pistol. Mercer came to his feet, whirled, and saw the weapon leveled at his head.

  Echoing across the open expanse of Valdez Bay, sirens wailed like a rape victim in a deserted parking lot, a haunting cry that came too late to prevent the inevitable.

  There was an emergency at the Alyeska Marine Terminal.

  Both men glanced out the windscreen toward the sprawling facility, as if they could see evidence of the awful destruction taking place along the eight-hundred-mile length of the pipeline. Mercer looked back at Kerikov, his gray eyes darkened by reckless hatred.

  “Too late, Dr. Mercer.” Kerikov revealed yellow teeth in what passed as a smile. “Last time you beat me by a few hours. This time I beat you by only seconds.”

  “I’m going to kill you, you sick fucking bastard.” Mercer shifted his eyes to Kerikov’s right as he spoke.

  “Afraid not.” Kerikov twisted to follow Mercer’s gaze and when he did, Aggie Johnston came out from an open flying bridge door to his left. Kerikov never saw the fire extinguisher she used as a bludgeon. He crumpled, blood pouring out of the wide gash in his skull.

  “Glad you were here to back up my threat,” Mercer said as he recovered Kerikov’s gun, training it on the Russian. He knew the man was still dangerous as he lay moaning on the deck. Aggie’s attack hadn’t been strong enough to knock him out, and already he was moving, struggling to clear his head.

  “What’s that sound?” Aggie asked over the klaxons shrieking from across the harbor.

  “We’re too late. Voerhoven set off the nitrogen packs.”

  Screaming like a madwoman, Aggie ran across the bridge to where her ex-lover sprawled on the floor. She kicked at him, yelling his name and swearing as if she would never stop. Her face was bright red and tears raged in her eyes. No one could have done her a more grievous injury than what Voerhoven had just done to Alaska. She felt the land’s pain as if it was her own body covered in toxic poison.

  “Aggie, stop it!” Mercer shouted, grabbing for her shoulders as her feet continued to pummel Voerhoven. “I have to contact the Terminal. There may be a way to reduce the damage. Aggie! Listen to me!”

  She stopped, finally, looking at him as an eerie calm settled over her.

  “Where are the radios?” Mercer was still shouting, his nerves frayed like a rope about to part. Voerhoven’s cell phone was at his feet, damaged beyond repair.

  “They’re destroyed. I saw that Arab smashing them on my way here. He stole a Zodiac and is headed away from the ship right now. I thought coming to the bridge was more important than trying to stop him.”

  Like a sprung trap, Kerikov came off the floor where he’d been momentarily forgotten. Mercer saw the movement out of the corner of his eye and shouted for the Russian to stop, but Kerikov was in full flight out the bridge wing door. Mercer triggered off one round, the bullet puncturing Kerikov high on the left shoulder, staggering and slowing him but not stopping his dash to freedom. He was already on the narrow flying bridge, the tails of his coat streaming around him in the wind, an arm crossed over his shoulder to clutch at the oozing wound.

  Mercer didn’t have time for a second shot before Kerikov reached the end of the deck and tossed himself over the side of the ship, dropping thirty feet into the frigid water. He was just starting to race after Kerikov to get another shot when he resurfaced, but he stopped himself, spun around, and grabbed Aggie by the hand.

  “Don’t talk. Run.”

  They raced back through the ship, fear hounding Mercer like never before. For Kerikov to flee as he had, he must have believed that taking a bullet in the back and jumping into the freezing water was a more survivable option than staying aboard the Hope. He had run the instant he heard Aggie say Abu Alam was no longer on the research vessel. Mercer recalled that the two of them had rigged the ship with explosives, and he guessed the psychotic Arab must have a detonator of his own.

  They burst into the dining hall to find the party even more wild than before, European rock music blaring from a stereo set up at the head of the room and most of the people dancing with abandon. Mercer took only a second to aim through the crowd, fired once and then again.

