River of Ruin

The Radisson Royal Hotel Panama City, Panama

Mercer struggled awake shortly after dawn. He was far from refreshed. His back ached from the night spent on the couch and as soon as he remembered the events from the day before, his soul felt stripped. A shower and coffee from room service did little to revive him. He was standing at the picture window when Harry shuffled from the bedroom. The old man was naked save a pair of baggy boxers and his fake leg.

“Morning,” Mercer said.

“Bah,” Harry snorted, a cigarette already burning between his fingers. He grabbed the coffee cup from Mercer’s hand on his way to the bathroom and slurped noisily without a backward glance.

He emerged ten minutes later and grunted again as he moved to the bedroom. He returned to the main part of the suite only when he was dressed. “Morning, Mercer,” he said pleasantly, his transformation from hungover curmudgeon to moderately robust curmudgeon complete. “If I’m going to steal your coffee, for Christ’s sake put some sugar in it.”

Mercer couldn’t help but laugh no matter how badly he was hurting inside. Harry had that effect on him. “There’s more on the tray.”

Harry lit another cigarette.

“Second of the day already?”

“Third.” Harry drank from his own coffee and even recharged Mercer’s empty cup. “So what’s the plan?”

Mercer raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m giving Maria an hour or so to sleep off whatever excesses she might have indulged last night before going over. Right now I’m going to call General Vanik and tell him that his daughter’s dead.”

Harry looked away. “Guess that would be the right thing to do. I’ll leave you alone.” He grabbed the complimentary newspaper from the room service tray and went back to the bedroom.

Taking Lauren’s cell phone, Mercer punched in the code for her father’s private line. After two rings a gruff but gentle voice answered, “Morning, Angel.”

Vanik must have caller ID, Mercer thought. “Ah, General. This isn’t Lauren. My name is Philip Mercer.”

Ten seconds passed. Mercer could almost feel Vanik thinking through why someone was calling him this early and on his daughter’s phone. He knew to give the general time to put it together.

“She’s dead.” There was no question in his voice. It was almost as if he’d expected it.

“I’m sorry, sir.” Mercer didn’t know what else to say. He had to explain the circumstances if he was going to get help stopping Liu Yousheng, but now wasn’t the time. God, when was?

He heard Vanik whispering a prayer: “... in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.”

“Amen,” Mercer echoed.

“Lauren told me who you are, Dr. Mercer, and what’s been going on,” Vanik spoke tonelessly. “We talked the night before she went with you to the lock. It happened there?”

“Yes, sir. The Chinese were waiting for her and her dive partner. Four frogmen emerged from the water a little over an hour after she and a French Legionnaire went in.”

“I see.” The grief was right under the surface. Mercer could sense it. Yet General Vanik managed to keep it in check. Somehow. “Since Lauren called me, I did some checking on you. You’re the geologist who went into Iraq as part of Operation Prospector to make sure Saddam hadn’t mined his own uranium?”

“That’s correct.” Mercer assumed in the years since the Gulf War that information had been partially declassified, at least to ranking army staffers. “I accompanied a Navy SEAL team.”

“And you’re about to start work at the White House?”

“Yes, sir. As a special science advisor.”

“John Kleinschmidt is a golfing partner.” Kleinschmidt was the president’s national security advisor. “His deputy, Ira Lasko, recommended you for the job?”

“Admiral Lasko and I were involved in a mission a few months ago in Greenland.”

“I’ve seen his report,” Vanik said. “Why’d my daughter die?”

“Sir?” The first blush of emotion in the general’s voice startled Mercer.

“It’s a simple goddamned question. Why did my daughter die?”

“Because the Chinese are about to plant nuclear missiles in Panama. They killed her because she knew part of the story.”

“Come again?” Lauren hadn’t known about the nuclear angle so this was the first the general had heard of it.

“What we first thought was an attempt to destroy the canal has turned into something more. The CIA will be getting a call shortly from DGSE, the French intelligence agency. Lauren and I were working with one of their spies. They are going to confirm our findings. In a Chinese-controlled warehouse, Lauren and I stumbled across eight DF-31 strategic missile launchers.”

“Were they armed?”

“Not yet, but I’m sure they will be soon. Things are moving pretty fast down here.”

General Vanik blew out a long breath. “All right. You’d better start from the top.”

Keeping the briefing as concise as possible and avoiding mentioning Lauren’s name, Mercer laid out their findings, starting with the book auction in Paris and ending with the upcoming meeting with Maria Barber.

“You think she knows something?”

“I do, sir. I think she can provide enough proof to nail Liu.”

“Question is, who’s gonna do the nailing?” Vanik said, his Southern accent emerging more as the conversation went on. “There’s gotta be some higher-ups in Panama’s government involved. Don’t think they’re gonna want to hear your story.”

