Deep Fire Rising

ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA THE PRESENT

Mercer woke with one thought on his mind. Seven uninterrupted days. He’d been working without a break for six and a half weeks. And in the past seven months he’d managed just one four-day weekend and a few stray days to himself. This was going to be his first real vacation in over a year. His second thought was that when it was over, he’d be returning to the Canadian Arctic, where he’d spent the past month and a half. He was facing at least another four weeks at an isolated mining camp thirteen hundred miles north of Montana. De Beers was looking to invest a further half billion dollars in the newly discovered diamond fields and was waiting for Mercer’s final test results and geologic report.

He’d been able to wrangle the time away because the rotary blast drill used for boring test holes had been so damaged by the brutal cold that Ingersoll-Rand was sending a team of mechanics to repair it. The hard reality of working in the Arctic was that while men could be insulated from the weather, steel became as brittle as glass. They’d been lucky no one had been injured when a main bearing detonated like a grenade.

It wasn’t unusual for Mercer to be away from home for months at a time, trotting around the globe prospecting, assaying, and troubleshooting for different mining companies. His expertise in geology had made him wealthy, although the price was very little time to enjoy it. So when he could string together enough consecutive days for a vacation, he liked to maximize every moment. Still, he procrastinated for another half hour under a feather duvet before swinging his legs out of bed.

The tan he enjoyed from a scuba-diving weekend in the Bahamas had long since faded. His lean body was as pale as a marble statue, the result of the Arctic’s twenty-two-hour nights and the exhaustion of continuous fifteen-hour work shifts. The only color came from his hands and forearms, which were darkened by ingrained dirt that wouldn’t wash out, and a dense bruise on his shoulder where a twenty-foot length of drill string had caught him.

Mercer’s home was a three-story brick rowhouse in one of the few sections of Arlington not yet turned into high-rise office buildings. He’d bought the building years ago and converted the six apartments it once contained into one home; it was difficult to see the extent of the remodeling from the outside because he’d left the original façade untouched. His bedroom was located on the third floor and overlooked an atrium that took up the front third of the house. On the second floor were two guest bedrooms, the family room, which was actually a bar modeled after an English gentlemen’s club, and an open space he used as a library. On the ground floor was a little-used kitchen, the dining room, where he kept a billiard table, and his home office. A spiral staircase restored by an architectural salvage firm in Connecticut connected the three levels.

The town house’s eclectic style and decoration reflected its owner, and because of his travel schedule Mercer had made certain it had become the anchor his life needed. He considered it one of his only real indulgences.

He’d arrived home from Canada at four in the morning and had been asleep for ten straight hours. Afternoon light spilled through the skylight above his bed and drifted over the balcony at the edge of the mezzanine. Mercer threw on a clean pair of jeans and an old Colorado School of Mines sweatshirt. His luggage lay stacked at the foot of his bed.

He’d remembered to set the automatic coffeemaker behind the bar before collapsing but had planned on waking at noon. The two-hour-old brew was as thick as tar. Perfect.

Since he rarely used the kitchen, he kept some groceries in the cabinets under the back bar and set about making a bowl of cereal. He didn’t think about the expiration date on the milk until the first cottage-cheese-thick curd landed in the bowl. Gagging at the smell, he poured the mess down the bar sink and cursed his house sitter. The orange juice in the rebuilt lock-lever refrigerator he stocked with beer and mixers was just as old.

Harry White, Mercer’s eighty-year-old best friend and the man who Mercer was convinced put the crotch in crotchety, knew he’d be home today and was supposed to have done the shopping. Harry tended to treat Mercer’s town house as his own, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. He had the domestic skills of a rabid wolverine. In the trash can were a dozen empty Jack Daniel’s bottles and about ten cartons’ worth of cigarette butts.

Mercer had been gone six weeks and felt it could have been worse. At least Harry had gotten his mail and had taken his phone calls. There was only one message on the answering machine. He hit the PLAY button. “Dr. Mercer, this is Cindy from Dr. Cryan’s office.” Mercer’s dentist. “I’m just calling to remind you of your cleaning appointment Wednesday at ten.”

