Pandora's Curse

TEN MILES NORTH OF THE SEA EMPRESS

Conversation outside the launch’s cockpit was impossible with her twin Saab turbo-diesels at full throttle. The sea was calmer than could be expected, so the forty-foot craft once stowed aboard the Njoerd shot across the low waves like a thoroughbred. Gunther Rath was in the throttleman’s seat while Dieter, the professional car racer, manned the helm. Greta Schmidt and two of Rath’s security people were strapped against the bench seat behind them. Because of the boat’s offshore capabilities, no one actually sat. Rather, they leaned into specially designed C-shaped cushions that allowed them to use their knees to absorb impacts.

Everyone was armed. Everyone was tense.

The Pandora box was secured in the forward cabin accessible through the low door between the drivers’ positions. With it were four “guests.”

Thanks to the confusion Mercer created, their escape from the Sea Empress had been relatively simple. Soon after the initial burst of automatic fire at the atrium, Rath understood Mercer’s intentions weren’t to kill, merely to spread enough panic to ensure he left the ship. The German knew he was being manipulated, hated it, but had little choice. Raeder would need just a moment alone with the cruise ship’s captain and Rath’s plans were finished. Once he’d taken his hostages, he and Greta raced for the marina, avoiding any area where gunfire was reported. After making certain the Njoerd’s launch was fueled and ready, they wrecked the eight large shuttle boats stored in the garage by smashing holes in their fiberglass hulls with sledgehammers.

From the radar repeater on the Empress’s bridge, Rath knew the Italian destroyer was eight miles south of the luxury liner, protecting her seaward flank, and would be unable to pursue the launch once they swung north toward Iceland, ninety miles away. With the solar max at its zenith and even the most powerful marine radios hampered to a few miles’ range, the Italians were deaf and mute.

Rath was making the best of the disasters that had befallen him and maintained optimism that they would be able to recover the sunken Pandora boxes and turn them over to Libya. If he couldn’t, he was confident that the single box in his possession would guarantee a financially secure future for him and Greta.

He figured he only needed a two-hour head start to escape Iceland once they reached its shores. It would take twice that time just for the Empress to get close enough to the island to report what had happened. By then Rath would have sent a chopper to the Njoerd, and he and Greta would be on a leased jet for a hop to Tripoli. He looked over his shoulder to where she huddled in her parka and offered her a reassuring smile. They’d be okay.

Mercer would have slammed down the phone if Rath’s unimpeded escape hadn’t been entirely his fault. It didn’t matter that the rest of his team had agreed with his assessment about the communications from the Empress. He’d made the call to let Rath go and radio the authorities afterward. And now the German was miles away with one of the boxes and there was nothing he could do to stop him.

Like hell there wasn’t. The idea came to him in a moment of clarity that overwhelmed his swelling feelings of defeat. “Erwin, put Raeder on the phone.”

“You’re on a speaker phone here in the bridge,” the president of Kohl said at once. “What do you want me to do?”

“Rath will be heading to Iceland. Turn the Empress northward and tell the captain to push the engines as far as they will go.”

“Herr Mercer, this is Captain Heinz-Harold Nehring.” The voice was accented but commanding. Mercer imagined a ramrod-straight veteran who’d seen and done it all. “The Sea Empress is capable of twenty-eight knots. We will never catch Rath. His boat is too fast. I recommend we alert the destroyer Intrepido with signal flares and, once we are close enough for voice contact, have them take up the hunt.”

“Where is she?”

“About eight miles south of us,” the captain admitted.

“It’ll take too long.” Mercer fought to keep frustration from his voice. “Every second we waste gives Rath that much more of a lead. We have the capability to go after him ourselves. Turn us to Iceland and start firing those flares. The Intrepido can catch up and you can tell them what’s happening en route. Does she have a chopper?”

“Yes, but it is down right now for a transmission problem.”

“Doesn’t matter. I can catch Rath.”

“How?”

“Turn the ship and let me worry about it.” Mercer looked at Ira Lasko. “How many guns do you have?”

“I dumped them all.”

“Father Vatutin?”

“So did I.”

Hilda had also returned to the cabin without her gun. “Erwin,” Mercer said into the phone, “get some weapons, MP-5s and pistols. Also a cell phone and a sat-phone. It may work when we’re closer to Iceland. Meet me in the marina where we first came aboard.”

“What are you doing?” Ira asked when Mercer cut the connection.

“Remember the Riva speedboats next to the Jet Skis? They’re ten or fifteen miles an hour faster than Rath’s boat. Rath’s going to beat us to the coast, but we’ll be right on his heels.”

Lasko made a sour face. “Those boats are thirty feet long,” he said doubtfully. “We must be a hundred miles from Iceland. They’ll never survive a race across the open ocean.”

Mercer was already at the door, forcing the others in the cabin to follow. “The boat will be fine. It’s us who may not survive.”

Ira got a sudden idea. “Wet suits?”

“Now we’re on the same page. They’re right next to the Aquarivas.”

Like a squad of soldiers bent on a one-way mission, they descended to the marina, grim faced and silent. While the alarms had been canceled, the public-address system repeated a call for all passengers to report to their rooms for a head count. The hallways were deserted.

Mercer’s body vibrated with tension, but his senses were on the hyperacuity he experienced whenever he faced danger. He felt he could almost hear the second hand of his watch.

He crashed through the doors to the marina and snapped on the overhead lights. The two Rivas were along the left wall, their polished forward decks gleaming under the fluorescents. The long stern decks hid a pair of 315 horsepower Mercruiser engines. Each had a leather-trimmed open cockpit behind a windshield that was more decorative than functional. They were expensive toys designed for running around secluded tropical coves, and he was about to take one out in the open north Atlantic on a chase her builders had never imagined.

He moved to the crane controls next to the glass office where Greta Schmidt had captured the others. “Ira, check the fuel status of the boat closest to the exit doors. If she’s full, dump out half the gas. We need speed, not range.”

“I’m on it.” He was already unclamping the rear hatch to get at the engines.

Mercer pulled an oversize wet suit over his stolen clothes. The garment was stiff and new, cutting his mobility, but he’d need it when the Riva approached Iceland’s wave-lashed coast. He and Ira were in for a wet, freezing ride. The boots had no treads, so he was forced to keep on his sneakers. The smell of spilled gas began to envelop the space. “Good job. Father Vatutin, monitor the gauges so Ira can change.”

Erwin was not alone when he came in to the marina a moment later. Marty, Anika, and Klaus Raeder were with him. Mercer allowed himself a second of relief that she was all right and turned his concentration back to what he was about to attempt.

“Give the weapons to Hilda to check over.” She had proved her weapons training equaled her cooking skills. “What’s the status on that fuel?”

“Almost there.”

“Anika, go open the outer doors,” Mercer said, paying no attention to her expression.

She ignored his order and crossed to him. Mercer was bent over, tying his shoe, and didn’t know she was there until he straightened. She slapped him across the face harder than any woman had ever struck him. He reeled against the rack of wet suits, his cheek numbed.

“That was for sticking a gun to my head.” Fury thickened her accent and made her eyes burn. “And I’d hit you again for jumping off the bridge. You didn’t need to do that. You could have given up right then. We had already won. It was a stupid stunt. You just wanted to see if you could do it, didn’t you? Goddamned men and their egos. You remind me of a climber I knew who attempted an impossible ascent but was willing to die trying. Which he did.”

She turned away, but Mercer placed a hand on her shoulder. She shook herself free. “Don’t touch me.”

Behind her anger, Mercer saw fear. For herself mostly, but a little for him too. “If you want to pigeonhole me with suicidal rock climbers I can’t stop you.” He showed no anger because he couldn’t blame her. “But I think you’re wrong. Am I reckless? When I have to be. Do I take chances no sane person would? Yes, but not because I want to. I do it because I have to.”

“And you have to chase Rath in a boat that will sink after the first mile?” Concern dampened her rage and her true feelings welled into her voice.

“Yes. Because he has to be stopped. I didn’t choose to be here, Anika. Nor did I choose to be on that walkway with a dozen guns pointed at me. In case you hadn’t noticed, I react to situations. I don’t go looking for them. If you think of me as some clichéd macho guy driven to danger that’s fine. But I don’t think you know me well enough for that kind of judgment.” Mercer became more conciliatory. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

He broke eye contact. Then noticed that Klaus Raeder was pulling on a wet suit. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Coming with you,” the industrialist said. “None of this would have happened if I’d faced my accountability rather than trying to buy it off. I’m not going to let you clean up my mistake.”

