Charon's Landing

Alyeska Marine Terminal Valdez, Alaska

As a frequent traveler, Mercer had developed an immunity to jet lag. He could force himself to stay awake or fall asleep upon arrival, depending on how much time he’d shifted. He could be fully acclimated in only a single day, whether he got thirteen hours of sleep or three. However, his flight to Alaska, by way of Chicago and Sea-Tac in Seattle, had been interrupted by both weather and a mechanical delay at Midway, forcing him to spend a night at an airport hotel. He finally landed in Anchorage at a little past ten in the morning, clear-eyed and sharp.

Mercer rented a four-wheel-drive Blazer and drove the three hundred miles south to Valdez, stopping only for fuel, coffee, and the occasional al fresco bathroom break. He arrived in town shortly before four and decided to head straight for the marine terminal rather than checking into his hotel.

He rolled the Blazer to the small guard booth at the entrance to the sprawling facility and was relieved to find his name still on the guest list from when he and Howard Small had used the terminal as a base for their mini-mole tests. Mercer drove into the terminal, around the East Manifold building that monitored oil pouring down the pipeline at 88,000 barrels per hour, and past the huge holding tanks that processed the contaminated seawater that ballasted tankers on their runs to the site.

He slid into an “Authorized Vehicle Only” spot in front of the Operations Center, just inland of berth number four, where a midsized tanker was having her belly filled with North Slope crude. Once he was out of the protective cocoon of the truck, the biting cold struck him head-on, the wind coming off the Sound like needles. Snow had blanketed much of the terminal, but it had all been plowed into huge mounds in parking lots and just beyond the sharp curves of the roads that crisscrossed the installation. To say the weather was unseasonably cold was to say that Cain and Abel only argued on occasion.

Quickly, Mercer dashed from the Blazer into the Operations Center, unzipping his coat as soon as he felt the blast of warm air from the building’s heaters. The receptionist was reading a thriller novel and regarded Mercer so angrily that he was sure he’d interrupted a climactic scene. “Can I help you, sir?”

“Yes, I phoned earlier. I’m Philip Mercer.”

“Oh, yes, you’re here to see Andy Lindstrom.” She got up from her chair, the metal legs scraping as she shifted her considerable bulk. “Right this way. He’s not expecting you for a while, but I’m sure he won’t mind.”

Lindstrom, the terminal’s Chief of Operations, stood behind his desk as Mercer entered his office. He wore jeans and a heavy flannel shirt, his head covered by a Seahawks baseball cap. Of average height and build and still in his forties, he looked much older, his skin heavily weathered by twenty years in Alaska and a two-packs-a-day cigarette habit. His jaw was stubbled with a couple days’ worth of reddish beard, and his blue eyes were wearier than Mercer remembered from the last time he’d seen him.

The office was small and institutional, the light provided by a single window and a bank of fluorescent fixtures suspended from the drop ceiling. Lindstrom’s desk was piled with papers placed haphazardly in spiraled stacks that seemed in imminent danger of toppling. A credenza and file cabinet were also buried under papers, thick technical manuals, and parts catalogs. The only furniture not covered was a pair of old wooden chairs in front of the desk. On one wall was a large topographical map of Alaska crudely bisected by a jagged red line representing the pipeline. On the opposite wall was a garish travel poster of a well-bikinied beach.

Lindstrom acknowledged Mercer with a raised finger, then pointed at the telephone receiver clutched in his other fist. His complexion was reddened by whatever was being said on the other end of the conversation.

“Now wait just a goddamn minute. I sent the armature up to the depot in Fairbanks two days ago. If you haven’t gotten it yet, bend their ear, not mine.” He paused and rolled his eyes at Mercer. “Hey, listen to me, I’m not your fucking whipping boy. This sounds like an internal problem to me. I just tried to do you a favor. Don’t think it means I want you calling me every time you have a glitch with one of your machines. Maybe next time you’ll buy American.”

He set the phone down and blew out a long breath.

“Let me guess,” Mercer said as Lindstrom lit a cigarette. “One of the oil companies up in the Refuge.”

“You got it. Alyeska promised to help them out, and the next thing you know they’re calling me when they run out of toilet paper. Christ, it wasn’t like this when we opened up this state. Those roughnecks knew how to work.

