Deep Fire Rising

THE ORACLE CHAMBER MONASTERY OF RINPOCHE-LA

The attack came from Mercer’s right, a slashing blow moving so fast it seemed to crack the air. He brought up his rifle in a purely reflexive block. The head of the twelve-pound sledgehammer hit the weapon’s receiver, crushing the mechanism, and the force of the impact knocked Mercer off his feet. He landed on his back five feet down the tunnel. He used the momentum to shoulder roll to his feet, disoriented but charged with adrenaline.

Donny Randall stood in front of him at the tunnel’s mouth, the long-handled hammer held at port arms. Mercer didn’t bother to aim. With the M-4 held at his hip, he pulled the trigger.

The weapon remained silent.

Randall charged.

Mercer raised the gun to ward off the next powerful swing of the hammer. The strike sent shivers up his arms and drove him back several paces. He retreated farther, dropping the M-4 and reaching for the Beretta hanging from his belt. Behind Randall the oracle glowed.

The pistol had just cleared the holster when Donny reacted. Mercer was out of range for another swipe with the hammer so he threw the tool like a javelin. The steel head smashed Mercer’s right hand, deadening his fingers and pitching the pistol into the dark recesses of the access tunnel.

Randall retreated back into the oracle chamber. Mercer searched for the fallen pistol but couldn’t find it. The hammer had landed nearby and he snatched that up at least to have a weapon. Facing Randall the Handle unarmed wasn’t an option. He dropped onto all fours, sweeping his hands blindly along the stone at the same time he watched for Randall’s return.

He caught a glimpse of something metallic just as Donny’s shadow loomed over him. He spun flat as Randall swung down at him with another sledgehammer. He twisted just enough for the head to miss him, but the side of his face was peppered with stone chips gouged from the tunnel floor by the blow. Mercer used the butt end of his own sledge to crack Donny on the shin, unbalancing him and allowing Mercer to scramble to his feet.

No one knew the origin of hammer dancing. It was almost as if it had cropped up spontaneously wherever men, hardened by labor and charged with savage competitiveness, gathered. It was a way of settling feuds in the slag heaps of Pennsylvania mill towns, and among black workers in the tail piles of Johannesburg’s gold mines. Mercer had seen it once on an oil platform in the swamps of the Niger River delta. The workers wagering on the outcome claimed they had invented the sport, but Mercer suspected men were betting on hammer fights in the pharaoh’s quarries when they were building the pyramids.

There were no rules to hammer dancing. And the outcome could not be questioned. One man was standing and one man was dead. The victor was usually crippled for life.

“I’ve wanted to dance with you since Vegas,” Donny sneered as he backed out of the tunnel to give himself room. “And I’m gonna lead.”

Mercer tightened his grip on his hammer, testing the tool’s balance and trying not to show the fear coursing through his veins. He knew he’d never find his pistol so he followed Donny into the oracle chamber. Stepping into the cavern, Mercer felt like a gladiator entering the Colosseum.

The oracle sat in the middle of the cavern, an enormous sphere reaching for the chamber’s rocky ceiling. Mercer estimated it was at least four stories tall. Below the sphere was a partitioned area furnished with antique desks and divans. The floor under the furniture was layered in carpets.

Randall’s dyed hair gleamed under the lights atop the wood scaffold ringing the top of the oracle. His grin remained fixed, his feral eyes on Mercer, watchful and expectant. He was eager for the fight, confident that his superior size and strength gave him the advantage. He’d probably done this a few times before.

He wore a pair of loose workman’s coveralls and steel-toed boots. With his sleeves rolled up, Mercer could see his forearms were as thick as footballs. The four-foot length of the sledgehammer looked puny in his huge hands. He was back far enough from Mercer to hold the hammer out straight in one hand, and he slowly brought it to the vertical using nothing but the power of his wrist. It was a staggering demonstration of his strength, leaving Mercer to hope that his eyes hadn’t bulged.

“Mercer!”

The cry came from near the towering sphere. The way the light played against the oracle’s glittering surface, Mercer could barely see the diminutive figure at its base, but he knew the voice. Tisa. She appeared unhurt but was tied to a chair. That must be where the archivists interpreted the oracle’s predictions, he thought, although he had no idea how the device worked.

The instant his eyes shifted to see her, Donny lunged forward, swinging his hammer in a wide, powerful arc. Mercer stepped back a pace but was unprepared for how effortlessly Randall could reverse the stroke and move in on him. The hammerhead came an inch from his chest and would have shattered his ribs had he not fallen back another step. He had his hammer up when Donny cut the strike at him again, carving a wicked S in the air. The handles met with a dull knock. Donny shoved and Mercer went sprawling.

The big man stood firm, not pressing the advantage. He wanted to draw this out and toy with Mercer before beating him to death. His grin widened, showing a gap where two of his side teeth had been.

“All that money you make in an office someplace made you soft. You ain’t as tough as people say.”

Mercer remained on the ground for a moment longer, taking his time getting to his feet so that when he launched himself at Randall, Donny wouldn’t expect it to come. He swung in an uppercut, judging the distance so all Donny had to do was sway back on his heels to avoid the blow.

