Charon's landing

reached him.

The lifeless corpse of the Hispanic commando flew by, pinwheeling through space until he landed flat on the water, white spume like a policeman’s chalk outline erupting around his body. Mercer jerked the pistol from his belt as he listened to the gunfire over his head. He couldn’t stay where he was, exposed and vulnerable, and rather than backing down, he surged upward, bobbing his head quickly over the railing to assess the situation.

The deck was empty except for a handful of shining brass shell casings that rolled on the white steel deck. Wisps of acrid smoke still filtered from the necks of the spent shells, singeing his nose even sharper than the leaking crude. There were thick strings of blood splashed across the deck leading toward a closed hatchway.

A mechanical-sounding voice almost made Mercer lose his precarious perch. “Devil Fish calling Mud Skipper. Standing by.”

He’d forgotten that he had Krutchfield’s comm link to the Tallahassee. Tucking his pistol under his arm to free his hand, Mercer reached for the radio. “This is Mud Skipper. The condition is… Oh, shit, I don’t know. Just wait. I’ll be back in touch.”

He jammed the radio back in his coat pocket and rolled onto the deck, finding cover under the port side lifeboat davit, the empty mechanism offering protection from every side.

The pain he had endured before, the agony of being beaten and shot and crashed and drowned and nearly incinerated, meant nothing at this instant. Adrenaline, the natural drug he had become addicted to so long ago, coursed through his body, giving clarity to everything he saw or felt or sensed. Mercer was on automatic and nothing else mattered.

“Hauser, move it. We don’t have time,” he called, rushing past the rope ladder.

Mercer slammed his shoulder against the superstructure door as Hauser came onto the deck. The heavy steel crashed back against a bulkhead, and beyond lay a dim carpeted hallway. Eight feet down the corridor, a dark lump on the deck revealed itself to be the body of one of the terrorists, his chest ripped open by a SEAL’s machine pistol. As Mercer stooped to pick up the pistol left lying near the corpse, Hauser came up behind him. The smell of oil lay heavy in the air, coating their throats like a thick mucus and burning their eyes so that they were red and raw.

“We have to get to the pump room.” Fear and tension made Hauser speak unnaturally loudly, his voice booming in the corridor.

Gunfire rippled in the distance. A fierce battle raged a deck below them.

“We’re not going to make it this way,” Mercer said, guessing they were cut off from the pump room.

“We can get there from the other side of the ship, but we need to go back outside and cross the hull on the funnel deck. I’ll lead you.”

“No, stay behind me. I can’t risk you if we get ambushed. Just call out directions.” Mercer was already running the way they’d come, the two automatic pistols held in his fists like a western gunslinger.

Hauser guided Mercer up several flights of stairs, their feet slipping on the steel treads. On the lower bridge deck, the area that housed the crew’s mess, theater, library, and dispensary, Hauser paused to look into the mess. Seeing that it was empty, a dark look crossed his face. He feared the worst for his boys. They crossed the width of the ship on the funnel deck at the very top of the superstructure. From this vantage, nearly eighty feet above the water, Mercer could see the widening stain of oil like a cancer around the supertanker. He had no way of judging the amount of crude already lost, but even a single drop was too much. A high wave passing down Juan de Fuca Strait met the resistance of the slick and was crushed under the oil’s weight into a ripple that could barely undulate the sea’s glossy surface. The two men dashed across the funnel deck, the Arctica’s captain on Mercer’s heels as he dodged between vent stacks, mechanical housings, and the elevator’s machinery shack. Hauser almost ran into the mining engineer when Mercer stopped just short of the swimming pool. The limp bodies of Hauser’s crew floated on the surface of the water like so many neglected toys. The gruesome tableau held both men immobile for long seconds as they stared mutely at the horror before them.

“I want them, Mercer. I want them all to pay for this.…” Words failed Hauser as he looked at what had become of his crew. Tears of rage and frustration pricked his eyes as he struggled to keep his emotions in check.

