Havoc

Niagara River, New York

Mercer, Cali, and her NEST team met Brian Crenna’s support boat at a pier on Grand Island. A chilled mist clung to the fast-flowing river and obscured the forest on the Canadian side. In the middle of the channel sat Crenna’s barge, the crane’s telescoping boom rising into the fog like a spindly finger. The tires hanging from the side of the barge looked like oversized portholes, and they could clearly see men on her deck.

The support vessel was an old cabin cruiser that had seen better days. The once white fiberglass hull had yellowed with age, and the red strip along her waterline had faded to the color of old brick. Crenna brought the boat in fast, cutting a tight circle at the last moment to lay the cruiser against the dock, barely squeezing the rubber fenders. The three fishermen readying their big Bertram sportfisher farther down the jetty looked up when the wake made their vessel bob, but they didn’t say anything about the breach of maritime etiquette.

“How’d it go?” Cali called after a deckhand had tied the craft to the wooden dock and Crenna had idled the engine.

“No problem. We’ve got the crane anchored just upstream of the Wetherby.” He pointed to the stack of black trunks on the dock. “What’s with all the gear?”

“Just some scientific instruments,” Cali said. “Plus a pair of dry suits. The water’s freezing.”

By her evasive tone Mercer realized that Captain Crenna hadn’t been informed exactly what was in the crates they hoped to recover. He supposed it didn’t mater. As he’d told Ira, plutonium isn’t particularly dangerous unless ingested or inhaled. As long as the crates maintained their integrity, Crenna and his crew weren’t in any danger.

“Oh,” Cali said as if she’d just remembered, “and a bunch of gas masks.”

Crenna’s scowl deepened. “Gas masks? What the hell for?”

“Asbestos from the Wetherby. Given her age, she’s going to be loaded with it. When we bring up the trunks, you and your crew are going to have to wear them. Sorry, it’s an EPA regulation.”

Crenna shook his head. “Damned government regulations. All right, load up and let’s go.”

“Nicely done,” Mercer whispered to Cali as they started helping Jesse and Stan transfer the matte-black trunks onto the cruiser. He made sure no one touched the big leather hand grip that hadn’t left his side since Washington.

As the cruiser pulled from the dock, Mercer tossed a casual wave at the three fishermen who were still puttering around their boat. Two waved back and the third, a large black man wearing a Greek fisherman’s cap, gave him an ironic salute.

The barge wasn’t as new as the crane sitting at its stern. Rust showed in streaks through worn paint and scaled the railings. Equipment bins overflowed with coils of rope, lengths of chain, and various tools. There was a compressor for refilling the scuba tanks that looked like Crenna had either just bought it or had rented it for the job.

“The crane used to be mounted on a truck,” Crenna explained. “I put it on this barge a couple of years ago when I was hired to salvage a fishing boat that sank on the other side of Grand Island. It cost the owner twice what the boat was worth, but I wasn’t complaining. So who’s diving?”

“Mercer and I,” Cali replied.

Jesse Williams looked up from one of the trunks. “I thought I was going.”

“You will when we set the burn charges. Mercer wanted to check out the Wetherby for himself.”

The former college football star looked at Mercer. “You know what you’re doing?”

After years of procrastination Mercer had finally gotten his dive certification a few months earlier, although he’d dived countless times before. While he’d only ever gone down wearing a wet suit or just swim trunks, when he’d asked Cali for the chance to see the Wetherby she’d told him the dry suits were just more cumbersome. “I’ll be fine,” he’d said.

They were ready to go an hour later. Because she had more experience, Cali would carry the dive computer strapped to her wrist as well as a waterproofed gamma ray detector.

Mercer’s OS Systems Nautilus dry suit was a little snug around the crotch because he was taller than Jesse Williams, but otherwise it felt comfortable. Jesse helped him into his tanks, buoyancy compensator, and weight belt while Stan checked over Cali’s gear. Jesse went over procedures for filling and venting the suit during the dive and made sure Mercer’s knife and the steel pry bar were secure.

“You’re sure about this?” Williams asked before fitting the helmet.

“Piece of cake.”

Mercer popped his jaw to equalize the pressure when the helmet was sealed.

“How do you read me?” Cali asked over the integrated communications net.

“Loud and clear.”

Together they waddled over to the rear of the service boat where a gate had been opened. Cali jumped first. Mercer waited until her head bobbed up before following her into the water.

Even with the protection of the dry suit and thermal underwear, he could feel the close presence of the cold waters, but it was the current he noticed most. It ran about three knots, powerful enough to sweep him downriver if he wasn’t careful. Visibility was no more than twenty feet and would diminish when they reached the wreck.