Donny remained rooted, tipping back so the hammer swung past his head. Mercer let the momentum carry him forward and around so as he pivoted he could chop down at Randall’s hip. Donny parried and the steel hammerheads crashed together with a ring like a cracked bell.

Mercer dodged away, unable to meet Randall’s brute strength when fighting on the inside. Randall came at him, swinging wildly. Some swipes Mercer ducked, others he parried. Each time Donny’s hammer struck Mercer’s, Mercer was forced to give ground. Even these deflected blows were taking a toll. His arms ached and his palms were losing feeling. His grip on the hammer was becoming lax. Donny Randall didn’t seem the least affected. He swung and chopped as though his hammer were a toy sword. While Mercer panted, Donny’s breathing was even and steady.

They had moved to within fifty yards of the oracle. Mercer saw for the first time that its surface wasn’t smooth as he’d assumed. It was rippled and made of either the most lustrous brass he’d ever seen or pure gold. It was also far larger than he’d estimated. He added another twenty feet to its height and diameter.

The two circled each other, making halfhearted feints. Donny lifted his sledge over his head, coming down on Mercer like a pile driver. Mercer caught the strike on the haft of his hammer and was nearly driven to his knees. The two hammerheads locked.

Donny heaved on his sledge, trying to pull Mercer’s hammer from his hands. Mercer managed to hold on but was bodily thrown ten feet when the heads separated. This time Randall gave no quarter. He stalked across the chamber, slashing back and forth with his maul. Mercer scrambled back, unable to parry the swipes, only just managing to avoid being hit.

He came up fast against a large antique desk. The oracle loomed overhead. Mercer barely had time to note that the ridges covering the outside of the golden orb were mountain ranges and plateaus. The oracle was an intricately detailed globe on an unheard-of scale! Donny swung again. Mercer rolled to his right, around the desk’s leg. The hammer split the wood, upending the heavy piece of furniture. The scrolls and leaves of parchment that had littered the desktop flew like scattered birds.

Randall fought through the mess, swinging his hammer again and again, as tireless as a machine. His face remained an expressionless mask. From the floor, Mercer drove his hammer at Donny’s ankle, a weak effort that forced the bigger man to move aside only to feel if the blow had been worse than it felt. Mercer scrambled up on the far side of the ruined desk.

Tisa was shackled to a nearby chair. She’d screamed when the table had shattered. Now she watched wide-eyed as Donny shifted away from Mercer and took three long strides across the work area toward her. He stopped when he stood above her, the head of his hammer resting on her bent knee.

“Hey, Mercer, wanna see something cool?” He raised his weapon.

Mercer got to his feet. The oracle chamber felt as hot as the burning monastery above him. He was bathed in sweat. His muscles felt drained, rubbery.

“I thought you were here to dance with me.” His voice came as a rough croak. “Can’t change partners now.”

“This will only take a second.” Donny had enough animal cunning to know if he injured Tisa, Mercer would come at him, blinded by rage. An easy victim.

He watched Mercer as he raised the hammer a bit higher. He could let gravity drop the heavy mallet and the bones around Tisa’s knee would turn to pebble-sized chips.

Something within the oracle lurched, a mechanism of some sort that gave a steadily rising ticking sound directly above the trio. Donny looked up, Tisa looked at Mercer and Mercer rushed Randall.

He caught the movement a moment too late. Mercer’s swing lacked power because it came from his off foot. Still, the steel head caught Randall in the stomach, driving deep into his flesh. Donny doubled over, curling tight in a spasm that ripped the hammer from Mercer’s hands. When he wheeled away, Mercer’s hammer was still lodged in place. Donny dropped his own.

Mercer bent to scoop it from the stone floor and went to finish the fight. He took his eyes off Donny for only the split second necessary to grab the fallen sledgehammer. Donny moved fast, faster than Mercer could have believed. His strike hadn’t been anywhere near as damaging as he’d thought. Donny had gained a firm grip on Mercer’s hammer. His face showed pain, but also a fierce hatred and a deadly determination. Mercer just got his hand on Donny’s hammer when Randall waded in. He swung once at Mercer’s shoulder, a glancing blow that spun Mercer in place, presenting his vulnerable back to his opponent. Donny couldn’t get the hammer to swing around quick enough so he rammed the butt end into Mercer’s spine.

The agony was a spike driven so deep Mercer felt the hammer was going to explode from his abdomen. He roared as pain flooded his nervous system, nearly short-circuiting his brain. Donny kept up the pressure, screwing the wooden handle into Mercer’s flesh, tearing the ballistic material of his fatigues and ripping into his skin. Perversely, his own blood lubricated the handle, allowing Donny to jam it deeper into the wound.

He was slowly being skewered.

Mercer let his legs collapse from under him. The handle tore from his back with a wet sucking sound. He rolled away from Donny as fast as he could. The wound left a trail of blood dappled on the stone. He got back to his feet in time to meet Randall’s charge, barely able to parry the hammer swing. He continued to backpedal, exchanging ground for the moments he needed for the worst of the pain to abate.

