Jack Du Brul - Deep Fire Rising

Spirit threw her arms around the engineer. “Thank you.”

“I’m going to ask if a crewman can keep watch on your door, if that’s all right,” Mercer said to Spirit after the engineer had left.

“Bit fucking late, isn’t it? His head’s already bashed in.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would go this far.”

“Didn’t think it would go this far?” she shouted back. “It went this far when someone tried to kill him on the Sea Surveyor . And what would have happened if he’d been in that lava tube when the ship drifted? You really are a conceited bastard, you know that? You don’t care about anyone or anything so long as you get the glory.” She began to sob. “Just leave.”

Mercer backed out of the cabin, knowing in his heart this wasn’t about glory. Maybe Tisa had gotten her wrong.

On deck, a blizzard of ash swept the ship in unending waves. Even with all the lights ablaze, the workboat was nearly blacked out by the ashfall. A resourceful officer had ordered the vessel’s water cannons to sweep the upperworks and deck, turning the ash into mud that drained from the scuppers. The rain that had begun to fall stung when it touched Mercer’s skin, made acidic by sulfur belching from the volcano.

He found Jim, Scott Glass and Tisa in the control van. “How’s Charlie?”

“Someone hit him over the head,” Mercer said, wiping the grime from his face with the towel Tisa had handed him. “He has a concussion, but the ship’s engineer was a corpsman and seems to think he’ll be fine.”

“What about the dive?” Scott asked. He was younger than Charlie, dark-haired and sporting a goatee and a nearly shaved head. Where C.W. was laid back and casual, Glass had an intensity and an attentiveness that Mercer appreciated. “One man can’t tow the line in alone.”

“Do any of the Petromax people have experience in the ADS?”

“No. There’s only the one pilot for their minisub. He might be able to do it, but he’s only five two. The suit’s too big.”

Jim added, “Most of the work Petromax does in the North Sea is done with saturation divers.”

“Can we use them?”

“It would take days just to set the diving bell and allow the divers enough time for their pre-breath on gas.” Jim shook his head. “ Conseil ’s stuck more than five hundred feet inside the vent and we have to go even deeper to place the bomb. It’s the suits or nothing.”

“I don’t know if he was bragging,” Scott put in, “but C.W. says that Mercer was pretty good in the suit when you were together a few weeks ago. If you’re willing to risk it, I’ll dive with you as my backup.”

Mercer hesitated. “Look, we only made a couple of dives. I have maybe three hours in the suit. And that was in open water. Forget it. What about you, Jim?”

“It’s ironic, but I’ve never even snorkeled.” Another resounding explosion echoed across the water. “We don’t have time to get someone else. We have to do this in one dive as soon as the bomb arrives.”

Mercer knew this was too important to risk on his limited skills. He would jeopardize everything if he made even a simple mistake. He shouldn’t do it, but what were the alternatives? He looked to Tisa. She understood how the decision tore at him. She gave him an imperceptible nod, not of consent but of compassion.

Scott would lead. Mercer’s role would be support if Scott needed something. All he’d really have to do is hang back and not be in the way. He could handle that, he thought. But what if he messed up? Mercer couldn’t let himself think about it. Glass needed someone to help haul the tow cable into the vent and there was no one else and no time to find someone.

“Okay. We’ll go as soon as the bomb’s delivered. That gives Scott four hours or so to teach me everything C.W. missed.” Mercer gave Glass a lopsided smile. “I hope you know what the hell you’re doing.”

“I was about to say the same to you.”

Before heading for the suits, Jim convinced Mercer that he needed at least one of his technicians with him to monitor the dive and personally vouched for the man.

“Just him,” Mercer agreed, but not liking it. “I don’t want the others released from the mess hall until they can be vetted.”

Mercer wanted an update on the bomb’s ETA and tried Ira on the cell phone but couldn’t get a signal again. He was able to radio Bill Farley, the supervisor over on the eastern side of the volcanic ridge.

The evacuation had been ordered, but no one was leaving their posts. In fact, Farley reported that the first- and second-shift workers were showing up by the hundreds, eager for an all-out assault to keep the Cumbre Vieja from slipping. He said the men would only leave the danger zone and head to the north of the island when the bomb was in the ground and the clock was ticking.

Mercer couldn’t have been more proud.

Crossing from the amidships control van on the Petromax Angel to where the NewtSuits were housed in a container at the Angel ’s stern was like a walk across a newly turned field in the middle of a cyclone. Wind and rain lashed the ship, and the best efforts of the crew couldn’t keep up with the swampy mud that had grown a couple of feet thick in some areas. Layers of ash and sizzling bits of pumice blanketed the sea.

The bright yellow NewtSuits stood on their wire-frame lifting cradles and were cracked open ready for the men. They resembled the discarded carapace of some science fiction insect. The technician Jim had vouched for was installing extra lights to the shoulders and forearms and a secondary battery pack.

“We’ll be hauling in a tow rope to pull the ROV from the tunnel so we can’t be on tethers,” Scott explained. “Too much risk of getting everything tangled. You and I will be able to communicate but once we’re in the tunnel we may lose the acoustical phone from the surface.”

“How will they know when to pull Conseil back out?”

Scott patted his suit’s steel claw. “Once we’ve got the line attached, just smack it with this. Jim can pick up the vibrations on his monitors. One tap for go, two to stop.”

“That easy?”

“K-I-S-S. Now, tell me everything you did with C.W. when you were together and I’ll take it from there.”

Over the next three hours the men went over the suits, Mercer absorbing as much as he could of what Scott told him. He remembered a great deal of what Charlie had taught him, but Glass had a way of imparting even more. They worked for an hour inside the suits, taking power off the ship’s mains so as not to drain the batteries. Although it was a dry run and would differ dramatically from when they were underwater, Mercer was grateful for the practice.

The only change they made from their original plan was that Scott would use Charlie’s suit, while Mercer operated the spare, the one he’d toyed with aboard the Sea Surveyor . Scott felt he’d be better able to handle the idiosyncracies of Charlie’s suit.

They took a break when Ira’s four-hour promise approached. Mercer tried to raise the admiral on his cell phone but still couldn’t get through. Jim had been able to use the ship’s radiophone to contact an official on the island of Tenerife who’d been told the bomb had been delivered to Lisbon, Portugal, and was now en route to La Palma. The man didn’t know how.

“There’s no way they can get a chopper to us in this soup,” Scott said as they looked out into the storm from the cargo container.

Dawn was just a gray promise. The San Juan volcano had stopped spewing ash several hours earlier but the sky was choked with it. It would remain the color of lead even if the rain clouds passed. There was barely enough light to see the outline of the island a mile away.