Captain Crenna had lowered an anchor down to the Wetherby, its line vanishing into the murky gloom. Cali put one hand on the rope and dumped air from her suit, allowing herself to glide into the depths. Mercer followed, adjusting his suit as the water pressure caused a fold of the tightly woven nylon to dig under his arm. The morning fog had dissipated but there was a lot of sediment in the water, dramatically cutting visibility. Mercer snapped on his dive light when he saw that Cali had slowed her descent.

Just like Ruth Bishop had said, the Wetherby had settled into a trough in the river bottom where she was sheltered from the worst of the current. She lay on her port side with her classic champagne-glass stern pointing upstream. Her hull was continuously scoured clean by the river, although there were still thousands of cut fishing lines streaming from her rails and superstructure. The ship was doubtless home to a lot of salmon and walleye, and local anglers paid the price for fishing on her with snagged lines. Her superstructure had been battered over the years, first when she drifted and sank and later by flotsam flowing down toward Niagara Falls. At some point the tree Ruth mentioned had been ripped free, leaving a gaping hole.

Cali and Mercer attached safety lines to her stern bollards and finned the length of the vessel. Her funnel was long gone and silt had built up around her bow where powerful back eddies had formed. One of her forward hatches was still secured, while the other was open, a yawning square that revealed her darkened hold. Because she rested on her port side there was no evidence of the explosion that had sent her to the bottom.

“What do you think?” Cali asked as they held tight to their lines just outside the open hold, the current pushing at them like a stiff breeze.

Mercer flashed his light into the hold but its beam could barely cut the gloom. “Let’s belay the line and take a look inside.”

They tied off their ropes to give them some slack, making sure that the tough nylon wouldn’t scrape over any sharp surfaces. They were both well aware that a mistake here could mean certain death plummeting over the falls just downstream. The floor of the hold, which was actually the Wetherby’s port side, was littered with barrels and crates lying in a disorganized heap. Mercer again had to adjust his suit as the pressure squeezed it against his body. He checked his depth and saw they were at fifty-seven feet. The water was markedly colder even through the protective clothing.

Here they could see evidence of the deadly explosion. Hull plates had been blown out by the blast and hammered flat by the ship’s tumble down the river. Ruth’s uncle had been right. It did look as though the Wetherby had been torpedoed.

Cali examined a couple of the crates. “Do you think any of these are the ones we’re looking for?”

“No,” Mercer answered confidently. “Bowie’s crates were loaded months before the Wetherby reached Buffalo. The captain would have tucked them out of the way because he wouldn’t need to reach them until they got to Chicago. This hold looks like it was used for cargo they’d need to access quickly.”

He swam aft and found a hatchway that led to the next hold. The door had been warped by the explosion but when he tried to open it farther he found it frozen by time. He loosened the pry bar from its Velcro holster and rammed it into a seam. He placed his feet against the wall and heaved back on the hardened steel, slowly building pressure until his spine felt like it was going to tear through the muscles of his back. The door refused to budge. Mercer repositioned the bar closer to the most damaged hinge and again drew back the metal rod.

A kaleidoscope of colors exploded behind his tightly closed eyes as he strained against the unyielding door. He was about to give up when he felt metal shear under the pressure. The hinge pin broke with a sudden pop and the pry bar slipped free. Mercer tumbled across the deck, caught immediately by the current that swept the hold. Cali screamed when she saw him rush by, and for a panicked second he was sure he’d be swept out of the ship.

He came up tight against the safety line just at the main hatch coaming.

“Are you okay?” Cali asked as Mercer swam back down into the hold.

“Bruised my ego a bit.”

The door hung from one hinge, and by pressing his back against the bulkhead and his feet against the door, he managed to swing it open, the shrieking protest of grating metal muted by the water. The hold beyond was even darker, a stygian void that seemed to swallow the beam of his dive light.

“Stay here and make sure my line doesn’t foul,” he told Cali and swam into the darkness.

This hold was the same size as the first and a huge amount of cargo had come loose from its pallets and lay against the port-side hull. He saw rotted sacks of what he thought was cotton, smashed crates that held the remains of dishes and glasses, and cases of wine bottles, although all the labels had been washed away. He also noted that there were hundreds of lengths of wood, and when he touched one his heart quickened. Despite seventy years of immersion, the board was still as hard as iron, with no trace of rot. He wasn’t sure of the species, but it had to be some kind of African hardwood. And if cargo in this hold had been loaded in Africa, it stood to reason that Bowie’s crates were in here as well.

“I think we caught a break.”

Cali waited by the hatch, her light like a muted beacon. “Did you find them?”

“Not yet but there’s a bunch of wood from Africa in here. I’m sure Bowie’s crates are here as well. Tie off our safety lines again and give me a hand.”

Before replying, Cali checked her dive computer and air gauges and asked Mercer the pressure in his twin Luxfer tanks. “We’ve got another twenty minutes, less if we exert ourselves,” she said when she joined him inside the hold.

“Okay.”

