Vulcan's Forge

USS Inchon

Mercer thanked the radio operator politely after hanging up on Henna and left the cryptlike Communications Room. His expression was neutral, and only a trained observer would notice the slight tenseness in his stride. His gray eyes were hard, devoid of emotion.

A woman he had dated several years earlier had said, the day their relationship ended, that the only way to tell what he was thinking was to ask him. His expressions, she complained, would never give him away, and his eyes, which are supposed to be windows into the soul, were really one-way glass that only he could see through.

He had scoffed at the notion, but any navy personnel that he passed would have agreed with her.

Because he had been sent to the Inchon for an undetermined number of days, Mercer had been assigned a cabin. It had the luxurious appointments of a cheap highway motel, but it was his own. He locked the door and stripped. After a cold shower to help wake him up, he dressed again, secreting equipment brought from his home.

When he was dressed, he did some quick shadowboxing to ensure that nothing would fly free and that his equipment was unconstricting. His moves were fast and efficient, his mind focused to a pinpoint. Satisfied, he took several deep, calming breaths. He tucked his Beretta pistol into the waistband of his pants, the tails of his black shirt over it. Grabbing the nylon duffel containing his combat harness and machine pistol, he left the small cabin.

He passed a few dozen of the nineteen hundred marines on board as he headed for the flight deck. He could tell by their grim faces that the men didn’t relish the idea of invading their own country.

Neither do I, he thought.

The flight deck of the amphibious assault ship was nearly three hundred feet shorter than the Kitty Hawk’s, but equally as pandemonious. An AV-8B Harrier jump jet thundered into the sky just as he walked onto the deck. Thanks to her ducted fans, the attack aircraft utilized only a tiny portion of the deck to achieve flight. The wind kicked up by her Rolls Royce Pegasus engines whipped the air furiously, sending grit into Mercer’s eyes.

Several Sea Stallion and Sea King helicopters sat on the deck, their huge rotors hanging limply. Mechanics and other personnel were buzzing around, dodging small vehicles and each other in preparation for a possible battle. It was obvious that the President hadn’t ordered the standdown yet. Mercer guessed that the commander-in-chief would wait until the last moment.

He shielded his eyes against the thirty-knot wind and surveyed the twilit deck until he saw the helicopter that had brought him from the Kitty Hawk early that morning.

A Sikorsky Sea King. Lieutenant Edward Rice, USMC, pilot.

The huge chopper sat just forward of the ship’s superstructure. Mercer could see movement in the cockpit.

Eddie Rice had told him on the flight from the carrier that he would be ferrying some equipment back to the Kitty Hawk just after sunset. Mercer was thankful that Henna had called before the chopper returned to its ship. The hijacking would be a little easier since he knew the pilot.

No sense ruining a stranger’s day, thought Mercer as he walked to the big helicopter. He approached the chopper from the port side and noticed with satisfaction that the crew door was open. He pulled the Beretta 9mm from under his shirt and threw his duffel bag onto the small platform below the chopper’s flight deck.

He kept the gun hidden when he poked his head into the cockpit.

“Come to see me off, Mercer?” Eddie Rice smiled.

Without a doubt, he had the worst teeth for a black man that Mercer had ever seen. So much for stereotypes, he thought.

“I loved your flying so much, the navy decided I should go back with you,” Mercer replied.

“They sent you to the Inchon just to bring you back to the Kitty Hawk?” Rice shook his head. “I’ve heard of the government paper shuffle, but this is nuts. Come on up; I’m just about cleared for takeoff.”

Mercer tucked the pistol away without ever displaying it and slipped into the empty copilot’s seat. As he had earlier that day, he felt like he was in a cocoon of dials and switches. He sat anxiously as Rice continued his preflight check. Waiting for the takeoff was agonizing and he kept glancing at his watch. He had eleven and a half hours until the nuclear strike.

“You got a date or something?” Rice asked, noting Mercer’s agitation.

“Something like that,” Mercer said grimly.

