Vulcan's Forge

Arlington, Virginia

The insistent ringing of the phone dragged Mercer from a deep, deathlike sleep. His hand groped across the nightstand, knocking the Tiffany clock to the floor, then found the phone and swung the receiver to his head.

“H’lo.” His tongue was cemented to the roof of his mouth with congealed saliva.

“Mercer, Dick Henna.”

Mercer came a little more awake, opening his eyes. He was startled to see that night had descended — the twin skylights above his bed were black rectangles in the ceiling. He glanced across his balconied bedroom and saw that his whole house was dark. Tish, too, must have gone to sleep.

“Yes, Mr. Henna, what’s up?” Mercer ran his tongue around his mouth and grimaced at the taste.

“The President accepted your proposal and, believe it or not, Paul Barnes from the CIA backed you up.”

“That’s surprising. I got the impression I was at the bottom of his Christmas card list.”

“Kind of surprised me, too, but when it comes to the job, Barnes puts his personal feelings second. The commando assault that the President ordered will be postponed for at least twelve hours.”

“So what happens now?” Mercer realized that his body was bathed in sweat. His sheets were a damp tangle around his legs.

“A jet will be ready for you at Andrews Air Force Base in about an hour and a half. You should be aboard the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk by five tomorrow morning.”

Mercer glanced at his scarred and scratched Tag Heuer chronometer. 9:15.

“Okay, I’ll be at Andrews in about an hour.” Mercer swung his legs off the bed, the cool air evaporating the sweat, making the dark, coarse hair on his chest and legs tingle.

“I’ll meet you at the main gate with the recon photos you requested.”

“Thanks, Dick.” Mercer used the director’s given name for the first time.

He cut the connection and dialed Harry White’s number. After twenty rings, he hung up and dialed Tiny’s. Tiny told him to hold for a second while Harry came back from the restroom.

“Harry, are you up for a little more babysitting?”

“That you, Mercer?”

“Yeah, Harry, can you come over and watch Tish again?”

“Why? What’s she doing?”

“Sleeping in the nude.”

“Yeah, I’d love to watch that,” Harry said with mock lasciviousness. “I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”

Mercer hung up, plucked the clock from the floor, and straightened the silver framed photograph of his mother that was the only other item on the nightstand. He flipped a bedside switch and light from three round Japanese lanterns bathed the room in a milky glow.

He stood up and moaned. The punishment his body had taken in the past few days was taking its toll. His shoulders were bruised a rich purple from his scrape against the metro train, and his feet and lower legs still stung from his leap into the Potomac. The cuts on his face had scabbed over, but they pulled every time Mercer moved his jaw. There was a livid red weal on his calf where the bullet had grazed him in New York.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered as he headed for the bathroom.

He took a steaming shower, popped a handful of Tylenol, and dressed quickly in baggy black pants and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. His socks and desert boots were also black. Feeling slightly more refreshed but by no means normal, he spun down the old rectory spiral stairs to the ground floor, his feet gliding over the steps.

Because his cooking skills fell far short of gourmet, his kitchen cabinets were nearly barren. It took him ten frustrating minutes to make a mangled, runny omelet using his last three eggs, a slice of American cheese, a couple of cocktail onions pilfered from the bar and half a can of tuna fish.

He carried the plate of food into his office, letting his hand brush against the large bluish stone on the credenza near the door as he entered. Setting the plate on his desk, he turned on the green shaded lamp. With a huge chunk of omelet stuffed in his mouth he took a key from under a reference volume of mineralogy in the shelf behind his desk.

The key slid into the oiled lock of the closet adjacent to the office’s entrance and the oak doors opened smoothly. In the closet were a fire retardant safe, a twisted and blackened piece of duraluminum that had once been a support girder in the airship Hindenburg, and a multidrawer cabinet which housed over a hundred valuable geologic samples he had collected through the years. On the floor of the closet sat an antique steamer trunk filled with souvenirs from his mission into Iraq.

Mercer dragged the heavy trunk out of the closet and propped open the lid. A Heckler and Koch MP-5A3 sat on top of the pile of equipment. The West German- manufactured machine pistol was a vicious weapon, capable of firing 9mm ammunition at over six hundred rounds per minute. Mercer lifted the nasty little gun and cleared the breach to ensure the action was still smooth, then set it aside and retrieved a Beretta automatic pistol. Since replacing the venerable Colt.45 as the primary sidearm of the U.S. Army, the Beretta had more than proved its worth in combat conditions. The pistol was in pristine condition like the H&K.