Working in the narrow confines of their dive lights, it was a daunting task, looking for four specific crates amid the jumbled mass of debris but as they began moving junk out of the way they realized that the timber made up the bulk of the load and there were only about forty crates they had to check. Cali took out the gamma ray detector and slowly pirouetted in the still water, her gaze never leaving the device. “I’m getting readings above ambient background but it’s hard to tell which crates are emitting the gamma rays. The water’s absorbing the particles.”

Cali began sweeping individual crates with the detector. As soon as she was certain a crate wasn’t one they wanted, Mercer would shove it aside to reveal other crates in the pile, making sure he didn’t dislodge anything from the precarious stack. It was like the child’s game of pick up sticks, only a mistake here could trap them under tons of debris.

Mercer heard the detector spike before Cali called out they’d found one. The crate was made of the same dense wood that the Wetherby had been transporting. Most likely Bowie had bought a few planks on the spot and had a carpenter in Brazzaville fashion the chests. The box was three feet square and nailed together, and the joints had been further protected with a layer of pitch that had hardened so the crate looked like it was striped in obsidian.

“How are the readings?” Mercer asked.

“We’re fine. I suspect Bowie shielded the inside with metal.”

Knowing what they were looking for made finding the other three a snap. Together they wrestled the heavy boxes closer to the hatch leading to the next hold.

“We’ve brought protective bags in case the crates had rotted,” Cali panted, “but we’re not going to need them until we get these to the surface. When I come back down with Jesse, we’ll hook the boxes directly to the crane and just drag them out. Let’s head back up.”

They swam into the exposed hold, untied their lines where they’d belayed them, and made their way out into the river. The current hit like a hurricane gale, having doubled in the twenty minutes they were inside the wreck. They had to climb their way against its force, first scaling the length of the Wetherby to where the ropes were secured to the bollard, and then hand over hand ascending to the dive boat. It took them longer than they’d expected and Mercer’s tanks were deep into the reserve by the time his head broke water.

Jesse and Stan were there to help him onto the dive platform and remove the eighty pounds of gear. “Well?” Stan Slaughbaugh asked when Mercer got his helmet off.

“Found them on the first try.” He held his hand out to Cali and plucked her from the river.

“Hot damn. I can’t wait to get the samples to a lab. I’m going to have a career just analyzing it.”

“Well done, boss,” Jesse Williams said to Cali.

“How’d it go?” Brian Crenna called from the deck of the crane barge.

“We found all four crates,” Cali said, raising her voice over the wind. “After I’ve warmed up and we’ve refilled the tanks, Jesse and I can go down with a cable from your crane. We’ll need to drag them out of the hold first, so I’ll need to set up a block-and-tackle system so you can have a clean lift.”

“Which hold are they in?”

“The second one. We have access from the first, though.”

“I can extend the crane’s boom almost a hundred and fifty feet. That should put it on the far side of the hold and I can drag them back without using tackle.”

“That sounds like it’ll work.”

“Call me when you’re ready.” Crenna turned away to continue some maintenance work with his men.

Cali ate an MRE and rested in the cabin while Jesse and Mercer filled the tanks with the compressor on the barge. Mercer noticed that the fishing boat he’d seen earlier was still tied to the dock. Two men stood at the transom holding fishing rods, while the black man in the cap lolled in the cockpit a few steps up from the rear deck.

It was eleven thirty by Mercer’s watch when they were ready for the second dive. They’d cleared a spot on the barge’s deck where they’d laid out large rubberized bags to contain the crates. Stan had told Mercer the bags’ carbon fiber underlayment had been designed by NASA and was nearly indestructible. It could absorb the shock of a bullet at point-blank range and would deflect a knife thrust.

Cali gave Crenna a walkie-talkie dialed in to the dry suit’s radio frequency so they could coordinate the lift. The wind had calmed again and the sun was trying to break through the overcast once more. A bass boat with a huge outboard roared past the barge, the four men aboard studying the craft as they raced to the next fishing hole.

“Dinner’s on me tonight,” Mercer said as he helped Cali back into her gear. He spoke low enough so only she heard.

She grinned up at him. “I take it that offer doesn’t include Stan and Jesse.”

“I’ll buy them some buffalo wings before we go.”

“It’s a date.”

Mercer had actually asked her out for a date. He was thankful she’d put on her helmet just then, so she couldn’t hear him exhale a nervous breath. “Once more into the breach,” he muttered, not sure if he knew what he was doing, but glad he’d done it.

Jesse and Cali dropped into the water as Crenna powered up the crane. He extended the telescopic boom until it reached far down the length of the sunken ship. The barge listed heavily, so that the chop lapped against the base of the forward rail. He shouted to his deckhands to reset the hydraulic anchors to compensate for the shift in the vessel’s center of gravity.

