carcinogenic fluid seeped into his bloody wounds.
Fifteen feet from the ground he heard voices over the noise and vibration. He hadn’t considered that other members of the Order would be around. He had no weapon other than surprise, and once that wore off he was no more capable of defending himself than Harry’s toothless basset hound.
“Snow, you here?” The voice was in Mercer’s head, a fantasy that Sykes had found him. “Snow, come in.”
Not in his head. In his ear. The tactical radio. “Doc, is that you? It’s Snow. Where are you?”
“I’m in a cave with a big gold globe that looks like it’s about to fall apart.”
Mercer sagged. The people he’d heard below weren’t more fanatic monks. Sykes and his Delta commandos had found him. He reached the ground floor. Above him, the surfaces of the oracle were a blur as the mechanisms inside destroyed themselves. Sykes stood a short distance off, covering Grumpy and Happy as they untied Tisa.
Mercer rushed past the two men and was nearly bowled over when Tisa threw herself into him. Their tears mingled as their lips sought each other out. Tisa was drawn and exhausted, her eyes washed out by her captivity. She hadn’t been allowed to bathe in days and her hair felt as brittle as straw. Mercer simply didn’t care. She was alive, and that was all that mattered.
“I knew you’d come for me,” she said. “I don’t know how, but I knew you’d come.”
“You never gave me your phone number. How else was I going to get in touch with you to ask for a second date?”
“Mercer,” Sykes interrupted. “We’ve gotta go.”
He couldn’t let go of Tisa completely, so as he pulled away he held one of her hands. “What’s the situation?”
“Serious unless Miss Nguyen knows a way out of here. We chased the last of the defenders into a bunch of dead-end tunnels. We got them, but there ain’t no way out except the way we came in.”
“And that’s blocked by the burning monastery.”
“How about it, ma’am?”
“There is a way. I used it once when I snuck into the oracle chamber when Luc and I were children. But first I have to go back for the Lama.”
“Was that the old man in the room with the secret entrance here?” Mercer asked.
“Yes.” Her tears changed from joy to sorrow. “I must save him.”
Mercer looked to Sykes and nodded. The commando leader wasn’t going to argue.
The three surviving Delta soldiers led them back to the bedroom. Mercer wanted to stay at Tisa’s side but something he’d noticed forced him to pull Sykes back from the party as they moved up the tunnel.
“None of you are wearing your packs. What happened?”
“Noticed that, did you?” Sykes jammed a plug of tobacco into his cheek.
“You lost all the satellite phones.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yep. Grump’s was shot to pieces and Hap’s was smashed when he took a fall and mine’s upstairs with yours. I’m guessing both are nothing but melted plastic by now.”
“What about the others?”
“Blown to shit along with my men. Sons a bitches claymored us.”
“I’m sorry,” was all Mercer could reply. Without those phones there was no way to get Tisa’s information to Admiral Lasko.
They reached the curtain covering the secret bedroom entrance. Tisa was the first one through. She rushed immediately to the bed. The Lama didn’t move. He remained flat on the bed, his lower body covered with a sheet, gaining him a measure of dignity in death he’d been denied in life.
Tisa knelt at his side, holding one of his birdlike hands in hers. Her face was hidden by her hair, but by the way her body convulsed, her sobs were apparent. Mercer knelt next to her, waiting for her to say what she needed.
“He was so good.” Her voice cracked. “He didn’t believe in violence and had he known the magnitude of what’s going to happen I know he would have wanted us to tell the world. People die every day. It is what makes us human. He didn’t think it was our place to warn others about what we know. But he would have changed his mind about La Palma. He would have warned you.”
“He was the Order’s spiritual leader?”
“And more.” Tears streaked down her cheeks. “He was my father.” Her tone turned bitter. “It was Luc who ruined everything. He wanted the Order to be an authority in the world, a nation with automatic superpower because of what we knew.”
She looked at Mercer. “I am so sorry I involved you.”
“Why?”
“Because you can’t make a difference. You can’t stop what’s going to happen. Luc has won because the earth can’t be changed.”
“That’s not true. The future isn’t set by the oracle, Tisa. It’s created by people like you and me, people who believe they can change things for the better. Tell me — how much time do we have? When is La Palma going to erupt?”
Mercer needed a year. With a year he had an idea how to stabilize the western flank of the Cumbre Veija volcano and prevent the catastrophic slide. In the moments Tisa took to answer him he cut the estimate in half.
Give him just six months and he could do it. It would be close, some material would crash into the sea, but not enough to devastate the Atlantic basin. With six months to work he could save the millions who lived along shorelines of America and Europe, although the property damage would likely run into the billions of dollars.
Grant me six months, please, he thought as Tisa proudly gave her answer. “Five weeks.”
Mercer went numb. Five weeks? It wasn’t possible. Tisa couldn’t have cut it so close. She’d said all along that she wanted to warn him with plenty of time. Five weeks was as useless as five minutes. The volcano could erupt in five seconds for all the good he could do with the time she’d given him.
Still on his knees next to the bed, he deflated and fell into Tisa. The greatest calamity in human history was about to unfold and he no longer had the strength to care. His blank stare turned Tisa’s self-satisfaction into dismay, then fear. She grabbed for his hand. “That’s enough time, isn’t it? You can evacuate the islands and warn people living along the coasts.”
Mercer raked his fingers through his hair. His skin prickled and he felt like he was going to vomit. He swallowed a mouthful of watery saliva. He looked into Tisa’s eyes. Below her alarm he could see vestiges of her pride that she’d defied the Order to give the world a warning. She’d never thought beyond the warning, what was involved once people knew La Palma was about to erupt. The Order had cast a dismal shadow over her entire life and she’d thought she’d escaped it by divulging her secrets to him. She’d freed herself and now he had to put her in a prison of guilt from which there would be no liberation.
Even before he spoke, she could sense it. Her entire body began to tremble. Mercer would have given anything, his own life even, to spare her from learning her warning did no good.
“When the volcano erupts, one side of it is going to crash into the ocean. The waves it creates are going to wash across the Atlantic, destroying most of southern Europe and America’s east coast. Those areas are home to a hundred million people. They can’t be evacuated because there’s no place to put them. And even if they did move away from the shores in time, there would be nothing left for them to return to. They would be permanent refugees. There’s no way to feed and house them. Rather than all of them being killed in one catastrophe, they’d die over time, slowly succumbing to disease, starvation, and the breakdown of social order.
Tisa had begun to hyperventilate. He stroked her head. “You only learned about the eruption a few months ago, right?” She nodded and tried to speak but gave only a low keen. “Even that isn’t enough time. It would take at least a year for any workable plan to take shape. A couple of extra weeks wouldn’t have made the slightest difference. You can’t blame yourself for something you weren’t aware of. Although I know you will. You’re a lot like me.”
Sykes had given Mercer and Tisa a few minutes alone at the side of the bed. He cleared his throat to get their attention. “I’m sorry to do this, Miss Nguyen, but we have to get out of here. We still have to find a way to pass your information to the admiral.”
