Charon's Landing

Alyeska Marine Terminal

Twenty agonizing minutes dragged by, the ticking of a wall clock sounding like the heartbeat of a dying man. Mercer’s call to Elmendorf had secured two Hueys with eight fully equipped Air Force commandos in each of the helicopters. True to his word, Dick Henna had galvanized the powers that be in Washington. Andy Lindstrom had phoned one of Alyeska’s on-call chopper pilots, a cowboy he thought would jump at the chance of the flight to the northern pump stations. The pilot would meet them at the Valdez Municipal Airport in thirty minutes. Mercer and Lindstrom were waiting for Mike Collins to get off the phone. Then they’d get a final word from Ted Mossey on his progress reactivating the pipeline’s computer operating system.

With ten minutes to go before they were to rendezvous with the helicopter pilot, Collins finally emerged from his office, his weathered face wearing a dark expression. His eyes had gone glassy and lifeless. The plug of tobacco jammed in his left cheek looked to be the size of a softball.

“I can’t reach Pump Stations 5 or 6. I’ve tried the phone, the two-way radio, and the shortwave. Even the fax machine. There’s no response.”

“What do you mean, no response? You didn’t send everyone down to Fairbanks, did you?” Lindstrom asked, panicked.

“Of course not. Do you think I’m that stupid?”

“Knock it off.” Mercer recognized the beginning of an ass-covering session and stopped it as quickly as he could. He had neither the patience nor the time for such bureaucratic idiocy. “We’ve got a major situation on our hands and don’t have the time to sit here and point fingers.”

Once again, Mercer found himself making decisions for Lindstrom and Collins, and again the two men obeyed without question. “Andy, I want you to stay here and coordinate our communications. Also, work on your computer guy. It’s imperative that you regain control of the system. Mike, you and I are heading up to Pump Station 5. On-site intel is crucial. Does your helicopter have the right gear for me to contact Elmendorf?”

“I don’t know,” Collins admitted. He switched his chew from one distended cheek to the other, a small jet of yellow juice shooting from his pursed lips. “You’d have to talk to Ed, the chopper pilot, about that.”

“Well, let’s go talk to Ed, then.” If Mercer felt any hesitancy, it didn’t show. He was moving on a deeply intuitive level that he’d learned to never question.

By the time they got to the airport, night had settled with deceptive ease, darkening the sky completely. The rain, which had been constant all through the afternoon, had finally stopped, leaving the trees heavy with water. Even the slightest breeze brought another shower falling to the earth. But slight breezes were not in order for this night. A stiff wind scoured the open field, with gusts strong enough to alter Mercer’s stride.

The lone Bell JetRanger among the Cessna 182s, Twin Otters, and a single private jet looked like an overgrown insect bathed in artificial light as it sat forty yards from the terminal. A dark figure leaned nonchalantly against the sharply angled Plexiglas windscreen, hands crossed over his broad chest.

Lit as they were, the pilot could see his passengers before they could get a clear image of him. He peered into the light beaming from the terminal and laughed roughly when he recognized one of his passengers.

“Don’t even think of coming one step closer, Mercer,” the pilot warned in a deep baritone. He was African-American. “The Judge Advocate General said I’ve got the legal right to kick your ass if you come within fifty feet of me.”

“Eddie?” Mercer called. “Eddie Rice?”

“None other, white boy, and I ain’t kidding — you stay away from me, man. You carry some seriously bad juju and I don’t want you around me again. My flying record was perfect before your sorry ass entered my life, and I plan to keep it to just that one crash until the man gives me my gold watch.”

“They give you a gold watch, Eddie, you’ll hawk it for a couple of forty-ounce malt liquors. You still drink when you fly?” Mercer called back, pacing a little ahead of Collins.

He and Eddie Rice came together, hugging as friends who thought they’d never see each other again. Even in a padded flight suit, Eddie was a solid person, his body dense and roped with muscle. He was not as tall as Mercer, but his shoulders were wider and his neck was as thick as a tree stump. Rice was handsome, the way a sports figure or music idol was handsome. His skin was glossy smooth and his deep-set eyes were wide and bright, only a single dark vein in his right eye marring their bluish whiteness. His only unattractive feature were small, misshapen teeth, two jagged rows of yellowed tablets that were either too crowded or too gappy.