Mercer saw Cali and Jesse’s bubbles for only a few moments before they were borne away by the current. With Crenna refusing to let him on the barge until the crates had been swung aboard, and only the one radio to eavesdrop on the dive, there was nothing for him and Slaughbaugh to do but wait. Stan held a Ph.D. in nuclear physics, so the two of them talked about Mercer’s theory concerning plutonium’s origin.

After ten minutes Crenna began to lower the hook into the water. Cali and Jesse must have reached the hold. A minute later the crane rotated a few degrees and another twenty or so feet of steel cable disappeared into the river.

“They must be hooking onto the crates,” Mercer said.

“Won’t be long now.” As if to punctuate the statement one of the deckhands came over to the barge’s rail and looked down onto the cabin cruiser. “They’re about ready to lift. Your boss said we should put on the gas masks now.”

“Oh right.” Stan rummaged through one of his trunks and came away with an armful of NBC (Nuclear/ Biological/Chemical) hooded gas masks. He tossed them up to the deckhand and took out two more for himself and Mercer.

“What happens when we get them to the surface?” Mercer asked.

“We’ll bag them, and get them back to the dock. We have a hazmat truck standing by.”

“Not planning on warning the people of this fair city that you’re hauling a thousand pounds of plutonium through their streets?” Mercer teased.

“Please. On any given day there are a couple of tons of radioactive material on the roads. Only reason why there hasn’t been an accident is because we don’t advertise it and invite out all the wackos.”

The crane’s big diesel bellowed and Mercer saw the drum at its rear begin to turn ever so slowly. “They’ve got them.”

He could imagine Cali and Jesse in the dark hold making sure the crates didn’t snag or smash against anything as the crane dragged them out. For another five minutes the crane spooled back cable in a delicate balance of horsepower, wind, and current. Then everything came to a standstill. Mercer couldn’t understand it. He looked across and could see Crenna in the crane’s cab. He leaned far back in his chair and had his arms crossed.

“They must have the crates out of the hold,” Mercer said, finally understanding. “He wants Cali and Jesse topside before he brings them up, in case there’s a problem.”

Moments later Cali and Jesse Williams bobbed to the surface at the rear of the cabin cruiser. Stan and Mercer quickly helped them aboard. When Crenna saw that the divers were safely out of the water, he started drawing back cable and retracting the telescopic boom to reduce tension on the crane’s hydraulic systems. In moments the crates emerged dripping from the river and hung suspended over the barge’s deck.

The roar of the crane’s diesel masked another, deeper sound until it was almost at the work site. The powerful outboard on the bass boat that had gone by earlier sent an arcing fountain of water into the air as it approached the barge at nearly forty miles per hour. Mercer had been busy helping Cali off with her equipment and only sensed the fast-moving craft when it entered his peripheral vision. He saw that the four men in the sleek boat were focused on the barge, and three of them brandished automatic weapons.

“Down,” he shouted, shoving Cali to the deck. As he whirled he saw the Bertram fishing boat that had been tied to the pier suddenly come alive, a boil of froth at her transom as the captain slammed the throttles to their gates.

Mercer had kept his hand grip close at hand the entire day. He ripped open the zipper, fumbling for a frantic second, and pulled out an MP-40 Schmeisser. The weapon was the standard German submachine gun during World War Two. Mercer had bought it from Tiny, who’d taken it in trade on a gambling debt. He jammed a thirty-round magazine into the receiver and racked the slide. He stuffed six more magazines into his jeans pockets. While not the most accurate weapon, the gun’s high rate of fire made it devastating at close range.

The fast-moving bass boat was still twenty yards from the barge when the three gunmen opened up with their Kalashnikovs. Crenna’s crew fell flat to the deck and Crenna himself leapt from the crane. He dove behind the big air compressor as rounds pinged and ricocheted off the barge’s metalworks. He tore off the gas mask and sat there panting.

Ducking behind the cabin cruiser’s gunwales, Mercer shoved the grip to Cali. “There’s a Beretta in there.”

“How did you know?”

“I didn’t. I just wanted to be ready.” He addressed Stan Slaughbaugh and Jesse Williams. Both were huddled at the transom and neither looked like he’d ever been on the receiving end of an ambush. “Go forward into the cabin. Fire up the engines, then stay down.” The two NEST scientists complied wordlessly.

The bass boat continued to roar up the river, the sustained automatic fire popping over the throb of the big outboard. It looked to Mercer as if they were going to jump onto the far side of the barge. He chanced looking over his shoulder. The Bertram fishing boat had crossed half the river and was coming on strong, her blunt bows buried behind a creaming froth of water. The captain was in the high bridge while the other two were stationed on either side of the stern deck. They both carried weapons — Heckler and Koch HK-416s, the German arms manufacturer’s latest assault carbine. The compact weapons fired NATO 5.56-millimeter ammunition and were fast becoming the popular choice among the world’s elite military units.