He ran his tongue around his mouth and decided his teeth weren’t in immediate danger of falling out. He’d reschedule for when he got back from Canada next month.

Sipping his coffee and thumbing through the stacks of mail, Mercer was grateful that Harry hadn’t repeated last year’s trick of putting him on a handful of pornographic mailing lists. He hadn’t been able to look his mailman in the eye until that mess had been straightened out. Delving deeper into his pile, he realized Harry’s distorted sense of humor had been in full swing after all.

Not only had he brought over junk mail from a half dozen of his cronies, he’d meticulously shuffled Mercer’s important stuff in with wads of credit-card solicitations and other garbage. The trade magazines were hidden inside catalogues for companies Mercer had never heard of. It would take an hour just to separate out his own stuff.

The phone rang. “Hello.”

“Hey, Mercer. You’re finally out of bed.” Harry’s voice, the result of sixty years of chain-smoking and hard drinking, grated like a diesel engine on a cold morning.

“Yeah, I didn’t get home until four. Wait, how’d you know I was asleep? Where the hell are you?”

“I came by a couple hours ago when you were sacked out,” Harry breezed, a lungful of smoke hissing past his lips. “I came back a little after noon. I’m downstairs in your office on line two.”

Mercer checked his phone and saw the light for the fax line was on. “I should call the cops and have you arrested as a Peeping Tom. Why didn’t you get milk, you bastard? You knew I was coming home today.”

“I did buy milk,” Harry protested. “To save time I got it two weeks ago and brought it over yesterday. It’s right in your fridge with the OJ you wanted.”

“And it was lumpier than my cereal.”

“Gripe, gripe, gripe.” Harry pitched his voice as high as he could. It still rumbled like a longshoreman’s. “This milk is too sour. This milk is too lumpy. Jesus, you’re worse than Goldilocks. Hold on. I’m coming up. I need a drink if I have to listen to you bitch about every little thing.”

Mercer was smiling as he set the cordless on the bar. In the ten years since they’d met, he couldn’t recall a single nice word between them. Nor could he recall a denied favor either. Harry was the other anchor in Mercer’s nomadic life, an unlikely friend who meant more to him than anyone he’d ever known. That one was more than twice the age of the other had never had a bearing on their relationship. Both had recognized early on that their personalities ran parallel and seamlessly transcended the generations. Mercer was very much the man Harry had been forty years ago and Mercer supposed, and occasionally dreaded, that in a few decades he’d be like Harry White.

In the moments it took Harry to climb the antique staircase that coiled up to the library adjoining the bar, Mercer had a Jack Daniel’s and ginger ale waiting.

The two men were the same height and roughly the same build, although gravity was shifting the breadth of Harry’s shoulders into a potbelly. Where Mercer’s eyes were sharp gray, Harry’s were a sarcastic blue. His face was as lined as a topographic map and his silver hair remained as stiff and full as a shoeshine brush.

Harry sported his traditional uniform of baggy pants, an overlaundered white oxford that showed the outline of the T-shirt underneath, and sneakers. A mid-March chill forced him into a light windbreaker.

“Welcome home,” Harry greeted, taking a seat at the bar in front of his drink. He hooked the sword cane Mercer had given him for his last birthday on the brass handrail. Although he’d lost a leg decades ago, the walking stick was still more of an ornament than a necessity. “Jesus, you look like the main course at a vampire convention. When was the last time you saw some sun?”

“I knew I should have gone on another diving trip rather than stay home and take your abuse—” Mercer paused. He heard a strange sound that seemed to be climbing the spiral staircase. A sort of click, click, shuffle, wheeze.

The clicking stopped while the wheezing continued. It sounded like something had reached the top of the wooden stairs and was moving slowly across the carpet in the library. Mercer looked to Harry. Harry swiveled to look through the French doors that separated the bar from the reading room.

“Come on, boy,” he rasped. “It’s okay.”

A moment later, Mercer’s eyes widened. “What the hell is that?”

“A dog, for Christ’s sake. What do you think it is?”

“If I had to guess I’d say an overstuffed sausage.”