The next item Mercer pulled from the trunk was the heaviest by far — a nylon combat harness, a thick belt supported by suspender straps. The holster for the Beretta was attached to the suspenders so it would rest under his left shoulder for a quick draw, and several nylon pouches full of clips for the machine pistol hung from the belt. A six-inch-long Gerber knife hung inverted from the suspenders. The final touches were a basic first aid kit and field compass in a slim padded case.

Mercer slid the Beretta into its holster and stuffed the combat rig into a light nylon duffel along with the machine pistol, then added a few other pieces of equipment. He zipped the bag, shoved the nearly empty trunk back into the closet, and locked the doors. He stashed the key back under the thick book and took one last weapon from his desk, first making sure it was loaded. Taking another big bite of his eggs, Mercer promised himself he’d never make another tuna omelet again.

“Mercer?” Tish called from the kitchen.

“I’m back here.”

Tish entered the study wearing one of Mercer’s Penn State sweatshirts. It came down to the midpoint of her smooth thighs and thrust up proudly over her unrestrained breasts. With her tousled hair and sleepy eyes, she looked vulnerable and incredibly sexy.

“That sweatshirt looks a hell of a lot better on you than it does on me,” Mercer remarked with a grin.

“Don’t even look at me; I’m a mess.” Tish ran a hand through her hair to get it away from her face. She noticed the duffel bag. “I heard you get up; what’s going on?”

“I’m leaving for a couple of days. I think I can finally put an end to everything and with a little luck bring back Valery Borodin for you.”

Tish’s eyes brightened. “I was thinking earlier and couldn’t believe how badly I want to see him again.”

“Give me a couple of days and he’s yours.” Mercer was genuinely happy for her. “Let’s go up to the bar; I need some of my famous coffee.”

“What’s that?” Tish asked as she turned to leave the study. Her gaze had fallen on the large stone near the door.

“My good luck piece,” Mercer remarked, caressing the rippled surface. “It’s a piece of kimberlite given to me by a director of DeBeers as thanks for saving his life after a cave-in in South Africa. Kimberlite is the most common type of matrix stone found in diamond mines.” He explained, “By itself it’s worthless, but nearly every diamond mined in the past hundred years has been found within a volcanic kimberlite pipe.”

Mercer didn’t tell her that this piece of kimberlite was far from worthless. Embedded in the underside of the stone was an approximately eight-carat diamond of startling blue-white color. Uncut, it was worth about a quarter of a million dollars, and if he ever had the stone finished, who could tell its value?

The door bells chimed, announcing Harry’s arrival, while Mercer was making coffee. Harry let himself in and entered the bar through the library. He needed the doorjamb for support.

“Where are you going, a costume party as a ninja?”

Mercer looked down at his black attire and shrugged. “Actually, the theme is your favorite environmental catastrophe. I’m an oil spill. What do you think?”

“I think you’re full of shit,” Harry replied, seating himself at the bar. The cigarette in his mouth jumped with each word.

“Hi, Harry.” Tish greeted the old man with a kiss on his gray stubbled cheek.

“You lied to me, Mercer. You said she’d be naked.” Tish didn’t understand the comment, but already knew Harry and Mercer well enough to not be offended. “Give me a drink, will ya.”

Mercer deftly poured Jack Daniel’s and ginger ale. “Actually, I’m going to put another pin in my map.” He jerked his thumb at the pin-studded map behind the bar.

“What color?”

“Clear,” Mercer replied.

Harry knew that the clear pin in Iraq had been some sort of covert government mission and that the one in Rwanda denoted a violent episode in his friend’s life. His whiskey-dulled eyes became a little sharper. “Where you heading?”

“I’m not supposed to tell you Hawaii,” Mercer smiled, “so I won’t.”

“So I guess the whole thing comes full circle,” Harry said softly, looking at Tish.

Mercer glanced at his watch and hoisted a nylon bag over his shoulder. “I’ve got to go. Give me your truck keys.”