“I was a little surprised to get your call yesterday,” Andy said as they shook hands. “I thought you’d left the state after completing those tests with Howard Small. And I’m downright curious why you wanted my Chief of Security present for this meeting. Mike Collins will be here in a few minutes. Mind telling me what you’re doing back in Alaska?”

“I’d prefer to wait until Collins gets here. It’s a pretty complicated story, and I only want to tell it once.”

“Am I right in guessing this has something to do with your project up on the hill?”

“Indirectly. Have you heard about Howard Small?”

“No, what about him?”

“He’s dead, I’m afraid. Murdered. And whoever killed him has made two attempts on me.”

“Jesus. All for that tunnel-boring machine of his?”

Before Mercer could reply, there was a knock at the door, and without pause, Mike Collins entered the office. He was big, a solid two hundred twenty pounds, and old enough that Mercer assumed the scar jagging its way across the right side of his face was a constant reminder of the Vietnam War. Like Lindstrom, he was dressed casually, jeans and a flannel shirt, a pair of Tony Lamas on his size-thirteen feet.

Because he and Mercer hadn’t met during Mercer’s earlier stay in Valdez, Lindstrom made introductions. Collins’ grip was sure and firm, his hands almost as callused as Mercer’s. The Operations Chief told Collins about the death of Howard Small and the two attempts on Mercer’s life.

“So this is about Minnie?” Lindstrom asked again.

“No, not at all. After we finished up our tests, Howard and I went fishing with his cousin in Homer. While we were out, we found a burned-out derelict fishing boat floating maybe forty miles offshore. What we found aboard her got him killed.”

“Yeah, and what was that?” Collins asked with the sharpness of a cop who couldn’t take retirement.

“It took the full efforts of the FBI lab in Washington to figure out that a piece of steel I’d salvaged from the wreck was a fragment of a liquid nitrogen containment tank. Our best guess is the boat was smuggling cylinders of the stuff into Alaska.”

“Why would someone do that when it’s commercially available, and why would someone then try to kill to cover it up?”

“The Feds are working on that right now,” Mercer answered. “What concerns me is what they’re going to do with it.”

“You think this may have something to do with us?” Collins asked.

Before Mercer could answer, Lindstrom spoke. “How much liquid nitrogen are we talking about?”

“Before I left Washington, I called the Harbor Master in Seward, the boat’s home port. He told me that the Jenny IV had gone out eighteen times in the past year, yet none of the canneries or fish-processing plants that I called have any record of buying fish from her. The Harbor Master also told me her captain had just paid cash for a new pickup, so he was making money somehow. Figure she went on at least eighteen runs and had a capacity of about thirteen tons. You do the math. That’s a shitload of liquid nitrogen.”

“I still don’t get it. It’s not a drug or explosives or anything illegal. I mean, it’s just cold. What’s the big deal?”

“The only thing that makes sense to me, and I believe that Dick Henna of the FBI agrees, is sabotage,” Mercer continued over the startled looks of the two men. “Liquid nitrogen can alter the molecular strength of any material exposed to it. It weakens steel so badly that it can fracture under its own weight. And there would be no trace of tampering. Say someone sprays a piece of equipment with the stuff. Later, when it’s used, the equipment would fail with no logical explanation and no detectable cause. What if they use the nitrogen to weaken a section of the pipeline? When it collapses you’ve got a major spill on your hands for no reason. You’ve been under the media microscope since work started on the new pipeline from the North Slope, so I figured you guys would be tailor-made for this kind of terrorist action.”

Mercer could see he’d caught Andy Lindstrom’s attention. But by no means was the third-generation oilman convinced. Instinctively, Mercer stayed quiet, letting Lindstrom think through the logic. But still he had to struggle not to show his agitation. He’d just dropped a bombshell on the Operations Chief’s desk, and Lindstrom didn’t know that Mercer wasn’t given to paranoid fantasies and conspiracy theories. Come on, damn it, come on. You know this could be a possible threat.

“The pipeline would make a choice target, but it wouldn’t work,” Lindstrom said at last, pulling a fifth of bourbon from a desk drawer and splashing some into three small cups. “The pipe walls are high-tensile steel, about a half-inch thick, with a maximum rated internal pressure load of nearly one thousand two hundred psi. Even if someone froze a section, they’d still need a bulldozer to crack it open, and our response team would be there long before they made their getaway.”

