Charon's Landing (61 page)

The threat of fire was real, and both Aggie and Mercer launched themselves from their seats as the plane finally ground to a stop.

“Remember, this flight counts double for your frequent flier miles. We want to thank you for flying Mercer Airlines. Have a nice day.” He was out the cargo door of the Cessna as the last words rolled from his lips, with Aggie right behind.

The sprint to the Operations Building took forever, both of them hampered by their injuries and by the countless vehicles they had to dodge as technicians and employees raced to evaluate the situation. Mercer pounded through the door, tossing a hapless employee back about ten feet as the edge of the door caught her square in the chest. He raced for the control room, ignoring the dazed woman completely. The room was packed. Voices clashed angrily over the wail of countless alarms, the normally calm professionals driven to the point of panic by the scope of the catastrophe facing them. Andy Lindstrom was in the center of it, his face red and his shouts muted to angry growls from hoarseness. He scanned the multiple panels and video display units, assessing the damage to his precious pipeline. Twenty or so engineers were gathered around him, ranked by seniority so the most experienced was at his shoulder and the juniormost stood in the back of the room. The windowless room was filled with cigarette smoke and the smell of fear’s sweat.

“Andy!” Mercer shouted over the arguing voices, but the noise drowned him out.

To gain attention, he pulled out Kerikov’s pistol and fired into the floor, silence echoing after the shot.

“Andy, how bad?” Mercer asked calmly. If he was bothered by the stunned crowd around him, it didn’t show on his stony face.

“Jesus Christ, Mercer, what the hell are you doing?” The shock on Lindstrom’s face was a combination of seeing Mercer with a pistol, seeing Mercer even alive, and the stress of the nitrogen packs freezing his pipeline as solid as a Popsicle. “Great to see you again, but I don’t have time for this — your friend the Russian has destroyed my pipe.”

“I know.” Mercer couldn’t afford the delay caused by emotional answers. “I need to know if the pumps are running right now.”

Before Andy could answer, an engineer seated at the console spoke up. “No, the computer logs show they shut down about a minute before the nitrogen packs went off. Right now they’re off-line. And it looks like they’ll never run again. Preliminary reports indicate at least forty spots where oil flow has stopped completely and a couple more with minimal flow. It looks as if there are at least two ruptures, one at the center of the Tanana River suspension bridge.”

“The bridge collapsed?” Mercer asked fearfully.

“Yeah. Oil is flowing toward it through open check valves like a spigot.”

“Where is that computer guy, Mossey?”

“He was in the computer room a moment ago,” replied a technician standing near Mercer.

Mercer turned so fast he bumped into Aggie, whom he’d all but forgotten. She was sickened by the fact that the pipeline had been cut by the nitrogen freezing. As a member of PEAL, she was, by default, responsible. “This isn’t over yet,” Mercer said and ran down the hall.

The computer room, in comparison to the Op-center, was sterile and clean and empty save for one frantic figure stuffing papers and computer discs into a soft-sided leatherette bag. Mercer didn’t give Ted Mossey a chance to even turn around. He used his left hand to smash Mossey’s head down to the desk while his other pressed the automatic pistol into his face so hard that Mossey’s teeth ripped the delicate inner skin of his cheek. When Mercer spoke, his voice was a white fury, his eyes glazed with hatred.

“Shut the program down! Now!”

“I can’t,” Mossey stammered, saliva and blood dripping from his mouth onto the computer station. “I was locked out as soon as Kerikov triggered the nitrogen.”

Mercer snicked back the hammer of the pistol, the small click sounding very final in the quiet confines of the room. “That’s too bad. You’ve had the program for a couple of months. I’d thought you’d have broken into it and set up a back door. Last mistake you ever made, pal.”

He was willing to let the bluff go for a few seconds before knocking Mossey unconscious, but it wasn’t necessary. Mossey folded instantly. “Wait, please. God, don’t kill me. There is a back door. I put it in soon after Kerikov hired me to reinstate his old program.”

“Use it now, you little ferret, and stop the pumps from coming on-line or, so help me Christ, I’ll pull the trigger and use your brains as finger paint.” Mercer let Mossey back up but kept the pistol screwed into his ear. The younger man started working on the terminal, his fingers blurring across the keys.

