was rising and falling so shrilly that his teeth felt on edge.
“How’s it going?” Mercer shouted over the klaxons. Hauser was working frantically, moving from one workstation to another, flipping switches and checking dials before returning to the Damatic computer system, running through menus and sliding the mouse around like a child with a toy race car.
“I think we’re going to make it. I’m trying to redistribute oil within the holds. I need to rebalance the ship.” Hauser looked up at Mercer seriously. “If we were a minute later, there wouldn’t have been anything I could do. The ship would have broken up.”
Without warning, the air in the pump room came alive as if an electric charge had arced through the space. A wild burst of nine-millimeter ammunition smashed into the steel walls and ceiling, fragmented into hundreds of supersonic pieces, filling the air like a maddened swarm. Over the shriek created by the fusillade came two concussive booms of a larger-caliber gun. Mercer was spared from the assault by a metal cabinet used to store crude samples taken from the tanks during loading. Hauser was not.
The captain caught a brutal spread across his broad back, red blooms erupting on his coat where the hot metal punctured cloth and skin. He pitched forward, screaming. He hit a desk, balanced for a second, and then fell to the floor, writhing as though caught in a seizure.
Mercer ducked around the cabinet in time to see a dark figure lurch from the doorway, getting off a snap shot he knew had been too slow. He edged to the door to take a quick look down the hall and almost had his throat slit for his effort. Lieutenant Krutchfield was leaning there, his face blackened and bloody. There were three bleeding holes in his uniform, and his Kevlar body armor looked as though it had been stampeded by a herd of buffalo. The knife he held at Mercer’s throat had drawn a thin line of blood before the SEAL realized he was about to kill one of the good guys and checked the motion.
“I almost had the son of a bitch, but I’m out of ammo.”
Krutchfield’s pistol was locked back empty and still smoked in his other hand. “I thought you were his backup.”
“Christ, he just opened fire in this room.” Fear stripped Mercer of his usual calm. “Do you think he would have done that to his own man?”
“Sorry.” Krutchfield was fading fast. “I’m a little messed up right now. I can’t seem to think too well.”
“No shit. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” Mercer guided the commando into the pump room and laid him on the floor next to Hauser. The captain had quieted to an occasional whimper. Mercer couldn’t tell if he had gone into shock. “Krutchfield? Is your other man still around?”
“I don’t think so. We got jumped pretty hard coming up. There were at least six terrs waiting for us. After securing the top of the ladder, we separated and went into pursuit. That wasn’t one of my best ideas,” the SEAL admitted.
“Just make sure you live to regret it.” Mercer checked the clips on his two pistols, combining the half-empty magazines into one fully charged weapon. “Stay with Hauser. Do whatever you can for him. I saw a Coast Guard ship headed our way, probably called in by Devil Fish. Help will be here in just a few minutes.”
Mercer was almost out of the room when Krutchfield called to him. “Be careful of this guy. I had him in my sights when I pulled the trigger, but he’d moved by the time the bullets arrived. He’s the quickest bastard I’ve ever seen.”
“Thanks.” It was news Mercer didn’t need.
In the hallway, Mercer took a second to examine the trail of blood splattered on the decking. Maybe the fleeing terrorist wouldn’t be so fast anymore. With the pistol held before him, he followed the blood, keeping himself covered as best he could. As the trail led him out of the superstructure, he increased his pace, feeling that the terrorist was more interested in escaping than finishing what he’d started in the pump room.
Finally coming out into a naturally lighted corridor, the pale sun entering through long rectangular windows, Mercer realized that the terrorist wasn’t headed toward the rope ladder. They had come out on the main deck on the opposite side of the tanker and well forward of where it had been left dangling. This close to the main deck, Mercer could feel the radiant heat of the crude oil that covered it. It had been about one hundred twenty degrees when it was pumped from the ground at Prudhoe Bay and had lost little of its warmth since. It actually felt good compared to the sharp October air, but the smell was tremendous, so strong he could see the fumes rising off the slick.
