Jack Du Brul - Deep Fire Rising

The six men, hand selected by Sykes, were perhaps the best-trained soldiers the United States had ever produced. They all came from the army and had excelled from their first days of basic training and in their extensive training since. Specialists in all forms of combat, they’d also learned to operate with initiative and flexibility. They were tighter knit than brothers, hard men who had trained through the human instinct of self-preservation to put their lives in the hands of the others. In Kosovo and Afghanistan and Iraq and a dozen other hot spots around the globe their bonds had been tempered by combat.

Because the occupant of the monkey bomb was virtually powerless once the weapon was loaded into the B-2, Mercer’s two days of orientation in Nevada was more for the Delta operators to assess him for themselves. New members seconded to the team, soldiers who’d already proved they belonged through years in the military, still needed months of initiation and indoctrination before they were accepted.

It wasn’t enough for the men that Sykes had said Mercer was all right. He had to prove it himself. In the thirty hours he’d spent with just the men, not Sykes, he was forced on two five-mile runs, endured numerous timed sprints through an impromptu obstacle course, expended about a thousand rounds of ammunition on a firing range and went on three static line parachute jumps (the jump master had explained why he wanted to see three jumps by telling Mercer anyone can fall from an airplane once, only a few will try it a second time and only damned fools go back for thirds and those were the kind he wanted).

In the end, the team’s senior noncom, Angel Lopez, a streetwise Honduran immigrant who went by the nickname Grumpy, had pronounced Mercer just marginally more fit than a week-old corpse. In keeping with the sequence of names the men chose for each other — Sykes being Doc, the son of a preacher who struck out consistently with women getting called Bashful, the team’s jokester going by Dopey, and so on — Mercer was given the ignominious name of Snow White.

Mercer and Sykes strolled past the hangar. In the background they could hear Grumpy snarling at the men. “H’okay people, we got twenty hours until we launch and twenty-four hours of work. I want a full weapons check, equipment breakdown and ammo load distribution in twenty mikes.”

At the edge of the aircraft ramp, beach sand blew across the asphalt in airy streaks. The wind had kicked up, a steady beat that flattened their clothes. Sykes hunkered down to a squatting position and took up a stick to draw random shapes in the dirt.

“What’s on your mind?” Mercer asked after a moment.

Sykes kept his eyes on his drawings as he spoke, his voice solemn. “We haven’t had a chance to talk since Dreamland. I just want you to know that Grumpy says you did okay back there. That’s a hell of a compliment coming from him.”

“So I gathered.” Mercer sensed this wasn’t what Sykes wanted to say.

“The boys are calling you Snow White.”

Mercer grinned wryly. “I’ve been called worse.”

“Yeah, I bet. Anyway, I’ve been with Delta for eight years now. I’ve lost a few men during that time. A good guy named Tom Hazen in Colombia, a heck of a sharpshooter in Pakistan, a gunny who got killed when his chute didn’t open at Bragg. A couple of others.

“These guys died doing their job. It’s part of the risk we take. But the thing is we take that risk. It isn’t given to us. Some ugly pops an ambush we’re too stupid to see, we deserve to get killed. That gunny packed his parachute wrong, he deserved not to have it open. You following me?”

Mercer knew where Booker was headed, but remained silent, knowing it needed to be said.

“Admiral Lasko tells me you’ve been in some real hairballs over the past few years and with some pretty good operators too. SEALs in Alaska, Force Recon in Africa. Some army spec dogs down in Panama last year. Don’t take this the wrong way, hell, there ain’t no right way, I guess, but I don’t want you thinking all that earned you a place here.”

“I never thought it did,” Mercer replied softly.

“I like you. I think you’ll do okay up there, but you have to understand my mission is about getting certain information back to the admiral. It’s not about protecting Miss Nguyen and it’s not about protecting you. If at some point you become a liability to that mission, or if you put one of my men at risk, don’t think I won’t drop you myself.”

“I’m taking this in the spirit it’s given. It’s not personal, I know.”

“It’s not, but this whole thing has my hackles up. We’ve never had a Snow White tagging along with the team before and that has me spooked.”

“You love them, don’t you?”

In the distance Grumpy was chewing out Sleepy, the marginally laziest man on the team. “Not them as individuals,” Sykes answered, “but the ideal of what they are. Faces come and go, but the team is still the same. Am I making any sense?”

“It’s the old saying about hating the president but loving the presidency. Only you’re talking about respect and honor, much truer feelings, ones that are harder to develop and sustain. You’ve felt this way for years now. It’s as much a part of you as the color of your skin. I’m not a member of your team, never could be, and you’re afraid that my going in with you will affect the balance somehow.”

Sykes nodded. “Something like that, I guess. I don’t mind being dropped out of a bomber in nothing more than a high-tech coffin or facing overwhelming enemy forces. I just like to know everyone who’s at my back.”

“There’s nothing I can say that’ll put you at ease so I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

They looked each other in the eye, a silent current of understanding flashing between them.

For the twelve hours the Delta team was slated for sleep, inside the hangar was a flurry of activity to prepare the B-2 and the eight MMUs. As Sykes had said, he and his men were only responsible for getting information out of Rinpoche-La. Mercer had been given the additional job of finding a way of turning that information into a practical plan. In an office off the barracks where the team snored away, he sat hunched over a laptop staring at the latest geologic reports coming out of La Palma.

The news wasn’t good. The numerous fumaroles, gas-emitting vents that dotted the volcano, were pumping out deadly aerosols with the force of jet engines. The discharge rate of noxious elements such as carbon dioxide and sulfur was rising exponentially. Rain as caustic as sulfuric acid was falling on parts of the island.

While the eastern side of the mountain was showing signs of displacement, the western, and more dangerous, flank hadn’t begun to slip. Yet each passing minute raised the temperature of the water trapped inside the volcano. It was only a matter of time before the increased pressure cracked the rock and the half-trillion-ton slab went crashing into the sea.

The president had hoped to keep the news of the potential eruption to a minimum, and it appeared for the time being his wishes were coming true. There weren’t any dramatic pictures for the media to focus on and the few so-called experts being interviewed downplayed the potential of a massive eruption because La Palma’s last jolt in 1971 hadn’t affected the fault. Instead, the press was focused on a Hollywood corruption scandal that was ruining the careers of several top-ranked actors. Mercer blessed the American fascination with fame and the misguided belief that the oceans still afforded isolation from the rest of the world.

Ever since he’d been asked to find a way to minimize the effects of a La Palma eruption, Mercer had spent countless hours examining the problem. He came at it from every direction, dissecting and discarding each scenario that occurred to him. Feasibility and practicality didn’t factor in his thinking. All he wanted were options. And as he’d known since the president first asked him to try to deflect a volcanic blast, there wasn’t a whole lot to be done except hope the other scientists working on the project were more inspired than he was.