It was eleven thirty by Mercer’s watch when they were ready for the second dive. They’d cleared a spot on the barge’s deck where they’d laid out large rubberized bags to contain the crates. Stan had told Mercer the bags’ carbon fiber underlayment had been designed by NASA and was nearly indestructible. It could absorb the shock of a bullet at point-blank range and would deflect a knife thrust.
Cali gave Crenna a walkie-talkie dialed in to the dry suit’s radio frequency so they could coordinate the lift. The wind had calmed again and the sun was trying to break through the overcast once more. A bass boat with a huge outboard roared past the barge, the four men aboard studying the craft as they raced to the next fishing hole.
“Dinner’s on me tonight,” Mercer said as he helped Cali back into her gear. He spoke low enough so only she heard.
She grinned up at him. “I take it that offer doesn’t include Stan and Jesse.”
“I’ll buy them some buffalo wings before we go.”
“It’s a date.”
Mercer had actually asked her out for a date. He was thankful she’d put on her helmet just then, so she couldn’t hear him exhale a nervous breath. “Once more into the breach,” he muttered, not sure if he knew what he was doing, but glad he’d done it.
Jesse and Cali dropped into the water as Crenna powered up the crane. He extended the telescopic boom until it reached far down the length of the sunken ship. The barge listed heavily, so that the chop lapped against the base of the forward rail. He shouted to his deckhands to reset the hydraulic anchors to compensate for the shift in the vessel’s center of gravity.
Mercer saw Cali and Jesse’s bubbles for only a few moments before they were borne away by the current. With Crenna refusing to let him on the barge until the crates had been swung aboard, and only the one radio to eavesdrop on the dive, there was nothing for him and Slaughbaugh to do but wait. Stan held a Ph.D. in nuclear physics, so the two of them talked about Mercer’s theory concerning plutonium’s origin.
After ten minutes Crenna began to lower the hook into the water. Cali and Jesse must have reached the hold. A minute later the crane rotated a few degrees and another twenty or so feet of steel cable disappeared into the river.
“They must be hooking onto the crates,” Mercer said.
“Won’t be long now.” As if to punctuate the statement one of the deckhands came over to the barge’s rail and looked down onto the cabin cruiser. “They’re about ready to lift. Your boss said we should put on the gas masks now.”
“Oh right.” Stan rummaged through one of his trunks and came away with an armful of NBC (Nuclear/ Biological/Chemical) hooded gas masks. He tossed them up to the deckhand and took out two more for himself and Mercer.
“What happens when we get them to the surface?” Mercer asked.
“We’ll bag them, and get them back to the dock. We have a hazmat truck standing by.”
“Not planning on warning the people of this fair city that you’re hauling a thousand pounds of plutonium through their streets?” Mercer teased.
“Please. On any given day there are a couple of tons of radioactive material on the roads. Only reason why there hasn’t been an accident is because we don’t advertise it and invite out all the wackos.”
The crane’s big diesel bellowed and Mercer saw the drum at its rear begin to turn ever so slowly. “They’ve got them.”
He could imagine Cali and Jesse in the dark hold making sure the crates didn’t snag or smash against anything as the crane dragged them out. For another five minutes the crane spooled back cable in a delicate balance of horsepower, wind, and current. Then everything came to a standstill. Mercer couldn’t understand it. He looked across and could see Crenna in the crane’s cab. He leaned far back in his chair and had his arms crossed.
“They must have the crates out of the hold,” Mercer said, finally understanding. “He wants Cali and Jesse topside before he brings them up, in case there’s a problem.”
Moments later Cali and Jesse Williams bobbed to the surface at the rear of the cabin cruiser. Stan and Mercer quickly helped them aboard. When Crenna saw that the divers were safely out of the water, he started drawing back cable and retracting the telescopic boom to reduce tension on the crane’s hydraulic systems. In moments the crates emerged dripping from the river and hung suspended over the barge’s deck.
The roar of the crane’s diesel masked another, deeper sound until it was almost at the work site. The powerful outboard on the bass boat that had gone by earlier sent an arcing fountain of water into the air as it approached the barge at nearly forty miles per hour. Mercer had been busy helping Cali off with her equipment and only sensed the fast-moving craft when it entered his peripheral vision. He saw that the four men in the sleek boat were focused on the barge, and three of them brandished automatic weapons.
“Down,” he shouted, shoving Cali to the deck. As he whirled he saw the Bertram fishing boat that had been tied to the pier suddenly come alive, a boil of froth at her transom as the captain slammed the throttles to their gates.
Mercer had kept his hand grip close at hand the entire day. He ripped open the zipper, fumbling for a frantic second, and pulled out an MP-40 Schmeisser. The weapon was the standard German submachine gun during World War Two. Mercer had bought it from Tiny, who’d taken it in trade on a gambling debt. He jammed a thirty-round magazine into the receiver and racked the slide. He stuffed six more magazines into his jeans pockets. While not the most accurate weapon, the gun’s high rate of fire made it devastating at close range.
The fast-moving bass boat was still twenty yards from the barge when the three gunmen opened up with their Kalashnikovs. Crenna’s crew fell flat to the deck and Crenna himself leapt from the crane. He dove behind the big air compressor as rounds pinged and ricocheted off the barge’s metalworks. He tore off the gas mask and sat there panting.
Ducking behind the cabin cruiser’s gunwales, Mercer shoved the grip to Cali. “There’s a Beretta in there.”
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t. I just wanted to be ready.” He addressed Stan Slaughbaugh and Jesse Williams. Both were huddled at the transom and neither looked like he’d ever been on the receiving end of an ambush. “Go forward into the cabin. Fire up the engines, then stay down.” The two NEST scientists complied wordlessly.
The bass boat continued to roar up the river, the sustained automatic fire popping over the throb of the big outboard. It looked to Mercer as if they were going to jump onto the far side of the barge. He chanced looking over his shoulder. The Bertram fishing boat had crossed half the river and was coming on strong, her blunt bows buried behind a creaming froth of water. The captain was in the high bridge while the other two were stationed on either side of the stern deck. They both carried weapons — Heckler and Koch HK-416s, the German arms manufacturer’s latest assault carbine. The compact weapons fired NATO 5.56-millimeter ammunition and were fast becoming the popular choice among the world’s elite military units.
Cali saw where Mercer was looking and gasped. They were trapped. Even if they untied from the barge, the Bertram would easily outrun them. She drew a bead on one of the sport fishermen with her pistol when the vessel was fifty yards out. Mercer had turned back to see the bass boat decelerate as it came abreast of the barge. The men were still firing, although Mercer couldn’t see Crenna or any of his deckhands. A snap burst from one of the gunmen hit the hydraulic controls that anchored the barge to the river bottom. Hydraulic fluid pumped from the reservoirs like lifeblood. Mercer looked back and was about to tell Cali to stay put when he saw her about to fire on the Bertram.