Deep Fire Rising - v4 (52 page)

Mercer backed out of the cabin, knowing in his heart this wasn’t about glory. Maybe Tisa had gotten her wrong.

On deck, a blizzard of ash swept the ship in unending waves. Even with all the lights ablaze, the workboat was nearly blacked out by the ashfall. A resourceful officer had ordered the vessel’s water cannons to sweep the upperworks and deck, turning the ash into mud that drained from the scuppers. The rain that had begun to fall stung when it touched Mercer’s skin, made acidic by sulfur belching from the volcano.

He found Jim, Scott Glass and Tisa in the control van. “How’s Charlie?”

“Someone hit him over the head,” Mercer said, wiping the grime from his face with the towel Tisa had handed him. “He has a concussion, but the ship’s engineer was a corpsman and seems to think he’ll be fine.”

“What about the dive?” Scott asked. He was younger than Charlie, dark-haired and sporting a goatee and a nearly shaved head. Where C.W. was laid back and casual, Glass had an intensity and an attentiveness that Mercer appreciated. “One man can’t tow the line in alone.”

“Do any of the Petromax people have experience in the ADS?”

“No. There’s only the one pilot for their minisub. He might be able to do it, but he’s only five two. The suit’s too big.”

Jim added, “Most of the work Petromax does in the North Sea is done with saturation divers.”

“Can we use them?”

“It would take days just to set the diving bell and allow the divers enough time for their pre-breath on gas.” Jim shook his head. “
Conseil
’s stuck more than five hundred feet inside the vent and we have to go even deeper to place the bomb. It’s the suits or nothing.”

“I don’t know if he was bragging,” Scott put in, “but C.W. says that Mercer was pretty good in the suit when you were together a few weeks ago. If you’re willing to risk it, I’ll dive with you as my backup.”

Mercer hesitated. “Look, we only made a couple of dives. I have maybe three hours in the suit. And that was in open water. Forget it. What about you, Jim?”

“It’s ironic, but I’ve never even snorkeled.” Another resounding explosion echoed across the water. “We don’t have time to get someone else. We have to do this in one dive as soon as the bomb arrives.”

Mercer knew this was too important to risk on his limited skills. He would jeopardize everything if he made even a simple mistake. He shouldn’t do it, but what were the alternatives? He looked to Tisa. She understood how the decision tore at him. She gave him an imperceptible nod, not of consent but of compassion.

Scott would lead. Mercer’s role would be support if Scott needed something. All he’d really have to do is hang back and not be in the way. He could handle that, he thought. But what if he messed up? Mercer couldn’t let himself think about it. Glass needed someone to help haul the tow cable into the vent and there was no one else and no time to find someone.

“Okay. We’ll go as soon as the bomb’s delivered. That gives Scott four hours or so to teach me everything C.W. missed.” Mercer gave Glass a lopsided smile. “I hope you know what the hell you’re doing.”

“I was about to say the same to you.”

Before heading for the suits, Jim convinced Mercer that he needed at least one of his technicians with him to monitor the dive and personally vouched for the man.

“Just him,” Mercer agreed, but not liking it. “I don’t want the others released from the mess hall until they can be vetted.”

Mercer wanted an update on the bomb’s ETA and tried Ira on the cell phone but couldn’t get a signal again. He was able to radio Bill Farley, the supervisor over on the eastern side of the volcanic ridge.

The evacuation had been ordered, but no one was leaving their posts. In fact, Farley reported that the first- and second-shift workers were showing up by the hundreds, eager for an all-out assault to keep the Cumbre Vieja from slipping. He said the men would only leave the danger zone and head to the north of the island when the bomb was in the ground and the clock was ticking.

Mercer couldn’t have been more proud.

Crossing from the amidships control van on the
Petromax Angel
to where the NewtSuits were housed in a container at the
Angel
’s stern was like a walk across a newly turned field in the middle of a cyclone. Wind and rain lashed the ship, and the best efforts of the crew couldn’t keep up with the swampy mud that had grown a couple of feet thick in some areas. Layers of ash and sizzling bits of pumice blanketed the sea.

