Vulcan's Forge

Hawaii

Way Hue Dong was the head of Hydra Consolidated, the Korean consortium that had bought the volcano from Ivan Kerikov. His grandson, Chin-Huy, sat at Kenji’s desk smoking a fragrant Romeo y Julietta cigar. He was young, not much past twenty, but he possessed the eyes of an old man, eyes that had seen many things in the service of his family. When his grandfather had ordered him to lead the fifty-man contingent of troops to Hawaii, Chin-Huy had not questioned, merely obeyed.

His family had sent him and his older brothers to some of the most dangerous places on earth in search of profit. Whether it was poached ivory from war-torn Angola or stolen artifacts from the ravaged jungles of Central America, the younger members of the family had responded with vigor and initiative.

This mission, though potentially dangerous, had proved quite easy for young Chin. His local contact, Kenji, had done much of the work necessary to ensure that the family would not be bothered when they seized the volcano. Chin’s men held the airport under the auspices of Hawaii’s more fervent national guardsmen and few had had to be used at Pearl Harbor to incite the assembled students to open fire at the military compound. The only difficulties had been at Ohnishi’s house, where more than twenty of his men had been cut down by a failed commando strike, presumably American.

All in all, Chin’s role had been minor. All that remained now was confirmation from the mining ship en route to the volcano that its target was in sight. That would not take place for another ten hours or so. Once his family had possession of the volcano, Chin would recall his troops, making sure that their withdrawal would bring a swift end to the state’s unrest. The violence now gripping Hawaii served only a limited purpose. Once the volcano was secure, it was best that the islands quieted.

“Your rewards will be great, Kenji. What do you plan to do with them?”

Kenji did not like the young man sitting languidly in his chair. Chin was brash, uncouth, and obnoxious.

“Do not speak too quickly; everything is yet to be settled.”

“That commando team fell for your ruse perfectly — they attacked the wrong house, just as you planned.” Chin waved his cigar in a dismissive gesture. “The volcano is within our grasp, surely you no longer worry.”

“Ivan Kerikov believed that the volcano was within his grasp and Takahiro Ohnishi believed that Hawaii was within his, too. Both men were wrong. I will not believe that we are successful until the mining vessel anchors at the volcano site.”

“Ach,” Chin said, then launched into another story of his own bravery in the face of adversity.

He had told Kenji nearly a dozen such stories earlier in the afternoon, before Kenji had set out to murder Ohnishi. Chin’s tales of bravado had a whining tone to them, as if daring Kenji to doubt them. Since Chin had not volunteered to lead his troops in the assault on Ohnishi’s mansion, Kenji needed no proof of the boy’s true character. Kenji had grown weary of the stories and the boy, yet listened as if rapt. It was expected of him.

Chin summed up, “If I could survive that and still keep the diamonds with me the whole time, surely I will get us out of this.”

Kenji tightened his fists at his sides. He could disembowel Chin with his bare hands without raising a sweat and the idea was a pleasurable one, but he had to maintain his composure. His grandfather held Kenji’s fate after he escaped Hawaii and he wouldn’t jeopardize that for the mere pleasure of killing the boy.

“All operations are different, surely you know this. Because you survived many in the past does not mean you are protected in the present.”

Though not chastened by Kenji’s comment, Chin remained silent.

Kenji was content to lean against the paneled wall of his study, arms now crossed over his chest, watching Chin smoke his cigar. His years of training had taught Kenji to remain impassive no matter what the situation around him. The tension within him would make a weaker man pace, but Kenji simply stood, quiet and dangerous.

“What of the woman,” Chin said, breaking the minutes long silence, “the reporter you have in the gardener’s shed?”

“What about her?”

“She has refused to help us; surely it is time for her to die.”

“Yes, maybe it is,” Kenji said sadly.

“I will do it,” Chin volunteered. “I want her first.”

“Take her,” Kenji replied casually, masking a sense of hurt.

At first, Kenji had entertained thoughts of taking Jill Tzu with him. There was something in the defiant beauty of the woman that made Kenji want to dominate her. Maybe it was because she knew of his Korean birth? He knew that she would never willingly be with him. Of course she could be drugged, like that American woman he’d rescued a week ago.

But Kenji knew that that was not a solution. Jill had to be eliminated, yet he had not been able to bring himself to do it. Chin’s lurid request was the perfect opportunity. Jill would die, but her blood would not be on his hands.

Chin pulled his small feet from the desk and slammed them against the carpeted floor. Kenji expected him to skip from the room like a spoiled child granted his favorite wish. Instead, Chin swaggered out, eyeing Kenji in an adolescent attempt at domination.

Jill wasn’t sure, but it felt as if night had descended once again, making this the fifth she’d spent locked up inside the maintenance shed. She could hear the incessant buzz of insects if she pressed her ear against the tiny crack under the door. The slit was too narrow for her to look through, not that it really mattered to her anymore. What was another night after all?

She’d entertained the thought of marking the floor by scratching the concrete with a sharp pebble to track the passage of time, but decided that it wouldn’t do her any good. She knew she’d be dead before there were even a few gouges. She’d asked herself over and over why she was willing to be killed rather than report the propaganda Kenji had presented her with. Was her journalistic integrity worth more than her life? Were her priorities that messed up?

No, she decided. She could have done it, spouted off whatever he told her. She could have guaranteed her survival, but afterward, her life wouldn’t really be worth living. Not because she would have helped that monster Kenji and not because she would have deceived the public. She would have disappointed herself and that was something she just couldn’t do.

All her life she had faced the world according to her personal set of standards and not once had she ever broken her own rules. If she had, she would have been lying to herself. Jill remembered doing a report once on heroin use among teens in Honolulu. One junkie, a sixteen-year-old girl who supported her habit by hooking, refused to admit she was addicted to drugs. She accused Jill of faking a photograph of her shooting up behind a sleazy hotel. The girl had lied to herself so much that she couldn’t even acknowledge the physical evidence of her problem. She’d told Jill that the needle tracks on her arms were tattoos.

Jill was afraid that if she broke her personal code, she would end up as self-delusioned as that junkie. Helping Kenji, even in an oblique way, would be a violation of that code. She couldn’t do it, wouldn’t do it, and would die for it.

