Pandora's curse

space was well lit and futuristic, with cat-walks that ran along parallel rows of heat exchangers and turbines. The building hummed. Another door at the front of the building crashed open, and two figures stood silhouetted. Mercer was about to fire when he recognized the silver hair of Cardinal Peretti. Shielded behind him was one of Rath’s men, a pistol held to the Catholic leader’s head.

“Let him go,” Mercer shouted over the whine of machinery.

The gunman jerked Peretti by the throat, ducking behind the cardinal as they moved into the building. “I see you make a move, he dies,” the neo-Nazi shouted back in German. Mercer didn’t need Raeder’s whispered translation to get the gist of the remark.

“You can walk away,” Raeder called out. “We only want Rath.”

“Forget it, Herr Raeder. We all leave or we all die.”

Mercer stood slowly so the gunman could see him, the MP-5 dangling from its strap. The man pulled his pistol from Peretti’s skull and aimed it at him. “Now you die,” the young fanatic shouted.

Dominic Peretti had been docile from the moment the gunmen had burst into his cabin aboard the Sea Empress because it was only his life he felt had been in danger. But seeing the stranger taking deliberate steps toward them, he couldn’t allow such a sacrifice. Forty-five years before, he had been a star on his seminary school’s basketball team because of a spin move some called divine.

He raised a hand to deflect the German’s aim, planted a foot to throw off the man’s weight and spun around him quicker than he’d been able to move in decades.

The gunman stood exposed for a fraction of a second. Mercer cleared the Beretta from his belt and triggered off three shots fast enough to sound automatic. The German was flung against the wall by the triple tap and crumpled to the steel flooring. Peretti dropped to a knee and felt for a pulse. He looked to Mercer with neither recrimination nor regret, then started last rites.

“Are you okay, Father?”

“I’m fine, my son,” the Vatican’s number two man said.

“Do you know where they have the Dalai Lama?”

“No. We split up when they took us here. The large man and the woman took the Lama with them. I believe they are in the administration building, but I’m not sure.”

“Trying to call the Geo-Research office in Reykjavik?” Raeder suggested.

“Maybe,” Mercer said. “Father, you have to hide yourself until this is over.”

“I will in a moment,” he said, continuing his prayers over the corpse. Only when he was done did he address Mercer again. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Ah, I don’t really have the time,” Mercer answered, not understanding what the priest could possibly want considering the circumstances.

“Ask for my forgiveness and say one Hail Mary.” His eyes were alight. “Then sin no more after you send the others to hell, where they belong.”

Mercer muttered the nearly forgotten prayer. Peretti made the sign of the cross over him and hid next to one of the massive conduits carrying superheated water through an exchanger, as safe a place as any at the site.

Glancing outside, Mercer saw no movement. The administration building’s front doors didn’t look damaged. He doubted that Rath had gotten that far yet.

“Klaus, keep that building covered. I’m going to check the next one.” Mercer dashed from the doorway, using pipes as cover until he crashed against the base of the three towering smoke stacks, the metal still hot to the touch even after the steam venting up them had passed through numerous turbines and exchangers.

The walls of the building behind him were made of steel plate, like it had been armored. As Mercer reached a door he recalled why. This was Building #4 and it contained the secondary turbine loops that used waste steam to boil a petroleum derivative called isopentane. This liquid had been specially formulated to boil at a mere two hundred degrees Fahrenheit in order to extract the last bit of energy from the natural steam. He remembered the plant manager who’d given him the tour years ago also telling him that isopentane was highly explosive. Behind this building would be the outlets where the saline water driven from the earth’s bowels was finally released back into nature after producing all the electricity and hot water needs of the citizens of the Reykjanes Peninsula. NO SMOKING signs were posted along Building #4’s walls.

