Havoc - v4 (39 page)

A second passed, then five. Then ten and Mercer began to worry. She had been injured in the blast, maybe hit by a piece of shrapnel. She could be bleeding to death just a few feet away.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Mercer sagged with relief. “Hold on. I’m going to get you out.”

He slithered back to the forklift and slowly drove the elongated tine under the rock. He could sense by the way the motor’s vibrations changed how much of the load the machine was taking, judging the weight and balance of the rubble with his instinct and experience.

Something in the pile shifted suddenly. Mercer eased off the accelerator and safed the chain drive that lifted and lowered the fork. He peered into the hole, the beam of the flashlight casting bizarre patterns on the fractured stone. There was a foot-high gap under the big slab, but he could tell it lay at an angle; the side closest to Cali was still on the ground. By hand he moved a few other rocks, his earlier plan all but abandoned. This was no longer a chess match, but a frantic game of checkers.

He got back onto the seat and tried to ram the fork deeper under the stone. It wouldn’t budge. The slick wheels began to spin uselessly against the stone floor. He wasn’t going to get Cali out anytime soon.

Enraged, he was about to give up when the plucky little forklift lurched forward another foot. He raised the tine as high as it would go and leapt off the machine, diving headfirst into the hole. A brilliant light nearly blinded him. Behind it he could see the bright yellow of Cali’s contamination suit. She slipped her lithe body through the tight aperture, and when their fingers locked Mercer wanted to give a shout of triumph. Slithering backward he guided her out of the hole.

As soon as they were clear Cali ripped off her helmet. Mercer opened his mouth to warn her that the mine could be contaminated, but he never got the words out because her incredible lips were pressed to his in a kiss that squeezed his heart.

“I’m so sorry,” he breathed into her. “I had to do it.”

“Shut up,” she panted and kissed him more fiercely.

They held each other in the dim light of the forklift for all eternity, it seemed, or a blink of an eye. When they parted there was laughter in Cali’s eyes. “Professor Ahmad is right, you know. You
are
predictable. I knew you wouldn’t leave me.”

“If I hadn’t jumped out we would have both been trapped.”

“That’s what I figured when I realized you were gone.”

“It must have been terrifying.”

“Not really. I said I knew you’d come get me. While I waited I checked the rest of the chamber.”

Mercer couldn’t believe it. When they realized they were trapped most people would have thrown themselves at the pile of rock or sat in the dark and cried themselves insane. But not Cali. She went exploring.

“I found the rooms where they stored the plutonium. Just as we calculated they had seventy barrels left. The rooms were pretty big; I think to keep the barrels segregated so the plutonium wasn’t allowed to reach critical mass. The walls had absorbed some radiation, but nothing too bad. I’ll avoid dental X rays for a year or two and I’ll be fine.”

“You are amazing,” Mercer said, pride catching in his throat.

She smirked at him and he could imagine her freckles glowing pink on her cheeks. “Sometimes I am.” She kissed him again, a brief yet promissory caress of her lips. “No sense taking any more chances, let’s make like a tree and blow.”

“I thought that was make like the wind and leave.”

She laughed. “We could make like a Japanese board game and go.”

“Make like a left-wing Web site and move on.”

This time she groaned. “That’s enough.”

“Right.”

The forklift died before reaching the mine’s entrance, forcing them to walk the last half mile, Cali helping Mercer because his knee still bothered him. Ludmilla was the only person waiting for them when they emerged from the stygian realm. She gave a little snort when she saw them but her bovine expression didn’t change.

“Great to see you too, Milly old girl,” Mercer said to get a reaction. He didn’t.

She accompanied them down to the remains of the helicopter. Sasha was sitting up against a tree stump; the pilot and the other scientist were dozing near the chopper.

“It looks like it went well,” Sasha said to greet them.

“Hit a little snag,” Cali said airily, “no big deal.”

“Where are Professor Ahmad and Devrin Egemen?”

“When the helicopter reported they were lifting off from Samara, they got in their vehicle and left.” Sasha handed Mercer a piece of paper. “He asked me to give you this.”

Mercer unfolded the note.