“Bet that felt good,” Donny taunted. “It’ll feel even better when I shove this thing up your ass.”

Mercer smiled around the agony. “You should buy me flowers or candy first.”

“In a minute I’m going to hammer that grin from your face and make you swallow your teeth. After that you’re gonna beg me, Mercer. You’re gonna beg me to let you die.” Donny wiped at his brow, smearing his hair dye across his forehead. “You still think you’re better than me?”

Mercer glanced around and saw something that gave him the start of a plan. “I have a better barber, that’s for sure.”

“You ain’t nothing. All that money, all them people talking about how good you are. It don’t mean shit down here. Here it’s just you and me. You think that Ph.D. of yours is gonna save your life?”

“No. The fact that you’re a goddamned moron is going to save my life. I came here with fifty Special Forces soldiers. While you’re bragging about how tough you are, they’re sweeping the tunnels. They should find this room in about two minutes.”

It was clear Randall hadn’t considered Mercer’s backup. His eyes narrowed. “Then I’ll kill you in one.”

Behind Mercer was a set of black iron stairs that spiraled to the scaffolding surrounding the top section of the oracle. Even as Donny was making his last threat, Mercer was in motion. The stairs were tight, a narrow corkscrew that made it impossible to mount more than two steps at a time. The confining structure shook as Donny raced after him.

Around they went, climbing ever higher. Halfway to the top, the oracle was close enough to the stairs for Mercer to reach out a hand and touch. He almost stopped running when he looked closer at the mysterious machine. The oracle was an enormous clockwork mechanism. Tiny brass gears and ratchets covered the oracle’s surface. Openings allowed him to see inside the device. Within the oracle was a complex collection of pistons, springs and cogwheels that drove plates on the surface. Some of the gears inside the machine appeared to be twenty feet in diameter, like something out of a factory.

That’s how they did it. The oracle was a model of the earth’s tectonic plates, the huge slabs of solid rock that glided on the planet’s liquid mantel. Somehow the builders had known about plate tectonics and crustal displacement long before it was discovered by Western science. Tisa had said that the plans for this machine were centuries old even before they were brought to China five hundred years ago. Meaning the designers had had generations to observe the earth’s movement, extrapolate how that motion would affect other regions and create a machine that could accurately predict future geological events.

As he moved past the globe’s equator he noted the Hawaiian Islands were sharp cones jutting from the near featureless plain of the Pacific basin. A cylinder half filled with mercury projected from the central island. It had to be Kilauea, Mercer realized, the volcano that had been erupting on Mauna Loa for years. The mercury must represent the volume of lava that belched from the volcano over a certain amount of time. Near it was another, smaller mercury vial. It was Loihi, the newest island in the Hawaiian chain. Mercer knew that the top of this volcano was still deep underwater. Craftsmen must be able to add to the oracle, he thought, when new discoveries about the earth were made.

He quickened his pace, climbing up the Pacific side of the oracle. There were the Aleutian Islands and the Bering Strait. He could see the rift valleys that crossed Alaska. Small brass armatures kept the miniature plates together but could allow them to shift suddenly if there was a significantly sized earthquake.

Mercer reached the top of the stairs at least one story ahead of Donny Randall. The platform ringing the oracle wasn’t nearly as wide as he’d hoped, and the wood scaffold was old and water seeping from the cavern roof had rotted it in places. He’d planned on waiting at the head of the stairs to ambush Donny, but there was hardly enough space on the landing to stand and nowhere to swing the sledgehammer. The scaffold was hemmed by rock on one side and a tall but rickety railing overlooking the globe on the other. The lights blazing off the oracle’s facade were blinding.

Donny reached the last twist in the spiral stairs. He paused, watching the landing, and once he was satisfied that Mercer couldn’t attack, he came all the way up.

“Two minutes for your rescue, huh?” He was slightly out of breath from the six-story climb.

“Among other things I’m an eternal optimist,” Mercer panted. He stayed well back from Donny on the circular catwalk, needing the space to think how he was going to get out of this.

Below them, at the top of the oracle globe, the gold sheets that covered the Arctic Ocean had been removed for maintenance. Looking down was like looking into the guts of a mechanical monster. Massive wheels turned slowly inside the oracle, driving ever-smaller cogs and gears, transferring the tremendous geothermal energy of the mountain redoubt into the finite movements of the delicate surface mechanisms, each capable of infinitesimal shifts along fault lines and tectonic plate boundaries. The interior of the oracle was as complex as an antique pocket watch but a thousand times its size.

Donny skulked forward, his hammer dangling by his waist. Mercer wasn’t fooled. Randall could have the sledge in position for a strike much faster than he could. Mercer continued to back away, keeping one eye on his opponent and one on the model world below them.

