“What do you think we should do?”
“You have to convince the Russians not to disclose this was a terrorist act. Have them report it as an industrial accident, gas buildup in a tanker’s hull or something.” Ahmad mouthed something to Mercer. He clamped his hand over the phone and asked him to repeat himself.
“Some extremist group will claim the attack on the Internet. The authorities must be ready to discredit any such statement.”
“Good idea.”
Ahmad bobbed his head in acknowledgment. “I do this for a living.”
“Ira, you’ve also got to monitor Web sites and shut down anything having to do with terrorists taking credit for the blast.”
“What else?” Lasko asked, sounding like he was writing notes to himself.
“I don’t know. You’re the spinmeister not me. Hey, any word from Booker?”
“Nothing yet. Give me a phone number and I’ll call as soon as I have anything on either Book or the Russkies. And Mercer, don’t beat yourself up about this. You’ve done a hell of a job.”
Ira clicked off. Mercer’s friend’s last words were meant to cheer him. If anything, they made him feel worse.
Mercer handed the satellite phone to Federov. “Contact your superiors. The train’s not coming. They need to send another chopper because I think Grigori Popov has betrayed us.”
“What?”
“I think he tipped off Poli about the cache of plutonium here. At first I thought there might have been a security leak on my side, but it makes more sense that Popov betrayed my boss and his own country. What do you know about him?”
“Not much,” Sasha admitted. “He is a deputy minister, a former admiral. I have heard he favors Western sports cars and is how you say, a maverick, a cowboy. I would not be surprised if he’s had dealings with criminal elements because in Russia these days that is the only way to gain power.”
“Do you think he would sell black market nuclear material?”
Sasha’s eyes turned sad as he considered such a betrayal. “I do not know. In this world anything is possible.”
Ludmilla and her colleague trudged up the switchback road from the railhead. While she seemed as fresh and imperturbable as ever, the male scientist looked on the verge of a massive coronary. She spoke to Sasha for five minutes, answering a few questions before heading off to eat.
“What did she say?” Mercer asked. Cali joined them while Ibriham Ahmad and Devrin Egemen consulted privately.
“It appears none of the containers split open.”
“Thank Christ.”
“They were loaded into two of the boxcars. The rest were empty. She says there were sixty-eight barrels, bringing the total to seventy accounting for the two Feines stole. So far there is little heat buildup but she says we must get the barrels isolated from each other soon to prevent the plutonium from obtaining critical mass and exploding.”
“She’s right,” Mercer said, “but there’s not much the group of us can do for now.” He paused. “Maybe there is. Is there any kind of record of what was in the depot?”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
Mercer looked to Cali. She spoke first. “I guess we’re going to play grocery clerk and take inventory.”
The rubberized contamination suit smelled of stale sweat and halitosis and what he was pretty sure was urine, a nauseating combination that churned the tinned borscht lying in Mercer’s stomach.
“How you doing?” he asked Cali as she sealed the hood over her head.
“Ugh. Smells like a locker room of a girls’ volleyball team.”
“I’ve got bad breath and pee in mine. Want to switch?”
“Pass.”
They were standing outside the entrance of the old mine with Ahmad, Devrin, and Ludmilla. The Russian scientist checked over their suits, using a roll of duct tape to seal their gloves and boots. She ran her hands over the suits to make sure there were no rips or tears from when she had examined the train wreckage. Mercer wasn’t sure whose backside she lingered over more, his or Cali’s, but the examination in that region had been more than thorough.
“Perhaps you should leave this for the Russians,” Professor Ahmad suggested for the second or third time. “Devrin and I plan to leave here before the helicopter that Captain Federov requested arrives. We can take you and Cali with us to the airport in Samara.”
“I told you, Ibriham.” Mercer had to raise his voice to be heard outside the yellow suit. “The man partially responsible for the theft will want to hide his culpability. He’s in Novorossiysk right now looking for those two missing barrels. When he finds them he’s going to return them to the train wreck and act like nothing happened.”
“It will be your word against his.”
“Trust me this won’t be going to any court of law.” Mercer checked his flashlight and the spare in the bag slung over his shoulder. He had no intention of being in the mine long enough to drain even one, but he’d spent half his lifetime underground and knew you could never be too prepared. “Ms. Stowe,” he said with a gallant sweep of his arms toward the small forklift Poli had brought and abandoned. “Our chariot awaits.”
They climbed onto the little machine, each sharing part of the single seat, their hips pressed tight though there was no feeling through the thick rubber. Mercer keyed the electric motor, which hummed to life. A foot pedal controlled the motor speed and a small wheel directed the agile rear wheels. He noted that there was plenty of juice left in the batteries when he flicked on the lights.
Mercer tossed the Turks and Ludmilla a wave over his shoulder and guided the forklift into the mine. As soon as they’d traveled just a dozen yards down the dark tunnel, he felt the temperature begin to drop, as if the stone was leaching the heat from his body. The shaft was at least forty feet wide and fifteen tall, much bigger than Mercer had expected, so the lift’s puny lights cast a feeble ring along the ceiling, walls, and floor that retreated just a few yards ahead of them as they drove downward. The triple set of tracks for hauling ore and waste rock from the mine were dulled from exposure and the mine’s constant dank humidity.
The main shaft shot arrow straight into the earth for nearly a mile before they came to their first cross tunnel. Mercer cut the power to the lift to conserve its batteries and jumped to the ground. Cali followed him as he entered the secondary tunnel. She carried a gamma detector and watched its readings intently.
After fifty yards they came to a chamber where the miners had employed what was called room-and-pillar mining. In essence they had excavated a broad cavern, but left thick columns of rock undisturbed to support the weight of the mountain above.
Mercer played his flashlight around some of the columns and whistled when something reflected the beam back at him. He felt like he’d stepped into a military museum. He recognized the sharklike snout of an ME-262, the extraordinary jet fighter the Germans introduced in the latter stages of the war. The aircraft’s wings had been removed and leaned against a pillar next to the deadly plane. A little farther on he came to another and another. Then he saw planes he didn’t recognize. They were advanced even for today. They were small and sleek one-man attack aircraft that looked capable of incredible speeds.
He said, “These must have been prototypes of planes the Nazis ran out of time developing.”
“Good thing too. Our prop jobs wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
“Anything on the gamma reader?”
“Background’s a tad high but nothing like what we found on the
They spent another fifteen minutes exploring the cavity just to be sure. There were at least fifteen aircraft stored here, all in remarkable condition. They also found early rockets. Some were mounted on trailers to be launched as the world’s first surface-to-air missiles. Others were small enough to be carried aloft for direct aerial combat. All of them were far more advanced than anything the allies had at the time.
“Clever, weren’t they,” Mercer said, examining a multiple rocket pod intended to fire a deadly swarm of small unguided missiles.
