Mercer wore only a bathing suit and sneakers, so when he took off running into the underbrush bordering the beach, the foliage ripped at his skin without mercy. He ran as hard as he could, because his head start would vanish quickly against armed hunters dressed for the sport.
In order to survive he would have to make it until dark. It was his only chance. Under cover of night he could swim to Futuna. It was two miles away, and Mercer recalled observing a substantial current the first night when they had anchored and Book watched for lightning, but he had no choice. Alofi was only twelve square miles. It could provide cover for a few days, but eventually they would find him.
Mercer knew he would have to ditch the stones. Fifty pounds wasn’t the heaviest load he’d ever packed, not by a long shot, but that dead-weight would sap his strength in the heat and humidity, making his pursuers’ job that much easier.
He continued through the brush, contemplating where he could hide the stones, when he suddenly heard the sound of approaching feet pounding through scrub in front of him. He hadn’t expected the encounter, and neither did the man rushing at him. Mercer had the advantage as he was running slightly uphill, while the man they’d posted to watch the marine salvage operation was running down and a little out of control.
Mercer veered just before they collided and threw out a foot to trip up the other guy, who crashed into the undergrowth. Mercer whirled and whipped out the compact Glock 30 pistol they had smuggled in with the Kriss Vector. Like Booker’s submachine gun, the Glock 30 packed the .45 ACP, a round developed for fighting in the Philippines after the Spanish American War, in which the Moro tribesmen would all but ignore being shot by the .38 calibers the Americans had been issued.
The guy recovered fast. He’d been running with a pistol in his hand but had landed awkwardly enough that he had to roll over to fire. He was just twisting to aim at Mercer when Mercer leapt at him, crashing his own gun down against the man’s temple. The first blow stunned him, but Mercer couldn’t take a chance and he slammed the butt into the thinnest part of the gunman’s skull a second time. He heard the bone break.
Mercer didn’t wait to see if the guy was dead; he knew he was. Nor did he bother looking for wherever the man’s gun went flying. He took off running again — but instead of trying to gain safety by gaining distance, Mercer reversed himself and went back toward where the seaplane had landed.
When he was close enough to see the landing spot, he peered out at the ungainly plane resting in the water just offshore, its nose already tied off to a large stake driven into the sand. The pilot and copilot were taking a moment to look over the wings and tail, while on the beach three men in baggy khaki pants and dark T-shirts huddled over a fourth man kneeling on the beach. He was bent over a piece of electronics, and Mercer saw his odds of success plummet.
They had some sort of detection gear. Mercer was almost certain it was a device that sent out radio or microwave bursts and measured for unnatural distortion fields in its proximity. The greater the warp in the field, the closer the gems.
Mercer turned back once again and began running for the interior. There would be no clever ruses or artful dodges. He needed distance from them, and he needed it fast. Sweat ran down his naked torso in rivulets that mixed with blood from where saber-like leaves had slashed at him. There were no large native animals on the island to carve game trails, so Mercer had to move across the terrain, fighting it, while at the same time trying not to leave an obvious trail that a tracker could follow.
He came upon a stream that was still running with the remnants of the storm two days earlier. He palmed several quick mouthfuls of drinking water, and then walked carefully along its course so that he left no tracks. Mercer stayed with the stream for two miles, climbing into the interior of Alofi Island, unconsciously seeking high ground. When the watercourse dried up, he moved back into the dense foliage. He decided not to hide the stones just yet, now that he had seen the electronic device being used by his opponents. Mercer knew his best chance was to keep on the move, maintaining enough separation that their detection gear wouldn’t home in on the crystals.
The day stretched on and Mercer kept at it, staying in motion in the thick underbrush for six hours. Dusk was still several hours away, so he couldn’t let his guard down, but he’d done as well as could be expected. He hadn’t seen or heard any sign of the men chasing him. However, he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and his shoulders ached from lugging the bag. He was also severely dehydrated.
Mercer knew he couldn’t keep moving much longer, and once he stopped the crystals would act as a homing beacon. He would have to ditch the stones now. During one of his earlier loops around the central hills, he’d spotted the old volcanic vent on a hillock near a ravine. The vent wasn’t very deep, about five feet before its passage was blocked by a plug of solidified lava, but he hoped it would help shield the crystals a little. He spent another twenty minutes backtracking to the vent, then jammed the bag into the fissure and began packing loose rocks around it.
Mercer finished piling rubble into the hole and stood. It was an enormous relief to have the weight off his shoulders, and as much as he wanted to take a few seconds to rest, he didn’t dare.
“I think we’ve played this game long enough.”
Mercer heard the voice and froze. He recognized the accent as South African, from his many times in that country, but he couldn’t see the man. He kept his pistol low and out of sight, turning in place to watch all approaches.
“You’re quite the pain in my ass.”
“I aim to please,” Mercer replied, still not sure where the man was. Not that it mattered — the South African’s support team would be surrounding him soon while he kept their quarry busy.
“Not so much anymore, eh, tough guy? I hope you realize we’ve been down on the beach the whole time watching you on our detector. We just don’t know what happened to the man we dropped off to watch your operation.”
“I bashed his head in,” Mercer said.
The man chuckled coldly. “No matter. I put this team together on the fly. I knew none of them.”
“They’re a bunch of amateurs.”
“That’s true. Hell, I think this would have all turned out a lot different if the greenhorn you killed in that old woman’s house hadn’t gotten jumpy back there in the mine and started firing. He left me no choice but to finish them all off.”
Mercer’s hand tightened on the pistol held down by his thigh. The man spoke so casually about Abe’s slaughter.
“I’ve had a bellyful of killing, Yank. I told my boss that there would be no need for violence on this operation. I told him that after it was over, I was done.”
“After what is over?” asked Mercer, partially to keep the man talking, but also to get some clarity on what this whole nightmare was about. “What’s so important about a handful of crystals?”
The man in the bush chuckled again. “You won’t live to see it, mate. This is space-aged…beyond our pay scales. They say these stones are going to help beam energy into the sky, and play with the temperature on Earth. It’s big business — billions. Nothing that concerns you and me.”
Mercer tried to comprehend what he had just heard. How was that possible?
“Now toss away the Glock I see in your hand, or I drop you where you stand,” the man said, stepping from behind a flowering bush.
Mercer looked up and was again struck by the familiarity of the man’s silhouette and the way he carried himself. Then the South African took another step closer, and a beam of sunlight penetrating through the canopy of trees shone across his face. Mercer gaped. Now he knew why the man was so memorable. He knew him. Had known him. In another time and at another place.