Jack Du Brul - Charon's landing

In a moment, the plane was heading into the bay, rapidly picking up speed. The twin pontoons carved deep slices in the water. Mercer made sure the fuel was set at Full Rich to give himself the maximum amount of power from the engine. He experimented with the rudder pedals, and the floatplane responded to his commands, turning gently. He tried to estimate where he’d last heard the lifeboat and steer a course around it — for in the fog he was virtually blind.

Feeling a bit more confident, he dialed the flaps down one notch, increasing the wings’ lift. The plane felt lighter in his hands, the ride smoothing and his speed increasing. He glanced at the indicator and was startled to see they were doing more than seventy knots. The floats skimmed the surface like arrows, and the Cessna felt like it wanted to fly. The plane was steady, but he felt the excessive speed was too much for him to handle, and he reached forward to reduce the throttle.

Like Leviathan rising from the sea, one of the Petromax Omega ’s escape pods appeared out of the fog directly in front of the hurtling aircraft. With just an instant to react, Mercer unthinkingly pulled back on the control yoke, and the Cessna came unglued from the water, flashing only a scant foot above the rounded top of the lifeboat. His first thought was to get the plane back on the water again, but she continued to climb steadily, the safety of the water receding with every passing second. Panic gripped him, and his hands felt like lead weights on the yoke. Oh, shit.

He purposely lightened his deathlike grip and let the plane settle into its natural environment as it rose through the silvery mist. Fighting his mounting fear, Mercer tried to remember the width of Cook Inlet and the height of the mountains on the other side. But as the plane climbed above three thousand feet, breaking out into clear sunshine, he saw that the mountains of the Kenai National Refuge were too distant to be a threat to the soaring aircraft. He took several calming breaths, wiping a new coat of sweat from his brow, but his heart continued to hammer at his chest. He’d just gotten himself and Aggie into a mess he had no idea how to fix.

Not giving in to his panic, he started to experiment with the plane. If he was to land them safely, he had to teach himself how to fly before the fuel gauges dropped to empty. Fortunately, the air was calm, and it took him only a few minutes to get used to the quick control response of the Cessna. After ten minutes, he set a course to Valdez and had the plane flying straight and level, throttled to 70 percent power and cruising as if he’d been flying all of his life.

Like hell.

In a vain attempt to distract himself from their predicament, he thought about Kerikov and how the Russian would destroy the pipeline. As Andy Lindstrom had said earlier, freezing the oil in the line wouldn’t do it; the steel making up the pipe segments was too thick. But if Kerikov had gained control of the computers that ran the pumps, which Mercer suspected he had through Ted Mossey, he need only wait until the line was mostly solidified and then crank the turbine pumps to maximum. The free oil in the unfrozen sections would create tremendous back pressure when it met the frozen oil plugs, and even with a rated pressure strength of eleven hundred eighty psi, the line could not hold against the combined power of its ten active pump stations. It would split in a hundred different places depending where Kerikov had placed the nitrogen-freezing packs.

Mercer looked at his watch. If he didn’t get to Valdez and warn Andy Lindstrom about Mossey, Kerikov would succeed. Ignoring the steadily plunging fuel gauge and the near redlines of the engine indicators, Mercer opened the throttles a notch farther, eking out a few more miles per hour. Another twenty minutes dragged by before the Cessna cleared the eastern coast of the Kenai Peninsula and broke out over the waters of Prince William Sound.

Gently, he banked the plane northward, hugging the coastline. The town of Seward was only four minutes south of their present location, but in his concentration, Mercer had failed to see it nestled between the mountains. He could have landed there and saved himself the ordeal yet to come.

THE Planetary Environment Action League research vessel Hope had the carnival air of a cruise ship that had just reached some tropical paradise. The crew, all young and idealistic, were toasting their success from bottles of cheap champagne. They were only an hour or two from completing the greatest attack on the industrial polluters in the history of the environmental movement. All of their previous actions — the arson attacks on gas stations, the rallies and fights, the shouted chants, and spray painting of slogans — had led to this moment. And this one had been pulled off so easily that many of them realized that large acts of eco-terrorism were much simpler than the small protests they had been part of before. A few were already talking about their next reprisal against the industrial world.

Jan Voerhoven stood surrounded by his followers in the Hope ’s wardroom, a glass of champagne in his hand, a smile lighting his handsome face. He basked in the mood around him like Caligula before his hand-picked Senate, drawing strength from their adoration. The only shadow in his deep blue eyes was the fact that Aggie wasn’t there to share it with him. He knew the significance of her leaving the ring he’d bought for her. She had meant a lot to him; however, the buoyant celebration helped dispel the loss he was already feeling less strongly. Several unattached women eyed him predatorily, for the rumor of Aggie’s departure had spread quickly.

One woman — a girl really, no more than nineteen — caught his eye, and when he smiled, she matched his gaze with a frank desiring expression. No, he thought as another champagne was placed in his hand, he would probably have a new bedmate this very night.

“How much longer, Jan?” someone shouted from the back of the crowded room.

“Not much more,” he called back, grinning. He had the detonator in his shirt pocket, the slim cellular phone tucked against his chest.

One deck below the raucous party, Abu Alam was making his report to Kerikov. He’d spent the past three hours in the engine room of the Hope , securing charges of plastique to fuel lines, oil bunkers, and other strategic locations. When they were detonated, there would be nothing left of the research ship but the twisted backbone of her keel. His clothing was filthy, his dark complexion sooty and streaked with oil and grime, and his hands were so black with dirt that they looked gloved. They were alone in Jan Voerhoven’s spacious cabin, Alam’s footprints staining the carpet’s rich pile.

He gave his report without emotion, dictating the locations of the charges and the fact that he had had to kill three engineers who had come too close to his work. His eyes were flat and hard. Alam contained his excitement with difficulty, trying to remain impassive under Kerikov’s critical stare.

Is he aware? Alam wondered.

It would be natural for Kerikov to suspect treachery from Alam — their entire world was created from deception — but he couldn’t tell if the Russian knew it was coming so quickly. Hours now, not days.

Alam had not thought through his timing yet, for the delicacies of it were somewhat beyond him. He was a soldier, not an officer, and certainly not a strategist. Hasaan Rufti had made it clear that the pipeline must be destroyed and that there could be no possible link between the act and the Minister himself. Eliminating PEAL was a desire of both Rufti and Kerikov; neither of them wanted a group of young idealists bragging of their achievements afterward. But killing the Russian was going to prove far more difficult. Alam had to make certain Kerikov detonated the nitrogen packs and activated the hidden computer program that would rouse the multiple pump stations before killing him with a quick knife thrust or blast from his SPAS-12 shotgun. Ideally, Kerikov would die when Alam set off the explosives secreted throughout the ship, but he didn’t know how to properly time such an occurrence.