Her mind had sharpened during the solitude of the past few days, driven by the same instincts which had kept man’s ancient ancestors alive on the plains of prehistoric Africa. Like any animal, the human being can sense danger long before the threat is seen or heard. Jill knew that there was a new danger around her; she could feel a malignancy in the air as surely as if it were a physical sensation.

She had first noticed it about an hour earlier, primarily as a tightening of the atmosphere, an almost electric sensation. Soon she noted more tangible evidence of a change.

There was an audible increase in the numbers of guards pacing around Kenji’s estate, more pairs of footfalls on the raked gravel walk next to the shed that was her prison. These new guards walked with a tighter cadence, more vigilant than Kenji’s usual security. But in the past half hour or so, she had heard fewer and fewer people walking around, as if the new guards were vanishing into the night. She heard them walk past the building as if headed for the jungle’s edge, but they never returned.

Now she heard new footsteps; there was an urgency in the strides. Jill knew instinctively where this man was headed.

The footsteps stopped outside the door and she heard keys jingling as merrily as a Christmas chime. The man thrust a key into the lock, turned it violently, and threw open the door. Jill had gotten to her feet and backed as far away from the door as possible.

The intruder was young, no more than a boy, but he carried himself with the negligent attitude of a world weary soldier, cocky eyes and a leering slit of a mouth. There was a pistol in a holster hanging from one bony hip.

He will rape me and then kill me, she thought as if reporting an incident that happened to someone else. I will be dead soon.

Chin-Huy approached, his small hands flexing in nervous anticipation. His eyes were dark spots on his face, like those drawn by a cartoonist. In them, she saw no depth. He drew closer, massaging his crotch languidly, his leer deepening by the moment.

Jill’s attacker was small, no more than fifteen or twenty pounds heavier than she. She might have a chance fighting him off, if only he left his pistol in its holster. Incredulous, she watched as he undid the web belt and let it fall to the floor, the pistol landing heavily against the concrete.

The door was open behind him, beckoning her into the warm embrace of the night. Maybe she could duck past him before he could retrieve his weapon. Jill’s eyes shifted past his shoulder to look at the rectangle of open country beyond her prison, and in that split second, Chin-Huy covered the last few feet between them. He struck her with a vicious roadhouse punch that drove her to the floor as if she’d been hit by a baseball bat.

Her connection to consciousness was just a thin strand. A quick hand darted out and kneaded one of her breasts painfully.

This is not happening to me, Jill thought. This is not me that’s being touched.

Chin-Huy twisted her nipple viciously and she gasped, the pain bringing her back from the dark realm that draped her mind. She looked up into his face. His teeth were crooked and stained, his breath on her skin was hot and fast. His eyes had narrowed to pinpoints and lust had suffused his face with dark blood.

In the millisecond it took her to blink away some of the tears flooding her eyes, an arm had whipped around his neck and yanked him up, off his feet.

By the time Chin sensed something was wrong, his windpipe had nearly been crushed. He tried to whirl around and break the grip, but the arm clung as tenaciously as a remora. His body began to jerk and twitch as if controlled by a manic puppeteer. He slammed back with one elbow, but the blow lacked power and the man killing him didn’t so much as grunt. The arm tightened even more, completely cutting off his air. Chin-Huy’s tongue snaked from between his lips, tearing against his teeth so that his saliva was stained pink. With one final tug, Chin’s neck snapped with a nauseating crackle.

Jill watched the man fall. Then her eyes scanned upward along the legs that stood behind the body of her would-be rapist. When she reached the face of the man who saved her life, she was greeted by a lazy smile and a pair of the most charming gray eyes she had ever seen.

“If he’s my only competition for your affection, I bet you’re free for dinner tomorrow night.” Mercer grinned, then bent down and checked the livid bruise spreading across Jill’s cheek. It was ugly and would last for a couple of weeks, but wasn’t serious. Her eyes were brightening, so he wasn’t too concerned about a concussion. They were stunning, deep and black with such a trusting expression that Mercer looked into them much longer than absolutely necessary. The emotions she’d bottled up for five days poured out as Jill ducked her head against his shoulder and cried. He murmured to her reassuringly, stroking her thick black hair.

“You’re safe now, Jill.”

“How do you know my name?” she asked meekly, her cheeks slick with tears.

“You’re an unwitting victim in something much larger that I’m here to stop.”

“You know about Takahiro Ohnishi and his coup?” she said urgently. Her resiliency marveled him.

“I know all about it.” Mercer untangled her long arms from around his neck. “Jill, I have to leave you here for a while, but I’m sure that nobody will bother you again.” He pointed to the dead soldier. “He was probably going to kill you, so now everybody thinks you’re dead. When Kenji’s eliminated, I’ll come back for you and we’ll all get out of here together. I have a helicopter waiting about two miles away.”

“I understand,” she said calmly. “What’s your name?”

“Most damsels call me Lance A. Lot but you can call me Mercer.” He smiled and was rewarded with one of Jill’s. Christ, even in her condition, she was beautiful.

The corpse of the soldier was dragged out of the maintenance shed by one of the SEALs. Mercer closed the door but didn’t relock it, then regarded the body.

“He’s Korean,” Mercer exclaimed, studying the mottled face. “I wonder who the hell he was.”

The SEALs simply stared flatly, not commenting.

On their approach to the shed, Mercer and his team had taken out eight Asian guards, some wearing fatigues like the figure at his feet and some wearing street clothing. In the jungle they had not taken the time to closely examine their victims, assuming that they were Kenji’s personal guards. The discovery that the dead men were Korean put a new twist on the situation.

“I don’t know who these guys belong to, but we’ll assume they’re not allies. That means we still have Kenji’s guards plus these Koreans.” Mercer spoke more for his benefit than the SEALs. “I doubt they know we’re coming, so we have the element of surprise, but how effective is that against an unknown force?”

Mercer led them closer to Kenji’s compound using whatever natural cover they could find until they were tucked safely behind the guest house. Near them, the azure pool shimmered with muted underwater lights. Kenji’s house waited quietly twenty yards beyond the pool. Mercer surveyed the back of the two-story sprawling home through the night-vision goggles lent to him by one of the SEALs. Only a few rooms were illuminated, but the glasses easily probed the darkened rooms as well. Through the greenish hue, he saw at least fifteen armed men in the house, slowly pacing through the rooms, scanning the extensive grounds.

