Charon's landing

tucked against his chest.

One deck below the raucous party, Abu Alam was making his report to Kerikov. He’d spent the past three hours in the engine room of the Hope, securing charges of plastique to fuel lines, oil bunkers, and other strategic locations. When they were detonated, there would be nothing left of the research ship but the twisted backbone of her keel. His clothing was filthy, his dark complexion sooty and streaked with oil and grime, and his hands were so black with dirt that they looked gloved. They were alone in Jan Voerhoven’s spacious cabin, Alam’s footprints staining the carpet’s rich pile.

He gave his report without emotion, dictating the locations of the charges and the fact that he had had to kill three engineers who had come too close to his work. His eyes were flat and hard. Alam contained his excitement with difficulty, trying to remain impassive under Kerikov’s critical stare.

Is he aware? Alam wondered.

It would be natural for Kerikov to suspect treachery from Alam — their entire world was created from deception — but he couldn’t tell if the Russian knew it was coming so quickly. Hours now, not days.

Alam had not thought through his timing yet, for the delicacies of it were somewhat beyond him. He was a soldier, not an officer, and certainly not a strategist. Hasaan Rufti had made it clear that the pipeline must be destroyed and that there could be no possible link between the act and the Minister himself. Eliminating PEAL was a desire of both Rufti and Kerikov; neither of them wanted a group of young idealists bragging of their achievements afterward. But killing the Russian was going to prove far more difficult. Alam had to make certain Kerikov detonated the nitrogen packs and activated the hidden computer program that would rouse the multiple pump stations before killing him with a quick knife thrust or blast from his SPAS-12 shotgun. Ideally, Kerikov would die when Alam set off the explosives secreted throughout the ship, but he didn’t know how to properly time such an occurrence.

Trust in Allah, Alam reminded himself, and his Prophet will guide you.

“Very well,” Kerikov cut into Alam’s transparent musings, for the Arab’s duplicity was obvious. “It’s nearly time. The crew should be drunk by now, and once we detonate the nitrogen packs, they won’t notice when we leave the ship. That will give us the window to destroy the Hope. Bring Voerhoven to the bridge. I want to see his face when he realizes what he’s done to his precious environment.”

The Cessna was a bright speck high over the gray water of Prince William Sound, the plane so high its droning engine couldn’t be heard by a ferry heading eastward from Seward to Valdez. At least that is where Mercer hoped the vessel was heading as he used it as a reference to make his turn slightly north and head up into Valdez Bay.

Everything was going perfectly — so far. He almost felt comfortable in the pilot’s seat, his hands and feet light but firm on the controls. The terrifying prospect of landing was still a few minutes away. What bothered him most now was the relentless movement of his watch’s second hand as it ground down toward the end. There was nothing he could do to stop it or even slow it. The plane was already at maximum power. The margin to reach the Hope was so thin it was practically nonexistent.

The great expanse of the Alaska mainland lay before the aircraft, the early morning light giving the vaguest hints of the beauty of the state, its towering mountains and icy streams and huge forests. If he failed, it would become a cesspool of unmanageable devastation. He knew the resilience of nature, what her forces could do to clean the scars left by man’s existence, and while the process was slow by human standards, nature always seemed to recover. But something like what Kerikov was attempting would take generations to heal. Alaska would be ruined well into the twenty-second century.

Amazingly, when he pushed a little harder on the maxed-out throttle, the engine beat picked up just that tiny bit more. He looked back to see Aggie still asleep in the cargo hold.

If only he could be certain they were headed in the right direction. While there were some charts in the plane, Mercer wasn’t familiar enough with the region or with navigation techniques to use them. They lay folded in a vinyl pouch on the floor below the copilot’s seat.

“God is my copilot and hope is my navigator,” he breathed between tight lips.