The basset hound seemed to understand he was the center of attention. His tail gave a feeble wag before drooping back to the floor. He was as long and round as an old canister vacuum cleaner and so bowlegged his belly rubbed the floor. His frayed ears dragged like neglected laundry as he tottered into the room. The old hound’s bloodshot eyes complemented the gray fur on his muzzle and the silver string of drool coming from his slack lips. Mercer put the dog’s age somewhere between fifteen and fifty. “They say that people look like their pets, Harry. That poor thing’s gonna have to get a lot uglier if you two are gonna be twins. Where did you get him?”

“He was rooting in the Dumpster behind Tiny’s.” Tiny’s was a neighborhood bar run by a former jockey, Paul Gordon. Harry was as much a fixture there as the horse-racing pictures on the walls. “No tags, no collar. Tiny wanted to call the Humane Society, but I figured no one was going to adopt him so I took him home. That was just after you left for Canada.”

“My God. A kind gesture. From you?”

“Up yours,” Harry growled, but couldn’t hide his self-satisfaction.

“Have you named him?” The dog heaved himself onto one of the leather sofas.

“ ’Cause the damned thing never wants to go for a walk, I call him Drag.”

The basset heard his name, let loose a long bawl and collapsed in exhaustion. He was snoring in an instant.

Mercer smiled. Harry had spent a great many nights passed out on the very same couch. “You two are more alike than I first realized.”

“At least I still have my balls.”

“Even if you don’t need them,” Mercer teased.

Harry downed the last of his drink and lit a fresh cigarette. “Viagra, baby. Viagra.”

Shuddering at the image that conjured, Mercer mixed Harry another whiskey. Mercer had been awake for less than an hour, but with nothing to do for the next five days, he poured himself a vodka gimlet and turned on the commercial air purifier. The cigarette smoke was already becoming a noxious cloud.

“You sure you don’t want to go diving or something?”

“I’m sticking around,” Mercer replied cautiously. Harry’s tone put him on alert.

“In that case, I guess I have to invite you to the party I’m throwing here on Saturday.”

“Mighty nice of you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Harry demurred. “Least I can do.”

An hour later, Harry was on his fourth drink and Mercer his second when Harry hauled himself to his feet. “If I’ve got to pump ship, I’m sure Drag does too.” He had the dog’s leash in his jacket pocket. He clipped it to Drag’s collar and tugged gently to wake him. The basset snored on. “Come on, you mangy beast.”

Drag’s skin twitched like a horse shooing flies and he woofed in annoyance. It took Harry a minute to coax him down the stairs. Mercer went to the library balcony to watch the tug-of-war. True to his name, Drag slid onto his belly when he reached the tiled foyer, forcing Harry to pull him by his leash until he realized stubbornness wouldn’t get him out of the walk.

Harry looked up. “Told you so.”

The doorbell rang an instant before his hand touched the knob.

The two men standing on the doorstep were dressed in off-the-rack suits that screamed government employee. Their muscular builds, overly short hair, and expressionless faces narrowed the field to law enforcement or military. Startled that the door had opened so quickly, both reached inside their jackets. They stopped from drawing their concealed weapons a second before the pistols were shown, but there was no disguising what they’d almost done.

“Are you Dr. Philip Mercer?” The taller of the two men made it sound like an accusation.

“Yes, I am,” Harry replied automatically.

The shorter of the pair stepped closer, pushing Harry back a couple paces. He was a few years older than his partner and appeared to be the leader. He looked Harry in the eye so there could be no misunderstanding when he said, “Omega ninety-nine temple. Counter?”

Harry had been a merchant-marine officer during World War Two and recognized a code when he heard one. He said the first thing that came to mind. “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.”

Standing above them, Mercer hadn’t heard the exchange nor did he see the play of confusion turning to anger. He had no idea who the men were or what they wanted. Didn’t particularly care either. He was on vacation. And then Harry called up to him, “Does omega ninety-nine temple mean anything to you?”

The jolt of adrenaline hit like an electric shock. He’d been given the recognition code at a White House briefing three months earlier by the deputy national security advisor, Admiral Ira Lasko, USN (ret.). These men were Secret Service agents, doubtlessly part of the president’s detail. The counter code flashed in his mind. He yelled down, “Caravan eleven solstice.”

