Climate Killers: Book 3. Bernadette Callahan Detective Series

by Lyle Nicholson

  The men he had on board were his clean-up crew. They weren’t deck hands; they were killers and would ensure no one made it from the submarine alive to tell the tale of what his people had done.

  What bothered Volkov was Sokolov’s failure to report in. He’d called several times with no answer. San Francisco, he knew, was experiencing severe fires and floods. Perhaps the cell phone towers had been damaged by the fires?

  He cursed his decision to not give him a satellite phone, as they were too expensive. He tried Sokolov again, got no answer and stuffed his phone back in his jacket. He would take great pleasure in killing Sigurdsson himself when this project was over. It would give him some sense of closure.

  The final closure he was missing was with that tall rich bitch, Willa. When he was finished with Sigurdsson, he’d be tracking her down. He had special plans for her. He smiled and walked back to his cabin.

  47

  Sigurdsson sat on the deck of the submarine and looked up at the stars. There was a smell of sea air mixed with cigarette smoke. He hated the latter, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  Every night, the submarine surfaced to take in fresh air and for the diesel to recharge its batteries. It gave the crew time to relax on deck, smell the air, and have a cigarette. A few cast a line to try their luck at fishing.

  Sigurdsson had been back on board for two days now. The crew had greeted him with mixed emotion. Some thought him a traitor for deserting them and others, with a knowing eye, thought how sad it was he’d been caught and brought back.

  The past few days had seen much activity. Sigurdsson had directed the seafloor drill once again. The Geotechnical drill could work at depths of 3,000 metres.

  A surface ship had dropped off the drill several months ago, and once it had descended to the ocean floor, the submarine took over the command of the robotic arms to drill to depths of up to 500 metres by remote.

  They drilled down, inserted a probe to get a temperature of the core, then Sigurdsson would assess if this was a spot to insert a blasting rod. Once the charge was inserted the seafloor drill was moved by its own propulsion system to a safe spot and the charge was detonated.

  The blast hole was assessed again to see if they’d ruptured a hole big enough to let out the steam from the volcanic magma that was flowing below the seabed. Sigurdsson was working on intuition and a series of guesses that his imagination had formed over the years. He knew that somewhere near this volcanic magma was also a great underwater river. They somehow flowed in concert, water and fire. He had no idea how they’d been formed.

  He’d heard of this phenomenon not in scientific circles but in legends, first in his home country of Iceland, and then in Canada’s high Arctic. The River of Thule flowed beneath a river of fire the ancient rumors had said.

  Sigurdsson pulled a blanket over his shoulders and sat upright against the submarine’s conning tower. He looked up at the bright stars. Was he chasing an ancient rumor? Was he a fool for believing it?”

  He shuddered as the thought surfaced. If he’d done all this, put his wife and granddaughter in peril and hundreds of thousands of people’s lives at risk because of a rumor? If that were true he did not know how he’d live with himself.

  What he knew was every day he stayed alive and was useful to Volkov and the people on this ship he kept his wife and granddaughter alive. But how much longer could he do this, while putting others in danger? He also knew he would no longer be useful and neither would his family, once he’d increased the ocean’s temperature.

  There was something he could do. It would be at great risk, he could find The River of Thule and unleash it. A light came into his eyes at the thought. Tomorrow, Volkov was supposed to arrive on the supply ship.

  What if he drilled down, unleashed the river and the eruption killed everyone in the area? Sure, he’d be killed, but so would everyone else and the project would be gone.

  “Would Sokolov kill my Sam and Becky,” Sigurdsson whispered to himself. The probability was high. Both Sam and Beck would understand and agree with his actions. They’d see he’d done the right thing. He sighed deeply, wrapped his blanket around him and, staring once more up at the stars, committed his soul to the universe, because tomorrow he might no longer be of this world.

  48

  Anton’s first call was to the Canadian Armed Forces in Ottawa. There was one person who he could call to give Bernadette and her crew some back up. Major William P. Baumgartner, nicknamed Boomer by his close friends, had a way of getting things done.

  They’d worked together on joint Canadian Security and Intelligence and Armed Forces missions before. Although this one was weird, it wouldn’t be too weird for ‘Boomer.’

  Major Baumgartner, ‘Boomer’ answered on this first ring. He was in his mid fifties, a navy lifer with a salt and pepper beard who would rather be at sea than sitting at a desk in Ottawa surrounded by politicians and bureaucrats who only saw the military as pawns to be moved around at their own discretion.

  “Hey, Boomer, Anton here. I got a hot one for you. You ready to have your world turned?”