After about five minutes of studying the mansion, he gave the commandos their orders. They obeyed without question and left, blending into the night.

Waiting while the SEALs got into position was agonizing. Thoughts of fear and failure tried to weaken Mercer’s resolve, but he crushed them down mercilessly. He had come too far to be afraid now, he told himself. Yet even as he mentally prepared himself for the assault, his mind drifted to a vision of Jill Tzu. He chuckled at himself. Of all the times to be thinking about sex. When the first crackling report of automatic fire rippled the silent sky, he shook his head quickly and moved.

As ordered, the SEAL team had crept around to the front of the house and opened fire, raking the edifice with a scathing barrage. Mercer ran across the open back lawn, praying that human nature would cause the men inside to turn toward the sounds, leaving him undetected. As his booted feet pounded across the grass, he crouched in anticipation of a killing shot from the second-story guards.

He covered the twenty yards to the house in record time.

Mercer leapt onto an immature palm and shimmied up like a monkey, feet and hands working in perfect harmony. Near its top, his weight bowed the tree inward and he dropped easily onto an unguarded second-floor balcony. The sound of gunfire intensified at the front of the house as the SEALs and the guards traded ammunition at a staggering pace.

Mercer kicked in one of the French doors and rolled across the room’s carpet in case there was an unseen guard stationed inside. He came up onto his knees, the MP-5 tucked hard against his shoulder, and scanned the room quickly. Empty.

He stripped off his goggles and took a few calming breaths. The sounds of the fight below were barely muted by the thick walls of the plantation house. He had just turned to reach for the door when he noticed a shadow bisect the sliver of light at the floor. Mercer rested his hand lightly on the polished brass knob and felt it twist beneath his fingers. As the latch fully retracted, he yanked on the handle and brought up his machine pistol. The guard was caught unaware; Mercer pulled him into the room and jammed the barrel of the MP-5 into his belly. Just as Mercer felt himself being pushed backward by the man’s weight, he pulled the trigger. The 9mm rounds tunneled through the guard, boring a cone-shaped wedge of flesh from his body that smeared against the wall behind him.

Mercer yanked his bloodied weapon from the falling corpse and turned down the wide hall. A fatigue-dressed Korean ducked out of one of the other rooms and Mercer managed to snap off a burst that caught the man high in the back. A quick check showed that one of the rounds had been fatal, while the rest had just mangled the ornate millwork of the door frame.

He did a sweep of the rest of the upstairs. The remainder of the elegant guest rooms in both wings of the mansion were deserted. One floor below, machine guns and grenades pummeled the masonry and shook the walls of the old plantation house. Mercer paused at the head of the stairs, the acrid tang of cordite smoke searing his nostrils.

A stab of fear lanced through his body. The battle below was like nothing he’d ever heard before, the ugly sounds of death echoing up the stairs. His experiences in Iraq and Washington were nothing like this. Those times, he’d been ambushed and hadn’t had time to think. In the OF&C offices in New York, he had felt more in control. But this — this hell — was something different. He was about to voluntarily walk into carnage, and that terrified him. Grimly, he descended the ornate mahogany stairs, one finger squeezed firmly around the trigger of his MP-5. Just an ounce more pressure would unleash a hail of bullets.

In the mezzanine, two bodies lay sprawled in the rubble of the blown-out windows, one dressed in fatigues, the other, one of Kenji’s men, in a dark suit. Cloying smoke layered the air, burning Mercer’s eyes as he crouched just above the bottom of the staircase; bullets and shrapnel whizzed by like angered wasps. Obviously the SEALs’ assault had lost none of its fervor. In an adjoining room, someone screamed in pain. Mercer knew, thanks to the plans provided by Dick Henna, that the wailing originated in a formal reception area.

Mercer didn’t realize someone had spotted him until a stream of bullets tore into the railing and banister near him, shredding the wood like a chain saw. He tumbled down the remaining steps, ducking his head and hunching his shoulders. As he landed on the marble floor, he glimpsed the assassin silhouetted in the doorway to the dining room. Mercer fired, but only one round went off before his clip emptied. The shot caught the Korean in the shoulder and spun him nearly completely around, but left him very much alive.

He started to turn back toward Mercer, Uzi clutched in his hands. Mercer launched himself from the floor, diving across a rich Turkish carpet while reaching for his holstered Beretta as he flew. The move threw off the guard’s aim, giving Mercer time to torque himself as he landed and pump four or five rounds into him.

Mercer reholstered the Beretta and jammed a fresh clip into his machine pistol. He ducked around the doorway leading to the reception area, taking out three guards who were crouched under the shattered windows.

From the plans, he knew Kenji’s study was on the other side of the entrance foyer, several rooms past the dining room.

Another guard spotted him as he raced back across the foyer and bullets tore up the marble at his heels. Mercer jinked once, then dove into the dining room, landing on a table large enough to seat twenty. The table had been beautifully set — Mercer’s momentum shattered the ornate Royal Doulton china, turning it into a very expensive pile of trash on the polished wood floor. He tumbled over the far side of the table, knocking three chairs onto their backs.

He knelt up, steadying his H&K on the table. Shards of china dug deeply into the toughened skin of his knees through his black pants.

An explosion ripped through the foyer as the SEALs blew out the solid front door. A pall of smoke roiled into the dining room, and the Korean who had just fired at Mercer staggered into the room. Obviously he’d been standing near the door when it shattered and the wood splinters had torn through his body. Mercer’s dispatching shot was a relief to the pitiable figure.

Mercer smashed through the door to the kitchen. There was more blood on the floor than in an abattoir; crimson smears streaked the walls and pooled under the two bodies crumpled below a blown-out window. The SEALs certainly knew their business. Mercer returned to the dining room and cautiously nudged open the other exit door. The room beyond reeked of smoke. Flames licked at the ceiling from a destroyed television set a few yards beyond a large leather sectional couch.

One of Kenji’s guards feebly tried to lift his weapon from where he lay, but he was missing a massive chunk of his left shoulder. Blood streamed from the wound.

Dispassionately, Mercer fired a short burst between the man’s hate-filled eyes. The other guard in the informal living room, a uniformed Korean, was already dead.

