Pocketing the keys to his truck, Mercer dashed to the cover provided by the huge flatbed semi, ducking under the low trailer and training the pistol over the wide expanse of the site. He quickly ran through Alam’s options in his mind. Alam hadn’t had enough time to pick the lock on one of the trailers and hide inside, nor did it seem he was using the rig to hide behind because he could have easily gunned down Mercer as he ran toward it. The surrounding field was mostly alpine grass and offered no protection, so Alam wasn’t running on foot, nor did he appear to be climbing the cliff, a difficult task for even an experienced climber. That left Minnie, the generators, or the couple of pallets of gear clustered near the entrance to the test hole. The four other holes nearby were no more than a couple of feet deep, dug as calibrating bores before Minnie’s main hole, and he could clearly see that Alam wasn’t lurking in any of them.
Instinctively, Mercer knew Abu Alam was trying to make his escape through the mountain in the four-foot-wide tunnel. But just in case he was wrong, he crawled the fifty yards to where the generators sat, his body tensed for a shot that never came.
Mercer worked the controls with one hand while the other held his pistol leveled at the tunnel entrance, and the generators, big Ingersol-Rands powered by eight-cylinder diesels, fired after only a second. Once they were running, he stripped off Minnie’s cover, revealing the ugliest machine he had probably ever seen.
The miniature boring machine operated much the same as its larger cousins but refined to near perfection. The cutting blade, a four-foot-diameter disk, was composed of carbon fiber polymer and diamond chips held together with the recently discovered carbon molecule called buckminsterfullerine. It could turn the hardest bedrock into microscopic dust in an instant. The body of Minnie was a rounded box that housed the sophisticated pumps and valves for the hydraulics and a third-generation global positioning system that gave her more accuracy than the American navy’s nuclear submarines. For propulsion, two hydraulic legs, rams designed much like the legs of a grasshopper, were mounted on either side of the machine’s body. They provided enough holding power and forward pressure for the cutting blade to core through granite at the unheard-of pace of two feet per minute. An enormous fan mounted on the very back of the machine blew the dust and debris created by the disk back down the tunnel it had created.
“Alam, I know you can hear me,” Mercer shouted at the tunnel, his voice booming down the length of the shaft. “That noise you hear is the boring machine that dug the hole you are running through.”
Abu Alam ran doubled over along the pitch-black passage, but he paused at the voice. It was distorted as it ricocheted off the walls, but he caught just enough to force him to stop. He recognized the voice as the person Kerikov had captured during his attack at the pump station. He had no desire to turn back and finish off the man. Philip Mercer was Kerikov’s enemy, not his. All that mattered to him was getting out of this hole and escaping. Behind him, the tunnel opening was only a pinhole, while ahead, there was only blackness.
“It was built by the man you killed in California,” Mercer continued as he readied Minnie, checking connections and making sure the cutting wheel was freely turning on its shaft. “He was testing it here just before you murdered him. Unfortunately for you, Alam, we never finished this hole before deciding the test was a success. It ends about five feet from the other side of the mountain.”
Alam went white.
Mercer engaged the ram/legs and stepped aside. Like a tired beetle, Minnie started forward, the cutting head spinning at fifteen thousand rpm. Without having to cut through rock, Minnie could travel about twelve feet per minute with its peculiar lurching gait. It would take an hour for it to reach Alam. Mercer couldn’t afford to wait until the end, so he programmed the machine to automatically shut itself down after boring through two additional feet of rock at the shaft’s terminus. He turned away and started back to his Blazer. “Die hard, motherfucker.”
Abu Alam, Father of Pain, would cower until the last possible second at the end of the shaft, curling himself into a ball against the rough stone before Minnie reached him. His body was liquefied by the cutter head. Days later, when the mini-mole was pulled from the hole, the largest piece of him found could have been squeezed through a toothpaste tube.
Back at the base of the access road, Mercer took on three of the most seriously injured of the bus passengers, none of whom were in any real danger. He deposited them at the Valdez hospital but left before anyone could detain him with questions about anything other than the crash’s location. It was only after the Blazer was rolling into the terminal facility that he remembered something Ivan Kerikov had said the night before on the Petromax Omega.
“Shutting down the pipeline is only one tine in a three-pronged attack.”
Mercer was about to find out that the second prong of Kerikov’s plan was as sharp as, and even deadlier than, the first.
Alyeska Marine Terminal
When Mercer got back to the Operations Building, Andy Lindstrom was in his office, one phone clamped to his head and another one lying off its cradle on a pile of papers, a tinny but strident voice calling from it like an irate Lilliputian. Two workers stood in front of the desk, their heavy utility clothes streaked with crude. Andy saw Mercer standing at the threshold and waved him in. He barked an order into the phone, cut the connection, and scooped up the other, launching into a new set of commands before dropping that one too into its receiver. Instantly both started ringing again.
“Christ, this is nuts,” Andy said, lifting one of the phones. He shouted into the mouthpiece, “Give me a second, will ya?”
Without waiting for a response from the caller, he set the phone on the desk. Ignoring the other ringing telephone, he took a moment to light a cigarette. His ashtray was overflowing with half-smoked butts. He used the glowing cherry of the cigarette like a finger to point at the two workers. “Introduce an instrument pig from Pump Station 10. I need to know the condition of the line between us and the Tanana River. The on-site guys say there’s no external damage, no sign of tampering, but I need to be sure. If you run into a frozen section, cut the pump immediately and call me. I’ll try to scare up another jet heater from the Air Force.”
The two men nodded quickly and left.
“Mercer, I’ve got a problem even bigger than this mess. Go down to the communications room. They’ll fill you in.”
“Andy, I’m going to bed,” Mercer said flatly.
“I need you, man. Without Mike Collins, I’ve got no security chief. I heard that someone was shot at the main gates an hour or two ago, the local police are screaming about that PEAL ship exploding in the harbor, and already oil companies are demanding revised delivery schedules. Alyeska’s board is telling me that I will have the line back up in three weeks, and I don’t even know how bad it is yet. Shit, worldwide crude prices are up three dollars since this morning, and it doesn’t look like they’re coming down any time soon. Help me out, will ya?”
“All right,” Mercer breathed resignedly. He didn’t acknowledge Lindstrom as he strode from the room, his dulled mind thinking that Andy’s new emergency might be another of Kerikov’s fronts.
The communications center was a small office dominated by a built-in counter with several multiline phones, fax, and teletype machines, plus two powerful marine transceivers. Three people were monitoring the fax, the teletype, and the huge radio sets, while a fourth was deep in conversation at a desk phone. Aggie Johnston was standing over by the desk, a cigarette smoldering between her fingers. She ran to Mercer when she saw him enter, pressing herself tightly to him.
“What happened?” she said against his chest.