A year ago, Eddie Rice had been a lieutenant in the navy, a chopper pilot commanding a Sikorsky Sea King off the amphibious assault ship Inchon. He’d had the bad luck of ferrying Mercer from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk to the Inchon during the crisis in Hawaii. Mercer had hijacked Rice’s helicopter, ordering him to fly to Hawaii so he could prevent a catastrophic invasion that would have forever crippled the United States. While making their escape after preventing a nuclear missile launch, Mercer, Eddie, and a Russian scientist named Valery Borodin had been forced to ditch their helicopter in the North Pacific. Eddie had been the most severely injured in the crash, spending three months in the naval hospital at Pearl Harbor. The last Mercer knew, the navy had given Rice an honorable discharge and set him up on a disability plan that would make him comfortable for the rest of his life. Mercer more expected to see Nanook of the North in Alaska than Eddie Rice, USN (Ret.).

“I’ll have you know, I have maintained twelve hours’ bottle-to-throttle since about twenty minutes ago,” Rice teased back.

On their desperate flight from Hawaii trying to track down a rogue Soviet sub, Mercer had offered Eddie a beer, which the pilot had gratefully accepted considering his chances of surviving to face a review board were about zero. It was one of the many things the two men had laughed about during their time in the hospital. The previous Christmas, Eddie had sent Mercer a single Sapporo beer, the brand that the two had shared on that fateful flight.

“What are you doing here?” Mercer questioned.

“Shit, I should ask you the same question. I get a call on my day off for some emergency flight, and who shows up but the most dangerous man I’ve ever met. What’s your story?”

“You remember the Russian behind the Hawaii affair? He’s back, and right now may be just a few hours north of us.”

“Who, that Ivan Kerisomething? You shitting me?”

“I wish I was.”

“Shit, that guy is the Tonton Macoutes and Baron D’Mort all rolled into one,” Rice said, blending his Haitian grandmother’s two greatest fears, the former Haitian Secret Police and one of the dark figures of traditional voodoo.

“Throw in Jack the Ripper and you’ve got it half right.”

Moments later, the stress on the JetRanger’s landing skids eased, the struts flexing so they seemed to help launch the chopper into the air. The Tiekel River Valley was soon a narrow ax stroke in the ground beneath the rapidly climbing craft. Mercer sat in the copilot seat while Collins occupied the back cabin, his feet stretched almost into the cockpit. All three wore radio earphones, which gave their conversation a muted, distracted sound. The light from the cockpit gauges was an eerie green.

The JetRanger’s nose-mounted strobe flashed a lonely signal into the night.

“So what’s this all about?” Eddie asked after he got the helicopter settled into their designated flight path.

“A couple of hours ago I sent some men down to Fairbanks from Pump Stations 5 and 6,” Mike Collins answered, the throat microphone too close to his mouth so that his voice was garbled. “They were all killed in an accident, two vans full of guys that I’ve known for years. Then, just about forty minutes ago, we lost communication with the rest of the men I left at Numbers 5 and 6.”

“This have anything to do with the trouble at the equipment depot I heard about on the news?”

“Yes,” Mercer answered. “But that’s just a distraction. I think the real trouble is at one of the pump stations.”

“All right, Mercer.” Collins sat forward, thrusting his head between the two cockpit seats. “You seem to have some special knowledge about what’s going on here, and I think it’s time you told me. I’ve lost some men tonight, and something tells me the killing isn’t done. You know something you’re not telling me and goddamn it, I have a right to know.”

“What happened to the captain of the Petromax Arctica?” Mercer replied.

“What?”

“The original captain of the Petromax Arctica was taken off the ship, choppered to Anchorage, and then taken to Seattle aboard a private medical flight paid for by Max Johnston himself. Do you have any idea why the ship was several hours late berthing at the terminal? If they went through the expense of pulling Harris Albrecht from the tanker, don’t you think it was to make sure the Arctica docked on time? So why was the tanker late? What the hell was an empty VLCC doing running around the Gulf of Alaska without a captain while a berthing space was being held for her?”