  “Last time that happened it was an Asian girl in Singapore, but why don’t you enlighten me, Anton?”

  “I got a super-yacht full of my people heading for a destination in the Pacific that needs the help of the US Navy.”

  “You’ll have to be a bit more specific, Anton. You’ve given me the first scene of Gilligan’s Island. I need something more.”

  Anton proceeded to give him the inside story on how he’d sent Detective Bernadette Callahan to work with Alistair McAllen and their mission.

  Boomer let out a breath. “Jesus H. Christ, Anton. Is this the same Detective Callahan who was assumed to be off of Ellesmere Island and involved in our latest dust up with Soviets?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s her.”

  “Okay, just wanted to make that clear. So now she’s with a band of other wanted criminals heading to an undisclosed location to head off a supposed climate disaster and she needs the help of the navy. Do I have that right?”

  “I couldn’t have stated it better myself,” Anton said, smiling to himself at how fast Boomer worked on things.

  “Okay, you got one little problem,” Boomer said.

  “What’s that?”

  “A Russian Submarine and three light destroyers are on the way to that same area.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “No idea. American Fleet operations in the Pacific have been watching this since yesterday. Everyone thought the Russians would be putting everything they had into the Arctic because of the sinking of their submarine. For them to throw a submarine and three surface ships in the Pacific is odd.”

  “I wonder if they are heading for the same place as Bernadette Callahan?”

  “Could be. Maybe they’re trying to stop what’s going on with this project of ocean temperature rising or trying to keep it going. Right now, we’re working with diplomatic channels. That news article that was published about Russia’s attempted takeover of America through disaster relief has sent heads rolling on an international scale. The Russian Politburo claims they knew nothing about it.”

  “I’m sure they’d claim that.”

  “We’ve had their admiralty on the phone to us. They say this is the work of a group of Mafia inside their government. They are working on expelling them. Seems this is all coming to a head quickly.”

  “So, they can get some assistance?”

  “I have some good contacts in the American Pacific fleet. They’ll be sending shadow patrols to be watching the Russians. It’s something both sides do when the other side gets anywhere near the other’s coast. I’ll let them know about Callahan and her little pleasure cruise and they’ll provide whatever assistance they can.”

  “That would be appreciated, Boomer.”

  “Just one more thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If the Russians and the Americans decide to start shooting at each oth
er, tell Bernadette Callahan and her friends to keep their heads down.”

  Anton put his phone down. Bernadette was out of phone range, and he had no way of getting a message to her. He hoped the Americans arrived in time to provide back up.

  49

  Bernadette awoke on the second morning of their voyage with visions of narwhales waving their long ivory tusks at her, motioning for her to come towards them. The island they pointed to was pure white in the sun but it shone back with an eerie dull light.

  She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, found coffee in the galley kitchen and went up to the wheelhouse where she found McAllen standing at the wheel. Becky and Samantha were standing beside him in a muted conversation.

  Bernadette looked out the front window of the ship towards the bow. The sea was restless this morning. Small whitecaps whipped up by a steady breeze made a blue carpet that folded into a grey haze on the horizon. They seemed to be travelling into a vast nothingness. Bernadette had never been this far out in the ocean before. She felt a chill and hugged her arms around herself.

  Becky appeared at her side. “Hey, Bernadette, did you sleep okay?”

  Bernadette turned back to Becky. The young lady looked good for someone who’d been in captivity for the past several days with people who were bent on killing her. “Yeah, I slept fine, but I’ve been plagued by dreams of narwhales waving their tusks at me.”

  “Sounds like they’re trying to tell you something.”

  Bernadette sipped on her coffee and stared back out into the vast ocean. “You believe in dreams, Becky?”

  “Always have,” Becky said following Bernadette’s’ gaze towards the horizon. “When you’ve spent as much time as I have both under and on the water, you get to sense things, like the ocean is trying to tell us something. Trying to get a message across.”

  “Like it’s saying, quit polluting me, and warming me up?” Bernadette asked.

  “Yeah, kind of like that. I hope you don’t mind me prying into your dreams, but what are these narwhales doing? Are they pointing to anything, or trying to get you to follow them?”

  “They’ve been waving at me and pointing to an island, which is funny, because there’re no islands this close to America. We’d have to get to Hawaii before we find another land mass.”

  “Did you see any of the island?” Becky asked.

  “Yeah, it had this dull white sheen to it. There was a bit of sun on it, but hardly any light reflected back.” Bernadette said.

  Becky’s scratched her forehead, “There’s only one island like that in this area.”

