Pandora's curse

cold and misery of their trip was lost in the desire to see it through.

The Njoerd’s launch seemed to grow in size as they approached. The little town of Grindavik was still dark but visible, and they would be abeam of Rath’s boat at least a mile before they reached it. Swaying in time with the boat’s motion, Ira jacked a round into the chamber of his MP-5.

Mercer steered for the stern of the offshore launch, masking the sound of his approach with the other powerboat’s thundering diesels. They needed only a few seconds in range to disable the steel-hulled craft, and as long as Rath and his crew kept their focus on the town they would never know they’d been spotted. Mercer slowed the Riva, matching the launch’s speed when it was just twenty yards ahead. He could see the name Njoerd painted on her flat transom. Beyond, he saw four heads, one of them with streaming blond hair.

Just as Ira raised the H amp;K to his shoulder, some instinct made Greta Schmidt look behind her. Mercer couldn’t hear her shouted warning, but her mouth moved in frantic command. Ira squeezed the trigger, and a flat spray of bullets kicked up spray at the spot the launch had been an instant before. Dieter had reacted to Greta’s screams with the exceptional reflexes that made him such a skilled racer. He began slewing the larger boat in a random slalom that was impossible to accurately track with a submachine gun. Ira couldn’t risk randomly firing at Rath’s boat in case he hit one of the hostages. Mercer backed off the throttles, not wanting to overtake the swishing launch. The race would only end when they reached shore.

Greta had disappeared from their view for a moment. When she emerged from the forward part of the launch, she had a pistol in one hand and a hostage in the other. Her greater size and strength all but smothered the struggles of her victim, the scantily dressed Lorna Farquar.

While his life had hardened Mercer to violence, he was not immune to it. There was no way he could brace himself to what he knew was about to happen. Lorna must have realized her fate too because her writhing became desperate. Greta’s expression didn’t change as she clubbed the woman behind the ear with the pistol and shoved her limp form off the back of the boat.

Instinct told Mercer to ignore the motionless body that bobbed in the launch’s wake and concentrate on Gunther Rath and the last Pandora box. That was what was important. Yet his humanity was a much stronger drive than any personal desire for justice.

There was no hesitation.

He chopped the throttles, holding fast against the steering wheel as the Riva dropped from plane like a head-on collision. Rath’s boat thundered away while Mercer swept the Riva in a tight circle to recover the evangelist’s wife. She lay facedown, her skimpy dress peeled from her body by the impact with the water. Her flesh was white against her translucent panties, already looking lifeless. With the Riva’s Mercruisers burbling, Mercer drew up next to her, edging wheel and throttle so the speedboat pirouetted and Klaus Raeder could grab her. He heaved her across the gunwale.

As soon as her feet cleared the frigid water, Mercer opened the throttles again. He looked over his shoulder in time to see clear water erupt from Lorna’s mouth and her body convulse in a coughing fit that sounded over the throb of the engines. She curled into a ball and retched again. She’d be shivering for the next couple of hours and her head would ache, but she’d be all right.

Rath was a quarter mile ahead, angling in toward the wooden jetties fronting Grindavik. His launch didn’t slow until the last second, its wake slamming fishing boats into each other and the floating docks. The one permanent pier thrusting out in the water was a concrete structure with a high-bowed purse seiner snugged against one side. A battered van was parked on the dock, and five early-morning fishermen talked amiably as they prepared the boat’s lines. Rath ordered Dieter to the other side of the pier, and the driver deftly coasted the last few yards. One of the security men leapt from the launch to secure a rope to the rusted cleats. Another man followed him, his attention on the fishermen, theirs on his gun.

As Mercer brought the Riva in toward the town, two other gunmen appeared at the big launch’s transom and unleashed matching sprays of automatic fire. The range was extreme, and yet Mercer had to sheer away from the stream of bullets, cutting a deep crescent in the sea. Like a shark kept at bay, he cruised just beyond the limit of the weapons, patrolling back and forth restlessly, seeking an opening that would never come. Rath held the superior position, and until he’d loaded his hostages and the Pandora box into the truck, Mercer, Ira, and Raeder could do nothing but wait.

