Charon's Landing (58 page)

Feeling a bit more confident, he dialed the flaps down one notch, increasing the wings’ lift. The plane felt lighter in his hands, the ride smoothing and his speed increasing. He glanced at the indicator and was startled to see they were doing more than seventy knots. The floats skimmed the surface like arrows, and the Cessna felt like it wanted to fly. The plane was steady, but he felt the excessive speed was too much for him to handle, and he reached forward to reduce the throttle.

Like Leviathan rising from the sea, one of the
Petromax Omega
’s escape pods appeared out of the fog directly in front of the hurtling aircraft. With just an instant to react, Mercer unthinkingly pulled back on the control yoke, and the Cessna came unglued from the water, flashing only a scant foot above the rounded top of the lifeboat. His first thought was to get the plane back on the water again, but she continued to climb steadily, the safety of the water receding with every passing second. Panic gripped him, and his hands felt like lead weights on the yoke.
Oh, shit.

He purposely lightened his deathlike grip and let the plane settle into its natural environment as it rose through the silvery mist. Fighting his mounting fear, Mercer tried to remember the width of Cook Inlet and the height of the mountains on the other side. But as the plane climbed above three thousand feet, breaking out into clear sunshine, he saw that the mountains of the Kenai National Refuge were too distant to be a threat to the soaring aircraft. He took several calming breaths, wiping a new coat of sweat from his brow, but his heart continued to hammer at his chest. He’d just gotten himself and Aggie into a mess he had no idea how to fix.

Not giving in to his panic, he started to experiment with the plane. If he was to land them safely, he had to teach himself how to fly before the fuel gauges dropped to empty. Fortunately, the air was calm, and it took him only a few minutes to get used to the quick control response of the Cessna. After ten minutes, he set a course to Valdez and had the plane flying straight and level, throttled to 70 percent power and cruising as if he’d been flying all of his life.

Like hell.

In a vain attempt to distract himself from their predicament, he thought about Kerikov and how the Russian would destroy the pipeline. As Andy Lindstrom had said earlier, freezing the oil in the line wouldn’t do it; the steel making up the pipe segments was too thick. But if Kerikov had gained control of the computers that ran the pumps, which Mercer suspected he had through Ted Mossey, he need only wait until the line was mostly solidified and then crank the turbine pumps to maximum. The free oil in the unfrozen sections would create tremendous back pressure when it met the frozen oil plugs, and even with a rated pressure strength of eleven hundred eighty psi, the line could not hold against the combined power of its ten active pump stations. It would split in a hundred different places depending where Kerikov had placed the nitrogen-freezing packs.

Mercer looked at his watch. If he didn’t get to Valdez and warn Andy Lindstrom about Mossey, Kerikov would succeed. Ignoring the steadily plunging fuel gauge and the near redlines of the engine indicators, Mercer opened the throttles a notch farther, eking out a few more miles per hour. Another twenty minutes dragged by before the Cessna cleared the eastern coast of the Kenai Peninsula and broke out over the waters of Prince William Sound.

Gently, he banked the plane northward, hugging the coastline. The town of Seward was only four minutes south of their present location, but in his concentration, Mercer had failed to see it nestled between the mountains. He could have landed there and saved himself the ordeal yet to come.

THE Planetary Environment Action League research vessel
Hope
had the carnival air of a cruise ship that had just reached some tropical paradise. The crew, all young and idealistic, were toasting their success from bottles of cheap champagne. They were only an hour or two from completing the greatest attack on the industrial polluters in the history of the environmental movement. All of their previous actions — the arson attacks on gas stations, the rallies and fights, the shouted chants, and spray painting of slogans — had led to this moment. And this one had been pulled off so easily that many of them realized that large acts of eco-terrorism were much simpler than the small protests they had been part of before. A few were already talking about their next reprisal against the industrial world.

