River of Ruin

The Pedro Miguel Lock Panama Canal, Panama

The pickup was parked in the middle of the visitor’s lot, the lone vehicle there under the punishing rain. Harry sat alone in the front seat, something nagging at the back of his mind as he read the transit manifest for the fourth time. With the windows closed, the cab was blue with smoke. When Mercer and Lauren came jogging up, he stubbed out his cigarette and slid over so she was between the two men. “They on their way?”

“Yes,” Mercer replied. “They’re taking Roddy when they board the Mario diCastorelli.”

Harry didn’t seem surprised by this revelation. Come to think of it, Mercer realized, Roddy hadn’t been either. He began to see that the two of them had known the Green Berets were going to need a pilot and conveniently didn’t tell anyone about it.

He continued. “I think they’ll be all right. Patke and his team look pretty tough. I told him that we’ll be ready to help once the ship’s secure.” He leaned forward so he could look directly at his friend. “Harry, with Roddy acting as pilot, I don’t think we’re going to need you out there. I want you to wait in the truck.”

“And get captured by some of Liu’s guards, who I’m sure are lurking around someplace? Forget it.” He snorted. “Besides, if the commandos fail, chances are Roddy won’t be in too good a shape. If they need you, you’re going to need me.”

“You’re sure you can handle that ship?”

“It’s like falling off a bike,” Harry dismissed with a grand wave. “Do it once and you never forget how.”

Lauren smiled. “Your metaphors are a bit screwy.”

“So’s Mercer’s head if he thinks I can’t conn a ship like that.”

Lauren rubbed the windshield to smear away the fog. They were all breathing heavier than normal and felt the claustrophobia of being jammed into the tight cab. Mercer suspected it was even worse for the five men in the cargo bed.

Rene Bruneseau tapped on the glass partition separating the cab from the truck’s enclosed bed. Harry reached behind to slide it open. “May I have one of your cigarettes?” the French spy asked.

“Here you go.” Harry handed him his pack but made sure to get it back.

“How long before they hit the ship?” The question was almost rhetorical. The Green Berets would radio just before the strike. Rene had asked just to dispel some of the nervous energy infecting them all.

“Probably just before she comes out of the lock. Say twenty minutes.”

They watched in silence as small locomotive engines drew the ship into the massive chamber. Once the doors were closed behind her, she would begin her thirty-foot vertical journey to the level of the Gaillard Cut and Lake Gatun. Another of the freighters trailing the Mario diCastorelli entered the nearer lock chamber, partially blocking their view of the bomb ship on its far side. She was an old tramp steamer laid out somewhat like a World War II Liberty Ship with a centrally located superstructure and a raised forecastle. The booms on her two cranes were like skeletal fingers.

“Which ship is that?” Harry asked.

With the truck at a slight angle in the deserted visitors’ parking lot Mercer had the better view. “The Robert T. Change.” He could see her flying a white triangular flag speared by a red dot. It was the Pilot On Board pennant. He couldn’t see her national flag so he didn’t know where she was registered.

“Angel, Heaven, this is Devil One.” Lauren had pulled out the earpiece from her radio so they all heard the voice from the tiny receiver.

“Go ahead, Devil. This is Heaven,” answered the comm officer aboard the McCampbell.

“We’re deployed. Estimate zero minus four minutes.”

“Roger,” Lauren and the destroyer responded simultaneously.

Looking at the lock complex less than two hundred yards away, it appeared that the Robert T. Change would leave her chamber before the Mario diCastorelli. They could see the bows of the small tramp steamer just peeking out as the chamber doors swung open on their hydraulic rams. Behind her, the much larger diCastorelli was still firmly held in the middle of the lock.

“That is not how it usually happens,” Lauren said with concern. “It’s always first ship in, first ship out. They never let vessels pass in the locks unless there’s some kind of snag.”

“Well, the wind’s kicking up,” Harry remarked, looking up to the leaden sky. “The Mario could be having trouble. I’ve been through here a few times myself back in the early 1950s. I’ve actually seen a mule locomotive pulled off her tracks and get dumped in the lock when a gust slammed against a freighter.”

Lauren suddenly struggled to replace her earpiece, her voice tight. “Devil One, this is Angel, over.”

“Go ahead, Angel.”

“Target may be held in place for a few more minutes. I just remembered they’ll need the time for divers to prepare the hull for when they attach the submersible.” She’d recalled a detail the others had all but forgotten and her quick thinking prevented Captain Patke from launching his assault too early.

“Affirmative, Angel. Thanks. Out.”

Lauren let out a relieved sigh.

“Good job,” Mercer said and laid his hand on hers. She let it linger.

“I can’t believe I’d forgotten that.”

They could no longer see the Mario diCastorelli as the Robert T. Change blocked their entire view. The small silver train engines straining to haul the vessel from the lock looked like circus workers trying to lead a stubborn elephant. Mercer craned around. Blocking his view down the canal were warehouses, machine shops, and other structures needed to run the complex. Even if the sprawling facility hadn’t obstructed his view, the distance was too great to see the next ship patiently waiting below the lock for its turn to climb the water ladder. Because of where they were parked, the downstream end of the lock was nearly a half mile behind him.