Randall suddenly lurched, halving the distance between them, his hammer arcing back and forth. When it struck the cavern’s stone wall sparks shot from the steel head; when it hit the wooden railing, splinters flew. Mercer timed his counterattack when Donny was at his full extension and his shoulder was exposed. He darted forward, ramming with the hammer rather than swinging it. While his strike lacked Donny’s power, it did connect. Donny grunted and he had to lower his hammer. Mercer tried for another hit, but Donny had already recovered. He swept aside Mercer’s thrust and twisted his upper body so he could drive his elbow into Mercer’s ribs.

Mercer went down. Randall tried to stomp on his head. Mercer rolled and the blow missed. Donny’s foot exploded through the wood floor and vanished up to his ankle. Mercer was just able to slide out of the way as Donny swept his hammer at him again. He couldn’t prevent Randall from yanking his foot from the shattered floorboard.

They fought their way around the ring of scaffold. Their hammers flew in furious strikes and the sound of their battle resonated across the cave. But neither could gain an advantage. Mercer was quicker than Randall, but the few glancing blows he’d inflicted only seemed to make the big man more determined. Donny seemed indefatigable. And as Mercer tired, he knew it would only take one mistake to lose the hammer dance.

Half the railing had been destroyed as they fought. Lights had been shattered and power cords ripped from their mounts so electrical cables arced and snapped, shooting sparks across the wooden deck.

Mercer was weakening. His back felt like a hot coal had been placed in the wound. He would have to end this soon or Donny would tear him apart. Donny fired a wild swing with his hammer. Mercer ducked under the blow and launched himself into Randall’s chest. They smashed into the cavern wall with enough force to burst the air from Donny’s lungs. Mercer choked up on his hammer and used the head as an extension of his fist, pumping punch after punch into Donny’s stomach, trying to stop him from reinflating his lungs.

Randall was dazed enough to stand still for five blows before he roared and shoved Mercer away, nearly sending him over the railing. Donny came at him, swinging the hammer over his head. The sledge smashed through the railing next to Mercer and the whole section began to collapse. Mercer spun away, managing to stay on the platform as Donny’s momentum started to take him over.

Randall grabbed the banister with his right hand and Mercer slammed his hammer into the exposed appendage. The bones were crushed flat yet Randall the Handle managed to swing his own hammer using only his left. The shot caught Mercer under the arm. Donny didn’t have the angle to crack ribs, but the impact knocked Mercer aside and left him gasping. With his right hand dangling uselessly at his side and the big hammer clutched firmly in his left, Randall charged Mercer, any rationality driven from his mind by the pain of his near-severed limb. Spittle flew from his lips with each gusting breath.

It was almost as if the past fifteen minutes had been a game to Donny Randall, a prelude for the moment he was maddened enough to finish the fight. He swung savagely, slashing and chopping with his hammer. More of the railing exploded when he hit it. Fragments of stone flew from the divots his counterswing gouged from the cavern wall. Black-dyed sweat rained from his head.

Mercer could barely back away fast enough. He didn’t dare try to parry Randall’s immense swings. The impact would have torn the hammer from his hands. The stairs were halfway around the scaffold. If he turned to make a run for them, Randall would be on him in a second. There was only one option and he took it without hesitation.

The railing was four feet tall, but right behind Mercer was a section of rotted wood that had been damaged earlier in the fight. The instant he’d backed next to the opening he tossed himself from the platform.

The drop was ten feet, a relatively easy leap had he not been so seriously injured. He landed hard, sprawled against the top of the mechanical globe, nearly losing his hammer in one of the open access panels. He managed to turn onto his back in time to see Donny jump after him.

Randall landed a few feet away and tried to steady his fall with his ruined right hand. He shrieked as the sharp end of the broken bones shot through his skin in a dozen spots, saturating his hand in blood. Mercer got to his feet, bracing himself on the slick surface by wedging his foot against the six-inch-high ridge that was Alaska’s northernmost mountain range. Randall had his hand up and Mercer took aim. His swing didn’t need power, only accuracy.

The hammer’s steel head caught Donny on the up-raised wrist. The remainder of the bones in his lower arm disintegrated. The force was enough to shred the tendons and skin that had been keeping the hand attached to his wrist. The member flew free. Blood fountained from the stump.

“That’s for…” Mercer paused, unable to remember the name of the miner Randall had killed when he flooded the DS-Two mine. “Damn it, that’s for being a fucking prick.”

Randall couldn’t defend himself so Mercer’s next swing carried every ounce of strength left in him. He hit Randall in the chest hard enough to detach his sternum. Donny staggered but didn’t fall.

He lurched around in a circle holding his arm aloft while turning blue because he couldn’t draw breath. He finally slipped on the blood drooling across the surface of the oracle. He landed on his side and began to slide down the sphere. That’s when he became aware of what was happening and tried to save himself from falling off the golden globe. He twisted and kicked out with one leg, arresting his plummet by catching the lip of an access panel.

When he tried to stand, his foot slid into the mechanism.

Mercer was five feet above Donny’s position so he couldn’t see what was happening inside the machine. But suddenly Randall’s blank stare turned into fear and then panic. Donny tried to jerk his leg free of the hole and fell backward, sliding farther down the globe until Mercer felt as much as heard his knee joint pop. Inside the clockwork oracle, Randall’s foot had caught between a large pinion gear and a saw-motion rack of metal teeth. Each quick ratchet of the gear drew his foot deeper into the machine.