Mercer considered denying Raeder his opportunity for repentance, but he sensed the German’s sincerity. Raeder wanted Rath dead more than he did. Mercer understood why. “Know how to handle a weapon?”

Raeder nodded, then boasted, “I’m also a black belt in judo.”

“Good for you.” Mercer was unimpressed. “I intend to shoot Rath from as far away as I can. If you want to go beat up his corpse afterward, be my guest.”

Erwin Puhl had opened the outer doors, and frigid sea air swept the gasoline fumes from the garage. While Ira Lasko slid his thin frame into a wet suit, Marty attached the lifting lines from the overhead crane to hard points on the speedboat. Retractable rails would move the Riva out of the garage and lower it to the ocean between the Empress’s twin hulls.

“Let’s saddle up,” Ira said when he was dressed.

Just before Mercer fired the Mercruisers, a ship’s officer burst into the marina. Erwin and Raeder recognized him. Captain Nehring. No one paid attention to the elderly figure behind him wearing black slacks and a gray sweatshirt.

Nehring was white haired and commanding as Mercer had imagined, but also physically and emotionally exhausted. “I’ve had stewards going over the ship to take a count of our passengers.” He panted from the run from the bridge. “We just discovered that Gunther Rath has taken hostages.”

“Damn it!” Mercer hadn’t anticipated this possibility. “Who?”

The gentleman behind him stepped forward. Not until Mercer looked closely, seeing past the casual clothes, did he recognize Pope Leo XIV. In the hallway he caught the shadows of several Swiss Guards. Stunned, Mercer spoke before thinking. “Holy shit.”

“The pope informed me that his secretary of state, Cardinal Peretti, is missing, and we’ve been unable to locate an American televangelist and his wife.”

“Tommy Joe and Lorna Farquar?” Ira recalled the flashy minister and his ditzy wife.

“Possibly a target of opportunity he grabbed in a hallway,” Captain Nehring said, then added somberly, “Rath also kidnapped the Dalai Lama.”

Everyone exchanged frightened looks.

Rath couldn’t have chosen a more emotionally evocative hostage if he’d tried. The Dalai Lama’s influence beyond his six million Tibetan followers was incalculable. After the pope, the Nobel Peace Prize winner was the most recognized religious figure in the world, seen as a sage statesman and the voice of the oppressed all over the globe.

“The captain has told me you are going after the kidnappers.” The pope’s English was accented yet musical. “I understand why you want to do this thing, but I can’t allow you to sacrifice your lives for the hostages. I have known the Dalai Lama for several years. He would not wish you to trade your life for his. Neither would Dominic Peretti. And in his own way Minister Farquar worships the same God as I do, and my heart tells me that he too would not want you to die to save him.”

Who had been taken hostage meant nothing to Mercer. To him, it didn’t matter if one of them was the Dalai Lama or the guy that fetched the Lama’s morning tea. This wasn’t about hostages or even revenge. It was about preventing the Pandora box from spreading death.

“I understand what you’re saying, Your” — Worship? Holiness? Grace? Mercer didn’t know what title was appropriate — “sir. And I appreciate your concern. But we’re not going to rescue the four hostages. We’re going because Gunther Rath possesses something that threatens every living thing on the planet.” Not knowing if he’d offended the pontiff, Mercer pointed to Anatoly Vatutin. “Father Vatutin can tell you what I’m talking about.”

The pope looked like he was going to ask another question but stopped himself. The determination in Mercer’s eyes and voice was enough to convince him that the men on the speedboat had no intention of martyring themselves. “Go with God and my blessing.”

Mercer felt the power of a billion Catholics behind that simple sentence. “Thank you.” He refocused on Captain Nehring. “Keep trying those radios. Alert the American base at Keflavik as soon as you can. If the Italians get their chopper in the air, send it after us.”

He keyed the Riva’s ignition, and the roar of the engines drowned out any other attempt at conversation. Raeder and Ira hung on tightly as Marty used the crane to lift the boat off its cradle and maneuver it to the launching rails. Mercer took a second to look at Anika. She was at the door of the marina, her arms crossed over her chest, her expression unreadable. Against his better judgment, he gave her a wink and thought he detected a small crack in her resolve, a tiny lifting at the corners of her mouth. It could have been his imagination.

The canal between the hulls streamed like a swift-flowing river. Marty’s hands were unsure on the crane controls, so when he lowered the Riva, it hit with a powerful splash and immediately bucked against the ropes. Mercer advanced the throttles to the same speed as the Sea Empress and their ride stabilized enough for Ira to cast off the lines.

Like the other extravagant marques Italy is famous for — Masarati, Ferrari, Lamborghini — the Riva came alive when Mercer gave it her head, firewalling the engine controls as soon as she was free. She came on plane and shot from the canyon-like channel, rounding the bow of the Sea Empress. The three men settled dive masks over their faces to protect themselves from the stinging wind and the spray whipped up when she cut through the swells. They wore throat-to-ankle two-piece suits, dive gloves, and hoods, and the goggles covered the last area of exposed skin. As long as the speedboat didn’t encounter seas she couldn’t handle, they would be safe from hypothermia. If she did hit a wave and capsize, the suits would buy them another few minutes in the water, which hovered just a few degrees above freezing.

The night dazzled with swaying tides of auroral light intense enough to hide all but the brightest stars. None bothered to notice. At the helm, Mercer kept his eyes focused to where he thought the horizon line divided sky from sea while Ira watched the compass to make sure they stayed on course. Klaus Raeder hunkered behind them on the bench seat designed for cocktail parties and relaxing soirees. The guns were at his feet. Without wind to roil its surface, the north Atlantic remained calm enough for them to maintain maximum speed.

With the air whipping past them at fifty miles per hour, speaking was out of the question. Instead, the three men were left with their nagging fears, constantly aware that a rogue wave could rear up without warning and end their desperate race. If by some miracle they survived the sea when it shelved against Iceland’s jagged shore, they still had to deal with a determined, and dangerous, Gunther Rath.

Mercer calculated that, with Rath’s one-hour head start, the two boats would reach the coast at about the same time, provided he could maintain their current speed.

That likelihood vanished as the sea grew restless.

It was barely noticeable at first, just a slow undulation like gently rolling hills, but after they were out in the open for an hour, the waves grew until the white slashes of foam topped all but a few of them. The Riva began to rock. Mercer was forced to nose the boat into the waves, pulling them off course so they didn’t take the swells broadside. Even with the Riva throttled back to thirty-five knots, the ride was punishing. The sleek craft became airborne off the larger waves, skipping across swells so that her props thrashed water and air in equal measure. Explosions of black water doused the men as they rode the turgid sea. Punished by their safety straps and lashed by an icy wind from the west, they held tight.

Ira placed his lips to Mercer ear and screamed, “You think Rath will have to slow too?”

Mercer shook his head no. It was too loud to explain that Rath’s larger boat was designed for these kinds of open-water waves. They had been lucky to make up nearly three-quarters of Rath’s lead and could only hope not to lose any ground as they powered northward.

The sea grew rougher still, and with the first blush of dawn smearing the eastern horizon, the wind kicked up. Mercer’s knees burned from the constant flexing and his hands ached from maintaining a white-knuckled grip on the wheel. His feet were soaked from water sloshing around the cockpit and a numbness was creeping up his calves. Through the salt-streaked face mask, he continuously scanned the sea for a glimpse of a wake or a running light. So far nothing.

Behind him, Klaus Raeder threw up.

Mercer spotted a wave twice the size of anything they’d encountered just before it hit. He whipped the wheel into the surging wall of water and the Riva rocketed up its face in a gut-churning swoop. Launched from the crest in a corkscrew flight, the boat landed with her gunwale almost awash and she would have capsized if Mercer hadn’t jerked the wheel in the opposite direction and slammed the throttles to their stops. Before he could fully recover, the next monster wave hit them broadside and water poured into the cockpit. This time there was nothing he could do but pray the wave passed under them before the Riva floundered.

The speedboat tumbled into the trough and Mercer had enough time to kick her around again so they sluiced through the third large wave in the set. It was a masterful demonstration of driving and Ira gave him a wide-eyed stare of disbelief. Mercer’s matching incredulity showed it had been luck and not skill.

The Riva’s bilge pumps cranked overtime.

With no idea when the next big series would hit, Mercer pointed to the west to tell Raeder to keep watch. The German tapped him on the shoulder in acknowledgment. Settled again on their northerly direction, Mercer throttled back slightly for better control and continued their pursuit.