No matter how large the ships that used the waterway, he thought, it seemed nothing could dwarf the scale of this century-old marvel.

A sharp rap on Mercer’s window made them all jump.

Standing in the rain wearing a camouflage poncho was a Chinese soldier. The rubberized cloth ran with water and barely hid the barrel of his machine pistol. He’d tapped the glass with its barrel. Swallowing a ball of fear, Mercer cranked down his window.

“What you do here?” the soldier asked in angry broken English.

“Watching the ships with my wife and her grandfather. He helped build the canal.” Harry hadn’t even been born when the construction was completed but Mercer needed a reasonable excuse to be sightseeing on such a miserable morning.

“It rain. You no see. You go ’way.”

“We’ll leave in a few minutes.” He gave the man his friendliest smile. “As soon as the next big cruise ship goes by.”

“You leave now!” The soldier pushed aside a fold of his poncho. The bullpup design of his type 87 was unmistakable.

Mercer opened his mouth to protest once more when the gunman’s expression inexplicably changed from anger to confusion to pain. And then suddenly he vanished from view. Mercer pushed open his door in time to see a corner of the poncho and a bloodless hand disappear under the truck. He whipped his head around. Lieutenant Foch was just getting to his feet on Harry’s side of the truck. With a defiant gesture that needed no further explanation Foch rammed a fighting knife back into the sheath hanging from his web belt.

No one had felt him getting out of the truck or heard him crawl under the vehicle. A moment later he was back at the partition. “I saw him coming across the parking lot,” Foch explained. “I think the next time you complained he’d call his friends, yes?”

“Oui, oui, oui,” said Harry, “all the way home.”

Lauren disagreed. “More than likely his squad leader is waiting for a report right now.”

“Devil One to Heaven. Zero minute in two.” Patke’s voice sounded like it came from inside her head.

“They’re going in two minutes,” she told the others.

“Foch, give me your best guess,” Mercer asked over his shoulder without looking at the Legionnaire. He kept his attention on the chain-link fence separating the tourist parking lot from the one used by canal employees. “How long do you think it’ll take them to neutralize the ship?”

“If Liu took off most of her crew like we think, and with the element of surprise, it shouldn’t take more then seven to ten minutes. Figure two men to the bridge, two to the crew’s spaces and two to engineering.”

Mercer started the truck’s engine. “All right.”

“What are you doing?” Lauren asked.

“You are right. That Chinese soldier’s gonna be missed. No way we can wait here for ten or fifteen minutes. Might as well get to the pilot boats early.”

“Should you tell Patke?” Rene asked.

Lauren said no. “He’s got enough on his mind.”

The fence was a hundred yards away, a diaphanous wall of wire mesh that stretched from the water all the way to the Gamboa Highway. Mercer left the big truck in low gear, trying not to appear suspicious. As they rolled across the wet asphalt, his view back to the lock chambers changed and he could see the great doors had parted before the Mario diCastorelli. She was being pulled free by heavy lines running from the towing engines through her fairleads.

When they were twenty yards from the fence, he knew that nothing he did now wouldn’t look unusual to the guards Liu had stationed here during this critical transit. He mashed the accelerator. The truck hummed and the wheels turned shallow puddles into a cloud of mist that rose in their wake like smoke.

All at once, the air around them seemed to explode, a sharp report that pounded on their eardrums painfully.

For a frantic second they all thought the Mario diCastorelli had detonated. A moment later they saw a flash of lightning and another deafening clap of thunder assaulted them. It was just the storm.

“Hold on!” Mercer called as they reached the fence.

He steered for one of the support poles. The truck barely paused as the steel bent under the bumper and a section of fencing sagged and then fell under the wheels. They drove over it and Mercer accelerated again, racing across the large employee parking lot, weaving along rows of workers’ cars.

At the far end of the lot was a dirt road that ran behind a series of low structures. Mercer tore down this road, shielded from the canal by the corrugated metal buildings, slowing only when they reached a boat ramp. Next to the access ramp lay a small inlet with a cement pier where four of the Canal Authority’s utility boats were moored. They were sturdy little craft with black hulls and white upperworks broken up by numerous windows for easy visibility on the busy waterway. Each boat was festooned with orange flotation rings and other safety gear.

Mercer braked hard at the base of the quay. He felt more than heard the Legionnaires pile from the rear. He pulled the .45 from his waistband and jacked a round into the chamber, not that he thought any hapless employee would resist the French soldiers and their wicked-looking FAMAS assault rifles.

“This is Devil One. We are on the target undetected. Switch to channel two.”

Lauren guessed Captain Patke and his men had simply jumped aboard from the seawall and were now hiding somewhere on the deck of the Mario diCastorelli. She changed channels on her small radio as the commando leader continued his report. “Target is being held in position after clearing the lock, possibly for submersible attachment. Ship that just exited the second lock has also stopped while a third vessel is in the chamber about to be raised. Also, be advised the seawalls around the locks are crawling with heavily armed Chinese.”

“Roger, Devil One. Don’t forget that the Canal Authority has stationed two Panamanian guards on all transiting ships. Over.”

“Haven’t forgotten, Angel. Out.”

