He brought the H amp;K to his shoulder and leapt up. Through the sights he saw Greta Schmidt’s head behind a small yellow-handled relief valve atop a thick pipe, her flaxen hair framing her beautiful/ugly face. Her expression approached sexual euphoria, eyes wide and dilated, her skin flushed.
She had her own machine pistol clamped at her side, but her aim was off by a few degrees of arc. She saw Mercer pop up from behind a piece of equipment and tried to adjust. A streaming hail of rounds followed her swing. Mercer fired once before the slide on his MP-5 racked back and jammed. The single bullet struck the valve and vectored harmlessly away.
After a second of silence that seemed to unroll in slow motion, the tremendous pressure of steam driven by the planet’s molten center exploded through the damaged valve in a screaming eruption. In the fleeting moment before the jet of vapor obscured his view, Mercer saw Greta’s face begin to dissolve. Her hair vanished first, burned away by the five-hundred-degree steam. Then the flesh began to melt away until patches of bone showed through. The steam turned red as it boiled the blood and tissue from her skull.
She vanished and Mercer choked on the acid that scoured the back of his throat. Hyperventilating, he cleared the jam, knowing that blind luck had saved him. He remained where he was while the mental image of Greta liquefying lost some of its vividness. His head pounded.
A scream galvanized him, a hoarse animal sound of primeval fury. Gunther Rath had entered the building from the opposite end and spotted what remained of his lover. “Mercer!” he roared. “I am going to kill you!”
“Better men than you have made that threat,” Mercer shouted back.
Rath fired off a wild burst that rattled around the room, sparking off countless metal surfaces. “I still have the Dalai Lama.”
Mercer almost made the mistake of telling him about Klaus Raeder in the next building. He was tired, hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours, and his brain wasn’t functioning anywhere near where it should. If it weren’t for the adrenaline he would have collapsed hours ago. “Give it up, Rath. Even if you make it out of this plant alive, you’ll never leave Iceland. You saw the helicopter. You know we’ve alerted the military. They’ll quarantine this entire island if they have to.”
“You think that matters now?” Rath challenged back. “Even if I do escape, the Libyans would have me killed for not delivering the Pandora boxes.”
Shit! He’s ready to die right here and he wants to take me with him. Mercer went from hunter to hunted in that one statement. He could leave now, slink away and wait for troops from Keflavik base to end this. Suddenly an image flashed into his brain of Elisebet Rosmunder feeding the ducks in Reykjavik.
“The Libyans won’t get the chance,” he yelled. He fired a quick burst and raced for one of the building’s back doors. Bullets chased him, but none hit before he rolled onto the asphalt outside. He knew Rath would never let him escape. The man had nothing left to lose and only revenge to keep him going.
Mercer gave Building #4 a wide berth as he circled around it, limping across open pavement until he reached a rocky area along the shores of the man-made wastewater lagoon. The water shimmered with sunlight that had burst from over the horizon. As he stopped at another tangle of pipes, he saw Rath at the door he’d just passed through. He was holding the Lama by his collar.
The Dalai Lama had lost one of his sandals during his ordeal. One foot was a bloody mess from running across the lava rocks. He couldn’t put any weight on it and his normally dusky complexion had paled from the pain. Yet his expression remained neutral, as if the agony wasn’t his own. The strength he used to defy a nation as large and powerful as China extended to a will over his own body.
The burst of gunfire came from the far side of the complex. It hadn’t been intentionally aimed to kill Rath, but passed far over his head. Klaus Raeder walked down the road like a Western gunslinger, changing clips as he approached, his squint never leaving the man who had once been his most loyal assistant.
The Dalai Lama seemed to come alive when he interpreted Raeder’s actions as a rescue attempt. He shifted his weight when Rath tried to return fire. The shots flew far wide as the Buddhist moved to smother his kidnapper in a bear hug. Mercer got ready for the moment the neo-Nazi let the Lama go. His machine pistol had become too heavy to hold, so he switched to the Beretta handgun. His grip was loose and shaky, his eyes barely able to focus. He squeezed his eyes shut to clear them and actually made his vision worse.
Fifty yards separated Rath and Raeder, hatred sparking between them like an electric arc. Frustrated that he couldn’t hit his former boss because of the Lama’s untutored struggles, Rath rammed the muzzle of his pistol to the Tibetan leader’s head, drawing blood. Having drawn the danger back to himself, the Lama went still, more concerned with Raeder’s safety than his own.
“No closer, Klaus,” Rath said in German, in a voice that was unnaturally calm. He’d already made whatever mental adjustments were necessary to die.
Either Raeder didn’t hear him or didn’t care. He kept coming. Mercer wished he could understand what they were saying to each other.
“Kill him, Gunther. It doesn’t matter,” Raeder said calmly. “You will still die.”
“I’ll do it.”
“I know you will.” He’d closed to within thirty yards. “What’s one more death to you, eh? I’d say it was one more soul on your conscience, but you don’t have one. I thought I had been your teacher all these years. Now I see it is you who taught me. Your life and mine are meaningless.”
“And his?” Rath forced the gun harder against the Lama’s skull.
“He believes he’ll be reincarnated on a higher plane. I’m sure he fears death even less than we do. Let him go and the two of us will end this together. Let’s see how much you have taught me.” Raeder dropped his MP-5 and threw aside the pistol in his belt. “One on one.”
“I let him go and Mercer drops me where I stand.”
Raeder flicked his eyes in Mercer’s direction and switched to English. “Don’t shoot. I am going to handle this.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Dr. Mercer, this is between Gunther and me. He is going to release the Lama if you don’t interfere.”
“Screw that.”
“Please,” Raeder begged. “I told you before that this is my mistake to fix. Allow me that. Afterward you can arrest me and throw me in jail. Let me end this my way.”
Mercer blinked, seeing two of everybody now. “You know what you’re doing?” he asked doubtfully. Raeder had boasted he was a martial arts expert, but Rath had forty pounds and four inches on him.
“Even if he wins, I guarantee he’ll be in no condition to leave this place.”
The inside of Mercer’s sneaker was spongy with blood from the sniper ricochet. “You’d better be sure about that. I’m in rough shape.” A wave of blackness swept across his vision, and he stumbled back, falling against an insulated outlet pipe that pulsed with the force of near-boiling water. He couldn’t prevent his aim from dropping.
Rath tossed his automatic and gave the Dalai Lama a shove that sent him sprawling. His glasses shattered when he hit the pavement. Though he struggled to get between the two antagonists, his injured foot refused to support him. The Lama called out for them to stop, but neither German listened.
Rath and Raeder moved closer, circling warily. Raeder threw the first punch, a lightning strike that would have crushed the throat of a normal man. Rath easily caught his fist, twisted Raeder over and kicked him three times in the stomach before releasing the arm and letting Raeder fall to the ground.
“Klaus,” he laughed. “Do you really think I taught you everything I know?”