Charon's Landing

Cook Inlet, Alaska

When flying to the Petromax Omega, the sea had appeared placid to Mercer, only a gentle swell marking the movement of the surging tides. However, in the small escape pod, caught up in the full motion of the twenty-knot tides, the surface of the Inlet was a steeply rolling plane, rising and dropping with gut-wrenching ferocity. Mountains of water broke over it like avalanches, plunging the craft into the hollows between the waves, giving only an instant’s reprieve before hauling her up to the next crest. White spume crashed against the windscreens as thick as foam. The life raft was a bright yellow dot on an otherwise black, empty sea.

Mercer woke to the sound of vomiting, a harsh barking that seemed as if its source was tearing its very intestines from its body. As he became more conscious, he realized that he was that source. Bitter bile scored his mouth and throat, pooling under his chin as he lay on the pitching floor. The stifling hot cabin smelled like the bottom of some zoo animal’s cage.

“Oh, Christ,” he moaned. “Talk about adding insult to injury.”

Having experienced seasickness only once in his life, he’d forgotten just how miserable it could be. His stomach felt like a nest of writhing snakes eager to escape. Knowing it was useless to resist his heaving stomach, he let himself throw up until he felt he would split open. Once purged, he felt a little better, but he knew dry heaves would shortly follow.

He checked on Aggie as she lay next to him at the stern of the pod, curled into a tight fetal ball. He felt her skin and sagged with relief. She was warm to the touch, her complexion back to its natural color. He tapped at her fingers and she mewed in her sleep. She hadn’t lost any sensitivity in her extremities, so frostbite was no longer a concern. She was in the deep sleep of exhaustion, not a coma as he’d feared.

He took a second to watch her, thinking about what a remarkable woman she was. They would both be dead now without her. Her levelheadedness on the offshore rig, knowing how to operate the pumps, and being able to do so under pressure had saved them both. Mercer’s life had been saved many times by many people, but never by a woman he felt so… He shut himself off from those emotions. He couldn’t afford to have a bachelor’s catharsis now and turned to more important tasks, first tucking more blankets around her.

The pod’s engine was purring on idle, the gauges all reading normal, and the compass bolted to the dash indicated that the boat was headed north, toward land. Mercer eased the throttles, and the life raft reacted instantly, meeting the waves more aggressively, shouldering aside the swells as best it could, a slim wake wedging out from her stern. The raft had an autopilot, which he engaged to continue them toward the northern side of the Inlet. According to his watch, they’d been in the raft for fifty minutes, giving them just a few hours to contact Andy Lindstrom at Alyeska and stop Kerikov from destroying the pipeline. While there were more towns on the Kenai Peninsula to the south, Mercer decided to head to the mainland. Landfall was significantly closer, and he hoped to find a radio or telephone at one of the many fishing camps on the Inlet.

With the raft motoring in the proper direction and feeling moderately human again after his sleep, he investigated the storage lockers, searching through the provisions to see what, if anything, would be useful. From a medical kit he took several Triptone tablets. The anti-motion-sickness pills were most effective before the onset of symptoms, but he figured swallowing a few, if he could keep them down, wouldn’t hurt. He discovered several woolen jumpsuits and donned one quickly, taking an extra minute to dress Aggie as she slept. She barely stirred. Behind the medkit, tucked between two flashlights, was perhaps his greatest find, an unopened bottle of whiskey. Though he didn’t recognize the label, he thanked the gods it was there. He took a heavy swallow, the spirits hitting his stomach like liquid steel poured from a crucible.

Expecting to be sick again, he was pleasantly surprised to feel his stomach calmed by the liquor. He considered the amount of whiskey Harry White absorbed daily and realized that his friend might be on to something.

He mopped up the water and vomit sloshing on the floor with a blanket and covered Aggie with several more, tucking them carefully around her body, running the back of his hand along her smooth cheek. God, she’s beautiful. Again he was assailed with emotions he couldn’t deal with and he turned them aside, concentrating on the reality of their current situation rather than the fantasy of any future they might have together.

He took his position at the controls and pushed the little craft as hard as possible. As they pounded northward, he activated the automatic distress beacon, the single-ping transponder sending out a repetitive signal on an emergency frequency of 121.5 MHz. He gave a few seconds’ thought to using the radio to call for help but knew there were at least two other life rafts from the Omega making their way toward land. The last thing he wanted was to broadcast that he and Aggie had survived the capsizing of the platform. For now, they were alone, arrayed against an army and totally cut off from help.