“What about the VSMs?” Mercer fired back, knowing he had to work fast or his warnings weren’t going to amount to anything.

The aboveground sections of the pipeline were supported above the frozen tundra by 78,000 VSMs or Vertical Support Members. The towers were spaced approximately sixty feet apart and were designed to allow the pipeline to shift within its bed up to twelve feet horizontally and two feet vertically to compensate for expansion and contraction of the pipe casing. The VSMs also served as a buffer in the event of an earthquake like the one that devastated Alaska on Good Friday of 1964. The bases of the stanchions were buried anywhere between fifteen and sixty feet deep, depending on the depth of the permafrost. They utilized passive ammonia cooling to ensure that conductive heat from the flowing oil didn’t melt the frozen soil that kept the pipeline stable.

“Same again. Even if you weakened the supports with liquid nitrogen, you’d still need heavy equipment to make them fail. Remember, it took 1347 state and federal permits to get the line constructed, and you can bet dollars to doughnuts that they covered their asses and made sure the whole system was so over-built that God himself couldn’t take it apart.”

“They said the same thing about the Titanic.” Mercer let his last statement hang in the air for a minute before continuing. “How about some of the bridges? Isn’t there one over a thousand feet long?”

“Where the pipeline crosses the Tanana River, there’s a suspension bridge of twelve hundred feet, but again, even after weakening the anchors and caisson supports, you’d need dynamite to bring it down. Why bother freezing the steel if you have to use explosives?”

“I know you guys have to put chemicals in the oil to augment its natural heat and make flow easier on the way from Prudhoe. What about just freezing the oil in the line, plugging it up solid? Would something like that cause severe damage?”

“If the oil froze, thermal expansion wouldn’t be enough to crack the pipe casings, and we could have the pipe cleaned out in just a few months,” Lindstrom retorted. Mercer could see that Lindstrom was ready to tear his idea apart. “And you’re also forgetting some other prime targets in Alaska like Elmendorf Air Force Base, or the string of radar-tracking stations along the north coast. And what about the new production facilities in the Refuge? A couple of them are already up and running, piping crude to Prudhoe Bay for transshipment here on the TAPline.” Lindstrom lit another cigarette while a new idea struck him. “The only place Alyeska could be targeted is up at our equipment depot in Fairbanks where we’ve got about half a billion dollars’ worth of drill string, cutter heads, and other equipment.”

“They spray a bundle of drill string, the sections of pipe used to bore into the ground, then smack them with a hammer.” Collins hadn’t detected the sarcasm in Lindstrom’s voice and was seriously considering the possibility. “The pipe wouldn’t crack — it’s too strong — but there would be microscopic fissures. When those turbines on the pads spool up, the string would shatter, fouling the bore hole for eternity.”

“What’s security like up there?” If Mercer could convince just one of the men about his fears, it was better than nothing.

“The expensive stuff, like the diamond cutter heads, are under lock and key, patrolled twenty-four hours a day,” Collins replied. “But the lengths of string are just lying around in big stacks ready to be transported to the North Slope.” Collins rubbed a hand across his balding head, a gold Marine Corps ring catching the final rays of the setting sun through the window.

“I suggest you beef up your force,” Mercer said mildly.

“I don’t see it,” Lindstrom remarked, still unconcerned. “If they shipped over two hundred and thirty tons of liquid nitrogen, they’re after something a hell of a lot more important than spare parts sitting in a warehouse.”

“What’s your estimation?” Mercer tried to draw Lindstrom in again, hoping that the Operations Director would take his warning more seriously.

“We’re secure here at the terminal, and Prudhoe Bay is so isolated it doesn’t make a logical choice.”

“Which leaves?”

“Not much. The pipeline is just too tough for something like you suggest. Alyeska may be a prime target for terrorism, and I’m not ruling us out before this crisis over the Refuge ends, but using liquid nitrogen just doesn’t make any sense.”

Mercer turned to Collins, hoping he still had the other man intrigued. “Why did you say that the terminal itself is secure? I didn’t have any problems getting in.”

