He forced himself to calm and took even, measured strokes. The ash tried to draw him back into the depths but he refused to succumb until at last he shot out of the morass. His first breath drew a mouthful of dust that he coughed and spit back into the sea. He could barely keep his head above the quagmire, but it didn’t matter.
As soon as he’d surfaced, the sharp-eyed pilot of the Seahawk off the cruiser spotted him struggling in the otherwise placid curtain of debris. A few seconds later he had his chopper hovering over Mercer and a pararescue jumper ready to haul him aboard. A basket was lowered.
Mercer was able to use the undulating mass of ash and pumice as a springboard to roll himself into the basket, eliminating the need for the PJ to leap to what would have been a broken leg. Mercer was winched into the chopper even as the pilot opened the throttle. They had seventeen minutes to get clear of the blast and the electromagnetic pulse that would wreck the chopper’s avionics.
The PJ threw a blanket over Mercer’s shoulder. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” Mercer said unconvincingly. “I’m fine.”
“I think you’d better lay back until we get back to the ship.”
Mercer shrugged off the blanket. “I need to speak to the pilot.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir,” the burly PJ advised. “If you don’t mind my saying so, I’ve seen drowned rats who’d win a beauty contest over you.”
Mercer grabbed a headset from the bulkhead dividing the cockpit from the cargo hold. “Any chance you noticed a ship inside the cordon on your way to get me?”
ABOARD THE PETROMAX ANGEL EIGHTEEN MILES EAST OF LA PALMA
They’d come under the cover of the eruption and storm on a sleek powerboat they’d stolen in Santa Cruz. Luc had brought only three men with him, but he hadn’t needed more. The Angel carried a skeleton complement of twenty-five, and only a handful of others were aboard, including Jim McKenzie and his assistant, Ken Bowers, both of whom were armed, both of whom were part of the Order.
Trying to reach the service boat had been a desperate gamble, a last role of the dice for Luc Nguyen. With the Order’s sanctuary in ruin and the oracle destroyed, his only hope of achieving anything was to see the Cumbre Vieja destroy much of the civilized world and hope the Order’s well-protected financial resources would give him power to rule in the chaos to follow.
It had taken just a few moments to hijack the Petromax Angel. As soon as they tied up to the rig tender, one man had gone to the bridge, another to the engine room, and the third scoured the crew accommodations, herding everyone he found to the mess hall, where technicians from the Sea Surveyor were already being guarded on Mercer’s orders. Luc had been able to secure the deck spaces with help from Jim and Ken.
They’d been too late to prevent Mercer from diving with the weapon, although Jim had been confident the damage he’d caused to his NewtSuit would prevent him from even reaching much past where the ROV was blocking the tunnel.
So it came as a numbing surprise when Mercer had radioed that he was on the end of the towline Luc’s soldier had started reeling up from the bottom. No sooner had the call come through than Charlie Williams, pale and still weak, staggered into the control van. The Order soldier who’d rounded up the crew had left him unconscious in his cabin. He raged at Ken Bowers, accusing him of attempted murder for smashing a wrench over his head. Jim had remained calm, coaxing Mercer to the surface so they could use his ADS to retrieve the bomb and at the same time trying to maintain his façade of innocence.
It all fell apart when Spirit realized that Jim had personally vouched for Bowers. They were on deck then, waiting for Mercer to be hauled over the rail. As soon as Jim knew they had the suit, he’d ended C.W.’s rants with the pistol he’d kept with him since he first left California on the Sea Surveyor.
Now Mercer was gone, pushed over the side by Spirit in her last act of defiance. All that remained for the surviving members of the Order was to run and hope the nuclear bomb failed to prevent the catastrophe.
Luc, Jim McKenzie and Tisa stayed in the confines of the control van as the workboat raced from the weapon’s epicenter. Jim maintained contact with the navy and fed bogus updates to Admiral Lasko, buying them the time they needed. Tisa hadn’t said a word since Mercer fell from the stern and made no protests when her brother tried to console her by touching her hair or her shoulder or hip. Her only movements were to gently rub the place where once she wore the watch he had given her.
“How far have we come?” Luc asked.
McKenzie checked the GPS readout on one of the multiple computer screens. “Almost twenty miles.”
“Is that far enough?”
“To avoid the fallout, yes, but we need to keep going. There’s going to be a pretty big wave following the blast and we’re still inside the navy quarantine zone. Once we make it to the nearby island of La Gomera, we’ll hide there until things calm down. We still have two weeks to make our escape if the bomb fails and the main eruption splits La Palma.”
“How much more time?”
“I estimate ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Do you think they will ever stop hunting you?” Tisa asked, breaking her hour-long silence.
“They don’t know we’re running,” Jim countered. “They don’t know they have to hunt us.”
Luc smiled at her. “My dear sister can speak after all. I’m sorry it had to come to this.”
“I doubt that. I think you feed off destruction. You need it the way others need love.”
“I need love too, you know.”
“And even that is something you’ve managed to pervert.”
Jim shifted in his padded seat. He’d known of Luc Nguyen’s incestuous feelings toward his sister and the thought made him uncomfortable.
“Not pervert, Tisa. Purify. Think of it. The two children of the Order’s last lama. Think what we could create.”
“A monster for the monstrous new world you want to build on the ashes of the old.”
He looked at her sadly, but also with the knowledge that he would have what he wanted.
Out of nowhere, the thunderous roar of a helicopter shattered the relative quiet of the control van. Jim launched himself out of his chair and looked out the open container doors. A gray SH-60 Seahawk hovered over the Angel’s fantail. Its side door was open and a soldier covered the workboat’s stern deck with an M-16. Behind him was the shadowy outline of another man. McKenzie was dumbstruck when the chopper turned slightly and the shadow passed. The other man was Philip Mercer.
Mercer saw Jim McKenzie standing just outside the container box, tapped the PJ on the shoulder and pointed. The M-16 spat and bullets sparked across the ship’s steel deck.
Jim dove back into the van. “It’s Mercer!”
“I told you they’d hunt you down.” Tisa never doubted that Mercer would come back for her.
Luc glanced out of the container and was driven back by fire from the Seahawk. He grabbed a walkie-talkie from his shirt pocket. “Everyone, get on deck! We’re under attack.” He checked the holster around his waist and racked a round in the chamber of the machine pistol he’d brought. As soon as his men appeared, they’d shoot the chopper from the sky.
He looked out again. The American helicopter remained over the stern, flying sideways so the gunman in the doorframe could cover the entire aft of the service boat.
“Paul, Pran, where are you?” he radioed.
“I’m on the bridge,” Paul Thierry replied. He was a boyhood friend from Paris who’d gone to Rinpoche-La with Luc when he’d returned to his father’s side. “As soon as I run to the wing I will have them.”