For the next two hours, Mercer fought the sea and his own sickness, the Saab engine under the rear cowling running flawlessly. Aggie remained unconscious during the trip, her exhaustion so complete that even the wild pitching of the escape pod could not wake her. Mercer was not so lucky. The farther they traveled, the worse his stomach reacted. For a while he tried to steer the raft with the outer hatch open to allow fresh air into the stuffy cabin, but too much water poured through the low opening.

The only thing keeping him going, the only spark that gave such a miserable experience any meaning, was the hope of stopping Ivan Kerikov. Without that drive, he would have given up long ago. But as his stomach convulsed for the twentieth time, dry hacks that left him sweaty and weak, he knew that he could endure anything to stop the Russian.

Dawn arrived slowly, silvering the sky in a pearly half light that only hinted at the coming of the new day. Through the wave-slashed windows, the northern coast of the Inlet was a gray-green strip cutting between the dark waters and the sky, the horizon undulating with pine-covered mountains. Rocky hills and nameless streams carved their way to the water’s edge to be ground down by the lunar pounding of Cook Inlet’s harsh tides. It was an uncompromising land, a rugged place inhabited by only the strongest.

With the coming day, the sea eased some, the great waves giving way to a more gentle swell that rocked the pod but no longer threatened her. Mercer was finally able to leave the hatch open, reveling in the foggy air that cooled his skin and cleared his gummy red eyes. He needed sleep so badly he’d forgotten what it actually felt like. His back was as stiff as a steel rod, his shoulders as tight as staying hawsers.

He began paralleling the coast, powering toward Anchorage but praying to find some sort of shelter long before that far-off city. There had been no sign of the other lifeboats from the Petromax Omega, but he kept a sharp eye out. To run into one of them now, with only a knife taken from the emergency stores to defend themselves, would mean his and Aggie’s recapture or, more likely, their death.

To his left, the coast scrolled by in a featureless panorama of rocky beach and towering forests beyond. After twenty minutes, Mercer began to think he’d made a serious mistake. Perhaps he should have gone south to the fishing communities on the Kenai Peninsula. The precious time he’d saved heading north was rapidly being whittled away as he searched for a fishing cabin. The coast gave way to a deep bay, the shoreline curving inward, carving deeply into the land. At the center of the wide-mouthed bay, a river disgorged the last of its summer runoff, white water cascading over rocks before reaching the ocean.

And on the bank of the river stood a cabin, the rough logs of its exterior weathered by decades of exposure. The cabin was one story with a native stone chimney rising from one side like a parapet and a low tumbling veranda leaning toward the river. It looked like an Appalachian homestead without the amenities, but to Mercer it was the most inviting building he had ever seen.

He guided the lifeboat shoreward, bucking through the swells that built against the coast, and as he neared the shack, he saw something that made his heart lift. Hidden behind a screen of dwarf spruce trees, a red seaplane was moored where the river met the Inlet, held fast against the swirling waters that licked at its torpedo-shaped pontoons by heavy manila lines.

If the cabin didn’t have a radio, which he suspected it didn’t, the plane surely would.

Beaching the lifeboat twenty feet south of the river, he drove it hard against the pebbly shore until it was firmly grounded, then cut the motor. His legs wanted to sway as if he were still on the water, but as he waited, the feeling left slowly, steadying him once again.

He jumped from the pod, his boots digging into the rocky beach. The morning air was sharp, scented with pine and the low fog that hung just above the treetops. He envied whoever owned the cabin for having such a remote and beautiful getaway.

Mercer paused to look through the cabin’s filthy windows and saw through the gloom that the cabin hadn’t been occupied for a while. Dust sheets covered the few pieces of furniture and cobwebs hung elegantly from the framed photographs on the stone mantel. From what he could see, the cabin was very primitive. The kitchen consisted of a small sink fed by an iron pump handle and a camping stove. He guessed that its communications would be equally crude. His best hope lay with the plane.

The airplane, an old Cessna, was in immaculate condition, its paintwork glossy, and when he opened the rear hatch, the interior cargo space was spotless. Mercer guessed that the single-engine plane was left here as a play toy while the cabin’s owner used a newer aircraft or perhaps a motor yacht to reach the camp from Anchorage. Mercer couldn’t believe that anyone would leave such a plane unprotected for the winter, but he was in no position to question the practices of others.

He ducked into the cockpit, checking for the radios as he settled himself into the pilot’s seat. He scanned the simple instrument package once quickly and then again with more concentration. The space where the radios should have been was an empty hole in the molded plastic dash. She carried no communications equipment.

