Charon's Landing (2 page)

Mercer had no desire to turn the body and see what damage the fire had done to its face.

The odd state of the body only compounded a deepening mystery surrounding the vessel. Already Mercer’s mind was worrying at a problem with the boat’s condition. There had been an accident on board and a raging fire, one that had caught the victim unaware, but there was no explanation as to why the fire went out before sinking the craft. Had it been extinguished by another ship, then surely the body would not have been left on the derelict. It didn’t make sense.

“Get back aboard your boat,” Mercer said to Jerry. “I need a flashlight and an ax.”

Jerry thankfully reboarded the
Wave Dancer
and handed the items over to Mercer. He sat anxiously against the gunwale as Mercer continued his investigation.

“Don’t you think we should wait for the Coast Guard?”

Howard had a good point, Mercer thought, but something about this fire bothered him and he wasn’t going to wait for the authorities to find out what.

“I won’t be a minute.”

Forward, a short set of stairs led up to the wheelhouse. Next to them a door led to the belowdecks area. The pilothouse, though damaged by the fire, wasn’t nearly as ravaged as the deck below, so Mercer went to the door and tried to wrench it open. The wood had been so warped by the heat that it jammed almost immediately. Mercer swung the ax a few times, and the wood splintered. Half the door fell to the deck with a splash.

He flicked on the heavy flashlight and cast its beam around the cramped room below the pilothouse. A small galley was to his left next to a couple of bench seats and a dining table. Everything was burned horribly. To the right were three bunks, two of them empty save for smooth layers of ash that had been the mattresses and blankets. The third bunk contained another skeleton, this one burned so badly that no flesh remained on the bones. Empty eye sockets watched Mercer almost accusingly, sending a superstitious chill up his spine. No matter how strong the urge to escape the charnel cabin, he forced himself to remain critical and press on.

He suspected that the third crewman of the
Jenny IV
must have jumped overboard to escape the inferno. Placing his hand against a steel bulkhead, he noted the metal was ice cold. Because the night before had been so bitterly cold, it would be impossible to guess the fire’s exact time until a forensic specialist went over the bodies.

The room’s ceiling was scorched by the flames, but it didn’t appear as if there had been enough time for the wood to burn through. Next to the door that Mercer had smashed through, another led down a short hallway to the cargo holds. Of the door itself nothing remained, and the casing and bulkhead near it had been blown outward by an explosion farther belowdecks. That explained why the fire hadn’t totally destroyed the boat. The explosion must have robbed the flames of oxygen, snuffing the inferno.

Mercer wondered what the fishing boat could have carried to cause such an explosion.

The vessel’s engines were in the stern, and logically the fuel tanks would be close to them, but there would be evidence of that sort of explosion abovedecks. Certainly that would have sunk the vessel. It was something else.

Murky green water reflected Mercer’s flashlight as he trained it into the holds. The smell of burned wood and plastic couldn’t mask the overpowering stench of years of fishing. A thick scum choked the surface of the water, pools of fuel flashing rainbow hues in the few clear areas. Mercer took a cautious step into the flooded hold, feeling for a step as he made his way down. The water leached his body heat through the thin protection of his pants.

He knew, as he stood thigh deep, that nothing could be accomplished here without diving equipment. He was just turning to leave when the beam of the flashlight reflected something in the water one step below where he stood.

He groaned as he reached under the surface to retrieve it, soaking his arm up to the shoulder. It was a piece of bright stainless steel about ten inches long and six wide. Whatever had exploded on board had torn the steel as if it were paper; its edges were distorted like a chunk of shrapnel. Mercer turned it in the beam of his flashlight and saw the name roger on one side, the last letter being the point where the steel was shredded.

He slipped the fragment into a cargo pocket of his jacket and made for the upper deck. He took a few deep breaths in the veiled daylight, realizing he’d been breathing shallowly since entering the vessel.

“Find anything?” Jerry called.

“No,” replied Mercer, noticing the damage to the net derricks for the first time.