With Lieutenant Foch leading them, they reached one of the pilot boats without being seen. The door lock was a puny affair that the Frenchman kicked apart with one blow. Sergeant Rabidoux, their electronics and arms expert, went straight to the cockpit to get at the ignition wires under the automobile-like dashboard. Never one to do more work than necessary, Harry followed him and found the keys in a cup holder.

He jingled them near his waist and the young trooper slithered back to his feet, mildly embarrassed.

“Don’t start the engine yet,” Mercer cautioned. “We’ve got a good enough view of the boatyard to see anyone coming. No sense drawing attention to ourselves.”

“Now what?” Bruneseau asked.

“We wait to hear from Devil One,” Lauren said. She moved next to Mercer and kept an eye on the rain-lashed marina. “And when they succeed we all go home.”

Out the stern window and across the small aft deck the canal ran green and turgid. On the far bank, the earth had been recently sculpted into a gentle slope to slow the remorseless landslides that continuously threatened to re-bury the canal. Where open grassland gave way to the concrete locks, the Mario diCastorelli sat motionless between the seawall extensions, presumably awaiting word from the divers that the diverter submarine was in place. Next to her, the Robert T. Change waited a few lengths from the lock. Behind her floated the Englander Rose, an almost exact copy of the tramp freighter preceding her through the canal.

Lightning danced in jagged tributaries that came dangerously close to the ground. Thunder pealed across the hills in crashing blasts that would certainly mask the sound of gunfire.

“Angel!” The cry came in Lauren’s headset so loudly that she winced. “This is ... Oh, screw it. Lauren, it’s Roddy. Put Mercer on fast.”

She gave him the earpiece and attached throat mike. “Something’s wrong. It’s Roddy.” Her hands were no longer so steady.

“Go ahead.”

“Mercer, I’m on the diCastorelli’s bridge. There’s no one on the ship. I mean no Chinese agents. The crew are all Greeks and Filipinos. The pilot’s a Panamanian friend of mine. Patke’s down in the hold right now. Just like the manifest says she’s carrying scrap steel and cement powder.”

Oh Jesus! “Could the explosives be hidden in the cement?”

“There isn’t that much of it for one thing,” Roddy shouted, on the edge of panic. “Patke says he’s already had his men tear into a few of the pallets. It really is just bags of Portland. I’m telling you, this isn’t the ship!”

Mercer looked around the crowded pilot boat. “We’ve got the wrong freighter.”

Rene Bruneseau was the first to react. His face turned crimson and he lunged for Harry, pinning the old man against a bulkhead. “You senile fool,” he screamed. “This is your fault.”

Foch launched himself at the spy, prying his hands from Harry’s collar and tossing the Frenchman onto the deck. “Touch him again and you’re dead,” he snarled.

“What do we do?” Roddy cried over the radio.

“How about it, Harry?” Mercer’s voice was grave, laden with frustration.

Harry White made no apologies for being wrong. He’d made his best guess and the others had readily agreed. Castor was one of the Gemini twins and there were no other vessels with such a name or anything containing Pollux, the other brother. His assumption that Liu Yousheng chose the code word Gemini based on the name of the vessel had been dead wrong. Without a reference point, there was no way he could deduce the right ship.

For all he knew the bomb ship had already passed the lock and was in position in the Gaillard Cut, ready to take down the massive Contractor’s and Gold Hill in an explosion that wouldn’t be much smaller than an atomic bomb.

Or the incendiaries were on one of the ships still to come; maybe on the Robert T. Change, which was just passing the pilot boat, or the Englander Rose steaming in her wake. Hell, it could be on the cruise ship for all he knew or any one of the tankers, container ships, or bulk carriers still crossing Miraflores Lake.

Harry had given it his best and failed. No, he had nothing to apologize for except letting Liu get away with destroying the Panama Canal and opening the way for nuclear missiles to threaten the United States. Fucking Chinese. The thought was so bitter that the inspiration springing from it took a second to hit. Chinese, damnit. He’s been thinking like a Westerner. Liu had been clever but not clever enough.

He looked at Mercer, stung by the reproach in his friend’s gray eyes. “We’ve got a serious problem.”

“We know that.” The voice cut even deeper than the eyes.

“There isn’t one bomb ship. There are two. The Mario diCastorelli is only supposed to block the canal so Liu can get the crews off of them before detonation.”

“Why are we listening to this idiot?!” Bruneseau raged.

“Tell us,” Lauren invited softly, for her faith in Mercer and Harry, though weakened by what was happening, was still with her.

“Gemini. Twins. But not the ones from our mythology. Robert T. Change. Englander Rose. Change and Englander. Chang and Eng—the famous conjoined brothers commonly referred to as Siamese Twins. They were actually Chinese.”

Harry had just cracked the unconscious mistake Liu had made when choosing a code name. The name diCastorelli had put in his mind the idea of the Gemini twins, although at the time he didn’t fully recall they were called Castor and Pollux. Yet when he saw the names of the two fabled Siamese twins hidden in the names of the two bomb ships and chose Gemini, he’d unknowingly tipped his hand to a man who loved to play word games.

No sooner had Harry finished his explanation than Mercer knew his friend was right. He keyed the radio. “Roddy, the two ships behind you. They’re both floating bombs.”

