Deep Fire Rising - v4 by Jack Du Brull Read Free Book Online Page A

escort either. Admiral Lasko sent me to D.C. yesterday and I just happened to catch this flight back.”
    Mercer descended the boarding stairs and crossed the fifty feet to Ira. The deputy national security advisor was in his mid-fifties, painfully thin, but with unbelievable strength for his size. He kept his head completely shaved in a tactical retreat from pattern baldness. It leant him a determined air that augmented his pugnacious jaw and penetrating mind. His eyes were a watchful brown under silvering brows. He wasn’t particularly tall at five feet seven, but his authority was not in doubt.
    Ira wore khaki pants, a matching shirt and a Navy bomber jacket. The temperature in the hangar barely reached fifty degrees. Despite its desert location, Area 51 lay nearly five thousand feet above sea level.
    “I told the security chief that you wouldn’t wear the helmet if the plane had to park in here.” Ira waved toward the far side of the hangar, where futuristic-looking shapes — aircraft, no doubt — were hidden under large tarps. “That’s why the really interesting stuff was covered up.”
    Mercer’s anger at the tactics to get him here had been replaced by a sense of awe. He was being granted a peek at the innermost sanctum of government secrecy. If the conspiracy nuts were correct, things went on here even the president didn’t know about. Still, he wouldn’t give Ira the satisfaction of showing that the surroundings had shaken his composure. He took Ira’s proffered hand. “Are you going to explain why you felt it necessary to have me shanghaied? A phone call and a plane ticket to Vegas would have sufficed.”
    “I’ve been calling your place for two days,” Ira replied. “I didn’t leave a message because Harry kept answering the phone.” He and Harry had swapped war stories on several occasions. Ira had spent his early naval career aboard submarines, and Harry had spent his dodging them in the Pacific. “You think if I let on that you were coming here that he wouldn’t be on the next plane out?”
    Mercer couldn’t deny that possibility, no, inevitability. “Maybe he should be out here. Don’t forget, he saved my ass in Panama last fall.”
    “And ran up about six grand in gambling debts on your credit card.”
    Mercer’s smile turned to a frown. Ten thousand was closer to the truth.
    “Besides,” Ira continued, “you won’t need him watching your back. You’re out here for a straightforward job. Nothing fancy, but something you’re eminently qualified for. A job that we consider vital.”
    Mercer cocked an eyebrow. “We?”
    Ira turned to the woman standing at his side. “This is Dr. Briana Marie. She’s heading the project. She’ll explain everything.”
    “Pleasure to meet you, Doctor.” Mercer shook the petite brunette’s hand. She wore no makeup; her girl-next-door appeal didn’t need any. He laughed to himself when she used her left hand to unnecessarily wipe at the lapel of her lab coat. Her wedding ring flashed in the bright light. Then he considered the situation from her perspective. There were probably a hundred men for every woman here and an early declaration of her marital status must have become habit. “Are you an M.D.?”
    “Nuclear physicist,” she replied in a remarkably deep voice.
    The answer surprised Mercer. He looked to Ira.
    “A lot more than testing aircraft takes place here,” the admiral explained. “All of it under complete compartmentalization. Hell, I only know a few things under development and I’m on the president’s staff.”
    “A case of the right hand not knowing what the left is up to?” Mercer joked.
    “The personnel here don’t even know there is a left hand,” Dr. Marie deadpanned.
    “Even with your top secret clearance,” Ira went on, “I had to pull some strings so you’d know the details of this operation. The men you’ll be working with have no idea.”
    Mercer got a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the