“What are you talking about? That doesn’t have anything to do with this situation. The Petromax Arctica docked long before—”

Mercer cut him off before Collins could finish. “Answer the question and I think you’ll know.”

“Harris Albrecht was taken to a trauma specialist in Seattle, a doctor specializing in limb reattachment and stump repair for prostheses.”

“Did you check him out, this doctor?” Mercer torqued himself around so that his eyes bored into Collins.

“I made a couple of calls when it happened.”

“And?” He cocked one dark eyebrow.

“Tissue repair following frostbite was his true speciality. He’s one of the foremost…” Collins went silent.

The rotors were thumping over their heads so loudly they drowned out the sound of the JetRanger’s turbine. Eddie kept the craft straight and level, ignoring his desire to dip into the valleys and fly nape of the earth as the military had trained him to do. In the Gulf War, he’d flown Recon Marines into the hottest landing zones, and that wild flying style had never left him.

Mercer spoke. “How many times has the Arctica docked at Alyeska without incident in the past year? How many times has Harris Albrecht snugged his tanker into your docks without so much as a bump? Tell me how he could lose an arm and need the attention of a frostbite specialist on a normal run from Long Beach, California, to Valdez, Alaska. He’s been smuggling frozen nitrogen into Alaska right under your nose. But on his last trip, something went wrong.”

“You don’t think this is all related?”

Mercer shot him a scathing look. “For Christ’s sake, of course it’s all related. Why do you think I’m in this helicopter with a madman at the controls while I could be back home having drinks at my neighborhood bar? Mike, Howard Small is dead, his cousin is dead, and so is his cousin’s son. People have taken potshots at me all because we found the boat ferrying the canisters of liquid nitrogen from the Petromax Arctica to shore. Kerikov and PEAL are trying to cover themselves by eliminating anyone who stumbled onto their operation. Your computer problem? It isn’t a coincidence, despite what your computer guy says. The riot at the depot, the accident with your vans? Whatever Kerikov has planned is happening right now!”

He hadn’t intended to go off like that; it wasn’t his style, but tension was starting to eat at him. There was a nagging feeling telling him he was already too late. He wasn’t angry at Mike Collins for not recognizing the dangers; he was mad at himself for not recognizing them fast enough. When Aggie Johnston had told him her boyfriend was gone on some mysterious mission, he should have acted then, called in the cavalry so to speak, and ordered a statewide search for PEAL’s leader. He was certain that Kerikov would have turned up in the same dragnet and this desperate flight wouldn’t have been necessary.

“Eddie, what’s our ETA to Elmendorf AFB?”

“I don’t know, I filed a flight plan to Fairbanks. What’s at Elly?”

“A couple of helicopter gunships and some gung-ho soldiers.” Mercer grinned at Rice. “There’s no way I’m going to get shot at again.”

“Amen to that, brother.” Rice smiled back, his teeth looking iridescent in the glow of the cockpit. “I’d say about another hour and ten minutes in these conditions.”

“As soon as you can, get me in radio contact with them. They’re expecting my call.” Mercer then switched to a more relaxed tone. “So, how does your wife like living up here?”

“She doesn’t,” Rice said ruefully. “She and I split up while I was still in the hospital. It seems I wasn’t the only one receiving injections from my doctor at Pearl.”

“Man, I’m sorry.”

“Ah, shit. Life goes on, don’t it? Besides, a black man up here? I get more ass than I can handle.” Eddie’s grin was back, though there was a hint of sad bitterness in his voice.

An hour later, Anchorage was a bright blur on the ground beneath the JetRanger. The waters of Cook Inlet were an inky black stain. The storm that had pounded Valdez during the afternoon had moved northward and now pummeled Alaska’s Queen City. Rain lashed the helicopter, striking the windshield so hard that it sounded like stones thrown against the Plexiglas. The wipers turned the torrent into arcing streaks across their field of vision. Wind rocked the craft, sluing it dangerously despite Eddie’s best efforts. He made no apology for his flying. His face was tight with concentration, his hands and feet dancing over the controls. A pilot of lesser skill wouldn’t have dared flying tonight.