“You’re still on the guest list; all others are being turned away. We’ve even suspended the regular visitors’ tour bus from town. Besides the access road, there’s no other way into the terminal. Fences, active and passive detectors, and patrols keep everyone from getting within a mile of any vital area.”

“Mercer, you’ve been focusing on why someone is smuggling liquid nitrogen into Alaska. Have you stopped to ask yourself who?” Though Lindstrom obviously didn’t believe in a threat to his private domain, he acknowledged the possibility of terrorism.

“Oh, I already know who,” Mercer said sharply.

“PEAL?” asked Collins.

“No. This may be their type of operation, but it’s way out of their league.”

“PEAL?” Lindstrom didn’t immediately recognize the name. “Oh, wait. Aren’t they the environmental group with the big research ship anchored in the bay?”

“Yeah,” Collins said. “They’ve been here for a couple of weeks, boycotting Petromax gas stations, giving interviews to the army of reporters that follow them around, and generally making everyone around here as edgy as hell.”

“They don’t have anything to do with this,” Mercer repeated. “They want to stop the drilling in the Arctic Refuge, but this is just too big for them. Boycotting gas stations is one thing, but coordinating an attack against Alyeska is entirely different. Listen, guys, I’m not up here in any official capacity; the Feds are handling the investigation. In fact, I’m in Alaska against the FBI Director’s direct order. But while they’re off looking for clues, I think they’re forgetting to watch over targets. I’m surprised no one from the Bureau has been here to talk to you. That’s what you get for having too many law school graduates and not enough people with brains.”

“You sound like you know who’s smuggling the liquid nitrogen. Who is it?” Collins asked.

“A former KGB colonel named Ivan Kerikov. I’ve dealt with him before. He’s utterly ruthless. He would kill without a moment’s hesitation. Oh, shit, that reminds me. Can I use your phone?”

Lindstrom nodded, and Mercer dialed quickly, the phone number being one of the hundred or so he was able to keep straight in his head.

“Homer Police, Chief MacLaughlin speaking.”

“Chief, this is Philip Mercer—”

MacLaughlin cut Mercer off before he could continue. “How the hell did you know the Jenny IV wouldn’t be there?”

“Just a hunch.”

“Bullshit,” MacLaughlin exploded. “No one gets hunches like that. I’ve just changed the deaths of Jerry and John Small from misadventure to murder. Add them to the death of Dave Heller, the guy we found in his beached boat, and it means I’ve got three unsolved killings in a town that hasn’t seen a murder since I became Sheriff. I want some fucking answers.”

“You’ll have them as soon as I do, Chief. I’m sorry, but that’s all I can say right now. I can tell you that you won’t find the murderers in town; they’re long gone.”

“No kidding,” MacLaughlin said sarcastically. “Just because I’m a small-town cop doesn’t mean I’m a simpleton.”

“I’m not saying that, but I think your investigation will be better served if you concentrate on finding where the Jenny IV was sunk the second time.”

“Fat fucking chance. After my brother-in-law failed to find her by dragging the bottom, I sent out nearly every boat in the harbor. Forty boats, all equipped with fish-finding sonar, failed to find anything. They must have searched a hundred square miles.”

Mercer could imagine their search. Captains and crews half drunk, thrilled at playing cop for a day, running randomly across the water without any logical search pattern. Mercer guessed that MacLaughlin’s one hundred miles was more like ten. There was no sense in pointing this out. MacLaughlin was so angry right now that any criticism would probably set him off like a volcano. Mercer couldn’t blame MacLaughlin; he was caught up in something so big that he didn’t know which way was up.

“Really?” Mercer said, trying to sound impressed while thinking that he might call Dick Henna and have him get an antisubmarine vessel into the area. With its side-scanning sonar, it would be able to find the hulk on its first pass. “I appreciate that, Chief, I really do. I’ll let you know if I get anything more on my end.”

Mercer cut the connection before MacLaughlin could protest.

“What was that all about?” Collins asked suspiciously.

“Maybe something, maybe a red herring. But a couple of nights ago, the Jenny IV was moved from where the Coast Guard had sunk her. Whoever did it killed the owner of the boat they used.”

“You think it was this Kerikov guy?”

