“Sun?” Harry asked, understanding.
“I’ve got to do it,” Mercer said. “I can’t explain why, but I’ve got to.”
“It’s not worth it,” Lauren said, stunned that Mercer would suggest it. “We can all wait right here. No one’s going to find us and the Panamanian coast guard is going to be here in a few minutes.”
“I do want you all to wait right here. But I’m going.” Mercer checked the ammo in his M-16 and felt for the.45-caliber pistol tucked behind his back.
“Sun isn’t going to get away,” Lauren pleaded. She’d never seen such savagery in Mercer’s eyes before and it frightened her. “You talked about being macho before. Well, listen to your own advice.”
Mercer didn’t look at her when he spoke. “If you knew how empty I feel because of what he did to me, you wouldn’t ask me to stay. I won’t be myself until I know he’s dead. It doesn’t make sense, I know. But it’s how I feel.”
Harry stood. “Let him go, Lauren. He’s right.”
“You too?” She wheeled on him, feeling betrayed because she was sure Mercer’s oldest friend would see the insanity of what he wanted to do.
“It’s for the best. Mercer, go. We’ll be right here.”
“That’s another I owe you,” Mercer said, moving to the door. Lauren’s expression was one of disgust. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed and took off down the hall.
No one moved or spoke for several long seconds. Foch finally turned to Harry. “Enough time?”
“Another few seconds.”
“What are you talking about?” Lauren blazed.
“We’re going to follow him,” Harry said. “What did you think?”
Mercer’s feet barely touched the scuffed linoleum decking as he ran. His vision felt heightened, as if nothing could hide from his gaze. Even the deepest shadows looked bright.
His hearing was more acute. Each creak and groan reverberating around the ship sounded distinctly in his ears and he could tell where each noise originated.
He climbed two decks, moving ever closer to where automatic fire from the chopper continued to slam the bridge. He passed the body of an officer who’d staggered down from the wheelhouse to die. A trail of blood from the large-caliber holes in his chest led up a third flight of stairs. Over the staccato beat of machine-gun fire, Mercer heard voices shouting in Chinese. He started up the stairs, keeping low and to one side.
At the upper landing he guessed that the bridge had been evacuated because the door separating it from the rest of the superstructure was closed. To his left was a short hallway that doubled back aft. It was where the ship’s officers had their quarters. To the right, he could just see into another large cabin, probably the captain’s. That’s where the voices came from.
He moved out of the stairwell to get a better view of what was going on inside. He recognized one of the men as the captain and the other as the stocky civilian. Unfortunately the third man wasn’t Sun. It was a soldier. The more Mercer looked at him the more he was convinced it was the same guy who’d captured him following the chase on the car carrier.
Mercer couldn’t understand what they were saying but it appeared the veteran soldier wasn’t happy about something. In fact it looked like he was holding a pistol on the civilian and the captain.
“For the last time, Huai,” General Yu said, trying to keep his anger in check. “Put that damned gun away.”
“I can’t do that, General. Not until you tell me exactly why you felt it necessary to sacrifice my men.”
“I told you that soldiers dying is the price of war.”
“That’s what confuses me. Who was this war against? Panama? America? Who?”
Yu snapped his mouth closed, suddenly understanding what the sergeant was going on about. He had lost men in a conflict he didn’t understand. He wanted answers and Yu could see that some pat response wouldn’t satisfy him. “Sergeant, this operation was about defending our way of life. Not all our enemies come with white skin and round eyes. Some are within our own ranks.”
“Liu Yousheng might have been a bastard, but I never saw him as my enemy.”
Yu seized on his statement. “Might have been? You killed him?”
Huai seized on the general’s desperation. “Maybe. Or maybe let him go and he is right now making arrangements to return to China.”
In truth, Liu was unconscious in a cabin, shackled to the plumbing behind a toilet. Huai wasn’t sure yet if he would tell anyone or let him drown as the
“You let him go!” Yu thundered.
Huai readjusted his pistol to remind the general who was in charge. “Who decided that Liu was our enemy?”
“Your government.”
“So my government denounced him as a traitor and yet they let a dozen of my men die working with him just to make a political statement about his treason. I see that as a greater violation than whatever Liu did.”
“What do you plan to do about it?” Yu scoffed, his lip twisting with derision. He’d been pushed as far as he’d go. “Are you going to shoot me? Then you’d have to shoot the captain here and everyone else on this ship to keep them from killing you.”
“That’s what you don’t understand,” Huai said calmly. “That is the kind of sacrifice a soldier is willing to make for his men. I don’t mind dying to kill you. You’ve betrayed my men, you’ve betrayed me and you’ve betrayed the People’s Liberation Army.” He raised his pistol. “For the crime of treason against his troops, General Yu Kwan, I sentence you to death.”
The shot rang out, crisp and sharp.
Sergeant Huai staggered back a step, his left hand reaching for his chest where blood oozed from the wound. Mr. Sun had watched the whole exchange from a hiding place in the adjoining bathroom. He’d enjoyed the play of emotion between the combat soldier and the political one, feeding off their fear and hatred. But he knew where his loyalties lay and judged precisely when the sergeant would shoot. He’d fired his own pistol an instant before Huai and was pleased the bullet had hit within a few inches of where he’d aimed. He’d never been good with guns.
The second shot had been delayed by a fraction of a second. The aim was perfect. The bullet had been fired even as Huai absorbed a shot to the chest and still blew most of General Yu’s brains out the back of his head. The gore exploded against the cabin wall and oozed like slime to the floor.
Mercer watched as the two fell to the deck. He didn’t have the proper angle to see if the civilian had used a hidden gun to kill the soldier, but it stood to reason that anyone involved in this plot would be armed. All he was sure of was that this incident had nothing to do with him. His fight was with Sun, not the Chinese Army and its civilian controllers. The ship’s captain walked over the soldier’s body to close and lock the cabin door.
Mercer lifted himself from where he’d hidden behind a cabinet. He put out of his mind what he’d just seen and continued his hunt for Sun, guessing that he would be cowering as far from the bridge as he could. He moved down the hallway, checking cabins. Most were unlocked and took just a moment to examine. Those doors that were locked he kicked in as quietly as he could, although the cacophony from outside and the alarms screaming on the bridge effectively masked any noise he made.
Each time he returned to the hall, he eyed the captain’s cabin to make sure no one had emerged. Reaching the last door, he felt the handle. It was locked. He kicked once and the puny lock shattered. He had the M-16 ready and swept the cabin in one movement. No one. He moved to check the bathroom. There was a body chained to the toilet.
“Well, well, well.” He looked closer. A livid purple bruise covered half of Liu’s face. Mercer touched his cheek. The skin was cold and waxy. He was dead. Whoever had clocked him had hit a little too hard and caused bleeding on the brain. “Good.”
The ship creaked as she listed farther into the capsized
