At the instant the sniper eased the trigger, the pilot jerked the chopper. The bullet passed harmlessly over Mercer’s head. The sniper glared at the pilot and shouted something, listened for a moment, and then looked over to where Mercer remained standing. He tossed a jaunty, apologetic wave, and the chopper heeled away, flying toward the spa’s open parking lot.
“What happened?” Raeder emerged from a natural fortification of twisted rock.
“Ira must have gotten through,” Mercer said, still amazed to be alive.
“Can you go on?”
The stinging in his leg was already subsiding as adrenaline overcame the pain. Mercer’s answer came without thought. “Goddamned right I can.”
They linked up with the pipeline that carried effluent from the generating plant to the spa’s pool and began running. In the distance loomed one of the Svartsengi plant’s many buildings, a two-story concrete structure with small windows that looked like portholes. From it ran countless other pipes in a tangled maze only an engineer could love. Steam drifted across the facility on the quirks of the wind. They raced past the turquoise pond that had been the old Blue Lagoon spa and now acted as the leach field for the mineral-laden water forced to the surface by earth’s tremendous internal pressure.
Once at the plant, Mercer chanced a look down the central road that bisected the station. There were six principal buildings, and all but the administration center across the road were connected by pipes and conduits of various diameters. It reminded Mercer of a miniature oil refinery. Only this place was spotlessly clean as befitting its environmentally friendly power source. The air crackled with the generation of thirty-two megawatts of electricity, enough power for a town of thirty-two thousand people.
A flash of light, and bullets sprayed the corner of the building where Mercer and Raeder crouched. Raeder fired back, sparking rounds off pipes but hitting little else. Whoever had them zeroed was well protected by the steel forest. There were two cars parked in front of one of the administration building, most likely belonging to security guards since the regular work shift was hours away. As Raeder kept him covered, Mercer fired two quick bursts, blowing out the four tires he could see from his vantage. One way or the other it would end here.
They circled back around the building, taking a path that ran alongside the lagoon of wastewater. At the next building, Mercer found an unlocked door and eased inside, his machine pistol held tight and ready. The interior space was well lit and futuristic, with cat-walks that ran along parallel rows of heat exchangers and turbines. The building hummed. Another door at the front of the building crashed open, and two figures stood silhouetted. Mercer was about to fire when he recognized the silver hair of Cardinal Peretti. Shielded behind him was one of Rath’s men, a pistol held to the Catholic leader’s head.
“Let him go,” Mercer shouted over the whine of machinery.
The gunman jerked Peretti by the throat, ducking behind the cardinal as they moved into the building. “I see you make a move, he dies,” the neo-Nazi shouted back in German. Mercer didn’t need Raeder’s whispered translation to get the gist of the remark.
“You can walk away,” Raeder called out. “We only want Rath.”
“Forget it, Herr Raeder. We all leave or we all die.”
Mercer stood slowly so the gunman could see him, the MP-5 dangling from its strap. The man pulled his pistol from Peretti’s skull and aimed it at him. “Now you die,” the young fanatic shouted.
Dominic Peretti had been docile from the moment the gunmen had burst into his cabin aboard the Sea Empress because it was only his life he felt had been in danger. But seeing the stranger taking deliberate steps toward them, he couldn’t allow such a sacrifice. Forty-five years before, he had been a star on his seminary school’s basketball team because of a spin move some called divine.
He raised a hand to deflect the German’s aim, planted a foot to throw off the man’s weight and spun around him quicker than he’d been able to move in decades.
The gunman stood exposed for a fraction of a second. Mercer cleared the Beretta from his belt and triggered off three shots fast enough to sound automatic. The German was flung against the wall by the triple tap and crumpled to the steel flooring. Peretti dropped to a knee and felt for a pulse. He looked to Mercer with neither recrimination nor regret, then started last rites.
“Are you okay, Father?”
“I’m fine, my son,” the Vatican’s number two man said.
“Do you know where they have the Dalai Lama?”
“No. We split up when they took us here. The large man and the woman took the Lama with them. I believe they are in the administration building, but I’m not sure.”
“Trying to call the Geo-Research office in Reykjavik?” Raeder suggested.
“Maybe,” Mercer said. “Father, you have to hide yourself until this is over.”
“I will in a moment,” he said, continuing his prayers over the corpse. Only when he was done did he address Mercer again. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Ah, I don’t really have the time,” Mercer answered, not understanding what the priest could possibly want considering the circumstances.
“Ask for my forgiveness and say one Hail Mary.” His eyes were alight. “Then sin no more after you send the others to hell, where they belong.”
Mercer muttered the nearly forgotten prayer. Peretti made the sign of the cross over him and hid next to one of the massive conduits carrying superheated water through an exchanger, as safe a place as any at the site.
Glancing outside, Mercer saw no movement. The administration building’s front doors didn’t look damaged. He doubted that Rath had gotten that far yet.
“Klaus, keep that building covered. I’m going to check the next one.” Mercer dashed from the doorway, using pipes as cover until he crashed against the base of the three towering smoke stacks, the metal still hot to the touch even after the steam venting up them had passed through numerous turbines and exchangers.
The walls of the building behind him were made of steel plate, like it had been armored. As Mercer reached a door he recalled why. This was Building #4 and it contained the secondary turbine loops that used waste steam to boil a petroleum derivative called isopentane. This liquid had been specially formulated to boil at a mere two hundred degrees Fahrenheit in order to extract the last bit of energy from the natural steam. He remembered the plant manager who’d given him the tour years ago also telling him that isopentane was highly explosive. Behind this building would be the outlets where the saline water driven from the earth’s bowels was finally released back into nature after producing all the electricity and hot water needs of the citizens of the Reykjanes Peninsula. NO SMOKING signs were posted along Building #4’s walls.
The knob had already been shot off a door, allowing Mercer to slip inside. Building #4 had a less modern, more industrial look than the others, with rows of long cylinders like rural propane tanks, but these held the isopentane in a closed-loop system of liquid and gas. Beside each set of tanks was a small steam-driven turbine. The floor was polished concrete.
Mercer was having difficulty keeping the MP-5 steady from the pain in his wrist. He had some motion in the joint and felt that some tendons had been torn. His left hand felt like a dead weight, and he steadied the machine pistol’s foregrip on the crook of his elbow. With so much ambient noise in the power-house, he had to rely on his vision to scout the building.
Around one of the tanks he spotted a darkly dressed figure hunkered next to a turbine. Mercer recognized the gunman as a Geo-Research “technician.” By his expression it was evident he recognized Mercer too. They fired at the same instant, both bursts going wild from the shock of discovery. Ducking around a turbine, Mercer was chased by more rounds, the sharp rip of a machine pistol tearing the air. An ember of steel burned his hand before he could brush it away.