“Either him or someone working for him,” Mercer said, keeping a tight rein on his building anger. “Like I said before, I really don’t have any right being here and talking to you two. But my ass is on the line here. I’m the only living witness to the discovery of the Jenny IV, and I don’t think Kerikov’s going to stop until I’m dead. My only choice is to stop him first. I don’t want to end-run the authorities, but if anything, and I mean anything, out of the ordinary happens here, I’d like to know about it.”

“Nothing will, but sure, we’ll keep you in the loop,” Lindstrom answered indulgently.

Mercer gave him the name of the hotel he’d be staying at. He felt he’d done the best he could with what little information he had and could only hope that his warnings wouldn’t go unheeded.

Twenty minutes later, he parked the Blazer in front of his hotel, a large clapboard structure that had seen better days. It wasn’t the best place in town, which suited him fine. After settling into his room and taking a quick shower, he enjoyed a salmon dinner in the nearly deserted dining room. The adjacent lounge was almost as empty, so he decided to head out for a while and maybe talk to some of the PEAL activists who might be in town.

Although he didn’t think PEAL was involved with the smuggling of the liquid nitrogen, he wanted a better handle on the group, partially for his own investigation and partially because he wanted to know more about Aggie Johnston, and PEAL seemed to be a major portion of her life.

Ever since she had stormed out of his house, thoughts of her weren’t too far away. At first, he’d tried to simply will her from his mind, but he gave that up. Aggie was not the type of woman Mercer could forget. In just a short time, she had worked her way into his head so deeply that he found he could recall the specific scent of her hair and the way her eyes softened when she first saw the bandage on his face from the pistol whip. Mercer had never believed the old adage about opposites attracting, but then he’d never really faced it before. He was both hurt and confused that Aggie hadn’t tried to contact him. But he had too much going on to allow himself to be distracted by thoughts of her, yet he still wanted to find out more about her, a lot more. Everything.

He walked along North Harbor Drive, paralleling the small boat marina. The sun had set, and the sound of waves slapping against the hundred pleasure craft came out of the darkness like an eerie recording. The few streetlights cast hazy puddles on the sidewalk, their glow barely glinting off the chrome trim of the nearest boats. The air was heavy with the tangy perfume of the ocean. Although the sidewalks were fairly crowded for a town of only three thousand, there was a loneliness here that was found in all of Alaska except for its larger cities. Out in the harbor he could see the running lights of a large vessel he knew must be the Hope.

Mercer finally came across a bar that looked promising, its advertising neon signs casting garish splashes of color into the night. Country music blared from within as a young couple entered, Mercer following close behind. He nodded his thanks to them and surveyed the room.

The bar was one step below a hole in the wall but better than a dive. The floor was chewing gum-smeared carpet with a pile so worn it looked like cement. The walls were yellowed by the cigarette smoke that hung in the air like smog. The U-shaped bar could seat about twenty people, and as he approached, he saw that its heavily varnished top was covered with carved initials. Like so many bars, this place relied on a gimmick to attract patrons; in this case, the immortality of etching your name into the bar top. There were about a dozen tables in the room, a tiny dance floor, and an even smaller stage, although the music was now coming from the battered jukebox next to the front door. The establishment was maybe half full.

Mercer wanted a vodka gimlet, but this was the type of place where you drank either beer or straight whiskey. He ordered a beer from the busty bartender and took a corner stool next to a guy he figured was a fisherman, given his size and the rubber boots he sported. The woman behind the bar bent deeply as she slid a Coors to Mercer, giving him an excellent view of what she kept barely hidden under her plunge-necked blouse. He smiled at her for both the beer and the view. If bars had gimmicks, well, so did bartenders.

“Are you an Us or a Them?” the man sitting at Mercer’s left asked without preamble.

“I guess that depends on who we are and who they are.” He couldn’t tell if the man was drunk or crazy.

“They are that ecology group and the mess of reporters here with them.” He nodded at a group of tables pushed together against one wall, the ten or so people forming an exclusive enclave. “We are just about everyone else.”

“Trust me, I’m one of us.” Mercer caught the man’s humor. “I’m a mining engineer. You?”

“I work aboard one of the ERVs, the ships that guide the tankers out of Prince William Sound,” he responded before taking a swallow of his beer. “I tell you, I just don’t understand how these protesters can survive. Do they get paid for screwing around with other people’s lives?”

“You’d be surprised how well funded most environmental groups are. And at least one member of this group has got more money than God.”

