River of Ruin

pilots experienced,” Mercer said. He turned to Foch, his cocked eyebrow asking the question.

“Vic is yours. I’ll cover for him with Bruneseau. When?”

“What do you think, Lauren? You’ve got the experience.”

“Early morning or late afternoon is best. The angle of the sun and its glare will hide the glow from a dive light. None of us are in shape to do it at dawn.” She looked at her watch. “Which is four hours from now. Let’s say tomorrow just before dusk.”

Roddy had a suggestion. “So you don’t draw attention by entering the water from shore, I know someone who keeps a powerboat at Limon on Lake Gatun’s east shore. You can meet him there and he’ll take you through the cut to the Pedro Miguel. His boat can be your dive platform.”

“Would he do it for you?” Mercer asked.

“He’s Carmen’s brother.” There was no need to elaborate. In a country such as Panama, nothing was more important than the family bond.

An hour later the ringing telephone jolted Mercer from sleep and for that he was grateful. He’d been deep into a nightmare, a virtual replay of his torture, only this time Mr. Sun hadn’t restarted Mercer’s heart before applying additional needles. Mercer was dead yet could feel the unbearable pain of his body turned against itself. Each new agony, piled on top of all the others, made him pray his brain would stop functioning. It was starving for the blood his heart no longer pumped while still providing him with every crisp pain. Death was not a release, no matter how much he hoped for it.

At the second ring he came awake enough to feel his body was so bathed with sweat that he needn’t have bothered with the brief shower he’d taken before collapsing on Roddy’s sofa. Through the panic, he felt his heart pounding against his ribs and fell back into the cushion with a relieved sigh. His lungs pumped air like a pair of bellows.

“Mercer,” Roddy whispered sotto voce. “Are you awake?”

“And alive,” he panted, disturbed by the vividness of the dream and the hollowness it left in his chest. Terror lurked right under the surface, ready to fill that emptiness if he didn’t force it back.

“Lieutenant Foch is on the phone.” Roddy crossed the dim living room, his parental sixth sense allowing him to navigate the minefield of discarded toys. “Here is the cordless.” He padded back to his bedroom.

“Yes, what is it, Lieutenant?” Mercer’s voice rasped.

“We’re back at the safe house. Bruneseau isn’t here.”

Mercer swung his legs off the couch, the rush of air tingling his sweat-matted hair. “Has he already left for France?”

“His luggage is still here, although his passport is missing.”

Mercer dismissed the missing passport. Like most knowledgeable international travelers, the spy would take the precaution of carrying it all the time. Mercer did whenever he was overseas. “Maybe he’s at the embassy.”

“I called his cell phone and spoke to him. He said that’s where he was, but after we talked I had another question and called his cell again. He didn’t answer. I then phoned the embassy to get him for me. The duty officer hadn’t seen him. I had security check their logs. Rene Bruneseau hasn’t been there in five days.”

This got Mercer’s attention. “He lied to you?”

“Oui.”

“Pourquoi?” Unconsciously Mercer had switched to French.

“Je ne sais pas,” Foch admitted. “When we spoke, he didn’t seem to care that I had taken some of the men tonight. Nor was he interested that you wanted Tomanovic tomorrow.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. Just that he had some loose ends to take care of before he could leave Panama and that we should make our own way back to Guyana.”

“Any idea what these loose ends might be?”

“Monsieur Bruneseau did a lot of work without us,” the Legionnaire explained. “Our job was mainly to watch the Hatcherly container port. He’d spend his days, and some nights, elsewhere. I assume cultivating contacts, but now I’m not sure.”

Mercer paused before responding. He’d worked with CIA agents in the past and thought he understood the spy mentality. Most took the concept of need-to-know to the very limit, oftentimes to their own detriment. “Did you tell him what we planned to do tomorrow?”

“Just the broad outline.”

Something told Mercer this was meaningless. He didn’t like Bruneseau. The French agent had used him, after all, but he didn’t think Rene would do anything to impede what they were trying to accomplish. Tonight, Lauren had told him how Bruneseau was ready to lead the rescue at the mine and only backed out when he found his primary mission was over. Not helping save Mercer made the Frenchman a bastard, not a threat.

“I don’t think we have to worry,” Mercer said at last. “Rene doesn’t know what we’re planning. If everything goes well, by tomorrow evening we’ll have the proof we need for Lauren to go to her superiors.”

“Okay. To be safe, I am going to close up this house and relocate. I’ll have Bruneseau’s stuff brought to the embassy. You and Captain Vanik should pick up Vic at the main bus station in the Cinco de Mayo Park at, say, nine- thirty. Don’t worry, he’ll recognize Roddy Herrara’s Honda.” Foch hadn’t come out and said he didn’t trust his superior, but the precautions meant the Legionnaire wasn’t taking any chances.

Operationally, it was a sound plan. It also made Mercer think about putting Roddy and his family into a hotel for a while. The few hundred dollars for a suite was a small price for peace of mind. He couldn’t bring himself to imagine anything happening to this generous family. Mr. Sun couldn’t create a torture even half as painful.

“Okay,” Mercer said with deepening apprehension. “I’ll be in touch before we reach Pedro Miguel.” He clicked off the phone.

Mercer settled back into the couch, wrestling with his doubts. There could be dozens of reasons why Bruneseau had dismissed the Legion soldiers. He really could be closing out his case or he might have been embarrassed to admit he was with a prostitute when Foch called. There was no reason to believe that Liu Yousheng had turned him, yet with so much at stake, Mercer couldn’t dismiss that idea.

When he finally drifted back to sleep, the nightmares returned. Only this time it was Rene Bruneseau who manipulated the acupuncture needles.

Lake Gatun, Panama

The boat was a twenty-four-foot Wellcraft, old but well maintained. The elements had yellowed her fiberglass shell, contrasting with the recently repainted red strip along her waterline. Her stern was molded into bench seats that hid the engine and partially insulated its throaty growl. Accessible between the two front seats was a forward cabin outfitted with two beds, a tiny kitchen, and a small cubicle for a chemical toilet. She was perfect for a romantic weekend cruise on the lake, where thousands of secluded bays and uninhabited islands beckoned.

Behind the powerboat a wake of white foam spread like an elongated arrow on the glassy green water. The overnight rains had ended and the morning haze had burned off. The sun beat mercilessly. The breeze of their twenty-knot speed kept the four people on the boat from wilting in the heat.

Had Mercer been able to forget what lay at the end of this journey, he would have cracked a beer and enjoyed himself.

He stripped off his shirt, leaving him in just shorts and sneakers. He watched with fascination as the unusual coast-line rolled by. It was tough to imagine that the immense body of water wasn’t a natural formation. Lake Gatun, in fact all of the Panama Canal, represented an unprecedented triumph of human engineering over a nearly insurmountable obstacle. Geology had separated the Atlantic from the Pacific three million years ago and now they were connected across a lake floating eighty-four feet above sea level. That the canal was nearly a century old made it that much more impressive.

From the boat’s speeding deck, Mercer found himself hard pressed to find evidence of the lake’s unnatural birth. Farther on, past Gamboa where the canal narrowed toward the Gaillard Cut, its man-made nature revealed itself, but here it looked like any other lake in the world. It wasn’t until he looked closely at the islands that he could