Cali saw where Mercer was looking and gasped. They were trapped. Even if they untied from the barge, the Bertram would easily outrun them. She drew a bead on one of the sport fishermen with her pistol when the vessel was fifty yards out. Mercer had turned back to see the bass boat decelerate as it came abreast of the barge. The men were still firing, although Mercer couldn’t see Crenna or any of his deckhands. A snap burst from one of the gunmen hit the hydraulic controls that anchored the barge to the river bottom. Hydraulic fluid pumped from the reservoirs like lifeblood. Mercer looked back and was about to tell Cali to stay put when he saw her about to fire on the Bertram.

“No!” he shouted and pushed her hand into the air.

The Bertram was thirty yards away, close enough for Mercer to see the look of concentration on Booker Sykes’s face as he drove the boat across the river. Mercer didn’t know the two Special Forces operators with him. They hadn’t been part of Sykes’s Delta Force team when they escorted Mercer into a Tibetan monastery once run by Tisa Nguyen’s father. Calling Sykes to provide security had dredged up fresh memories of the events leading to her death, but Mercer wouldn’t let his pain hamper the ongoing investigation.

“They’re with me,” he said. “They are Delta Force commandos. The commander’s name is Sykes. Cover me.”

Mercer eased over the gunwale and onto the deck of the barge. He could feel that the hydraulic system had failed and the barge was responding to the wind and waves, but so far he couldn’t tell if it was caught in the Niagara River’s relentless current.

The bass boat was so low to the water that he couldn’t see it on the far side of the barge. He found cover behind a chain locker and waited for the gunmen to expose themselves again. Sykes arced the Bertram well behind the barge and was about to engage from the Canadian side of the river when another bass boat appeared around the north tip of Grand Island. Mercer counted four men in it as well, bringing the total number of attackers to eight. When he looked back to the first bass boat, he caught a fleeting glimpse of one of the men lunging onto the barge.

His initial plan if they were attacked was to wait until he and Sykes could take out all the gunmen in a surprise counter ambush, but the sheer numbers made that option untenable. Another gunman raised himself over the low flank of the bass boat. His classic Middle Eastern features told Mercer two things. One was that the gunmen had probably received training in some terrorist camp in Iraq, Syria, or Saudi Arabia. The second thing he knew was that they were here to fight to the death.

The Arab was exposed for only a fraction of a second but it was enough time for Mercer to bring the Schmeisser to bear. The old submachine gun bucked in his hand like a living thing as he fired off a five-round burst. Four of the rounds went wide but the fifth blew the gunman off the barge in a spray of blood.

The counterfire from the other three terrorists was swift and sustained. The sound of bullets striking the chain locker was horrific. It felt like the noise would shake Mercer’s teeth loose from his jaw. But even over this racket he heard Sykes and his team engage the second bass boat, their assault carbines adding to the gun battle raging across the width of the river.

Mercer waited until the firing stopped to blindly fire a few rounds over the chain locker and scamper to better cover near the crane. He nearly tripped over the prone form of Brian Crenna. He was huddled partially under the crane with one of his deckhands.

“What the hell is going on?” Crenna shouted over the roar of automatic weapons.

Mercer ignored the pointless question. “Where are your other two men?”

“Billy jumped over the side.” He pointed out over the water. Mercer could see a man swimming toward Grand Island. “He’s a good swimmer. He’ll make it. I don’t know about Tom.”

The second bass boat raced around to their side of the barge, Sykes’s big Bertram trying to keep up with the faster and more nimble craft. While one of the gunmen fired at the Bertram, two more raked the cabin cruiser. Several shots went wide and slammed into the crane’s turret, forcing the three men to cower further, as if trying to burrow into the steel decking.

“Listen,” Mercer said when the outboard faded. “I’m going to cover you. Get to the cabin cruiser and get out of here.”

He changed out the half-depleted magazine for a fresh one, waited a moment for Crenna and the deckhand to get ready, then ducked under the extended boom and cut loose with the Schmeisser. He raked the far side of the barge in a continuous sweep from stem to stern. The gunmen were out of sight so he nodded to Crenna. The two men took off in a loping run, covering the thirty feet to the side of the barge in seconds. Both vaulted over the rail and onto the cabin cruiser’s deck.

Even as he concentrated on finding a target, Mercer noticed that the far bank of the river was moving ever so slightly. When the last round had cycled through the gun, Mercer ducked back under the crane, and as he changed out the magazine he looked at the near bank. Intellect overcame the adrenaline surging though his veins and he realized the land wasn’t moving at all. The hydraulic anchors had failed completely and the barge was at the mercy of the Niagara River. And in the few seconds it took to reload the Schmeisser he realized the barge was accelerating. The wind had picked up again and he estimated they were going six knots.

Mercer was certain the cabin cruiser didn’t have the power to tow the barge against the current. He needed to get to the tug moored to the far side of the craft if he was going to prevent them all from plummeting down the falls. Failing that, he had to get the crates of plutonium ore into the special bags so they wouldn’t smash open when the barge went over.