“Do you have any suggestions?” Mercer asked crisply. If the general could subvert his feelings of loss, at least temporarily, Mercer owed it to him to do the same.

“I need to check with the CIA and our own intelligence yahoos, see if they’ve detected anything going on with China’s rocket forces, like if a few of them were moved recently. For now just sit tight, talk with that woman, then call me back when you’ve found something.” Vanik paused. “She was a good girl, wasn’t she?”

“The best, General,” Mercer replied. What else could he say?

“I’ve lost hundreds of men. Vietnam, Kuwait, Bosnia, a dozen ops you never heard of. I’ve always understood my responsibility and I’ve always carried on. I don’t know. It’s all such a damned ...”

“Waste,” offered Mercer.

“There are a lot of people in this world who like nothing more than killing and there are precious few who are willing to stop them. I hear you’re one of ’em. So was Lauren. Don’t seem right.”

“It isn’t.”

“Shit,” Vanik drawled. “If I hadn’t been a soldier, she’d be alive right now.”

“With all due respect, that isn’t true. I knew her a short time, but I learned that your daughter was her own person. You didn’t pressure her into the military, nor did you pick her duty stations. Lauren chose her path.”

The line remained silent.

“Maybe, but it doesn’t make it easier. Call me when you have something,” the general said hastily. “I’ll do the same.”

The phone went dead. Mercer shut it off. “I’m done, Harry.”

“How’d it go?” Harry asked when he returned from the bedroom.

“As well as it could, I suppose.” Mercer noticed that his friend had filled in half of the crossword from the Spanish-language newspaper. “What the hell are you doing? You don’t speak Spanish.”

Harry held up the puzzle. “I’m putting in English words with the right number of letters and making sure they mesh.” He shrugged. “Better than nothing. In fact I’ve gotten myself in a bit of a jam. Know any six-letter words with the middle ones r and f ?”

Despite his jumbled emotions, Mercer needed just a second. “Try barfly.”

Harry looked at him sharply, wrote it in, then with a malicious glint said, “That’ll work if I change eighteen across from donnybrook to”—he gave another significant glare—“douchebag.”

Mercer smiled, grateful for the repartee. “You don’t have enough letters. Has to be douchebags.”

“You’d think so,” Harry muttered, “but there’s only one of you.”

Fifteen minutes later, Foch arrived with Rene Bruneseau and a pair of Legion soldiers. All wore civilian clothes that hid the bulges of their handguns from untrained eyes. Mercer called Roddy Herrara up to the suite so he could phone Maria to make sure she was home. Roddy disguised his voice so she wouldn’t recognize him and hung up as soon as he’d woken her, apologizing for dialing the wrong number. He gave the men a thumbs-up.

It was time to snatch Maria Barber.

When she first realized she was still alive, she didn’t even remember what had happened at the last second. She remembered sinking. She seemed to recall seeing a light, but that was it. Everything else was blank.

No, that’s not true. The more she regained consciousness, the more the memories returned. The light came from a wrist lamp strapped to the body of the second Chinese commando who’d entered the intake tunnels with her. She remembered falling toward the dead diver and pulling his regulator to her mouth. She’d just filled her lungs when the divers who’d earlier avoided the sucking torrent entered the lock from the open doors. She had been in no condition to put up a fight.

They took her someplace. Where?

“A diving chamber,” Lauren Vanik whispered through chapped lips.

The Chinese had a diving bell near the lock that the frogmen used while they worked underwater. While the four men who’d survived the fight returned to the surface, she’d been guarded by another two for a few hours. Back on the surface she was gagged and blindfolded and then tossed into the back of a van.

Now she was awake, tired but alert. She levered her eyes open. They were about all she could move. She was strapped to some sort of frame, a bed maybe. Her legs were splayed and her arms were secured over her head. She could tell she was naked. The air was stifling and the absolute darkness was cut by a sliver of light leaking from under a door she could see if she tilted her head.

When she tried to speak she managed just a hoarse croak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Come on, you bastards,” she yelled. “Get it over with.”

A minute later she heard footsteps outside the door and a key being inserted into a lock. When the door swung open, she could tell by the angle of the sun it was just past dawn and that she hadn’t been taken to the Twenty Devils Mine. The landscape outside her cell didn’t look familiar. She also saw that her prison must have been a garden shed. There were racks for tools bolted to the wall and from somewhere close she recognized the taint of fertilizer.

The man who entered was Chinese, a soldier in a uniform without insignia. He was old enough to be an officer, but had the hard look of a drill instructor. She guessed he was an NCO. When the sergeant turned on the overhead lights he made sure his gaze didn’t wander from her face.

“Very gallant of you,” Lauren sneered.

“Your strength,” the soldier said not unkindly. “Keep it.”