In frustration, Mercer beat on the control wheel. He and Aggie were stuck until rescue workers, searching for survivors from the Omega, stumbled upon the cabin. That could take days, long after the Alaska Pipeline had been destroyed by Kerikov and his PEAL allies. Mercer had spent hundreds of hours being ferried to remote mining locations in small aircraft and he watched pilots intently, getting pointers, but he’d never had any formal flying lessons. It was one of those things he’d promised himself he’d do but never found the time for. He cursed himself now for procrastinating.

The controls before him seemed so familiar, and starting the plane would be a snap, but he wasn’t sure of the proper combination of rudder, yoke, throttle, trim, and fuel mixture that would make the plane fly. But he’d been through too much to give in now. If escaping the oil rig hadn’t killed him, then surely stealing a plane, flying it a hundred miles, and landing it again wouldn’t either, he thought insanely. And as soon as he realized he was going to do it, his stomach was cramped by fear, a paralyzing stab that almost coaxed him out of his decision.

He concentrated, relying on his near-photographic memory to replay exactly the motions he’d observed so many times before. Upwind, fuel mixture rich, throttle to full, ease back, and you were airborne. It was easy. But landing? The pilots just seem to do it, settle the plane, glide down, and the next thing you know, you’re on the ground.

Sitting there, he felt as lost as a teenager on the first day of driver’s education. Everything was so familiar, yet bewilderingly complex and frightening. Oh, Jesus.

And then a new thought struck him, and he smiled. He didn’t have to take off. He could use the floatplane like a boat, letting the Lycoming engine zip them across the waves rather than haul them through the sky. That was something he could handle.

His newfound self-satisfaction evaporated when he heard the hum of a marine diesel engine far out in the bay. Its distance was hard to judge because of the fog rising from the water, but it sounded like it was heading toward shore. He’d hoped to leave Aggie in front of a fire in the cabin before starting out on his suicidal mission, but that was no longer an option. The engine noises could only mean that Kerikov’s men who’d escaped the Omega were approaching.

“Mercer Airways flight 666 to Hell now boarding,” he joked as he leaped from the cockpit, running back down the beach to where he’d left Aggie in the escape pod.

Aggie was still sleeping as he scooped her up, keeping the blankets around her. Shimmying out of the pod, one item caught his eye and he grabbed it.

“Complimentary beverage service and everything.” He raced back to the Cessna, the bottle of whiskey clutched tightly.

Mercer laid Aggie in the open cargo section of the plane, securing her to the deck with tie-down straps, then stripped away the vinyl coverings over the pitot tubes. Rather than taking the time to untie the aircraft, he simply cut the ropes with the pilfered knife. He jumped back onto the Cessna as the swift flow of the river grabbed it, pushing it out into the bay. The sound of the approaching motor was much closer, seemingly right on top of them, but still lost in the fog.

Once seated and strapped in, the daunting task he’d set himself became all too apparent, especially after he turned the ignition key and got no response from the plane’s engine. “Come on, baby, don’t do this to me.”

He tried again and got nothing for the second time before remembering to throw the toggle marked Master Switch. Not knowing the exact purpose of the magnetos, he left them set at BOTH and tried the ignition again. The engine kicked over once, died, kicked again, then boomed loudly, a gray spout of exhaust jetting from the motor.

“All right,” he said aloud.

He looked at the quivering engine gauges and decided their order of importance quickly.

“Oil temperature, who cares?

“Manifold pressure, who cares?

“Carburetor heat, who cares?

“Airspeed indicator, too slow.” He opened up the throttles, wincing when one of the cylinders prefired and then settled again.

In a moment, the plane was heading into the bay, rapidly picking up speed. The twin pontoons carved deep slices in the water. Mercer made sure the fuel was set at Full Rich to give himself the maximum amount of power from the engine. He experimented with the rudder pedals, and the floatplane responded to his commands, turning gently. He tried to estimate where he’d last heard the lifeboat and steer a course around it — for in the fog he was virtually blind.

Feeling a bit more confident, he dialed the flaps down one notch, increasing the wings’ lift. The plane felt lighter in his hands, the ride smoothing and his speed increasing. He glanced at the indicator and was startled to see they were doing more than seventy knots. The floats skimmed the surface like arrows, and the Cessna felt like it wanted to fly. The plane was steady, but he felt the excessive speed was too much for him to handle, and he reached forward to reduce the throttle.

Like Leviathan rising from the sea, one of the Petromax Omega’s escape pods appeared out of the fog directly in front of the hurtling aircraft. With just an instant to react, Mercer unthinkingly pulled back on the control yoke, and the Cessna came unglued from the water, flashing only a scant foot above the rounded top of the lifeboat. His first thought was to get the plane back on the water again, but she continued to climb steadily, the safety of the water receding with every passing second. Panic gripped him, and his hands felt like lead weights on the yoke. Oh, shit.

