The top of his desk was buried under two inches of paper, some organized in piles, others spread haphazardly. Somewhere under the clutter lay the plates he’d used for both breakfast and lunch. He hadn’t slept since returning from his late-night meeting with Dick Henna, and while the pots of coffee he had consumed kept him awake, a raging headache had formed behind his eyes and spread so that his entire skull throbbed. There was a break in the incoming faxes, so he reached for the phone. Prescott Hyde’s number was permanently imprinted on his brain.
“Yes, Dr. Mercer, what is it now?” Hyde was as tired of receiving the calls as Mercer was of making them.
“Bill, I’m probably going to need a blasting license once I’m in Eritrea. I’m faxing over copies of my master’s licenses from the U.S., Canada, South Africa, Namibia, and Australia. Whatever functionary issues them in Asmara should be suitably impressed, so I won’t need to be tested once I’m there.”
“Shouldn’t Selome be handling stuff like that? You have her cell phone number.”
“She hasn’t answered the damn thing all day, so the job is falling on your lap,” Mercer explained. Because Selome didn’t have a connection to the Eritrean embassy and Mercer didn’t know if she was involved with the kidnappers, he didn’t want to reveal his misgivings about her. He felt that Selome and Hyde’s collusion ran deep. “While we’re at it, the explosives I’ve ordered need an End User’s certificate before they can be shipped. You’ll need to arrange that. I also want to get some collapsible fuel bladders for filling the equipment at the site. I can order them from a civilian supplier, but the military versions are stronger.”
“Why not just use tanker trucks to refuel the equipment?”
“Once we get geared up, I can’t afford to have tank trailers laying idle. They’ll be making round-the-clock runs to bring in more diesel. You can’t imagine how many gallons per hour some of those trucks drink.”
“Okay, anything else?”
“Yes, I’ve got a bill on my desk for two million seven hundred thousand dollars, payment due in thirty days for the heavy equipment leases. My word was enough to get the equipment in transit, but my reputation is on the line here and I need to know that this is going to get paid.”
“Don’t worry about the money,” Hyde said. “Selome and I have that all taken care of. Fax the bill to my office and don’t give it another thought.”
Mercer didn’t like Hyde’s snake-oil-salesman’s tone, but he let it pass. “All right. How are you two coming with the rest of my requests?”
“Excellent. I spoke with Selome earlier this morning, and she said that the small equipment you wanted is waiting for you in Asmara. It’s being loaded onto trucks for shipment closer to the target area. She’s found a local who has experience in mining — well, quarry work actually, named Habte Makkonen. He’ll be your guide once you’re in Eritrea.”
“Do you have a number where I can reach him?”
Hyde chuckled. “If you had any idea how horrible the phone service is over there, you wouldn’t have asked that question.”
“Fine. We’ll talk later.” Mercer cut the connection, adding two Iridium satellite phones to his long list of necessary equipment.
He had to get to Tiny’s office for Henna’s call, and he gathered a bundle of papers for the wait. He hated to use the time this way, but he couldn’t chanced his phone being tapped or his office bugged, nor could he afford to miss the call. He was almost out the front door when his phone rang again. He raced back into the kitchen and grabbed the extension hanging from the wall, its coiled cord nearly brushing the floor.
“Where are you?” Chuck Lowry asked. He knew more about computers than any of Mercer’s other friends.
Much of Lowry’s business was legitimate, erecting data protection systems and investigating electronic fraud, but he kept his hand in the illegal side of the Internet and computer networks. Mercer suspected the Vietnam veteran still loved the underworld of the electronic age that he had helped create. He was a bit of a flake who purposely cultivated a computer geek’s eccentricity and had made a fortune debugging computers for Y2K compliance.
“At home. Where the hell do you think I am?” Mercer snapped, too tired to care that Lowry was responding to an appeal for help.
“Hey, I didn’t know if I dialed your home number or your cell. Doesn’t matter. Head to Dulles Airport. I’ll call you on your car phone in two minutes.” There was an urgency in Lowry’s twangy voice. “I found Harry for you.”
Mercer slammed the phone in its cradle, dropped the papers to the floor, and sprinted out of his house. His Jag was parked on the street, as he usually left it, the keyless entry system chirping even as he swung open the long door. The Perelli tires left two long greasy marks on the asphalt as he smoked them away from the curb.
He was on the beltway doing eighty, weaving though traffic like a stock car driver when the car phone rang. Needing both hands on the wheel, he activated the speaker mode. “What have you got, Chuck?”
“It may already be too late.” Lowry’s strident voice filled the Jaguar.
“Tell me.” Mercer jinxed his car around a minivan occupied by a startled mother and four equally wide-eyed children. He was pushing ninety miles per hour now, the tension in Lowry’s voice transferring to the gas pedal.
“I went through all the major airline reservation databases last night and this morning looking for new bookings out of Reagan National, Dulles, and BWI. The kidnappers more than likely would have drugged him to keep him quiet. Can’t have some old man screaming and yelling on an international flight, can they? So I figured they might have requested special assistance. Had to crack into a government computer system to use their juice for the search engine, but that’s neither here nor there.”
“Come on, Chuck, get on with it!” Mercer’s frustration was finding an outlet.
“The search turned up bupkis, but then I got thinking. What about a charter jet service? I started that search just a few minutes ago and got a hit first try. A Gulfstream IV out of Dulles was chartered yesterday morning for a departure in…” Lowry paused. “. . eighteen minutes, according to the flight plan.”
“Why suspect this particular charter?” Even as he asked, Mercer felt his excitement swell.
“Ticketing code had a WCHC flag, which is a request for wheelchair assistance to the plane. If they drugged an eighty-year-old man, chances are Harry won’t be tap dancing up the boarding stairs. General Aviation at Dulles told me the five passengers are there right now waiting to board, and the old man in the wheelchair hasn’t made a peep since they arrived.”
Bingo!
Mercer floored the Jag, the speedometer needle arcing past a hundred just as smoothly as the engine builder could make it. The feline-sleek car knifed through the steady afternoon traffic with elegant ease, Mercer deftly passing cars on both the left and the right, dodging dangerously into the breakdown lane when necessary.
There it was. The shot of adrenaline, his drug of choice. Harry had said that the hollow in Mercer’s life was loneliness, and he agreed that there was a lot of truth in that statement. But Mercer also missed the danger. He’d become addicted to it in Alaska and craved the feeling of life it gave. The narrow gaps between cars seemed like open chasms as he bulled the Jag toward Dulles. He scarcely noticed a fender bender in his wake, caused by an overagressive move. The honks of protest as he accelerated past commuters sounded like a chorus.
“Thanks, I owe you a big one. I’ll call you later.”
I’ve been in New York for the past couple of days and I’m leaving for Los Angeles tomorrow. Mercer could only pray that Henna hadn’t left yet. He dialed the director’s cell phone number.