The top of the A-frame fishing gantry was gone, as if it had been removed with a cutting torch. He looked closely at the two steel stumps, all that remained of the net hauling crane, and saw that the breaks were clean and sharp. There was no evidence of explosive damage. Whatever had destroyed the derrick had sheared it off. Curious, he turned and saw that the antennas for the
Jenny IV
’s radios also had been snapped off, about a foot above the wheelhouse roof.

He had no explanation.

“Did you contact the Coast Guard?”

“Yeah. They’re sending a cutter from Homer. It should be here in about an hour.”

“Fine.” Mercer jumped back to the
Wave Dancer
after taking another look at the body on the commercial ship. “There’s no sense remaining tied up. Her lower decks are flooded and she could sink at any time.”

Jerry fired up the engine while his son cast off the securing lines. Once they were fifty yards from the
Jenny IV
, Jerry idled his boat and kept her at a constant distance from the derelict. There was a mystery about the burned-out vessel and its skeletal crew that went beyond an engine explosion, and all four men knew it. They were silent for many long, unsettled minutes, watching the deathly quiet
Jenny IV
as she swayed with the rolling waves. The two bodies aboard her would never give them the answers they wanted.

“Well, I guess that takes care of fishing for the day.” Jerry’s voice was unnaturally loud.

Mercer turned to him and smiled back his own misgivings. “Hell, fishing’s just a reason to drink, and I’ve never really needed an excuse for that.”

T
he President’s long-legged stride carried him easily across the informal dining room in the first family’s private quarters. He smiled warmly as his sole guest got to her feet to shake his hand. She was much shorter than his six foot two inches and somewhat squat. Her clothes looked as if they’d come from the matron section of a discount department store, and her makeup seemed to have been applied with a hand trowel. Even the kind early morning light streaming through the windows overlooking the Rose Garden could not hide her creped neck or heavy jowls. In a world dominated by media sound bites and personal appearance, her looks were incongruous. Tucked away from journalistic scrutiny, she had worked her way up through the government ranks on sheer determination and the simple fact that she was always the best person for any job. Her intensity and intellect had made her one of the President’s closest friends and most trusted advisers.

“Good morning, Connie. It’s great to see you,” the President said as he sat across the table from his secretary of energy, Con-stance Van Buren.

She smoothed her black polyester skirt against her nyloned legs as she retook her seat. “You know me, I never pass up a free meal.”

“So what’s the latest one? Don’t spare me.”

Connie took a sip of coffee, her eyes sparkling with humor. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, because this one is cruel. Stu Hanson at the EPA said he heard it on one of the late-night talk shows.” She paused. “According to the media, your latest poll was so limp that even Viagra can’t help you now.”

The President burst into laughter, the tension lines around his eyes easing as he and his old friend began bantering back and forth. These meetings ostensibly were for presidential briefings on energy matters, but actually they served as a respite for the President from the pressures of his office. While the two did accomplish work during these bimonthly breakfasts, they looked forward to them just for the pleasure of being in each other’s company.

“I was just thinking, Connie. When Lloyd Easton from State comes over for breakfast, he brings two aides, four briefcases, and a portable fax machine in case something happens while he’s here.”

“Yeah, well, Lloyd had his sense of humor removed sometime between his acceptance into Mensa and receiving his Phi Beta Kappa key. What all you boys in the big offices have forgotten is that these are only jobs, important jobs, yes, but they are just jobs. I still spend weekends with my grandchildren and bake them cookies and berate my daughter for marrying a lazy husband and do all the other things normal people do.”

A shadow passed across the President’s eyes before he spoke. “I told you I’ve decided not to run again, didn’t I?”

“You said you were thinking about it.” She nodded. “I think it’s a good idea. We both know your marriage is rocky at best. You and Patricia need some time together. And I don’t know how your health is, but your hands never used to shake at eight o’clock in the morning.”

The President looked down at his long tapered hands and was shocked to see a minor tremble. “Jesus, how anyone could volunteer to put himself through a second term is beyond me.”