Five more times they hit high rolling sets of waves, and each time Raeder gave Mercer enough warning for him to steer into them. The ranks of swells between the big ones were still large enough to sink the boat, but Mercer had found their rhythm and kept them safe.

After another hour, what appeared at first to be a pinprick of light ahead and slightly to their left slowly revealed itself as a lighthouse. They were approaching the eastern side of the Reykjanes Peninsula, very close to where Iceland’s Keflavik Airport was located. Mercer racked his brain to remember the geography of the area. As he recalled, the only accessible village on this part of the peninsula was the small fishing community of Grindavik, about ten miles farther along the coast.

Assuming Rath would follow the most direct course to Iceland and would need to steal a truck to complete his escape, he edged the Riva to starboard and increased their speed when they entered the coastline’s protective cover. The twin engines sang.

The dawn grew to a white-and-gold ribbon, and the nature of the coast became more clear, forlorn, and tortured by its volcanic creation. Mercer could see the outline of a couple of volcanoes like elongated triangles on the flat plain beyond.

Also revealed in the growing light was a distant speck of white on the water: the wake of a boat running hard. When the others spotted it too, Raeder passed a machine pistol to Ira Lasko and kept one for himself. The cold and misery of their trip was lost in the desire to see it through.

The Njoerd’s launch seemed to grow in size as they approached. The little town of Grindavik was still dark but visible, and they would be abeam of Rath’s boat at least a mile before they reached it. Swaying in time with the boat’s motion, Ira jacked a round into the chamber of his MP-5.

Mercer steered for the stern of the offshore launch, masking the sound of his approach with the other powerboat’s thundering diesels. They needed only a few seconds in range to disable the steel-hulled craft, and as long as Rath and his crew kept their focus on the town they would never know they’d been spotted. Mercer slowed the Riva, matching the launch’s speed when it was just twenty yards ahead. He could see the name Njoerd painted on her flat transom. Beyond, he saw four heads, one of them with streaming blond hair.

Just as Ira raised the H&K to his shoulder, some instinct made Greta Schmidt look behind her. Mercer couldn’t hear her shouted warning, but her mouth moved in frantic command. Ira squeezed the trigger, and a flat spray of bullets kicked up spray at the spot the launch had been an instant before. Dieter had reacted to Greta’s screams with the exceptional reflexes that made him such a skilled racer. He began slewing the larger boat in a random slalom that was impossible to accurately track with a submachine gun. Ira couldn’t risk randomly firing at Rath’s boat in case he hit one of the hostages. Mercer backed off the throttles, not wanting to overtake the swishing launch. The race would only end when they reached shore.

Greta had disappeared from their view for a moment. When she emerged from the forward part of the launch, she had a pistol in one hand and a hostage in the other. Her greater size and strength all but smothered the struggles of her victim, the scantily dressed Lorna Farquar.

While his life had hardened Mercer to violence, he was not immune to it. There was no way he could brace himself to what he knew was about to happen. Lorna must have realized her fate too because her writhing became desperate. Greta’s expression didn’t change as she clubbed the woman behind the ear with the pistol and shoved her limp form off the back of the boat.

Instinct told Mercer to ignore the motionless body that bobbed in the launch’s wake and concentrate on Gunther Rath and the last Pandora box. That was what was important. Yet his humanity was a much stronger drive than any personal desire for justice.

There was no hesitation.

He chopped the throttles, holding fast against the steering wheel as the Riva dropped from plane like a head-on collision. Rath’s boat thundered away while Mercer swept the Riva in a tight circle to recover the evangelist’s wife. She lay facedown, her skimpy dress peeled from her body by the impact with the water. Her flesh was white against her translucent panties, already looking lifeless. With the Riva’s Mercruisers burbling, Mercer drew up next to her, edging wheel and throttle so the speedboat pirouetted and Klaus Raeder could grab her. He heaved her across the gunwale.

As soon as her feet cleared the frigid water, Mercer opened the throttles again. He looked over his shoulder in time to see clear water erupt from Lorna’s mouth and her body convulse in a coughing fit that sounded over the throb of the engines. She curled into a ball and retched again. She’d be shivering for the next couple of hours and her head would ache, but she’d be all right.

Rath was a quarter mile ahead, angling in toward the wooden jetties fronting Grindavik. His launch didn’t slow until the last second, its wake slamming fishing boats into each other and the floating docks. The one permanent pier thrusting out in the water was a concrete structure with a high-bowed purse seiner snugged against one side. A battered van was parked on the dock, and five early-morning fishermen talked amiably as they prepared the boat’s lines. Rath ordered Dieter to the other side of the pier, and the driver deftly coasted the last few yards. One of the security men leapt from the launch to secure a rope to the rusted cleats. Another man followed him, his attention on the fishermen, theirs on his gun.

As Mercer brought the Riva in toward the town, two other gunmen appeared at the big launch’s transom and unleashed matching sprays of automatic fire. The range was extreme, and yet Mercer had to sheer away from the stream of bullets, cutting a deep crescent in the sea. Like a shark kept at bay, he cruised just beyond the limit of the weapons, patrolling back and forth restlessly, seeking an opening that would never come. Rath held the superior position, and until he’d loaded his hostages and the Pandora box into the truck, Mercer, Ira, and Raeder could do nothing but wait.

“Get Mrs. Farquar below and wrap her in as many blankets as you can find,” Mercer ordered. “There should be heating vents mounted on the ceiling of the cuddy cabin. Open them wide.”

As Raeder maneuvered the woman into the cabin and Mercer watched the frenzied activity on the dock, Ira Lasko got an inspiration. He flicked on the sat-phone he’d carried and tried to get a signal through. “Damn it! Nothing.”

“What about the cell phone? It doesn’t rely on a satellite. Its signal only has to reach the closest tower, and I think I can see one just inland of the town.”

“Good idea.” He tossed the sat-phone aside and snapped open another telephone no bigger than a wallet. “I’ve got a signal!”

“Call Paul Barnes and get us some help.” Mercer could see that three of the fishermen were being pressed into service to carry the golden box from the launch to the rear of their van. As Rath directed the transfer, Greta Schmidt covered a rubbery Tommy Joe Farquar, the squat Dalai Lama, and Cardinal Peretti. Farquar still had on his shiny suit while Peretti wore black pants and shirt. The Lama suffered in the cold, wearing nothing more than a red robe and sandals. His eyebrows looked like dark smudges on his nearly bald head.

Ira worked the phone for a minute, speaking in non-sequitur codes until he finally reached his case officer. “Rudy, Ira Lasko… shut up and listen. It’s all true… yes, the meteorite fragments and Kohl industries and every other damned thing. Klaus Raeder isn’t the man we want. It’s his special-projects director, Gunther Rath. Now listen to me. Rath has a box loaded with an unknown amount of the meteor as well as three hostages, including the Dalai Lama and the number two man at the Vatican. We’re off the coast of Iceland near a town called Grindavik… It doesn’t matter how we got here. We’re here and we need some serious fucking help. Get on the horn and get us a chopper from the Keflavik airbase. Rath’s in a white stretch van and will probably be heading across the peninsula toward the Reykjavik road. I think it’s Route 41.”

Mercer interrupted. “Have him tell the pilot they’ll be on the access road to the Blue Lagoon thermal spa.”

Ira passed on the information, adding, “We’re going to try to get ground transportation and maintain pursuit. Rath has four or five men armed with pistols and subguns. He will not hesitate to fire… No! Don’t take the van from the air unless absolutely necessary. He’s got hostages, for Christ’s sake. You’ve got a trace on this line, so call me back at this number when you have Air Force cooperation.” He snapped off the cell phone. “He had a million questions that don’t need to be answered until this shit’s over.”

“How long to get a chopper?” They couldn’t afford a delay. Rath would be miles ahead by the time they stole a vehicle of their own and took up the chase again.

“Only fifteen minutes. Military’s been on alert since I stopped checking in.”

Klaus Raeder clambered up the steep steps from the Riva’s cabin. “She should be fine. The knot on her head is bleeding a bit, but I don’t think her skull is cracked.”

Every time the speedboat drifted toward shore with the rising tide, a burst of machine gun fire erupted from the dock and Mercer jammed the boat into reverse and hauled them out of range again. They used the time to strip out of the restricting wet suits. Wind cut through the clothing but adrenaline insulated them from the chilling effects. Had Grindavik been more than a clutch of white clapboard structures, he would have beached the Riva farther away and tried to flank the fugitives. But there was nothing on either side of the village except miles of barren desolation.