Somehow Randall struggled upright again. His screams drowned out all other sounds, echoing off the cavern, rebounding again and again in a chorus of unbearable agony. Mercer didn’t enjoy watching what was unfolding, but he wouldn’t look away. He kept his eyes locked on Donny Randall’s as the oracle’s remorseless mechanisms chewed his leg and pulled him deeper inside.

When his leg was half gone, Randall could no longer remain upright. He toppled into the hole and became tangled in more of the machinery. His cries lasted a few seconds more as he was literally eaten alive, his limbs plucked from his body before his torso was consumed. Somewhere deep inside the bowels of the oracle, his severed head dropped free, only to get stuck between a pair of gears and crushed.

“Bet you didn’t predict that,” Mercer said as he clambered along the oracle to find a way off its crown.

The huge machine shuddered just as he found a ladder that could be pulled down from the overhead scaffold. A steady vibration built from inside the oracle, as though a flywheel had become unbalanced and was fighting against its bearings. Something tore loose with a metallic squeal. A jet of mercury shot from a nameless volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.

“Mercer?” Tisa shouted from far below, her voice nearly lost in the din of the damaged machine. “What’s happening?”

Unbalanced by Randall’s body falling through its gears, the machine tore itself apart. A piston exploded from the side of the oracle, poking a huge hole in its skin and scattering hundreds of intricate parts. Mercer pulled the ladder down and stepped off the oracle just as a huge gear rammed through the top of the machine, spitting a shower of brass and gold shrapnel.

Forced onward by geothermal pressure, the mechanism continued to grind upon itself, the intricacy of its design causing its downfall. Each component of the oracle was directly connected to every other, so when one was wrecked the damage spread geometrically. The plate containing the entire continent of Africa sheered from its mounts and dropped to the cavern floor.

Swaying on the scaffold, Mercer realized that Tisa was directly below the oracle. The structure was threatening to collapse. He raced around the platform, dodging sparking power cables and charging through a fire that had caught along one section. He reached the spiral stairs and threw himself down, unconcerned how the tower wobbled. He was doused by liquid mercury gushing from the Hawaiian Islands. Doubtlessly some of the carcinogenic fluid seeped into his bloody wounds.

Fifteen feet from the ground he heard voices over the noise and vibration. He hadn’t considered that other members of the Order would be around. He had no weapon other than surprise, and once that wore off he was no more capable of defending himself than Harry’s toothless basset hound.

“Snow, you here?” The voice was in Mercer’s head, a fantasy that Sykes had found him. “Snow, come in.”

Not in his head. In his ear. The tactical radio. “Doc, is that you? It’s Snow. Where are you?”

“I’m in a cave with a big gold globe that looks like it’s about to fall apart.”

Mercer sagged. The people he’d heard below weren’t more fanatic monks. Sykes and his Delta commandos had found him. He reached the ground floor. Above him, the surfaces of the oracle were a blur as the mechanisms inside destroyed themselves. Sykes stood a short distance off, covering Grumpy and Happy as they untied Tisa.

Mercer rushed past the two men and was nearly bowled over when Tisa threw herself into him. Their tears mingled as their lips sought each other out. Tisa was drawn and exhausted, her eyes washed out by her captivity. She hadn’t been allowed to bathe in days and her hair felt as brittle as straw. Mercer simply didn’t care. She was alive, and that was all that mattered.

“I knew you’d come for me,” she said. “I don’t know how, but I knew you’d come.”

“You never gave me your phone number. How else was I going to get in touch with you to ask for a second date?”

“Mercer,” Sykes interrupted. “We’ve gotta go.”

He couldn’t let go of Tisa completely, so as he pulled away he held one of her hands. “What’s the situation?”

“Serious unless Miss Nguyen knows a way out of here. We chased the last of the defenders into a bunch of dead-end tunnels. We got them, but there ain’t no way out except the way we came in.”

“And that’s blocked by the burning monastery.”

“How about it, ma’am?”

“There is a way. I used it once when I snuck into the oracle chamber when Luc and I were children. But first I have to go back for the Lama.”

“Was that the old man in the room with the secret entrance here?” Mercer asked.

“Yes.” Her tears changed from joy to sorrow. “I must save him.”

Mercer looked to Sykes and nodded. The commando leader wasn’t going to argue.

The three surviving Delta soldiers led them back to the bedroom. Mercer wanted to stay at Tisa’s side but something he’d noticed forced him to pull Sykes back from the party as they moved up the tunnel.

“None of you are wearing your packs. What happened?”

“Noticed that, did you?” Sykes jammed a plug of tobacco into his cheek.

“You lost all the satellite phones.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yep. Grump’s was shot to pieces and Hap’s was smashed when he took a fall and mine’s upstairs with yours. I’m guessing both are nothing but melted plastic by now.”

“What about the others?”

“Blown to shit along with my men. Sons a bitches claymored us.”