Harry fished the keys to his battered Ford pickup from his pocket and tossed them to Mercer.

Mercer snatched them from the air. “I’ll be back in a few days; keep an eye on things.” He gave Tish a light kiss and told her, “You be good and don’t excite old Harry here.”

On his way out of the house, Mercer paused in the library and smiled wickedly at the stack of framed pictures on the floor. The top photo, an 8X10, showed Mercer and another man standing on the crawler track of a huge Caterpillar D-11N bulldozer. The handwritten caption read, “Mercer, you did it again; this time I really owe you one.” It was signed Daniel Tanaka. The logo stenciled on the engine cowling of the 107-ton dozer was the stylized hard hat and dragline of Ohnishi Minerals.

“Debt paid, Danny boy.”

In the black night, the sentry post at Andrews Air Force Base in Morningside, Maryland, looked like a highway toll booth. Several small glass buildings supported a metal roof that stretched across the entire road and bathed it in fluorescent lights. Mercer brought Harry’s pickup to a stop, the ancient brakes squealing like nails drawn across a blackboard. The guard, an African-American barely out of his teens, regarded the decrepit truck with suspicion until Dick Henna, standing behind him, placed a hand on his shoulder. Through the open window of the truck, Mercer heard Henna reassure the young corporal.

Henna exited the small armored-glass guardhouse, walked to the passenger side of the pickup, opened the door, and slid in without comment. Mercer started rolling forward.

“I know that until recently you drove a Jaguar convertible,” Henna said at length, his voice nearly drowned by the blasting exhaust. “I expected your second car to be a little better than this.”

Mercer coughed as the Ford backfired and an acrid cloud of exhaust was blown into the truck’s cab. He grinned. “Something old, something new. .”

“Something borrowed, something blue,” Henna finished the rhyme. “Got ya.”

“But I think, under all the rust, this truck is brown. I’m not sure.” Mercer looked at the large manila envelope in Henna’s hand. “Is that for me?”

“Yes.” Henna set it on the seat between them. “Two of the infrared photos from the spy plane, and contractor’s drawings of the homes of Takahiro Ohnishi and his assistant Kenji. What the hell do you want this stuff for? You know you’re only going as an advisor and observer.”

“Absolutely,” Mercer agreed quickly. “But when the assault occurs, I need some material to advise with, right?”

“Turn left here,” Henna directed as they drove further into the sprawling complex. “You’re one of the most ingenious men I’ve ever met, Mercer, but I’ve yet to figure out how you’re going to get off the Inchon and onto Hawaii.”

Mercer looked at him with mock astonishment, his face the picture of cherubic innocence. “Perish the thought, a cruise on an assault ship has always been a dream of mine. I have no intention of leaving the watchful eye of the navy. Seriously, Dick, you need someone out there who knows the whole situation and also understands something about bikinium. I don’t think Abe Jacobs is up to it. Besides, I found out about this whole mess and I just want to see it finished.”

Henna did not respond.

“Are you buying any of this?”

“No, I’m not.” Henna grunted.

“Good, because that’s about the worst line of bull I’ve ever thrown.” Mercer looked at Henna, the streetlights casting his face in either blinding light or impenetrable shadow. “If you know I’m planning to get off the Inchon as soon as I can and get to the islands, why are you letting me go?”

“Simple, I know you’ve withheld information from me.” There was no anger in Henna’s voice. “And that information is the key to ending this whole affair. You’re the only person who knows what the hell is going on and suicidal enough to try and stop it.”

“I appreciate your honesty and confidence,” replied Mercer sardonically. “But dying isn’t on my agenda of things to do and see on my Hawaiian vacation.”

“Turn left.”

Mercer swung the pickup and drove parallel to one of the base’s steel-reinforced concrete runways. The blue lights which bordered the tarmac flashed by in a solid blur. In the distance, a jet roared off into the night.

They approached several massive hangars, the powerful lights around the buildings reflecting against their corrugated metal sides. Men in blue overalls walked purposely in and around the hangars, carrying tools, binders, and other paraphernalia.

“Swing into the first hangar,” Henna directed.

Mercer slowed, passing several mobile generators used to jump-start the jet fighters. He pulled the truck into the hangar and stopped in a spot indicated by a grizzled chief master sergeant. The hash marks on his uniform sleeve, denoting years in the service, ran from his wrist to his shoulder.