On the dock, Gunther Rath raged at his men. He’d been ensured that there was no way anyone could follow them from the Sea Empress and yet evidence to the contrary lurked a few hundred yards off shore. Granted, even he couldn’t have predicted Mercer would attempt the dangerous open-ocean crossing in such a small boat, but if he’d known about the Riva speedboats in the Jet Ski garage he would have ordered their hulls smashed too.

The petrified fishermen had almost maneuvered the two-hundred-pound golden box into the back of the van. Once it was secure, Rath planned to leave one gunman on the dock to hold Mercer at bay while they made their escape. He needed a half hour to reach Keflavik Airport, where they could trade the hostages for a jet to get away from Iceland.

“Come on!” he shouted and cuffed one of the fishermen. The man staggered and the box fell heavily into the cargo area of the van, rocking its suspension.

Without thought or mercy, Rath pulled his automatic pistol from where it was jammed into his belt and shot two of the fishermen. Two others leapt onto their boat and hid from view and the fifth jumped into the water. “Load up,” he snarled, gesturing at the three hostages with the smoking gun. Mutely, they climbed into the van, the Dalai Lama giving him a look as if he understood what demons drove Rath to murder so callously. Tommy Joe Farquar, while sobered by the long boat ride, simply allowed himself to be maneuvered, too stunned by what happened to his wife to offer any kind of resistance. Cardinal Peretti did nothing to hide his contempt.

“Willie, I want you to stay on the dock,” Rath ordered the youngest of his men. “Keep that boat from landing as long as you can. Buy us thirty minutes and get yourself out of here. Stay away from the Geo-Research office in Reykjavik and get word to the Party’s office in Hamburg. They’ll know how to contact me and we’ll extract you in a couple of days.”

“Ja wohl!” the young neo-Nazi replied, proud to be able to serve his cause.

Greta kept her pistol on the hostages as she entered the van through the side door, reveling in the smell of testosterone and fear filling the cab. She was near a sexual peak and the pressure of her clothing against her breasts sent ripples of energy through her body. Her faith in Gunther was so absolute that she knew they would make it away.

With Dieter behind the wheel and Rath in the passenger seat, the van started rolling down the dock. Once it was on the road, they accelerated quickly. The airport was just thirty miles away.

Frustration filled Mercer as the hostages boarded the van for a ride he doubted any would survive. As soon as the vehicle disappeared into the quiet town, he started for the dock and only realized Rath had left behind a picket when the water around the Riva exploded and bits of her forward deck blew away in bright slivers of precious wood. He cranked the wheel while Ira and Raeder returned fire. The gunman on the dock had cover behind a stack of heavy steel fish traps, and nothing short of a missile would dislodge him.

“I’m going to beach down the coast and we’ll run back to town to find a car,” he shouted over the engines.

Before he could execute his plan, the gunman suddenly staggered out from his hide, his hands smeared red where they clutched his stomach. The sound of a rifle reached the men on the water a second later, and they all saw a puff of smoke blow from the bridge of the fishing boat tied to the dock. The neo-Nazi looked up to where the shot had come from, and the back of his head erupted as the rifle the fishermen used for sharks blew his brains all over the dock.

Mercer didn’t waste a second. He took them in under nearly full power, not caring that he scrubbed off speed using the side of the $300,000 Riva against the dock. Ira vaulted up to the concrete quay with a line and cinched it tight. Raeder came next and then Mercer, now holding a submachine gun and a Beretta pistol. Two Icelanders stood on the bridge of the boat, their deeply weathered faces and suspicious eyes never leaving the three men. The third survivor of the group had just reached the rocky beach and began walking back to the dock.

“There’s a woman in the cabin.” Mercer pointed at the Riva, hoping that these men spoke English like most Icelanders. “She’s near hypothermic and needs a doctor for a concussion.” The fishermen said nothing. The old bolt-action rifle was leveled at Mercer’s head. “The men who killed your friends dumped her in the sea. We need a car to go after them.”

The wind whistled through the fishing boat’s rigging.

“If you won’t help us, at least don’t stop us,” Mercer pleaded.

The man holding the shark rifle let the barrel fall until it was pointed at the deck of his boat. “How long the woman in the water?”

“Five minutes, maybe eight.”

Gunfights and cold murder were beyond what these men knew. A person sacrificed to the sea was a danger they could understand. “The two men they kill. My cousins,” the captain of the boat said and reached into his pocket. He tossed a wad of keys onto the dock at Mercer’s feet. “You know killing. You kill them. I know sea. I will help woman.” He raised his hand toward the town. “Blue Volvo in front of Vsjomannastofan Restaurant.”

Mercer didn’t thank them. They wouldn’t expect it and he didn’t have the time. He scooped up the keys and raced off the dock, confident that Ira and Klaus would keep up. He was stopping for nothing until Rath was dead.

The Volvo was a beaten four door, rust smeared and so often repaired that little of its original paint remained. The interior reeked of pipe smoke and the seat covers were so shredded they showed more foam padding than black vinyl. The engine belched and snorted and barely settled down when he forced the transmission into first gear with a painful grind. Mercer’s Heckler & Koch was across his lap. Ira’s window refused to roll down, so he smashed it out with his machine pistol.

The road twisted out of town, following the vagaries of the volcanic terrain. As their speed approached sixty, the bald tires and mist-slick macadam tried to throw them in the ditches bordering each curve. Mercer wished he had his Jag right now. They’d be doing a hundred without a chirp from the wheels. Still, he pushed the old Volvo harder, drifting through corners with quick touches of brake and gas, his hand working the stick without regard to the gears’ worthless synchronizers.

In the distance, he could see steam plumes from the Svartsengi power plant rising into the gray dawn like clouds struggling from the black landscape. What he couldn’t see was a white van driving as recklessly as he was. At the end of this road was a branch east to Reykjavik or west to the international airport and Keflavik. Each route held promise for fugitives, and Mercer needed to be close enough to see where Rath was heading.

“Any sign of that chopper?” he asked. The Volvo briefly lifted on two wheels as its tires screamed through a tight bend.

“Ceiling’s only about five hundred feet,” Ira said, referring to the low cloud cover that hung from the tallest peaks like muslin. “We won’t see it until we pass under it.”

The road leveled out and straightened as they neared the geothermal generating station and the adjacent Blue Lagoon spa. A trio of hundred-foot cooling towers rose from the lava field like slender rockets on a moonscape, their tops wreathed in steam. The rest of the sprawling facility was hidden in a dip in the topography. A half mile ahead was the turn for the plant and spa — and just beyond that was the van. Mercer’s jaw tightened. Then he realized something was wrong. The van wasn’t in his lane, it was in the opposite. It wasn’t heading away from them. It was coming closer!

Like an enraged insect, a Hughs 500 helicopter painted olive drab hovered above the hurtling van, its skids no more than fifty feet from the vehicle’s roof. A sniper with a Barrett.50 caliber rifle sat in the open door, his clothes rippled by the wind, his eye screwed to the weapon’s enormous scope.

Mercer slammed on the Volvo’s emergency brake and slipped the car into a skid that completely blocked the two-lane road. Even the sturdiest four-wheel-drive SUV couldn’t penetrate more than five feet into the moss-covered lava fields. Rath was caught between the helo and the car. Throwing open his door, Mercer pulled the H&K and watched the van approach over the sights. He pulled the trigger, intentionally aiming low. He couldn’t risk the driver or a stray shot ricocheting in the cab.

It was one thing for Dieter to risk his life on a race track, another thing entirely facing the winking eye of an automatic 9mm. It was a game of chicken that he wouldn’t play. Braking so the van’s back end broke loose, he spun into the driveway of the generating plant and accelerated away.

Mercer knew from his tour of the facility a couple years ago that this was the only way in or out of the complex. As long as he could disable the van, the Pandora box was trapped. He dove back into the Volvo, willed the transmission into gear and tore after the fleeing vehicle. Ira jammed a fresh magazine into Mercer’s MP-5. The van continued past the turnoff for the power station and drove toward the newly constructed Blue Lagoon spa. The Hughs 500 flashed over the car, nose down and menacing.

The spa’s modern glass-and-steel building was set back from the empty parking lot. It was reached by a meandering foot path cut into the lava, a narrow trail flanked by ten-foot walls of tortured stone. Dieter careened through the lot and shot down the footpath, sparks flying whenever the fenders scraped rock. With Mercer still several hundred yards behind them and unable to communicate with the chopper, the maneuver bought them a few minutes to hustle their hostages from the van. They had no choice but to leave the golden box in the rear.