“I’m sorry,” was all Mercer could reply. Without those phones there was no way to get Tisa’s information to Admiral Lasko.

They reached the curtain covering the secret bedroom entrance. Tisa was the first one through. She rushed immediately to the bed. The Lama didn’t move. He remained flat on the bed, his lower body covered with a sheet, gaining him a measure of dignity in death he’d been denied in life.

Tisa knelt at his side, holding one of his birdlike hands in hers. Her face was hidden by her hair, but by the way her body convulsed, her sobs were apparent. Mercer knelt next to her, waiting for her to say what she needed.

“He was so good.” Her voice cracked. “He didn’t believe in violence and had he known the magnitude of what’s going to happen I know he would have wanted us to tell the world. People die every day. It is what makes us human. He didn’t think it was our place to warn others about what we know. But he would have changed his mind about La Palma. He would have warned you.”

“He was the Order’s spiritual leader?”

“And more.” Tears streaked down her cheeks. “He was my father.” Her tone turned bitter. “It was Luc who ruined everything. He wanted the Order to be an authority in the world, a nation with automatic superpower because of what we knew.”

She looked at Mercer. “I am so sorry I involved you.”

“Why?”

“Because you can’t make a difference. You can’t stop what’s going to happen. Luc has won because the earth can’t be changed.”

“That’s not true. The future isn’t set by the oracle, Tisa. It’s created by people like you and me, people who believe they can change things for the better. Tell me — how much time do we have? When is La Palma going to erupt?”

Mercer needed a year. With a year he had an idea how to stabilize the western flank of the Cumbre Veija volcano and prevent the catastrophic slide. In the moments Tisa took to answer him he cut the estimate in half.

Give him just six months and he could do it. It would be close, some material would crash into the sea, but not enough to devastate the Atlantic basin. With six months to work he could save the millions who lived along shorelines of America and Europe, although the property damage would likely run into the billions of dollars.

Grant me six months, please, he thought as Tisa proudly gave her answer. “Five weeks.”

Mercer went numb. Five weeks? It wasn’t possible. Tisa couldn’t have cut it so close. She’d said all along that she wanted to warn him with plenty of time. Five weeks was as useless as five minutes. The volcano could erupt in five seconds for all the good he could do with the time she’d given him.

Still on his knees next to the bed, he deflated and fell into Tisa. The greatest calamity in human history was about to unfold and he no longer had the strength to care. His blank stare turned Tisa’s self-satisfaction into dismay, then fear. She grabbed for his hand. “That’s enough time, isn’t it? You can evacuate the islands and warn people living along the coasts.”

Mercer raked his fingers through his hair. His skin prickled and he felt like he was going to vomit. He swallowed a mouthful of watery saliva. He looked into Tisa’s eyes. Below her alarm he could see vestiges of her pride that she’d defied the Order to give the world a warning. She’d never thought beyond the warning, what was involved once people knew La Palma was about to erupt. The Order had cast a dismal shadow over her entire life and she’d thought she’d escaped it by divulging her secrets to him. She’d freed herself and now he had to put her in a prison of guilt from which there would be no liberation.

Even before he spoke, she could sense it. Her entire body began to tremble. Mercer would have given anything, his own life even, to spare her from learning her warning did no good.

“When the volcano erupts, one side of it is going to crash into the ocean. The waves it creates are going to wash across the Atlantic, destroying most of southern Europe and America’s east coast. Those areas are home to a hundred million people. They can’t be evacuated because there’s no place to put them. And even if they did move away from the shores in time, there would be nothing left for them to return to. They would be permanent refugees. There’s no way to feed and house them. Rather than all of them being killed in one catastrophe, they’d die over time, slowly succumbing to disease, starvation, and the breakdown of social order.

Tisa had begun to hyperventilate. He stroked her head. “You only learned about the eruption a few months ago, right?” She nodded and tried to speak but gave only a low keen. “Even that isn’t enough time. It would take at least a year for any workable plan to take shape. A couple of extra weeks wouldn’t have made the slightest difference. You can’t blame yourself for something you weren’t aware of. Although I know you will. You’re a lot like me.”

Sykes had given Mercer and Tisa a few minutes alone at the side of the bed. He cleared his throat to get their attention. “I’m sorry to do this, Miss Nguyen, but we have to get out of here. We still have to find a way to pass your information to the admiral.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said flatly.

“Excuse me?”

Mercer got to his feet and crossed to where Sykes and his men waited by the secret exit. “We only have five weeks before La Palma blows.”

“What? Jesus! It’s going to take two just to trek out of the valley.”

“I know.”

Sykes thought about that for a minute. “My orders were to get that information to Lasko. It makes me no never mind if the answer’s five weeks or ten minutes.” He yanked the Velcro flap off his watch to check the time. “It’s oh four hundred. Once we get to the surface, we can rest up until noon and then start for Nepal. I’ve got a feeling the secret’s out about this place and pretty soon the Chinese army will come swarming.”

Mercer nodded. “No matter how bad a mass evacuation is going to be, it’s the best we can do. We need to give Ira every extra second we can. We might want to consider splitting up. I’m in no shape for a trek over the Himalayas. The wound in my back isn’t as bad as it feels but it is going to slow me down.”

