Mercer leaned over the side, grasped Aggie by the loose waist of her coveralls, and hauled her over the rail. She fell in a heap at his feet, cursing at him for scraping her chest against the railing.
“Okay, now what?” she breathed, looking at him critically.
“We find Kerikov and kill him,” Mercer replied, his eyes fixed in a deadly stare. “After the crew sees we’re together, I want you to get to the radio room, contact the Marine Terminal, and tell the manager there, a man named Lindstrom, to stop their computer technician. Mossey is his name. Tell Lindstrom that Mossey was responsible for locking out the computers and he’s planted a new operating system that is keyed into the nitrogen detonators.”
He saw that Aggie didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about. There wasn’t enough time to explain further, so he changed plans. “The hell with it. Stick with me and just make sure none of your PEAL buddies think I’m the enemy.”
They ran to the superstructure, tossing open one of the heavy doors, and dashed down a deserted hallway, the ship’s heaters feeling like a steam room compared to the cold air on the open deck. Most of the cabin doors they passed were open, the rooms empty. The sounds of the party grew steadily as they tracked its source.
“That better not mean we’re too late,” Mercer said tightly, his fists bunched at his sides as he dodged through several hatchways, Aggie at his side.
Bursting into the main dining room, Mercer and Aggie were stopped short by the sight of the ebullient crowd. The celebration was in full swing, and the transition from the horrors of the past hours to this took them both aback. A roar went up as the environmentalists recognized Aggie, some with delight, others with surprise.
They took scant notice of Mercer, obviously not equating him with the man who’d arrested several of their comrades during the FBI raid. In an instant, he and Aggie were enveloped, people jostling to get close, plying them with glasses of champagne. Mercer felt so out of place, it was as if he’d just broken in on his own funeral.
“Has it happened yet?” he shouted over the festive din, and from somewhere a voice responded that it would in a couple more minutes. They were ready for the final countdown.
Aggie looked at Mercer fearfully. Her eyes were huge. It was obvious that no one knew the full effects of what was about to take place. “Where’s Jan?” she asked a PEAL activist standing next to her in the mass of drunken revelers.
“On the bridge, I think,” came the response, and Mercer was carving a swath through the crowd, pushing aside those who got in his way as he lunged for the door.
IVAN Kerikov was posed before the bridge windows when Jan Voerhoven found him. His hands were behind his back, his thick chest puffed up, his chin thrusting boldly at the wild land beyond the thick armored glass. His flint-hard hair was silvered in the dawn, like the fur of a winter fox. There were fewer than fifteen years between their ages, but Jan felt like a callow youth in the Russian’s presence. He stood silently for several seconds, fearing to disturb Kerikov’s repose.
“The time has come for you to take your place as the spark that begins the third great revolution of modern times.” Kerikov turned the full brunt of his mesmerizing eyes on Voerhoven.
Jan thought that those must have been the eyes that Rasputin had, not in color but in intensity. “The third?”
“Of course, the Russian Revolution of nineteen seventeen, the Fascist Revolution that swept in Hitler, Tito, and Mussolini, and now the Green Revolution,” Kerikov replied, giving an answer that would soothe the agitated environmentalist. Kerikov kept to himself that the third revolution would actually be the unifying of the Middle East under joint Iraqi and Iranian control. “You have the detonator?”
“Right here.” Jan pulled the phone from his shirt pocket, snapping open the mouthpiece. Everything around him seemed unreal. He suddenly felt that he was being dragged into something he no longer wanted to be a part of. Yet he could not stop himself. Kerikov nodded to him to proceed and, as if the Russian actually had control of his fingers, he began to dial.
Mercer heard only that Voerhoven had the detonator as he crouched at the entrance to the bridge. The Russian was out of sight, and he had no time to determine Kerikov’s position, but Jan was standing right before him, near the central control console. Mercer rushed from his hidden position, closing the gap between himself and Voerhoven. He crashed into the Dutchman with the force of a cannon shot.
