Jack Du Brul - Deep Fire Rising

He moved on, found a flight of stairs and climbed to the bridge. He didn’t know the watch officer, but the red-haired Irishman knew him and greeted him by name. “Kind of late for a stroll, Dr. Mercer. I’m Seamus Rourke.” Most of the Petromax Angel ’s officers and crew were from the British Isles.

“No rest for the wicked.” They shook hands.

“I thought it was the weary.”

“Both.” He helped himself to coffee from the urn on a counter at the back of the spartan bridge. “Can you show me the GPS receivers.”

“You too, huh? I’ve been sitting here thinking about that since I heard what happened and I kind of thought sabotage. But the receivers are on the antenna mast outside. You can’t get to them without accessing a service ladder that’s kept locked. Only the captain and chief engineer have keys and I already checked the padlock. No one messed with it.”

“That blows my theory.”

“There is another way,” Rourke suggested.

“I’m all ears.”

“There is such a thing as a GPS scrambler. It’s only available to the military so they can prevent enemies from accessing the positioning satellites or at least messing with their reception.”

“That’s right! I think Saddam Hussein tried to use them during Iraqi Freedom. As I recall they didn’t work.”

“Not against the equipment used by the U.S. Air Force and Navy, but it might confuse our gear long enough for us to drift off station. The Angel ’s a good boat but she was state-o’-the-art when Maggie Thatcher was hanging her girdle at Number Ten.”

Rourke’s idea had merit. “What would one of these scramblers look like?”

“Probably just a little black box. Something that could be tossed overboard. I doubt we’d ever find it even if the saboteur kept it with him. And there’s also the chance that our receivers were scrambled by somebody onshore. We’re close enough.”

Mercer hadn’t thought of that. Had there really been a ship over the horizon from the Sea Surveyor ? That opened the possibility that someone on the island had the jammer. Eleven thousand workers were currently on La Palma along with about a thousand diehard locals who had yet to evacuate. Not one had been screened by security. There hadn’t been time.

The tall officer looked Mercer in the eye. “I want to know why. Why would they do it? We’re trying to save the world. Why would someone want to stop us. No one gains.”

“It’s not about gain.” Mercer set his cup next to the coffeemaker and turned to the door. “I think it’s about maximizing loss.” He hadn’t forgotten that Tisa’s brother, Luc, hadn’t been at Rinpoche-La and was still at large.

Mercer found his way to the deck. The air felt heavier than before and charged with static. Lightning licked along the distant Cumbre ridge, caused by the ash and gas erupting from the southern part of the island. Mercer watched strike after strike. On the far side of the ridge he had teams drilling into the mountain trying to stabilize the slope. The drill trucks were well grounded, but it was only a matter of time before one of the men was struck.

With just one week left he considered evacuating them. The extra support pipes they were pinning into the rock wasn’t worth the risk of one or more being killed. He knew from the beginning that the whole scheme had been a long shot at best. His hopes had always lain with the nuke.

But what if each pipe prevented one ton of debris from slamming into the ocean? And what if that one ton meant saving a family trapped on the Bahamas, or in the Belgian lowlands?

On his numerous inspection tours he’d talked to enough of the roughnecks to know that they’d probably ignore his evacuation order anyway. He was pretty sure a few of the tougher ones would even continue to drill as the Cumbre Vieja split and slid down to the sea.

He turned his back on the atmospheric discharges and looked to the east. Dawn was hours away, but the glow from the erupting Teneguia volcano painted the sky in oranges and flickering reds. The light danced like the mindless rage of an artillery barrage. Cracks of thunder added to the illusion.

It would be ten o’clock on Saturday night back home, he realized. Harry would be slouched on his stool at Tiny’s. Paul would be in his cramped office getting tomorrow’s odds for his sports book. Doobie Lapoint would be behind the bar, the crisp towel over his shoulder the cleanest item in the place. Mercer desperately wanted to be a part of that normalcy, not here making decisions that affected the lives of millions of people.

He pulled the phone from his pocket and started to dial the Arlington number when he realized he didn’t have a signal. The lightning, he guessed, and turned back to appraise the island.

Mercer had a second to realize the sky had been shredded — the burst of ash had already climbed to five thousand feet — before the wall of sound rocked the Petromax Angel and threw him off his feet.

San Juan was erupting.

Lit from below by its own fiery heart, the top of the volcano had been blown skyward, a seething, billowing column of ash and rock that spread as it rose, a bruised purple mushroom cloud that cleaved the darkness.

The ship was a mile from shore, and the volcano was another eleven miles inland, and yet the shock wave slammed the Angel with hurricane force. Mercer clung to the rail as the wind ripped and tore at his precarious grip. He had to find cover. In moments the first ash and chunks of pumice would rain on the deck, yet he could not let go until the wave passed.

His head was filled with the ceaseless bellow of the explosion, a sound that seemed to shake his flesh loose from his bones. When the concussion finally dissipated, he felt like a dried husk. His fingers were bent into claws from his grip on the metal stanchion.

He staggered to his feet, his first concern for the crews working to pin the side of the mountain. He had to find a working phone or radio. He had to know how many he’d lost. At least five drill trucks were working the lower flank of San Juan. Fifty men had been within three miles of the blast, more when he considered the tanker drivers and relief workers, who rarely ventured far from their machines.

A door into the superstructure flew open. Spirit Williams was backlit against the interior lights. Her T-shirt was cropped so high that the bottom of her breasts were visible, two heavy crescents of white skin. Her panties were little more than a triangle of silk. Mercer brushed past her without a glance.

“What happened?” she cried and raced to keep pace.

“It blew. The son-of-a-bitching mountain blew.” Crewmen and scientists tumbled from their cabins in various states of undress.

Mercer climbed for the bridge. Third Officer Rourke stood at the windscreen, binoculars pressed to his eyes. “Get on the radio, Seamus. See if you can get a signal. We need to know what’s going on.” Mercer tried his cell again but there was no signal.

“Your little girlfriend said we had two more weeks,” Spirit accused.

“Go find Jim,” Mercer ordered. “And your husband. We have to push up the dive.”

“Dr. Mercer, I have someone onshore.” The watch stander handed him the radiophone handset.

“This is Philip Mercer. Who is this and where are you?”

“Bill Farley, Doctor. I’m an assistant supervisor for the drilling crews. I’m about eight miles south of the volcano.”

“What’s the situation?”

“Chaos. I don’t know what’s happening. There were three crews up near the summit and another two farther down. I haven’t heard from them and from what I can see here I don’t think they made it.”

That news wasn’t unexpected but still hit like a body blow. “What about the fault?” Mercer asked. “Has it slipped?”