One of Rath’s gunmen waited in the van, his machine pistol able to cover the entire trail. When they followed, Mercer and his men would run headlong into a scathing ambush.

Rath blew apart one of the spa’s glass doors with his pistol and rushed in, confident that his men had Peretti, Farquar, and the Dalai Lama well covered. Ahead was a cavernous room bisected by a reception counter. Beyond was a waiting area with a twenty-foot glass wall overlooking the steaming waters of the artificial lagoon. In the weak light of the encroaching dawn, the water had a peculiar shade of milky blue, a combination of silica and bacteria that gave it curative powers and the unholy stench of sulfur.

With an eye for urban street fighting, Rath positioned his men to best cover the entrance in case Mercer’s team made it past the gunner in the van. He also scouted out his escape route for when Mercer was dead. The building echoed with the reverberations of chopper blades just a few feet above the roof.

When he reached the parking lot and saw the spa’s canyon-like entry path, Mercer instinctively knew where Rath had gone. He braked hard at the beginning of the trail, blocking it with the body of the Volvo to trap the van. Hyped on adrenaline until his veins burned, he never considered waiting for reinforcements from the military base at Keflavik.

“They’ll be waiting for us to follow,” Ira said.

“We’ll flank ’em,” Mercer grunted. “You two climb up the left side of the path, and I’ll go right. We’ll stop when we’re above the van.”

The lava on this part of the Reykjanes Peninsula had been laid down in A.D. 1226, and despite Iceland’s scouring winds it had not yet succumbed to the polishing effects of erosion. Clambering up the wall on one side of the path was like climbing a mound of broken glass. A mistimed lunge for a knuckle of stone resulted in a bleeding gash on Mercer’s knee and what felt like four fingerprints being abraded off his left hand. Slowed by his injuries, he made his ascent and started off for the building he could see nestled in an excavated bowl of rock. The lagoon behind it simmered like an aquamarine cauldron. Watching for a guard atop the lava and keeping one eye out for anyone lurking in the shadowy trail below, Mercer scrambled along the rim of the path until the van was directly below him. He looked through the multiple windows fronting the spa but saw nothing in the darkness within. The helicopter’s downblast blew a freezing gale across his naked scalp.

Once Ira and Raeder were across from him and had the building covered, Mercer raised himself slightly to zero in on the rear of the white van and gave the H&K’s trigger a long squeeze. He emptied a clip, careful to direct his fire away from where he thought the van’s fuel tank would be. The crashing shots deafened him, so he didn’t hear the rear door unlatch, but he saw it swing outward. A man in a black Geo-Research jumpsuit oozed slowly to the ground, small eruptions in his uniform leaking blood.

Gunfire burst from one of the windows a story above his position. Ira and Raeder’s returned fire had no effect on the sniper. A steady stream of rounds continued to explode around Mercer. He had a small measure of shelter behind an outcropping of lava, but the 9mm rounds were quickly eating away at the volcanic stone. He slapped in another clip. Then, rather than run away, as the gunman anticipated, Mercer charged the spa, firing a short burst.

The gap between Mercer’s hill and the building’s second story was eight feet across, and in the instant before he jumped down, he saw another gunman lurking below him. Unable to stop, Mercer angled slightly and leapt instead for an office window, snapping off a couple rounds at the black glass as he flew. The window was just starting to come apart as he burst through in a shower of glass. He landed atop a cluttered desk, scattering papers and knocking a computer to the floor. He levered himself back to the window, ready to fire at the guard he’d glimpsed below, but the man had vanished.

He saw Ira and Raeder moving out to find their own access to the building. Mercer took a deep breath, prepared for the lancing pain of a broken rib or two, but other than the dull ache from his impact with the desk, he was all right. He eased out of the office after recharging his half-depleted clip with bullets from a pair of pistol magazines. The interior of the spa was murky and indistinct, filled with shadows that shifted as the sun rose higher.

At the end of the corridor was a bridge that overlooked the entry foyer and waiting area. Dozens of chairs and tables had been hastily stacked in one corner about halfway across the room. A shape moved behind them. Mercer sighted in and fired off a three-round burst. A hail of return fire pinned him to the bridge. Its glass railings disintegrated in a rain of shards. He had a sudden inspiration. When the autofire ceased, he rolled and fired above the hidden gunman’s redoubt. The twenty-foot wall of glass was divided into huge sections by a steel lattice. He concentrated his aim on the top section above the neo-Nazi and held steady. The inch-thick plate splintered and came crashing down, hundreds of pounds of glass falling to the stone floor, the table, and the gunman. It was Dieter. Caught in the avalanche he had just started to dive out from under the onslaught when a fifty-pound piece of window caught him on the shoulder and severed his arm from his body. Mercer cut off his scream with a shot to the head.

Movement caught his attention, and he raised his weapon, holding his fire when he recognized Ira and Raeder approaching from the other side of the bridge.

“Stay down!” Mercer shouted too late.

The shots came from behind and below them, near the spa’s gift shop. Ira’s quick dive wasn’t enough. His body jerked as two bullets found their mark. The remainder of the short blast pinged off the structural steel in the ceiling. As Raeder provided cover fire, Mercer grabbed Ira’s collar and dragged him to the safety of the corridor. A snaking trail of blood was smeared into the carpet behind him. Mercer rolled him on his back and Ira’s brow beaded with sweat. He’d gone completely white and his breath came in short, choppy slurps. Blood bloomed across his abdomen and looked like a black slick on the inside of one thigh.

“How bad?” Mercer asked, gently pulling up Ira’s shirt.

“How the hell should I know?” the agent gasped. “I’m not a doctor.”

Mercer used his sleeve to clear away blood and laughed. The bullet pierced the small flap of skin on Ira’s waist, a clean in and out that left puckered holes but no lasting damage. “Had your wife been a better cook, it would have been worse.”

The wound in the leg was much more serious. It hadn’t cut the femoral artery, but the gushes of blood that poured from it indicated some other major vessels had been torn. Klaus exchanged more shots with the gunman in the gift shop.

Mercer used his belt as a crude tourniquet, cinching it as tight as he dared. It would have to be released every twenty minutes or Ira would risk gangrene. If he couldn’t remain conscious to do it, Raeder would have to stay with him.

“Is he okay?” Raeder asked.

“Yeah.” Mercer brushed glass from his shoulders. With two guards down, there were two left in addition to Greta and Gunther. The odds had been evening out, but without Ira, Mercer would have to go after them alone. And as long as the Germans had the hostages, he was fighting from an even more severe disadvantage. “I think the two gunmen are going to try to pin us here while the others escape over to the power plant where they can steal a vehicle.”

“What about the sniper in the helicopter?” Raeder asked as he gathered Ira’s spare clips.

“Unless they set down, they’ll never risk a shot. The chopper’s too unsteady. Ira, can you handle your own tourniquet?”

“I can for a while.” He licked his lips. “What’s your plan?”

“No idea.” Mercer looked around, a haze of gunpowder smoke stinging his nostrils. He could almost feel the two armed men lurking someplace in the elegant building. He finally looked back to Ira. “How about contacting your case officer again? Have him phone Keflavik base so we can get the helicopter down. You need immediate evac and we need some men to secure the Pandora box. Klaus will stay with you until they land and then he can follow me.”

“Where’re you going?”

“After Rath.”

“That isn’t the smartest idea you’ve ever had.”

Mercer laughed. “This coming from a man who just let himself get shot?” His next teasing comment died on his lips. A pistol shot had sounded somewhere below, near where he had seen the signs for the bather’s changing rooms. There was only one reason for a single shot in this kind of situation. For some reason Rath had just put down one of his hostages. Mercer looked first at Ira and then at Klaus Raeder. They too knew what had happened.

“I’ll be okay,” Ira said, clasping Mercer’s arm. He had a pistol at his side. “Move me into an office and go kill that sick son of a bitch.”

“Make sure that chopper pilot knows which side we’re on when we get outside,” Mercer said once Ira was safely hidden behind a desk.

He grabbed up his H&K and took off down the hallway with Klaus Raeder. Several office doors were open, and their windows had a view of the lava-rimmed pool area. From this vantage point they saw figures moving through the swirling mist, dark furtive shapes that lurched from cover to cover. It was obvious that two were going against their will but was impossible to tell which one — the Dalai Lama, Cardinal Peretti, or Tommy Joe Farquar — had been shot in the dressing room. It was also clear that the two remaining gunmen in Rath’s command were with them. The Blue Lagoon spa was clear.

“There are stairs at the end of the corridor,” Raeder said.

