Charon's landing

aim through the crowd, fired once and then again.

The music suddenly stopped as the speakers disintegrated in showers of black plastic and wires.

“Get off the ship. It’s going to explode.” Having given a warning he didn’t feel they deserved, Mercer grabbed Aggie again and rushed to the aft deck where the Cessna seaplane was still held fast against the side of the Hope by the tide.

He jumped down to the plane, the wing dipping under his weight even though he cushioned the fall by flexing his knees. He turned and looked up at Aggie at the railing. “Jump!”

He expected her to hesitate for a moment, but she didn’t. She threw herself over the side before he had properly braced himself. She landed in his arms with so much force that they both almost rolled into the water. Struggling, Mercer held on to Aggie as her feet dangled off the trailing edge of the wing.

“Can you reach the pontoon?” he asked, gently lowering her.

“Almost… Wait… I’m on it.”

He let go, and even as he got into position to follow her, Aggie ducked into the plane, readying it to get them away from the Hope. As he jumped down to the pontoon, the engine kicked over, and the prop wash nearly blew him off the eight-inch-wide float. Struggling against the wash, he edged forward until he hopped into the cabin.

“Go. Go. Go, goddamn it, go,” he screamed.

Aggie hadn’t bothered with her safety straps since the damaged wing prevented the Cessna from ever flying again. She sat on the edge of her seat, like a child driving a car for the first time, her eyes wide with fear. She had enough sense to keep the yoke pressed forward, spilling off any lift the wings might produce as the plane moved away from the doomed research ship. In a moment, Mercer was in the copilot’s seat at her side.

“Those people…” she said, referring to the PEAL members still on the Hope.

“Signed their death warrants when they allied themselves with Kerikov,” Mercer finished. “We gave them a chance they never would’ve had.”

“Where are we headed?” Aggie resumed that calmness that so fascinated Mercer.

“To the Marine Terminal. I don’t know. Maybe there is something we can still do.” Mercer knew it was too late; the damage had been done. All that remained was to help clean it up. Even over the vibration of the plane and the whining drone of the engine, he could hear the sirens calling from across the water.

Valdez Harbor

Abu Alam had barely left himself enough time after planting the explosives to disable the Hope’s radio equipment and dash down to the boat deck. He had cut the margin much too thin. He was a good mile from the rocky beach at the head of Valdez Bay when he heard the alarms from the Marine Terminal. Kerikov had triggered the nitrogen packs. Alam was too exposed on the open water to detonate the explosives aboard the Hope. To do so now would attract attention, and he still needed time to steal a vehicle that would take him to Anchorage’s airport.

Every second now increased Ivan Kerikov’s chance to escape the doomed ship, and one of Rufti’s most explicit orders was that the Russian must not survive. Alam balanced caution with his desire to kill Kerikov. He knew that until he reached land, caution by necessity must prevail. He’d considered motoring the Zodiac toward Valdez, but it was very possible that he had been spotted kidnapping Aggie Johnston. It would be smarter for him to head for the Alyeska Terminal where he could beach the rubber raft a short distance from the facility and steal a vehicle during the confusion created by the detonation of the liquid nitrogen.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw the decks of the Hope were quiet, the young people obviously still enjoying their morning celebration. Alam hated using explosives. It was too distant, too impersonal. He much preferred seeing his victims die, smelling their fear as their life drained from a slit throat or a bullet in the chest. He had used bombs before, but he felt a little cheated inside, as if the explosives did the killing, not him.

A big wave grabbed at the Zodiac, forcing Alam to concentrate on his course. Just beyond the outside perimeter of the tanker loading facility, a small stream emptied into the bay. It was screened on both sides by thick copses of trees and would make an ideal landing spot. Even this far out, Abu Alam could see a low bridge crossing the water-washed ravine. The Alyeska access road was only a couple dozen yards away. Perfect.

Because he was unfamiliar with the workings of small boats, Alam focused all of his attention on bringing in the Zodiac and didn’t turn back again until the bow was bucking against the stream’s flow, the motor churning brown silt from the bottom. When he finally twisted around, he immediately reached for the detonator in his jacket pocket. A steady stream of tiny figures were leaping over the yellow side of the Hope. At this distance, they looked much like the proverbial rats leaving a sinking ship. The PEAL members were escaping, Kerikov probably among them. Alam didn’t waste time thinking of this, didn’t even notice the red speck that was a damaged aircraft racing from the ship. He thought only about the pounds of artfully placed explosives aboard the Hope and the deaths they were about to cause. Clearing the detonator from his pocket, he keyed an activation code, noted the green indicator light, and pressed ENTER.

Like a crippled fledgling that doesn’t know it can’t fly, the aerodynamics of the Cessna kept trying to loft Mercer and Aggie Johnston skyward as they skimmed along the surface of Valdez Bay. Aggie struggled to keep the Cessna level, forcing nearly all of her weight against the starboard rudder pedal to compensate for the destroyed port wing. As it was, she could only manage to crab the plane sideways across the bay, the nose pointed almost thirty degrees away from their direction of travel.

Mercer now knew enough about planes to know he didn’t know enough about planes to help her. He kept his hands and feet clear of the controls. He focused instead on the tiny mirror placed high on the dash and watched the Hope shrink in their wake. No matter how fast they traveled, it seemed they were still too close to the research ship. If it had been rigged with enough explosives to panic Kerikov into his suicidal jump, he and Aggie were in for a rough ride. With nothing better to do, Mercer grabbed the bottle of whiskey still in the cockpit and dosed himself with a little liquid courage.

The MV Hope, formally a Hecla class research vessel in the British navy, vanished just as the bottle came away from his lips.

One second the ship was centered in the mirror and the next it was gone in a blooming explosion of red, yellow, and black, huge slabs of the hull splitting apart, chunks of metal, wood, and flesh arcing through the air. The devastation was total. Even before the shock wave hit the fleeing Cessna, the main part of the ship had sunk beneath the rippling bay, nothing to mark its existence except a greasy fire raging on the surface and the human misery wallowing near its grave.

The overpressure wave blew out every storefront window in Valdez, killing four people, and overturned all but the largest boats lying at anchor in the public harbor, claiming a further eight victims. Had the explosion been delayed by a few more minutes, the civilian death toll would have been much higher, as onlookers were just converging at the shore to see what had caused the alarm at the tanker facility that shared their waters and gave many of them their livelihoods. Of the PEAL environmentalists, Mercer’s shouted warning had saved all but twelve. Eight died immediately and four later in the hospital.

Two potential victims the blast did not claim were Aggie Johnston and Philip Mercer, but it was a close call all the way.

“Brace yourself,” Mercer shouted as soon as he recognized what had happened, dropping the bottle to the floor.

The concussion of the explosion grabbed the Cessna, tipping it so high that the prop ripped at the water, slicing it into a plume that obliterated their view. Aggie pulled back on the yoke immediately, releasing the rudder at the same time. The plane tried to lift, and for a precious moment it was back on an even keel, the pontoons barely keeping purchase, the forces of the wings and that of the concussion wave holding the aircraft steady.

Then the concentric swells radiating from the explosion caught up to the plane, lifting it higher and, like a bodysurfer caught on a perfect crest, bore it even faster along the Bay of Valdez. The water raced from the explosion’s epicenter at nearly one hundred fifty miles per hour, piling up a mountain of water thirty feet high, and