He purposely lightened his deathlike grip and let the plane settle into its natural environment as it rose through the silvery mist. Fighting his mounting fear, Mercer tried to remember the width of Cook Inlet and the height of the mountains on the other side. But as the plane climbed above three thousand feet, breaking out into clear sunshine, he saw that the mountains of the Kenai National Refuge were too distant to be a threat to the soaring aircraft. He took several calming breaths, wiping a new coat of sweat from his brow, but his heart continued to hammer at his chest. He’d just gotten himself and Aggie into a mess he had no idea how to fix.

Not giving in to his panic, he started to experiment with the plane. If he was to land them safely, he had to teach himself how to fly before the fuel gauges dropped to empty. Fortunately, the air was calm, and it took him only a few minutes to get used to the quick control response of the Cessna. After ten minutes, he set a course to Valdez and had the plane flying straight and level, throttled to 70 percent power and cruising as if he’d been flying all of his life.

Like hell.

In a vain attempt to distract himself from their predicament, he thought about Kerikov and how the Russian would destroy the pipeline. As Andy Lindstrom had said earlier, freezing the oil in the line wouldn’t do it; the steel making up the pipe segments was too thick. But if Kerikov had gained control of the computers that ran the pumps, which Mercer suspected he had through Ted Mossey, he need only wait until the line was mostly solidified and then crank the turbine pumps to maximum. The free oil in the unfrozen sections would create tremendous back pressure when it met the frozen oil plugs, and even with a rated pressure strength of eleven hundred eighty psi, the line could not hold against the combined power of its ten active pump stations. It would split in a hundred different places depending where Kerikov had placed the nitrogen-freezing packs.

Mercer looked at his watch. If he didn’t get to Valdez and warn Andy Lindstrom about Mossey, Kerikov would succeed. Ignoring the steadily plunging fuel gauge and the near redlines of the engine indicators, Mercer opened the throttles a notch farther, eking out a few more miles per hour. Another twenty minutes dragged by before the Cessna cleared the eastern coast of the Kenai Peninsula and broke out over the waters of Prince William Sound.

Gently, he banked the plane northward, hugging the coastline. The town of Seward was only four minutes south of their present location, but in his concentration, Mercer had failed to see it nestled between the mountains. He could have landed there and saved himself the ordeal yet to come.

The Planetary Environment Action League research vessel Hope had the carnival air of a cruise ship that had just reached some tropical paradise. The crew, all young and idealistic, were toasting their success from bottles of cheap champagne. They were only an hour or two from completing the greatest attack on the industrial polluters in the history of the environmental movement. All of their previous actions — the arson attacks on gas stations, the rallies and fights, the shouted chants, and spray painting of slogans — had led to this moment. And this one had been pulled off so easily that many of them realized that large acts of eco-terrorism were much simpler than the small protests they had been part of before. A few were already talking about their next reprisal against the industrial world.

Jan Voerhoven stood surrounded by his followers in the Hope’s wardroom, a glass of champagne in his hand, a smile lighting his handsome face. He basked in the mood around him like Caligula before his hand-picked Senate, drawing strength from their adoration. The only shadow in his deep blue eyes was the fact that Aggie wasn’t there to share it with him. He knew the significance of her leaving the ring he’d bought for her. She had meant a lot to him; however, the buoyant celebration helped dispel the loss he was already feeling less strongly. Several unattached women eyed him predatorily, for the rumor of Aggie’s departure had spread quickly.

One woman — a girl really, no more than nineteen — caught his eye, and when he smiled, she matched his gaze with a frank desiring expression. No, he thought as another champagne was placed in his hand, he would probably have a new bedmate this very night.

“How much longer, Jan?” someone shouted from the back of the crowded room.

“Not much more,” he called back, grinning. He had the detonator in his shirt pocket, the slim cellular phone tucked against his chest.

One deck below the raucous party, Abu Alam was making his report to Kerikov. He’d spent the past three hours in the engine room of the Hope, securing charges of plastique to fuel lines, oil bunkers, and other strategic locations. When they were detonated, there would be nothing left of the research ship but the twisted backbone of her keel. His clothing was filthy, his dark complexion sooty and streaked with oil and grime, and his hands were so black with dirt that they looked gloved. They were alone in Jan Voerhoven’s spacious cabin, Alam’s footprints staining the carpet’s rich pile.