  The music suddenly stopped as the speakers disintegrated in showers of black plastic and wires.

  “Get off the ship. It’s going to explode.” Having given a warning he didn’t feel they deserved, Mercer grabbed Aggie again and rushed to the aft deck where the Cessna seaplane was still held fast against the side of the Hope by the tide.

  He jumped down to the plane, the wing dipping under his weight even though he cushioned the fall by flexing his knees. He turned and looked up at Aggie at the railing. “Jump!”

  He expected her to hesitate for a moment, but she didn’t. She threw herself over the side before he had properly braced himself. She landed in his arms with so much force that they both almost rolled into the water. Struggling, Mercer held on to Aggie as her feet dangled off the trailing edge of the wing.

  “Can you reach the pontoon?” he asked, gently lowering her.

  “Almost… Wait… I’m on it.”

  He let go, and even as he got into position to follow her, Aggie ducked into the plane, readying it to get them away from the Hope. As he jumped down to the pontoon, the engine kicked over, and the prop wash nearly blew him off the eight-inch-wide float. Struggling against the wash, he edged forward until he hopped into the cabin.

  “Go. Go. Go, goddamn it, go,” he screamed.

  Aggie hadn’t bothered with her safety straps since the damaged wing prevented the Cessna from ever flying again. She sat on the edge of her seat, like a child driving a car for the first time, her eyes wide with fear. She had enough sense to keep the yoke pressed forward, spilling off any lift the wings might produce as the plane moved away from the doomed research ship. In a moment, Mercer was in the copilot’s seat at her side.

  “Those people…” she said, referring to the PEAL members still on the Hope.

  “Signed their death warrants when they allied themselves with Kerikov,” Mercer finished. “We gave them a chance they never would’ve had.”

  “Where are we headed?” Aggie resumed that calmness that so fascinated Mercer.

  “To the Marine Terminal. I don’t know. Maybe there is something we can still do.” Mercer knew it was too late; the damage had been done. All that remained was to help clean it up. Even over the vibration of the plane and the whining drone of the engine, he could hear the sirens calling from across the water.

  Valdez Harbor

  Abu Alam had barely left himself enough time after planting the explosives to disable the Hope’s radio equipment and dash down to the boat deck. He had cut the margin much too thin. He was a good mile from the rocky beach at the head of Valdez Bay when he heard the alarms from the Marine Terminal. Kerikov had triggered the nitrogen packs. Alam was too exposed on the open water to detonate the explosives aboard the Hope. To do so now would attract attention, and he still needed time to steal a vehicle that would take him t
o Anchorage’s airport.

  Every second now increased Ivan Kerikov’s chance to escape the doomed ship, and one of Rufti’s most explicit orders was that the Russian must not survive. Alam balanced caution with his desire to kill Kerikov. He knew that until he reached land, caution by necessity must prevail. He’d considered motoring the Zodiac toward Valdez, but it was very possible that he had been spotted kidnapping Aggie Johnston. It would be smarter for him to head for the Alyeska Terminal where he could beach the rubber raft a short distance from the facility and steal a vehicle during the confusion created by the detonation of the liquid nitrogen.

  Looking over his shoulder, he saw the decks of the Hope were quiet, the young people obviously still enjoying their morning celebration. Alam hated using explosives. It was too distant, too impersonal. He much preferred seeing his victims die, smelling their fear as their life drained from a slit throat or a bullet in the chest. He had used bombs before, but he felt a little cheated inside, as if the explosives did the killing, not him.

  A big wave grabbed at the Zodiac, forcing Alam to concentrate on his course. Just beyond the outside perimeter of the tanker loading facility, a small stream emptied into the bay. It was screened on both sides by thick copses of trees and would make an ideal landing spot. Even this far out, Abu Alam could see a low bridge crossing the water-washed ravine. The Alyeska access road was only a couple dozen yards away. Perfect.