Lauren knew what she was in for. She’d known as soon as she realized she’d been tied up. The terror of Mercer’s stories about the acupuncturist filled her mind. Strangely, this veteran soldier seemed bothered by her fate. Why else would he have warned her just now? She wondered if she could use that concern.

“You can help me,” she pleaded. “Don’t let them touch me.”

The soldier’s eyes dropped.

He felt shame. Was it enough? Would he let her go?

“You know what he’ll do to me. You’re a soldier. Like me. Where is your honor?” Her cry was met by silence. “Please. You can’t let him do this to me. The other man. The American. He’s in a hospital. He hasn’t spoken since his escape. He’s a vegetable.”

Sergeant Huai was unable to hide his revulsion.

“It’s true,” Lauren continued. “Mercer is his name, but he can’t even remember it. Listen. I don’t care anymore about what you’re doing in Panama. My country doesn’t care. Please, let me go.”

“I cannot.” Huai answered.

“Then kill me.” Lauren’s eyes blazed, not knowing she echoed Mercer’s exact words when he was first faced with torture. “If that’s what it takes to prevent that sadist from raping and torturing me then do it. Kill me now!”

“Sun no rape.”

“Bull! It’s a proven method of torture. He’ll do it.”

“Sun, ah ...” Huai pointed at his crotch. “No longer a man.”

“But he’s man enough to stick needles in my body that will destroy my mind. Is that how you people fight? Is that your way?”

“Not my way. Sun’s way.”

“You’re the same. If you let him do it you’re just as bad as he is.”

That concept made Huai pause again. Lauren was sure she was on the right track. The NCO had the look of a man who fought his nation’s enemies on battlefields, not in horror chambers. If only she could get through to him, weaken him.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “You’re not the same. You’re a soldier. He’s a monster. It’s not your fault that your country uses men like Sun. You only follow orders. Just like me.”

“Yes. Orders.”

“And when you get home and tell your wife about what he did here, you can tell her that you were ordered to let a woman get tortured to death. She will see the honor in that. She will think you are a hero.”

Was there indecision in his eyes? Lauren was almost certain it was there. Her ploy was working. Huai looked outside then back at Lauren. He was about to make a move when another soldier stepped into the shed. Younger than the sergeant, he also wore a uniform without insignia. The newcomer barked an order and the NCO saluted. He gave Lauren one last look, and left.

“What is your name?” The young officer spoke clearer English and had no compulsion about studying Lauren’s nude form.

“Vanik, Lauren J. Captain. United States Army. 05894328.”

“Who are you working with?”

“Vanik, Lauren J. Captain. United States Army. 05894328.”

Unfazed by her response, the officer asked several more questions that Lauren answered by giving her name, rank, and serial number. “Enough,” he said at last. “You will answer our questions in due time. A specialist will be here shortly. I recommend that you tell me everything now.”

“Screw yourself,” she hissed.

The officer turned smartly and relocked the cell after stepping out. Lauren was left with her fear and her disappointment. She’d been close with the sergeant. So close. Had the officer not arrived maybe he would have let her go. Now the opportunity was gone. Mr. Sun would arrive soon and it would be over for her.

She’d always considered herself a brave person, having faced down countless dangers and physical hardships, but she held no illusions about resisting the kind of torture in store for her. The army classes she’d taken in psychological warfare told her that there really was no way to hold out forever against physical abuse. And what the acupuncturist did went far beyond the mere physical. Mercer had escaped before being subjected to a second round with Mr. Sun. Lauren doubted she’d get such a chance. For her there’d be no escape once Sun got to work on her.

She spent the next ten minutes, until her cell was opened again, fighting her imagination. Each time she saw what was coming, her heart would race and she’d hyperventilate. The heat was only partially responsible for the sweat coating her skin.

When the cell door swung open, she looked back to see a cadaverous Chinese man wearing dark gray trousers and a long shirt of the same color. What hair remained on his large cranium was as fine as spider silk. In his skeletal hand he clutched a rolled-up piece of black cloth. Lauren noticed immediately that Mercer’s TAG Heuer watch dangled from Sun’s emaciated wrist.

With him was a Panamanian dressed in fatigues. Lauren guessed his age at fifty, for his face was lined, but his hair was a thick lustrous black and his body was still trim. Above his mustache, his nose was large and bony and his eyes were lifeless black spots. She recognized him immediately.

He was Hugo Ruiz. A major under Manuel Noriega in the G-2, Panama’s murderous secret police. Ruiz had once been a deputy warden at La Modelo Prison, responsible for running tours of the facility so well-heeled sadists could watch the degradation heaped on the inmates. His specialty was organizing the gang-rape indoctrination of new prisoners and selling cocaine and peasant women to inmates who performed for his guests. Ruiz had also trained under Nivaldo Madrinan, Noriega’s chief torturer, perfecting dark skills that few could believe humans capable of.

