Deep Fire Rising

you were together a few weeks ago. If you’re willing to risk it, I’ll dive with you as my backup.”

Mercer hesitated. “Look, we only made a couple of dives. I have maybe three hours in the suit. And that was in open water. Forget it. What about you, Jim?”

“It’s ironic, but I’ve never even snorkeled.” Another resounding explosion echoed across the water. “We don’t have time to get someone else. We have to do this in one dive as soon as the bomb arrives.”

Mercer knew this was too important to risk on his limited skills. He would jeopardize everything if he made even a simple mistake. He shouldn’t do it, but what were the alternatives? He looked to Tisa. She understood how the decision tore at him. She gave him an imperceptible nod, not of consent but of compassion.

Scott would lead. Mercer’s role would be support if Scott needed something. All he’d really have to do is hang back and not be in the way. He could handle that, he thought. But what if he messed up? Mercer couldn’t let himself think about it. Glass needed someone to help haul the tow cable into the vent and there was no one else and no time to find someone.

“Okay. We’ll go as soon as the bomb’s delivered. That gives Scott four hours or so to teach me everything C.W. missed.” Mercer gave Glass a lopsided smile. “I hope you know what the hell you’re doing.”

“I was about to say the same to you.”

Before heading for the suits, Jim convinced Mercer that he needed at least one of his technicians with him to monitor the dive and personally vouched for the man.

“Just him,” Mercer agreed, but not liking it. “I don’t want the others released from the mess hall until they can be vetted.”

Mercer wanted an update on the bomb’s ETA and tried Ira on the cell phone but couldn’t get a signal again. He was able to radio Bill Farley, the supervisor over on the eastern side of the volcanic ridge.

The evacuation had been ordered, but no one was leaving their posts. In fact, Farley reported that the first- and second-shift workers were showing up by the hundreds, eager for an all-out assault to keep the Cumbre Vieja from slipping. He said the men would only leave the danger zone and head to the north of the island when the bomb was in the ground and the clock was ticking.

Mercer couldn’t have been more proud.

Crossing from the amidships control van on the Petromax Angel to where the NewtSuits were housed in a container at the Angel’s stern was like a walk across a newly turned field in the middle of a cyclone. Wind and rain lashed the ship, and the best efforts of the crew couldn’t keep up with the swampy mud that had grown a couple of feet thick in some areas. Layers of ash and sizzling bits of pumice blanketed the sea.

The bright yellow NewtSuits stood on their wire-frame lifting cradles and were cracked open ready for the men. They resembled the discarded carapace of some science fiction insect. The technician Jim had vouched for was installing extra lights to the shoulders and forearms and a secondary battery pack.

“We’ll be hauling in a tow rope to pull the ROV from the tunnel so we can’t be on tethers,” Scott explained. “Too much risk of getting everything tangled. You and I will be able to communicate but once we’re in the tunnel we may lose the acoustical phone from the surface.”

“How will they know when to pull Conseil back out?”

Scott patted his suit’s steel claw. “Once we’ve got the line attached, just smack it with this. Jim can pick up the vibrations on his monitors. One tap for go, two to stop.”

“That easy?”

“K-I-S-S. Now, tell me everything you did with C.W. when you were together and I’ll take it from there.”

Over the next three hours the men went over the suits, Mercer absorbing as much as he could of what Scott told him. He remembered a great deal of what Charlie had taught him, but Glass had a way of imparting even more. They worked for an hour inside the suits, taking power off the ship’s mains so as not to drain the batteries. Although it was a dry run and would differ dramatically from when they were underwater, Mercer was grateful for the practice.

The only change they made from their original plan was that Scott would use Charlie’s suit, while Mercer operated the spare, the one he’d toyed with aboard the Sea Surveyor. Scott felt he’d be better able to handle the idiosyncracies of Charlie’s suit.

They took a break when Ira’s four-hour promise approached. Mercer tried to raise the admiral on his cell phone but still couldn’t get through. Jim had been able to use the ship’s radiophone to contact an official on the island of Tenerife who’d been told the bomb had been delivered to Lisbon, Portugal, and was now en route to La Palma. The man didn’t know how.

“There’s no way they can get a chopper to us in this soup,” Scott said as they looked out into the storm from the cargo container.

Dawn was just a gray promise. The San Juan volcano had stopped spewing ash several hours earlier but the sky was choked with it. It would remain the color of lead even if the rain clouds passed. There was barely enough light to see the outline of the island a mile away.

“Hey, Mercer!” Jim’s shout came from the control van. “I think I have something.”

Mercer dashed through the filthy rain to the van. “What have you got?”

McKenzie handed him a headset. “Hello?” Mercer said into the mouthpiece.

“That you, Snow?”

There was too much interference to recognize the voice and it took Mercer a moment to remember the nickname. “Sykes?”

“Roger that.” The Delta commandos hadn’t stayed in La Palma for even an hour when they flew here with Mercer. Lasko and others in Washington needed a mission debrief and Mercer hadn’t been able to spare the time to give it. They’d been flown straight to Washington on the same Citation they’d borrowed to get to La Palma from Katmandu. “The Monkey Bombers have gone nuclear.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m about ten miles up-range of your position. The warhead was loaded into an MMU in Portugal and we’re about to drop it.”

“Don’t tell me you’re coming in too.”

“Sorry, not this time. I’m sitting behind the two pilots of the stealth that plopped us into Tibet. The least they could do was give me a ringside seat.”

Mercer saw the logic in delivering the W-54 bomb in one of the Manned Munition Utilities. The pods were designed to accurately and gently deliver a soldier to the battlefield. They couldn’t risk sending a chopper to the island until the volcanic fallout subsided. A regular parachute drop didn’t have the precision to land the weapon on the deck of a ship at sea, so the monkey bomb was the sensible choice.

“I’m calling to verify your GPS coordinates,” Sykes went on. “And to let you know the trigger is a three-hour delay. Once it’s set there ain’t no turning back.”

“Okay, Booker. I’m turning you over to Jim McKenzie — he’s the master of ceremonies for this particular ring of our circus. Good to hear your voice, man.”

“Same to you. Good luck down there. Sounds like you’re going to need it.”

“Hoo-yah!” Mercer returned the headset to Jim and went back to the deck, shouting for the crewman trying to hose mud over the side to clear the way.

The Petromax Angel had about forty feet of open deck between the control van and her stubby superstructure, more than enough room to land the MMU. He waited in the shelter of the bridge wing, shielding his eyes against the acid rain and swirling ash to glimpse the stealthy black pod as it fell from the cheerless sky. He mistakenly looked straight up, not realizing the MMU’s onboard computers were constantly correcting the pod’s descent for the brutal windshears.

The MMU actually swooped over the port side scant feet above the rail and dropped to the deck, falling lightly onto its back as the parachute was cut away. The billow of nylon vanished over the starboard rail, as fleeting as a ghost.

The seals around the lid hissed and the coffinlike door opened a crack. Mercer couldn’t help the eerie feeling he got as he approached the MMU. He almost didn’t want to touch it. He swung open the lid and stared in wonder at what lay nestled in the protective foam.

The bomb was white and nearly featureless, just a rectangular box that really was about the size of a large Samsonite suitcase. He placed a hand on its casing. It was cold.