The Lightning Stones

26

Mercer timed his move to the second. The PBY flying boat was coming in low and slow, bearing down on him like a lumbering beast, so the waist gunner would have the best angle, and the longest window, to fire. He watched over his shoulder as it came closer, steeling himself to the growing roar of its engines, knowing he had one chance to get this right and a million to get it wrong.

The plane began to turn, its engines so close he could see the twin brown ribbons of exhaust spewing into the slipstream. The door gunner was doubtlessly in position, though Mercer couldn’t yet see him. The pilot twisted the aircraft, and suddenly Mercer was exposed to the open door. He could see the man braced there, an assault rifle to his shoulder, his one arm up in a classic firing stance. Even in the uncertain light of the aircraft’s cabin and despite the pitching and rolling, Mercer recognized the shooter instantly — as he knew he would.

Without hesitation, and before the marksman could draw a bead, Mercer hauled over the outboard, and he crossed under the string of bullets that tore over his head and kicked up little fountains from the Pacific’s surface. The inflatable was just too maneuverable. The plane made a wide turn and came back for another pass, and this time Mercer simply cut the throttle and the next fusillade tore at the sea in front of him.

He played mouse to their cat the entire way in to shore, with Mercer winning each round. The only time they came close was during the final run-up to the beach. The plane was coming at him at an angle, and until he made his passage through the breakers, he couldn’t turn or he’d capsize in the surf.

The rifle barked its repetitive mechanical cracks, and the water around him erupted with the impacts. The Zodiac began to hiss as two cells were hit and started to deflate. Mercer’s bare shoulder was singed by a passing bullet, but he made it through without being struck.

The large plane banked off, turning so tightly he could imagine the old aluminum struts and supports groaning at the G-load. They wanted one more pass before he beached the boat and vanished into the jungle. Mercer raced through the pounding waves, even as the plucky little inflatable sagged. He recalled the roles being reversed in Iowa.

The boat burst through one large curling wave, and suddenly he was through the breakers. The Catalina was coming around, slower and lower, and Mercer realized that this strafing run would be parallel to the beach because they were landing just inside the reef line. It was a gutsy move, but one he didn’t waste time appreciating. He gunned the boat, and just when he was sure he could feel the crosshairs on his spine he threw himself over the side and into the water.

Bullets shredded the air overhead, while the wave action and momentum shoved the Zodiac on the shelving beach. Mercer stayed underwater for another few seconds, then rose up when the plane had flown past. Standing knee-deep in the surf, he untied the dive bag from the oarlock and tossed it over his shoulder. A quarter mile up the beach the PBY skimmed the water and then alit with the grace of a swan. Spray erupted around the hull and engines as the propellers’ pitch was changed to augment the deceleration of planing into the sea.

Mercer wore only a bathing suit and sneakers, so when he took off running into the underbrush bordering the beach, the foliage ripped at his skin without mercy. He ran as hard as he could, because his head start would vanish quickly against armed hunters dressed for the sport.

In order to survive he would have to make it until dark. It was his only chance. Under cover of night he could swim to Futuna. It was two miles away, and Mercer recalled observing a substantial current the first night when they had anchored and Book watched for lightning, but he had no choice. Alofi was only twelve square miles. It could provide cover for a few days, but eventually they would find him.

Mercer knew he would have to ditch the stones. Fifty pounds wasn’t the heaviest load he’d ever packed, not by a long shot, but that dead-weight would sap his strength in the heat and humidity, making his pursuers’ job that much easier.

He continued through the brush, contemplating where he could hide the stones, when he suddenly heard the sound of approaching feet pounding through scrub in front of him. He hadn’t expected the encounter, and neither did the man rushing at him. Mercer had the advantage as he was running slightly uphill, while the man they’d posted to watch the marine salvage operation was running down and a little out of control.

Mercer veered just before they collided and threw out a foot to trip up the other guy, who crashed into the undergrowth. Mercer whirled and whipped out the compact Glock 30 pistol they had smuggled in with the Kriss Vector. Like Booker’s submachine gun, the Glock 30 packed the .45 ACP, a round developed for fighting in the Philippines after the Spanish American War, in which the Moro tribesmen would all but ignore being shot by the .38 calibers the Americans had been issued.

The guy recovered fast. He’d been running with a pistol in his hand but had landed awkwardly enough that he had to roll over to fire. He was just twisting to aim at Mercer when Mercer leapt at him, crashing his own gun down against the man’s temple. The first blow stunned him, but Mercer couldn’t take a chance and he slammed the butt into the thinnest part of the gunman’s skull a second time. He heard the bone break.

Mercer didn’t wait to see if the guy was dead; he knew he was. Nor did he bother looking for wherever the man’s gun went flying. He took off running again — but instead of trying to gain safety by gaining distance, Mercer reversed himself and went back toward where the seaplane had landed.

When he was close enough to see the landing spot, he peered out at the ungainly plane resting in the water just offshore, its nose already tied off to a large stake driven into the sand. The pilot and copilot were taking a moment to look over the wings and tail, while on the beach three men in baggy khaki pants and dark T-shirts huddled over a fourth man kneeling on the beach. He was bent over a piece of electronics, and Mercer saw his odds of success plummet.