“Get Mrs. Farquar below and wrap her in as many blankets as you can find,” Mercer ordered. “There should be heating vents mounted on the ceiling of the cuddy cabin. Open them wide.”

As Raeder maneuvered the woman into the cabin and Mercer watched the frenzied activity on the dock, Ira Lasko got an inspiration. He flicked on the sat-phone he’d carried and tried to get a signal through. “Damn it! Nothing.”

“What about the cell phone? It doesn’t rely on a satellite. Its signal only has to reach the closest tower, and I think I can see one just inland of the town.”

“Good idea.” He tossed the sat-phone aside and snapped open another telephone no bigger than a wallet. “I’ve got a signal!”

“Call Paul Barnes and get us some help.” Mercer could see that three of the fishermen were being pressed into service to carry the golden box from the launch to the rear of their van. As Rath directed the transfer, Greta Schmidt covered a rubbery Tommy Joe Farquar, the squat Dalai Lama, and Cardinal Peretti. Farquar still had on his shiny suit while Peretti wore black pants and shirt. The Lama suffered in the cold, wearing nothing more than a red robe and sandals. His eyebrows looked like dark smudges on his nearly bald head.

Ira worked the phone for a minute, speaking in non-sequitur codes until he finally reached his case officer. “Rudy, Ira Lasko… shut up and listen. It’s all true… yes, the meteorite fragments and Kohl industries and every other damned thing. Klaus Raeder isn’t the man we want. It’s his special-projects director, Gunther Rath. Now listen to me. Rath has a box loaded with an unknown amount of the meteor as well as three hostages, including the Dalai Lama and the number two man at the Vatican. We’re off the coast of Iceland near a town called Grindavik… It doesn’t matter how we got here. We’re here and we need some serious fucking help. Get on the horn and get us a chopper from the Keflavik airbase. Rath’s in a white stretch van and will probably be heading across the peninsula toward the Reykjavik road. I think it’s Route 41.”

Mercer interrupted. “Have him tell the pilot they’ll be on the access road to the Blue Lagoon thermal spa.”

Ira passed on the information, adding, “We’re going to try to get ground transportation and maintain pursuit. Rath has four or five men armed with pistols and subguns. He will not hesitate to fire… No! Don’t take the van from the air unless absolutely necessary. He’s got hostages, for Christ’s sake. You’ve got a trace on this line, so call me back at this number when you have Air Force cooperation.” He snapped off the cell phone. “He had a million questions that don’t need to be answered until this shit’s over.”

“How long to get a chopper?” They couldn’t afford a delay. Rath would be miles ahead by the time they stole a vehicle of their own and took up the chase again.

“Only fifteen minutes. Military’s been on alert since I stopped checking in.”

Klaus Raeder clambered up the steep steps from the Riva’s cabin. “She should be fine. The knot on her head is bleeding a bit, but I don’t think her skull is cracked.”

Every time the speedboat drifted toward shore with the rising tide, a burst of machine gun fire erupted from the dock and Mercer jammed the boat into reverse and hauled them out of range again. They used the time to strip out of the restricting wet suits. Wind cut through the clothing but adrenaline insulated them from the chilling effects. Had Grindavik been more than a clutch of white clapboard structures, he would have beached the Riva farther away and tried to flank the fugitives. But there was nothing on either side of the village except miles of barren desolation.

On the dock, Gunther Rath raged at his men. He’d been ensured that there was no way anyone could follow them from the Sea Empress and yet evidence to the contrary lurked a few hundred yards off shore. Granted, even he couldn’t have predicted Mercer would attempt the dangerous open-ocean crossing in such a small boat, but if he’d known about the Riva speedboats in the Jet Ski garage he would have ordered their hulls smashed too.

The petrified fishermen had almost maneuvered the two-hundred-pound golden box into the back of the van. Once it was secure, Rath planned to leave one gunman on the dock to hold Mercer at bay while they made their