For a while the CIA believed Ruiz had been executed during a purge before Noriega’s ouster, but in 1992 he’d been spotted in Cuba, where he’d once been part of a smuggling operation to ship the dregs of the island’s population to Miami. The latest reports had him selling his interrogation skills to Colombian FARC rebels. That he was back in Panama now meant he had secured a place within President Quintero’s regime.

“Ah, Señor Ruiz,” Mr. Sun said to his companion in English, “I didn’t realize we’d be making friends with a woman today.” He sounded delighted.

Lauren remained motionless, resisting the urge to flinch when Sun unfurled his cloth and adjusted the hundreds of needles it contained.

Ruiz studied her closely. “And a buena one at that. I look forward to seeing your techniques in practice. Your instruction over the past days using cadavers wasn’t very satisfying.”

“But necessary,” Sun said as he examined Lauren’s skin, awed by its suppleness. “So soft,” he whispered intimately. His breath was a fetid caress. Bits of skin fell on Lauren like scaly ash.

Lauren’s flesh crawled and she had to bite her tongue to keep from screaming.

“Young lady, you have caused a number of problems for us in the past week. My job is to see how many of those problems go away with your death. Before we are through, you will tell me exactly who you are working with, how much you have seen and what steps you and your superiors have taken to stop us.

“Now I realize that you aren’t aware of Gemini’s location, nor could you know that it will be detonated in the canal tomorrow, but you must know many other things. Like what is in the Hatcherly warehouse and how the Twenty Devils Mine is, a, ah—what is the word?—a fraud. Do you know these things?”

Sun took up the first of his needles and lectured to Ruiz, “Watch closely at the angle the needles enter the body. It is not as important establishing the first of the connective links within the nervous system, but later the technique helps you better generate and control the pain.”

Just before he slid the first needle into Lauren’s throat the cell door opened and the officer who she’d seen earlier spoke with Sun in Chinese. They talked for a moment before Sun returned the needle to the cloth.

“I am sorry, Señor Ruiz,” he said and wiped his palms on his pants. “Mr. Liu wants to see me before he returns to the city. I will be about fifteen minutes.”

Lauren recognized the gleam in Ruiz’s expression when he looked down at her. “I understand, Señor Sun. Perhaps I will get started without you.”

“As you wish.” Sun bowed before following the young officer into the sunshine.

No sooner had the door closed than Ruiz punched Lauren in the side of the head. “Buenas noches, puta.”

Lauren’s head lolled and her mouth went slack. Ruiz struck her again to make sure she was out, then grabbed one of the acupuncture needles. He forced it into her thigh. She didn’t move when he worked the needle a little farther into her flesh.

Satisfied that she would remain unconscious, Ruiz studied her for a moment, distressed that his body did not react the way he had hoped it would when he’d first seen her lying naked on the table. He knew what he had to do. A lifetime spent forcing sodomy on his victims had left him incapable of even raping in the normal fashion. To get at what he wanted he needed to roll her over.

He flicked open her pupils, saw they were pinpricks and hastily unstrapped her legs before moving around the platform to untie her hands. He was just about to turn her over when Lauren sprang.

She swept up a handful of the needles Sun had left next to her and rammed them deep into Ruiz’s left eye. Before the scream could form in his throat, she was up, clamping one hand over his mouth and using the heal of her other to drive the tiny spikes deep into his skull. The Panamanian butcher was dead before he hit the concrete floor. “Buenas noches, bastardo.”

Lauren ignored the blood dribbling from the tiny puncture in her leg when she got to her feet. She swayed against a wave of blackness. She had to sit back down for a few minutes to regain her equilibrium. Her temples throbbed. Once she was sure she wouldn’t collapse, she crushed her distaste and stripped Ruiz out of his uniform. The clothes weren’t that oversized on her, with the exception of his jungle boots, which she stuffed with handkerchiefs the pig had kept in his pocket. She cinched his gun belt and secured it around her waist, checking that the old Colt .45 Ruiz carried was loaded and had a round in the chamber.

She took a couple more steadying breaths. Her head was pounding now and no amount of massaging would ease the ache. She was sure she’d get a black eye out of the ordeal and considered it more than a fair trade for what she could have faced.

Opening the cell door a crack, Lauren looked out across the grounds of what she realized was a luxury estate. She smelled the salt of the ocean and heard it crashing someplace in the distance. Apart from the swaying of some palm trees she could see no movement anywhere in the sprawling compound. Near the front of the large house she saw a pair of sedans, but what drew her attention was the garage midway between the garden shed prison and the modern home. One of its doors was open and the front of an SUV peeked out.

With no cover protecting her approach, Lauren began running for the garage as fast as she could. Her feet flopped painfully in the boots while Ruiz’s gamy body odor wafted from the uniform.