The knob had already been shot off a door, allowing Mercer to slip inside. Building #4 had a less modern, more industrial look than the others, with rows of long cylinders like rural propane tanks, but these held the isopentane in a closed-loop system of liquid and gas. Beside each set of tanks was a small steam-driven turbine. The floor was polished concrete.

Mercer was having difficulty keeping the MP-5 steady from the pain in his wrist. He had some motion in the joint and felt that some tendons had been torn. His left hand felt like a dead weight, and he steadied the machine pistol’s foregrip on the crook of his elbow. With so much ambient noise in the power-house, he had to rely on his vision to scout the building.

Around one of the tanks he spotted a darkly dressed figure hunkered next to a turbine. Mercer recognized the gunman as a Geo-Research “technician.” By his expression it was evident he recognized Mercer too. They fired at the same instant, both bursts going wild from the shock of discovery. Ducking around a turbine, Mercer was chased by more rounds, the sharp rip of a machine pistol tearing the air. An ember of steel burned his hand before he could brush it away.

He fired back. His adversary had moved, so the shots hit nothing but metal. Okay, where the hell did he go? Mercer moved to his left, sighted along an access walkway but saw nothing. He then went right. A burst of autofire raked the concrete at his heels as he dove under an isopentane cylinder. Oh, that’s where he went.

He tried to get a bead on the assassin but there was too much machinery for a clean shot. He studied the tank above him. Ten different pipes, including a huge trunk line that brought steam from outside, linked the stacked vessels. Mercer had no idea which carried gas and which carried liquid but he could tell which were the most vulnerable. The trick would be to get the gunman into position. He switched to his pistol to conserve ammunition and began maneuvering around the plant, working the gunman like they were chess pieces, giving ground when he had to, but inexorably moving the man to where he wanted him.

Dashing across an open space, Mercer slid behind a support column. Shots ripped furrows from the floor behind him. Secure once again, his wounded leg all but dead now, Mercer felt he had the gunman. He steadied his grip on the pistol and cycled through the clip as fast as he could pull the trigger. The ricochets whined away as ten rounds slammed into the point where a pipe joined with the isopentane tank that shielded the assassin.

Even before he knew if he’d succeeded, Mercer began to run. Behind him, the German had flinched at the onslaught of bullets hitting steel so close to his head. He had a second to register the high-pitched hiss before the leaking isopentane ignited. Like a flamethrower, escaping gas blew out in a fifty-foot tongue of fire that mushroomed into an overwhelming inferno, eating everything it touched. Amid the blistering paint and melting wires, the assassin’s body cooked like a joint of meat.

Blasted by the overpressure wave, Mercer was thrown into the side of the building hard enough to momentarily knock him out. When he came to, an alarm sensed the fire and shut down this portion of the facility. A Klaxon wailed and sprinklers began a rain that quickly turned into a torrent. He hauled himself from the floor, fingering the knot growing on his forehead. If none of the other tanks ruptured from the searing heat, the building wouldn’t go up. If one did, they all would in a chain reaction that would likely wreck several square acres.

He fitted the last magazines into each of his weapons and ran for the next building. This structure was nearly identical to where he’d left Cardinal Peretti. Differently painted pipes and valves added the only color to the monochromatic steel interior. Doubled over and limping, his vision beginning to blur from a concussion, Mercer began a systematic sweep of the building. There were hundreds of crannies a person could hide in, miles of heavy pipes that could shield even the largest man and he wouldn’t know they were there until he walked into their sights.

He jumped over a handrail to get off the exposed catwalk dividing the long room. At the end of the row of identical machines he thought he’d seen a shadow move. He hunkered down to look under the pipes blocking his view. There! Hiding behind the last turbine was a pair of legs. But as he watched, they vanished. The person was crawling on top of the boxy exchanger, getting the best location to cover the entire room.

Mercer stood, holding himself just out of the gunman’s view. He had one chance to get this right. Not quite pistols at ten paces, this was more like automatic rifles at thirty. The assassin knew he was in here, had a good