The lead agent shot a furious glance up to where Mercer stood above them. “You’re Mercer?”

“Yes.”

Although Mercer didn’t know the specifics, he knew why the agents were here and it was his own fault. It had to do with his past accomplishments.

Long ago Mercer had realized there were two ways to look at the distribution of the earth’s mineral wealth. Either Mother Nature had deliberately hidden her treasures in some of the world’s most turbulent political hot spots, which seemed rather unlikely, or the presence of mineral reserves turned indigenous people on each other in order to control the resources. Mercer knew it was the latter. He’d seen it firsthand too many times not to.

The illicit diamond trade and the need to control the gem-producing regions funded nearly all of Africa’s recent civil wars. Colombia’s rebel groups, FARC and others, had been fighting for thirty years, buying their weapons with illegally mined emeralds. And the Middle East wouldn’t be able to export its particular brand of aggressive fundamentalism without the oil deposits to pay for it. It came as no surprise to him that the increased levels of rebel activity in Indonesia came shortly after the opening of an enormous gold mine on the island of Irian Jaya.

The truth of it all was that wealth generated greed in some and jealousy in others and eventually the two sides would fight for dominance. The banners they rallied behind, the causes they claimed, were contrived disguises to hide the ugly truth of this most basic of human conflicts.

Mercer’s career had embroiled him in all of it: the terror, the massacres, the unbelievable savagery. He’d been in the middle of a half dozen low-grade wars, ethnic conflicts, and revolutionary coups. It wasn’t in his nature to remain passive in situations like that, or to turn tail as many foreign workers tended to do. Often, Mercer stayed behind and through his direct involvement had been instrumental in saving countless lives.

Because of Mercer’s record for success, he had come to the attention of military and intelligence circles as someone with unique professional credentials and terror-related experience. Ira Lasko had approached Mercer last year with an offer to join his staff. He wanted to create a post specifically for him as special science advisor. The job went far beyond the purview of the chief executive’s regular scientific personnel. They focused on forming national policy. Mercer was to be a consultant and sometime field agent for when the worlds of science and terror collided, a fresh perspective on problems that no one else could solve.

Mercer spiraled down the stairs and crossed the foyer. The easy banter from the past hour had evaporated, and his anticipation for his first vacation in a year was gone. Ira wouldn’t send two agents unless he absolutely had to. Something was up. Something big. “Why don’t you gentlemen come in,” he said. “Harry, take your time walking Drag.”

“Right you are.” The octogenarian smiled at the agents. “Sorry about my little joke. No hard feelings.”

The shorter agent flashed his Secret Service credentials to Mercer. He was Special Agent Michael Thayer. “Who was that man?”

“A friend who knows about my position with Ira Lasko. Relax.”

Thayer remained terse. “Admiral Lasko sent us to deliver you to Andrews Air Force Base, where an aircraft is standing by. He said you should pack for a week.”

At least Ira’s expecting me to return, Mercer thought. He asked one of the more practical questions swirling in his head. “Do you know where I’m going? I need to know what to bring.”

“We weren’t told,” the second agent said.

“All right, give me a few minutes.” He went back to the stairs. At the balcony, Mercer saw neither of the agents had moved from near the front door. “The old man and his dog will be back in a few minutes. Tell him I’m in my bedroom packing.”

Mercer hadn’t unpacked from Canada, so he dumped the dirty clothes from his suitcases into the hamper and tossed the empty luggage on his bed. An aircraft waiting at Andrews could mean a thirty-minute helicopter ride or a C-5 Galaxy cargo jet that could take him to the other side of the planet. No sense trying to guess what he’d need. He stuffed a week’s worth of socks and underwear into a bag along with his toiletry kit. A pair of jeans went next, a couple of casual shirts, a pair of slacks and a sports jacket. He added one dress shirt, one tie and a pair of heavy-duty miner’s coveralls with reinforced patches at the knees and elbows.

Before throwing a metal hard hat on top of the pile, he grabbed the Beretta 92 semiautomatic from his nightstand. The weapon was coolly familiar in his hands. There was no need to check if the magazine was full; he could tell by its weight. He slid it into the helmet’s liner and zipped it into the leather bag. Work boots and loafers went into outside pockets.