“That’s not a good idea.”

“Booker, every extra minute you give Admiral Lasko means an additional thousand lives saved. I’m going to hold you up.”

Sykes said nothing but it was clear he knew Mercer was right. His men, though exhausted by the firefight, were in peak physical condition. They could do the trek out of China in half the time if they didn’t need to worry about Mercer. “What about you two?”

“I think Tisa should go with you. Maybe I can convince her. I’d follow you as soon as I was ready.”

“And if the Chinese show up before then?”

“It’s a risk I have to take.”

Sykes laughed. “I still haven’t figured out if you’re brave or an idiot.”

“Sometimes there isn’t much of a difference.”

“Hoo-yah.”

Mercer returned to Tisa’s side, dropping to his knees next to her. His back had stiffened and the movement opened the scab. Warm blood trickled into the waistband of his fatigues. “Captain Sykes and his men are going to run for the border. They can make it a lot quicker without me. I want you to go with them. You know these mountains. They need you as a guide.”

She sniffed. “I’m not leaving you. I can talk to some of the villagers. A couple of them can get Sykes to Nepal. You and I will go together when you’re strong enough.”

“Tisa, I—”

“This is an argument you aren’t going to win, so don’t bother fighting it. I’m staying with you.”

“There’s a good chance the Chinese are going to find Rinpoche-La. The fire could have been spotted by a helicopter patrol.”

“Mercer, you forget I grew up here. I know where all the hiding places are. I can keep you safe if they come.”

Just like Sykes knew Mercer was right about leaving him behind, Mercer knew Tisa was correct now. “You’re pretty remarkable, you know that?”

She touched his face. “So are you. Would you ask Captain Sykes if one of his men could carry my father. I want to see he gets a proper burial.”

Mercer was about to volunteer for the duty himself, but he was in no condition even if her father weighed no more than ninety pounds. “They’d be honored, I’m sure.”

Sykes kept point as they returned to the oracle chamber in case they encountered pockets of resistance. The oracle had demolished itself. The outer sheath was split in dozens of places, and much of it had fallen off the machine so now it resembled a shattered eggshell. The mechanisms inside were twisted into unrecognizable shapes. Pipes carrying superheated steam that powered the oracle spewed jets of vapor that were quickly filling the lofty chamber. The walls of the cavern ran with condensation and the temperature had climbed past one twenty. The huge space was becoming a scalding sauna.

Tisa paused at the base of the ruined machine. “Good,” she said after a moment. “I’m glad it’s gone.”

“I can understand how you feel,” Mercer agreed. “The temptation to abuse its power is just too great. It’s a testament to your Order that it wasn’t subverted long before now.”

The hidden entrance that Tisa had found as a child lay on the far side of the cavern. It took forty minutes just to locate it and a further two hours to negotiate the twisting tunnels. She didn’t remember the exact route to the surface and led them down countless dead-end branches.

They came out in a cave high atop a craggy bluff midway between the village and the monastery. The sun was just rising, a pale wash that barely penetrated the valley. The air was cold and laced with the heavy smell of burned wood. Nothing remained of the monastery except a few upright support timbers and a smoking fifty-foot mound of debris.

There were maybe two hundred huts in the village clustered around a central square. From their vantage it appeared the people were packing up to leave. They too understood that the fire would eventually attract attention. Their simple life of supporting the monks who tended the oracle was over. Several of the wood buildings were aflame. The villagers would leave nothing for the army when they came.

“Are they loyal to your father or your brother?” Mercer asked.

Tisa was helping position her father’s body for when they came back to get him. “The Lama. I doubt any of them know Luc tried to take over the Order.”

“So they’ll help us?”

“I believe so.”

Sykes shot Grumpy and Happy a look to tell them to stay alert as they descended the trail to the valley floor.

They were halfway to the village when the eerie morning silence was shattered. The narrow confines of the valley masked the approach of the helicopters until they burst over the rim. There were three of them, two huge Russian-made Hind-D gunships and a French-built Aerospeciale Gazelle in civilian colors. Laboring at the high altitude, the three helos were still as nimble as dragonflies.

Mercer and his party were caught in the open. The nearest cover was a hundred yards away and one of the Hinds was thundering straight for them. The other swooped low over the village, its multiple missile racks and chin-mounted machine cannon at the ready.

The Delta commandos had dropped flat at the first sign of the choppers and watched their approach through their gunsights — a purely reflexive action since the 5.56-millimeter rounds from the M-4s were useless against the heavily armored Hind. Mercer and Tisa remained on their feet. After a moment, Sykes and his men realized the futility of their position and also got up, holding their weapons low against their bodies in a nonthreatening pose. There was no place to run and no way to fight their way out.

“How did they get here so fast?” Grumpy shouted over the helo’s deafening roar, his clothes and hair rippling under the onslaught of the blades’ downdraft.

“No idea,” Mercer said, keeping his eyes fixed on the pilot hovering twenty feet above him.