Aggie stood in awe at the back of the room, fascinated by the absolute control Mercer showed of both the situation and Ted Mossey. It wasn’t the gun that gave Mercer power, it was the man himself. His conviction and his unwavering belief in himself held her rapt. As unpredictable and wild as his actions had seemed to her, once the resolution became clear, his was the only logical course. Standing as he was, grim-faced and tensed, Mercer was the most desirable man Aggie had ever seen. The sight of him gave her a delicious thrill.

“I’m in,” Mossey said at last. “Just a minute more.”

“I blow your skull apart in thirty seconds.” No one, not even Mercer, knew if he was still bluffing or not.

Andy Lindstrom had followed Mercer and Aggie to the computer room and, after watching the drama unfold for a moment, crossed to a terminal next to Mossey, the computer screen before him indicating pump and pipeline status. Though the program had been installed by a mole at the height of the Cold War, only now was it active. All ten pumps had spooled up to full power, building a tremendous back pressure against the solidified oil plugs. Mercer had been too late to stop that from happening, but pipe integrity was still holding. If they could shut down the pumps in time, the line wouldn’t blow apart as Kerikov had planned.

“Internal pressure?” Mercer demanded without taking his eyes off Mossey.

“Twelve hundred pounds per square inch within the pipe casing at nearly every sensor,” Lindstrom cried. “We’re over the maximum rating. The whole thing’s going to let go at any second. Pumps are still in operation. This isn’t going to work.”

“Someone already told me that today.” Mercer stole a glance at Aggie, who smiled at him in response.

Mossey pushed himself from his keyboard computer, his slight frame spent. “That’s the most I can do.”

“Status?” Mercer barked.

“Twelve hundred twenty-five psi. It’s thing is going to burst.” Lindstrom screamed. “Massive pressure drop at one of the sensors, pipe blowout. Pumps are still… Wait, pumps are off-line. They’ve stopped.” Lindstrom’s voice trailed off as he watched fearfully. The internal pressure sensors placed within the line continued to climb higher and higher, now 15 percent beyond their rated maximum tolerance. Finally he spoke again, filling the thick silence, excitement crowding his words together. “Pressure going down across the board, steady drop. My baby held together. Oh, thank you, God, and thank the union welders for making this bitch stronger than we ever thought.”

Mercer looked over at him in relief, his face and body showing the extent of the battering he’d been through since last night. “What about the steel mills that rolled the pipe sections?”

“Fuck ’em, it was a Japanese firm.” Lindstrom laughed, emotion bubbling over. While still facing a major disaster — there were three huge leaks belching out thousands of barrels of oil — the extent had just been reduced to manageable levels. With Mossey as a witness, Alyeska would be found blameless for the entire affair.

“Human error,” Mercer said, as if reading Andy’s mind. “Not the negligent kind, but the type found when people do the wrong thing for the wrong reason.”

“How’d you know about Mossey?”

“I’ll tell you everything tomorrow. Right now I need a drink, a hot shower, and a bed — in whatever order they come.”

“Drink first.” Andy grinned. “That I have in my office. But no matter what you did here today, I’m not sharing my bed with you.”

Mercer glanced at Aggie and smiled at the shy look on her face. Andy followed his gaze, forcing Mercer to make introductions. “Andy Lindstrom, this is Aggie Johnston, Max Johnston’s daughter.”

“I know your father.” Lindstrom shook her hand as he led Aggie and Mercer back to his office. “Listen, I don’t have time for that drink. I’ve got to get crews to the damaged sections of the line and start on the repairs. I can tell from the sensor panel where PEAL placed their nitrogen. There are miles of open pipe between the plugs, so we’re going to lose a shitload of oil. The leak on the Tanana Bridge is spilling something like five thousand gallons an hour. Every minute we wait is going to make this more of a mess than it already is.”

Lindstrom paused, then asked, “Listen, Mercer, can you stick around for a while? I need to get details of what happened at Pump Station 5. We still haven’t managed to get a team up there. The fire at the depot in Fairbanks is still raging out of control, tying up a lot of my people.”

“Eddie didn’t make it?” Mercer was stunned. He thought rescue crews would have found the fearless chopper pilot before his injuries claimed him.