He checked his watch. Three minutes and forty seconds from the time the bag hit the bed until he was done. Not bad.

He heard Harry’s voice from downstairs and peered over the balcony. “Don’t bother coming up. I’m leaving.”

“You think I care what you do?” Harry retorted. “I left a full drink on the bar.”

They met at the library landing, and Mercer followed Harry into the dark oak-and-brass barroom. He downed the last of his gimlet. “I’ll be gone a week, or so they tell me. Who knows.” Mercer peeled two hundred-dollar bills from his wallet. “For your party.”

“Thanks.” Harry left the money untouched.

“Hire someone to clean up when you’re done. Last time there were enough pizza boxes lying around to corner the world cardboard market.” Mercer smiled. “See you, Harry.”

“Yeah, see you.” Harry shot him a good-natured scowl, trying not to show his disappointment.

Drag rewarded Mercer with a sloppy kiss when he scratched behind the basset’s ears. Then he ambled off to lie at his master’s feet.

Mercer pulled a bomber jacket from the coat closet next to the front door and followed Thayer and his partner to a dark Chevy Suburban parked in front of his town house. Traffic to Andrews was a snarl so it took more than an hour to reach the base. No one in the SUV said a word, which suited Mercer just fine.

These were the first moments to think about what was happening and he found he resented the unnecessary secrecy. Ira could have easily called to tell him why he was needed. Mercer would have gone. Lasko didn’t have to send two goons to virtually kidnap him and rush him off for some clandestine flight. Typical government zealotry, Mercer thought, the kind he detested.

Once past a series of checkpoints, Thayer guided the Suburban through the sprawling air force base and onto an access road behind the flight line. A KC-135 tanker was just taking off. Its engine shriek split the air while the four black smears of exhaust looked like claw marks on the otherwise bright sky. The Suburban pulled in toward an enormous hangar and drove through its side door. Thayer braked next to the only aircraft in the cavernous space, a Gulfstream IV executive jet painted in U.S. Air Force livery. Standing next to the open hatch was a soldier in camouflage fatigues. The dark insignia on his collar showed him to be a captain

Without preamble, the muscular African American asked Thayer, “You got my passenger?”

Mercer unlimbered himself from the SUV holding his bag in one hand.

The soldier eyed him. “Mercer?” Mercer nodded. “I’m Sykes. Omega ninety-nine temple.”

“Caravan eleven solstice.”

“Good enough for me. Get aboard.”

Even before Mercer got to his seat, the jet’s tail-mounted engines spooled to life and the nimble plane was towed through the hangar doors facing the complex of runways. Noticing that all the shades had been pulled over the windows, he reached to open the one nearest him. Captain Sykes leaned back in the seat in front of Mercer and closed the shade again.

“Sorry, Doc. Think of it as blackout conditions.” Sykes had a wad of tobacco in the corner of his mouth and appeared to be swallowing the juice.

“Any idea how long the flight will be?”

“Long enough for you and I to play a whole lot of gin.”

This was just getting better and better. “Do you know Admiral Lasko?”

“I know he authorized this flight,” Sykes replied, “but I’ve never met the man. Way above my pay grade.”

“If you happen to meet him before I see him again” — Mercer settled deeper in his seat, stretching out his six-foot frame and closing his eyes — “tell him he’s a dead man.”

“So, no cards, Doc?”

“Try solitaire.” Mercer felt the plane leap from the tarmac a few minutes later. There was no sense speculating about their destination. The same went for trying to guess what Ira wanted him for. Instead of frustrating himself further with mental gymnastics, he allowed his mind to slip into a balance between sleep and consciousness. If this was going to be a long flight, the least he could do was tune out most of it.

Hurtling into the unknown. It was a phrase that just popped into his head and immediately reminded him of the first time he’d been involved with a mine rescue. The visions came back to him with a dreamy quality, a kind of hyperreality where Mercer seemed to be standing still while the events rushed past him. He was twenty-seven at the time, on one of his first consulting jobs. A fire had broken out eleven hundred feet below ground at a West Virginia coal mine where he’d been plotting the best way to extract a newly discovered vein. As the only miner there who’d trained with South Africa’s famed Proto Team, the world’s best subterranean rescue group, Mercer had been the first volunteer to go down into the mine. He led four other men into the elevator cage after it had been verified that not all the men who’d gone down on their shift had returned when the mine was evacuated.

