“We’ll be hauling in a tow rope to pull the ROV from the tunnel so we can’t be on tethers,” Scott explained. “Too much risk of getting everything tangled. You and I will be able to communicate but once we’re in the tunnel we may lose the acoustical phone from the surface.”
“How will they know when to pull Conseil back out?”
Scott patted his suit’s steel claw. “Once we’ve got the line attached, just smack it with this. Jim can pick up the vibrations on his monitors. One tap for go, two to stop.”
“That easy?”
“K-I-S-S. Now, tell me everything you did with C.W. when you were together and I’ll take it from there.”
Over the next three hours the men went over the suits, Mercer absorbing as much as he could of what Scott told him. He remembered a great deal of what Charlie had taught him, but Glass had a way of imparting even more. They worked for an hour inside the suits, taking power off the ship’s mains so as not to drain the batteries. Although it was a dry run and would differ dramatically from when they were underwater, Mercer was grateful for the practice.
The only change they made from their original plan was that Scott would use Charlie’s suit, while Mercer operated the spare, the one he’d toyed with aboard the Sea Surveyor. Scott felt he’d be better able to handle the idiosyncracies of Charlie’s suit.
They took a break when Ira’s four-hour promise approached. Mercer tried to raise the admiral on his cell phone but still couldn’t get through. Jim had been able to use the ship’s radiophone to contact an official on the island of Tenerife who’d been told the bomb had been delivered to Lisbon, Portugal, and was now en route to La Palma. The man didn’t know how.
“There’s no way they can get a chopper to us in this soup,” Scott said as they looked out into the storm from the cargo container.
Dawn was just a gray promise. The San Juan volcano had stopped spewing ash several hours earlier but the sky was choked with it. It would remain the color of lead even if the rain clouds passed. There was barely enough light to see the outline of the island a mile away.
“Hey, Mercer!” Jim’s shout came from the control van. “I think I have something.”
Mercer dashed through the filthy rain to the van. “What have you got?”
McKenzie handed him a headset. “Hello?” Mercer said into the mouthpiece.
“That you, Snow?”
There was too much interference to recognize the voice and it took Mercer a moment to remember the nickname. “Sykes?”
“Roger that.” The Delta commandos hadn’t stayed in La Palma for even an hour when they flew here with Mercer. Lasko and others in Washington needed a mission debrief and Mercer hadn’t been able to spare the time to give it. They’d been flown straight to Washington on the same Citation they’d borrowed to get to La Palma from Katmandu. “The Monkey Bombers have gone nuclear.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m about ten miles up-range of your position. The warhead was loaded into an MMU in Portugal and we’re about to drop it.”
“Don’t tell me you’re coming in too.”
“Sorry, not this time. I’m sitting behind the two pilots of the stealth that plopped us into Tibet. The least they could do was give me a ringside seat.”
Mercer saw the logic in delivering the W-54 bomb in one of the Manned Munition Utilities. The pods were designed to accurately and gently deliver a soldier to the battlefield. They couldn’t risk sending a chopper to the island until the volcanic fallout subsided. A regular parachute drop didn’t have the precision to land the weapon on the deck of a ship at sea, so the monkey bomb was the sensible choice.
“I’m calling to verify your GPS coordinates,” Sykes went on. “And to let you know the trigger is a three-hour delay. Once it’s set there ain’t no turning back.”
“Okay, Booker. I’m turning you over to Jim McKenzie — he’s the master of ceremonies for this particular ring of our circus. Good to hear your voice, man.”
“Same to you. Good luck down there. Sounds like you’re going to need it.”
“Hoo-yah!” Mercer returned the headset to Jim and went back to the deck, shouting for the crewman trying to hose mud over the side to clear the way.
The Petromax Angel had about forty feet of open deck between the control van and her stubby superstructure, more than enough room to land the MMU. He waited in the shelter of the bridge wing, shielding his eyes against the acid rain and swirling ash to glimpse the stealthy black pod as it fell from the cheerless sky. He mistakenly looked straight up, not realizing the MMU’s onboard computers were constantly correcting the pod’s descent for the brutal windshears.
The MMU actually swooped over the port side scant feet above the rail and dropped to the deck, falling lightly onto its back as the parachute was cut away. The billow of nylon vanished over the starboard rail, as fleeting as a ghost.
The seals around the lid hissed and the coffinlike door opened a crack. Mercer couldn’t help the eerie feeling he got as he approached the MMU. He almost didn’t want to touch it. He swung open the lid and stared in wonder at what lay nestled in the protective foam.
The bomb was white and nearly featureless, just a rectangular box that really was about the size of a large Samsonite suitcase. He placed a hand on its casing. It was cold.
Mercer shivered in the rain. Beneath the steel and lead shielding lay a ball of explosives that would implode an even smaller sphere of plutonium. It had the power to level a city.
He prayed it had the power to save a planet.
ABOARD THE PETROMAX ANGEL OFF LA PALMA
A deckhand approached hauling a small winch on wheels. Together he and Mercer slung a cradle under the nuclear bomb and lifted it from the MMU. The weapon swung and twisted on the end of the cable in a way that reminded Mercer of an obscene piñata. The absurdity of his observation brought a smile to his face.
“What’s so funny, Doctor?” the crewman asked.
“Just that it’s a good thing I don’t have a blindfold and a stick.”
They wheeled the bomb across the slick deck to the container at the stern of the service boat. The ashfall had smothered the waves so the ship sat as solidly as if she were in drydock. Fire hoses had been directed over the fantail to open a spot in the muck so the divers could be safely lowered into the sea. Gantry lights showed the pace of the ashfall was slowing, as was the rain. The sky had even brightened to a dull pewter.
Mercer passed his side of the winch dolly to another crewman to answer his vibrating phone. The signal was the clearest it had been since the eruption four hours ago.
“You must pull some serious weight with the president,” Ira said without preamble.
“What happened?”
“I’ve been trying to get through to tell you that he decided to wait until morning on the East Coast to make the announcement.”
“I doubt it was my influence,” Mercer said, overjoyed by the news. “Waiting until daylight to start the evacuation makes better sense than starting it at eleven o’clock at night.”
“Either way you have five hours. If you can set off that nuke and prevent the avalanche he won’t call for the evacuation. Has it arrived?”
“About two minutes ago. Good thinking using an MMU.”
“Thought you’d like that,” Ira said. “We’ll make sure that anyone on the western sides of the other islands will be above the surge line of any wave created when that bomb goes off. The navy is pushing out their quarantine zone. An Aegis cruiser is going to remain inside the cordon if you need it.”