He gave his report without emotion, dictating the locations of the charges and the fact that he had had to kill three engineers who had come too close to his work. His eyes were flat and hard. Alam contained his excitement with difficulty, trying to remain impassive under Kerikov’s critical stare.

Is he aware? Alam wondered.

It would be natural for Kerikov to suspect treachery from Alam — their entire world was created from deception — but he couldn’t tell if the Russian knew it was coming so quickly. Hours now, not days.

Alam had not thought through his timing yet, for the delicacies of it were somewhat beyond him. He was a soldier, not an officer, and certainly not a strategist. Hasaan Rufti had made it clear that the pipeline must be destroyed and that there could be no possible link between the act and the Minister himself. Eliminating PEAL was a desire of both Rufti and Kerikov; neither of them wanted a group of young idealists bragging of their achievements afterward. But killing the Russian was going to prove far more difficult. Alam had to make certain Kerikov detonated the nitrogen packs and activated the hidden computer program that would rouse the multiple pump stations before killing him with a quick knife thrust or blast from his SPAS-12 shotgun. Ideally, Kerikov would die when Alam set off the explosives secreted throughout the ship, but he didn’t know how to properly time such an occurrence.

Trust in Allah, Alam reminded himself, and his Prophet will guide you.

“Very well,” Kerikov cut into Alam’s transparent musings, for the Arab’s duplicity was obvious. “It’s nearly time. The crew should be drunk by now, and once we detonate the nitrogen packs, they won’t notice when we leave the ship. That will give us the window to destroy the Hope. Bring Voerhoven to the bridge. I want to see his face when he realizes what he’s done to his precious environment.”

The Cessna was a bright speck high over the gray water of Prince William Sound, the plane so high its droning engine couldn’t be heard by a ferry heading eastward from Seward to Valdez. At least that is where Mercer hoped the vessel was heading as he used it as a reference to make his turn slightly north and head up into Valdez Bay.

Everything was going perfectly — so far. He almost felt comfortable in the pilot’s seat, his hands and feet light but firm on the controls. The terrifying prospect of landing was still a few minutes away. What bothered him most now was the relentless movement of his watch’s second hand as it ground down toward the end. There was nothing he could do to stop it or even slow it. The plane was already at maximum power. The margin to reach the Hope was so thin it was practically nonexistent.

The great expanse of the Alaska mainland lay before the aircraft, the early morning light giving the vaguest hints of the beauty of the state, its towering mountains and icy streams and huge forests. If he failed, it would become a cesspool of unmanageable devastation. He knew the resilience of nature, what her forces could do to clean the scars left by man’s existence, and while the process was slow by human standards, nature always seemed to recover. But something like what Kerikov was attempting would take generations to heal. Alaska would be ruined well into the twenty-second century.

Amazingly, when he pushed a little harder on the maxed-out throttle, the engine beat picked up just that tiny bit more. He looked back to see Aggie still asleep in the cargo hold.

If only he could be certain they were headed in the right direction. While there were some charts in the plane, Mercer wasn’t familiar enough with the region or with navigation techniques to use them. They lay folded in a vinyl pouch on the floor below the copilot’s seat.

“God is my copilot and hope is my navigator,” he breathed between tight lips.

Up ahead, he spotted a long, narrow island sitting a couple miles off the north coast of the Sound. He watched it for a moment and then reached over to dig out the maps. Maybe he could use them after all; the island was so symmetrical that recognizing it on the charts would be relatively easy. When he straightened back, he saw the long trail of white water backing against the island and realized it was no landmass at all but a supertanker heading south from Valdez. Even from three thousand feet the vessel’s size was staggering. Looking around at the insectlike Cessna, it was hard to imagine that both craft came from the mind of the same species, for surely the tanker was proportioned for the gods.

While he admired the ship, he also realized that it had just saved him from making a disastrous error. Mercer was on a too easterly course; they would have flown beyond the entrance to Valdez without ever realizing it. Quickly adjusting their route to follow the wake of the ponderous tanker, Mercer took a second to check his watch again. Not enough time, but still he had to try.

One of the first things an instructor teaches a student pilot is that the use of the elevators must correspond with the throttle in order to avoid stalling or power diving. Usually after the verbal lesson, the instructor will demonstrate this fundamental by heeling the plane over at full throttle and scaring the student half to death in a dive-bomber stoop that quite often spills the student’s lunch.

Mercer had never been a student pilot, and the throttle was at the gate when he pushed the yoke away from his chest. The Cessna responded like a horse given free rein, dropping out of control, Prince William Sound filling the view from the windshield, and every second brought the sight into sharper focus. The engine screamed, and the plane began to buffet as its wings reached, then passed, their structural tolerance point. They were traveling straight down at one hundred forty-five miles per hour.