Jan Voerhoven stood surrounded by his followers in the
Hope
’s wardroom, a glass of champagne in his hand, a smile lighting his handsome face. He basked in the mood around him like Caligula before his hand-picked Senate, drawing strength from their adoration. The only shadow in his deep blue eyes was the fact that Aggie wasn’t there to share it with him. He knew the significance of her leaving the ring he’d bought for her. She had meant a lot to him; however, the buoyant celebration helped dispel the loss he was already feeling less strongly. Several unattached women eyed him predatorily, for the rumor of Aggie’s departure had spread quickly.

One woman — a girl really, no more than nineteen — caught his eye, and when he smiled, she matched his gaze with a frank desiring expression. No, he thought as another champagne was placed in his hand, he would probably have a new bedmate this very night.

“How much longer, Jan?” someone shouted from the back of the crowded room.

“Not much more,” he called back, grinning. He had the detonator in his shirt pocket, the slim cellular phone tucked against his chest.

One deck below the raucous party, Abu Alam was making his report to Kerikov. He’d spent the past three hours in the engine room of the
Hope
, securing charges of plastique to fuel lines, oil bunkers, and other strategic locations. When they were detonated, there would be nothing left of the research ship but the twisted backbone of her keel. His clothing was filthy, his dark complexion sooty and streaked with oil and grime, and his hands were so black with dirt that they looked gloved. They were alone in Jan Voerhoven’s spacious cabin, Alam’s footprints staining the carpet’s rich pile.

He gave his report without emotion, dictating the locations of the charges and the fact that he had had to kill three engineers who had come too close to his work. His eyes were flat and hard. Alam contained his excitement with difficulty, trying to remain impassive under Kerikov’s critical stare.

Is he aware? Alam wondered.

It would be natural for Kerikov to suspect treachery from Alam — their entire world was created from deception — but he couldn’t tell if the Russian knew it was coming so quickly. Hours now, not days.

Alam had not thought through his timing yet, for the delicacies of it were somewhat beyond him. He was a soldier, not an officer, and certainly not a strategist. Hasaan Rufti had made it clear that the pipeline must be destroyed and that there could be no possible link between the act and the Minister himself. Eliminating PEAL was a desire of both Rufti and Kerikov; neither of them wanted a group of young idealists bragging of their achievements afterward. But killing the Russian was going to prove far more difficult. Alam had to make certain Kerikov detonated the nitrogen packs and activated the hidden computer program that would rouse the multiple pump stations before killing him with a quick knife thrust or blast from his SPAS-12 shotgun. Ideally, Kerikov would die when Alam set off the explosives secreted throughout the ship, but he didn’t know how to properly time such an occurrence.

Trust in Allah, Alam reminded himself, and his Prophet will guide you.

“Very well,” Kerikov cut into Alam’s transparent musings, for the Arab’s duplicity was obvious. “It’s nearly time. The crew should be drunk by now, and once we detonate the nitrogen packs, they won’t notice when we leave the ship. That will give us the window to destroy the
Hope
. Bring Voerhoven to the bridge. I want to see his face when he realizes what he’s done to his precious environment.”

THE Cessna was a bright speck high over the gray water of Prince William Sound, the plane so high its droning engine couldn’t be heard by a ferry heading eastward from Seward to Valdez. At least that is where Mercer hoped the vessel was heading as he used it as a reference to make his turn slightly north and head up into Valdez Bay.

Everything was going perfectly — so far. He almost felt comfortable in the pilot’s seat, his hands and feet light but firm on the controls. The terrifying prospect of landing was still a few minutes away. What bothered him most now was the relentless movement of his watch’s second hand as it ground down toward the end. There was nothing he could do to stop it or even slow it. The plane was already at maximum power. The margin to reach the
Hope
was so thin it was practically nonexistent.

The great expanse of the Alaska mainland lay before the aircraft, the early morning light giving the vaguest hints of the beauty of the state, its towering mountains and icy streams and huge forests. If he failed, it would become a cesspool of unmanageable devastation. He knew the resilience of nature, what her forces could do to clean the scars left by man’s existence, and while the process was slow by human standards, nature always seemed to recover. But something like what Kerikov was attempting would take generations to heal. Alaska would be ruined well into the twenty-second century.