Henna shook the chief’s hand. “Everything all set?”

“Yes, sir.” The chief said “sir” the way most men say “impotent”—either not at all or never above a bare whisper. “There’s an extra flight suit in the office and a KC-135 stratotanker’s ready to take off in Omaha. Another is standing by near San Francisco. Why the air force is paying for the transfer of a civilian in a navy aircraft I’ll never know.”

Mercer had seen the jet when he first drove into the hangar, but now took a moment to study his ride to the Pacific. The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet rested lightly on her landing gear as if ready to pounce. She was like a leopard seated on its haunches, immeasurable power coiled up like a spring. The hard points under her razor-edged wings were bare of weapons, though two drop tanks clung there like fat leeches. Mercer took in her clean lines, the sharp needle nose, the twin outward-canted tails, the six stubby barrels of her General Electric gatling gun tucked under the canopy. She had two seats, which meant she was a training version.

“Ever been in a fighter before?” the chief asked with a patronizing smile.

“No,” replied Mercer.

“Oh, Bubba’s going to love you.”

Mercer looked down at the chief. He was a good foot taller than the air force man, but the chief’s wide shoulders and hard, thick gut made them appear physically equal. “Bubba?”

“Howdy,” said a voice that came straight from a dirt farm in southern Georgia.

Mercer whirled around. The speaker stood near an office tucked against one wall of the cavernous hangar. The man’s high-tech flight suit bulged where pads and air bladders would squeeze his body to keep him from passing out in the High-g world of the modern dog fighter. The pilot had a baby face and thin, mangled hair, and when he smiled, Mercer could see that a front tooth was missing. The helmet in his hand had “Bubba” stenciled between stripes of red, white, and blue.

The man looked nothing like Mercer’s mental picture of the pilot.

“Billy Ray Young.” The pilot extended a bony hand. “Jist call me Bubba.” He grinned around the plug of tobacco firmly held in one cheek.

“Mercer.” They shook hands. Henna couldn’t help but chuckle at the pallor that had crept into Mercer’s face.

“Kinda glad to have me some company on the flight,” Bubba said. “I been to the stockade fer a spell and didn’t talk to many folks there.”

Mercer looked over at Henna. The FBI director said nothing, but his eyes sparkled with amusement.

“Come with me — ay’ll git ya geared up.”

Mercer followed the pilot to the office. Billy Ray kept up a solid monologue about his term in the stockade for flying his Hornet under the Golden Gate Bridge. His accent was so thick that Mercer understood maybe a third of the pilot’s speech. Billy Ray showed Mercer how to fit into the constricting flight suit and cinch up the various harnesses. Mercer felt like the Michelin Man strapping on a girdle.

Back out in the hangar, Dick Henna hefted Mercer’s nylon duffel bag. “Bit heavy for a change of underwear.”

“My toilet case is lead lined.” Mercer grabbed the bag from him.

A mechanic took the duffel from Mercer and stored it in the area meant for the 1,350 rounds of 30mm gatling gun ammunition. He closed the hatch to the ammo bay and secured it with a special screwdriver, patting the fuselage affectionately before walking away.

“Giddyup there, Mr. Mercer, we’s got a schedule to keep.” Billy Ray Young was already in the Hornet’s front seat.

“Mercer, don’t worry about him,” Henna said. “He’s one of the best pilots in the navy. His record during the Gulf War was unparalleled.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Mercer asked.

“No, not really.” Henna smiled and extended his right hand. “Once you get to the carrier, a helicopter will transfer you to the Inchon. I’ll get in touch with you there. Good luck.”

“Thanks, Dick.” Mercer walked over to the aircraft and mounted the metal steps to the cockpit.

The chief personally strapped Mercer into the ejector seat, briefly outlining the fifty things Mercer shouldn’t do or touch while in the aircraft.

“Any parting thoughts, Chief?”

“Yeah, you puke in here and I’ll have the deck officer on the Kitty Hawk make you clean it up.” The chief slapped Mercer on the top of the helmet and scrambled down the mobile ladder.

“Y’awl set?” Billy Ray asked over the intercom.