Mercer took a few deep breaths as he changed clips. Glancing at his watch, he noted with surprise that only six minutes had elapsed since he had started running for the palm tree in the backyard. The adrenaline fizzing in his veins had made it seem more like six hours, yet each moment was etched into his brain like frames of film. Outside, the battle was dying down. Either the ranks of SEALs or guards had dwindled to nothing. He had no way of knowing.

Beyond the living room, a wide, window-lined gallery stretched the length of the northern wing of the house. The SEALs had shot out the tall transomed windows to his right, so the air was free of smoke. Opposite the windows, French doors opened into other rooms — a book-lined library, a silk-draped billiards room, a small cinema that had probably been the music room when the house was built at the turn of the century. The last door of the gallery led to Kenji’s study.

Mercer stealthily made his way along the promenade, quickly checking each room he passed. The door just before the study was open, and as Mercer approached, a foot kicked out with incredible strength. The MP-5 flew from his grip, tearing some meat off his right index finger where it had caught on the trigger guard. Before he had time to react, a fist pounded into him, catching him just below the heart. Mercer’s breath exploded in a wheezing gasp.

He staggered back a few paces, massaging his ribs. Kenji stepped into the corridor, wearing a black gi and no shoes. His dark eyes blazed with pure hatred as he gazed at the Occidental interloper.

“I do not know who you are, but I will take great pleasure in killing you for what you’ve done.” His voice echoed from someplace deep within, an empty chasm which contains normal men’s souls. Kenji had none.

Mercer struggled to draw his pistol, but Kenji paced forward cutting the distance between them in the blink of an eye. His foot flicked out with the speed of a viper’s tongue and the Beretta spun away as Mercer’s right hand went numb. Though Kenji was nearly twenty years his senior, Mercer had no hope of defeating him. Even if Mercer hadn’t been battered so much in the past week, Kenji would still be able to take him apart at a leisurely pace.

“Are you another of Kerikov’s errand boys?” Kenji asked mildly, cracking a hardened foot against Mercer’s ribs.

Mercer fell against the wall, clutching at the rough stucco to keep himself on his feet. His chest felt as if it had been worked over with a baseball bat.

“What are you talking about?” he gasped.

A fist slammed into Mercer’s stomach, doubling him over into Kenji’s knee, which shot upward into his face. Kenji spun away as Mercer went sprawling onto the flagstone floor. “Did Kerikov send you with those assassins at Ohnishi’s house?”

Mercer retched painfully, a trace of blood in the rancid bile that shot from his mouth and nose. Kenji’s questions had thrown him off as much as the brutal hits he’d taken. Dazed by the punches and kicks, he wasn’t sure he had heard correctly. “I’m not with your Russian allies.”

Kenji kicked again, but Mercer managed to block the shot with his arm. Kenji was thrown off balance by the move, giving Mercer precious seconds to regain his feet.

“Where are your Russian sponsors, anyway?” Mercer asked through gritted teeth as Kenji stalked around him.

Kenji gave a derisive laugh. “As dead as Ohnishi.”

He threw a combination punch at Mercer, the first blow knocking against Mercer’s skull and the other cracking two more ribs. Despite the pain, Mercer managed a counterpunch, but his fist felt like it merely bounced off the muscled cords of Kenji’s throat.

“Like Ohnishi, the Russians were pawns to be used and discarded by myself and my true allies.”

“The Koreans?” Mercer wheezed, understanding a bit.

“They have backed me for months in a double-cross against both Ivan Kerikov and Ohnishi.” Kenji wasn’t even breathing hard while Mercer was sucking in great draughts of air. “We triggered Ohnishi and Kerikov’s pathetic coup and shifted American interest away from the volcano and its mineral wealth. To Kerikov, the coup was a means to an end; for Ohnishi, it represents a lifelong dream. To us, it was simply a diversion.”

“You piggybacked onto Kerikov’s plan, took his idea and his agents for yourselves. Then it was you who rescued Tish Talbot from the Ocean Seeker?” Mercer had to keep Kenji talking in a vain hope that a SEAL was still alive to save him.

“As ordered by Kerikov for the benefit of Valery Borodin, I believe. But she has no use in my plan, so my allies hired some assassins to execute her in Washington.”

“Not quite.” Mercer managed a wry smile. “She is very much alive and well.”

“You?”

“Yes.”

“No matter, I’ll have her killed later on.”

“The fuck you will,” Mercer said, hatred giving him a reckless courage.

He dove at Kenji, slamming a shoulder into his chest. Both men flew backward, pounding into the wall hard enough to break away some of the plaster. Mercer recovered an instant before Kenji and fired three heavy punches into the older man’s muscled torso. Kenji grunted with each blow, but still had the strength to pick Mercer off his feet and toss him away. Mercer scrambled up as quickly as he could, his cracked ribs keeping him slightly doubled over.

“I thought killing Ohnishi would give me the greatest pleasure, but now I realize your death will be even better,” Kenji said menacingly as he came for Mercer.

Kenji’s kick contained every ounce of strength in his body. It was a killing blow. Mercer bent backward the instant Kenji’s foot rose, ignoring the pain that exploded in his chest with the movement. As he straightened back up, his hand reached for the Gerber knife suspended from his harness.

The steel pommel of the knife cracked against Kenji’s foot with all the strength Mercer had left. The blow shattered the delicate bones as though they were glass, checking Kenji’s attack. Mercer whipped the knife upward in a last desperate lunge. The tempered steel parted Kenji’s abdominal muscles, sliced through the tough membrane of his diaphragm, and punctured his left lung.

Kenji reeled back, yanking the knife from Mercer’s fingers. He stared down at the blade sticking from his chest with crazed and panicked eyes.

“You,” he sputtered, blood spraying with his word.

Mercer had fallen to the floor after his attack. He was too weak to rise, so when Kenji pulled the knife from his body and turned the bloody blade at him, he had no defense. The savagery was draining from Kenji as fast as his life’s blood, but he still had enough time to kill his last victim. Mercer lay sprawled like a temple sacrifice, arms at his sides, legs slightly parted. He could not avoid the blade plunging toward his chest.

