Jack Du Brul - Vulcan's forge

Jill watched the man fall. Then her eyes scanned upward along the legs that stood behind the body of her would-be rapist. When she reached the face of the man who saved her life, she was greeted by a lazy smile and a pair of the most charming gray eyes she had ever seen.

“If he’s my only competition for your affection, I bet you’re free for dinner tomorrow night.” Mercer grinned, then bent down and checked the livid bruise spreading across Jill’s cheek. It was ugly and would last for a couple of weeks, but wasn’t serious. Her eyes were brightening, so he wasn’t too concerned about a concussion. They were stunning, deep and black with such a trusting expression that Mercer looked into them much longer than absolutely necessary. The emotions she’d bottled up for five days poured out as Jill ducked her head against his shoulder and cried. He murmured to her reassuringly, stroking her thick black hair.

“You’re safe now, Jill.”

“How do you know my name?” she asked meekly, her cheeks slick with tears.

“You’re an unwitting victim in something much larger that I’m here to stop.”

“You know about Takahiro Ohnishi and his coup?” she said urgently. Her resiliency marveled him.

“I know all about it.” Mercer untangled her long arms from around his neck. “Jill, I have to leave you here for a while, but I’m sure that nobody will bother you again.” He pointed to the dead soldier. “He was probably going to kill you, so now everybody thinks you’re dead. When Kenji’s eliminated, I’ll come back for you and we’ll all get out of here together. I have a helicopter waiting about two miles away.”

“I understand,” she said calmly. “What’s your name?”

“Most damsels call me Lance A. Lot but you can call me Mercer.” He smiled and was rewarded with one of Jill’s. Christ, even in her condition, she was beautiful.

The corpse of the soldier was dragged out of the maintenance shed by one of the SEALs. Mercer closed the door but didn’t relock it, then regarded the body.

“He’s Korean,” Mercer exclaimed, studying the mottled face. “I wonder who the hell he was.”

The SEALs simply stared flatly, not commenting.

On their approach to the shed, Mercer and his team had taken out eight Asian guards, some wearing fatigues like the figure at his feet and some wearing street clothing. In the jungle they had not taken the time to closely examine their victims, assuming that they were Kenji’s personal guards. The discovery that the dead men were Korean put a new twist on the situation.

“I don’t know who these guys belong to, but we’ll assume they’re not allies. That means we still have Kenji’s guards plus these Koreans.” Mercer spoke more for his benefit than the SEALs. “I doubt they know we’re coming, so we have the element of surprise, but how effective is that against an unknown force?”

Mercer led them closer to Kenji’s compound using whatever natural cover they could find until they were tucked safely behind the guest house. Near them, the azure pool shimmered with muted underwater lights. Kenji’s house waited quietly twenty yards beyond the pool. Mercer surveyed the back of the two-story sprawling home through the night-vision goggles lent to him by one of the SEALs. Only a few rooms were illuminated, but the glasses easily probed the darkened rooms as well. Through the greenish hue, he saw at least fifteen armed men in the house, slowly pacing through the rooms, scanning the extensive grounds.

After about five minutes of studying the mansion, he gave the commandos their orders. They obeyed without question and left, blending into the night.

Waiting while the SEALs got into position was agonizing. Thoughts of fear and failure tried to weaken Mercer’s resolve, but he crushed them down mercilessly. He had come too far to be afraid now, he told himself. Yet even as he mentally prepared himself for the assault, his mind drifted to a vision of Jill Tzu. He chuckled at himself. Of all the times to be thinking about sex. When the first crackling report of automatic fire rippled the silent sky, he shook his head quickly and moved.

As ordered, the SEAL team had crept around to the front of the house and opened fire, raking the edifice with a scathing barrage. Mercer ran across the open back lawn, praying that human nature would cause the men inside to turn toward the sounds, leaving him undetected. As his booted feet pounded across the grass, he crouched in anticipation of a killing shot from the second-story guards.

He covered the twenty yards to the house in record time.

Mercer leapt onto an immature palm and shimmied up like a monkey, feet and hands working in perfect harmony. Near its top, his weight bowed the tree inward and he dropped easily onto an unguarded second-floor balcony. The sound of gunfire intensified at the front of the house as the SEALs and the guards traded ammunition at a staggering pace.

Mercer kicked in one of the French doors and rolled across the room’s carpet in case there was an unseen guard stationed inside. He came up onto his knees, the MP-5 tucked hard against his shoulder, and scanned the room quickly. Empty.

He stripped off his goggles and took a few calming breaths. The sounds of the fight below were barely muted by the thick walls of the plantation house. He had just turned to reach for the door when he noticed a shadow bisect the sliver of light at the floor. Mercer rested his hand lightly on the polished brass knob and felt it twist beneath his fingers. As the latch fully retracted, he yanked on the handle and brought up his machine pistol. The guard was caught unaware; Mercer pulled him into the room and jammed the barrel of the MP-5 into his belly. Just as Mercer felt himself being pushed backward by the man’s weight, he pulled the trigger. The 9mm rounds tunneled through the guard, boring a cone-shaped wedge of flesh from his body that smeared against the wall behind him.

Mercer yanked his bloodied weapon from the falling corpse and turned down the wide hall. A fatigue-dressed Korean ducked out of one of the other rooms and Mercer managed to snap off a burst that caught the man high in the back. A quick check showed that one of the rounds had been fatal, while the rest had just mangled the ornate millwork of the door frame.

He did a sweep of the rest of the upstairs. The remainder of the elegant guest rooms in both wings of the mansion were deserted. One floor below, machine guns and grenades pummeled the masonry and shook the walls of the old plantation house. Mercer paused at the head of the stairs, the acrid tang of cordite smoke searing his nostrils.

A stab of fear lanced through his body. The battle below was like nothing he’d ever heard before, the ugly sounds of death echoing up the stairs. His experiences in Iraq and Washington were nothing like this. Those times, he’d been ambushed and hadn’t had time to think. In the OF amp;C offices in New York, he had felt more in control. But this — this hell — was something different. He was about to voluntarily walk into carnage, and that terrified him. Grimly, he descended the ornate mahogany stairs, one finger squeezed firmly around the trigger of his MP-5. Just an ounce more pressure would unleash a hail of bullets.

In the mezzanine, two bodies lay sprawled in the rubble of the blown-out windows, one dressed in fatigues, the other, one of Kenji’s men, in a dark suit. Cloying smoke layered the air, burning Mercer’s eyes as he crouched just above the bottom of the staircase; bullets and shrapnel whizzed by like angered wasps. Obviously the SEALs’ assault had lost none of its fervor. In an adjoining room, someone screamed in pain. Mercer knew, thanks to the plans provided by Dick Henna, that the wailing originated in a formal reception area.