Deep Fire Rising

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

Before Mercer could react to her statement, she cranked the nimble little car onto Mandalay Bay Road and then onto Las Vegas Boulevard, the casino-lined stretch of highway known around the world as the Strip. She blew through a red light and accelerated away from the traffic snarl she’d created.

“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded, Doctor.”

Mercer struggled to find his mental equilibrium in the wake of what had just happened. As the adrenaline wore off, his legs and shoulder throbbed in time with his still-pounding heart. His breathing came in deep gasps. “Exactly how many ways are there to interpret ‘you’re going to die anyway’?”

“What I meant was that they will keep coming after you,” she said from the shadows. “They want you dead.”

As they tore past one of the Strip’s more garish neon signs, a wash of pink and teal light flooded the dim interior of the BMW. Mercer finally got to see his rescuer.

She was in profile, her mouth held taut in concentration, and the lights played against her smooth skin, kaleidoscoping in the planes and angles, at once making her beautiful and demonic. Her hair was shimmering black, cropped short around her head and curling in tendrils down her slender neck. She looked at him at that moment.

She wore black-framed designer glasses that gave her a no-nonsense air. Her large eyes were almond shaped and wide spaced belying some Asian ancestry. Above them, her brows were saucy arcs. Had he not just escaped his second assassination attempt in four hours, he would have found her attractive. Stunning, actually.

And then he looked closer at her eyes and saw what drew him so quickly. It was the eyes themselves that he would know forever and how her beauty made the pain in them that much more difficult to witness. In them he saw a despair that seemed to drop into infinity, as if she’d seen horrors no person should ever see. It was like looking into the suffering eyes of a refugee child. Or those of a mother who’d just lost one. Whatever had led her to this moment had so haunted her that it looked as if she’d never come back.

Mercer had to fight himself to put aside the upwelling of empathy she evoked and concentrate on what had just happened. He asked the most obvious question. “Not that I’m not grateful, but I know you didn’t happen along at the right moment, so do you mind telling me who you are, who those gunmen were and why they want me dead?”

“My name is Tisa Nguyen.” Her last name was a common Vietnamese surname, but her first, which rhymed with Melissa, was one Mercer had never heard before. “And those men were sent to kill you because of your work at Area 51.”

That she used the name of America’s premier research facility wasn’t a surprise. After all, it was one of the best known secrets in the world. What startled him was that it seemed everyone and their sister knew he was working there. Ira Lasko was in for a shock if Mercer somehow survived long enough to tell him.

He noted that she hadn’t given the assassins’ identity.

Tisa guided the car onto a cross street and then rocketed up a ramp onto I-15 heading north. Commuter traffic was thick but she seemed immune to it, exploiting the tiniest opening and using deft touches on the accelerator and brake to keep them rolling at a steady eighty miles per hour. She handled the car like a professional race driver.

“I can’t tell you who the gunmen were. I’m sorry. But please know that my saving you tonight is an indication of my sincerity.” She paused. “I didn’t think it right that you should suffer for something out of your control.”

“Lady,” Mercer flared, “the past twenty minutes has been about as out of control as things can get. Since you knew where I was staying and what was about to happen, don’t you think you could have just called to warn me?” She tried to interrupt, but Mercer overrode her protests. “Thanks for your help, but why don’t you just pull off at the next exit and let me out?”

“I tried calling,” Tisa snapped. She spoke English with an accent, French and something else. “Several times. You never picked up and then just before they were to hit your room, the line was busy.”

Mercer opened his mouth and let it close. What she said was plausible. He’d been in the shower for a half hour and then dialed Harry almost immediately after he toweled off. Maybe she had tried to warn him. That still didn’t negate the fact that she knew exactly what time the gunmen were making the hit. Meaning? Meaning either she’d been tracking them or she was part of their team. He chose his next words carefully. “You know they killed at least one woman that I saw.” He kept his voice mild to heighten the barbarism. “Probably got two or three security guards too.”

His hoped-for reaction of guilt never came. Tisa barely blinked at the news. “It could have been worse,” she finally said.

“Worse? I just told you innocent people are dead and you say it could have been worse. I think you could have saved them. I think you could have stopped them by warning the hotel or something. Don’t you realize their blood is on your hands?”

“Theirs isn’t the first, Dr. Mercer,” she said matter-of-factly. “And it certainly won’t be the last.”

A tense minute went by. Mercer studied her profile, conflicted by her beauty and seeming indifference.

“I was too late to stop them from attacking your room,” she said at last. “But I could try to save you if they failed. I’ve put my life at risk just by helping you, though it doesn’t really matter.”

“What doesn’t matter? That innocent people are dead or that you may be next?”

“Actually, none of it.” They sped up to ninety miles per hour as traffic thinned.

Mercer had heard enough. He hadn’t needed Tisa to figure out that the attack concerned Area 51. He was thankful for his rescue, but he wasn’t going to put up with her nonanswers. He would know the truth after he and Ira grilled Donny Randall, who no doubt had some connection to the gunmen. And the truth, he knew, had nothing to do with Ira’s bogus cover about a nuclear repository. Terrorists didn’t assassinate miners for digging a waste dump. They’d attack the nuclear materials en route or hit the site after it was full.

