an order even if it came from an American civilian. He crawled over the corpses of his friends to retrieve several AK-74s and one of the RPG rocket launchers. He handed them across to Mercer just as Sasha slammed the door back on its roller stops. The acrid smoke boiled out the opening like a volcano, but the sudden influx of fresh air also caused the small fire smoldering at the rear of the helicopter to flare up.
“Come on,” Sasha shouted in Russian. He grabbed Cali’s hand and helped her crawl up the hold. When she reached the door he said, “Jump as soon as you’re outside and run fifty meters straight ahead. The mine is behind us, so they won’t see you.” He handed her his AK-74. “Round is chambered. Is okay?”
Cali nodded. “I’m familiar enough.”
Sasha helped her climb out the open door and she immediately disappeared from view. Next came the two uninjured scientists, a man and a woman. The man was frightened and shaking so badly he was ready to topple over. The woman, with her thick body and Slavic features, looked as imperturbable as a babushka. Sasha repeated his order and was about to give an automatic pistol to the man when he thought better of it and handed it to the woman instead.
He had to struggle to push her ample backside out the door.
Mercer checked the rest of the passengers. The pilot had already escaped through the shattered windshield. The copilot was dead. The only other survivor was a pretty girl from Sapozhnik’s staff with a broken collarbone. She screamed when Mercer probed it gently with his fingers. She said something in keening Russian.
Sasha gave his orders to the soldier and together they tossed most of the weapons out through the door and onto the ground. Then the soldier scrambled up and out of the helicopter. Mercer shot Federov a scathing glare, thinking the girl should have been the next one out.
“I need him to catch her and cover for her. I also heard automatic fire.”
They used one of the AK-74 assault rifles as a step and boosted her up. She paused on top of the chopper, fearfully looking down at the young soldier outside.
“Go,” Sasha hissed and reached out to shove her.
A sustained burst of autofire slammed into the underside of the helicopter, opening dozens of sizzling holes in the aluminum skin and sending ricochets whizzing through the hold whenever a round struck something solid. There was no mistaking the sound of several of the bullets punching through human flesh. Either the girl or the soldier or possibly both were dead. Cali had found cover behind a hillock some fifty yards from the downed bird. From there she quickly silenced the gunfire with a pair of three-round bursts.
Knowing that jumping out the hatch was suicide, Sasha and Mercer scrambled for the cockpit, and as the echoes of the exchange faded, Cali screamed, “RPG!”
They dove headfirst through the remains of the windshield and hit the ground running. The rocket veered slightly at the last second and hit the tail rotor. The explosion blew the boom from the body of the chopper while the concussion knocked Mercer and Federov off their feet and into a drainage ditch. A moment later the remaining fuel went up in a boiling cloud of orange flame and black smoke that lit the stark landscape like the hellish glow of a blast furnace.
“Who’s out there?” Sasha Federov panted as he checked over his AK-74.
Mercer inspected his own weapon and said, “A mercenary named Poli Feines. I don’t know what you’ve been told but the plutonium we’re here to secure is naturally occurring. It was mined in Africa back in the late 1940s. Feines was in the village where Cali and I found the old mining operation, again in New Jersey while we were tracking a clue about an American who first discovered the lode. Two days ago one of his men and a bunch of Arab terrorists attacked us in Niagara Falls, New York.”
“How is it he’s here?”
“Million dollar question,” Mercer said. He made sure the Yarygin nine-millimeter pistol he’d shoved behind his back was secure. “I suspect there’s a leak within the organizations I’ve been dealing with.” It was the first time he’d given voice to the nagging thought that had been with him almost since the beginning. If true, the ramifications of it were chilling because the only people who knew the truth were himself, Cali, Ira Lasko, and Harry. He trusted Harry and Ira with his life and Cali had been shot at enough times to disqualify her as a traitor, so the theory didn’t make sense. But there were no alternatives, either.
He poked his head above the rim of the drainage ditch. He spotted Cali behind a mound of boulders. The two scientists were with her, and the young soldier had found cover behind a pile of mine tailings. The body of the pretty female scientist had been immolated when the helicopter exploded.
The building that housed the headgear machinery was four stories tall and covered in corrugated metal. The seams were streaked in rust, creating a patchwork effect. Around it were several smaller buildings, offices, and workshops. Also littering the mine were piles of machinery-old ore cars with broken wheel bogies, small electric shunting locomotives, pumps, and hundreds of other items. Most of the old machinery had rusted together over the past decades and thorny weeds grew around everything. But there were two trucks backed to the gaping mine entrance. They were UAZ-5151s, rugged little four-wheel drives that resembled jeeps. Poli was here to steal the plutonium and transport the ore from the mine down to the train with the off-roaders.
Mercer spotted a dozen men around the trucks, more than half of them armed. As he watched, a forklift emerged from the mine, a single barrel lashed to a pallet it carried. Its driver wore a gas mask and protective suit. At least the Soviets had taken a few precautions, Mercer noted. The barrel was massive and obviously well shielded, and when the forklift lowered it into the bed of the truck, the suspension sagged under the load. He looked at the other vehicle. Its tires were still fully inflated which meant it hadn’t been loaded yet. This explained the train, however. The trucks couldn’t handle the crumbling Russian roads carrying such weight.
The guards didn’t seem intent on hunting down Mercer’s party. They just wanted to keep loading their trucks so they could leave. Mercer turned to Sasha.
“Do you have a radio or satellite phone?”
The Russian shook his head. “Radio was on the helicopter and I’ve never even seen a satellite telephone.”
“This just gets better and better.” Mercer plucked a sleek cell phone from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. There wasn’t a cell tower for a hundred miles but he tried anyway. When he didn’t get a signal, he slid it back into his coat. “It’s up to us.”
“You seem like you can handle yourself,” Sasha said. “Cali, too, but that leaves us just four against eight or more.”
“Five. That other woman looks capable.” Mercer’s eyes went hard. “But it doesn’t matter. We don’t have an option. We can’t call for help, and once they get those trucks on the train we’ll never be able to stop them. They’ll be beyond Russia’s borders by the time anyone comes to check on us.”
Sasha nodded grimly. “All right.”
Mercer turned back to study the terrain and come up with a plan. A frontal assault was out of the question. Poli’s force was too large. They could circle around the building, but there was a lot of open ground to cover, and if Poli was smart, which Mercer knew he was, he’d have sent a couple of guards to cover his flanks as soon as he saw people escape the chopper crash. The best way would be to circle even wider, climb up the hill rising above the mountain, and attack from above. It would take time but Mercer saw no other way. He turned to run his plan by Sasha but the Russian was gone.
He looked down the length of the drainage ditch. Federov was crawling away, and for a fleeting second Mercer wanted to put a bullet in his back. Then he realized that Sasha was getting into a better position to attack from the opposite flank, behind a row of abandoned ore cars. From there he could find cover behind the steel pylons that supported the ore chute.
Sasha would still need cover to get into position. Mercer inched his way out of the ditch, crawling across the cold ground. The forklift disappeared into the mine once again as a man emerged. One of the others used a hose attached to one of the trucks to douse his suit with water before he took off his gas mask. Even at two hundred yards Mercer recognized the bald head and eye patch.
Uncontrollable rage made him bring the AK to his shoulder, not caring that the counterfire would catch him exposed. He wanted the son of a bitch dead. He centered Poli’s broad chest in the weapon’s iron sites and eased the trigger. The instant he fired, Mercer rolled to his left several times and lurched to his feet, racing toward where
