The wound in the leg was much more serious. It hadn’t cut the femoral artery, but the gushes of blood that poured from it indicated some other major vessels had been torn. Klaus exchanged more shots with the gunman in the gift shop.
Mercer used his belt as a crude tourniquet, cinching it as tight as he dared. It would have to be released every twenty minutes or Ira would risk gangrene. If he couldn’t remain conscious to do it, Raeder would have to stay with him.
“Is he okay?” Raeder asked.
“Yeah.” Mercer brushed glass from his shoulders. With two guards down, there were two left in addition to Greta and Gunther. The odds had been evening out, but without Ira, Mercer would have to go after them alone. And as long as the Germans had the hostages, he was fighting from an even more severe disadvantage. “I think the two gunmen are going to try to pin us here while the others escape over to the power plant where they can steal a vehicle.”
“What about the sniper in the helicopter?” Raeder asked as he gathered Ira’s spare clips.
“Unless they set down, they’ll never risk a shot. The chopper’s too unsteady. Ira, can you handle your own tourniquet?”
“I can for a while.” He licked his lips. “What’s your plan?”
“No idea.” Mercer looked around, a haze of gunpowder smoke stinging his nostrils. He could almost feel the two armed men lurking someplace in the elegant building. He finally looked back to Ira. “How about contacting your case officer again? Have him phone Keflavik base so we can get the helicopter down. You need immediate evac and we need some men to secure the Pandora box. Klaus will stay with you until they land and then he can follow me.”
“Where’re you going?”
“After Rath.”
“That isn’t the smartest idea you’ve ever had.”
Mercer laughed. “This coming from a man who just let himself get shot?” His next teasing comment died on his lips. A pistol shot had sounded somewhere below, near where he had seen the signs for the bather’s changing rooms. There was only one reason for a single shot in this kind of situation. For some reason Rath had just put down one of his hostages. Mercer looked first at Ira and then at Klaus Raeder. They too knew what had happened.
“I’ll be okay,” Ira said, clasping Mercer’s arm. He had a pistol at his side. “Move me into an office and go kill that sick son of a bitch.”
“Make sure that chopper pilot knows which side we’re on when we get outside,” Mercer said once Ira was safely hidden behind a desk.
He grabbed up his H&K and took off down the hallway with Klaus Raeder. Several office doors were open, and their windows had a view of the lava-rimmed pool area. From this vantage point they saw figures moving through the swirling mist, dark furtive shapes that lurched from cover to cover. It was obvious that two were going against their will but was impossible to tell which one — the Dalai Lama, Cardinal Peretti, or Tommy Joe Farquar — had been shot in the dressing room. It was also clear that the two remaining gunmen in Rath’s command were with them. The Blue Lagoon spa was clear.
“There are stairs at the end of the corridor,” Raeder said.
“Let’s do it.”
They went down and came out into another hallway. The men’s changing room was behind them and Mercer entered first, his hands tight on the small machine pistol. His ragged breathing reverberated off the tile walls. He swept the dimly lit room quickly, checking behind islands of lockers, before swinging into the adjoining showers and rest room. A body lay against one wall.
Tommy Joe Farquar’s toupee was missing and his suit had lost its luster, but he was alive, frightened and in pain from the bullet through his shoulder. He screamed when he saw Mercer with the gun, doubtlessly assuming he was with the men who’d kidnapped him and dumped his wife into the sea. Suddenly he choked off his own shouts and stared defiantly. “Philistine! God will smite you down with a vengeance only He can conjure,” he raged in his best preacher’s voice. “You will burn in an unspeakable pit for all eternity, your soul to become food for Satan’s hell hounds.”
“That’s probably true, Mr. Farquar,” Mercer agreed. “But we’re not with your kidnappers. In fact, we’re the ones who saved your wife.”
“Lorna?”
“Is back in Grindavik, where you first made land-fall. She’s going to be fine.”
“Oh, praise sweet Je-sus.” He tried to raise his arms in supplication, but his wound quickly brought his hands back to his side. He shrieked and turned ashen.
“Why’d they shoot you?” Mercer asked.
“I tried to run away.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Raeder snapped impatiently. “We have to go after Gunther.”
“Mr. Farquar, medical help is on the way. If you can, try to crawl out to the hallway so someone spots you.”
“You can’t leave me.” Tommy Joe raised his good arm. “They may come back.”
“Not if I can help it.”
They left him without another word, passing out of the building and onto the wooden deck surrounding part of the sulfurous pool. Heat radiated from the surface of the oddly colored water. Raeder followed Mercer around the lagoon, tracking across the deck in the same direction they’d seen Rath lead his prisoners. The uneven terrain separating the spa from the power plant offered a million places for the Germans to lay an ambush. Wary, Mercer stepped off the deck and onto the moonscape, an ounce more pressure on his index finger ready to unleash thirty rounds.
Fifty yards into the lava field, he burst out from the densest of the steam. The Hughs 500 swept across the plain at him, its rotors beating like thunder, forcing him and Raeder to dive into a craggy hollow. The industrialist landed on Mercer’s back, pressing his face against a knife edge of stone that opened yet another gash, this one deep enough to leave a scar.
“What is he doing?” Raeder shouted, terrified.
“He thinks we’re with Rath!”
The chopper came across again, this time standing off a hundred yards to give the sniper an open line of sight. The Barrett.50 caliber cracked once, and a chunk of rock the size of a basketball blew apart just a few feet from their position. Mercer and Raeder both lunged to their feet and began running, leaping from boulder to boulder, rising and falling with the wrinkled ground. The gun boomed again and this time the bullet passed close enough for Mercer to feel the shock wave.
“What can we do?”
“Keep running. Ira’s got to get through to tell him who we are.”
Another shot went wide as Mercer jinked like a fleeing antelope. Then suddenly his leg folded under him and he fell hard. He heard more than felt something give way in his wrist as he tried to break the headlong tumble. The numbness that climbed his left arm became a stabbing sensation from hand to elbow. And then the pain behind his thigh hit, searing and hot. Yet he could move his foot, could see it rotate as he tested it. Something was wrong. A.50-caliber round should have crucified him to the ground and left him immobile, and yet he struggled to his feet, teetering as a wave of pain washed out of him. He felt for the wound. Amid the mass of blood he felt something gritty.
Jesus! His femur had been powdered by the shot. He was so deeply in shock he couldn’t feel the full extent of the crippling injury. That was why he could stand. In a minute he knew he’d pass out. He could feel it coming.
But as he checked his blood-smeared hand, he saw particles of something black. It wasn’t bone fragments. It was bits of rock. He’d been peppered by a ricochet of stone fragments from a round that had hit behind him. The wound was no more than being shot from a half dozen BB guns.
He sagged, but his relief was short-lived. He’d been concentrating on his wounds and not the chopper. Mercer had been standing motionless for fifteen seconds, long enough for a good sniper to shoot him many times over. He looked up and stared into the cockpit of the chopper hovering fifty yards away. The sniper had him zeroed.