“Two more minutes and we’re out of here.” Rice tugged the microphone to his lips and began talking to the flight controller. A moment later, the two turboshaft engines began to whine. Needles on the instrument panel quivered and then started to climb as the General Electric motors warmed. Rice watched the instruments intently, his gaze darting from one gauge to the next.

When he engaged the gearbox, the engines’ whine dulled for a moment as they fought the inertia of the stationary rotors, then picked up as the five great blades began to turn. The noise in the cockpit increased dramatically, forcing Mercer to don a helmet. Eddie continued to add power and the blades beat the air fervently. He eased back on the collective pitch and the 20,000-pound helicopter lifted into the dim Pacific sky.

“Piece of cake.” Rice grinned as the Inchon vanished behind them. He turned to Mercer expecting a return smile, but was greeted by the gaping barrel of the Beretta. The grin melted from his face.

“Sorry, Eddie,” Mercer said, his voice sounding tinny through the chopper’s intercom. “But we’re not heading for the Kitty Hawk.”

“I guess we’re not.”

Mercer reversed his grip on the pistol and smashed it into the Sea King’s radio, cutting the chopper off from the outside, then turned the weapon back on Rice.

“Listen, I’m on a secret mission. Hijacking a helicopter at the last moment was the only way to maintain security.”

“Right,” Rice said suspiciously.

“You know why the navy moved these ships to Hawaii.” It was a statement, not a question. “You may be forced to invade your own country and kill your own people. Well, there’s a chance I can stop it. I have to get to Hawaii and you’re my best shot. It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not, but you are going to take me to Hawaii.”

“There’s no way you work for the CIA. The few agents I’ve known would’ve just pulled the gun and given the orders. They don’t like to explain shit. So who the hell are you?”

“I don’t work for the CIA, Eddie. I didn’t lie this morning when I told you I was a geologist, but I’m also the only guy who can pull this off.”

“You know there’s nothing I can do to you; I’ve got to keep both hands on the sticks to keep this eggbeater in the sky. So don’t you worry about me. But my passengers might not like a sightseeing tour.”

“Passengers? I thought you were carrying cargo.”

“When you see them, you’ll know why I call ’em cargo.”

Knowing Rice couldn’t leave his seat or contact any other aircraft or ship, Mercer ducked down until he could look into the cargo hold of the Sea King. There were five men in the 160-square-foot hold.

They were Navy SEALs, the best trained commandos in the American military, perhaps in the world. They sat in stony silence, oblivious to the noise of the chopper or the wind buffeting them from the open hatch. Like a computer that only works in a binary system of ones and zeros, the commander of the SEALs regarded Mercer as threat or nonthreat. His fathomless eyes were the bright blue of glacial ice. They held Mercer’s for the fraction of a second it took him to categorize Mercer as nonthreat and turned away indifferently.

Mercer had never felt such an aura of utter malignance in his life than that surrounding these men. Rice was right to call them cargo. To call them passengers would be admitting they retained a trace of humanity.

He went back up to the flight deck and took his seat, donning his headset.

“See what I mean?” Eddie grinned. “Me, I’ve got no problems with Hawaii, in fact I’d love a Mai Tai, just give me a target destination and I’ll get us there. Oh, you didn’t need to smash up our radio, you know.”

“Yeah, why’s that?”

Rice smiled crookedly. “The call I received about two minutes before you boarded. Seems my commander was contacted by the director of the FBI. Said he thought you’d pull a stunt like this and the SEALs would be a compromise between your plan and the President’s. Those SEALs back there are under orders to follow you. He told me they might come in handy tonight.”

Mercer laughed so hard his guts ached. “That son of a bitch,” he said admiringly. “No wonder he’s the director of the FBI. My first hijacking and the victims turn out to be willing accomplices. Sorry about pulling the gun on you.”

“Ain’t nothing. I was born in South Central. Wasn’t the first time it’s ever happened. Probably not the last, either.”