His stomach, already turbulent from the ride in the escape pod, went into full revolt, liquid acids rearing into his mouth, gagging him with their foul taste. Knowing he’d just committed a critical error, Mercer pulled back on the yoke, but the pressure of the wind against the control surfaces was too strong for him to fight. His greatest effort only managed to stretch the control cables running from the stick to the elevators, suddenly making the yoke feel mushy in his hands. The plane was going down, and no matter how hard he strained, he couldn’t stop it. The altimeter spun backward in a solid blur, unwinding their altitude faster than the barometrically controlled needle could accurately follow.

He never considered the throttle until an elegant hand reached for it and gently backed it off, the engine calming immediately. Without saying a word, Aggie Johnston wedged herself into the copilot’s seat, fighting against the force of the plane’s severe pitch. She added her strength to Mercer’s, and with the aid of a slowing engine, they managed to pull the plane’s nose upward, slowly at first and then as the wings felt lift, quicker and more smoothly, the airframe stopping its mad shudder as the craft came level only eighty feet above the choppy waters.

“The last thing I remember, we were about to drown, and now we’re about to crash,” she said so calmly that Mercer could not believe her quietude. “What is it, can’t decide how you want to die?”

“Of course I can.” He matched her nonchalance, relieved at her obvious flying skills. “I see myself killed by a ricochet while passing a kidney stone. How about you?”

“Let’s put it this way, I don’t want to be killed by another of your idiotic ideas.” Aggie had the plane in trim now, gaining altitude steadily as she followed the course Mercer had set. “It’s clear you don’t know how to fly a plane, so do you mind telling me what’s going on?”

“We escaped the Petromax Omega about ten seconds before it capsized.” She looked at him sharply. “I know what you’re thinking — any fuel that she spilled was burned up in a fire that would have inspired Dante. We made it to shore a couple hours later, where I found this plane and decided that stealing it was a much better option than being recaptured by Kerikov’s goons. I never intended to take off, but, well, you know how these things sort of happen. While I thought out the beginning of our escape, I don’t mind the fact that you’re stepping in to finish it. You do know how to land this thing, don’t you?”

“Two hundred and fifty-seven hours in my log. Where’s the closest runway?”

“Ah.” Mercer tried a charming smile to cover his trepidation. “This is a seaplane, and we’re only about five miles from the Hope. But you can land a seaplane, right?”

“Oh, shit.” The color that had returned to Aggie’s face drained once again. Her hands tightened on the spongy yoke of the unfamiliar Cessna. “I’ve never been in a floatplane before.”

“Sure you have,” Mercer quipped. “We’ve been airborne for a while.”

He ignored the sour look she shot at him and continued seriously. “Besides, we don’t have the time to discuss the differences between a seaplane and a regular plane. For now just consider it semantics, because there’s the Hope.”

Looking much like a yellow toy, the MV Hope sat at anchor in the middle of Valdez Bay, equidistant between the town and the sprawl of the Alyeska Marine Terminal. The mountains looming at the head of the Sound were a bleak snowcapped backdrop. Valdez was a tumbled gray blur to their left, enmeshed by a spiderweb of docks and jetties. The tired fishing and pleasure boats looked like detailed models.

“Aggie, you have to land this plane. Kerikov is on that ship, and you and I are the only ones who can stop him,” Mercer said harshly. “I’ve never given up on anything in my life, and I know you haven’t either. If you care, I mean if you really care about the environment, then don’t think about putting this plane down, just do it.”

Mercer considered having Aggie land them at the Alyeska breakwater, but he didn’t think they had the time. It would take several minutes to cross the Sound and even more time they didn’t have to reach Andy Lindstrom at the Operations Center. And even then, there was no guarantee they would be able to stop Kerikov from cycling the pumps and destroying the pipeline. His only choice was to stop the Russian from detonating the nitrogen in the first place.

Aggie didn’t speak, didn’t even take the time to look at him. Even though she was piloting a strange aircraft and forced to fly from the right-hand seat, she was quick and sure with the controls. She eased the throttles back farther, added ten degrees of flap to the wing, and edged the nose higher, the Cessna happily following her lead as if it knew that its previous pilot was a total incompetent and that it now enjoyed the ministrations of a professional.

Coming in low over the water, actually having to rock the plane around a fishing boat headed out to sea, Aggie brought the Cessna in for its landing. Without knowing the weather conditions, pressure, wind direction, or any of the myriad other pieces of information pilots used to land successfully, she relied on her own training. The altimeter read that they were still forty feet above the seas, but she knew they were no more than twenty. She recognized that Mercer had not set the altimeter when he took off. The plane was much bigger than the aircraft she had flown before, and the two pontoons under the hull acted as drag as she crabbed the plane in, her hands and feet dancing on the controls like a pianist during a concert solo.

