Read Deep Fire Rising - v4 for Free Online

the front door and followed Thayer and his partner to a dark Chevy Suburban parked in front of his town house. Traffic to Andrews was a snarl so it took more than an hour to reach the base. No one in the SUV said a word, which suited Mercer just fine.
    These were the first moments to think about what was happening and he found he resented the unnecessary secrecy. Ira could have easily called to tell him why he was needed. Mercer would have gone. Lasko didn’t have to send two goons to virtually kidnap him and rush him off for some clandestine flight. Typical government zealotry, Mercer thought, the kind he detested.
    Once past a series of checkpoints, Thayer guided the Suburban through the sprawling air force base and onto an access road behind the flight line. A KC-135 tanker was just taking off. Its engine shriek split the air while the four black smears of exhaust looked like claw marks on the otherwise bright sky. The Suburban pulled in toward an enormous hangar and drove through its side door. Thayer braked next to the only aircraft in the cavernous space, a Gulfstream IV executive jet painted in U.S. Air Force livery. Standing next to the open hatch was a soldier in camouflage fatigues. The dark insignia on his collar showed him to be a captain
    Without preamble, the muscular African American asked Thayer, “You got my passenger?”
    Mercer unlimbered himself from the SUV holding his bag in one hand.
    The soldier eyed him. “Mercer?” Mercer nodded. “I’m Sykes. Omega ninety-nine temple.”
    “Caravan eleven solstice.”
    “Good enough for me. Get aboard.”
    Even before Mercer got to his seat, the jet’s tail-mounted engines spooled to life and the nimble plane was towed through the hangar doors facing the complex of runways. Noticing that all the shades had been pulled over the windows, he reached to open the one nearest him. Captain Sykes leaned back in the seat in front of Mercer and closed the shade again.
    “Sorry, Doc. Think of it as blackout conditions.” Sykes had a wad of tobacco in the corner of his mouth and appeared to be swallowing the juice.
    “Any idea how long the flight will be?”
    “Long enough for you and I to play a whole lot of gin.”
    This was just getting better and better. “Do you know Admiral Lasko?”
    “I know he authorized this flight,” Sykes replied, “but I’ve never met the man. Way above my pay grade.”
    “If you happen to meet him before I see him again” — Mercer settled deeper in his seat, stretching out his six-foot frame and closing his eyes — “tell him he’s a dead man.”
    “So, no cards, Doc?”
    “Try solitaire.” Mercer felt the plane leap from the tarmac a few minutes later. There was no sense speculating about their destination. The same went for trying to guess what Ira wanted him for. Instead of frustrating himself further with mental gymnastics, he allowed his mind to slip into a balance between sleep and consciousness. If this was going to be a long flight, the least he could do was tune out most of it.
    Hurtling into the unknown. It was a phrase that just popped into his head and immediately reminded him of the first time he’d been involved with a mine rescue. The visions came back to him with a dreamy quality, a kind of hyperreality where Mercer seemed to be standing still while the events rushed past him. He was twenty-seven at the time, on one of his first consulting jobs. A fire had broken out eleven hundred feet below ground at a West Virginia coal mine where he’d been plotting the best way to extract a newly discovered vein. As the only miner there who’d trained with South Africa’s famed Proto Team, the world’s best subterranean rescue group, Mercer had been the first volunteer to go down into the mine. He led four other men into the elevator cage after it had been verified that not all the men who’d gone down on their shift had returned when the mine was evacuated.
    Mounted above the cage was a crude sign: THIS MINE