  Because he was unfamiliar with the workings of small boats, Alam focused all of his attention on bringing in the Zodiac and didn’t turn back again until the bow was bucking against the stream’s flow, the motor churning brown silt from the bottom. When he finally twisted around, he immediately reached for the detonator in his jacket pocket. A steady stream of tiny figures were leaping over the yellow side of the Hope. At this distance, they looked much like the proverbial rats leaving a sinking ship. The PEAL members were escaping, Kerikov probably among them. Alam didn’t waste time thinking of this, didn’t even notice the red speck that was a damaged aircraft racing from the ship. He thought only about the pounds of artfully placed explosives aboard the Hope and the deaths they were about to cause. Clearing the detonator from his pocket, he keyed an activation code, noted the green indicator light, and pressed ENTER.

  Like a crippled fledgling that doesn’t know it can’t fly, the aerodynamics of the Cessna kept trying to loft Mercer and Aggie Johnston skyward as they skimmed along the surface of Valdez Bay. Aggie struggled to keep the Cessna level, forcing nearly all of her weight against the starboard rudder pedal to compensate for the destroyed port wing. As it was, she could only manage to crab the plane sideways across the bay, the nose pointed almost thirty degrees away from their direction of travel.

  Mercer now knew enough about planes to know he didn’t know enough about planes to help her. He kept his hands and feet clear of the controls. He focused instead on the tiny mirror placed high on the dash and watched the Hope shrink in their wake. No matter how fast they traveled, it seemed they were still too close to the research ship. If it had been rigged with enough explosives to panic Kerikov into his suicidal jump, he and Aggie were in for a rough ride. With nothing better to do, Mercer grabbed the bottle of whiskey still in the cockpit and dosed himself with a little liquid courage.

  The MV Hope, formally a Hecla class research vessel in the British navy, vanished just as the bottle came away from his lips.

  One second the ship was centered in the mirror and the next it was gone in a blooming explosion of red, yellow, and black, huge slabs of the hull splitting apart, chunks of metal, wood, and flesh arcing through the air. The devastation was total. Even before the shock wave hit the fleeing Cessna, the main part of the ship had sunk beneath the rippling bay, nothing to mark its existence except a greasy fire raging on the surface and the human misery wallowing near its grave.

  The overpressure wave blew out every storefront window in Valdez, killing four people, and overturned all but the largest boats lying at anchor in the public harbor, claiming a further eight victims. Had the explosion been delayed by a few more minutes, the civilian death toll would have been much higher, as onlookers were just converging at the shore to see what had caused the alarm at the tanker facility that shared their waters and gave many of them their livelihoods. Of the PEAL environmentalists, Mercer’s shouted warning had saved all but twelve. Eight died immediately and four later in the hospital.

  Two potential victims the blast did not claim were Aggie Johnston and Philip Mercer, but it was a close call all the way.

  “Brace yourself,” Mercer shouted as soon as he recognized what had happened, dropping the bottle to the floor.

  The concussion of the explosion grabbed the Cessna, tipping it so high that the prop ripped at the water, slicing it into a plume that obliterated their view. Aggie pulled back on the yoke immediately, releasing the rudder at the same time. The plane tried to lift, and for a precious moment it was back on an even keel, the pontoons barely keeping purchase, the forces of the wings and that of the concussion wave holding the aircraft steady.

  Then the concentric swells radiating from the explosion caught up to the plane, lifting it higher and, like a bodysurfer caught on a perfect crest, bore it even faster along the Bay of Valdez. The water raced from the explosion’s epicenter at nearly one hundred fifty miles per hour, piling up a mountain of water thirty feet high, and at its very crest, Aggie maintained an unsteady control of the Cessna, not sure if her adjustments to yoke and rudder were effective in keeping them in place or if the aircraft was at the whimsy of the raging onslaught.

  As her ears stopped ringing and she became aware of the sounds of the torrent around her, she also heard Mercer laughing. “What’s so goddamned funny?” she shrieked.

