Jack Du Brul - Charon's landing

At five thousand feet above the low bowl of ground on the banks of the Chena River that is Fairbanks, Alaska’s largest interior city, the swelling fires raging to the southwest of the urban center were easily discernible. They seethed and roiled upward and outward into the night, unaffected by the rain that fell in a wind-driven downpour. The fire was centered near the International Airport at Alyeska’s new equipment depot. Eddie, Mercer, and Mike Collins could see the frantic movement of men and equipment trying to battle the fierce blaze. Revolving lights atop the emergency vehicles winked furiously. From their high vantage, it appeared that the number of fire engines was woefully inadequate for the size of the conflagration. At least a couple of acres were obscured by undulating sheets of flame and black chemical smoke.

“Jesus Christ, what’s going on down there?” asked the fourth man in the helicopter, a young sergeant assigned by Colonel Knoff to handle communications between Eddie Rice and the two Huey gunships about half a mile in front of them.

“One hell of a diversion,” Mercer replied from his place in the back of the JetRanger. “Looks like we’re not going to get any ground support from Fort Wainwright.”

Before leaving Elmendorf, Colonel Knoff had suggested sending a convoy of Military Police from the Fort Wainwright Military Airfield in Fairbanks up the Dalton Highway toward Pump Stations 5 and 6. Mercer had agreed, knowing that the three choppers would reach the pump stations long before the MPs, but if Kerikov had already left, he would run right into the army vehicles.

An emergency as large as the fire burning below would surely take precedence over Mercer’s mission in the eyes of the local government. Any able-bodied soldier from Wainwright would certainly be assisting in crowd control, search and rescue, and medical treatment. The three helicopters thundering north were on their own.

Mike Collins sat next to Mercer and stared out the window, his face pressed tightly to the Plexiglas as he studied the devastation. His lips were compressed and bloodless and his hands flexed nervously in his lap. “Do those lunatics realize that there’re about a thousand tons of seismic charges and other explosives warehoused at that facility?”

“Probably,” Mercer observed mildly.

“This isn’t some joke.” Collins turned and glared at Mercer.

“Mike, I know it’s not, but I guarantee that this is just a sideshow; the main event is still to come. Kerikov knows there would be a response once we lost communications from the pump stations, and he’s trying to sidetrack us.”

“How do you know that? How do you know the fire isn’t what he wanted all along?”

“Because I know how the bastard thinks, and this just isn’t big enough for him.” Mercer was going to continue, but the sergeant interrupted. Colonel Knoff wanted to speak with him. Mercer put on his headset. “Yes, Colonel, what’s up?”

“I just got a priority message from Wainwright. They need our choppers for medical evacs to Anchorage. Facilities in Fairbanks are swamped; they need every available aircraft to get patients south and doctors and supplies north.”

“Negative, we go on.”

“You said yourself this might be a wild-goose chase, and there are people dying down there. They need us.”

“There wouldn’t be a fire down there if one of those pump stations hadn’t been attacked. It’s a distraction, Colonel, nothing more.”

“That distraction has already claimed twenty-three lives, Dr. Mercer,” Knoff said acidly.

“My mission takes precedence. I’m sorry. Mercer out.”

“You cold son of a bitch,” Mike Collins said, then turned back to the window as Fairbanks vanished behind the helicopter’s flat bottom.

Mercer sat quietly, arms folded across his chest, eyes flat and unpenetrable. Behind the facade, his mind was working furiously. Am I right? he asked himself. Or am I consigning innocent people to death by refusing them these helicopters?

“Mercer, call from Andy Lindstrom,” Eddie Rice said through the headset. “He says no answer from Pump Station 5, but 6 is on line, a skeleton crew standing by. He’s asking if he should send some men down to 5.”

“No! Under no circumstances are those men to leave Pump Station 6. They’d be cut to ribbons long before they reached the control building. Number 5 is under the control of terrorists. Sergeant, call Colonel Knoff. Tell him the target is Pump Station 5. Eddie, what’s our ETA?”

“At least another hour and twenty minutes. This weather is really killing us, and those Hueys are even slower than we are, especially fully loaded.”

“Shit! Pump Station 5 went off line hours ago. It’s possible Kerikov’s already gone.”

Time slowed. Whenever Mercer twisted his wrist to look at his watch, a shorter and shorter arc of the minute hand had swept by. The rhythmic throbbing of the rotor blades over his head had a lulling effect, sending him into a kind of daze, his mind emptied of everything, so he was just barely aware of the JetRanger’s turbine engine and the occasional mutterings between Eddie Rice and the pilots of the two Hueys. And then the thoughts came, fear and doubt the strongest, but also a deep exhaustion, a gritty feeling behind his eyes that made blinking painful. He had been awake for twenty-two hours. But that wasn’t what was really nagging him.

Suddenly the quest for the unknown, the search for knowledge that had dominated his life, that made him who he was, was no longer so important. He felt like telling Eddie to turn the chopper around and head back to Anchorage. This wasn’t his problem, it wasn’t their fight. He had done this too many times now, put his life on the line for an ideal, a belief that he couldn’t really define or name.

This was always the worst, the waiting. He’d been here before, with Eddie in fact, but with other men, too, hurtling into harm’s way, fear like a weight in his stomach, doubt like a nagging headache behind his temples. He’d long ago stopped wondering why he found himself constantly surrounded by danger, but he still questioned how much longer his strange obsession would allow him to live. How many more times could he descend into the earth in some mine shaft in need of immediate repairs? How many times could he climb aboard a helicopter to face someone like Ivan Kerikov and actually return? Pessimism burned hotly behind his ribs.

God, I’m tired.

“Ten minutes to the Pump Station,” Eddie called.

Mercer straightened up, noting the queer look Mike Collins shot him, as if Alyeska’s Chief of Security had been reading his mind. He ignored Collins, leaning forward to peer out the cockpit canopy. In the darkness, the running lights of the two Air Force Hueys looked like flashing jewels, a cold, comforting light signifying the presence of other humans amid the great expanse of forested nothingness below. Thousands of square miles of birch and white spruce separated the Alaskan Range mountains from the Brooks Range, whose foothills they were approaching. The area was crisscrossed by dozens of rivers, streams, and tiny lakes.

“Any traffic on the Dalton Highway?”

“I haven’t seen anything, and we’ve been over it for nearly half an hour. I didn’t even see any police cars where the Alyeska vans reportedly went off,” Eddie replied. “It’s like the road isn’t even there.”

“Call Knoff. Tell him we’re almost there.”

“Already done. His boys are chomping at the bit.”

“Good. I want you to hang back at least a mile until they’ve landed and Knoff gives us the all-clear sign. If Kerikov and his men are still here, Knoff’s troops should be able to handle them. He won’t be expecting this strong a reprisal because of his pyrotechnic display in Fairbanks.”