Dear Doctor,
I want to apologize for how I manipulated you and Miss Stowe into helping us. My Janissaries have defended the alembic for generations and if not for a conversation among lovers decades ago we would not have faced the crisis we have. It is almost contained now thanks in part to you. The rest is our responsibility. I pray you will heed my advice and return to your lives, satisfied with the knowledge you have contributed to a noble cause.

It was unsigned.

“What do you think?” Cali asked after she read it.

He crushed the piece of paper. “Without the stele there isn’t much we can do this side of digging up half of Egypt. The Russians will handle the plutonium and Popov too if I’m right about him.” He felt the heat of their kiss once again and looked into her eyes. “I guess we go back and resume our lives like he says.”

“Exactly like it was before?” she said teasingly.

He took her hand. “I foresee a change or two.”

By the time their connecting flight from Frankfurt touched down at Dulles Airport, thirty-six hectic hours had passed since Cali and Mercer were picked up at the mine by the Russian military. With no luggage except the bag of duty-free Jack Daniel’s Mercer had bought for his depleted bar, they were through Customs quickly. Ira had sent a government car to take them home. They’d agreed earlier they would drop Cali at her condo first. It had been a grueling couple of days and the promise of a budding relationship couldn’t overcome two exhausted, worn-out bodies.

Mercer saw her to her door, and together they checked out her cozy two-bedroom to ensure no one had been there in her absence. He felt like a teenager on a first date as they kissed under the porch light. It was their first since the mine. Without the bulky contamination suit, her long-limbed body was all bone and hard angles but fit perfectly in his arms. Their eyes were at almost the same level and neither closed them.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Cali asked.

“And the day after that,” Mercer promised.

“I have to report in to NEST in the morning, then I’m taking a couple of days off.”

“And I don’t have any contracts lined up for two weeks.”

“I’ll see you at noon.”

The twenty-minute drive to Mercer’s brownstone passed in a contented blur.

The lights were on when he opened the door and he heard a voice. He tensed momentarily before recognizing Harry White’s jackhammer laugh. He climbed the spiral stairs up to the bar, his knee feeling better but still noticeable. As he passed through the alcove library and the French doors he heard another voice and laughed aloud, calling, “Booker Sykes, don’t you get in the habit of drinking my booze too.”

Book and Harry were sitting at the bar with a couple of drinks and a nearly depleted bowl of pretzels. A baseball game playing on the big television held Drag’s rapt attention, like he was almost following the action.

Mercer slapped Booker on the shoulder. “I already know your trip was a bust. Sorry about that. Are you and your men okay? When’d you get back?”

“Couple hours ago,” Sykes said. “And there isn’t anything wrong with us that some ice and a chiropractor can’t fix. What the hell do you mean bust?”

“I talked to the guy who blew up the stele.”

“Shit, man, you are a pessimist.” He waved his beer bottle. “Check it out.”

Mercer turned to see what he was talking about. On the floor behind one of the couches were three large backpacks. Mercer flipped open the biggest one. Inside was a bunch of gray stones. So exhausted by the past days, he couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. He lifted one of the rocks from the bag. It was a lump of unremarkable granite about the size of a blackboard eraser. One side of it had been poorly smoothed. He looked closer at the tool marks. His eyes widened. He’d never be able to decipher it without expert help but he clearly recognized an Egyptian cartouche and hieroglyphic writing.

“It wasn’t blown up,” Booker explained. “Looks like they broke it apart with hammers or rifle butts. Rivers, Cieplicki, and I humped out every piece bigger than a marble.”

Mercer was grinning like an idiot. “Booker, you have my permission to drink as much of my booze as you want.” He tried to lift the bag. “Jesus, this thing must weigh a hundred pounds.”

“The lightest was a hundred and seventy-five according to the airline, which charged an extra four hundred bucks for the weight. That’s the reason I look like a question mark when I stand up.”

Mercer reached into the bag for another smaller piece, his smile fading when he realized he was actually holding two chunks of a seven-foot-long, six-hundred-pound, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. It would take months to put the stele back together, if it was possible at all.

“Hey, Mercer, check out behind the bar,” Harry said from his stool.

“Huh?” Mercer grunted distractedly.