“Figures, the idle rich feel guilty, so they try to make sure no one else can make any money.”

“Modern noblesse oblige,” Mercer muttered.

He took a moment to study the group at their tables. Deciding who was a journalist and who was a member of PEAL was simple. The reporters had a hard-edged cynicism, whether gained through experience or affected, that they all wore like a badge of honor. The environmentalists were usually younger, fresh-faced and eager, with open smiles and easy laughs that made them look like a victorious college football team and their girlfriends. There was a scrubbed innocence to them and a strong sense of camaraderie that bound them much more strongly than simple friendship. They were crusaders, brothers in arms fighting a holy mission.

“So what do you know about them?” Mercer asked his neighbor, who, like so many Alaskans, was more than willing to talk to a stranger.

“Not much, other than I want ’em out of my town,” he spat. “They been here a few weeks, them and the reporters. One group getting in everyone’s faces, preaching at us about this and that, treating us like morons.” Then he quipped, “And the protesters are even worse.”

The ERV crewman had just started telling Mercer about the overturned fuel truck when the door to the bar opened, letting in a blast of cold air. Mercer turned to see a large group of people enter, laughing as they stepped across the threshold. There were nine men and five women, though it was hard to distinguish between the two if one judged by hair length alone.

When he saw her, he wasn’t surprised. It was logical that she’d be in Alaska. Her organization’s largest protest was happening right here in Valdez, and their flagship was anchored in the bay. There was no reason why she wouldn’t want to be part of it. And this bar was the closest to where Mercer had seen several PEAL Zodiacs tied against the public docks. He wondered, as he looked at her, if his being here was as random as he liked to believe. Or had he come to this particular bar hoping that she would be here too? Even if some part of him had wished for her entrance, he was unprepared for her arrival.

Aggie Johnston didn’t see him as she was swept into the bar with her friends, her face radiant. They immediately headed for the tables already staked by PEAL and the sycophantic reporters. Like the day he’d first seen her at George Washington University, she wore a shapeless green anorak.

His eyes tracked her across the room, listening to the joyous cries of her fellows as she joined them. It was obvious that they had not seen her in some time, and her presence was the reason for their celebratory mood. He watched for a few moments longer, then turned away abruptly, angry at himself for acting like a lovelorn teenager suffering through the end of a summertime romance.

“Jesus,” Mercer’s neighbor breathed, “I’d rather feel that than feel sick.”

Mercer looked and saw that Aggie had taken off her coat, revealing a tight black turtleneck. He expected that his friend’s taste in women ran toward the bosomy centerfold type, yet he too had felt Aggie Johnston’s allure.

“I don’t think you can’t have one without the other,” Mercer said darkly.

Two beers later, Mercer was getting ready to leave. The bar was filled to capacity and the band was just going on its first break, the house lights coming back up. A few of the locals had tried to approach the PEAL table to ask the women to dance, and had all been rebuffed with casually cruel snickers. Aggie had had the most potential suitors, and while her refusals seemed a little kinder, they were no less absolute.

One of the men at the table, a black-bearded giant who appeared to be some sort of leader given the deferential quiet he received when he stood, hoisted his glass to make a toast in the silence following the band’s last song. “To Brock Holt, a polluter who paid for his actions.”

Although the toastmaster spoke to his group, his eyes scanned the crowd, clearly hoping for a response. His eyes were glazed with fervent conviction and several pitchers of beer. No one knew he had been on that lonely stretch of road with Jan Voerhoven. Even the jaded reporters were stunned by his inappropriate words.

He didn’t have to wait long for a response. A voice from the far side of the bar, ten or so stools from Mercer, bellowed drunkenly, “What did you say, asshole?”

“I don’t believe I was talking to you,” the environmentalist menaced.

The air in the room had gotten tight. The bartender was already reaching for the phone to call the police. The club’s three bouncers would be sorely outmatched if things turned ugly.

“Brock was a friend of mine.” The local stood on drunken legs, his lips rubbery but his emotions as clear as crystal. He wore a blue parka with a Petromax logo over his left breast.

“Then you should be as relieved as we are that he’s no longer hauling poison across the state,” came the reply with a mocking sneer. Aggie tried to pull her friend back to his seat, but he shook her off, too hyped to think about what he was saying or where he was.