Staring down the expanse of the main deck it was easy to see the footprints left by JoAnn Riggs’ last terrorist, their shape distorted as the oil slowly oozed back to cover them but distinguishable nevertheless. In the very far distance, past the manifold towers, a figure ran, favoring one leg as he moved but maintaining a good pace on the slick surface.
Mercer dashed up to the raised metal catwalk that ran down the center of the deck in hopes the dry surface would be quicker going than chasing directly after the terrorist. He was surprised, but thankful, to find an old bicycle propped up against a support stanchion, the tired-looking two-wheeler left there as a convenience to crews who needed to get to the distant bow during routine ship’s operations. Every supertanker usually carried them.
In seconds, he was gaining rapidly.
Wolf had been certain he’d heard voices as he and JoAnn Riggs were leaving the pump room. As they’d walked away, he could almost feel eyes on the back of his head, but he hadn’t turned to look. It was only after he and Riggs had gotten to the main deck, and he saw the human carnage that had once been his team, that he decided to go back into the ship and dispose of whoever was opposing them. Riggs continued to the boarding ladder and the cabin cruiser. Wolf knew that the pump room would be the logical target for a counterstrike. It was the only place on the ship to prevent her imminent destruction.
As he fled along the deck, running as best he could with the stinging wound to his thigh where Krutchfield had shot him, he realized that going back had been a critical, maybe fatal, mistake. He had abandoned his training by giving in to emotions. Even if the destruction of the
Now he raced for the bow, hoping the SEAL who’d shot him would follow. If he was to die on this cursed ship, he wanted the opportunity to take out just one of the Americans.
Wolf looked behind him, hoping to see the SEAL giving chase, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a madman on a bicycle racing toward him on the elevated walkway over his head. He tossed his empty weapon onto the deck, and from the deep pocket of his cargo pants withdrew a wax-coated flare he’d carried with him since the beginning of the scuttling operation. It had been his assignment to ignite the oil lying on the deck just before he and Riggs and the rest of the team fled the vessel.
Mercer heaved the bicycle into a tight skid on the catwalk when he saw the figure below turn and toss away a machine pistol. He let the bike clatter to the deck as he stood to take careful aim with his pistol. Just before he got into a proper stance, the terrorist jerked his right hand, and a red sun burst from his fist, an acrid trail of smoke billowing from the flare he’d been carrying.
“Drop your weapon or this whole ship goes up in flames,” Wolf shouted at what he thought was a SEAL on the spidery walkway.
“You don’t need to do this. Throw the flare over the side of the ship,” Mercer countered. Wolf stood in a pool of oil about two inches deep but covering nearly four acres. Just behind him, the deck bubbled as more crude leached out of an improperly secured hatch cover.
Two hundred thousand tons of highly explosive crude oil. Two hundred kilotons. Facing his own death, Mercer absently wondered if a ton of TNT had more or less explosive force than a ton of oil. He recalled that Hiroshima had been leveled with the equivalent of twenty kilotons. Even if the ratio between TNT and oil wasn’t close, he was still standing on a bomb many times more powerful than Little Boy.
He tried to remember what Hauser had said about the gases in the storage tanks. Why did the air in the tanks have to be inert? It was a sign of Mercer’s exhaustion that he couldn’t remember what it was about oil that made the air in the tanks so important.
“Yes, I do need to do this,” Wolf shouted back, the flare waving in his hands like a Fourth of July sparkler, as mesmerizing as a cobra’s dance. “If for no other reason than to know you will die with me.”
Mercer tightened his grip on the gun, keeping the sights centered on Wolf’s chest. Then he remembered. Oil is combustible only in a narrow range of gas ratios; to burn it had to be mixed with precisely 11 percent oxygen. Too much or too little and the mixture was noncombustive unless the oil was preheated first. Hoping that the mix was in his favor and without thinking further, Mercer adjusted his aim and fired off three rapid rounds. The 9mm