The other Hind wheeled away from the village. With the first gunship providing cover, the second chopper flew within thirty yards of the team and settled on its landing wheels. A side door crashed open and eight Chinese soldiers outfitted for cold-weather combat jumped to the ground. Each carried China’s type-87 assault rifles, a 5.8-millimeter bull-pup design that was so new that only the country’s special forces had been issued them.

Sykes, Grumpy and Happy slowly unslung their M-4s and let them drop to the ground, keeping their hands in the air. The leader of the Chinese commandos made a gesture with the barrel of his rifle for the team to step away from their weapons.

“What’s going to happen?” Tisa asked.

Sykes spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Four armed Americans and a Chinese national caught in a secret valley that housed an ancient monastery the government had not known about? I suspect they’ll congratulate us on our discovery. Then shoot us.”

The Chinese made no further threatening moves, not that they needed to. There was nothing Mercer or his people could do. The words “dead to rights” ran through Mercer’s head.

With the Americans covered by soldiers on the ground, the first Hind reared away to make room for the Gazelle. The elegant copter was more befitting an executive helipad atop a skyscraper than these rough surroundings, but like the Hinds it had been modified for high-altitude duty. As soon as the skids took the craft’s weight, a soldier in the copilot’s seat leapt out and opened the rear door.

Two men stepped to the ground. One was Chinese, a middle-aged man wearing a greatcoat and general’s stars on his cap. The other was a Westerner wearing a blue suit and polished loafers, as if he hadn’t been prepared for the flight. His only concession to the frigid temperature was a garish ski jacket festooned with colorful lift tickets.

The Gazelle’s turbine spooled down and relative quiet returned to the valley.

The general stepped ahead of the civilian until he was standing in front of the team. He looked each up and down as though they were soldiers on parade. He paid particular attention to Tisa, though his appraisal was more respectful than sexual. He finally got to Mercer.

“I suspect you are Dr. Philip Mercer?” The general’s English was passable. His voice grated from a lifetime of harsh unfiltered cigarettes, one of which he lit with a brass windproof lighter. The smoke blew back into his face, forcing him to squint.

Mercer kept his expression neutral. “That’s correct.”

“I am General Fan Ji. By order of the chairman of the politburo, I am placing you and your people under arrest for espionage. You have already been found guilty and your punishment has been determined. Immediate execution.”

Overhead, a hawk screamed.

“If the guy in the suit’s my lawyer, tell him I won’t take the plea bargain.”

The general’s smile revealed yellow uneven teeth. “A joke, yes? One of your American sarcasms?”

“It’s called gallows humor.”

“Ah, like from your western movies. The man is not your lawyer, Dr. Mercer. He is Hans Bremmer, the German chargé d’affaires from Katmandu, the highest-ranking diplomat we could find on short notice.”

“Is he here to make sure our blindfolds meet the specifications laid out in the Geneva Convention?”

“More sarcasm?”

“Impertinence.”

“No matter. He is here because the politburo has also decided that your sentence is to be commuted. You are to be flown to the border and released. However if you or any of the others return to the People’s Republic, your death sentence will be reinstated and you will be executed.”

“I don’t—”

Bremmer came forward. He was in his mid-thirties, with sandy blond hair and the healthy glow of someone who enjoyed the outdoors. He held his hand out to Mercer. “I apologize for this but to secure China’s cooperation, they insisted on your arrest before I was allowed to get you out. I’m sure you understand that diplomatic protocols must be maintained.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“The situation on the island of La Palma has changed. Your government has been in contact with the Chinese since shortly after you took off from Diego Garcia. I guess you were under radio blackout. I wasn’t cleared for those types of operational details.”

“What’s happening on La Palma?”

“I’m sorry, Doctor. I don’t know.” Behind the diplomat, the Chinese soldiers were transferring fuel from drums carried in the hold of the Hind gunship to the Gazelle. “My ambassador ordered me to meet General Ji at the border and accompany him to this location. I am to fly you and your team to Katmandu. An American aircraft will be waiting to take you from there to the Canary Islands. I understand there’s a plan being discussed that requires your expertise.”

Mercer, Tisa and Sykes exchanged an identical look of disbelief. A few minutes earlier they were facing a death sentence, before that a weeks-long hike to civilization, and before that the understanding that nothing could prevent the impending cataclysm. Mercer shook off his surprise and pumped Bremmer’s hand again, this time with much more feeling. “What the hell are we waiting for?”

They were airborne ten minutes later, leaving behind the smoldering remains of the monastery and a thousand hapless villagers who were being rounded up by the Chinese.

“What will happen to them?” Mercer asked Tisa as she stared out the Gazelle’s window long after they lifted out of the valley.

“They will kill some. Others will be jailed. The rest will be relocated, doubtlessly far from each other.” She looked at him with the same bottomless sorrow she’d shown him so many times before. “The people of Rinpoche-La avoided the Chinese occupation for more than half a century. I guess that’s something to be grateful for.”

“I’m sorry,” he said lamely.

“It’s not your fault.” She took his hand, then added so he couldn’t hear, “It is mine.”