She hadn’t yet covered half of the one hundred yards when Mr. Sun walked out of the big house and paused under the porte-cochere. He peered at her as if the distance was too great for his old eyes. The range was much too far for a pistol shot so Lauren smothered the urge to shoot at him. Sun called to someone in the house. The sergeant who seemed distressed by the acupuncturist’s tactics appeared. The distance wasn’t too far for his eyes and he drew his sidearm.

Lauren threw herself to the ground, rolling across the stiff grass as a pair of shots split the air above her. She spun back to her feet and continued charging. The sergeant held his aim for a second—why, Lauren would never know—but it gave her the time she needed to dive again and throw off his aim once more.

Maybe he was letting her go, or at least giving her a chance, in order to make up for his own feelings of distaste about the torturer. Whatever the reason, Lauren reached the corner of the garage before he could fire again. The other Chinese troops running from the house couldn’t target her either. She blew off the garage’s side-door lock with the Colt. The SUV was a green Ford Explorer and, blessing of blessings, Liu trusted his security staff enough to leave the keys in the ignition.

She had the engine running before the first of the Chinese led by the sergeant were a quarter of the way to the garage. The troops carried type-87 assault rifles. The automatic weapons crackled the instant she pulled from the garage. Glass exploded around her and no matter how low she ducked in the seat she felt she presented a huge target. Flooring the big truck so the V-8 growled, she tore across the lawn away from the advancing soldiers, the 4x4 giving excellent traction despite the dew covering the grass.

More rounds hit the back of the truck, shattering the rear windshield, but each second increased the range and decreased the accuracy. Lauren dared sit straighter. She twisted the wheel to get back on the driveway and floored the gas.

She had no idea what kind of force Liu had at the end of the meandering drive, but she was sure they’d been alerted by radio that she was coming. She was also sure that in a few minutes guards would give chase in the sedans.

With the speedometer reading eighty miles per hour, she drove with single-minded purpose, keeping her focus on what was coming up, not what was already behind.

Every few seconds she had to wipe her sweaty hands on the front of her uniform. She saw the car phone clipped to the center console when she reached down to engage the air conditioner. Now wasn’t the time, but having the phone gave her spirits an added lift. She had to tell Mercer that Liu planned to destroy the canal the next day using a ship called Gemini.

After ten miles, she spotted the end of the driveway. A guardhouse constructed of wood sat at the juncture of a main highway and Liu’s access road. A chain-link fence topped with razor wire stretched parallel to the highway and a heavy gate had been closed across the drive. The trio of guards had also maneuvered a pair of matching SUVs to bolster the gate.

Lauren hesitated for a second then mashed the accelerator again. As she approached the gate she fired off her Colt’s magazine, keeping the guards down for the seconds she needed. Ten yards from the barricade, she eased off the gas and gently turned the wheel, mindful that the sport utility wasn’t known to be nimble.

She ducked an instant before the front of the truck smashed into the guardhouse. Wood and cheap furniture exploded around the hurtling vehicle like they had been tossed aside by an enraged bull. The truck barely slowed and continued through the far wall with so much momentum that Lauren had to slam the brakes to make the turn onto the highway. The black marks in the asphalt indicated that the traffic entering or leaving Liu’s compound came from the right, leaving Lauren to believe that was the way to Panama City. A minute later she saw her assumption was correct. A road sign said she was thirty miles from the capital. As soon as she reached a long straightaway she pressed the button on the steering wheel that activated the car phone’s voice-recognition program and she asked it to dial her cell phone number.

She couldn’t wait to hear Mercer’s voice.

The difficulty in snatching Maria Barber began with her anger at being woken for a second time when Mercer and Bruneseau hammered on her fourth-floor apartment door.

Lieutenant Foch and two Legionnaires waited in a van outside the nondescript apartment house.

She came to the door after five minutes of pounding. She was yelling at them in Spanish even before swinging open the door. She wore a tattered housecoat, her hair was awry, and her breath was sour with stale alcohol. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. Whatever beauty she’d once possessed was being washed away by the booze.

Seeing her, Mercer felt a hot stab of anger surge through his body. Maria was partially responsible for Lauren’s death and had callously told Liu about her husband’s discovery, knowing that Gary and everyone else living with him on the banks of the River of Ruin would be murdered. That a quirk of geology had killed them first didn’t absolve her in his mind.

She continued her tirade, not bothering to identify who had disturbed her. Mercer stood rooted, his lips compressed in a white line and his eyes narrowed to angry slits. He let her go on for a few more seconds then slapped her across the face. The blow was just enough to stun her into silence.

“Mercer!” she cried when she finally recognized him.

Rene and he pushed her into the dingy apartment and closed the door.

“What are you doing here?” Maria clutched at her robe.