The antagonists started walking toward each other, and chairs began scraping back from tables as the room galvanized into two camps. This fight between activists and locals had been brewing since PEAL had arrived in Valdez, and after a few more heated insults, the room exploded, each side believing that it was right; the ecologists knowing their struggle was to save a planet, the locals fighting to preserve their livelihoods and families. The reporters ducked behind their tables and watched the melee with ghoulish glee.

It was apparent that only about thirty of the locals wanted to get involved; the rest made for the door as quickly as possible. Nearly all twenty-five members of PEAL were eager to brawl, including several women. At first, Mercer wanted to join the hurried exodus, but as he moved toward the exit, he realized that he couldn’t leave Aggie until he knew she was safe. He turned and struggled back into the bar, shoving and pushing through the panicked throng.

Forcing himself into the clear, he heard her scream over the shouts and yells, over the grunts and cries, over the breaking of glass and the crash of furniture. She was pinned near the far wall of the bar, bent backward over one of the band’s large speakers, red stage lights flashing against her pale, pained face. A swarthy man in a black leather jacket held her hands over her head, a sheen of eager sweat gleaming on his skin. To get there, Mercer fought his way in, out, and around a half dozen fights, punching and kicking with little regard for his target.

A blow landed solidly in his stomach and another caught him on his jaw. He rolled with the shots, giving himself a few moments to recover. A PEAL advocate came after him, hands held low and at the ready. Mercer let him come, gauging the man with an expert eye. As soon as his attacker had committed himself to a powerful roundhouse punch, Mercer eased back just enough so that the fist slid past his chin. He grabbed the man’s outstretched arm, steadied his target, and fired off a series of punches at the man’s exposed flank, fists sinking into the hard pad of muscle below the activist’s arm. A couple of ribs snapped with sickening pops.

Mercer sidestepped the falling environmentalist and targeted the man holding Aggie. Her attacker had freed one of his hands so he could grope between her legs. His shoulders were hunched to protect himself from her futile ripostes. Mercer shoved aside two struggling men who staggered into his path and reached Aggie only sixty seconds after the fight had broken out.

Had her assault not turned sexual, Mercer might have been willing to let her feel the consequences of her action. She was playing with other people’s lives as a pet project, disregarding what was at stake for the men and women who lived in Valdez. Protests like this were strictly geared for the media. PEAL wasn’t in Alaska to raise environmental awareness, just the world’s awareness of the group’s existence. Their interest in Valdez would last only as long as they could hold the media’s attention, then they would move on. But the man holding Aggie had made the mistake of trying to satisfy some perverse desire by fondling her.

Even as Mercer swept a half-filled beer bottle off one of the few unoverturned tables, he hoped that a less amorous man had pinned Aggie. She wanted to be part of the Green Revolution, and this was its reality. Tear down what exists and worry about the aftermath later. With a strong downward jerk, the bottle shattered over the man’s head and he hit the floor before the last of the disintegrated glass found its way to the carpet.

Aggie was pulled off balance by his fall, sliding off the speaker and onto her feet. Her eyes widened to almost impossible proportions when she recognized Mercer standing before her.

“Now, what’s a nice girl like you… Oh, never mind, let’s get the hell out of here.” Mercer grabbed her wrist and led her out a back door just as the police stormed into the bar. As they fled, Mercer took an instant to notice that nearly all the PEAL activists were still fighting while the floor was littered with the dazed forms of Valdez’s toughest citizenry.

The alley behind the bar was dimly lit and the Dumpster next to the back exit was filled to near overflowing. Aggie tried to stop, but Mercer wanted to be as far away from the bar as possible. He didn’t want to spend the night in the town’s drunk tank with a group of hungover antagonists whose fight was far from over. He dragged her to a lit street, one block inland from the bar.

Once under the protective pool of a streetlight, she stopped and jerked her arm out of Mercer’s grip. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“You’re welcome.”

“Answer me, goddamn it.”

“Hey, I was in the right place at the right time. If you want to go back, be my guest. I’m sure that guy would love to have another go at you,” Mercer said with more anger than he felt.

“Fuck you.”

“Good-bye, Aggie.” He started to walk away and was relieved when she ran up and grabbed his sleeve.