Adding more flaps and pitching the nose even higher, Aggie realized that they were too close to the Hope to land and still have enough room for a rollout or, more accurately, floatout. The vessel was just a hundred yards away, and the floats under the Cessna were still ten feet above the Sound. She should pull up and come around again, but she continued grimly, her anger at Jan making her reckless.

Now only four feet from the water and held aloft by the ground effects of the wide wings, the Cessna was open to the variability of the winds that slued the plane hard to port. Aggie stomped on the right rudder to compensate and eased the plane down as best she could, the pontoons smashing into a wave, breaking clear through a trough, then barreling into another of the two-foot swells.

The Cessna almost flipped as if it had been plucked from the sky, the prop coming dangerously close to digging into the water. The plane fought its way through the next swell as it slowed, droplets spattering the windshield. They had landed. Aggie had done it. She heaved a sigh as the aircraft wallowed like a spindly dragonfly.

“Flying pigs be damned, I’m a pilot,” Aggie breathed.

Mercer guessed the non sequitur was some ritual.

“Yes, you are. Now, go!” he said, on the edge of an adrenaline overdose. He jammed the throttle back in just before the last of the spark in the motor died away. It bellowed at full power, and the plane began racing across the water. The Hope was twenty yards away, shimmering in the late dawn light.

“Get me alongside,” he ordered, “near her stern if you can. I’ve got an idea.”

Aggie wasn’t yet over the shock of their escape from the Omega, not to mention Mercer’s suicidal nosedive or her near fatal landing. She was too tired to argue with him, didn’t have the energy to do anything but follow his orders. She guided the plane toward the Hope, her feet playing alternately against the rudders as swells slammed into the deeply settled pontoons.

The hull of the Hope loomed quickly, too quickly, her yellow sides towering up and over the Cessna’s cockpit before Aggie realized they were that close. She desperately tried to avoid contact, but just then a heavy wave smashed the plane into the research vessel, the thin aluminum skin and support members of the port wing crumpling against the hardened steel of the ship’s hull.

“Damn it,” she cursed her own misjudgment, but no one was there to hear her epithet.

Mercer was at the rear cargo door, wrenching it open, letting in a harsh blast of frigid air to cleanse the stench of fear from the Cessna. The main deck of the Hope was twelve feet over his head, and there appeared to be no way up. He jumped down onto the pontoon and shimmied forward so he could grasp the angular strut supporting the starboard wing. The pontoon was slippery, forcing him to struggle onto the wing using his arms and shoulders, new pains tearing into the old ones.

Grunting and straining, he managed to haul himself onto the undamaged wing, then stood on the unsteady platform. Prop wash whipped at his hair and clothing like a hurricane gale. The dynamics of the tides and waves kept the Cessna hard against the side of the Hope, the plane scraping against the vessel with every surge. Even with the wing’s added height advantage, it was too far of a jump to reach the steel railing circling the vessel’s deck.

Mercer dodged to the far tip of the wing, his weight dipping that side of the plane farther into the water, and then ran to the other side, stopping just short of the damage caused by Aggie’s mistimed approach. He repeated the process, slowly building a steady rocking motion, every dash raising the damaged wing closer to the deck. At the instant he thought the plane would pitch no higher, he raced onto the wrinkled section of the wing, springing upward even as the weakened section sagged under his weight.

His leap was fouled by the wing giving way, and he had to scrabble to maintain his grip on the scaly opening of a deck scupper, the molded steel giving almost no purchase as his feet pumped against the glassy smooth hull. Hanging in space, Mercer prayed that Kerikov hadn’t posted any deck guards. The approach and subsequent crash of the Cessna had the subtlety of a slap in the face, and it would only stand to reason that someone would come out to investigate. If Mercer was discovered hanging from the side of the ship like an unwanted barnacle, he could be cleaned off with an easy shot through the top of his skull.

Mercer pulled himself upward, his feet scrabbling. The rough steel edges of the scupper tore into his hands, releasing a fresh torrent of blood from his raw palms and fingers. He ignored it and heaved himself onto the empty deck, scissoring his legs under the railing in a last desperate effort.

“Aggie,” he shouted down to the plane, his voice almost stripped away by the engine noise and still-spinning propeller.

A second later, the prop juddered to a stop, and the engine went dead. The only sound to be heard was the lap of water against the hull of the ship. Then, through the silence, Mercer heard laughter coming from within the superstructure.

