great deal to finish tonight.”
“You promised me, and by the blood of the holymen, I’ll make you pay if I don’t get them.”
Mercer knew that the jittery maniac was afraid that the opportunity to kill him and some other prisoner would be taken away from him. And it was clear he would enjoy the task.
He also saw there was a rivalry between these two. Anyone could tell that the Arab resented taking orders from Kerikov. Without knowing who, Mercer sensed that Alam worked for someone else and that his being with Kerikov was on behalf of this other person. The alliance was one of convenience, nothing more. Not that it really mattered, he thought, considering his circumstances, but Mercer would have loved to know who that other person was.
“We have more important tasks than to worry about our guests.” Kerikov glanced at Mercer, no longer considering him a threat, then looked again at Abu Alam. “Get a few satchel charges from the stores I brought aboard. After we’re finished tomorrow, I guarantee you’ll be able to enjoy yourself with our esteemed doctor here. The other prisoner, well, we have to wait about that for now.”
“It’s time to do away with the activists?” Alam asked brightly.
“It’s time to make the preparations, yes.” Kerikov’s patience with Alam was wearing thin. It appeared to Mercer that he was having trouble reining in the Arab’s desire for death and his love of pain and suffering. “Now take him below, get the explosives, and meet me back here. I want to be off the rig within the hour.”
To Mercer, it sounded as if part of Kerikov was patronizing Abu Alam while some deeper element was in total accordance with the young assassin. Despite Kerikov’s more sophisticated polish, and his more urbane attitude, he was just as sick as the Arab killer. It was like comparing the madness of Hitler to that of his henchman, Joseph Goebbels — darker and lighter shades of the same evil.
Alam yanked Mercer from his chair and shoved him across the room. Mercer calculated the odds of escape and rejected the idea as suicidal. His hands were still bound, and Alam and his two agents had seven visible guns between them. He knew they would love a chance to draw one or all of them and cut him in two, so he allowed himself to be pushed around. The sinking feeling of defeat was overcoming him. He was facing an optionless situation, a trap with no escape, a puzzle with no solution. But he would not let it end here. At the doorway, Mercer turned to look at Kerikov once more. The Russian quietly sipped his drink as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
“It’s too bad that the computers in Valdez detected a drop in the temperature of the oil moving through the pipeline two weeks ago. One of your nitrogen packs leaked, Kerikov. Alyeska has been following behind your PEAL work crew, removing the packs just as quickly as they were attached.”
Kerikov swiveled around, searching Mercer’s face with an expression bordering on pity. When he spoke he almost sounded sad, as if Mercer’s bluff was too pathetic to warrant a response. “Of course, you’re lying.” He smirked. “I’ve had control of those computers for nearly a month. There hasn’t been a single anomalous reading since I tapped in. I really did expect more from you.”
Gotcha, Mercer said to himself.
Abu Alam jammed the barrel of his shotgun into Mercer’s back, forcing him out into the hallway. For now, his only choice was to allow Alam to lead him into the mechanical decks of the rig, where the brightly lit corridors gave way to a warren of twisting crawl spaces and work shafts whose function Mercer couldn’t even guess.
They walked for nearly fifteen minutes, and even with his strong sense of direction, developed over years of working in labyrinthine mines, Mercer was lost. He knew he was deep within the superstructure of the oil rig, but he couldn’t pinpoint exactly where. The dark serpentine walkways merged from one to another so easily that every new junction resembled the previous. If he had any hope of escape, only Ariadne’s string could save him from this maze.
They stopped in front of a six-foot hatch, its dogging wheel all the way open. It was as unremarkable as the two dozen similar hatches they had passed during their silent march through the
“Open it,” Alam barked, and one of his men heaved at the doorway, revealing a tiny room beyond. Alam had his shotgun ready, as if he expected to see someone standing in the phone booth-sized cabin. Mercer realized that he was looking into an elevator car. The drilling rig was so new that the lubricant used to grease the hatch was still a clear yellow, not yet darkened by dirt and grime.
“Inside.” Alam prodded Mercer again.
He stepped into the small elevator, expecting Alam to disobey Kerikov and shoot him in the back, but the blast did not come. Although he knew it was futile, Mercer tried to reason with Alam. “You know you’re not going to get away with this. You’re going to be caught and killed.”
“I pray for nothing more than a martyr’s death fighting the Great Satan,” Alam said, and his two men nodded in agreement.
“Be careful what you wish for; it may come true.” The door was slammed in his face, and the car began to drop.
There was no real elevator car, just a cagelike platform guided by a rail on its back side. It fell sedately into one of the rig’s massive hollow support columns, the walls opening up around Mercer, widening and curving like the insides of a huge grain silo. Looking out over the open edge of the car, he guessed the fall to be about one hundred feet. The bottom of the shaft was just a dark circle from his perspective, no larger than a manhole cover.
Down the platform dropped, the guide wheels passing slickly along its rail, the great open void sucking at him. Mercer had never suffered from vertigo before, but it didn’t seem a good time to push his luck. He kept his eyes fixed on the opposite wall of the featureless shaft. The air was chilled and humid, condensation droplets clinging to the pale blue walls like clear, fat leeches. At one point, Mercer could feel that the elevator had passed below the water line, the temperature plummeting a further twenty degrees. He pulled his leather jacket tighter around his body.
When he finally reached the bottom, it took only a few minutes to cut the tape binding his wrists by rubbing it against the accordion gate affixed to the floor. He located the controls that would send the elevator back to the top of the support leg to his right, but they had been sabotaged. The call buttons dangled from their housing on a few blackened wires. Mercer mashed the green button anyway, pressing it with all of his strength as if sheer force would convince the disabled elevator to begin rising.
Nothing happened. It had been shorted so only the upper controls still functioned. He was trapped in a modern-day version of the medieval pit. Without waiting for the full effect of his predicament to sink in, Mercer began to explore for another way out, starting first with the elevator itself. The cable that lowered the car was his best hope, and he scrambled on top of the open-sided car to examine it more closely.
As he expected, the finely braided steel cable was slick with grease. It was so slippery that he was barely able to grasp it and knew it would be impossible to climb. Yet he had to try, and just as he gathered himself to begin pulling himself upward, a voice from the gloom warned him.
“When I tried that, I fell and almost broke my leg.”
“Aggie?” Mercer couldn’t believe he’d heard correctly, but it was her voice echoing inside the huge cylinder. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He looked around the dimly lit space at the bottom of the support leg. The circular room was enormous but spartan. Half of it was occupied by machinery that looked as if it had come from the nightmares of a demented plumber. It was impossible to completely trace the twisting path of even one of the hundreds of pipes with their countless valves, gauges, and spurs. A low counter with storage doors and a near-empty tool rack stood a little way off from the tangled steel forest. The deck was mostly solid plating, but there were several large grates that would give access to even lower levels.
“Rereading
Mercer jumped back to the floor, crossing the distance between them in a few quick strides. He gathered her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers, feverishly kissing her as if nothing else mattered or ever would.
A moment later she stepped back, breathless. “Where did that come from?”
“I don’t know,” Mercer replied with a sheepish smile. “But you can’t deny it felt good.”
“You won’t hear me complaining, but you haven’t picked a very romantic spot to demonstrate your affection.” Her eyes were a bright, rich green, although the rest of her was ragged, worn by whatever ordeal she had undergone.