“Are you sure?”

“No doubt about it.” Iron-hard, Mercer’s conviction carried across the airwaves. “Your ship was held up for the submarine, meaning the Mario is supposed to choke off the canal to give the next two ships a legitimate reason to stop. Once they’re in place, Liu will use the sub to pull off the crews and let them blow.”

“Angel, this is Devil One.”

“Go ahead.”

“Can you come get us? We’ll try an assault from your boat.”

“Ah, negative.” Mercer thought furiously, trying to come up with a plan that would minimize damage. That at least one of those ships would explode wasn’t in doubt. He turned to Harry. “Fire up the engine and ease us into the canal.”

Harry moved with the speed of a man half his age. “Which ship?”

The Robert T. Change had already passed their position while the Englander Rose was almost directly abeam. “The Rose.”

Captain Patke and Roddy had heard the exchange over the comm link. “What are you doing?” the commando asked.

Mercer ignored him. “Roddy, you’ve got to stop your ship from being deflected by the submersible. Get some crewmen on the deck so they’ll see its propwash and give a warning the instant she fires her motor.”

“Okay. Then what?”

“Liu must need both ships to explode either simultaneously or in a pre-timed sequence, like what they do when blowing up a building. Carefully placed charges are more effective than one big blast. Get away from the Robert T.

Change, even if you have to swim to shore and run like hell. We can’t stop that one from going up, but maybe we can get the Englander Rose far enough away so that when she goes she doesn’t complete her job.”

Roddy’s voice became strident. “Even if you separate the boats by a mile or more, you’re still stuck next to the lock. The explosion will blow it into a million pieces. Liu still wins.”

“Can you think of a way to get her back through the lock?”

“Not quickly,” the pilot admitted, thinking about the dozens of Chinese soldiers they’d slipped past to board the ship.

“I can.” It was the female officer aboard Heaven, the USS McCampbell. She went on to outline her idea. With the pilot boat fast approaching the scaly side of the Englander Rose, there wasn’t time to debate the merits of her plan, only its chance for success. Roddy, who was the most disturbed by her suggestion, agreed that it would work, adding, “Do you have any idea what this is going to cost to repair?”

“Less than if Liu blows the lock entirely,” Mercer said. “Don’t forget I happen to know where your country can get the money to fix it.”

“The Twice-Stolen Treasure,” the Panamanian breathed.

“A fitting use.” Mercer had moved to look through the windscreen as they neared the lumbering freighter. A wash of disturbed water undulated along her Plimsoll mark as she picked up speed after coming out of the lock. Because pilot boats were so common on this stretch of the canal, none of the men standing around her superstructure paid them much attention.

Mercer looked farther up the waterway, where the stern of the Mario diCastorelli was just vanishing around a curve. A towering promontory of granite loomed over the ship where men and machines had once cleaved the path through the mountains. The other shore had been leveled further to a sloping plain that dropped into the water. He knew from what Roddy had told him, the ship would be in the canal’s tightest choke point in about fifteen minutes, a narrow gut at the exact center of the continental divide. There is where Liu intended to set off his explosives-laden vessels.

Between him and the Mario was the dark shape of the second bomb ship, the Robert T. Change.

“Oi!” The voice was amplified by a loudspeaker and came from above the pilot boat.

Harry throttled back to keep pace with the huge ship. Mercer stepped aft, emerging from the cabin onto the small rear deck space. He looked up at the ship’s rail twenty feet over his head, steady rain drumming his upturned face. It was hard to tell but the man with the megaphone appeared Chinese.

“We no need another pilot.” His accent was the same as the guard Foch had knifed in the parking lot.

Moving slightly so the man above couldn’t see, Mercer asked, “Foch, any ideas?”

“We’ve got him sighted,” the Legionnaire said. “As soon as I finish fashioning this anchor into a grappling hook, we’ll take him.”

Foch sat on the deck out of view of the sailor. He worked to replace the heavy chain secured to a foot-wide anchor with rope he’d pulled from a locker. Behind him, two of his men peered through the windows, their eyes screwed into their assault rifles’ scopes.

Mercer turned his attention back to the Chinese crewman. “We had a report that you needed us. It’s not true?”

“No.”

“Let me speak with Guillermo, the pilot,” Mercer bluffed.

“No Guillermo. Pilot is Mr. Lin.”

“Wait,” he cried as if making a sudden realization. “Is your ship the Mary Celeste?”

“No. That ship behind. You go back.” The guard showed the butt of a pistol.

“I’m ready,” Foch announced.

Mercer dropped to his knees behind the gunwale. “Take him.”

It took just one shot that sounded quieter than the shatter of the glass the bullet had gone through. The soldier had aimed perfectly, compensating for angle, deflection of the glass, and the wind that raced up the canal. The round caught the lookout in the soft part of the throat so that most of its energy was carried beyond his corpse. Rather than fall back, he slumped forward, draped over the rail as if he were studying something on the water.

Foch was in motion an instant later, racing out into the open, the anchor ready to throw, loops of rope hanging from his left arm. Mercer recalled trying to snag the vent stack on the Hatcherly warehouse with Lauren and was amazed at how effortlessly the Legion officer heaved the heavy anchor over the Rose’s rail.

