“We ran into a little difficulty of our own,” Alan deadpanned.
“It felt like an hour later when I saw Bob’s lights. Jesus, I’ve never been so relieved in my life. What took so long with the welds?”
“We had to use oxyacetylene,” Mercer answered. “You weren’t grounded so an electric arc welder would have fried you in the suit.”
“Oh. Good thinking. Thanks.”
Mercer and Alan exchanged a guilty glance. “Thank Jim. We hadn’t even considered it. How are you feeling?”
He gave Spirit a quick squeeze. “Better now.”
Spirit turned from her husband to Mercer. “I suspect you’re waiting for me to thank you for saving him.”
Jesus, she is one hard bitch, Mercer thought. “Not at all.” He smiled.
“Well, I won’t. Rather than thank you, I blame you. If you hadn’t ordered him to dive today, none of this would have happened.”
Jim McKenzie stepped up, saving Mercer from telling Spirit where she could shove her blame and how far up it could go. “Nice job. All three of you. That was one hell of a thing.”
He didn’t sound too overjoyed. In fact, to Mercer he sounded distracted, worried. They chatted for a few more minutes before Spirit led C.W. back to their cabin and Alan went to find a shower. Mercer and McKenzie were left alone at the rail looking out over the horizon. McKenzie’s thin sandy hair rippled in the breeze.
A silent minute passed.
“You going to tell me what’s on your mind, Jim?”
“You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who believes in coincidences.” McKenzie lit a cigar after offering one to Mercer, who refused.
“Like how that machine down there kicked on during our dive? Nope.”
“Yeah, me either. While we were waiting to hear back from you, I double-checked our logs from radar, sonar, acoustical gear and every other piece of science gear we run twenty-four/seven.”
Mercer’s heart tightened. “And?”
“And I think we’ve stumbled onto something big.”
Mercer didn’t correct him that they hadn’t stumbled onto anything. They’d been deliberately lured here by the sinking of the USS Smithback.
McKenzie continued, “We got a signal off the passive sonar suite a minute before C.W. reported the blades on the current turbines began to turn.”
“What kind of signal?”
“A series of tones, something nonrandom. It only lasted a couple of seconds. If I’d have to guess it was an acoustical activation code sent to switch that thing on and release the gas. Someone was trying to sink us.”
Or sabotage the dive, Mercer thought. “Could you tell where the signal came from?”
“It didn’t last long enough to triangulate. The way sound travels through water, it could have been anywhere. Our radar coverage only goes out eighteen miles. There could be a ship sitting twenty miles away listening to everything we said when you were on the bottom. They could have transmitted an activation code at the critical moment.”
Mercer scanned the horizon again, an unconscious check to see if they were being watched. Of course, there was nothing out there but what his imagination conjured. Tisa had said their organization was huge, numbering in the millions, though many didn’t know they even belonged. It was a secret core that ran things, and within the inner circle was a faction that had gone rogue. Up until this moment he wasn’t sure if he believed her. As far as he had seen, her group was just a handful of gunmen who had no compunction about murder. She could belong to any number of fringe groups with a couple of guns and an excess of hatred. But now he had proof of something else. And not just the tower itself, which was an expensive undertaking beyond the scope of all but the largest multinational companies. No, what he saw as proof was the activation signal sent from another ship. That meant they had access to an oceangoing vessel of some kind and a sophisticated network of informants to let them know when to power up the machinery.
Tisa had sought him out and sent him here so he could see for himself what her group was capable of, and what presumably she was trying to stop. Mercer tried to put his mind around what exactly that was. He couldn’t. She’d made the tower, which must have cost tens of millions of dollars, sound like a small part of what her people could accomplish. This was a mere demonstration. He felt adrift. If this was a sideshow, how much bigger could their main goal be?
“Are you okay?” Jim asked. “You went pale there for a minute.”
“I’m fine,” Mercer said slowly, unable to convince himself or McKenzie that he was okay.
“Something big’s happening, isn’t it? Like maybe what Spirit was talking about. A government conspiracy?”
Mercer tried to shake off the feeling of being overwhelmed. “This is one time I think Uncle Sam’s innocent, but we are in the middle of something big.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Get pissed.” Jim gave him an uncomprehending look. “You don’t need to know any of the details, but since this whole thing started I’ve been a step behind, reacting rather than taking the initiative. It’s like I’m being led around like a bull with a ring through its nose. I get shown clues that only lead to more questions. I’ve got to find a way of taking charge.”
McKenzie still didn’t understand what Mercer was saying, not that it mattered. Mercer knew his feelings. Ira had withheld truths from him and so had Tisa, both using him for their own purposes. He’d forced Lasko to finally come clean, and when he reached Greece, he’d have to do the same with Miss Nguyen.
HONOLULU, HAWAII
A light drizzle fell across the tarmac as Mercer stepped from the air force cargo jet with two dozen rowdy marines ready for their first night on American soil in six months. They’d been part of a counterterrorism team assigned to the Philippine Islands. Mercer had gotten a lift on their flight to Hawaii with a little help from Ira Lasko.
Standing at the bottom of the ramp, Mercer paused as the men filed past, a few he’d spoken with on the plane wishing him well, the rest eager to use up everything in their wallets. A flight-line technician wearing a shiny rain slicker and commercial-quality ear protectors approached.
“Dr. Mercer?”
“Yes.”
“Could you come with me, please? Admiral Lasko is waiting for you.”
Mercer was led to an open-topped utility tractor. The technician hopped behind the wheel, leaving Mercer a tiny perch on the back of the vehicle. He held his bag on his lap as the tractor lurched across the parking apron. Hangars and a control tower lined one side of the vast expanse, while the rest was lost in the darkness.
Twisting so he could see where they were headed, he spotted a Gulfstream jet like the one Ira had procured to fetch him to Area 51. Sheets of rain poured from the aircraft’s swept wing, but the boarding hatch was open and inviting light spilled onto the asphalt. The tractor shuddered to a stop next to the jet. Over the whine of the idling engines, Mercer heard the line worker tell him this was his plane. Mercer jumped from the tractor, gave the man a wave and hauled himself up the boarding steps. Ira was waiting for him just inside the luxury cabin.
Mercer had expected to meet with the admiral for a debrief in Washington. He was grateful for the private plane after eleven hours cooped up with a bunch of rambunctious marines, but he would have preferred to sleep through the flight. He’d spent an additional three days on the Sea Surveyor while Jim McKenzie and his team tried to repair the submersible. Mercer had gotten some instruction on the Advanced Diving Suit from C.W., but in the end they decided that it wasn’t the optimal platform to study the mysterious tower and abandoned the idea of a tandem dive. It would be a week or more before Bob was functional again and a team could continue their investigation.