Two empty wine bottles sat on a coffee table next to a dinner plate overflowing with cigarette butts. Wads of tissue like the bodies of dead birds littered the floor next to the sofa. Maria had been crying the night before as she tried to drink away some pain. Mercer felt no sympathy. Gauzy curtains diffused the light streaming through the window and cigarette smoke still swirled in the stuffy room.

Lapsing into a wary silence, Maria watched as Mercer made a slow circuit of the living room, peering at the cheap curios she displayed. There were open spaces on the walls where photographs, probably of her and Gary, had until recently hung.

Mercer’s body vibrated with the effort it took to put up a calm front. “He was right, you know,” he said when he could finally look her in the eye. “Gary, I mean. There was a clue in that book I brought from Paris. The Twice-Stolen Treasure is at the lake very close to where he was working.”

Maria blanched. She staggered back and dropped onto the sofa. Keeping her face to Mercer, her hands searched out, then lit, a cigarette. “I always knew he would find it.” She couldn’t muster enough conviction to cover the lie.

“Don’t bother, Maria. We know everything. About you and the Chinese. How you gave up your husband for whatever Liu promised you. I assume it was money, but I don’t really care. I also know you called Liu yesterday when you found out I was still in Panama and had gone out on Lake Gatun.”

To her credit, Maria didn’t continue the charade. Instead her voice turned furious. “And that son of a bitch tossed me aside last night like I was a whore.”

Rene stepped closer to her. “You are a whore, Madam Barber.”

She threw him a halfhearted curse in Spanish.

“Get dressed,” Mercer ordered. “You’re coming with us.”

“Like hell I am.”

Mercer’s urgency to get away from the apartment suddenly grew. Liu Yousheng wouldn’t be satisfied with just breaking up with Maria. She had information he needed protected and only her death would ensure silence. He was somewhat surprised that she was still alive now. “I can’t promise to keep you out of jail, but I can save your life. Liu is going to have you killed the same as he’s killed a lot of other people involved in his plot.”

“I don’t care.” Plucking a fresh tissue from a box she dabbed her eyes and blew her nose.

Mercer yanked her off the couch and shoved her toward the back bedroom, pushing her through the door into the dim room. The bed was unmade and mounds of clothes threatened to topple from chairs and dressers. A mirror, razor blade, and a rolled dollar bill sat on the nightstand. Mercer’s expression twisted with disgust. “I’m giving you one minute to get some clothes on or so help me God I’ll drag you out of this building naked.”

“That’s all men want from me anyway,” she sobbed.

“Keep your self-pity and get dressed!”

With eyes a mix of contempt and fear, Maria shucked off the robe. If she was looking for Mercer to react to her nudity, she didn’t get it. She snorted and threw on panties, jeans, and a T-shirt that strained against her chest. He handed her a pair of sneakers. Back in the living room, they found Rene on his cell phone.

“We have trouble,” the agent said to Mercer.

“What’s up?”

“Foch said a car just pulled up outside. There are three Chinese men in it. They’re talking right now as if finalizing a plan. Also an army patrol is just down the block. Ten men at least.”

“Shit!” Mercer and Rene drew their weapons. He gave Maria a look as if to say I told you so. “Is there a fire escape?”

Her bravado evaporated. “No, the elevator and stairs are the only way up.”

“What do you think, Rene?”

“Three men? One will come up the stairs, two in the elevator. One of them will remain in it so he can hold the car while the second comes to the apartment to kill her.” He put the phone back to his ear. “Foch, wait until they enter the building then send in one of the men. As soon as two of the Chinese get in the elevator tell him to take out the man coming up the stairs. That’s how we’ll be coming down.” He turned his attention back to Mercer. “We’ll be gone before the Chinese in the elevator know we have Maria or that army patrol hears anything.”

Rene opened the apartment door and checked the hallway, which was clear. With Maria between the two men, they moved toward the enclosed stairway. Like the rest of the building it was cement and they clearly heard a door opening four floors below. That would be the first of the Chinese. A moment later the door swung open a second time and someone whistling the opening bars of “La Marseillaise” entered. The Legionnaire.

Mercer glanced at Maria, trying to judge how she was handling the situation. He had just an instant to recognize the defiance before she screamed. “Help! Help me, please.”

With a startled grunt, the Chinese soldier climbing the stairs began racing upward. Bruneseau unceremoniously punched Maria in the stomach to choke off her shouts. Mercer readied himself in case the Legionnaire couldn’t stop the assassin in time.

Before the soldier came into view, everyone in the echoing stairwell heard the racking slide of his weapon being cocked. Mercer used his knee to buckle Rene and Maria just as an eruption of automatic fire burst up from below, sparking off the cement in a maddened swarm of ricochets and cement shrapnel. The soldier then turned because the next fusillade sounded like it was fired down the stairs.

Amid the deafening roar, Mercer heard Lauren’s cell phone ringing in his pocket.