It hooked in the shelter of one of the overhanging lifeboats on the first toss. Foch handed the free end of the rope to Mercer. With his FAMAS slung over his back, the soldier shimmied up the line using knots he’d tied as grips. Even before he reached the top, Rabidoux was ready to climb, and the others were lined up behind him.

Mercer held the rope steady as one by one the Legionnaires strained their way to the deck of the Englander Rose. So intent on their mission, Lauren didn’t give him a passing glance as she muscled herself up the rope followed by Rene Bruneseau. For a moment Mercer considered taking the trailing end of the rope with him, stranding Harry on the pilot boat, but with what they were going to attempt, they desperately needed the old bastard’s seamanship skills.

“Harry, come on,” he called into the cabin.

Still at the helm, Harry jiggled the throttles until the two craft were perfectly in sync before looping a bungee cord around the wheel to keep her on course. He snatched up his cane and joined Mercer on the aft deck.

Mercer handed him the rope, pointing out that Foch had tied a loop at its end. Knowing what to do, Harry placed his prosthetic leg into the loop and did something behind at his ankle to lock the joint. He held the line steady as Mercer climbed to the looming ship, his assent covered by two of the Legionnaires.

Hands grabbed at him as he reached the railing and they dragged him over. He landed in a heap, swiveling around even as the Frenchmen began to haul Harry up the side of the ship. He added his strength to theirs, and seconds later Harry’s silver crew cut appeared. Harry steadied himself for the final effort and then he was with them. He unlocked his ankle and gave it an experimental flex.

“I feel like a pirate taking a galleon on the Spanish Main,” he whispered, pulling the pistol from the corpse Foch had stuffed behind a ventilator.

“We’ll call you Graybeard the Geriatric,” Mercer teased.

That they had just climbed aboard a ship carrying several thousand tons of explosives hit them all at the same moment. They exchanged nervous glances. A blast of that magnitude wouldn’t blow them apart, or even vaporize them. Such a detonation would atomize them. The concussive force would be enough to render their bodies to their basic building blocks of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and the few others that made up a human.

It would be like standing on the surface of a sun at the moment it went supernova.

“Let’s go,” Foch said, taking point.

The deck planking was slick with rain and twenty years of spilled oil and solvents. The metalwork had been so often painted that the underside of the railings were pebbled with hardened drips as thick as cake frosting. What machinery they could see looked frozen with grime. Had she not been tapped for this operation, the Englander Rose should have been sitting in a breaker’s yard ready for the cutting torches.

With Foch in the lead and Rabidoux covering their rear, they crept under the belly of the lifeboat and edged toward a hatchway. The door was open a crack, probably left by the sailor who’d challenged them. Foch peeked through the opening and then slowly swung the door open with the barrel of his FAMAS, one of his men standing by so he could cover the lieutenant.

“Clear.”

They rushed into a utilitarian corridor that ran the length of the squat superstructure. He led them to the shelter of an open closet reeking of disinfectant.

“Harry,” he asked, “with little space on their submersible, what is the minimum they could leave aboard this ship during a canal passage?”

“I can feel by the way she vibrates she’s diesel powered,” the former ship’s captain answered. “Meaning they could pull everyone out of the engine room. Realistically, there could be as few as three, but no more than ten.”

“D’accord,” Foch said, then lapsed into silence.

“This is your show, Lieutenant,” Mercer prompted. “How do you want to do it?”

He needed only a second to form his plan. “Rabidoux, lead Mercer, Harry, and Captain Vanik to the bridge. The rest of us will sweep the ship to prevent some hidden fanatic from blowing the charges himself. If you need backup pull a fire alarm and we will get to you as fast as we can.”

“Bon chance,” Mercer said to Foch as he followed Lauren and Harry behind Rabidoux’s lead.

Lauren walked just a step behind and to the left of the young Legion noncom, her M-16 ready to cover their flank. Harry stayed a few paces back with Mercer walking sideways behind him so he could cover their rear and still add firepower if they came upon any crewmen or guards.

The hallway was deserted, and when they climbed narrow stairs set in an echoing well, they came out on another empty passageway.

“Which way?” Rabidoux asked.

Harry thought for a moment. “Head aft, there’ll be central stairs that run from the bridge to the bilge. It’s the most direct route.”

The halls smelled of salt and rust, aged by a long career tramping around the globe. There was little in the way of amenities on board. The walls were painted metal and the decks were laid with peeling linoleum tile. The lights were bare bulbs in little cages. Passing a door marked “Head” left them moving through a reeking miasma of stale human waste.

The attack came without warning.

One moment they were closing in on the stairs and the next second the hall was filled with automatic fire. Mercer dove to tackle Harry, making sure to hit him in his fake leg. At the same instant Rabidoux pushed Lauren to the floor and counterfired with a sustained burst from his assault rifle.

The soldier who’d fired at them ducked around a corner as the metal edge he used as cover sparked like a Catherine wheel under the onslaught of 5.56mm rounds.