The bright yellow NewtSuits stood on their wire-frame lifting cradles and were cracked open ready for the men. They resembled the discarded carapace of some science fiction insect. The technician Jim had vouched for was installing extra lights to the shoulders and forearms and a secondary battery pack.

“We’ll be hauling in a tow rope to pull the ROV from the tunnel so we can’t be on tethers,” Scott explained. “Too much risk of getting everything tangled. You and I will be able to communicate but once we’re in the tunnel we may lose the acoustical phone from the surface.”

“How will they know when to pull
Conseil
back out?”

Scott patted his suit’s steel claw. “Once we’ve got the line attached, just smack it with this. Jim can pick up the vibrations on his monitors. One tap for go, two to stop.”

“That easy?”

“K-I-S-S. Now, tell me everything you did with C.W. when you were together and I’ll take it from there.”

Over the next three hours the men went over the suits, Mercer absorbing as much as he could of what Scott told him. He remembered a great deal of what Charlie had taught him, but Glass had a way of imparting even more. They worked for an hour inside the suits, taking power off the ship’s mains so as not to drain the batteries. Although it was a dry run and would differ dramatically from when they were underwater, Mercer was grateful for the practice.

The only change they made from their original plan was that Scott would use Charlie’s suit, while Mercer operated the spare, the one he’d toyed with aboard the
Sea Surveyor
. Scott felt he’d be better able to handle the idiosyncracies of Charlie’s suit.

They took a break when Ira’s four-hour promise approached. Mercer tried to raise the admiral on his cell phone but still couldn’t get through. Jim had been able to use the ship’s radiophone to contact an official on the island of Tenerife who’d been told the bomb had been delivered to Lisbon, Portugal, and was now en route to La Palma. The man didn’t know how.

“There’s no way they can get a chopper to us in this soup,” Scott said as they looked out into the storm from the cargo container.

Dawn was just a gray promise. The San Juan volcano had stopped spewing ash several hours earlier but the sky was choked with it. It would remain the color of lead even if the rain clouds passed. There was barely enough light to see the outline of the island a mile away.

“Hey, Mercer!” Jim’s shout came from the control van. “I think I have something.”

Mercer dashed through the filthy rain to the van. “What have you got?”

McKenzie handed him a headset. “Hello?” Mercer said into the mouthpiece.

“That you, Snow?”

There was too much interference to recognize the voice and it took Mercer a moment to remember the nickname. “Sykes?”

“Roger that.” The Delta commandos hadn’t stayed in La Palma for even an hour when they flew here with Mercer. Lasko and others in Washington needed a mission debrief and Mercer hadn’t been able to spare the time to give it. They’d been flown straight to Washington on the same Citation they’d borrowed to get to La Palma from Katmandu. “The Monkey Bombers have gone nuclear.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m about ten miles up-range of your position. The warhead was loaded into an MMU in Portugal and we’re about to drop it.”

“Don’t tell me you’re coming in too.”

“Sorry, not this time. I’m sitting behind the two pilots of the stealth that plopped us into Tibet. The least they could do was give me a ringside seat.”

Mercer saw the logic in delivering the W-54 bomb in one of the Manned Munition Utilities. The pods were designed to accurately and gently deliver a soldier to the battlefield. They couldn’t risk sending a chopper to the island until the volcanic fallout subsided. A regular parachute drop didn’t have the precision to land the weapon on the deck of a ship at sea, so the monkey bomb was the sensible choice.

“I’m calling to verify your GPS coordinates,” Sykes went on. “And to let you know the trigger is a three-hour delay. Once it’s set there ain’t no turning back.”

“Okay, Booker. I’m turning you over to Jim McKenzie — he’s the master of ceremonies for this particular ring of our circus. Good to hear your voice, man.”

“Same to you. Good luck down there. Sounds like you’re going to need it.”

“Hoo-yah!” Mercer returned the headset to Jim and went back to the deck, shouting for the crewman trying to hose mud over the side to clear the way.

The
Petromax Angel
had about forty feet of open deck between the control van and her stubby superstructure, more than enough room to land the MMU. He waited in the shelter of the bridge wing, shielding his eyes against the acid rain and swirling ash to glimpse the stealthy black pod as it fell from the cheerless sky. He mistakenly looked straight up, not realizing the MMU’s onboard computers were constantly correcting the pod’s descent for the brutal windshears.