Mounted above the cage was a crude sign: THIS MINE HAS OPERATED FOR 203 ACCIDENT-FREE DAYS. Not anymore.

Smoke billowed up the shaft like pollution from a factory’s chimney, so thick that their lanterns were reduced to pinpricks. Smudge built up on their full-face oxygen masks and simply smeared when they tried to clean them. Fear caused Mercer’s breathing to come in sharp gulps.

The elevator dropped — hurtling into the unknown — past ten levels and deeper into the smoke. As it approached eleven the heat was brutal, radiating from the rock like an oven. But none of the men were willing to stop. Not until they knew what had happened to the twenty-six unaccounted miners caught up in the conflagration.

The scene when the cage doors opened was worse than the most gruesome image of Hades. The walls, ceiling and floor smoldered with the residual energy of the fire’s overflash. Anything combustible was a searing pocket of flame — men mostly, horrible twisted shapes of char. Almost worse was that some of them were still alive. The rescuers used portable fire extinguishers to shoot out jets of foam to smother the flames. As the sound of the fires waned, the pitiable cries of the dying grew.

The first explosion had exhausted most of the mine’s supply of air, but even with the industrial fans on the surface shut down, it was drawing in more like a flue. The blaze would reignite the swirling eddies of coal dust as soon as enough oxygen had been drawn down. Mercer understood that he and his team had minutes. They dragged the wounded into the skip hoist. Two of the rescue workers wanted to stay down and look for others, but Mercer wouldn’t let them. The mine was too hot. The risks they were taking already bordered on suicidal.

The second explosion, as violent as the first, rocked the hoist when they were fifty feet from the surface. Without the protection of their retardant suits, the overpressure wave would have scalded them to death. They used their bodies as human shields to protect their fallen comrades until the hoist reached the top. Scrambling amid a hellish torrent of smoke, they carried the seven men they’d saved clear of the heat. A triage station had already been established. Topside workers carried the wounded to the building as Mercer and his men stripped out of their scorched suits. By the time Mercer staggered into the first-aid station, only one of the men was still alive, and even he didn’t survive long enough to make it to the nearest hospital. The mine continued to burn for twelve days. After the bodies were recovered, level eleven had never reopened.

Of all the mine rescues Mercer had been involved with, that one struck the deepest in his mind. Not because it was the first, but because it was the only one where he hadn’t saved at least one miner who survived long enough to be found.

Mercer shook his head as if to dislodge the images. His memory was so full of such horrors that he tried not to revisit them. He blamed his uncharacteristic dark mood on the fact that this whole situation had him on edge. The unknown was perhaps his most feared adversary. As soon as he knew what was happening, the mood would pass.

A little over four hours later, the engine’s steady drone changed in pitch. They were beginning their descent. Guessing the aircraft cruised at five hundred knots, Mercer estimated they’d covered about twenty-four hundred miles. But not knowing their direction could put them anywhere in a circle large enough to touch on South America, the Azore Islands, the tip of Greenland and as far west as…

It couldn’t be.

Maybe it could. There was one easy way to find out. Sykes wasn’t exactly asleep, but he hadn’t turned the page of the book he was reading for the past fifteen minutes. Before his escort became aware the plane had left her cruising altitude, Mercer inched open his window shade. The darkness outside the aircraft was absolute. They could be over the Atlantic as far as he knew, but he doubted that very much.

The bright moon played against the underside of the clouds above the Gulfstream, and when Mercer pressed a hand to the Plexiglas to cut the glare from the cabin lights, he caught the dark reflection of mountains running off to the horizon.

The plane made a gentle turn and a riot of light erupted from the ground. It was a garish display, an unworldly sight like no place on earth. It was Las Vegas.

And Mercer knew of only one place near Vegas that was secret enough to warrant the level of security he’d endured. It was a remote section of desert euphemistically called Dreamland, but known more widely by its designation on an old Department of Energy map.

Area 51.