They had some sort of detection gear. Mercer was almost certain it was a device that sent out radio or microwave bursts and measured for unnatural distortion fields in its proximity. The greater the warp in the field, the closer the gems.

Mercer turned back once again and began running for the interior. There would be no clever ruses or artful dodges. He needed distance from them, and he needed it fast. Sweat ran down his naked torso in rivulets that mixed with blood from where saber-like leaves had slashed at him. There were no large native animals on the island to carve game trails, so Mercer had to move across the terrain, fighting it, while at the same time trying not to leave an obvious trail that a tracker could follow.

He came upon a stream that was still running with the remnants of the storm two days earlier. He palmed several quick mouthfuls of drinking water, and then walked carefully along its course so that he left no tracks. Mercer stayed with the stream for two miles, climbing into the interior of Alofi Island, unconsciously seeking high ground. When the watercourse dried up, he moved back into the dense foliage. He decided not to hide the stones just yet, now that he had seen the electronic device being used by his opponents. Mercer knew his best chance was to keep on the move, maintaining enough separation that their detection gear wouldn’t home in on the crystals.

The day stretched on and Mercer kept at it, staying in motion in the thick underbrush for six hours. Dusk was still several hours away, so he couldn’t let his guard down, but he’d done as well as could be expected. He hadn’t seen or heard any sign of the men chasing him. However, he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and his shoulders ached from lugging the bag. He was also severely dehydrated.

Mercer knew he couldn’t keep moving much longer, and once he stopped the crystals would act as a homing beacon. He would have to ditch the stones now. During one of his earlier loops around the central hills, he’d spotted the old volcanic vent on a hillock near a ravine. The vent wasn’t very deep, about five feet before its passage was blocked by a plug of solidified lava, but he hoped it would help shield the crystals a little. He spent another twenty minutes backtracking to the vent, then jammed the bag into the fissure and began packing loose rocks around it.

Mercer finished piling rubble into the hole and stood. It was an enormous relief to have the weight off his shoulders, and as much as he wanted to take a few seconds to rest, he didn’t dare.

“I think we’ve played this game long enough.”

Mercer heard the voice and froze. He recognized the accent as South African, from his many times in that country, but he couldn’t see the man. He kept his pistol low and out of sight, turning in place to watch all approaches.

“You’re quite the pain in my ass.”

“I aim to please,” Mercer replied, still not sure where the man was. Not that it mattered — the South African’s support team would be surrounding him soon while he kept their quarry busy.

“Not so much anymore, eh, tough guy? I hope you realize we’ve been down on the beach the whole time watching you on our detector. We just don’t know what happened to the man we dropped off to watch your operation.”

“I bashed his head in,” Mercer said.

The man chuckled coldly. “No matter. I put this team together on the fly. I knew none of them.”

“They’re a bunch of amateurs.”

“That’s true. Hell, I think this would have all turned out a lot different if the greenhorn you killed in that old woman’s house hadn’t gotten jumpy back there in the mine and started firing. He left me no choice but to finish them all off.”

Mercer’s hand tightened on the pistol held down by his thigh. The man spoke so casually about Abe’s slaughter.

“I’ve had a bellyful of killing, Yank. I told my boss that there would be no need for violence on this operation. I told him that after it was over, I was done.”

“After what is over?” asked Mercer, partially to keep the man talking, but also to get some clarity on what this whole nightmare was about. “What’s so important about a handful of crystals?”

The man in the bush chuckled again. “You won’t live to see it, mate. This is space-aged…beyond our pay scales. They say these stones are going to help beam energy into the sky, and play with the temperature on Earth. It’s big business — billions. Nothing that concerns you and me.”

Mercer tried to comprehend what he had just heard. How was that possible?

“Now toss away the Glock I see in your hand, or I drop you where you stand,” the man said, stepping from behind a flowering bush.

Mercer looked up and was again struck by the familiarity of the man’s silhouette and the way he carried himself. Then the South African took another step closer, and a beam of sunlight penetrating through the canopy of trees shone across his face. Mercer gaped. Now he knew why the man was so memorable. He knew him. Had known him. In another time and at another place.

The port-wine birthmark had once taken up half the man’s left cheek, but a bullet scar puckered and contorted the blemish and twisted his mouth so that the lower lip hung slack. That deformity forced the man to slurp back saliva that tried to dribble through his seemingly lifeless mouth.

Mercer knew he’d gone pale, and the man’s eyes narrowed. The killer must have assumed it was revulsion at his hideous disfigurement; he was probably accustomed to seeing that reaction.

The mercenary raised an American-made M-4 assault rifle to his shoulder and snapped angrily, “Lose the Glock or you die now.”

In his shock Mercer had forgotten the earlier order. He dropped the pistol to the ground. It was useless now anyway. He had one advantage, and he had to use it now before the merc’s backup got into position.

“Who was the other white man with you?” Mercer asked.

