Jack Du Brul - Charon's landing

The second mile on the Dalton Highway merged with the third and into the fourth, Mercer’s mind all but shutting down, conserving his energy to keep his feet running. He couldn’t remember a time when he had been so utterly exhausted, both mentally and physically. His stamina was waning and, with it, his coordination. He found himself stumbling more, lurching forward and one time pitching to the ground, the gravel digging deeply into the already torn meat of his palms.

Lying on the slick road, his face pressed against the dirt, his eyes closed in pain and weariness, he heard the unmistakable sound of a truck engine starting, revving up and then settling as the transmission was engaged. He looked up and through the drizzle saw headlights retreating back into the night. Had he been five minutes quicker, he would have jogged right into Kerikov’s rear guard. The vehicle retreated northward toward Pump Station 5.

Mercer wasn’t certain if this meant Kerikov was about to pull out of his position, or that he no longer feared a land-based assault up the Dalton Highway and wanted his men in a tighter defensive position. A new sense of urgency gripped him. If Kerikov was about to leave the pump station, Mercer would never have his chance. There was nothing he could do with a single machine pistol against a convoy of trucks. A single vehicle, yes, but he was sure that Kerikov would have used at least four trucks to transport enough men and equipment to seize the station and be able to deploy troops armed with missile launchers. He had to get to the station before they evacuated if he was to get his chance to eliminate Kerikov before the Russian was whisked to safety once again.

His strides felt lighter, more sure as he began running again, his focus sharper. The rain intensified, turning the hardened gravel road into a thick morass, clay lodging into the heavy tread of his boots. Mercer edged closer to the verge where the road had a rougher aggregate and he could gain a stronger purchase. Clearing a blind corner around a jagged tor of rock that cut off his view northward, Mercer dove off the road, rolling down the low shoulder and landing in a small stream of rain runoff. Ahead of him was the pump station, lit by powerful truck-mounted halogen lamps, the squat building and its immediate surroundings bathed in a pool of white light. And suddenly Mercer understood why Kerikov had taken the risk of attacking the pipeline directly.

Six flatbed trucks were pulled up against the pipe, cranes mounted on two of them swinging long cylindrical collars into place over the oil conduit. Men and women scurried around the site, and even at this extreme range, Mercer could hear their cries and oaths and shouts. This was what Kerikov was doing with the liquid nitrogen. He was placing it around the pipeline, encapsulating strategic parts of its eight-hundred-mile length in supercooled gas in an attempt to stop the flow of oil. This must be the last of it, he surmised, the replacement for the cylinders that he’d discovered aboard the Jenny IV .

Watching closely as the protective sleeve surrounding the pipeline was cut loose with a torch and its virtual twin was set in place, Mercer realized how cleverly they had carried out the operation. Had he not seen it actually happen, he never would have believed that there was anything out of the ordinary to the doctored section of pipe. Who knew how much of the line they had laced with liquid nitrogen?

He moved forward, wriggling through the water and mud in the drainage ditch, shutting his mind off from the rain and the cold and his own pain. Even with their yellow rain jackets and water-darkened hats, Mercer was able to recognize a couple of the PEAL activists he had seen at the bar in Valdez. They moved with the competence of an experienced construction crew, hoisting the original sections of pipe sleeve onto a truck. When they released the nitrogen within their fake lining, it would take weeks or even months to discover the sabotage, and even then, who would believe such a bold and cunning plan?

Remembering what Andy Lindstrom said about freezing the oil in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, he could believe that PEAL would be satisfied with shutting down the pipeline for the months it would take to clear the solidified oil from it and replace any damaged sections, but Mercer had a hard time accepting that Ivan Kerikov would work on such a symbolic but otherwise worthless act of eco-terrorism. There was something else to this, something that Mercer couldn’t quite grasp. The steady whine of the pump station’s main turbine sounded like a muffled dentist’s drill, droning on and on despite everything happening around it.

The hard prod at the back of his neck was a concentric circle, its inner ring exactly nine millimeters in diameter. The barrel of an Uzi pressed into his flesh was held by one of Kerikov’s former East German assassins. Mercer hadn’t heard him approach — he’d been too rapt by the sight before him — and as he slowly locked his fingers behind his back, he cursed himself for his lack of caution.

“Up,” he was ordered, and as he stood, he was warned to do so slowly, the gun pulling back so that he couldn’t twist around and grab its barrel. The man who captured him knew precisely how to handle a prisoner.

Mercer dragged himself to his feet, turned, letting the H amp;K machine pistol dangle from its strap against his chest. Seeing the weapon for the first time, the German took an involuntary step back, tightening the grip on his own weapon. His left foot slid a fraction of an inch in the mud at the edge of the drainage ditch, his concentration switching from his prisoner to his own balance for just an instant. Mercer used it to his full advantage, predicting it so accurately he was already in motion when the man slipped.

He dove forward, pounding into the man, throwing up his arm so that the Uzi rose harmlessly, its stubby barrel pointed into the trees. The bullet wound from Burt Manning’s attack on his house screamed with newfound pain as the lips of the long gash split open again, fresh blood welling through the opening. Mercer’s momentum took both men down into the ditch, the German pinned in the wet mud by Mercer’s body. Mercer cocked his right arm, punching as hard as he could, one, two, three powerful shots to the jaw. The German was still conscious, but just barely. Without a second thought, Mercer held the assassin’s head under the babbling stream flowing at the bottom of the ditch until his body went completely still.

Only after the man was dead did Mercer become aware that his heart was racing with fear, his chest pumping as though he couldn’t get enough oxygen. His fingers twitched with adrenaline. Lying in the ditch, his back pressed into the greasy mud, he tilted his neck and opened his mouth, letting cold, sweet water seep to the back of his throat, easing the raging thirst the sudden adrenaline rush had given him. He rested a moment longer, then crawled out of the mire to see if the fight had caught the attention of the workers at the pump station.

Peeking over the rise, he saw that no one had noticed; they were still working at securing the final nitro pack to the pipeline. The sound of the big turbine within the building and the rumbling diesel engines of their trucks must have masked the noise Mercer made killing the picket.

Without warning, a fountain of dirt exploded in Mercer’s face, throwing wet grit into his eyes, clogging his nostrils, and filling his mouth. He ducked again, burrowing into the ground as the sound of machine gun fire reached him an instant later. Just to his left, another burst kicked mud from the embankment, so close he could feel the heat of the bullets as they hit the dirt. He was pinned down and very vulnerable. The next move belonged to whoever held the gun.