The kinetic energy of the first bullet arrested Kenji’s downward thrust and nearly stood him upright. The second shot tore another hole through his chest, shredding his heart and damaged lung. The final shot blew out the back of his skull.

Mercer twisted around in time to see one of the SEALs, bloody and battered, fall to the floor. A full sixty seconds passed before Mercer recovered enough to get up and check on the wounded SEAL. When he turned him onto his back, Mercer was staggered. The man who had saved his life wasn’t a SEAL at all.

Through a mask of dried and caked blood the unknown man opened his one undamaged eye. “Spesivo.”

The use of Russian shocked Mercer for a second, then he understood.

“Kerikov.”

“No.” The man coughed up a bloody ball of phlegm and spat it on the floor. “I am Evad Lurbud, major in the KGB, Department Seven, and Ivan Kerikov’s assistant. Thank you for allowing me to kill that pig.”

“Where is Kerikov?” Mercer demanded sharply.

“Last I knew, he was headed toward Europe. Now, who knows? You are a member of the American Special Forces, yes?”

“I’m the guy who blew your entire operation.”

Lurbud chuckled painfully. “I doubt that. No man could stop every contingency we laid down.”

“I bet your men in New York wouldn’t agree with you.”

“That was you?”

Mercer smiled modestly. “It was nothing really. But it did lead to all sorts of interesting things, little things like disguised submarines named John Dory, man-made volcanoes, and long-dead scientists who do great Lazarus impressions.”

Mercer could tell that Lurbud was truly shocked to see how much he knew.

“You guys made just enough small errors for me to figure out your little caper.” Mercer ticked of each item on a finger. “When Tish Talbot was pulled aboard the John Dory, she saw the design on her stack and heard her crew speaking Russian. Then you used an OF&C ship for her official rescue, which made it easy to find the connection to the Grandam Phoenix, the ship you bastards started the whole operation with. And you didn’t watch Valery Borodin closely enough, since he managed to send off the telegram that got me involved. I guess you can ultimately blame him for your failure. Without that telegram, no one would have ever suspected a thing.

“Too bad that your agents here in Hawaii turned on you. It’s wise, when picking allies, to be certain of their true motivations. Ohnishi wanted an independent country more than he wanted the volcano, and Kenji, he must have had his reasons for bringing in those Koreans.” Mercer had retrieved his weapons and now had the MP-5 pointed at Lurbud’s chest.

“You can’t kill me.”

“Why in the hell not?” Mercer replied casually.

“If I don’t radio the John Dory in an hour and a half, she will launch a nuclear missile at the volcano.”

Mercer noticed the black radio pack wedged under Lurbud’s body. He jerked it out by its nylon strap and held it at arm’s length. Letting the Hechler & Koch dangle by its sling, he drew the Beretta, then calmly fired two rounds through the armored plastic shell. The radio sparked and smoked for a moment as it shorted completely.

He dropped the radio next to Lurbud’s head. “Any other bargaining chips?”

“I am a major in the KGB. I am worth much to the CIA.”

“Assuming I work for the CIA must be an infectious disease. You’re the third or fourth person to think that. Too bad.” Mercer aimed his pistol. “I’m a geologist,” he said as he fired the last round from the Beretta. “Not a spy.”

Mercer wearily started back down the gallery toward the main entrance of the house. He believed Lurbud about the nuclear threat from the John Dory. If Kenji and his Korean allies had somehow double-crossed Kerikov, he had no doubt that the Russian spymaster would reap some form of revenge. Destroying the volcano and the bikinium made the best sense. The hour and a half time limit would make things extremely tight.

He was just passing the last transomed window before the living room when a figure crashed through the remaining glass and fragile mullions. Mercer dove to the side, twisting in the air to bring the MP-5 up to bear. The attacker hit the floor, rolled, and came to his knees in an instant, his gun aimed at Mercer’s head. Mercer was a fraction of a second too slow — the man had him pinned.

“I’m sorry if I scared you, Dr. Mercer, I wasn’t sure who you were from outside,” the leader of the SEALs apologized and lowered his weapon.

“Jesus,” Mercer breathed, his heart slamming against his rib cage. “I was too petrified to be scared.”

The SEAL’s uniform was so tattered it was nearly unrecognizable. A wound in his shoulder bled freely. His face was streaked with dirt and dried blood. Despite the pain he must have felt, his eyes were impassive.

“What’s the situation?” Mercer asked.

“All the guards are dead, the building is secure, but I lost my entire squad.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Mercer said, getting to his feet.

“It’s our duty, sir.”

“Radio the chopper and have the pilot land in the backyard. I’ve got some more work tonight.”

While the SEAL made the call, Mercer wandered through the dining room and into the kitchen. Ignoring the two bodies on the floor, he searched through the three large refrigerators until he found something decent to drink. Though Kirin beer was far from his favorite, he gulped two bottles in record time. A minute later he was in the backyard, skirting the edge of the pool.

Jill Tzu had left the shed when the firing had stopped and was hiding near the guest house when she saw Mercer striding across the back lawn. Behind him, the main house burned in several places, the fiery light making his features appear sharp and uncompromising.

The Sea King thundered in over the grounds, its blinding searchlight playing across the estate as Eddie Rice searched for a clear place to set her down.

Reaching Jill, Mercer took her into his arms. She clung to him tightly, unaware that Mercer’s ribs grated against each other as she squeezed. “Everything is all right now. You’re safe. Kenji’s dead.” She nuzzled her head into his shoulder as if she were a small creature burrowing into the earth for protection. “Jill, I have to leave you here with one of my men for a while.”

Jill looked up into his face with beautiful but frightened eyes. “Can’t you take me with you?”

“I can’t. There’s still a lot for me to finish,” Mercer said, then kissed her tenderly. “That’s to let you know I would if I could — and that I’m coming back.”

Mercer untangled her arms from around his body and nodded to the SEAL. “Try to contact the Inchon somehow, maybe through Pearl Harbor, and have another team sent here. Don’t trust any local authorities. Also, guard her with your life.”

He jogged to the waiting chopper and vaulted into its hold. Eddie lifted off immediately, sweeping the chopper over the dark jungle.

In the cockpit, Mercer threw on a helmet, keying the mike immediately. “Head north as fast as this bitch can move.”