Lauren moved forward under the covering fire, slithering on her belly across the filthy floor. She had her M-16 to her shoulder and crawled using only the wiggle of her hips and what grip she could get with her elbows. Mercer shifted onto one knee, hugging a wall, and waited for the Chinese guard to appear again, his body shielding Harry’s prone form.

The soldier ducked his head around the corner as soon as Rabidoux intentionally drained his magazine. Through the whirling smoke, his eyes naturally locked on the tallest target—Mercer. He never saw the slender shape less than three yards in front of him. Lauren adjusted her aim in the fraction of a second the soldier gave her and put one round through his neck and one into his forehead.

She waited for two heartbeats before moving forward. Once she could see around the corner that had hidden the guard, she called back, “All clear.”

The sudden attack had robbed their element of surprise so they mounted the stairs at a run, Mercer and Rabidoux moving side by side, step in step. Lauren and Harry remained a half flight below them as they corkscrewed up the decks. They reached the bridge level without incident, and when they saw the solid door blocking their progress, they understood why. Whatever crewmen were still in the upper decks had barricaded themselves in the wheelhouse. The hatch was solid steel, dogged tight and locked from the inside. Nothing short of a satchel charge, which they didn’t have, would blow it open.

“Is there another way?” Mercer asked Harry.

“Not on this level. We’ll have to go down one and then try to get in from outside. When we approached I saw a stairway leading from there up to the wing bridge.”

Mercer looked at his watch. “We’re running out of time.” He keyed his throat mike. “Roddy, what’s your situation?”

“We’re almost between Gold Hill and Contractor’s Hill. We’re expecting the sub to try to divert us any moment.”

“You’re ready for it?”

“They used this trick to get me fired once. They won’t get away with it a second time.”

Mercer looked to Harry again. “What about going up one deck and just jumping onto the wing bridge?”

“You’ll either take them by surprise or they’ll take you,” Harry said seriously. “But it sounds better than trying to fight our way up from outside.”

They backtracked to the stairs and climbed up a dim shaft that ended in a flat hatch. It took all Mercer’s strength and a push from Sergeant Rabidoux to unseal the hardened paint that had frozen the portal solid. Heaving against its dead weight they finally threw it open. It dropped flush with the roof of the wheelhouse. Rainwater eased the cordite sting from Mercer’s eyes and he let a few drops trickle down his throat.

From this vantage he could see the Robert T. Change about a quarter mile ahead but the Mario diCastorelli was out of view as the three ships wended their way deeper into the mountains. The hills were bare, blasted rock, chiseled by explosives with the precision of the Egyptian pyramids. Some had been pinned with huge steel rods to solidify them further. Waterfalls splashed to the canal, torrents made greater because the ground was so saturated by the rainy season’s regular deluges. Something Mercer was sure Liu’s experts had counted on.

He took in all of this in a moment’s glance. He was certain the captain of this vessel was radioing his counterpart on the other bomb ship and discussing options.

Making sure to keep his footing on the metal deck, he shuffled to the edge of the wheelhouse while Rabidoux moved to the opposite side, positioning themselves above where the wing bridges cantilevered over the water. They exchanged a quick look to synchronize their timing and moved as one, dropping neatly the eight feet to the stubby flying bridges.

Landing hard, he could see Rabidoux across the expanse of the bridge already had his FAMAS ready. Mercer brought up his weapon, picking his first target, presumably the captain because he was screaming into a handheld radio, and rattled off a tight three-round burst through the glass weather door that protected the bridge from the elements.

As the glass fell in a crystal avalanche, the Chinese captain of the Englander Rose was flung as if body punched. Scarlet drops of blood danced in a tangent away from his crumpling corpse. The helmsman went down at the same moment, raked from hip to head by the French commando.

The canal pilot standing next to him was Chinese, no doubt one of the Hatcherly employees that Liu Yousheng had been infiltrating into the Canal Authority. He dove for cover behind the control console. Rabidoux didn’t wait to see if he was armed, putting two rounds into the back of his neck before ducking through the ruined wing door. Mercer shifted so he could see the aft section of the wheelhouse as two men jumped behind the wooden chart table. Another figure ran farther aft, trying to reach the locked hatch where Lauren and Harry waited.

A shot came from behind the chart table, aimed where Mercer had been standing an instant before. The bullet pinged off the ship’s metal hide. Mercer was on his belly, crawling aft to get an angle on the two while Rabidoux maneuvered himself to the center of the bridge, which allowed him to cover both sides of the enclosed table.

Mercer studied the construction of the cabinet, saw it was made of wood and knew it was unlikely to deflect the high-velocity rounds from his M-16. He fired a savage burst into the table. White splinters exploded from the varnished oak as the bullets bored through.

One of the men sprang to his feet, swinging his type-87 assault rifle in a wild spread of fire, a lance of flame jetting from the barrel. His chest oozed from numerous hits, and a shard of wood had been rammed into his arm. And still he fought. Rabidoux put him down just before the arc of fire would have cut him in half.

Mercer chanced looking past the table. The crewman who’d fled the wheelhouse was just undogging the door. He got it open only an inch or so when Lauren blew him back with a single shot to the face. Rabidoux moved closer to the chart table, edging forward with his FAMAS at the ready. The fifth man lay in a pool of purple blood that spread as slowly as jelly, his eyes wide and sightless.

