Pandora's curse

take up the hunt.”

“Where is she?”

“About eight miles south of us,” the captain admitted.

“It’ll take too long.” Mercer fought to keep frustration from his voice. “Every second we waste gives Rath that much more of a lead. We have the capability to go after him ourselves. Turn us to Iceland and start firing those flares. The Intrepido can catch up and you can tell them what’s happening en route. Does she have a chopper?”

“Yes, but it is down right now for a transmission problem.”

“Doesn’t matter. I can catch Rath.”

“How?”

“Turn the ship and let me worry about it.” Mercer looked at Ira Lasko. “How many guns do you have?”

“I dumped them all.”

“Father Vatutin?”

“So did I.”

Hilda had also returned to the cabin without her gun. “Erwin,” Mercer said into the phone, “get some weapons, MP-5s and pistols. Also a cell phone and a sat-phone. It may work when we’re closer to Iceland. Meet me in the marina where we first came aboard.”

“What are you doing?” Ira asked when Mercer cut the connection.

“Remember the Riva speedboats next to the Jet Skis? They’re ten or fifteen miles an hour faster than Rath’s boat. Rath’s going to beat us to the coast, but we’ll be right on his heels.”

Lasko made a sour face. “Those boats are thirty feet long,” he said doubtfully. “We must be a hundred miles from Iceland. They’ll never survive a race across the open ocean.”

Mercer was already at the door, forcing the others in the cabin to follow. “The boat will be fine. It’s us who may not survive.”

Ira got a sudden idea. “Wet suits?”

“Now we’re on the same page. They’re right next to the Aquarivas.”

Like a squad of soldiers bent on a one-way mission, they descended to the marina, grim faced and silent. While the alarms had been canceled, the public-address system repeated a call for all passengers to report to their rooms for a head count. The hallways were deserted.

Mercer’s body vibrated with tension, but his senses were on the hyperacuity he experienced whenever he faced danger. He felt he could almost hear the second hand of his watch.

He crashed through the doors to the marina and snapped on the overhead lights. The two Rivas were along the left wall, their polished forward decks gleaming under the fluorescents. The long stern decks hid a pair of 315 horsepower Mercruiser engines. Each had a leather-trimmed open cockpit behind a windshield that was more decorative than functional. They were expensive toys designed for running around secluded tropical coves, and he was about to take one out in the open north Atlantic on a chase her builders had never imagined.

He moved to the crane controls next to the glass office where Greta Schmidt had captured the others. “Ira, check the fuel status of the boat closest to the exit doors. If she’s full, dump out half the gas. We need speed, not range.”

“I’m on it.” He was already unclamping the rear hatch to get at the engines.

Mercer pulled an oversize wet suit over his stolen clothes. The garment was stiff and new, cutting his mobility, but he’d need it when the Riva approached Iceland’s wave-lashed coast. He and Ira were in for a wet, freezing ride. The boots had no treads, so he was forced to keep on his sneakers. The smell of spilled gas began to envelop the space. “Good job. Father Vatutin, monitor the gauges so Ira can change.”

Erwin was not alone when he came in to the marina a moment later. Marty, Anika, and Klaus Raeder were with him. Mercer allowed himself a second of relief that she was all right and turned his concentration back to what he was about to attempt.

“Give the weapons to Hilda to check over.” She had proved her weapons training equaled her cooking skills. “What’s the status on that fuel?”

“Almost there.”

“Anika, go open the outer doors,” Mercer said, paying no attention to her expression.

She ignored his order and crossed to him. Mercer was bent over, tying his shoe, and didn’t know she was there until he straightened. She slapped him across the face harder than any woman had ever struck him. He reeled against the rack of wet suits, his cheek numbed.

“That was for sticking a gun to my head.” Fury thickened her accent and made her eyes burn. “And I’d hit you again for jumping off the bridge. You didn’t need to do that. You could have given up right then. We had already won. It was a stupid stunt. You just wanted to see if you could do it, didn’t you? Goddamned men and their egos. You remind me of a climber I knew who attempted an impossible ascent but was willing to die trying. Which he did.”

She turned away, but Mercer placed a hand on her shoulder. She shook herself free. “Don’t touch me.”

Behind her anger, Mercer saw fear. For herself mostly, but a little for him too. “If you want to pigeonhole me with suicidal rock climbers I can’t stop you.” He showed no anger because he couldn’t blame her. “But I think you’re wrong. Am I reckless? When I have to be. Do I take chances no sane person would? Yes, but not because I want to. I do it because I have to.”

“And you have to chase Rath in a boat that will sink after the first mile?” Concern dampened her rage and her true feelings welled into her voice.

“Yes. Because he has to be stopped. I didn’t choose to be here, Anika. Nor did I choose to be on that walkway with a dozen guns pointed at me. In case you hadn’t noticed, I react to situations. I don’t go looking for them. If you think of me as some cliched macho guy driven to danger that’s fine. But I don’t think you know me well enough for that kind of judgment.” Mercer became more conciliatory. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

He broke eye contact. Then noticed that Klaus Raeder was pulling on a wet suit. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Coming with you,” the industrialist said. “None of this would have happened if I’d faced my accountability rather than trying to buy it off. I’m not going to let you clean up my mistake.”

Mercer considered denying Raeder his opportunity for repentance, but he sensed the German’s sincerity. Raeder wanted Rath dead more than he did. Mercer understood why. “Know how to handle a weapon?”

Raeder nodded, then boasted, “I’m also a black belt in judo.”

“Good for you.” Mercer was unimpressed. “I intend to shoot Rath from as far away as I can. If you want to go beat up his corpse afterward, be my guest.”

Erwin Puhl had opened the outer doors, and frigid sea air swept the gasoline fumes from the garage. While Ira Lasko slid his thin frame into a wet suit, Marty attached the lifting lines from the overhead crane to hard points on the speedboat. Retractable rails would move the Riva out of the garage and lower it to the ocean between the Empress’s twin hulls.

“Let’s saddle up,” Ira said when he was dressed.

Just before Mercer fired the Mercruisers, a ship’s officer burst into the marina. Erwin and Raeder recognized him. Captain Nehring. No one paid attention to the elderly figure behind him wearing black slacks and a gray sweatshirt.

Nehring was white haired and commanding as Mercer had imagined, but also physically and emotionally exhausted. “I’ve had stewards going over the ship to take a count of our passengers.” He panted from the run from the bridge. “We just discovered that Gunther Rath has taken hostages.”

“Damn it!” Mercer hadn’t anticipated this possibility. “Who?”

The gentleman behind him stepped forward. Not until Mercer looked closely, seeing past the casual clothes, did he recognize Pope Leo XIV. In the hallway he caught the shadows of several Swiss Guards. Stunned, Mercer spoke before thinking. “Holy shit.”

“The pope informed me that his secretary of state, Cardinal Peretti, is missing, and we’ve been unable to locate an American televangelist and his wife.”

“Tommy Joe and Lorna Farquar?” Ira recalled the flashy minister and his ditzy wife.

“Possibly a target of opportunity he grabbed in a hallway,” Captain Nehring said, then added somberly, “Rath also kidnapped the Dalai Lama.”