“Alyeska Flight One-eleven, we have you on radar twelve miles out, flying three-oh-five degrees.”

“Roger that, Elmendorf,” Eddie confirmed. “ETA in five minutes. Approach three-ten, squawk zero-two-two-zero. Confirmed.”

“Confirmed One-eleven.”

“You know what you’re doing?” Mercer teased Rice.

“No clue.”

Four minutes and forty seconds later, Eddie settled the Bell chopper onto the tarmac near a huge corrugated steel hangar. Two Huey UH-1 troop transport helicopters were next to the spot where ATC had sent the Alyeska helicopter, and even in the murky light spilling from the hangars, they looked deadly. The side doors were open, revealing gimbal mounted M-60 heavy machine guns. Even before the JetRanger’s blades stopped turning, technicians were swarming around the craft, oblivious to the icy rain buffeting the airfield. A fuel truck drew alongside and two men prepared to attach the thick hose to the chopper.

Mercer ducked from the JetRanger, dashing for the protective cover of the hangar, his boots kicking up violent waves in the puddles on the asphalt. A cold chill lapped under the raised collar of his leather coat, and his hands felt frozen by the time he entered the glowing hangar.

The huge building’s heating eased the chill on Mercer’s exposed skin, but his insides were still cold with fear and apprehension. Two delta-shaped F-15 Strike Eagles dominated the space, their twin tails rising up almost twenty feet from the polished concrete floor. Behind them, at the back of the hangar, a cluster of men waited quietly, their faces blackened with camouflage grease, their M-16A1 assault rifles held competently in demigloved hands. They paid little attention to Mercer as he approached, satisfying themselves with a dismissive glance before turning back to the perpetual task of checking and rechecking equipment. Mercer kept walking toward them, and finally a single man detached himself from the collective.

He was short and heavily built, with bristle-cut hair and a face that needed a razor. His brows were heavy tangles of wiry hair that met above his hooked nose. His eyes were dark and wrinkled at their corners, but Mercer saw that they were level and quick. His mouth, incongruously, was full-lipped and sensitive.

“Colonel Knoff?”

“You must be Mercer.” Knoff’s handshake was like having a hand caught in some sort of farm machine, a relentless grinding pressure. Mercer briefly considered matching Knoff’s handshake but realized this wasn’t some sort of macho test, just Knoff’s natural grip. “I gotta say, you’ve caught us a little off guard here. An hour ago, I was watching porno movies with a few of the guys, and next thing I know, I’m on the phone with General Samuel Kelly, the Air Force’s Chief of Staff. I can’t even guess who you are to pull that kind of string.”

Mercer immediately liked Knoff’s attitude. He didn’t have a career soldier’s disdain for anyone not in uniform. It was clear that he hadn’t forgotten that it was civilians he was trained to serve. “Ask any politician and he’ll tell you I’m the most powerful person in the country.” Mercer smiled. “An American tax-payer.”

“You mind telling me what this is all about?”

Mercer could understand Colonel Knoff’s question and the concern he felt for his men that made him ask it, but none of them had the time to stand around and discuss it. He had to get them moving.

“Colonel, if I’ve managed to convince your superiors about this mission’s importance, put your trust in their judgment and just go along with it. This may be a waste of your time, but if it’s not, if I’m right, we’re going to face a seriously hot LZ. I can’t give you any of the overall picture, but I need to know if you have any tactical questions about tonight’s op. If you don’t ask now, some of your boys may not be coming back.”

“Mr. Mercer, I wouldn’t worry about us.” The ramrod in Knoff’s back got about two degrees straighter, if such a thing was possible. “General Kelly briefed us on what to expect. What bothers me is the presence of you and your slick in our convoy. My pilots don’t know your man, and the last thing we need is a civilian helicopter flying in the same area where we’re making a hot drop.”

Mercer had expected such a concern, and his reply was the reassurance that Knoff wanted. “I flew with this pilot during last year’s flap in Hawaii. Plus, he’s ex-navy and a Gulf War veteran. I plan to keep us a couple miles back from your landings and monitor from the radio. You guys are the ones who make the big bucks for getting shot at, not us. Have your lead pilot give instructions to my man, and he’ll follow them to the letter.”