Up ahead, he spotted a long, narrow island sitting a couple miles off the north coast of the Sound. He watched it for a moment and then reached over to dig out the maps. Maybe he could use them after all; the island was so symmetrical that recognizing it on the charts would be relatively easy. When he straightened back, he saw the long trail of white water backing against the island and realized it was no landmass at all but a supertanker heading south from Valdez. Even from three thousand feet the vessel’s size was staggering. Looking around at the insectlike Cessna, it was hard to imagine that both craft came from the mind of the same species, for surely the tanker was proportioned for the gods.

While he admired the ship, he also realized that it had just saved him from making a disastrous error. Mercer was on a too easterly course; they would have flown beyond the entrance to Valdez without ever realizing it. Quickly adjusting their route to follow the wake of the ponderous tanker, Mercer took a second to check his watch again. Not enough time, but still he had to try.

One of the first things an instructor teaches a student pilot is that the use of the elevators must correspond with the throttle in order to avoid stalling or power diving. Usually after the verbal lesson, the instructor will demonstrate this fundamental by heeling the plane over at full throttle and scaring the student half to death in a dive-bomber stoop that quite often spills the student’s lunch.

Mercer had never been a student pilot, and the throttle was at the gate when he pushed the yoke away from his chest. The Cessna responded like a horse given free rein, dropping out of control, Prince William Sound filling the view from the windshield, and every second brought the sight into sharper focus. The engine screamed, and the plane began to buffet as its wings reached, then passed, their structural tolerance point. They were traveling straight down at one hundred forty-five miles per hour.

His stomach, already turbulent from the ride in the escape pod, went into full revolt, liquid acids rearing into his mouth, gagging him with their foul taste. Knowing he’d just committed a critical error, Mercer pulled back on the yoke, but the pressure of the wind against the control surfaces was too strong for him to fight. His greatest effort only managed to stretch the control cables running from the stick to the elevators, suddenly making the yoke feel mushy in his hands. The plane was going down, and no matter how hard he strained, he couldn’t stop it. The altimeter spun backward in a solid blur, unwinding their altitude faster than the barometrically controlled needle could accurately follow.

He never considered the throttle until an elegant hand reached for it and gently backed it off, the engine calming immediately. Without saying a word, Aggie Johnston wedged herself into the copilot’s seat, fighting against the force of the plane’s severe pitch. She added her strength to Mercer’s, and with the aid of a slowing engine, they managed to pull the plane’s nose upward, slowly at first and then as the wings felt lift, quicker and more smoothly, the airframe stopping its mad shudder as the craft came level only eighty feet above the choppy waters.

“The last thing I remember, we were about to drown, and now we’re about to crash,” she said so calmly that Mercer could not believe her quietude. “What is it, can’t decide how you want to die?”

“Of course I can.” He matched her nonchalance, relieved at her obvious flying skills. “I see myself killed by a ricochet while passing a kidney stone. How about you?”

“Let’s put it this way, I don’t want to be killed by another of your idiotic ideas.” Aggie had the plane in trim now, gaining altitude steadily as she followed the course Mercer had set. “It’s clear you don’t know how to fly a plane, so do you mind telling me what’s going on?”

“We escaped the Petromax Omega about ten seconds before it capsized.” She looked at him sharply. “I know what you’re thinking — any fuel that she spilled was burned up in a fire that would have inspired Dante. We made it to shore a couple hours later, where I found this plane and decided that stealing it was a much better option than being recaptured by Kerikov’s goons. I never intended to take off, but, well, you know how these things sort of happen. While I thought out the beginning of our escape, I don’t mind the fact that you’re stepping in to finish it. You do know how to land this thing, don’t you?”

“Two hundred and fifty-seven hours in my log. Where’s the closest runway?”

“Ah.” Mercer tried a charming smile to cover his trepidation. “This is a seaplane, and we’re only about five miles from the Hope. But you can land a seaplane, right?”

“Oh, shit.” The color that had returned to Aggie’s face drained once again. Her hands tightened on the spongy yoke of the unfamiliar Cessna. “I’ve never been in a floatplane before.”

“Sure you have,” Mercer quipped. “We’ve been airborne for a while.”