“Cali,” he shouted. “We’re adrift. Cast off and get out of here.”

“What about you?” she shouted back without revealing herself.

“Sykes can pick me up.” For the moment, though, Mercer didn’t know where his friend was. The Bertram and the second bass boat had gone upriver. He would just have to trust that Booker Sykes would take out the second group of terrorists and return before it was too late.

Cali and Crenna spoke for a second and she covered him as he inched his way to the controls of the cabin cruiser. Cali wanted Crenna to use the cruiser to push the barge to shore so he opened the throttles and put the rudder hard over. The ropes securing the cruiser to the barge strained as the tired motor roared. To Mercer’s surprise and delight it seemed like her plan was working. The nine-hundred-ton barge slowly rotated and seemed to be heading for the Canadian side of the river. The gunmen on the bass boat hadn’t expected such fierce resistance so it was taking them a few seconds to regroup, but when they heard the cruiser they opened fire again. The windshield and side windows exploded, covering Crenna in a shower of glass, while chunks were ripped from the cruiser’s upperworks. It was a fluke shot that hit the cleat securing the cruiser’s bow to the barge. The boat slewed away from the metal side of the barge before Crenna could bring the wheel over or throttle down the engine. The tension on the rear cleat was too much and it gave way, tearing a large section of the transom in the process.

The gunmen continued to fire as the two craft separated. The rear deck was chewed up by the barrage, forcing Cali to dive into the cabin. Greasy smoke began to boil from the engine cowling and the motor started to sputter. As soon as Crenna drove them out of range, Cali mounted the four steps to the cockpit. “We have to go back.”

“Forget it, lady. You ain’t paying me enough for this. I’m going to pick up Billy and call the Coast Guard.”

“Mercer will be dead by the time they get here.”

“That’s his problem.”

Cali cursed herself for emptying the Beretta. She wouldn’t have shot Crenna but she certainly would have threatened him. “Okay, I’ll drop you off at the dock but I’m going back.”

“Not on my boat you’re not. Bad enough I might lose my tug and the crane if she don’t ground.”

Cali exploded in rage. “Those crates we raised are filled with plutonium,” she shouted. “If they fall into the hands of a bunch of terrorists I’ll make sure you’re charged with treason and shot.”

He looked at her. Cali’s eyes blazed with fury and her breath came in heaving gasps. Just as he was about to agree, a wave of heat washed over them. They turned in unison. The rear of the boat was a wall of flame. A bullet had severed the fuel line and the raw gasoline had ignited. “Jesus,” Crenna yelled. “Everyone off the boat. Now!”

Stan, Jesse, and Crenna’s third mate scrambled from the cabin. More familiar with watercraft, the mate knew instantly that the boat was going to burn to the water line, so he threw himself over the side. Stan and Jesse saw that Cali and the captain were crawling out through the shattered windshield and they jumped into the swift-flowing river.

Cali grabbed a pair of flotation rings that hung just below the windscreen and jumped into the water with Crenna right behind her. The shore of Grand Island was only a hundred yards away, and once everyone was together and holding on to one of the rings, they struck out. The boat drifted past. The fire had already spread to the cabin and flames shot from the cockpit. Tears of frustration stung Cali’s eyes. By the time she reached shore and found another boat it would be too late.

Mercer needed to cross twenty feet of open deck to reach the little towboat. The gunmen were well covered and fired at him from the protection of their boat. Their only exposed flank was from the water, and since Sykes and his team were still upriver fighting the other boat, they could afford to be patient. Mercer was effectively pinned. He had yet to figure out their plan or spot the last member of Crenna’s crew, and time was quickly running out. The barge had drifted at least a mile from where it had anchored over the Wetherby and was fast approaching a series of rapids.

He couldn’t wait for Sykes any longer. He had to end the standoff and get to the tug. He checked his ammo. The magazine in the Schmeisser was fresh and he had two more in his pockets. He fired a quick burst to keep the terrorists’ heads down and sprinted for the forty-foot tugboat. As he ran he watched for movement and as soon as one of the gunmen looked over the side of the barge he triggered another three-round burst. The bullets went wide but the terrorist ducked from sight.

Mercer had just another couple of paces to go when the barge struck a rock as the river began to shoal. He was thrown flat and the barge spun on its axis, grinding across the hidden boulder until water pressure shoved it free. The crates of ore still suspended over the deck on the end of the crane pendulumed dangerously but didn’t fall.

Mercer scrambled up just as the three terrorists recovered and let loose with their Kalashnikovs. He fell from the barge and onto the deck of the small tug, bullets exploding all around him. He lay flat for a moment and glanced back toward the gunmen when the firing stopped. One of them stood upright, a long tube resting on his shoulder. It was an RPG-7, a venerable Russian-made tank killer. The rocket popped from the launcher a second later, its motor engaged, and it streaked across the barge. Mercer threw his hands over his head just as the rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the tug’s wheelhouse. The explosion shattered the big windscreen, allowing most of the blast to vent away from Mercer, but the overpressure wave was a crushing weight that seemed to suck the air from his lungs and left his ears ringing. He could no longer hear the roar of Niagara Falls only a mile or two downstream.