He carefully set the pieces of stone back in the knapsack and stepped behind the mahogany-topped bar. Nothing seemed out of place. “What is it?”

“Nothing. Just wanted you to make me another drink.”

“Bastard.” Mercer scowled as he freshened Harry’s Jack and ginger and made a gimlet for himself. “How the hell are we going to put the stele back together?”

“That thing is in more pieces than Humpty Dumpty,” Harry commented. “You guys ever wonder what made them think the king’s horses could fix him?”

“No,” Booker and Mercer said in unison.

“Seriously,” Harry went on, “there must be five or six hundred pieces, most of them are freakin’ tiny, and the ones I examined at all look pretty much the same.”

Mercer said, “I’ll call Ira in the morning; he might have an idea who can reassemble it. There must be some forensic guys out there who have experience reconstructing bones. Maybe they can do something.” He didn’t sound optimistic.

“Should we tell him?” Booker asked Harry.

“He called me a bastard. I say let him twist awhile longer.”

“Tell me what?”

Booker kept looking to Harry, until the octogenarian threw up his arms. “I give up. Go ahead and tell him, only you’re no fun.”

“I spoke with Admiral Lasko as soon as we landed. We’ve got a meeting at the Goddard Space Flight Center over in Greenbelt, Maryland, tomorrow morning at nine.”

“What’s there?”

“From what Ira tells me, magic.”

Greenbelt, Maryland, was on the opposite side of the nation’s capital from Arlington, and it took them two hours battling a nearly gridlocked Beltway to reach the exit. Fortunately, the Goddard Center was two miles from the I-95 and Mercer eased his Jaguar convertible to the main gate with five minutes to spare. Next to the gate was the public visitors’ center where a couple examples of NASA’s earliest rockets were on display in an outdoor garden.

“Nice lawn ornaments,” Booker remarked.

“Beats pink flamingos.”

After checking their identification and making sure they were on the day’s visitors list, a guard handed over two passes and directed them to a new building at the end of Explorers Road on the far side of the sprawling government research campus. Mercer parked in a large lot next to a storm runoff pond. A trio of ducks was lazing in the early morning sunshine.

The building was an unremarkable brick affair with only a few windows high on its façade. Mercer and Booker were met in the reception area by a twentysomething man in a white lab coat. Below it he wore black pants and a black T-shirt. Mercer assumed it was his black Miata among all the minivans and SUVs in the parking lot. He had slicked back dark hair and stylish glasses, not the image of a government scientist Mercer had pictured.

“Dr. Jacobi?”

“Alan Jacobi. You must be Dr. Mercer.”

“Call me Mercer.” They shook hands. “This is Booker Sykes.”

“Hi. Call me Alan.” He looked behind them. “Do you have the samples?”

“They’re in the car. Do you have a trolley or anything?”

“Oh sure.”

Ten minutes later they had the three bags in Jacobi’s lab. The room was at least fifty feet square, packed with workstations, computers, and sleek, humming boxes whose function Mercer could only guess.

“I have to say when I got the call from the White House yesterday I was pretty blown away. I mean we don’t do anything high-priority here.”

“What do you do?”

“As you know the Goddard Center is one of the leading research laboratories in the country for earth and space sciences. We run expeditions all over the world, and beyond for that matter. My lab here deals with three-dimensional holography and materials analyses. We’re adapting it for medical research and possibly archaeology.”

“And you think you can help.”

“Oh no doubt. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Mercer opened one of the backpacks and started removing fragments of the stele and setting them on a table. Jacobi picked up one of the bigger pieces, a twenty-pound misshapen chunk of stone that resembled a head of broccoli.

“This should work nicely for a demonstration.” He took the stone to a piece of equipment that looked like a microwave oven and set it inside. He closed the door and turned to a nearby computer. He spoke as he tapped at the keys. “What this machine does is scan a three-dimensional object into the computer, creating an exact digital reproduction down to one micrometer or one millionth of a meter.”

“Wow,” Mercer said.

“That’s nothing. They use machines like this in Hollywood all the time to turn clay models of monsters and spaceships and stuff into digital effects. My machine is just a lot more precise.”