Eddie banked the chopper, then turned to Mercer, grinning, “I don’t think you’re gay, so that must have been a woman you were kissing just then. Where the hell did you find a woman in the middle of that fight?”

“You just gotta know where to look.” Mercer chuckled in the murky light of the cockpit. He opened the last two beers he’d taken from the kitchen and handed one to Eddie.

“Not when I’m flying,” the pilot demurred.

“I’m not with the FAA or the navy; don’t worry about it.”

“Good point,” Eddie replied, and took a long swallow.

“Did those SEALs have any dive equipment on board?”

“Yeah. Like you asked, I went through their stuff while I was waiting. There’s air tanks, regulators, masks, the works.”

“Good.” Mercer pulled a slip of paper from his pants pocket and handed it to Rice.

“What’s this?”

“The Loran numbers of a Russian submarine about to start a nuclear war.” Mercer had mentally calculated the position of the John Dory from the infrared pictures provided by the National Security Agency. “Punch them in and follow them.”

“Problem,” Eddie said after keying the Loran numbers into the Sea King’s navigational computer. “We have enough fuel to get out there, but not enough for the return flight.”

“There’s a good chance there won’t be a return flight.”

“Why’d I know you’d say that?” Eddie muttered.

An hour later the chopper was thundering over the ocean swells, a driving rain pelting the windscreen of the Sea King like grenade fragments. The wipers were all but useless. Occasionally, a bolt of lightning arced through the sky, casting a brilliant incandescence into the cockpit.

Mercer sat quietly in a borrowed navy wet suit, content to let Eddie Rice do his job. It had been torture getting himself into the constricting neoprene, but now the tightness around his chest eased the pain from his cracked ribs. Unconsciously, his hand polished the barrel of his machine pistol as if he were at home working on a piece of railroad track. Hundreds of questions roiled in his mind, questions about Kenji, the Koreans, Kerikov, and Lurbud, but he could not allow himself to become distracted by them. He had to remain completely focused on the present and let the past sort itself out later.

He and Eddie were racing against an imminent nuclear launch. Failing meant not only their deaths but also the loss of one of man’s greatest discoveries. The benefits of the bikinium were too great to let slip away now, and on a personal level, Mercer wouldn’t allow himself to fail; he’d suffered too much in the past week to not see this completed successfully.

“What’s our ETA?”

“About another ten minutes.”

Mercer glanced at the luminous dial of his Tag Heuer. “According to Lurbud’s threat, the John Dory launches in thirty.”

“I’m already ten knots over the safety limits of this bird in these conditions.”

“Make it twenty knots over and that Mai Tai you wanted will be on me.”

“Christ, I could use it now,” Eddie replied miserably as he torqued more power out of the turbofans.

The chopper rocked and jerked in the storm as Rice fought to keep her below the John Dory’s radar. Her rounded nose nearly skimmed the white spume atop the waves.

“Bingo,” Eddie nearly shouted a minute later. “Target dead ahead.”

“What’s the range?”

“One mile,” Eddie said, glancing again at the neon blue radar screen.

“That’s got to be her. Take us down. I’ll swim the rest of the way. When I jump out, take off again, but be ready to pick me up when that ship blows. Approach from the stern and make sure no one else gets aboard except me and the man I’ll have with me.”

“I told you, we don’t have enough fuel to get back to Hawaii.”

“That doesn’t matter. Someone will figure out we’re here eventually.” Mercer didn’t want to tell Eddie that if the SEAL failed to get through to Pearl Harbor, the President would launch his own nuclear strike against the volcano in just three hours.

“You’re crazy, you know that?”

“It’s the main reason I can’t get life insurance.”

The Sea King’s engines wound down and the rotors whipped the sea into a salty mist as Rice brought her in for a water landing. Mercer waited at the open doorway of the chopper, sweating in the wet suit, the two large air tanks bowing his back. Around his waist he wore a leaded belt and a waterproof bag containing some other items borrowed from the SEALs. A razor-sharp dive knife was strapped to his right calf. The whole time Mercer had struggled into the gear, he had wracked his brain trying to recall everything that Spook had taught him about diving all those years ago in that flooded New York mine.

As soon as the rounded underhull of the Sea King touched the churned-up water, Mercer bit down on his mouthpiece, sucked in a breath of cool air, and launched himself out of the chopper.

The water was warmer than he expected. At first Mercer sank below the surface, then he adjusted his buoyancy by detaching one of the lead weights. He took a bearing from the compass on his wrist and, still underwater, started swimming toward the John Dory.

Mercer had made two potentially fatal assumptions when he launched himself from the Sea King. One was that the ship they had picked up on radar was, in fact, the John Dory. There was a definite possibility that the craft ahead of him was an entirely different ship, one innocently steaming through the area. The second assumption concerned the hull of the Soviet submarine/ freighter. If there was no gap between the submarine’s hull and the fake sides of the freighter, he would have no way of gaining access to the vessel. If he was wrong about either guess, he would be dead long before the Russian missile detonated.

After a few minutes of swimming, Mercer felt a vibration through the water — the pounding engines of a large ship.

Adding a little air to the compensator, he surfaced on the crest of a swell. Through the rain-lashed night, he made out the running lights of a large freighter about two hundred yards ahead of him. His breath hissed through the regulator, rain and spume splattered against his mask.

He ducked back under the surface and continued to doggedly swim toward the John Dory. The backs of his legs were beginning to ache and his breathing was labored.

The sound of the ship’s props filled the silence of the sea, but the vessel itself was still hidden in the gloom. Mercer was hesitant to turn on his dive light for fear of being detected by a lookout on deck, but at last he took the chance.

The knife-edge bow of the John Dory was no more than ten feet away and bearing down on him at eight knots. Mercer dove hard, but his reaction came an instant too late. The steel plates of the ship’s bow scraped along his body, shredding the thick rubber of his wet suit. The thick crust of barnacles grated against Mercer’s skin like a thousand tiny paring knives.

Mercer screamed into his mouthpiece as pain shot through his system, racing through his body to explode against the top of his skull. He felt the gray blanket of unconsciousness falling over his mind, but managed to push it aside by sheer force of will. He wouldn’t allow pain to stop him now. He had only a few seconds in which to find a handhold of some sort before the vessel passed him. And if that happened, he had no chance of ever catching her.