Covering each other as they explored the rest of the wheelhouse, they made certain that was the last of them. No one was hiding in the small radio shack or in an office belonging to the captain.

“Okay, Lauren,” Mercer called aft. “We’re clear.”

Looking forward past the crane and the vessel’s peaked bow, he saw the Robert T. Change moving steadily up the narrow canal, her wake like a lazy vortex of churned water. He couldn’t see anything to indicate her captain was altering their original plan. Good. This takes care of the easy part.

Because the Legionnaires used their own radios, Mercer asked Rabidoux to get a report from Lieutenant Foch. He lifted his mike back in position to talk to Roddy.

“It’s Mercer. What’s your situation?”

A half mile ahead of the Englander Rose, Roddy Herrara was fighting his ship with everything he had. He’d been expecting the moment when the sub attached to the diCastorelli would try to shove the big freighter off course. He even had lookouts watching the water for propwash, but still couldn’t believe the force the submersible exerted.

The Mario diCastorelli weighed probably twenty-five thousand tons and yet her bow continued to swing inexorably toward shore no matter how he worked the rudder and applied reverse thrust to her offside shaft. The remoralike sub was doubtlessly designed to act as an underwater tug, but even a powerful tugboat couldn’t move a freighter if she didn’t want to go.

The parasite submarine had to be equipped with some kind of new technology, Roddy thought, something designed for the military, for their newest torpedoes maybe. Peroxide-powered hydrojets, or something even more exotic. Whatever it was, it moved the freighter’s bow a few points on the compass every minute and all Roddy could do was stall the inevitable.

“Not now,” he answered and ignored whatever else Mercer asked.

The great ship moved relentlessly toward the left bank no matter how he tried to keep her at her head. The entire vessel shuddered with the strain of fighting the diverter under her hull. They were deep in the mountains now, towering stone monoliths that loomed over the waterway like the sides of the Grand Canyon Roddy had seen on a family vacation to el Norte.

Behind them, he knew, the Robert T. Change continued on her mission to destroy the canal. Roddy could almost feel her presence, something ghostly and evil. Something he was powerless to stop.

The captain of the ship, a lanky Greek with the mouth-twisting name of Leonidaes Chaufleus, waited at the wheel for Roddy’s next instruction, one bony hand on the wheel, the other ready to massage the throttle levers.

Roddy paced from one side of the bridge to the other, studying the canal and looking at the swirl of boiling water near the bow where the unseen submarine labored to ram the ship into the land. With each circuit of the bridge he had to step over the two trussed-up Panamanian guards who’d unknowingly been assigned to a ship destined to be destroyed. Wisely forgoing machismo for survival, they hadn’t put up a fight when the Green Berets stormed the vessel. Their instructions had been to defend against thieves, not an American assault force that moved with the fluidity of quicksilver.

“Captain,” Roddy said as he was struck by a sudden inspiration. “Can you drop anchors from here?”

“Is possible,” the Greek said.

The pilot originally assigned to guide the Mario diCastorelli on her doomed transit was a Panamanian named Ernesto Garcia. Shaken by the Green Berets’ surprise assault, he’d readily turned the helm over to Roddy when he learned what was about to happen. Now he broke himself from his fearful silence. “If we slow, there will be nothing to stop the sub from grounding us. We must speed up and hope we can shake it loose.”

“I don’t want to stop her, Ernie, I want to kedge her.”

“Kedge?” Captain Chaufleus asked. “What is this kedge?”

“The sub’s pulling us to port. I want to drop the starboard anchor, let her hook on bottom and then play out some chain. Once we’ve unspooled a hundred feet or so, we’re going to haul the bow around using the anchor winches. I don’t care what’s powering that son of a bitch, she won’t be able to fight the winches. No way.”

“Ah,” said the captain. “Yes. I see. It work no problem.” He ordered one of his officers to stand by the controls that could remotely drop either of her seven-ton anchors.

“Make sure he knows to let the flukes snag before letting out more chain,” Roddy warned. “Otherwise the anchor will just drag when we reel her back in.”

“Yes, sir. I understand,” the officer said, obviously a better English speaker than his captain.

The freighter was well outside her lane now, and under other circumstances Roddy would have been fired for letting a ship get away from him like this. Hell, he thought, I was fired for it once. Her bows were less than two hundred feet from hitting the shore and at the speed they were traveling, the impact would tear open her forward compartments as if they were made of aluminum foil. It wouldn’t take long for the wind to swing her stern across the waterway and block the channel to all traffic. Then, at least one of the bomb ships would heave-to, and the crew would go overboard to be picked up by the sub for transport back to Pedro Miguel or maybe under the crippled freighter to Gamboa.

After that ...

“Drop the starboard anchor.”

The officer pressed a button on his console and three hundred feet forward of the wheelhouse the big capstan began to unwind. The anchor vanished under the surface to plunge forty feet to the bottom of the canal.

Because there was a constant stream of water feeding the great locks, the canal was scoured clean constantly. There was little mud or debris for the anchor’s flukes to skip against. Almost as soon as it hit the bottom, the anchor fell sideways and the hardened steel dug into the rock.