Both men flew over the console, the phone flying from Voerhoven’s hand as he smashed to the deck, ribs cracking as Mercer’s full weight landed on his chest. It took only two powerful punches to knock the activist into unconsciousness, but the delay gave Kerikov enough time to reach for a holstered pistol. Mercer came to his feet, whirled, and saw the weapon leveled at his head.
Echoing across the open expanse of Valdez Bay, sirens wailed like a rape victim in a deserted parking lot, a haunting cry that came too late to prevent the inevitable.
There was an emergency at the Alyeska Marine Terminal.
Both men glanced out the windscreen toward the sprawling facility, as if they could see evidence of the awful destruction taking place along the eight-hundred-mile length of the pipeline. Mercer looked back at Kerikov, his gray eyes darkened by reckless hatred.
“Too late, Dr. Mercer.” Kerikov revealed yellow teeth in what passed as a smile. “Last time you beat me by a few hours. This time I beat you by only seconds.”
“I’m going to kill you, you sick fucking bastard.” Mercer shifted his eyes to Kerikov’s right as he spoke.
“Afraid not.” Kerikov twisted to follow Mercer’s gaze and when he did, Aggie Johnston came out from an open flying bridge door to his left. Kerikov never saw the fire extinguisher she used as a bludgeon. He crumpled, blood pouring out of the wide gash in his skull.
“Glad you were here to back up my threat,” Mercer said as he recovered Kerikov’s gun, training it on the Russian. He knew the man was still dangerous as he lay moaning on the deck. Aggie’s attack hadn’t been strong enough to knock him out, and already he was moving, struggling to clear his head.
“What’s that sound?” Aggie asked over the klaxons shrieking from across the harbor.
“We’re too late. Voerhoven set off the nitrogen packs.”
Screaming like a madwoman, Aggie ran across the bridge to where her ex-lover sprawled on the floor. She kicked at him, yelling his name and swearing as if she would never stop. Her face was bright red and tears raged in her eyes. No one could have done her a more grievous injury than what Voerhoven had just done to Alaska. She felt the land’s pain as if it was her own body covered in toxic poison.
“Aggie, stop it!” Mercer shouted, grabbing for her shoulders as her feet continued to pummel Voerhoven. “I have to contact the Terminal. There may be a way to reduce the damage. Aggie! Listen to me!”
She stopped, finally, looking at him as an eerie calm settled over her.
“Where are the radios?” Mercer was still shouting, his nerves frayed like a rope about to part. Voerhoven’s cell phone was at his feet, damaged beyond repair.
“They’re destroyed. I saw that Arab smashing them on my way here. He stole a Zodiac and is headed away from the ship right now. I thought coming to the bridge was more important than trying to stop him.”
Like a sprung trap, Kerikov came off the floor where he’d been momentarily forgotten. Mercer saw the movement out of the corner of his eye and shouted for the Russian to stop, but Kerikov was in full flight out the bridge wing door. Mercer triggered off one round, the bullet puncturing Kerikov high on the left shoulder, staggering and slowing him but not stopping his dash to freedom. He was already on the narrow flying bridge, the tails of his coat streaming around him in the wind, an arm crossed over his shoulder to clutch at the oozing wound.
Mercer didn’t have time for a second shot before Kerikov reached the end of the deck and tossed himself over the side of the ship, dropping thirty feet into the frigid water. He was just starting to race after Kerikov to get another shot when he resurfaced, but he stopped himself, spun around, and grabbed Aggie by the hand.
“Don’t talk. Run.”
They raced back through the ship, fear hounding Mercer like never before. For Kerikov to flee as he had, he must have believed that taking a bullet in the back and jumping into the freezing water was a more survivable option than staying aboard the
They burst into the dining hall to find the party even more wild than before, European rock music blaring from a stereo set up at the head of the room and most of the people dancing with abandon. Mercer took only a second to