“Eddie’s fine. He’s in a hospital in Fairbanks right now, but he’s been sedated since his arrival. An army chopper picked him up last night, but they didn’t return to the pump station. They’re still ferrying the injured out of Fairbanks.”

Somehow, knowing Eddie Rice had survived meant more to Mercer than preventing Kerikov from destroying the pipeline. But that was how he thought; human life always took precedent over all other concerns. In mine rescue work, he had spent millions to save one lowly worker, and to him it was a bargain. And whether it was money he was gambling or the environmental fate of an entire region, his decision was always the same. Life, anyone’s life, came first. Perhaps it was a superior attitude to take considering the new-world thinking, but it was the way he was.

“Andy, seriously, there’s nothing I can give you about your pump station. I never got within a hundred yards of the pump house before I was captured.” Mercer was almost asleep on his feet. “I’ll tell you everything I can tomorrow, but for now, I’m worthless.”

Lindstrom wasn’t even listening. He was already engaged in a discussion with an engineer, the two of them arguing about materials allocation for repairs. Mercer turned away, guiding Aggie into Lindstrom’s office and closing the door quietly behind them. The soft click of the door closing became a punctuation mark to what they had been through, an end to what had happened before and a beginning to what would now come between them. They both felt it, glancing at each other with both longing and trepidation, as if the adventures they’d shared had been a necessary distraction from what they now faced.

The air sizzled.

“Drink?” Mercer twisted himself away from her eyes, reaching into Lindstrom’s desk for the bottle he knew would be there.

“Yes, please,” Aggie said, acquiescing to Mercer’s desire to sidestep their emotions.

He poured Scotch into two paper cups, slopping each one nearly half full. Of all the morning drinks he’d had in his life, and there had been quite a few, Mercer believed that he and Aggie had actually done enough to warrant this one. He finished his in a heavy swallow, pouring another by the time Aggie had taken a first tentative sip. She found a pack of cigarettes on Andy’s desk and smoked one of them almost as fast as Mercer drank.

“Is it over?” she asked.

“You know, I think it really is.” They were standing close together, the top of her head well above his shoulder, her face tilted to his, her lips full and inviting. There was an unmistakable gleam behind her emerald eyes.

As he stooped to kiss her, the door to Andy’s office flew open, the matronly receptionist from the front office almost falling to the floor in her rush. She was about to speak, but when she saw that Andy wasn’t there, her face collapsed. Mercer realized she was really in distress, far more than the others dealing with the emergency.

Not recalling her name, he asked her if anything was wrong, and in a rush it came pouring from her so fast there was hardly a pause between words.

“There was a shooting at the main gate. Ralph, the nice older guard is dead, another person, I don’t know who, is lying in the street, blood all around his body. A man attacked them, shot up the booth with some sort of machine gun and stole one of the company trucks. Oh, God, poor old Ralph, he was just a nice man.”

She fell into a chair, overcome by everything that had happened, her doughy body pooling around the wooden chair, her rounded cheeks stained with fresh tears. Mercer shot a look at Aggie, who immediately understood that he wanted her to look after the receptionist, and then he was gone again, running out of the building, shouldering aside those already in a scurry over the crisis.

The air was bitter cold under a pewter sky as he raced toward his rented Blazer still sitting in the Op-center parking lot. Despite everything he had been through since the previous afternoon, he’d managed to keep his keys, transferring them to the deep pocket of the coveralls when he’d donned the garment in the escape pod. The engine roared with the first crank, and a second later the truck slashed through the terminal’s gates, threading nimbly around the people clustered near their fallen coworkers. As he sped from the facility, he hoped one of them had had enough sense to alert the authorities in Valdez.

The pistol he’d taken from Kerikov was lodged behind his back. He pulled it out and set it on the plastic console between the two front seats. He drove furiously, the heavy-duty tires screaming as he took corners fifteen or twenty miles faster than posted. He estimated that ten minutes had elapsed since the attack, factoring in the distance between the main entrance and the Op-center and the time it took witnesses to get themselves in motion after the initial assault.

If he had had his Jaguar, he could have made up that time effortlessly, but the Blazer was built for rugged off-road use, not high-speed pursuit.