“What? What other white man? All the guys with me are white.”

“Not here. I’m talking twenty years ago — when we were in Cameroon, and you and a small force attacked my camp. It was the day I used your birthmark for target practice.”

Niklaas Coetzer’s face went through a gamut of expressions — confusion, shock, anger, regret, hatred, pain, loneliness. It was the playback of a lifetime of woe brought about by the one defining moment in his past. The disfigurement and poor medical care had changed the trajectory of his life. Prior to that fateful shot he had fought on the side of the righteous, working for clients he could believe in. After that there was little meaning in his life. Children ran in horror from his gaze, and Coetzer only knew love when he paid for it in cash. He was cast adrift by his ruined face and soon found himself uncaringly working for some of the worst monsters in the world.

That shot had wrecked his life. Rarely had a day passed that he hadn’t wished the round had killed him, or that he’d get a chance to kill the man who’d cursed him.

Coetzer’s brain returned from that fate-filled moment in the African jungle, only to realize that his quarry was in motion, backpedaling quickly for the ravine behind him. His men had express orders not to fire until Coetzer gave the command, so none of the men around him were reacting to Mercer’s escape. It took Coetzer another second to process this fact, too.

Mercer spun and launched himself off the ravine’s edge. The slope was gentle, but the ground was rocky and he hit hard, rolling over his right shoulder, trying and failing to gain his feet as he continued to tumble out of control.

“Fire!”

He heard the shout behind him, but he was already out of the mercenaries’ sight, at least for a few seconds. And that’s all he’d really bought himself, seconds, because nothing was going to stop the South African from wanting to kill him now.

The shots came from across the ravine, a hundred yards away, and were fired with pinpoint accuracy. Two of the mercenary’s hired goons went down before the sound of the report reached them, and before the others realized that they were under attack. The leader recognized the danger and threw himself flat with his two remaining hired guns.

This was all happening behind and above Mercer, but he could see ahead where the sniper was holed up in the crook of a tree, the boxy Kriss submachine gun tucked hard against his meaty shoulder. He reached the bottom of the ravine and staggered to his feet. Meanwhile, on the opposite rim, Booker Sykes watched the area where the confrontation had taken place through a five-power scope.

The mercenaries stayed well hidden but quickly managed to get off volleys of return fire. Three guns on full auto forced Book to relinquish his post. He jumped down off the tree and retreated back into the jungle. Mercer ran as hard as he could, his body aching from so much abuse. Behind him, the remaining shooters maintained their positions; they had gone from offense to defense in the blink of an eye and now had to protect the bag of crystals since it, and not the men who’d found it, was their ultimate goal.

Book slowed his retreat enough for Mercer to catch up. As soon as they were side by side, Booker picked up the pace again.

“ ’Bout damned time,” Mercer wheezed.

“That’s the thanks I get?”

“I circled back half a dozen times to the volcanic vent you told me about from your night of recon, waiting for you to get into position.”

“Don’t know if you noticed, but they blew up the damned boat about three miles off the coast.”

“There was that,” Mercer conceded. “You two okay?”

“Reyes is seriously pissed but unhurt. In the time between the grenade going off and the diesel exploding, I gathered my gear and a spare scuba rig and got us over the side. It took us this long to swim in without being detected, and to get to a place where I could surveil the vent.”

“Did you place the electronic tracker?”

“Planted that first thing when we reached shore. I stuck it under the old Catalina’s outer pontoon. Pilots were asleep, while the armed rabble were watching something on an electronic display on the beach.”

“Yes…they were tracking me the whole time,” Mercer said angrily.

Mercer was actually thankful. Their Plan B had been a hairy idea…but necessary. He knew there was a distinct chance his enemies would recognize the flaw in Jason Rutland’s deception. They had good scientists backing their efforts, and he and Booker had to prepare for the possibility they would recalculate Fred Noonan’s navigation error and arrive at the crash site very quickly.

Thirty minutes later, Mercer and Sykes were approaching the north coast of Alofi, almost directly opposite of where Mercer had first landed. Without warning, a thundering sound filled the jungle, and they ducked their heads as the silver PBY rumbled over the island, low enough to whip the topmost branches but gaining altitude as it flew away.

“Wasn’t sure if they were going to leave,” Mercer said.

“Why wouldn’t they? They got what they came for.”

“They did…but they didn’t get me.”

Book looked at Mercer quizzically.

“I didn’t tell you this,” Mercer said, “but the team leader is a South African mercenary.”

“Yeah, so. You know him?”

“Not his name,” Mercer admitted. “But I shot him in the face while I was in college, and I really, really think he wants me dead.”

Booker whistled. “For a rock jock, man, you sure get around. Talk to me.”

“First tell me that you managed to save your sat phone so we can get off this godforsaken rock.”

“I left it with Rory. We’ll have a charter plane here from Fiji by the time we find our way over to the airstrip on Futuna. And don’t worry, no swimming. We found a boat we can borrow. Now…tell me how a college puke ends up shooting some badass South African operator?”

Mercer nodded. “First let me tell you about the teacher who invited me on an expedition…”