Amazingly, when he pushed a little harder on the maxed-out throttle, the engine beat picked up just that tiny bit more. He looked back to see Aggie still asleep in the cargo hold.

If only he could be certain they were headed in the right direction. While there were some charts in the plane, Mercer wasn’t familiar enough with the region or with navigation techniques to use them. They lay folded in a vinyl pouch on the floor below the copilot’s seat.

“God is my copilot and hope is my navigator,” he breathed between tight lips.

Up ahead, he spotted a long, narrow island sitting a couple miles off the north coast of the Sound. He watched it for a moment and then reached over to dig out the maps. Maybe he could use them after all; the island was so symmetrical that recognizing it on the charts would be relatively easy. When he straightened back, he saw the long trail of white water backing against the island and realized it was no landmass at all but a supertanker heading south from Valdez. Even from three thousand feet the vessel’s size was staggering. Looking around at the insectlike Cessna, it was hard to imagine that both craft came from the mind of the same species, for surely the tanker was proportioned for the gods.

While he admired the ship, he also realized that it had just saved him from making a disastrous error. Mercer was on a too easterly course; they would have flown beyond the entrance to Valdez without ever realizing it. Quickly adjusting their route to follow the wake of the ponderous tanker, Mercer took a second to check his watch again. Not enough time, but still he had to try.

One of the first things an instructor teaches a student pilot is that the use of the elevators must correspond with the throttle in order to avoid stalling or power diving. Usually after the verbal lesson, the instructor will demonstrate this fundamental by heeling the plane over at full throttle and scaring the student half to death in a dive-bomber stoop that quite often spills the student’s lunch.

Mercer had never been a student pilot, and the throttle was at the gate when he pushed the yoke away from his chest. The Cessna responded like a horse given free rein, dropping out of control, Prince William Sound filling the view from the windshield, and every second brought the sight into sharper focus. The engine screamed, and the plane began to buffet as its wings reached, then passed, their structural tolerance point. They were traveling straight down at one hundred forty-five miles per hour.

His stomach, already turbulent from the ride in the escape pod, went into full revolt, liquid acids rearing into his mouth, gagging him with their foul taste. Knowing he’d just committed a critical error, Mercer pulled back on the yoke, but the pressure of the wind against the control surfaces was too strong for him to fight. His greatest effort only managed to stretch the control cables running from the stick to the elevators, suddenly making the yoke feel mushy in his hands. The plane was going down, and no matter how hard he strained, he couldn’t stop it. The altimeter spun backward in a solid blur, unwinding their altitude faster than the barometrically controlled needle could accurately follow.

He never considered the throttle until an elegant hand reached for it and gently backed it off, the engine calming immediately. Without saying a word, Aggie Johnston wedged herself into the copilot’s seat, fighting against the force of the plane’s severe pitch. She added her strength to Mercer’s, and with the aid of a slowing engine, they managed to pull the plane’s nose upward, slowly at first and then as the wings felt lift, quicker and more smoothly, the airframe stopping its mad shudder as the craft came level only eighty feet above the choppy waters.

“The last thing I remember, we were about to drown, and now we’re about to crash,” she said so calmly that Mercer could not believe her quietude. “What is it, can’t decide how you want to die?”

“Of course I can.” He matched her nonchalance, relieved at her obvious flying skills. “I see myself killed by a ricochet while passing a kidney stone. How about you?”

“Let’s put it this way, I don’t want to be killed by another of your idiotic ideas.” Aggie had the plane in trim now, gaining altitude steadily as she followed the course Mercer had set. “It’s clear you don’t know how to fly a plane, so do you mind telling me what’s going on?”

“We escaped the
Petromax Omega
about ten seconds before it capsized.” She looked at him sharply. “I know what you’re thinking — any fuel that she spilled was burned up in a fire that would have inspired Dante. We made it to shore a couple hours later, where I found this plane and decided that stealing it was a much better option than being recaptured by Kerikov’s goons. I never intended to take off, but, well, you know how these things sort of happen. While I thought out the beginning of our escape, I don’t mind the fact that you’re stepping in to finish it. You do know how to land this thing, don’t you?”