Mercer slowly sat upright. He hadn’t been hit by any debris, but the pilothouse was ruined. There was no way now to stop the barge from going over the falls and he had just minutes to get the crates into their protective bags. He looked down the river. There was a structure of some sort jutting into the water from the Canadian side. It was the water intakes for a massive hydroelectric power plant. The barge had drifted too close to the American side for it to be drawn toward the intakes. Instead it was steering for the rapids that preceded the most powerful waterfall in North America.

A movement caught Mercer’s eye. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. A man in a black jumpsuit had just landed on the center of the barge, his parachute billowing before he cut it away. A second man landed a moment later. Above them a dark helicopter began to descend toward the barge. The gunmen must have thought Mercer had died when the tugboat was hit because they cheered and ran up to embrace one of their comrades. The second parachutist, who was Caucasian rather than Arab, made straight for the crates.

Mercer steadied his submachine gun on the edge of the tug, took careful aim, and fired. His rounds stitched through the group. One of the parachutists was hit across the hips and collapsed, screaming in agony as bright blood pumped from his femoral artery. Two of the gunmen were raked across the chest because no matter how Mercer fought his Schmeisser, he couldn’t stop the barrel from climbing. The last gunman and the second parachutist dove for the bass boat. Mercer didn’t give them time to recover. He charged across the deck shouting incoherently. He was halfway there when the barge slammed into another rock and stopped dead. He staggered but didn’t fall. He reached the edge of the barge and was about to fire into the bass boat when he realized there was no point. It had been caught between the barge and the rocks and had been crushed flat. Only the big outboard had survived the impact and to Mercer’s eye even it looked a little narrower than normal.

The river kept the barge pressed tightly to the rock, and as Mercer stood over the ruined bass boat, panting, it seemed like it was jammed solid. A few hundred yards away he saw a billowing cloud of mist as the river dropped nearly two hundred feet to the gorge below. He checked the gunmen. All were dead with the exception of the man with the shattered hip, but he had already slipped into a shock-induced coma as he bled out. Mercer wasted no more time with them.

The helicopter the two men had parachuted from came within two hundred feet of the barge and Mercer opened fire. He missed at that range but the big chopper pirouetted in the air and thundered over the Canadian border and out of view.

Having logged hundreds of hours running everything from a twelve-thousand-ton walking dragline to a compact skip loader, Mercer had little trouble deciphering the controls to Crenna’s crane. He retracted the boom and lowered the crates until they were a few inches from the deck. He jumped from the cab and carefully arranged the bags so he could close them around the wooden chests. He was about to lower the crates that last little bit when he felt the barge move again. The current had found a tiny angle to exploit and started swinging the craft around the rock. The deck began to move and the grind of metal against stone reached a fierce crescendo as the barge came free and was again drawn toward the falls.

Mercer hurriedly lowered the crates and ran back out to the deck. He scanned for the helicopter as he wrestled the first crate into place and began closing the bag. There were four different seals. First there was a wide adhesive strip, then Velcro, and then a heavy-duty zipper. Those took seconds. It was having to lace the bag closed with wire that took several minutes.

The barge continued to hit against rocks. It would hold steady for a minute or two, then continue downstream while the flat bottom constantly scraped against the shallow bottom. Three shots in rapid succession made him drop flat and pick up his Schmeisser. He looked around. There was no one. Then he looked upstream and saw Booker Sykes standing at the stern of the Bertram, his assault carbine resting on a cocked hip. The Bertram was a wreck. Part of the bow was smashed in and the hull was riddled with bullet holes. Mercer could just imagine what was left of the second bass boat.

Sykes had fired three shots into the air to get Mercer’s attention.

Mercer waved over at him, then shrugged his shoulders as if to say there was nothing the Delta operator could do to help. Then he went back to work. He had the second bag secured when he started to feel the spray from the falls sprinkling like a light rain, but it quickly grew to a torrential downpour as the barge edged closer and closer.

The sound of the hull scraping bottom set Mercer’s teeth on edge and water began to surge over the deck as it succumbed to gravity. With the third bag sealed, Mercer glanced over. Booker was still on station watching the scene through binoculars. Behind Mercer the Niagara gorge began to yawn open. He could see the city of Niagara and the arching span of the Rainbow Bridge beyond the thundering mist.