The MMU actually swooped over the port side scant feet above the rail and dropped to the deck, falling lightly onto its back as the parachute was cut away. The billow of nylon vanished over the starboard rail, as fleeting as a ghost.

The seals around the lid hissed and the coffinlike door opened a crack. Mercer couldn’t help the eerie feeling he got as he approached the MMU. He almost didn’t want to touch it. He swung open the lid and stared in wonder at what lay nestled in the protective foam.

The bomb was white and nearly featureless, just a rectangular box that really was about the size of a large Samsonite suitcase. He placed a hand on its casing. It was cold.

Mercer shivered in the rain. Beneath the steel and lead shielding lay a ball of explosives that would implode an even smaller sphere of plutonium. It had the power to level a city.

He prayed it had the power to save a planet.

A
deckhand approached hauling a small winch on wheels. Together he and Mercer slung a cradle under the nuclear bomb and lifted it from the MMU. The weapon swung and twisted on the end of the cable in a way that reminded Mercer of an obscene piñata. The absurdity of his observation brought a smile to his face.

“What’s so funny, Doctor?” the crewman asked.

“Just that it’s a good thing I don’t have a blindfold and a stick.”

They wheeled the bomb across the slick deck to the container at the stern of the service boat. The ashfall had smothered the waves so the ship sat as solidly as if she were in drydock. Fire hoses had been directed over the fantail to open a spot in the muck so the divers could be safely lowered into the sea. Gantry lights showed the pace of the ashfall was slowing, as was the rain. The sky had even brightened to a dull pewter.

Mercer passed his side of the winch dolly to another crewman to answer his vibrating phone. The signal was the clearest it had been since the eruption four hours ago.

“You must pull some serious weight with the president,” Ira said without preamble.

“What happened?”

“I’ve been trying to get through to tell you that he decided to wait until morning on the East Coast to make the announcement.”

“I doubt it was my influence,” Mercer said, overjoyed by the news. “Waiting until daylight to start the evacuation makes better sense than starting it at eleven o’clock at night.”

“Either way you have five hours. If you can set off that nuke and prevent the avalanche he won’t call for the evacuation. Has it arrived?”

“About two minutes ago. Good thinking using an MMU.”

“Thought you’d like that,” Ira said. “We’ll make sure that anyone on the western sides of the other islands will be above the surge line of any wave created when that bomb goes off. The navy is pushing out their quarantine zone. An Aegis cruiser is going to remain inside the cordon if you need it.”

“What about the North African coast?” Mercer asked, still amazed by the level of coordination even though he was at the center of it.

“Even more deserted than normal. The UN has done a good job there. Are the divers set to go?”

Just as Mercer didn’t need to know the details of the world reaction to the crisis, he wouldn’t bother Ira with the attack on Charlie Williams or how he would be making the dive. “Ready and willing.” Mercer didn’t know how to ask the next question. It wasn’t in his nature to question success, but he had to make plans. “Listen, Ira, I’d like you to do me a favor.”

“Name it.”

“If this doesn’t work and they call for a full evacuation I want you to look after Harry.”

“Already taken care of. He and Tiny have your car gassed and loaded, and a hotel reservation near Lynchburg, Tennessee.”

Their choice of destination was no surprise.

Lynchburg was the home of the Jack Daniel’s distillery. “Just make sure they leave.”

“I will but you shouldn’t worry. I think they’re going whether the president makes the announcement or not.”

That brought a smile to Mercer’s face. “Then tell him if his dog scratches my leather seats I’m going to reupholster them with his wrinkled hide.”

“You got it. I have to go, Mercer. Keep me posted.”

“I might be out of touch but I’ll make sure Jim McKenzie or Tisa are available.”

“Okay. Good luck.”

Mercer returned the phone to the pocket of the overalls he’d been given by Scott. Glass stood by his ADS talking with Spirit. “How’s C.W.?” Mercer asked.

Spirit glowered at him and said nothing.

“Still unconscious,” Scott answered, not understanding the animosity. “The engineer pumped a third IV into him. Spirit says his color is better and the bleeding has stopped.”