He fired back. His adversary had moved, so the shots hit nothing but metal. Okay, where the hell did he go? Mercer moved to his left, sighted along an access walkway but saw nothing. He then went right. A burst of autofire raked the concrete at his heels as he dove under an isopentane cylinder. Oh, that’s where he went.
He tried to get a bead on the assassin but there was too much machinery for a clean shot. He studied the tank above him. Ten different pipes, including a huge trunk line that brought steam from outside, linked the stacked vessels. Mercer had no idea which carried gas and which carried liquid but he could tell which were the most vulnerable. The trick would be to get the gunman into position. He switched to his pistol to conserve ammunition and began maneuvering around the plant, working the gunman like they were chess pieces, giving ground when he had to, but inexorably moving the man to where he wanted him.
Dashing across an open space, Mercer slid behind a support column. Shots ripped furrows from the floor behind him. Secure once again, his wounded leg all but dead now, Mercer felt he had the gunman. He steadied his grip on the pistol and cycled through the clip as fast as he could pull the trigger. The ricochets whined away as ten rounds slammed into the point where a pipe joined with the isopentane tank that shielded the assassin.
Even before he knew if he’d succeeded, Mercer began to run. Behind him, the German had flinched at the onslaught of bullets hitting steel so close to his head. He had a second to register the high-pitched hiss before the leaking isopentane ignited. Like a flamethrower, escaping gas blew out in a fifty-foot tongue of fire that mushroomed into an overwhelming inferno, eating everything it touched. Amid the blistering paint and melting wires, the assassin’s body cooked like a joint of meat.
Blasted by the overpressure wave, Mercer was thrown into the side of the building hard enough to momentarily knock him out. When he came to, an alarm sensed the fire and shut down this portion of the facility. A Klaxon wailed and sprinklers began a rain that quickly turned into a torrent. He hauled himself from the floor, fingering the knot growing on his forehead. If none of the other tanks ruptured from the searing heat, the building wouldn’t go up. If one did, they all would in a chain reaction that would likely wreck several square acres.
He fitted the last magazines into each of his weapons and ran for the next building. This structure was nearly identical to where he’d left Cardinal Peretti. Differently painted pipes and valves added the only color to the monochromatic steel interior. Doubled over and limping, his vision beginning to blur from a concussion, Mercer began a systematic sweep of the building. There were hundreds of crannies a person could hide in, miles of heavy pipes that could shield even the largest man and he wouldn’t know they were there until he walked into their sights.
He jumped over a handrail to get off the exposed catwalk dividing the long room. At the end of the row of identical machines he thought he’d seen a shadow move. He hunkered down to look under the pipes blocking his view. There! Hiding behind the last turbine was a pair of legs. But as he watched, they vanished. The person was crawling on top of the boxy exchanger, getting the best location to cover the entire room.
Mercer stood, holding himself just out of the gunman’s view. He had one chance to get this right. Not quite pistols at ten paces, this was more like automatic rifles at thirty. The assassin knew he was in here, had a good idea where he was hiding and would have the advantage of a secure firing platform. Mercer moved laterally, singeing his hands on a pipe but not making a sound as he crawled to a different position.
He brought the H&K to his shoulder and leapt up. Through the sights he saw Greta Schmidt’s head behind a small yellow-handled relief valve atop a thick pipe, her flaxen hair framing her beautiful/ugly face. Her expression approached sexual euphoria, eyes wide and dilated, her skin flushed.
She had her own machine pistol clamped at her side, but her aim was off by a few degrees of arc. She saw Mercer pop up from behind a piece of equipment and tried to adjust. A streaming hail of rounds followed her swing. Mercer fired once before the slide on his MP-5 racked back and jammed. The single bullet struck the valve and vectored harmlessly away.
After a second of silence that seemed to unroll in slow motion, the tremendous pressure of steam driven by the planet’s molten center exploded through the damaged valve in a screaming eruption. In the fleeting moment before the jet of vapor obscured his view, Mercer saw Greta’s face begin to dissolve. Her hair vanished first, burned away by the five-hundred-degree steam. Then the flesh began to melt away until patches of bone showed through. The steam turned red as it boiled the blood and tissue from her skull.
She vanished and Mercer choked on the acid that scoured the back of his throat. Hyperventilating, he cleared the jam, knowing that blind luck had saved him. He remained where he was while the mental image of Greta liquefying lost some of its vividness. His head pounded.
A scream galvanized him, a hoarse animal sound of primeval fury. Gunther Rath had entered the building from the opposite end and spotted what remained of his lover. “Mercer!” he roared. “I am going to kill you!”
“Better men than you have made that threat,” Mercer shouted back.
Rath fired off a wild burst that rattled around the room, sparking off countless metal surfaces. “I still have the Dalai Lama.”
Mercer almost made the mistake of telling him about Klaus Raeder in the next building. He was tired, hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours, and his brain wasn’t functioning anywhere near where it should. If it weren’t for the adrenaline he would have collapsed hours ago. “Give it up, Rath. Even if you make it out of this plant alive, you’ll never leave Iceland. You saw the helicopter. You know we’ve alerted the military. They’ll quarantine this entire island if they have to.”
“You think that matters now?” Rath challenged back. “Even if I do escape, the Libyans would have me killed for not delivering the Pandora boxes.”
Shit! He’s ready to die right here and he wants to take me with him. Mercer went from hunter to hunted in that one statement. He could leave now, slink away and wait for troops from Keflavik base to end this. Suddenly an image flashed into his brain of Elisebet Rosmunder feeding the ducks in Reykjavik.
“The Libyans won’t get the chance,” he yelled. He fired a quick burst and raced for one of the building’s back doors. Bullets chased him, but none hit before he rolled onto the asphalt outside. He knew Rath would never let him escape. The man had nothing left to lose and only revenge to keep him going.
Mercer gave Building #4 a wide berth as he circled around it, limping across open pavement until he reached a rocky area along the shores of the man-made wastewater lagoon. The water shimmered with sunlight that had burst from over the horizon. As he stopped at another tangle of pipes, he saw Rath at the door he’d just passed through. He was holding the Lama by his collar.
The Dalai Lama had lost one of his sandals during his ordeal. One foot was a bloody mess from running across the lava rocks. He couldn’t put any weight on it and his normally dusky complexion had paled from the pain. Yet his expression remained neutral, as if the agony wasn’t his own. The strength he used to defy a nation as large and powerful as China extended to a will over his own body.