“What about you, what’s your experience?” Knoff asked.

“Were you in Iraq?” Knoff nodded. “I’d already been in and out before the Abrams tanks broke through the berms. I was a specialist for Delta Force’s Operation Prospector, to make sure none of you boys faced nukes on the battlefield. I’ve probably seen more firefights than all of your troops combined, and we can sit here all night and compare scars, but I don’t have the time. Anything else?”

Knoff was slightly taken aback by Mercer’s response. The Special Forces community, though rife with interservice rivalries, was close-knit, and stories of black operations circled freely in watered-down versions to avoid compromising ongoing missions. It was obvious in his reaction that Knoff had heard of Operation Prospector and knew that a civilian had turned a debacle into a success while saving most of the team sent to protect him. “No, sir. That should do it. I’ve got the coordinates for the pump stations and the quick sketch map faxed to us by a guy named Lindstrom. I figured we’d hit both simultaneously.”

“Negative,” Mercer replied evenly. “If we split your forces, we’ll be outgunned and probably outmanned. By the time we get up there, I’ll have the intel on which station was taken.”

“All right.” Knoff didn’t have any more questions.

“Then let’s go,” Mercer said with more bravado than he felt.

Ivan Kerikov settled into a chair behind the pump control console, a Heckler and Koch MP-5 resting across his knees. The corpses of the few Alyeska employees who’d remained at the station had already been dumped outside. He removed his heavy overcoat and was thinking about taking off the bulky black sweater he wore beneath it. In the late 1970s, he’d been attached to a KGB commando team as an intelligence officer. As a training mission, they’d once had to retake a “terrorist-occupied” natural gas pumping station deep in the heart of Siberia. He’d never forgotten the loneliness of the station far out in the tundra or how drab and utilitarian and unbearably cold the facility had been. Expecting much the same in Alaska, he’d dressed several layers too thick for the assault on Pump Station Number 5.

So far, overdressing had been his only miscalculation.

Ever since he’d arrived in Alaska, he’d been plagued by set-backs, delays, and a thousand other problems. He’d handled them all in his typical manner. If the problem is mechanical, replace it; if it’s timing, stall it; and if it’s human, kill it. But now, all his groundwork was paying off. Thanks to the former captain of the Petromax Arctica and the PEAL workers, there were eighteen hundred tons of liquid nitrogen encasing strategic parts of the Alaska Pipeline. The specially built packs needed to keep the supercooled fluid from prematurely freezing the pipeline were disguised as the metal sleeving that encased the forty-eight-inch-high carbon steel pipe. The nitrogen packs had been so well built that even close inspection by Alyeska workers couldn’t differentiate them from the normal sleeves. Kerikov had gone so far as to have them weathered to duplicate the quarter century of wear the pipeline had withstood. To the inspectors, the slightly larger size of the packs never raised any suspicion, and some of them had been in place for months.

Using PEAL had been Kerikov’s greatest masterstroke. But as he sat in the control room, he allowed himself one more degree of conceit and admitted that creating PEAL had been the masterstroke. Hasaan bin-Rufti had been leery of Kerikov’s plan. He had wanted to use some of his own people to carry out the delicate operation of placing the nitrogen packs, but Kerikov had pointed out that fifty Arabs running all over Alaska would arouse too much suspicion. However, Kerikov said, a group of environmental activists, common all over the United States and especially in Alaska since the President’s announcement about the Arctic Refuge, wouldn’t raise even an eyebrow, let alone an alarm. Like the purloined letter, they could hide in plain sight, protesting at various sites and cities along the pipeline’s route while their companions booby-trapped the pipe.

The beauty of PEAL, too, was that they didn’t know that their actions had a darker motive. Jan Voerhoven and his sad band of codependent flotsam didn’t realize that their sabotage went so far beyond an environmental statement. They naively believed that when the nitrogen was released it would freeze the oil in the line and forever prevent the Trans-Alaska Pipeline from transporting crude. They believed this because it was what Kerikov had told them and was what they wanted to believe. Not one of them had ever considered that just freezing the line would present only a temporary setback to Alyeska and the opening of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge.