He also heard a keening wail of a mortally wounded man down below. The French soldier had been hit.

“Merde!” Bruneseau looked ready to kill Maria for giving them away.

Mercer chanced opening the stairwell door and spied a Chinese assassin armed with a silenced automatic running down the hall. His partner, who’d been waiting in the open elevator car, raced after him, pulling one of the compact type 87s from under a coat.

Lieutenant Foch must have heard the gunfire outside, but Mercer didn’t know how close the Panamanian patrol was to the building. He didn’t know if Foch and his partner could storm the place. He had no choice but to go on the assumption that he and Rene were on their own.

He fired through the partially opened door, startled that the snap shot actually hit the lead gunman. He fell awkwardly, clearing a lane of fire for the other assassin. Mercer slammed the door as bullets from the assault rifle pounded the metal. Another burst exploded from below.

The phone chimed again. Bruneseau laid down suppressing fire and peered around the corner of the scissor stairs. The Chinese commando had ducked out of view. The gunfire against the closed door abated, probably because the gunman was checking his wounded comrade.

Maria had regained her breath, but wisely realized her only chance of surviving the next few seconds lay with Mercer and the heavyset Frenchman. Bruneseau fired down the stairwell again and slithered forward. The gunman had retreated at least one flight, maybe hoping to lure them down or to wait for his partners to break through the steel door. The air swam with acrid clouds from the spent ordnance.

Then came a sound more incongruous than the ringing cell phone. A single shot from a silenced pistol. And then a wet voice. “Monsieur Bruneseau, tout clair.”

The Legionnaire gunned down in the first seconds of the exchange had survived and had either climbed up behind the Chinese assassin or had lain in wait for him to come down. Mercer grabbed on the door handle to keep it closed while Rene led Maria down the stairs. He gave them a few-seconds lead then took off after them, leaping from landing to landing as he spiraled toward the first floor. Fear and adrenaline buzzed in his veins like champagne. He was halfway down when the door above opened and the Chinese gave chase. They were too far back to stop him now.

He leapt to another landing and would have fallen down the remaining stairs had he not clutched for the railing. Like a horrible Rorschach blot, the floor was painted in blood. The Chinese soldier had been hit in the side of the neck and much of the blood in his body had pumped from the grisly wound. Through the red pool, Rene and Maria’s footprints continued past the gruesome scene.

Lieutenant Foch stood at the bottom landing, his wounded man thrown over his shoulder. He had an automatic in his free hand and waved Mercer toward the small lobby. The third Legion trooper had pulled the van to the front of the building. Rene was already bustling Maria inside.

Mercer gave the street a perfunctory scan. Uniformed soldiers of Panama’s National Police were at least a hundred feet away and showing no interest in the apartment house. The only thing that had gone in their favor all morning. He waited for Foch and helped him gently lay the bleeding soldier across the van’s middle bench. The two clambered in and the driver pulled from the curb.

Mercer looked out the rear window in time to see the uninjured Chinese gunman rush from the apartment building. He quickly pulled the type 87 from view and plucked a phone from his jacket pocket.

Mercer threw him the finger. “How’s your man?” he asked Foch.

“Three hits, two in the stomach, one in the thigh.” Foch tore off his shirt and used it to stanch the blood. The wounded Legionnaire moaned as pressure was applied to the oozing holes. “He needs a hospital.”

Mercer addressed the driver, “Head toward Avenue Balboa on the waterfront. That’ll take us to the Paitilla Hospital.”

Although they were far from safe, Bruneseau didn’t protest the detour. In the past weeks he’d learned that no matter what, the Foreign Legion always took care of their own. He nodded to the young soldier behind the wheel. “You’ll have to stay with him.”

“I understand.” Because these were gunshot wounds, it was likely the driver would be detained by the police. He was the logical choice to remain behind.

Mercer was well aware that including Foch, only five Legionnaires were in fighting condition. If Lauren’s father couldn’t come through for him, Liu would likely succeed through sheer attrition. Thinking of General Vanik reminded him of the cell phone. He turned it on and hit the automatic call-back button. Rather than a long international exchange, it dialed a seven-digit local number.

“Hold on,” a female voice answered after four rings. For a moment Mercer thought it was Lauren.

The next sound he heard was tires squealing on asphalt and the concussive blast from a handgun.

What the hell?

“One more second,” the woman said.

It sounded so much like her that Mercer’s heart flopped in his chest. He couldn’t help himself. “Lauren?” His voice quivered.

“Hi, Mercer. Give me a sec.” The gun exploded again and Mercer could hear the rising snarl of a vehicle under heavy acceleration. Foch and Bruneseau had looked at Mercer when he called Lauren’s name. He gave them an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

His hand tightened on the phone as the past fifteen hours of misery lifted from his shoulders. He had no idea how or why, but Lauren was alive. Alive! So overcome with emotion, he couldn’t speak as he listened to what sounded like a running battle over the cellular connection.