Training the dive light upward, Mercer recognized the smooth curve of a submarine’s hull. At least he had the right ship. He flashed the light to starboard and saw a space between the freighter silhouette and the sub’s hull. He swam into the gap.

When his head broached the surface, he spat out his mouthpiece and gulped down the warm humid air trapped between the steel plating and the sub. The water in the four-foot-wide gap was churned in a vortex that carried Mercer along with the ship.

Since he did not have the luxury of time, he didn’t bother glancing at his watch. He was certain that the sub was getting into position to fire the missile. He immediately set to work. The magnetic limpet mines he’d pilfered from the SEALs’ stores stuck to the hull with a quiet snap; the timers had all been set, and as each one made contact with the sub’s hull, it went active.

As soon as the explosive charges were planted, Mercer began climbing the spiderweb of steel girders that locked the bogus freighter hull to the submarine. Because of his injured ribs and the scuba gear hanging from his back the climb was exhausting. He wished he could dump the dive equipment, but if he hoped to escape with Valery Borodin, he needed it. At the top of the girders, he paused to look at his watch. Four minutes until launch.

Shit.

The sharp steel struts had ripped into his hands; blood poured from the wounds and dripped onto the deck where Mercer stood, just forward of the submarine’s conning tower. The empty superstructure of the freighter soared thirty feet above his head. The cavernous space echoed with the hiss of water sliding across her hull and the beat of her props. The nearly total darkness smelled of diesel oil and saltwater. As quietly as possible, Mercer stashed his scuba gear and dive fins in a corner.

Two minutes.

He crept up the ladder of the rounded conning tower. As he neared the top, he made out muted voices. The language was unmistakably Russian.

He popped his head over the top of the conning tower and gave a friendly smile to the two shocked officers standing at the open hatch.

“Take me to your leader,” Mercer grinned. Exhaustion and the adrenaline he was using as a substitute for real courage had made him giddy.

The two officers produced pistols in record time, leveling them at Mercer’s head. One of them shouted down into the sub. Though Mercer did not speak Russian, he assumed that the captain had just been informed that they had a prisoner. Prompted by curt gestures from a pistol barrel, Mercer went down the hatchway and into the Soviet submarine.

At the base of the ladder, Mercer casually glanced around the vessel’s control room. By the slack-jawed looks and the lack of movement, he rightly guessed that the launch had been suspended for the moment.

“Hi, my name’s Barney Cull.” Mercer stuck out his hand but no one made a move to shake it. “I’m offering a sale on hull scraping and wondered if you needed my services.”

Captain Zwenkov stepped forward, his face set in a deep scowl. “Who are you?” His English was thick but understandable.

“Actually I’m Sam O. Var, your local Coffee Wagon Company representative. How are you guys fixed for blinis?”

Zwenkov said something that in any language would have sounded like, “Get him out of here and lock him up.”

Mercer was hustled from the control room by two armed sailors. He called over his shoulder, “Don’t think strong-arm tactics will get me to lower my prices.”

He would have continued with the jokes but the pistol stabbing into his kidney jammed the air in his throat. He was led through the sub toward the stern, thankfully away from where he had planted the charges.

He was stripped of his wet suit and after a rather extensive body search, one of his guards undogged a hatch and thrust Mercer into a small cabin. The hatch was closed behind him but not locked.

In the spartan room, a man a few years younger than Mercer sat on one of the bunks. He was handsome in that Connecticut shore, hair blowing in the wind, sweater knotted around the throat kind of way. Mercer assumed, correctly, that this was Valery Borodin. Borodin said something to Mercer in Russian.

“Sorry, I don’t speak it.”

Mercer’s use of English drained the color from Valery’s face. “I said, you’re not a member of the boat’s crew. Who are you?”

“I’m Philip Mercer, the guy you sent the telegram to.”

“Who?” Valery’s eyes narrowed in confusion.

“Philip Mercer. You sent a telegram to me in Washington, warning me about the danger to Tish Talbot.”

“Tish sent you?” Valery stood, his voice brightening.

“No, you sent me.” Mercer was getting confused himself.

“I don’t know who you are, but you know Tish?”

“You didn’t send a telegram to me in Tish’s father’s name?”

“No.”

“Just after you had her rescued from the Ocean Seeker?”

“No.”

“If you didn’t, then who the hell did?” Mercer muttered. “Well, anyway, I’m here to help you get off this tin can.”

“Did Tish ask you to come?”

“Not exactly, but she’s safe and waiting for you right now in Washington, D.C.”

“There’s no way to escape. We’re hundreds of miles from Hawaii.”

“Listen, in thirty seconds this sub is going to have more holes in it than the golf course at Pebble Beach. I’ve got a helicopter waiting for us, so don’t worry about it. Where’s your father?”

“He died two days ago. Heart attack.”

“For the pain he’s caused, don’t expect my condolences.”

Mercer glanced at his watch and held up his right hand with fingers splayed. As each second ticked by, he curled one finger downward. With two fingers to go, several explosions rocked the John Dory. Immediately klaxons sounded throughout the sub. The dim battle lights blinked once, then shut off completely; a single white bulb lit as the emergency system took over. Above the wail of the sirens and the shouts of men, Mercer could hear the sound of water pouring into the vessel, signaling her impending death. Mercer thrust his hand down the front of his pants, ignoring Valery’s startled look.

Few body searches ever explore the area between the scrotum and anus. As Mercer’s fingers grasped the four-barrel pepperbox Derringer pistol held there by his jock strap, he was thankful that homophobia struck Russians, too. The gun, a favorite of nineteenth-century riverboat gamblers because of its small size, had been a gift from his grandfather years before and had remained in Mercer’s desk at home since then.

He yanked the tiny pistol from his pants, mindful of the stray hairs caught in the gun’s hammer. Although the Derringer was only twenty-two caliber, it was loaded with bored-out hollow-points filled with mercury. At a range of more than ten feet the gun was useless. Closer, a hit would be fatal.

“Are you coming?” The sub was already listing.

Valery grabbed a cheap briefcase from the bunk. “Yes, I’m with you.”