  “Half hour ago, you were complaining about my flying. I don’t see this as an improvement.”

  Before Aggie could come back with an obscenity-laden rejoinder, the wave smashed into the breakwater protecting the Alyeska facility, the top of it battering the seawall built specifically for just such a tsunami, although the designers expected waves generated from earth tremors, not catastrophic explosions. The pontoons were ripped from the Cessna by the concrete wall, and much of the force of the wave was beaten down by the massive cement structure, leaving the plane to sail clear for an instant before it plowed into the rocky ground, its belly scraping off their speed brutally, the prop blades folding back around the engine cowling like the tentacles of some sea creature.

  The threat of fire was real, and both Aggie and Mercer launched themselves from their seats as the plane finally ground to a stop.

  “Remember, this flight counts double for your frequent flier miles. We want to thank you for flying Mercer Airlines. Have a nice day.” He was out the cargo door of the Cessna as the last words rolled from his lips, with Aggie right behind.

  The sprint to the Operations Building took forever, both of them hampered by their injuries and by the countless vehicles they had to dodge as technicians and employees raced to evaluate the situation. Mercer pounded through the door, tossing a hapless employee back about ten feet as the edge of the door caught her square in the chest. He raced for the control room, ignoring the dazed woman completely. The room was packed. Voices clashed angrily over the wail of countless alarms, the normally calm professionals driven to the point of panic by the scope of the catastrophe facing them. Andy Lindstrom was in the center of it, his face red and his shouts muted to angry growls from hoarseness. He scanned the multiple panels and video display units, assessing the damage to his precious pipeline. Twenty or so engineers were gathered around him, ranked by seniority so the most experienced was at his shoulder and the juniormost stood in the back of the room. The windowless room was filled with cigarette smoke and the smell of fear’s sweat.

  “Andy!” Mercer shouted over the arguing voices, but the noise drowned him out.

  To gain attention, he pulled out Kerikov’s pistol and fired into the floor, silence echoing after the shot.r />
  “Andy, how bad?” Mercer asked calmly. If he was bothered by the stunned crowd around him, it didn’t show on his stony face.

  “Jesus Christ, Mercer, what the hell are you doing?” The shock on Lindstrom’s face was a combination of seeing Mercer with a pistol, seeing Mercer even alive, and the stress of the nitrogen packs freezing his pipeline as solid as a Popsicle. “Great to see you again, but I don’t have time for this — your friend the Russian has destroyed my pipe.”

  “I know.” Mercer couldn’t afford the delay caused by emotional answers. “I need to know if the pumps are running right now.”

  Before Andy could answer, an engineer seated at the console spoke up. “No, the computer logs show they shut down about a minute before the nitrogen packs went off. Right now they’re off-line. And it looks like they’ll never run again. Preliminary reports indicate at least forty spots where oil flow has stopped completely and a couple more with minimal flow. It looks as if there are at least two ruptures, one at the center of the Tanana River suspension bridge.”

  “The bridge collapsed?” Mercer asked fearfully.

  “Yeah. Oil is flowing toward it through open check valves like a spigot.”

  “Where is that computer guy, Mossey?”

  “He was in the computer room a moment ago,” replied a technician standing near Mercer.

  Mercer turned so fast he bumped into Aggie, whom he’d all but forgotten. She was sickened by the fact that the pipeline had been cut by the nitrogen freezing. As a member of PEAL, she was, by default, responsible. “This isn’t over yet,” Mercer said and ran down the hall.

  The computer room, in comparison to the Op-center, was sterile and clean and empty save for one frantic figure stuffing papers and computer discs into a soft-sided leatherette bag. Mercer didn’t give Ted Mossey a chance to even turn around. He used his left hand to smash Mossey’s head down to the desk while his other pressed the automatic pistol into his face so hard that Mossey’s teeth ripped the delicate inner skin of his cheek. When Mercer spoke, his voice was a white fury, his eyes glazed with hatred.