“Most of your predecessors never had to make the hard choices you’ve made to put this country back on track, so they never had to take the kind of political heat you’ve gotten.”

“Like the oil thing.”

“Like the oil thing,” Connie Van Buren agreed.

The President had committed political suicide only nine months into his term, according to supporters and opponents alike. During his first prime-time address to the nation, he had laid out his new Energy Direction Policy. The President wanted the United States to end its dependence on foreign sources of oil within ten years. Through special discretionary funds, the administration would finance massive programs to create new sources of alternative energy throughout the country. He envisioned a nation running cleanly, cities freed from smog and the ecological disasters that had plagued the 80s and 90s. Sprawling windmill farms were to be built in the plains states and solar collector arrays set up in the Southwest. He proposed erecting a tidal power station off the coast of Maine that would provide nearly all the energy for the city of Boston.

Because of its unusual electromagnetic properties, the recently discovered element bikinium would be used to multiply the output of current generating stations. Eventually it would become a source of power itself. The automotive industry, which had been sitting on battery technology for years because it wasn’t profitable, would be forced to fully develop electric cars. At the end of the President’s ten-year schedule, half of all vehicles sold would have to be electrically powered. He’d said that the technology was there; America just had to have the courage to use it.

The President had given the nation a tough challenge, and they seemed eager to accept. The people were galvanized with the same sense of expectant optimism that President Kennedy generated when he promised to put a man on the moon. Environmentalists saw the glorious end to fossil fuel’s rapacious destruction of the ecology. Economists agreed that the transition period would be difficult, but the ban on oil imports would help end the nation’s decades-long trade imbalance. Technocrats were eager to see the emerging technology that would wean America from her dependence on oil. And the State Department was thrilled to see the Middle East’s diplomatic trump card, the threat of another oil embargo, taken away from them.

Within a few short weeks of his plan, political reality reared its ugly head.

The world’s seven major oil companies, known collectively as the Seven Sisters, have a combined economic power larger than many industrialized nations. They knew their largest market was about to vanish, and they began to exert their massive influence. In what amounted to economic blackmail, the Seven Sisters began bumping up the price of gasoline in ten-cent increments until it had nearly doubled. Then, they quietly made it known within the beltway that prices would continue to rise if certain concessions weren’t made. The President was realistic enough to know that the oil giants could spiral the global economy into a slide that would make the Great Depression seem like a boom time.

By pulling in every political favor he had acquired during his terms in the House and Senate and making promises that would take the rest of his term to honor, the President pressured Congress to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration. The millions of acres of virgin tundra on Alaska’s north coast just east of Prudhoe Bay were the last major source of domestic oil and one of the most delicate ecosystems on the planet. The Arctic refuge was known to hold oil deposits many times larger than those found at Prudhoe, and it was a prize that the Seven Sisters had wanted for years. That was the price the Sisters demanded for their cooperation, and that was what the President got for them. The bill had been quietly tucked in with other legislation only minutes before passage, forestalling any debate on the floor. Environmental lobbyists and activists never knew what was happening until it was too late.

Environmental concerns had always blocked earlier attempts to open the Refuge to exploitation. However, the President had no choice but to sweep those aside, knowing that he had negotiated for the lesser of two evils. He knew that no matter how many precautions the oil companies took in their scramble for this new source of crude, the land would be destroyed virtually forever. But he also felt that it was a small price to pay if his new policy led to a cleaner life for the rest of the country and eventually the world.

He never expected the severity of the uproar when the nation learned of the deal. Overnight, it seemed every citizen became a champion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. People who couldn’t find Alaska on a map suddenly started spouting off statistics about the damage that oil exploration would do to the wilderness. Posters, T-shirts, and talk show guests materialized out of thin air. The arctic fox and the polar bear became immediate media sensations; hours of programming chronicling their plight choked the airwaves. Thundering herds of caribou raced across television screens night after night while serious-voiced commentators described how they would be nearly extinct within eighteen months of the first oil rig start-up. People were outraged, and dozens of environmental groups burgeoned after the President’s announcement.