Jack Du Brul - Vulcan's forge

Mercer flipped back onto his stomach, cursing the pain and his own stupidity. He was now unarmed and facing an unimaginable number of enemies.

As the Metro climbed above ground just south of the Jefferson Memorial, Mercer realized that he had a chance to escape while the train was crossing the Potomac River. He swore at himself for even thinking it, but knew he had no other option. As soon as the train reached daylight, he sat up and kicked off his shoes. The train sped onto the truss bridge that spanned the sluggish river, rattling and clanging like an old steam locomotive. Mercer stood, the wind whipping his jacket around his body. He shed it quickly and peered at the river below. It was a sapphire blue.

Mercer jumped.

The jarring vibration of the Metro vanished as he arrowed toward the water, and for a moment all was quiet except for the wind in his ears. The impact as he hit the choppy water nearly knocked him unconscious, but the cold brought him back quickly. He was deep under the river’s surface. With lungs emptied by the blow, the swim upward was agonizing.

He finally broke the surface and coughed the water from his lungs. He looked up at the bridge, but the train had already vanished from sight.

Twenty excruciating minutes later, he dragged himself onto the shore.

“Welcome to Virginia,” he gasped.

By its very nature a modern nuclear submarine makes an optimal platform for sensitive intelligence gathering. With its ability to remain submerged for extended periods and its absolute silence, a sub can maintain station near an unfriendly coast for weeks or even months with relative impunity.

The sub now lying in wait two hundred miles northwest of Hawaii had been there for seven months and apart from one minor incident had not once come close to detection. There was only about another week or two left of this patrol, so morale, which had been dismal, was finally picking up.

The crew, mostly northerners, no longer snickered at the captain’s thick Georgian accent. The bickering, which had become an almost daily occurrence even among this highly disciplined crew, had ceased. The men knew that very soon they would feel the warm sun, breathe unrecirculated air, and have the company of their families once again.

The captain, an unlaughing, hawk-faced man in his midfifties, scanned the control room slowly. The red lights of battle stations, which had glowed continuously since the beginning of the mission, stained the faces of his men and hid every corner of the room in shadow. He too was looking forward to going home. Though he had lost his wife years before, he did have a daughter. A daughter who would have given birth to his first grandchild in his absence.

A boy or a girl? he mused. And if it was a boy will she name him after me or that idiot husband of hers?

“Captain, contact bearing two-oh-five degrees range fifteen miles,” the sonar operator barked.

The bridge was galvanized with anticipation, each pair of eyes riveted on the captain. He checked his watch and decided that this might be the ship they were expecting.

“Sonar, scrub the target’s signature please,” the Old Man said calmly.

“Range too far, sir, we have to wait. Range thirteen miles. Single screw turning thirteen knots.”

The captain picked up the hand mike. “Fire control, plot a solution to target and give me a lock. Torpedo room, flood tubes one and two but do not open outer doors.”

Even on the bridge, thirty yards from the torpedo room, the captain could hear the water flooding into the tubes. He just hoped that there was no one else out there to hear as well.

“Sonar, can you scrub the signature yet?”

“Affirmative, sir, working now.”

The boat’s multimillion-dollar acoustical computer was analyzing the sounds coming from the approaching ship, digitally washing out the grinding rotation of her screw, the liquid friction of her hull cutting through the waves, and the omnipresent background noise of the living sea, until…

“We have our target, her signal is coming in strong. Repeat, she is our ship.” Amid the ambient noise of the vessel, an ultrasonic generator pulsed a signal through the water to be picked up by only those listening for it. It was this signal for which the computer searched and the captain waited.

The captain picked up the microphone again. “Torpedo room, stand down.”

“Shit!” the sonarman screamed and ripped off his headphones.

“What is it?” the captain demanded.

There was a thin trickle of blood from the man’s ears. He spoke unnaturally loudly. “Another underwater explosion, sir. Much more powerful than any other.”

“You are relieved,” the captain said.

The sensitive sonar gear was designed with a fail-safe acoustical buffer to shield the hearing of the men who listened in, yet his four top operators now suffered permanent hearing damage due to the buffer’s inability to screen out the nearby subsurface explosions. The equipment simply wasn’t designed for this kind of abuse. And neither were the men.

Mercer tapped the cabdriver on his shoulder and handed the young African immigrant a twenty. “Keep the change and I’m sorry about the seat.”

The cloth-backed seat of the yellow Ford Taurus was soaking wet, just like Mercer’s suit. He walked toward his house in stocking feet, his socks making an obscene sound against the concrete with every step.

The front door of the house was unlocked. Mercer breathed a heavy sigh once the door was closed behind him. It had taken him nearly an hour and a half to get home after he’d pulled himself from the river near the Pentagon. His first act, after wringing the water from his clothes behind a derelict bus, was to phone a friend with the metro police.

The friend promised that Mercer’s shot-up Jaguar would be towed to an auxiliary lot in Anacostia, not to the city’s main impound. He also assured Mercer that the paperwork on the car would be “lost” for at least a couple of days. It would take some time to trace him through his destroyed car.

He now had a little breathing space to figure out what in the hell had just happened and why.

Mercer heard the sound of the television and knew that Tish Talbot had made it here safely. He walked through the house, not caring about the water he was getting on the tile or the antique stairs. Tish was asleep in the bar, stretched out on the couch under a steamer rug that Mercer had bought in an auction of ocean liner memorabilia. The name SS Normandie was embroidered in gold silk on the thick dark wool.

Tish woke slowly, extending her hands over her head in a decidedly feline gesture.

“How do you feel?” Mercer asked. Making a quick decision between keeping his floor dry and his need for a drink, he gingerly stepped behind the bar.

“I’m not sure,” Tish responded, then noticed his appearance. “My God, are you okay?”

“Let’s just say, I’m not ready to do that again.” Mercer pulled two beers from the antique fridge and popped the lids.

“No, thanks,” Tish said. “I took the liberty of opening a bottle of wine.” She indicated the half-filled glass on the coffee table.

“I wasn’t offering,” Mercer replied as he tilted the first bottle to his lips. The beer vanished in seven heavy swallows. “I need a shower and a change. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He left the empty on the bar.

Ten minutes later, Mercer returned wearing jeans and a Pittsburgh Penguins jersey. Tish had folded the blanket and was sitting at the bar. “Your home is beautiful. I made the mistake of going for cute rather than practical when I bought my condo in San Diego. My whole unit is smaller than this room.”