“Let’s do it.”

They went down and came out into another hallway. The men’s changing room was behind them and Mercer entered first, his hands tight on the small machine pistol. His ragged breathing reverberated off the tile walls. He swept the dimly lit room quickly, checking behind islands of lockers, before swinging into the adjoining showers and rest room. A body lay against one wall.

Tommy Joe Farquar’s toupee was missing and his suit had lost its luster, but he was alive, frightened and in pain from the bullet through his shoulder. He screamed when he saw Mercer with the gun, doubtlessly assuming he was with the men who’d kidnapped him and dumped his wife into the sea. Suddenly he choked off his own shouts and stared defiantly. “Philistine! God will smite you down with a vengeance only He can conjure,” he raged in his best preacher’s voice. “You will burn in an unspeakable pit for all eternity, your soul to become food for Satan’s hell hounds.”

“That’s probably true, Mr. Farquar,” Mercer agreed. “But we’re not with your kidnappers. In fact, we’re the ones who saved your wife.”

“Lorna?”

“Is back in Grindavik, where you first made land-fall. She’s going to be fine.”

“Oh, praise sweet Je-sus.” He tried to raise his arms in supplication, but his wound quickly brought his hands back to his side. He shrieked and turned ashen.

“Why’d they shoot you?” Mercer asked.

“I tried to run away.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Raeder snapped impatiently. “We have to go after Gunther.”

“Mr. Farquar, medical help is on the way. If you can, try to crawl out to the hallway so someone spots you.”

“You can’t leave me.” Tommy Joe raised his good arm. “They may come back.”

“Not if I can help it.”

They left him without another word, passing out of the building and onto the wooden deck surrounding part of the sulfurous pool. Heat radiated from the surface of the oddly colored water. Raeder followed Mercer around the lagoon, tracking across the deck in the same direction they’d seen Rath lead his prisoners. The uneven terrain separating the spa from the power plant offered a million places for the Germans to lay an ambush. Wary, Mercer stepped off the deck and onto the moonscape, an ounce more pressure on his index finger ready to unleash thirty rounds.

Fifty yards into the lava field, he burst out from the densest of the steam. The Hughs 500 swept across the plain at him, its rotors beating like thunder, forcing him and Raeder to dive into a craggy hollow. The industrialist landed on Mercer’s back, pressing his face against a knife edge of stone that opened yet another gash, this one deep enough to leave a scar.

“What is he doing?” Raeder shouted, terrified.

“He thinks we’re with Rath!”

The chopper came across again, this time standing off a hundred yards to give the sniper an open line of sight. The Barrett.50 caliber cracked once, and a chunk of rock the size of a basketball blew apart just a few feet from their position. Mercer and Raeder both lunged to their feet and began running, leaping from boulder to boulder, rising and falling with the wrinkled ground. The gun boomed again and this time the bullet passed close enough for Mercer to feel the shock wave.

“What can we do?”

“Keep running. Ira’s got to get through to tell him who we are.”

Another shot went wide as Mercer jinked like a fleeing antelope. Then suddenly his leg folded under him and he fell hard. He heard more than felt something give way in his wrist as he tried to break the headlong tumble. The numbness that climbed his left arm became a stabbing sensation from hand to elbow. And then the pain behind his thigh hit, searing and hot. Yet he could move his foot, could see it rotate as he tested it. Something was wrong. A.50-caliber round should have crucified him to the ground and left him immobile, and yet he struggled to his feet, teetering as a wave of pain washed out of him. He felt for the wound. Amid the mass of blood he felt something gritty.

Jesus! His femur had been powdered by the shot. He was so deeply in shock he couldn’t feel the full extent of the crippling injury. That was why he could stand. In a minute he knew he’d pass out. He could feel it coming.

But as he checked his blood-smeared hand, he saw particles of something black. It wasn’t bone fragments. It was bits of rock. He’d been peppered by a ricochet of stone fragments from a round that had hit behind him. The wound was no more than being shot from a half dozen BB guns.

He sagged, but his relief was short-lived. He’d been concentrating on his wounds and not the chopper. Mercer had been standing motionless for fifteen seconds, long enough for a good sniper to shoot him many times over. He looked up and stared into the cockpit of the chopper hovering fifty yards away. The sniper had him zeroed.

At the instant the sniper eased the trigger, the pilot jerked the chopper. The bullet passed harmlessly over Mercer’s head. The sniper glared at the pilot and shouted something, listened for a moment, and then looked over to where Mercer remained standing. He tossed a jaunty, apologetic wave, and the chopper heeled away, flying toward the spa’s open parking lot.

“What happened?” Raeder emerged from a natural fortification of twisted rock.

“Ira must have gotten through,” Mercer said, still amazed to be alive.

“Can you go on?”

The stinging in his leg was already subsiding as adrenaline overcame the pain. Mercer’s answer came without thought. “Goddamned right I can.”

They linked up with the pipeline that carried effluent from the generating plant to the spa’s pool and began running. In the distance loomed one of the Svartsengi plant’s many buildings, a two-story concrete structure with small windows that looked like portholes. From it ran countless other pipes in a tangled maze only an engineer could love. Steam drifted across the facility on the quirks of the wind. They raced past the turquoise pond that had been the old Blue Lagoon spa and now acted as the leach field for the mineral-laden water forced to the surface by earth’s tremendous internal pressure.

Once at the plant, Mercer chanced a look down the central road that bisected the station. There were six principal buildings, and all but the administration center across the road were connected by pipes and conduits of various diameters. It reminded Mercer of a miniature oil refinery. Only this place was spotlessly clean as befitting its environmentally friendly power source. The air crackled with the generation of thirty-two megawatts of electricity, enough power for a town of thirty-two thousand people.

A flash of light, and bullets sprayed the corner of the building where Mercer and Raeder crouched. Raeder fired back, sparking rounds off pipes but hitting little else. Whoever had them zeroed was well protected by the steel forest. There were two cars parked in front of one of the administration building, most likely belonging to security guards since the regular work shift was hours away. As Raeder kept him covered, Mercer fired two quick bursts, blowing out the four tires he could see from his vantage. One way or the other it would end here.

They circled back around the building, taking a path that ran alongside the lagoon of wastewater. At the next building, Mercer found an unlocked door and eased inside, his machine pistol held tight and ready. The interior space was well lit and futuristic, with cat-walks that ran along parallel rows of heat exchangers and turbines. The building hummed. Another door at the front of the building crashed open, and two figures stood silhouetted. Mercer was about to fire when he recognized the silver hair of Cardinal Peretti. Shielded behind him was one of Rath’s men, a pistol held to the Catholic leader’s head.

“Let him go,” Mercer shouted over the whine of machinery.

The gunman jerked Peretti by the throat, ducking behind the cardinal as they moved into the building. “I see you make a move, he dies,” the neo-Nazi shouted back in German. Mercer didn’t need Raeder’s whispered translation to get the gist of the remark.

“You can walk away,” Raeder called out. “We only want Rath.”

“Forget it, Herr Raeder. We all leave or we all die.”

Mercer stood slowly so the gunman could see him, the MP-5 dangling from its strap. The man pulled his pistol from Peretti’s skull and aimed it at him. “Now you die,” the young fanatic shouted.

Dominic Peretti had been docile from the moment the gunmen had burst into his cabin aboard the Sea Empress because it was only his life he felt had been in danger. But seeing the stranger taking deliberate steps toward them, he couldn’t allow such a sacrifice. Forty-five years before, he had been a star on his seminary school’s basketball team because of a spin move some called divine.

He raised a hand to deflect the German’s aim, planted a foot to throw off the man’s weight and spun around him quicker than he’d been able to move in decades.

The gunman stood exposed for a fraction of a second. Mercer cleared the Beretta from his belt and triggered off three shots fast enough to sound automatic. The German was flung against the wall by the triple tap and crumpled to the steel flooring. Peretti dropped to a knee and felt for a pulse. He looked to Mercer with neither recrimination nor regret, then started last rites.

“Are you okay, Father?”

“I’m fine, my son,” the Vatican’s number two man said.

“Do you know where they have the Dalai Lama?”

“No. We split up when they took us here. The large man and the woman took the Lama with them. I believe they are in the administration building, but I’m not sure.”

“Trying to call the Geo-Research office in Reykjavik?” Raeder suggested.

“Maybe,” Mercer said. “Father, you have to hide yourself until this is over.”

“I will in a moment,” he said, continuing his prayers over the corpse. Only when he was done did he address Mercer again. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Ah, I don’t really have the time,” Mercer answered, not understanding what the priest could possibly want considering the circumstances.

