Jack Du Brul - Vulcan's forge

“Department Seven is one of those groups we know very little about. They don’t seem to have any active agents or any real goals. They just act as a sort of think tank as far as we can figure. Now, if Perchenko’s death can be linked to Kerikov then we have a definite connection between the volcano and this Department Seven.”

Sam Becker had been reading the file handed to him earlier, with the photos, and now he looked up sharply. “We have that connection.”

“What do you have, Sam?” The President caught the strength behind Becker’s voice and drew from it.

“On Paul’s request last evening, I had the archive sections at Fort Meade pull anything they had on Soviet geologists from the fifties and sixties. The records were sketchy, but we just got lucky.”

Since its inception, the National Security Agency at Fort Meade was the repository for every scrap of intelligence gathered from around the world. There was more computer power in the sprawling complex than anywhere else on the planet, and it was used to decipher even the most oblique reference or cryptic message from enemy and ally alike. If something had ever been put in print, spoken about over a phone line, or bounced off a satellite, NSA had a record of it. From the personal advertisements in the Johannesburg Star to mundane conversations between two sisters in Madrid to the dying gasps of three cosmonauts who secretly suffocated aboard the Soyuz space station in 1974, it was all stored on the magnetic tapes in NSA’s archives.

Becker held up his slim file. “This is from the archive director, Oliver Lee. According to Lee, personnel records from a research laboratory near Odessa show that Olga Borodin has been drawing a decent pension from the state since an accident claimed her husband on June 20, 1963. Given the parameters of the search, her name caught Lee’s attention, and after a bit more research he found that the laboratory was part of an agency called Department Seven. It seems the CIA knows more about Department Seven than we do but the connection is obvious. Olga Borodin is the widow of a geologist named Pytor Borodin.”

“You mean the Russian specialist on bikinium?” Henna interrupted.

“So, Dr. Mercer was right. The Russians are involved, just not their government.” The President was truly shocked. “Kerikov must be the mastermind and Ohnishi merely a pawn. The man’s got balls, I’ll say that much, but knowing this doesn’t help us any. We still have a coup taking place in Hawaii and a valuable resource about to fall to this Ivan Kerikov.” The President swiveled to face Henna. “What do you propose?”

“Give Mercer until dawn,” Henna said. “If he has a plan, at least give him that much time. You saw from that last transmission that it’s almost dark in Hawaii. Tonight should be relatively calm. The guardsmen don’t have the right equipment for night fighting. If we don’t hear anything by sunrise, continue with your plan, blow up the volcano and surrender the islands to Ohnishi.”

The President leaned back in his chair for a moment, staring at the soundproofed ceiling tiles, fingers laced behind his head. He made his decision quickly. “All right, I’ll give Mercer until seven A.M. local time, then I want that volcano obliterated.”

Henna stood to leave the room. Mercer had arrived on the Inchon ten hours earlier and Henna had promised to get in touch with any final news.

“Dick?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Why do you trust Mercer so much?”

Henna paused by the elevator door, his arms full of papers and files. “I’m basically a cop, sir, and cops learn to trust their instincts.”

Despite the sophistication of the equipment in the White House Communications Room, Henna spent twenty frustrating minutes waiting for a connection to the Inchon and another ten for Mercer to be tracked down aboard the 778-foot assault ship and brought to the radio.

“About time you called.”

“You’ve got until seven tomorrow morning your time,” Henna said without preamble. “So you better have one hell of a plan in that Machiavellian mind of yours.”

“What happens at seven?” Mercer asked airily.

“A cruise missile blows up Borodin’s volcano and the President surrenders the Hawaiian Islands without a fight.”

“Talk about your serious deadlines.” Mercer paused, absorbing this latest piece of information. “Well, I’d best be off, then. Any parting advice?”

“Yeah. Right now Pearl Harbor is a war zone and we can only assume the rest of the islands are equally inflamed.”

“I’m surprised it’s stayed calm as long as it has. What else?”

“We’ve found a definite link between the coup and a Russian KGB director named Ivan Kerikov. He’s the mastermind. He was last seen in Thailand but may be on Hawaii by now. Oh, yeah. I’ve had a team monitoring ham radio operators from Hawaii for the past couple of days. A guy there named Ken Peters, who works for one of the television stations, got hold of one of my people in California. He suspects that one of their reporters, Jill Tzu, may have been kidnapped by Ohnishi. She was doing a real in-depth expose on him when she vanished.”

“Dudley Doright to the rescue. What else?”

“Just that Ohnishi’s mansion is heavily guarded by some real fanatics, so be careful.”

“Don’t worry, Dick. I have no interest in Ohnishi’s house. He’s just a willing accomplice, not the linchpin.”

The signal from the Inchon faded. Henna knew that Mercer had cut him off.

He settled the phone back into its cradle. If Mercer wasn’t going to Ohnishi’s mansion, then where was he going? And if Ohnishi wasn’t the principal in this affair, who was?

Evad Lurbud’s senses were so highly tuned that the explosion which echoed across the lawns from the main house rocked him back against his heels as if he had been physically struck. Sergeant Demanov placed a steadying hand on his shoulder.

“What in the hell was that?” the burly sergeant asked in a whisper.

“Don’t know,” Lurbud replied curtly, straining his eyes through the night-vision binoculars at the front of Ohnishi’s glass mansion. “I can’t see anything out of the ordinary.”

Demanov, Lurbud, and two commandos were crouched behind a small stand of flowering rhododendrons placed like an island on the wide front lawn of the estate. The rest of the squad was similarly hidden behind other natural cover.

They had reached Ohnishi’s as the shadows of twilight began smearing the beautiful grounds. Lurbud’s team had made use of the jungle which surrounded the estate to approach to within two hundred yards of the house, then had dashed across the lawn in a leapfrog technique, moving from small grove to small grove.

Lurbud and Demanov were no more than fifty yards from the marble porte cochere when the explosion occurred. The sound was accompanied by a flash of brilliant light at the side of the darkened house.

“I don’t see anyone within the building,” Lurbud said.

The night-vision glasses allowed Lurbud to see into the glass-walled house, but the main foyer entrance, curving staircase, and the rooms immediately to its left and right were all empty. He was about to signal the men behind him to move forward when a tiny movement within the mansion made him pause.

Someone was moving across the foyer toward the staircase. The figure was walking cautiously, twisting his body and neck as he peered around. When the man reached the base of the stairs, Lurbud clearly saw the assault rifle tucked under his arm.

“We’ve got company,” he said tensely.

Lurbud watched closely as another figure swept into the entrance foyer and scurried up the stairs. “Two so far,” he remarked. “But something’s not right. They look as if they aren’t familiar with the house. It seems strange for Ohnishi’s security to act like that.”