“I’m sorry. I don’t care why you were there tonight, but I’m certainly grateful.” She looked up at him, her eyes like gems.

He wanted, more than anything else, to kiss her, to capture that mouth with his. But he turned away instead and continued walking. He hated being this confused, and his natural reaction was to leave, as if getting away from her presence would ease the hurt in his mind.

“Mercer, wait!” She caught up to him again, and they began walking in stride, her long legs matching his angry pace. Without a word, he shed his leather jacket and draped it over her shoulders. She snuggled into it like a favorite blanket. After a moment she said, “We need to talk.”

“I really don’t think we do.”

“The man who broke into your house, I knew him.”

“Yes, I know,” Mercer replied evenly, thankful she hadn’t dodged the other issue that had been plaguing him since that night. “I’ve never seen anyone face death the way you did. Your expression wasn’t fear or disgust, it was recognition.”

He might have expected her first revelation, but he wasn’t prepared for her second. “He worked for my father.”

“What?” Mercer stopped, whirling her around so that she faced him.

“Well, he used to. I confronted my father about it yesterday. He told me Burt Manning hadn’t worked for him for a couple of months.”

“And you believed him?”

“Yes. No. Well, maybe. I don’t know.”

“Aggie, we’re talking about lives here, mine in particular.”

“When I talked to my father, he knew what time I was at your house and the only way he could have known that is if Manning had told him before breaking in to kill you. Manning must have been working for him.” Aggie went quiet for a second, on the verge of tears. “I just can’t believe it. My father is a monster, but he would never have someone killed, especially you. You two are friends. After I talked to him, I was so scared, I didn’t know what to think, so I came here a couple of days before planned.”

“Aggie, do yourself a favor and get the hell out of Alaska. You’re not safe here.”

“I’m safer here than I was in Washington.” They started walking again.

“Manning wasn’t after you. He was after me, and his reasons have nothing to do with your father. Go home.”

“What does being in Alaska have to do with anything?”

“More than you think, but I don’t have time to explain.” Mercer had shut down the emotional side of his brain so when he spoke again it was without the trace of bitterness he expected. “You and your PEAL friends should just pack up and go somewhere else.”

“None of us are leaving until our work is done.” Her tone was absolute.

“Hey, you guys want to go chain yourselves to trees and stage marches, that’s fine, but people are dying here and I’m afraid it’s not over yet. Don’t you understand? You are about to get caught up in something more dangerous than that barroom brawl. Is your life worth more than making a little noise about the environment? Listen, Aggie, your father didn’t have anything to do with that attack on my house. It was coordinated by a former KGB operative named Ivan Kerikov, and he’s in Alaska now and has already killed four people including three of my friends.”

“But my dad knew when I was at your house,” Aggie persisted.

They’d walked back to the docks, where a crowd of PEAL activists were clustered around the two large Zodiacs. By their laughter, it seemed that only a few had been arrested and none seemed the worse for the fight. Mercer guessed that the lenience was due to the media’s presence. His impression that they were like a bunch of collegiates out for a good time was reaffirmed. He paused, while he and Aggie were still in the shadows of a storefront, and watched the environmentalists a little more critically. They appeared too relaxed, and something about that niggled at the back of Mercer’s mind.

“Well, there are your friends. I know you’re not going to listen to my advice because you’re too stubborn, but I want you to be careful, all right?”

“Mercer, I—”

“Just be careful.” He turned and vanished into the night so quickly that his absence surprised her.

A moment later she’d rejoined her friends, laughing with them as they recounted their prowess in the fight before boarding the Zodiacs for the brief run out to the Hope. She kept peering into the darkness, hoping to see Mercer watching her, but he was gone.

As the group clambered aboard the rubber boats, another figure was watching them, tucked deeply in the shadows. He languidly massaged his crotch as he watched Aggie ease herself into a Zodiac, her taut body straining against the denim of her jeans as she stood for one instant stretched between the wharf and the boat.

She’s got the backside of a young boy, Abu Alam thought. He touched the lump on his head where the bottle had collided. He couldn’t have his revenge against the man tonight; Kerikov was expecting a report about PEAL’s activities in town, but he now knew the man’s face very well. And once he was out of the way, there was nothing to stop him from discovering if her ass felt as tight as it looked.