“Aggie,” he called again, and her pale face appeared in the opened cargo door of the Cessna, her short hair swept across half her face. In the tricky light of the morning, her green eyes appeared luminous. “I need you up here. Otherwise this will never work.”

Mercer wanted to send her to shore so she could alert Lindstrom, but he needed her with him. Because he’d led the Coast Guard raid against the Hope, he was certain that the crew would try to stop him. But with Aggie at his side, he hoped that her presence would arouse less suspicion, freeing him to go after Kerikov.

“I can’t jump up there.” Aggie stood on the floatplane’s pontoon.

“Wait.” Mercer ducked from her view, rushing to the stern of the research vessel where a fluorescent orange life-preserving ring hung from the railing, attached to the ship by two hundred feet of heavy nylon line. He ran back to the side of the ship, casting quick glances forward, thankful that no one had investigated the Cessna.

“Grab onto this. I’ll pull you up.” He threw the ring over the side, and it landed in the narrow strip of dark water between the ship and the floatplane, the line dangling in front of Aggie’s face.

Without question, for she was well beyond that point, Aggie wound the rope around her wrists several times. She walked up the side of the PEAL ship in time with Mercer’s tugs. At the top, with one hand bracing the rope, Mercer leaned over the side, grasped Aggie by the loose waist of her coveralls, and hauled her over the rail. She fell in a heap at his feet, cursing at him for scraping her chest against the railing.

“Okay, now what?” she breathed, looking at him critically.

“We find Kerikov and kill him,” Mercer replied, his eyes fixed in a deadly stare. “After the crew sees we’re together, I want you to get to the radio room, contact the Marine Terminal, and tell the manager there, a man named Lindstrom, to stop their computer technician. Mossey is his name. Tell Lindstrom that Mossey was responsible for locking out the computers and he’s planted a new operating system that is keyed into the nitrogen detonators.”

He saw that Aggie didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about. There wasn’t enough time to explain further, so he changed plans. “The hell with it. Stick with me and just make sure none of your PEAL buddies think I’m the enemy.”

They ran to the superstructure, tossing open one of the heavy doors, and dashed down a deserted hallway, the ship’s heaters feeling like a steam room compared to the cold air on the open deck. Most of the cabin doors they passed were open, the rooms empty. The sounds of the party grew steadily as they tracked its source.

“That better not mean we’re too late,” Mercer said tightly, his fists bunched at his sides as he dodged through several hatchways, Aggie at his side.

Bursting into the main dining room, Mercer and Aggie were stopped short by the sight of the ebullient crowd. The celebration was in full swing, and the transition from the horrors of the past hours to this took them both aback. A roar went up as the environmentalists recognized Aggie, some with delight, others with surprise.

They took scant notice of Mercer, obviously not equating him with the man who’d arrested several of their comrades during the FBI raid. In an instant, he and Aggie were enveloped, people jostling to get close, plying them with glasses of champagne. Mercer felt so out of place, it was as if he’d just broken in on his own funeral.

“Has it happened yet?” he shouted over the festive din, and from somewhere a voice responded that it would in a couple more minutes. They were ready for the final countdown.

Aggie looked at Mercer fearfully. Her eyes were huge. It was obvious that no one knew the full effects of what was about to take place. “Where’s Jan?” she asked a PEAL activist standing next to her in the mass of drunken revelers.

“On the bridge, I think,” came the response, and Mercer was carving a swath through the crowd, pushing aside those who got in his way as he lunged for the door.

Ivan Kerikov was posed before the bridge windows when Jan Voerhoven found him. His hands were behind his back, his thick chest puffed up, his chin thrusting boldly at the wild land beyond the thick armored glass. His flint-hard hair was silvered in the dawn, like the fur of a winter fox. There were fewer than fifteen years between their ages, but Jan felt like a callow youth in the Russian’s presence. He stood silently for several seconds, fearing to disturb Kerikov’s repose.

“The time has come for you to take your place as the spark that begins the third great revolution of modern times.” Kerikov turned the full brunt of his mesmerizing eyes on Voerhoven.

Jan thought that those must have been the eyes that Rasputin had, not in color but in intensity. “The third?”

“Of course, the Russian Revolution of nineteen seventeen, the Fascist Revolution that swept in Hitler, Tito, and Mussolini, and now the Green Revolution,” Kerikov replied, giving an answer that would soothe the agitated environmentalist. Kerikov kept to himself that the third revolution would actually be the unifying of the Middle East under joint Iraqi and Iranian control. “You have the detonator?”

“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.