An hour and a half later, the Sea King blasted along the northern coasts of the Hawaiian islands, her watertight hull no more than fifty feet above the crashing surf, her sixty-five-foot rotor blades less than one hundred yards from the towering cliffs. Mercer had spent much of the flight in the cargo hold with the SEALs, poring over the plans to Kenji’s estate and forming a battle plan. By the time the Sea King cleared the coast, all of them were satisfied that the assault could be pulled off successfully.

Back in the cockpit, Mercer could see lights, the concentration on Rice’s face, but he also saw a slight trace of enjoyment too.

Maui and Molokai and the Big Island were behind them and now they skirted the northern coast of Oahu. Mercer thought about the dead whales found there only a month ago — the start of this whole chain reaction. Amazing how such an inane event sparked one of the greatest crises America might ever face.

“Do you have the coordinates?” Rice asked, his eyes never leaving the moon-bathed waves below.

Mercer read the coordinates of Kenji’s estate from the map provided by Dick Henna. Eddie Rice punched them into the navigational computer, waited as the machine processed them, then glanced at the readout. Banking the helicopter, he lifted her over the cliffs and headed inland. The moonlit scenery below them was a gray blur, the Sea King beating through the sky at nearly 140 knots, at times below tree top level.

Mercer trusted Rice’s flying implicitly. He had no choice.

They rocketed over mountains only to plunge down the other side, the helicopter never more than a hundred feet from the ground.

“Ever done flying like this before?” Mercer asked, trying to act casual though his knuckles were white as he gripped the seat.

“Sure,” Rice replied. “ ’Course that was in Iraq, where there weren’t as many mountains or trees or buildings to smear against.”

Mercer tightened his grip.

“You ever done anything like this before?” asked Rice.

“Sure,” Mercer mimicked Rice’s deep baritone. “ ’Course that was in Iraq, where there weren’t any wise-ass pilots.”

Rice laughed, then yanked the helicopter skyward to avoid a tall stand of trees thrusting up from the jungle.

As the terrain flattened out, Rice began to whistle. Mercer recognized the song as Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.” He knew exactly how Eddie felt.

“We’re about ten miles from your coordinates,” Rice announced a few minutes later.

“Okay, the target is a compound in the middle of an old pineapple plantation. There will be a clearing about two miles north. It used to be an equipment storage area when the plantation was operational. There’s an abandoned shed on its southern edge. We’ll land there.”

Rice didn’t reply. He was watching the ground below. The low jungle canopy retained a semblance of regimentation from when it had been planted fields. He slowed the chopper to thirty knots.

“There,” he said, spotting the clearing as he crabbed the helicopter to starboard.

Mercer saw the open ground a moment later, an area of about an acre; the abandoned metal building stood at its far end, the corrugated roof sagging in the middle.

“Ugly country in thirty seconds,” Mercer said into his microphone, informing the SEALs in the cargo hold.

Rice used the last scrap of jungle cover before bursting into the clearing. The rotors kicked up a cloud of fine dust, cutting visibility down to nothing. He landed the big chopper by feel alone, settling her as close to the building as possible. Had there been paint on the huge storage garage, the Teflon rotors would have scraped it off.

By the time Mercer jumped from the chopper, the SEALs had already secured the building and the surrounding area. There was no one else in the vicinity.

The air was hot and incredibly humid; Mercer’s clothing stuck to his body like a clammy film and the chirping of insects sounded unnaturally loud after his hours in the chopper. He buckled his combat harness around his lean waist, cinching the shoulder straps so they were snug but not binding. After pulling his MP-5 from the duffel, he threw the empty bag back into the chopper and turned to Rice.

“You know what to do?”

“I’ll wait here until you contact me.” Rice held up a miniature walkie-talkie given to him by one of the SEALs. “If I don’t hear anything by five a.m., I’m outta here.”

“Right.”

Mercer looked at his watch, 9:35. In nine and a half hours the President would unleash the nuclear warhead and destroy the volcano two hundred miles north. A few minutes after that, Hawaii would become an independent country.