The ship shuddered as she fought the anchor before the officer slowly allowed more chain to drop through the fairleads, keeping tension on the anchor so it wouldn’t lose its grip.

“Good. Good,” Roddy whispered softly, feeling the ship return to its tug-of-war with the sub. The Chinese crew down there would never know what was coming.

He raced for the starboard wing bridge to watch the chain disappear into the green water far below. He could also look across to port and see the shore coming up alarmingly fast.

He had to give it just a few more—“Now! Bring up the anchor!”

Like a dog snapped back on a leash, the Mario diCastorelli came up hard against her anchor when the capstan was reversed. The violent action sent Roddy staggering into a railing and sent two of the American commandos watching on the bridge to their knees.

Two things happened at once. The anchor chain’s weakest link, deep under the water near the anchor itself, failed under the enormous strain. Like a whip, the chain came flying out of the water at a hundred miles per hour and snapped back at the ship. The forward cargo hatch was quarter-inch steel. The chain tore a twenty-foot gash across its surface with little more difficulty than a knife cuts paper. The impact blew the links apart, spraying the superstructure with chunks of shrapnel the size of a human head. One struck the superstructure’s forward window and embedded itself in a bulkhead at the rear of the bridge, narrowly missing two Green Berets.

The second thing that occurred was that the electromagnetic clamps that held the Chinese submersible to the freighter’s hull let go.

Free from its monstrous burden, the truck-sized submersible accelerated away from the ship, driving at full speed toward the shoreline before its two-man crew could stop it. It hit the canal’s edge like a torpedo strike, a burst of water and froth that lofted twenty feet before splashing back to earth. It surfaced seconds later, an oxide-red tube resembling a ship’s boiler with an integrated impeller fan at least fifteen feet across.

Roddy saw immediately why Liu had never tried to divert one of the big PANAMAX ships. The size of the submersible meant she had to attach herself under shallow draft vessels, and even then the unusual craft would have been dangerously close to being crushed against the bottom.

The sub remained surfaced with water gushing into its shattered nose. Air trapped in the hull seethed and made the water look like it was boiling. A moment later, the struggling figure of a crewman emerged from the battered hulk. The submariner was injured; he fought the roiling waves using only one arm while the other floated uselessly next to him.

Well versed at the dynamics of these large ships, Roddy knew that his quick thinking and decisive action wouldn’t be enough to save the Mario diCastorelli. He glanced into the wheelhouse to see Captain Chaufleus frantically working rudder and throttle in a desperate attempt to swing her bows away from the shore. Even he knew it wasn’t in the cards.

Roddy turned back to see the Chinese sub’s surviving crewman look up at the massive wall of steel bearing down on him. Roddy couldn’t hear his scream but watched his mouth open, a round black hole in his round white face.

The ship bowled over the sub, crushing it flat, and struck the bank with an impact ten times worse than the jolt when the anchor caught the bottom. The rending of steel on rock shook the massive vessel like an earthquake. Even those who’d prepared themselves for the collision by grabbing for handholds were thrown to the floor or propelled into bulkheads. Roddy was almost tossed over the railing as the bows crumpled inward and then lifted up onto the bank, pushed onward by the momentum of her own engines and that of the submarine.

The bow pushed twenty feet into the rain-soaked earth, piling before it an oozing mound of mud that almost reached to her main deck. Grounded so firmly that she didn’t list more than a degree or two, her stern had been driven deep by her unnatural angle.

Automatic watertight doors slammed throughout the vessel, echoing shots that were as jarring as they were useless. The Mario diCastorelli was in no danger of sinking. With her stern jutting out into the canal, and her bows hard into the shore, she wouldn’t be going anywhere without a fleet of salvage ships and tugboats.

Still determined to save his vessel, Captain Chaufleus called for full reverse on both shafts, driving her engines far beyond their tolerances. He cranked the rudder from lock to lock, hoping to get the vessel to rock, and break the hold of the clinging mud. Apart from the churn of her screws kicking water into a white cauldron, his actions were futile.

Roddy sagged, wiping a mixture of rain and sweat from his face. They had failed. He reached for his miniature radio. “Mercer, it’s Roddy. The sub’s been destroyed, but we’re grounded. The captain’s trying to break free, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. I’m sorry.”

Before Mercer could respond, Jim Patke broke in on the connection. Roddy had sent him to the fantail to watch the bomb ship through a pair of the ship’s powerful binoculars. “This is Devil One. There’s activity on the Change. They’re turning the vessel to block the rest of the canal and I think they’re prepping the lifeboats to abandon ship. They must have seen what happened to the sub. We should go get them.”

“Negative.” It was Mercer. “You don’t have the time to worry about them or save the Mario. The Robert T. Change is going to blow in forty-five minutes.”

“Are you sure about that?” Patke asked.

“That’s when our ship goes up. According to Foch there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Get yourselves to shore and run as fast as you can.”

“Mercer, you won’t be able to get the Englander Rose past us,” Roddy cried. “You’ll be stuck at the lock!”

“We knew there was a real chance this could happen.” Mercer paused. “We’ll have to go with our second option and pray the VGAS cannon on the McCampbell is as accurate as they claim.”