They stepped into the boat’s central passageway, Valery clutching the briefcase to his chest like a mother protecting her baby. Panicked sailors and officers ran down the narrow corridor, ignoring everything except their own safety. Mercer and Valery blended into the stream of men rushing to the nearest hatch.

Bursting into the control room, Mercer saw Captain Zwenkov leaning over the weapons officer. They were still going to launch the nuclear missile. Instinct made Zwenkov turn around and face his executioner.

The report from the Derringer was lost in the sounds of the dying vessel and her crew, but the bullet tore through the captain’s head cleanly. His cap flew through the air, carried by the top section of his skull. The blood-splattered weapons officer whirled in his seat, but before he could move, a round caught him in the throat, ripping out his carotid artery and jugular vein, sending a fountain of blood across the ballistic control computer.

A crewman grabbed Mercer from behind. Mercer whipped around, smashing his elbow into the man’s jaw. Blood and broken teeth sprayed from the Russian’s lips. Another man, this one wearing the coveralls of an engineer, charged forward, and Mercer shot him point blank in the heart.

The little four-barreled pistol had only one round left, and Mercer didn’t have any spare ammunition. “Valery, come on.” With Valery close behind, Mercer shouldered his way to the hatch, shoving, kicking, and punching his way to the bottom of the ladder.

On deck, the list of the submarine was much more noticeable, at least twenty degrees. Mercer guessed that the vessel would flip onto her back in moments. The confused mass of men on the deck were too busy trying to launch an inadequate number of life rafts to notice Mercer as he led Valery to the cache of scuba equipment. The din of the klaxons echoed across the storm chopped sea.

“There’s only one set of tanks,” Valery pointed out.

“We’ll buddy dive,” Mercer said, slipping the heavy tanks over his shoulders.

“But I’ve never dived before.”

“That’s okay, this is only my second time, so we’re almost even.” Mercer shoved Valery into the gap between the sub and the outer plating and leapt after him, losing his mask in the plunge.

In the water, Mercer slipped Valery’s hand through the straps of the scuba tank so they would not get separated in the confusion. Explosions rumbled within the sub’s hull and burning oil filled the narrow gap with reeking smoke. Mercer worried fleetingly about the very real danger that the nuclear power plant would melt down from the shock of cool seawater washing over its five-hundred-degree shielding.

“There will be a helicopter a few hundred yards directly astern. If we stay underwater, we won’t be spotted.”

A bullet plowed into the sea a few inches from Mercer’s head, throwing up a tiny fountain of water. Mercer fired the last round from the Derringer into the gloom above them, grasped Valery’s free arm, and ducked beneath the waves. He kicked downward, breathing as slowly as possible. About fifteen feet below the surface, he felt Valery tug the regulator from his mouth. The Russian took a few breaths, then thrust the rubber piece back between his lips. The John Dory was mortally wounded but her engines still pounded out eight knots. Mercer and Valery hung below the surface as the 285-foot hull glided over their heads. The concussion from the blasts that were wrenching her apart assaulted their ears painfully, but they had no time to worry about its effects. They began swimming away from the stricken vessel. Their progress was impeded by the turbid swells and their need to trade the life-giving mouthpiece.

After five minutes, Mercer brought them to the surface. The John Dory was a few hundred yards away and it was easy to see she was sinking. Her bow rode deep and her props thrashed the water into a white froth as they were pulled from the ocean. Only two of the lifeboats had been launched and the crew seemed too occupied, picking up survivors and corpses, to care about the huge helicopter that swooped in overhead.

Eddie Rice settled the Sea King into the water and let the rotors idle. Mercer could see the pilot scramble to the cargo door of the Sikorsky machine. Rice popped open a large drum of oil and spilled it onto the water. The churned-up sea settled immediately under the weight of the fluid.

Mercer and Valery swam toward the helicopter, their heads repeatedly swamped by the storm. Both men retched seawater regularly. They were only twenty yards from the machine when one of the lifeboats began motoring their way.

“Eddie,” Mercer screamed into the night, “get ready to take off.”

The pilot must have heard Mercer because he vanished from the hatch. The last fifteen yards of the swim were the most agonizing moments in Mercer’s life. The pain in his body was unbearable. His lungs burned, his arms felt like lead, and saltwater had closed his eyes to slits. He dug deep within himself, searching for any last reserves of stamina to keep him going. There wasn’t much left but still he swam on with Valery right beside him.

The outboard motor of the life raft was getting louder as the small craft drew near. Neither man dared look back.

Suddenly they burst into the calmed pool of oil that Eddie Rice had laid down. The chopper’s rotors were beginning to beat harder. Mercer and Valery swam the last few yards on will alone. Valery tossed his father’s briefcase into the open door and clung desperately to the side of the chopper, his lungs pumping for air.

Mercer shoved him into the craft and stole a glance over his shoulder. The John Dory’s life raft was only about twenty yards behind and closing fast. Mercer knew he’d never clamber into the chopper before the Soviets were upon them.

“Tell the pilot to take off,” he shouted, and let go of the Sea King.

Valery was nowhere to be seen. Mercer assumed that the Russian had passed out as soon as he was inside. He was wrong.

Valery reappeared in the doorway, a machine pistol held firmly to his flank. He fired a long, devastating burst at the life raft, bullets and screams piercing the night. When the clip was empty, he held the weapon out to Mercer.

Mercer grasped the proffered gun stock and hauled himself to the chopper. He hooked an arm through Valery’s and the younger man hoisted him aboard. Mercer didn’t even take time to catch his breath; he grabbed a headset and wheezed into the microphone, “Go, Eddie, goddamn it, go.”

Only after the Sea King lifted from the water toward Hawaii did Mercer collapse to the deck, his eyes glazed over, his lungs nearly in convulsions. Valery sat down next to him, drained by exhaustion and an adrenaline overdose.

“My father told me that years ago he had stood by and watched as a lifeboat full of men was machine-gunned like that. He said that the men died for Russia’s greater glory even though they weren’t Russian. Now I have done the same. For what?”

“For the best reason of all,” Mercer gasped. “To save your own ass.”

He got to his feet and staggered to the open cargo door, wind and rain whipping around his body. He closed the door and returned to Valery’s side. “Tell me, are you sure you didn’t send that telegram?”

“Positive.”

“I wonder?” Mercer mused, and then passed out.