Havoc

and vanished over the falls. Mercer popped the drogue chute and held it in his right hand as the barge slipped farther. He paused for a heartbeat, waiting for the boom to reach vertical. The Niagara Gorge was a narrow gash through the forests and farmlands, while in the distance Lake Ontario looked like polished glass.

With a last rending squeal the barge tipped, and just before it shot out from under Mercer he threw himself from the crane, tossing the drogue chute over his head. He and the barge and the water all fell at nearly the same speed, but the pressure against his stomach told Mercer he was accelerating. There was nothing to do but pray as he plummeted down the face of Niagara Falls, his body sodden by the constant spray. He couldn’t see the surface of the river or the rocks below because of the mist, and perhaps it was for the best.

But fate wasn’t going to be that kind to him. As he fell the mist cleared a bit. He could see the boiling surface of the river, the tons of rocks that had eroded off the falls, and even the plucky sightseeing boat called the Maid of the Mist. Mercer could feel the chute start to pull from the pack, drawn out by air resistance against the drogue. There wasn’t enough room.

Mercer closed his eyes.

And jerked them open when the main chute deployed, yanking the straps so far into his groin he was certain his testicles had ruptured. The wind off the falls caught the chute and pushed him just past the mounds of jagged boulders as the barge augered in. The crane snapped from its mounts and nearly hit him as he drifted a few more yards before plunging into the river. He went deep and felt the current snatch the chute, dragging him farther downstream.

Mercer fought and clawed his way to the surface, his lungs near bursting as he got there and gulped great drafts of air. He managed to find the chute release, and once it was gone he could tread water. The Maid of the Mist cut across the narrows, passengers in blue ponchos cheering when they saw Mercer had survived. A few minutes later a pair of deckhands helped him onto the lower deck.

“Have you got a death wish or something?” one of them asked.

Having no pithy retort on hand, Mercer rolled onto his side and promptly threw up.

Arlington, Virginia

Mercer sprawled on the leather sofa in the rec room wearing the loosest pair of sweatpants he owned, a bag of frozen peas pressed to his groin and a vodka gimlet within easy reach. From the floor, Drag regarded him through droopy, bloodshot eyes, indignant that he’d been evicted from his favorite spot.

Cali and Ira Lasko sat on the other couch facing Mercer, while Harry and Booker Sykes were at the bar. Burgers and fries from a fast-food restaurant littered the coffee table and bar top.

When the Maid of the Mist returned to its dock and it was determined that Mercer didn’t need a hospital, he was given a ride to the Niagara Police Department and booked on numerous charges. Like after the shoot-out in New Jersey, Ira had to step in with local authorities to get him released. Sykes had picked up Cali and her team from Grand Island and abandoned his boat so no one knew of their involvement. Ruth Bishop from the Coast Guard was to lead the investigation into the gun battle, coordinating with her Canadian counterparts to find the helicopter that had dropped the paratroopers and was most likely going to haul away the crates. So far word of their contents had not spread thanks in large part to the money Brian Crenna was being paid to keep his mouth shut. He’d have a new tugboat and floating crane by the end of the week. His missing crewman had been found on the Canadian side of the border, so with no civilian fatalities this was being heralded as a thwarted terrorist attack on Niagara Falls power plants. Mercer, NEST, and Sykes’s team weren’t part of the cover story and were sworn to secrecy.

Because none of the terrorists’ bodies had been recovered, Mercer, Cali, and Sykes’s Delta team had spent the day with the FBI’s counterterrorism unit going over hundreds of pictures of known terrorists in hopes of identifying the men who’d attacked the barge. One of the bass boats had survived the ordeal and was found packed with enough explosives to sink a cruise ship. As Mercer had noted during the battle, the terrorists were Middle Eastern. He recognized four of the men from the photo lineup. Two were Iraqi and two were from Saudi Arabia. The Arab paratrooper, a former captain in the Iraqi Republican Guard, was well known to the Pentagon, but none of the others were particularly high up in the Al Qaida chain of command. There was nothing in any database on the Caucasian parachutist.

Ira made sure that Homeland Security would keep him in the loop as they tracked how the men entered North America and where they had gotten their weapons. They would also provide twenty-four-hour guards for Mercer’s house. That was his price for cooperation. He didn’t want to take up Ira’s suggestion of moving to a safe house.

With his genitals sufficiently numb, Mercer set the peas on a dishrag next to him and wiped a smear of ketchup from his lips. He’d just finished telling Harry the story of the fight and his dive off the falls.

“I think that makes you the twelfth person who’s gone over the falls and lived,” Harry remarked. “However, technically you didn’t go over them. You parachuted, so it really doesn’t count.”

“Technically, my ass,” Mercer spat back and hobbled to the bar for another drink. “I may not be able to talk about it but in my mind I went over the falls and I’ve got the swollen stones to prove it.” He turned to Ira. “I’ve forgotten to ask. How’s it going with the recovery of the crates?”

“Coast Guard’s on it now with Cali’s teammates, ah, Slaughbaugh and Williams. They managed to recover two of them pretty easily from the Maid of the Mist Pool below the rapids, but the other two are directly under the falls, where the water is deeper than the falls are tall. The good news is there’s no trace of radiation in the water, so we know they didn’t break open.”

“And security?”

“Airtight this time,” Ira said solemnly. “What made you invite Booker along?”

“Poli’s been a step ahead since Africa. He has the original manuscript from Chester Bowie’s safe, which gave him the name of the freighter Bowie used to ship the crates to America. And as Cali proved finding what happened to the Wetherby wasn’t too tough. What I hadn’t anticipated was the number of men he’d employ and the sophistication of the assault given the short amount of time he had to plan it.”

Booker Sykes spoke up. “An operation like he coordinated would have taken weeks, maybe months for training and he pulled it off in just a couple of days.”

“That tells us,” Mercer continued, “that he’s got a lot of assets in the States.”

“And you’re sure he wasn’t with the assault team?” Ira asked.

“Positive,” Mercer said bitterly. More than anything he wished the mercenary had been there when the barge went over the falls. “I did recognize the white paratrooper from New Jersey. He was taking the potshots at us while Poli was driving. I suspect the Qaida fighters on the bass boats were just cannon fodder in case the barge was protected.”

“That’s why all the explosives,” Booker added. “Suicide run if you had a Coast Guard escort. I figure the Iraqi who ’chuted in was the terror cell’s leader but they were working for Poli.”

“Who ultimately works for someone else,” Cali said.

“Someone we don’t have a bead on yet.” Mercer returned to the couch and settled the frozen peas over his groin again. “But it’s got to be Al Qaida. How else could he get their men? For Poli it’s all about the money. Guys willing to die in a suicide attack do it for politics or faith.”

Ira finished his burger and crushed his napkin. “You think this is Al Qaida’s attempt to get the radioactive material they need for a dirty bomb?”

“What else could it be?” Cali answered. “We all know they’ve wanted to get their hands on nuclear material for years. And despite what the media thinks, NEST and other groups are doing a damn fine job closing conduits from the old Soviet republics and any other source imaginable.” She glanced at Mercer almost as if what she was about to say was his fault. “What no one anticipated was finding a cache of natural plutonium that seems to have been lost for a couple thousand years. Using what Chester Bowie rediscovered is Al Qaida’s only chance if they want a dirty bomb.”

“I don’t get something,” Harry said. “If you guys could recover the crates without any problems, what’s the big deal with a dirty bomb anyway?”

Cali met his frank gaze. “It’s a terror weapon. More people would be killed in the initial explosion than would