“Ask for my forgiveness and say one Hail Mary.” His eyes were alight. “Then sin no more after you send the others to hell, where they belong.”

Mercer muttered the nearly forgotten prayer. Peretti made the sign of the cross over him and hid next to one of the massive conduits carrying superheated water through an exchanger, as safe a place as any at the site.

Glancing outside, Mercer saw no movement. The administration building’s front doors didn’t look damaged. He doubted that Rath had gotten that far yet.

“Klaus, keep that building covered. I’m going to check the next one.” Mercer dashed from the doorway, using pipes as cover until he crashed against the base of the three towering smoke stacks, the metal still hot to the touch even after the steam venting up them had passed through numerous turbines and exchangers.

The walls of the building behind him were made of steel plate, like it had been armored. As Mercer reached a door he recalled why. This was Building #4 and it contained the secondary turbine loops that used waste steam to boil a petroleum derivative called isopentane. This liquid had been specially formulated to boil at a mere two hundred degrees Fahrenheit in order to extract the last bit of energy from the natural steam. He remembered the plant manager who’d given him the tour years ago also telling him that isopentane was highly explosive. Behind this building would be the outlets where the saline water driven from the earth’s bowels was finally released back into nature after producing all the electricity and hot water needs of the citizens of the Reykjanes Peninsula. NO SMOKING signs were posted along Building #4’s walls.

The knob had already been shot off a door, allowing Mercer to slip inside. Building #4 had a less modern, more industrial look than the others, with rows of long cylinders like rural propane tanks, but these held the isopentane in a closed-loop system of liquid and gas. Beside each set of tanks was a small steam-driven turbine. The floor was polished concrete.

Mercer was having difficulty keeping the MP-5 steady from the pain in his wrist. He had some motion in the joint and felt that some tendons had been torn. His left hand felt like a dead weight, and he steadied the machine pistol’s foregrip on the crook of his elbow. With so much ambient noise in the power-house, he had to rely on his vision to scout the building.

Around one of the tanks he spotted a darkly dressed figure hunkered next to a turbine. Mercer recognized the gunman as a Geo-Research “technician.” By his expression it was evident he recognized Mercer too. They fired at the same instant, both bursts going wild from the shock of discovery. Ducking around a turbine, Mercer was chased by more rounds, the sharp rip of a machine pistol tearing the air. An ember of steel burned his hand before he could brush it away.

He fired back. His adversary had moved, so the shots hit nothing but metal. Okay, where the hell did he go? Mercer moved to his left, sighted along an access walkway but saw nothing. He then went right. A burst of autofire raked the concrete at his heels as he dove under an isopentane cylinder. Oh, that’s where he went.

He tried to get a bead on the assassin but there was too much machinery for a clean shot. He studied the tank above him. Ten different pipes, including a huge trunk line that brought steam from outside, linked the stacked vessels. Mercer had no idea which carried gas and which carried liquid but he could tell which were the most vulnerable. The trick would be to get the gunman into position. He switched to his pistol to conserve ammunition and began maneuvering around the plant, working the gunman like they were chess pieces, giving ground when he had to, but inexorably moving the man to where he wanted him.

Dashing across an open space, Mercer slid behind a support column. Shots ripped furrows from the floor behind him. Secure once again, his wounded leg all but dead now, Mercer felt he had the gunman. He steadied his grip on the pistol and cycled through the clip as fast as he could pull the trigger. The ricochets whined away as ten rounds slammed into the point where a pipe joined with the isopentane tank that shielded the assassin.

Even before he knew if he’d succeeded, Mercer began to run. Behind him, the German had flinched at the onslaught of bullets hitting steel so close to his head. He had a second to register the high-pitched hiss before the leaking isopentane ignited. Like a flamethrower, escaping gas blew out in a fifty-foot tongue of fire that mushroomed into an overwhelming inferno, eating everything it touched. Amid the blistering paint and melting wires, the assassin’s body cooked like a joint of meat.

Blasted by the overpressure wave, Mercer was thrown into the side of the building hard enough to momentarily knock him out. When he came to, an alarm sensed the fire and shut down this portion of the facility. A Klaxon wailed and sprinklers began a rain that quickly turned into a torrent. He hauled himself from the floor, fingering the knot growing on his forehead. If none of the other tanks ruptured from the searing heat, the building wouldn’t go up. If one did, they all would in a chain reaction that would likely wreck several square acres.

He fitted the last magazines into each of his weapons and ran for the next building. This structure was nearly identical to where he’d left Cardinal Peretti. Differently painted pipes and valves added the only color to the monochromatic steel interior. Doubled over and limping, his vision beginning to blur from a concussion, Mercer began a systematic sweep of the building. There were hundreds of crannies a person could hide in, miles of heavy pipes that could shield even the largest man and he wouldn’t know they were there until he walked into their sights.

He jumped over a handrail to get off the exposed catwalk dividing the long room. At the end of the row of identical machines he thought he’d seen a shadow move. He hunkered down to look under the pipes blocking his view. There! Hiding behind the last turbine was a pair of legs. But as he watched, they vanished. The person was crawling on top of the boxy exchanger, getting the best location to cover the entire room.

Mercer stood, holding himself just out of the gunman’s view. He had one chance to get this right. Not quite pistols at ten paces, this was more like automatic rifles at thirty. The assassin knew he was in here, had a good idea where he was hiding and would have the advantage of a secure firing platform. Mercer moved laterally, singeing his hands on a pipe but not making a sound as he crawled to a different position.

He brought the H&K to his shoulder and leapt up. Through the sights he saw Greta Schmidt’s head behind a small yellow-handled relief valve atop a thick pipe, her flaxen hair framing her beautiful/ugly face. Her expression approached sexual euphoria, eyes wide and dilated, her skin flushed.

She had her own machine pistol clamped at her side, but her aim was off by a few degrees of arc. She saw Mercer pop up from behind a piece of equipment and tried to adjust. A streaming hail of rounds followed her swing. Mercer fired once before the slide on his MP-5 racked back and jammed. The single bullet struck the valve and vectored harmlessly away.

After a second of silence that seemed to unroll in slow motion, the tremendous pressure of steam driven by the planet’s molten center exploded through the damaged valve in a screaming eruption. In the fleeting moment before the jet of vapor obscured his view, Mercer saw Greta’s face begin to dissolve. Her hair vanished first, burned away by the five-hundred-degree steam. Then the flesh began to melt away until patches of bone showed through. The steam turned red as it boiled the blood and tissue from her skull.

She vanished and Mercer choked on the acid that scoured the back of his throat. Hyperventilating, he cleared the jam, knowing that blind luck had saved him. He remained where he was while the mental image of Greta liquefying lost some of its vividness. His head pounded.

A scream galvanized him, a hoarse animal sound of primeval fury. Gunther Rath had entered the building from the opposite end and spotted what remained of his lover. “Mercer!” he roared. “I am going to kill you!”

“Better men than you have made that threat,” Mercer shouted back.

Rath fired off a wild burst that rattled around the room, sparking off countless metal surfaces. “I still have the Dalai Lama.”

Mercer almost made the mistake of telling him about Klaus Raeder in the next building. He was tired, hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours, and his brain wasn’t functioning anywhere near where it should. If it weren’t for the adrenaline he would have collapsed hours ago. “Give it up, Rath. Even if you make it out of this plant alive, you’ll never leave Iceland. You saw the helicopter. You know we’ve alerted the military. They’ll quarantine this entire island if they have to.”

“You think that matters now?” Rath challenged back. “Even if I do escape, the Libyans would have me killed for not delivering the Pandora boxes.”

Shit! He’s ready to die right here and he wants to take me with him. Mercer went from hunter to hunted in that one statement. He could leave now, slink away and wait for troops from Keflavik base to end this. Suddenly an image flashed into his brain of Elisebet Rosmunder feeding the ducks in Reykjavik.

“The Libyans won’t get the chance,” he yelled. He fired a quick burst and raced for one of the building’s back doors. Bullets chased him, but none hit before he rolled onto the asphalt outside. He knew Rath would never let him escape. The man had nothing left to lose and only revenge to keep him going.

Mercer gave Building #4 a wide berth as he circled around it, limping across open pavement until he reached a rocky area along the shores of the man-made wastewater lagoon. The water shimmered with sunlight that had burst from over the horizon. As he stopped at another tangle of pipes, he saw Rath at the door he’d just passed through. He was holding the Lama by his collar.