He put his hand on the gear shift lever. “In ten seconds I am going to jam the transmission into neutral.”

Tisa glanced at him, then returned her eyes to the road.

“Unless you’re armed you can’t stop me, so why don’t you just pull over.”

“I’m not armed,” she admitted.

“Then stop the goddamned car.”

Tisa ignored his demand. She spoke confidently. “Four months ago there was a seismic disturbance that was triangulated to a remote spot at Area 51.”

“One.”

“The epicenter was eight hundred feet below the surface.”

The exact depth Mercer and his men had tunneled off the main shaft. “Two.”

“Looking through U.S. Geologic Survey records, there’s no evidence of a fault in this location, certainly not that shallow. It is the first such earthquake there.”

This part of Nevada was riddled with microfaults; many of which hadn’t been discovered. Mercer was unimpressed. “Three.”

“The problem is that it wasn’t an earthquake at all.”

Tisa paused and Mercer had to remind himself of his countdown. “Four.”

“The closest analogy is that a bubble erupted inside solid rock. One second everything was normal and the next, seismographs showed a tremendous displacement of simultaneous P and S waves. As quickly as it happened, everything went back to normal. Almost like a contained nuclear explosion that only lasted for a moment.”

“How big?” Mercer asked, despite himself.

“Five.”

“On the Richter scale?”

“No. Your ultimatum. You’re up to number five. On the Richter it registered a single spike of three-point-one.”

“Duration?”

“Like I said, one second.”

“That’s not possible,” Mercer stated. “What about foreshocks or aftershocks?”

“Just the one spike.”

While Mercer had never heard of anything like this, an unusual earthquake was no reason to have him assassinated. He asked her why.

“What about your countdown?” Tisa asked with a little lift to her lip. Despite his palpable anger, she was teasing him.

“I’m keeping it going in my head,” he growled, although a smile was trying to tug at the corners of his mouth. “Why would someone want me dead for working near an undiscovered fault?”

“Because it wasn’t a fault. They believe it was a weapon test of some kind. I don’t know the details. I… I’m not part of the group that ordered your murder. When I learned what was going to happen, I flew to Las Vegas to save you. You’re a pawn in this. Innocent. I didn’t want to see you hurt.”

“Why?”

She looked at him for the first time in several miles. Her eyes went soft while her mouth remained defiant. The shock of the attack had worn to the point Mercer could admit to himself that she was achingly beautiful. “The reasons are my own. That’s all I’ll tell you.”

“Can you at least tell me how you knew I was involved with Area 51?” He himself hadn’t known about the job until being stuffed into a government SUV.

She laughed. “I never expected modesty from you, Doctor. It’s charming.”

“I’m not being modest,” Mercer said.

“In some circles, you are one of the most famous people in the world. You are perhaps the greatest prospecting geologist working today. You’ve found or been instrumental in the development of dozens of successful mines. Opals in Australia. Diamonds in Canada and Africa. The Ghuatra ruby mine in India. It’s been estimated that you alone are responsible for having one hundred million cubic yards of earth shifted in just the past eight years.”

Mercer understood then. The way she’d been talking, with a kind of reverent fatalism, it should have been obvious. She belonged to an environmental group, one with a radical arm that decided to forgo passive protesting and turn to violence. Like some fringe right-to-life groups whose members began to gun down abortion doctors, it was inevitable that extremist environmentalists would eventually target those they considered the ecosystem’s worst enemies. He still carried the scars from dealing with a similar group in Alaska a few years earlier.

“So your people think I’m Earth’s enemy number one and that by killing me a few acres of desert will remain unspoiled for future generations to ignore?”

She considered his accusation for a second. “Quite the opposite, actually. I do belong to a group, called the Order, and we do strive to protect the planet, but not in the way you think. We don’t chain ourselves to trees or chase whaling ships in rubber boats. Our work is more” — she searched for the right word — “consequential.”

Mercer scoffed. “And you consider me consequential enough to kill?”

“I never wanted you killed,” Tisa said fiercely. “But others do.”

“Because I’m a successful mining engineer,” Mercer interrupted. “And you think my work damages the environment?”

Tisa eyed him again. “With the exception of a few extreme cases, Doctor, one person cannot affect the environment in any appreciable way. You should stick to being modest. It suits you better. Very little of what you’ve accomplished has required any kind of adjustments on our part.”

Mercer had no idea what she meant by adjustments. He was about to ask when she continued.

“I’m afraid you were targeted because you stand in the way of certain people learning what happened four months ago deep under Area 51. Until they, no, I should say we — in a way I am part of this — until we learn the nature of what happened, people within the Order feel there is a tremendous risk.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She nodded. “You don’t have any idea how much you don’t know. And I’m afraid I don’t have time to explain it to you. Well, I have the time, but you would never believe me.”

He was beginning to think his rescuer was more than a little insane. Nothing she said made sense.