“We both do,” Mercer said quietly. No matter how many times he’d seen death in its thousand guises, he could not, would not, harden himself to it. He was as shaken as Captain Hauser.

A door opened beside them. Mercer instantly noticed the man’s clothes as he peered onto the deck. It wasn’t one of the SEALs, and Mercer’s two guns spit in rapid succession, eight rounds fired as fast as he could pull the triggers. Six of the shots caught the terrorist, stitching him from thigh to throat. He was dead before he hit the deck.

Deep below the waterline, at the very keel of the Petromax Arctica, microscopic welding flaws in the hull plating began to expand into long jagged rents as the strain of the uneven cargo load grew. Like a tree caught in a high wind, the ship moaned, metal rending against metal in a deep resonance that echoed across the Strait. The Arctica was beginning to break up.

“Let’s go. We’ve got to stop this ship from splitting apart.”

Hauser led Mercer to the forward edge of the superstructure just above the bridge. Both men were struck dumb. Expecting to see the red-painted main deck stretching the length of three football fields, they were greeted by a wide expanse of crude oil. Only the elevated catwalk that ran the length of the ship and the twin towers of the manifold located amidships were visible above the stinking black morass.

“What does it mean?” Mercer found his voice.

“They probably plan to ignite the ship too. It’s not enough just to pour her cargo from her — they want to set her ablaze as well.”

Far beyond the bow of the tanker, miles away it seemed, Mercer could just make out the white knife-edge prow of an approaching Coast Guard cutter, but it was already too late for the cavalry’s arrival. Poison was dumping from the tanker so fast that by the time the authorities arrived, tens of thousands of tons would be polluting the virgin waters of Puget Sound.

“We’ve got to close the sea suction inlet,” Hauser shouted.

“Lead on,” Mercer cried and followed Hauser at a fast run toward the interior of the VLCC.

They ran through the crew’s portion of the superstructure, both men ignoring the possibility of an ambush. If they did come across one of Riggs’ terrorists, it would be a chance to vent some of their hatred and anger. At a T- junction at the end of a long hall, Hauser directed Mercer left, then down two more flights of stairs. So far the coast was clear. The ship had begun to list, and it felt more noticeable as they entered her bowels, forcing both men to run with one shoulder braced against the wall. The chemical stench was getting stronger with each passing breath.

“How much farther?” Mercer’s lungs burned from the combination of exertion and the petrochemical mist he inhaled with every step.

“One more deck down,” Hauser panted. “We’re almost there.”

Mercer set off again, his jaw locked in determination. Twelve hours ago he had been struggling to escape a doomed oil rig and now he was racing into the heart of a doomed oil tanker. The irony was not lost on him, and he chuckled grimly.

All at once, he heard voices at the foot of a staircase and flattened himself against a wall to listen. Over the shriek of several alarms, he couldn’t distinguish the words. The voices, one male, the other female, seemed to be retreating down the hallway he and Hauser had almost entered.

Taking a chance, he ducked around the stair landing and saw two figures walking away, neither of them apparently concerned with the vessel’s predicament or the alarms crying around them. Hauser looked too and almost started after JoAnn Riggs and the terrorist named Wolf, but Mercer restrained him, forcing the captain against a bulkhead so that he could look the older man in the eye.

“They’re not important. I know how you feel, but we’ve got to save the ship first. You’ve got to stop the oil.”

Reluctantly, Hauser nodded, and the two men dashed down the dim corridor and into the pump room. The captain immediately set about righting his ship, spooling up the three pumps in an effort to suck the oil- contaminated seawater back into the vessel. It was a desperate act that did not succeed. The weight of crude remaining in the tanks exerted too much pressure for the pumps to overcome. Oil continued to belch from her. Hauser was forced to close the double valves on the thirty-inch main and each of the three smaller pipes, managing to stem the leach of petroleum. While Hauser was doing this, Mercer worked on deactivating the alarms. The sound