The Dalai Lama had lost one of his sandals during his ordeal. One foot was a bloody mess from running across the lava rocks. He couldn’t put any weight on it and his normally dusky complexion had paled from the pain. Yet his expression remained neutral, as if the agony wasn’t his own. The strength he used to defy a nation as large and powerful as China extended to a will over his own body.

The burst of gunfire came from the far side of the complex. It hadn’t been intentionally aimed to kill Rath, but passed far over his head. Klaus Raeder walked down the road like a Western gunslinger, changing clips as he approached, his squint never leaving the man who had once been his most loyal assistant.

The Dalai Lama seemed to come alive when he interpreted Raeder’s actions as a rescue attempt. He shifted his weight when Rath tried to return fire. The shots flew far wide as the Buddhist moved to smother his kidnapper in a bear hug. Mercer got ready for the moment the neo-Nazi let the Lama go. His machine pistol had become too heavy to hold, so he switched to the Beretta handgun. His grip was loose and shaky, his eyes barely able to focus. He squeezed his eyes shut to clear them and actually made his vision worse.

Fifty yards separated Rath and Raeder, hatred sparking between them like an electric arc. Frustrated that he couldn’t hit his former boss because of the Lama’s untutored struggles, Rath rammed the muzzle of his pistol to the Tibetan leader’s head, drawing blood. Having drawn the danger back to himself, the Lama went still, more concerned with Raeder’s safety than his own.

“No closer, Klaus,” Rath said in German, in a voice that was unnaturally calm. He’d already made whatever mental adjustments were necessary to die.

Either Raeder didn’t hear him or didn’t care. He kept coming. Mercer wished he could understand what they were saying to each other.

“Kill him, Gunther. It doesn’t matter,” Raeder said calmly. “You will still die.”

“I’ll do it.”

“I know you will.” He’d closed to within thirty yards. “What’s one more death to you, eh? I’d say it was one more soul on your conscience, but you don’t have one. I thought I had been your teacher all these years. Now I see it is you who taught me. Your life and mine are meaningless.”

“And his?” Rath forced the gun harder against the Lama’s skull.

“He believes he’ll be reincarnated on a higher plane. I’m sure he fears death even less than we do. Let him go and the two of us will end this together. Let’s see how much you have taught me.” Raeder dropped his MP-5 and threw aside the pistol in his belt. “One on one.”

“I let him go and Mercer drops me where I stand.”

Raeder flicked his eyes in Mercer’s direction and switched to English. “Don’t shoot. I am going to handle this.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Dr. Mercer, this is between Gunther and me. He is going to release the Lama if you don’t interfere.”

“Screw that.”

“Please,” Raeder begged. “I told you before that this is my mistake to fix. Allow me that. Afterward you can arrest me and throw me in jail. Let me end this my way.”

Mercer blinked, seeing two of everybody now. “You know what you’re doing?” he asked doubtfully. Raeder had boasted he was a martial arts expert, but Rath had forty pounds and four inches on him.

“Even if he wins, I guarantee he’ll be in no condition to leave this place.”

The inside of Mercer’s sneaker was spongy with blood from the sniper ricochet. “You’d better be sure about that. I’m in rough shape.” A wave of blackness swept across his vision, and he stumbled back, falling against an insulated outlet pipe that pulsed with the force of near-boiling water. He couldn’t prevent his aim from dropping.

Rath tossed his automatic and gave the Dalai Lama a shove that sent him sprawling. His glasses shattered when he hit the pavement. Though he struggled to get between the two antagonists, his injured foot refused to support him. The Lama called out for them to stop, but neither German listened.

Rath and Raeder moved closer, circling warily. Raeder threw the first punch, a lightning strike that would have crushed the throat of a normal man. Rath easily caught his fist, twisted Raeder over and kicked him three times in the stomach before releasing the arm and letting Raeder fall to the ground.

“Klaus,” he laughed. “Do you really think I taught you everything I know?”

Raeder lurched to his feet, clutching broken ribs. Mercer raised his pistol, but the two began circling again and he wasn’t sure which of the figures he saw were real and which were chimeras. He threw up. His concussion from the explosion in Building #4 was far worse than he’d thought.

The two men exchanged flurries of blows, deflecting most, landing occasionally. Both knew this match would have only one outcome. Rath was stronger, fitter, and more skilled. He’d trained Raeder and for years had allowed his pupil to win bouts to keep him interested. At any time Rath could have killed him in the dojos where they sparred — one more of Rath’s many deceptions that was turning out to be as deadly as the rest.

Soon Raeder’s mouth bled from broken teeth and one eye was nearly closed. He limped from a kick aimed at his crotch he’d deflected into his thigh. And yet he fought on, giving ground whenever Rath came in on him, sacrificing his body as if the pain would somehow expunge his sins. Mercer had to drag himself to keep the combatants in view, crawling across the rocks at the edge of the lagoon as they battled. Heat radiating from the pool drew more sweat to his already soaked face.

He was too dulled to understand what Raeder was doing, and Rath was too intent on the kill. The water feeding the nearby spa was regulated to a constant temperature of 158 degrees, hot enough to scald but cooling when it mixed in the 45,000-square-foot pool. Here, there was no need to artificially cool the effluent, and it erupted from the outlet pipes at near-boiling temperatures. Steam rose as from a volcano’s caldera.

Raeder absorbed a roundhouse kick to the head that dropped him near the outlet, and when Rath allowed him to get to his feet, he swayed drunkenly, almost toppling. As Rath came in again, the industrialist showed that last bit of reserve he’d clutched, a flicker of hatred that drilled diamond hard through the pain. Clutching Rath’s jacket, Raeder threw himself into the pool.

Mercer drew back as scorching water splashed his legs. The two men remained submerged for no more than a few seconds, and when they surfaced, Klaus Raeder had yet to relinquish his grip. Their faces and hands had turned bright red, and the water sluicing off them carried their topmost layers of skin. They were boiling alive. Writhing to break free, Rath lost his footing and sank under again, coming up when his boss no longer had the strength to hold him. It was far too late to save himself. The Nazi’s eyelids were gone. Rath’s scream was something Mercer would carry for the rest of his life. So too would he forever remember the look of triumph on Klaus Raeder’s face as he collapsed back into the water, pressing his apprentice’s body under the seething waves. Tendrils of flesh formed a sickening broth around the corpses.

A minute might have passed, maybe an hour. Mercer became aware of time again only when he felt a touch on his shoulder. He opened his eyes. It was the Dalai Lama. He had dragged himself over. Without his glasses, his eyes were squinted and watery.

“Where are you hurt?” he asked.

“Everywhere but my conscience.” Mercer managed a tired smile. “Are you all right?”

“I believe so, yes,” the Buddhist replied. “I wish I could have stopped them.”

Mercer rolled his head to stare into the boiling pool. “The man who saved you had a karmic debt that only his death could pay. I think it’s better you didn’t.”

Either the Lama agreed or was too played out to respond. Mercer wasn’t sure. The silence between them, punctuated by the muffled alarms still sounding from the isopentane explosion, continued until battle-dressed soldiers appeared from the mist like wraiths. They swarmed over the facility in squads of four, barrels of their M-16A1s in constant sweeping motion. A trio of medics approached Mercer and the Lama. However, another figure beat them to the wounded pair. Anika Klein’s expression showed a mix of concern and clinical professionalism. The soldiers must have already known her medical background because they deferred to her as she checked her patients.

“I thought you didn’t make house calls,” Mercer croaked.

“And I was going to give up flying too,” she agreed, rolling him to examine the bloody wound in his leg, “but the Italian Navy got their helicopter running again and I knew you’d need a doctor.”

“What about Ira and the hostages?”

“They’re fine. Ira has already been airlifted to Reykjavik along with Mr. and Mrs. Farquar. Cardinal Peretti was unharmed. Stop worrying about the others.” She used scissors from one of the medics’ bags to cut away his pants while they concentrated on the Dalai Lama. Her fingers were sure and quick. “This isn’t too bad. We found what’s left of Greta and the other two Geo-Research guys. Where are Rath and Raeder?”

“Still fighting in hell, I would think,” he slurred.

Anika flashed a penlight in his eyes. “Looks like you’ve got a slight concussion. I’m surprised, thick skull like yours.” Her tone was teasing.

“You’re losing points for bedside manner.”

“How’s this then?” And she leaned over to kiss him lightly.

“Does that mean I’m forgiven?”

“No, it means that I understand you a little better.” Her eyes softened. As two stretcher bearers approached she whispered, “And I still like what I see.”