“And I do want you to believe me.” Her eyes caught his, held them in the dim glow from the dashboard. The anguish had faded, but there remained a gentle sadness, a sort of pervading melancholy that softened her features. He saw that her words were an intimate confession. “By saving you I hope I’ve demonstrated that you can trust me, at least a little bit. Had I known their plans earlier, I would have gotten a warning to you, I swear. I am sorry about that hotel guest you mentioned. What time is it?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The time?”

“Oh.” Mercer glanced at his watch, noting that the dash contained a digital clock. “Eight thirty. Why? Is something going to happen?”

“No,” she said absently. “I just don’t wear a watch. I saved you because I thought it was time for someone to take a stand. Our group never started out this way. Using violence, I mean. This has only come about recently and I’m afraid it’s going to get worse.”

“Why haven’t you gone to the authorities?”

“That’s just what I’m doing. I’ve come to you. You have the experience and understanding to grasp what I will show you and hopefully the influence to prevent it.”

Mercer’s senses went on alert. “Prevent what? A terrorist attack?”

“Nothing so simple, I’m afraid. I’m going to rely on a little of that trust I hope you feel and say that I can’t tell you yet, but I can give you a demonstration.” She looked at him sideways. “You must understand that what I’m about to tell you breaks a code of secrecy dating back more than a hundred fifty years.”

She took a breath. Mercer was at a loss to explain who she was or what her group wanted, but it was clear she was fighting a battle of conscience. She seemed more reluctant to break her vow than she did to endanger her life by rescuing him.

“Can you meet me on the Greek island of Santorini on the twenty-seventh?”

“I suppose,” he said cautiously.

“There’s a tramway that carries people from the harbor up to the town. I will meet you at the upper terminal at five in the evening.”

“Tisa, I’m sorry, but you haven’t given me any reason not to think that this is all an elaborate setup of some kind.”

“And there’s nothing I can say or do until the twenty-seventh,” she countered, then reversed herself with a yelp. “Wait! Yes, I can.”

Such was the transformation that to Mercer it seemed like another person was driving the car. Her eyes, far from being dim and haunted, came alive.

“Something is going to happen in the Pacific Ocean in a couple of days. I’m sorry I don’t know what, only that it’s some kind of natural phenomenon that’s never happened before. Whatever it is, I’m sure you will recognize it. If it happens, will you meet me?” She was almost pleading.

“This something, it has to do with your group, what did you call them, the Order?”

“Yes.”

“But not a part you’re involved with?”

“No. It’s… it’s the same faction that attacked you tonight.”

“If I meet you, will you finally explain who you really are?”

“Once you see the demonstration, you’ll understand.” She paused again, as enigmatic as ever, but beguiling in way that Mercer knew he shouldn’t trust. “People call you Mercer right, not Phil or Philip?”

“Yes.”

“May I call you Mercer, too.”

“If we’re to meet again on one of the most romantic islands in the world, I think it’s the least you could do.”

Her facial muscles contorted as she fought to contain a smile. “Mercer,” she said softly, as if trying out the name for the first time.

Tisa suddenly brought the car to a stop. “Here we are,” she announced.

They’d left the highway at least an hour ago. A milky moon silhouetted the barren mountains to the east while overhead the stars burned cold and indifferent. Nearby, tall utility poles marched to the horizon like stick-figure soldiers. For as far as they could see there wasn’t any other evidence of human habitation, no lights, no buildings, nothing.

“You call this place a ‘here’?”

“Not exactly the Gare du Nord at rush hour, but this is your stop.” Tisa noticed Mercer tense and reached over to place a hand on his arm. Her fingers were long and slim. She said nothing for a second, just studied the pale outline of her skin against the dark material of Mercer’s sports coat. “Relax. We’re on an access road that leads into Area 51. About a hundred yards farther up is the perimeter. Once you pass the marker, security cameras and heat-tracking devices will detect you. It should take base security only a couple of minutes to find you. It may take a bit longer for you to establish your identity, but I think you’ll be all right.”

“What about you?” Mercer asked, more concerned than he thought he’d be. “Are you going to be all right?”

“So long as you meet me in a couple of weeks in Santorini, everything will be fine.”

“What about…?”

“The — what should I call them, the rogue faction? They won’t dare touch me. Don’t worry.”

He stepped from the car and closed the door, finding no context in what had just transpired. If asked to explain the past hours, he couldn’t. As the taillights disappeared around a bend, he realized there were two ideas he could cling to. One was that Ira Lasko had better have some answers for him when they met. And the second was that despite the skepticism he’d shown Tisa, he didn’t doubt her sanity. Too much had happened for him to think there wasn’t something much larger going on. The explosion in the mine, Donny Randall’s disappearance, the attack at the Luxor. There was a connection, but he had no idea what and wouldn’t allow himself to speculate. That would come later. For now he drew his damp jacket tighter across his shoulders and began his trudge up the chilly road. A third idea came to him and he glanced over his shoulder to where the wind had swallowed the sound of Tisa’s car. He felt certain that whatever she knew, or thought she knew, it was worth pursuing.