He had two minutes or less and still hadn’t thought of a way out of his predicament. There were no large boulders he could jump to between the barge and the edge of the falls, and if he tried to swim to one he’d be sucked over the precipice. The crash of so much falling water echoed in his head and made concentrating difficult. He had the first three seals in place and had just started to lace the bag when Booker fired again. Mercer looked up just as he was hit from behind in a blind tackle that sent him tumbling. He’d recognized the black jumpsuit as belonging to one of the parachutists, when he was kicked under the chin. The parachutist had somehow survived when the bass boat was crushed, possibly by being close to the engine, and had taken this long to extricate himself.

Mercer’s head snapped back and slammed the deck. He fought the dizzying wave of darkness that washed through his mind and rolled clear just as the man tried to smash his heel into Mercer’s nose. The empty hull of the barge echoed with the impact. Mercer grabbed the man’s ankle with both hands and twisted savagely. The man went down and Mercer used his fall to lever himself into a sitting position. He smashed his elbow into the man’s groin as hard as he could and staggered to his feet. The barge had stopped right on the edge of the falls where the water was remarkably only about three feet deep. Niagara Gorge was a void that seemed to stretch forever.

He whirled again as the assassin got to his feet. Mercer recognized him. It wasn’t Poli but one of the men with him when they attacked the Deco Palace Hotel. Mercer’s Schmeisser was on top of the crates and too far, so he simply charged. The two crashed together and fell into the water sluicing across the deck. The water was only a foot deep but the current was relentless. Mercer lost traction on the slick hull plates and shot twenty feet toward the bow before he could dig in his heels and stand. The leading edge of the barge was suspended over open air and the hull continued to grind against the bottom.

That’s when he saw his only chance of salvation. The parachutist had also gotten to his feet, but the wind had been knocked out of him. Mercer splashed to the crates and grabbed up his weapon. The white mercenary reached for a pistol hanging in his shoulder holster, but he wasn’t quick enough. Mercer fired one-handed, the heavy weapon bucking in his hand, and a pair of nine-millimeter slugs slammed into the man’s chest. He fell and was instantly grabbed by the current. Mercer dropped the Schmeisser and lunged for the body, grabbing at the man’s hair just before he went over the bow. He dragged the corpse against the current and in the lee of the crates managed to unhook the man’s reserve parachute.

He hadn’t done enough skydiving to know if he’d put it on properly, but there was nothing he could do about it. The stern of the barge began to rise with the current as it edged toward its tipping point.

Mercer’s biggest threat now wasn’t that he was so high above the gorge. The problem was he wasn’t high enough. While a hundred and eighty feet was a great height, it was nowhere near high enough for a parachute to deploy. It would be no different than jumping without one. Mercer ran to the crane again, spun it on its turntable until it was facing aft to shift the barge’s center of gravity in his favor, hit the levers that raised the boom to its maximum height, and started the hydraulics that would extend it to its fullest length. By doing this he bought himself another hundred feet.

There were ladder rungs welded to the top of the first section of the steel boom, and even as it continued to rise, Mercer started to climb. The next three sections didn’t have any handholds so he had to rely on the strength of his hands to shimmy up the slick boom like a monkey.

He reached the top just as the world began to tip. The barge was going over. The crates slid across the deck and vanished over the falls. Mercer popped the drogue chute and held it in his right hand as the barge slipped farther. He paused for a heartbeat, waiting for the boom to reach vertical. The Niagara Gorge was a narrow gash through the forests and farmlands, while in the distance Lake Ontario looked like polished glass.

With a last rending squeal the barge tipped, and just before it shot out from under Mercer he threw himself from the crane, tossing the drogue chute over his head. He and the barge and the water all fell at nearly the same speed, but the pressure against his stomach told Mercer he was accelerating. There was nothing to do but pray as he plummeted down the face of Niagara Falls, his body sodden by the constant spray. He couldn’t see the surface of the river or the rocks below because of the mist, and perhaps it was for the best.

But fate wasn’t going to be that kind to him. As he fell the mist cleared a bit. He could see the boiling surface of the river, the tons of rocks that had eroded off the falls, and even the plucky sightseeing boat called the Maid of the Mist. Mercer could feel the chute start to pull from the pack, drawn out by air resistance against the drogue. There wasn’t enough room.

Mercer closed his eyes.

And jerked them open when the main chute deployed, yanking the straps so far into his groin he was certain his testicles had ruptured. The wind off the falls caught the chute and pushed him just past the mounds of jagged boulders as the barge augered in. The crane snapped from its mounts and nearly hit him as he drifted a few more yards before plunging into the river. He went deep and felt the current snatch the chute, dragging him farther downstream.

Mercer fought and clawed his way to the surface, his lungs near bursting as he got there and gulped great drafts of air. He managed to find the chute release, and once it was gone he could tread water. The Maid of the Mist cut across the narrows, passengers in blue ponchos cheering when they saw Mercer had survived. A few minutes later a pair of deckhands helped him onto the lower deck.

“Have you got a death wish or something?” one of them asked.

Having no pithy retort on hand, Mercer rolled onto his side and promptly threw up.