Voerhoven was the worst of them. He was intelligent, probably possessed a genius IQ for all Kerikov knew, but he was warped by his inflated ego. Ivan Kerikov had transformed him from a member of the lunatic fringe into a driving force in the war on industrialism, and Voerhoven thought that he’d done it all on his own. Twenty years with the KGB in various functions had taught Kerikov how to manipulate others. Sometimes it took money and sometimes fear; with Jan Voerhoven, all it took was a little ego stroking and the Dutchman was off and running. By the time PEAL began setting the packs around the pipeline, Voerhoven had convinced himself that the idea for the strike had been his all along.

“Sir.” One of Kerikov’s people entered the control room, a dusting of snow covering his wide shoulders. “It’ll take another two hours to secure the nitrogen packs.” He spoke in German-accented Russian and his voice was apologetic. “Our intelligence didn’t specify that the pipeline would be so high off the ground when it reaches this station. We only have two trucks equipped with cranes, so the work is slowed considerably.”

Kerikov’s feeling of self-satisfaction evaporated.

The final packs, the linchpin for the entire operation, had been lost when one of them had split during transfer from the Arctica to the fishing boat Jenny IV. Captain Albrecht had had one of his arms frozen off when it was doused in two-hundred-degrees-below-zero nitrogen. During the confusion following the accident, a fire had broken out on the Jenny IV. The crew of the boat had been unable to put it out before it boiled the cryogenic tanks already stowed aboard. The resulting explosion had all but destroyed the fishing boat. JoAnn Riggs had assured Kerikov that the hulk wouldn’t float for more than an hour after they cut her away from the tanker. Of course, the Jenny IV hadn’t sunk and was discovered the next day. Though Kerikov had been forced to act against the men who found the derelict, his more pressing demand was to find additional liquid nitrogen and get it in position. The original KGB blueprint for Charon’s Landing had called for eighty tons of liquid nitrogen to be placed in a remote area on the downward leg of the pipeline as it descended the Brooks Range, fifty miles north of his present location. Without that quantity of nitrogen to work with, Kerikov had had to modify the plan and place a much smaller amount directly at Pump Station 5.

He’d timed the attack so there would be only about twelve hours between the assault on the pump station and the release of the nitrogen, but every second they spent here increased their chances of either being caught or being forced to release the nitrogen prematurely, reducing its effect. In a small way, he blamed himself for not telling Voerhoven to sabotage this critical section during the beginning of the operation and not waiting for it to be the last set of packs coupled to the pipeline. Coming here was a calculated risk, but like any calculating man, Kerikov planned to stack the odds in his favor.

“Tell your men to stop helping the PEAL members placing the packs. I know it’ll slow us further, but I need you and your troops ready for the American response. By now, they must know we’re here. I expect a counterassault shortly.” Kerikov spoke with confidence. He was back in his element. “Deploy the Grails and the RPG-7s and send a vehicle down the road as a rear guard. The authorities haven’t had enough time to organize their attack, which gives us the tactical advantage. And remember to make sure the missile strikes count. If you miss even one of their helicopters, they’ll be able to radio for reinforcements. I’m sure by now, those vans of Alyeska employees that were run off the road by the trucks have attracted police interest. The cops could show up quickly if they knew something was happening here.”

While the brunt of the PEAL activists had arrived at Pump Station 5 in the lumbering trucks transporting the heavy nitrogen packs, Ivan Kerikov, Jan Voerhoven, and Kerikov’s two bodyguards had flown to the station in a helicopter. He thought that if the Americans managed to land a large number of shock troops, they could use the chopper again to escape, leaving the environmentalists to fend for themselves.

If Voerhoven had any misgivings about allowing his people to be used as cannon fodder, it didn’t show. He was outside, braving the arctic storm, cheering on his workers like this was some great adventure that they would all reminisce about in the years to come.

There was no way Kerikov would allow any of them to live even if they somehow survived the imminent American attack. He smiled tightly and lit a cigarette.