“Let’s do it, Bubba,” Mercer said tiredly. Suddenly the five hours of sleep he had gotten earlier didn’t seem like enough, but he doubted he would sleep much on this flight.

Billy Ray closed the canopy and fired up the two GE F404 turbofans. The sixteen-thousand-pound thrust engines sounded like banshees as he brought them to full power for an instant and then throttled them back again.

A tow tractor came out of the night’s gloom and a lineman attached the tow bar to the front landing gear. With a slight jerk, the tractor edged the Hornet out onto the base’s apron. Over the helmet intercom, Mercer listened to the chatter between the tower and several aircraft in the area. When Billy Ray finally spoke to ground traffic control, his accent nearly vanished. His voice was crisp and professional and Mercer began to feel a little better about the flight and the pilot.

“You barf easy on carnival rides, Mr. Mercer?” But not much better.

“Don’t worry about me, Bubba.”

The tractor stopped just short of the runway and the driver leapt from the vehicle and unhooked the tow bar. Billy Ray eased open the throttles and the twenty-five-ton aircraft began to judder under the massive power of her own engines. They taxied to the end of the runway and paused, waiting for clearance from the tower. The runway was a two-mile-long ribbon racing off into the night, edged by blue lights which seemed to converge at the distant horizon.

When they got clearance, Billy Ray let out an earsplitting rebel yell and jammed the twin throttles to their stops, simultaneously engaging the afterburners.

Thirty-foot cones of blue-white flame knifed from the two turbofans as raw fuel was dumped into their exhaust. The Hornet reared back on her pneumatic landing gear as she started to rocket down the runway. Mercer was forced back into his seat as the aircraft accelerated.

At two hundred knots, Billy Ray yanked back on the stick and the plane arrowed into the black sky. Mercer’s pressure suit automatically squeezed his chest, ensuring that blood didn’t drain from his head and cause a blackout. He held onto the seat arms as he watched the altimeter needle wind around like a hyperactive clock.

Billy Ray didn’t level out until they reached thirty-two thousand feet, and it took several minutes for Mercer’s stomach to catch up to the hurtling Hornet. Sixty seconds later there was a jarring explosion and the thunderous roar of the engines died abruptly. Mercer thought for sure that Billy Ray had torn the guts out of her but then realized they had just broken the sound barrier.

“What ya think of her?” Billy Ray asked in the eerie silence.

“I can’t wait until United uses these for their shuttle service,” Mercer retorted. “Does she have a name?”

“Sure does,” Billy Ray said with pride. “Mabel.”

“Your mother?”

“No, my pappy’s prize heifer,” the pilot replied matter-of-factly.

Mercer slumped into his seat as much as he could and rested his head against the canopy. He closed his eyes for a moment and realized that sleeping would be a lot easier than he had first imagined. The only irritation was Billy Ray’s off-key humming of “Dixie.”

He was jolted awake once during the trip between Washington and the West Coast. That waking was the worst moment of sheer terror he had ever experienced. It was still dark outside and he could clearly make out the running lights of another aircraft that was so close he couldn’t see the tips of its wings. Billy Ray seemed bent on ramming it. They were at subsonic speed, but the other plane was rapidly filling the Hornet’s canopy. Mercer braced himself for the impending collision, but Billy Ray tucked his F-18 under the other lumbering plane with maybe twenty-five feet to spare.

Rapt, Mercer watched in fascination as a spectral boom came out of the murky night and into the halo of light around the fighter. Only when the boom attached itself to the tube just forward and right of the Hornet’s cockpit did he realize that the fighter was being refueled in flight. It took several minutes for the KC-135 tanker to fill the F-18’s tanks. As the hose retracted toward the tanker, residual drops of fuel froze in the rarefied atmosphere and flashed past the cockpit like tracer fire.

“Thanks for the nipple; this baby was hungry,” Billy Ray said to the crew of the stratotanker.

He waggled the wings of the nimble fighter, dipped below the slow-moving KC-135, and eased the throttles forward. An instant later, the tanker was miles behind them and the Hornet was approaching the speed of sound. Once the F-18 began flying faster than the roar of her engines and again the cockpit was silent, Mercer rested his head against the Plexiglas canopy. It took another few minutes for his heart to slow enough for him to fall asleep.