He heard the Doppler wail of a tractor-trailer truck’s air horn and the sharper bark of a smaller vehicle’s tires losing grip. Lauren gave a little moan as if her voice could control the events around her.

“Yessss!”

“What happened?”

She sighed, relieved. “Some of Liu’s goons were following me. I just played chicken with an eighteen-wheeler and got him to jackknife across the road behind me. I think I’m in the clear. I’m about ten miles from the city.”

Mercer laughed along with her breezy description, loving the melodious sound of her voice. “Are you going to tell me how you pulled off the greatest Lazarus impersonation since the Bible?”

“It can wait.” She became almost frantic with the need to tell him what she knew. “Liu’s going to take out the canal tomorrow! Sun told me because he thought I wasn’t getting out of his horror chamber. The ship carrying the explosives is called Gemini.”

“Jesus. Are you sure?”

“His exact words were that Gemini is going to be detonated in the canal tomorrow.”

“Anything else?”

“Isn’t that enough?” she cried.

“I’m just making sure, that’s all. I, ah ...” Mercer didn’t know how to broach the next subject so he just plowed in. “I spoke with your father this morning. I told him you were dead.”

“Thank you.” Lauren was serious. “I wouldn’t want him hearing about it from anyone else. I’ll call him in a minute.”

“Anyway, I brought him up to speed and told him some stuff even you don’t know. Like how there are eight missile launchers in the Hatcherly warehouse we broke into.”

“I never saw them,” she protested.

“I think we both did, but you made the same assumption I did, that they were cranes of some sort. They were on the other side of the building from the gravel pile, painted yellow. Rene Bruneseau is the one who recognized them when I drew a picture of one.”

“What’s my father doing?”

“Mourning you for one thing, but he’s taking the threat seriously. He’s checking with the CIA and others about recent Chinese missile movements. Also, Rene is going to get in touch with his people to corroborate our findings. With any luck we can get an Army Rapid Reaction Force down here before tomorrow.”

“Easier said than done,” Lauren said grimly. “You can’t just whistle up the cavalry to come to your rescue. The United States no longer has bases in Panama so they’ll have to mobilize out of Fort Bragg and then fly down. Unless they parachute in, the Panamanian authorities could deny them landing permission.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky and there will be an assault ship in range with a load of marines.” Mercer’s voice betrayed that he doubted there would be such an eleventh-hour deliverance.

“I’m not too optimistic either,” Lauren agreed, then added, “but if there are marines close by, my dad will get them for us.”

“Listen, I just want to say ...” Mercer was at a loss at how to continue. He sounded more intimate than he intended. “This sounds lame, but I am glad that you’re okay. I thought, we all thought that, well ...”

Lauren laughed. “Please, don’t underwhelm me with sentiment.”

“You know what I’m trying to say.”

“I do, but it’s fun to hear you tongue-tied,” she teased.

The van made the turn from Avenue Balboa to Calle 53 Este. The hospital loomed on their left. “Lauren, I have to go. Can you get to the Radisson Royal?”

“Is that where you’re staying?”

“Yeah, we’ve got a couple rooms under Harry’s name.”

“Okay. I should be there in half an hour or so.” Her tone darkened. “Tell Lieutenant Foch that I’m sorry. Tomanovic died at the lock.”

“I’ll tell him. And Lauren, I can’t wait to see you.” Mercer smiled as he said it.

“Me too,” she replied and the phone went dead.

“Vic?” Foch asked when Mercer folded the cellular and shoved it back into his pocket. Mercer shook his head.

The Legionnaire had already accepted the Serb’s loss once and took the news with little outward reaction.

“How did she escape the lock?” Rene asked.

“I have no idea. I guess she’ll tell us in the hotel. We all set here?”

The driver swung the van toward the emergency room entrance, braking just shy of the busy doors.

Rene turned so he was looking at Maria. “You see what happened back there when you warned Liu’s men. If you try a stunt like that again, I will kill you myself.”

“I won’t.” Maria was still in shock from what she’d witnessed. Or maybe her numbness stemmed from understanding that had she not double-crossed her husband she’d be far wealthier than what Liu had promised.

Foch spoke with the driver and returned his crisp salute before whispering to the injured soldier. He kissed the man on both cheeks and followed Mercer and Maria out the side door of the van. The driver proceeded to the ER and what would no doubt be a long police interrogation. There were a number of cabs waiting at the hospital and a minute later the group was en route to the French embassy so Bruneseau could use their secure communications equipment to alert his people back home.

Mercer kept a close eye on Foch to make sure he didn’t strangle Maria Barber. Not that he wouldn’t blame him if he tried.