  “Really, are you serious? There’s a white island a thousand kilometres off the coast of the USA?”

  “Yeah, it’s called garbage island or sometimes even plastic island,” Becky said. “It’s become a floating vortex of all the accumulated plastic that’s been dumped into the ocean over the past fifty years.” She motioned for Bernadette to follow her into the wheelhouse where she found a laptop. She pulled up a Google search.

  “You see this? Google states there are three large garbage patches. One off the coast of Japan, it’s called the Western Garbage Patch, then there’s the Subtropical Convergence Zone in the north, and we’re heading right towards the Eastern Garbage Patch in the North Pacific Subtropical High,” Becky said.

  Bernadette traced her fingers over the screen. “It says here that the floating garbage is the size of Texas, some seven hundred thousand square kilometres. You’d think you’d see it from space?”

  “You’d think so, but a lot of it is in tiny particles of plastic and it’s submerged just below the surface,” Becky explained.

  “Could they be hiding a submarine under that?”

  “Well, if they were, the large amounts of plastic and floating garbage would distort any attempts to find them by using sonar,” Becky said. She turned to Samantha who had moved closer to them. “What do you think, Grandma Sam?”

  “I totally agree. From what I understand of the great garbage patch islands, there’s so much stuff floating around underneath from toilet seat covers to plastic water bottles, that sonar would bounce all over the place,” Samantha said.

  Bernadette walked over to the stone that she’d received from the Inuit woman. It was glowing now. She could feel the warmth of it from standing nearby. “Where is this pointed to?” she asked.

  McAllen looked at the chart that was appearing on his screen above the wheel. “I’d say we’re heading dead center of the big bulk of plastic junk you three have been talking about. Hopefully, we’ll find our submarine in the midst of all that garbage.”

  Bernadette looked at the screen. It showed only dark blue sea, with no island. “Any idea how we’re going to take on a submarine when we get there?”

  McAllen raised one eyebrow then motioned for Bernadette to come closer. “Go below and talk to Sebastian and Percy. Both are weapons experts. They can come up with something.”

  “Did they bring some weapons with them?” Bernadette asked.

  McAllen shook his head. “No, not that I know of, apart from some small machine guns and a few handguns. But both of them have been known to improvise. That’s what we need now. We need brains over brawn. This little cruiser would be kindling if the submarine has a deck gun, and we’re a sitting duck if it has usable torpedoes. We need the boys below to figure out something they don’t expect.”

  Bernadette had no idea what McAllen was talking about. She had a sinking feeling their mission to find a submarine and stop it was doomed from the start. She went below to find Sebastian and Percy. A chord of guitar music floated up the passageway as she headed down the plush stairs.

  She first followed her ears towards the music, then her nose. The distinct smell of marijuana reached her nose as she approached, making it wrinkle. The weed was legal in Canada and some states in the USA, but it still unnerved her to smell it, as she’d had years of prosecuting people using it. As the music grew louder, she opened the door of the sound studio and a cloud of marijuana smoke billowed out. Percy and Sebastian sat in two chairs with guitars and joints.

  Sebastian looked up and expelled a plume of smoke. “Hey, Bernadette, we’re just having a morning consult. You want to join us?”

  “No,” Bernadette said, crossing her arms, and trying not to look too judgmental. “McAllen sent me down here, said you might improvise something that we could take on a submarine with.”

  Sebastian passed his joint to Percy. “I thought you’d never ask. Yes, we have a plan.” He expelled a large plume of smoke and smiled.

  50

  Lieutenant Commander Akasawa scanned the daily reports from Pacific Fleet. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. A small convoy of Russians, consisting of one submarine and three light destroyers were heading for the California coast.

  Why had they left the task force that had been steaming towards the Arctic? Akasawa was in the command room of San Diego US Pacific Fleet Operations. His job was to decipher Russian Fleet movements sending recommendations to fleet commanders as to which threats they should consider hostile and which ones they should shadow. He sighed, picked up his cold cup of coffee and sipped on it. The bitterness of the cold liquid almost made him gag.

  Petty Officer Milken appeared at Akasawa’s side with a memo. “I just got this, sir. It’s for your eyes only.” Milken saluted and walked away.

  Akasawa looked at the paper. It was from his friend, Baumgartner in Naval Operations in Canada. They’d served together in the Gulf of Aden, stopping Somali pirates from boarding merchant ships and taking the sailors hostage.

  He had to read it several times before he understood what Baumgartner was asking, but he still couldn’t believe it. He grabbed his phone and dialed his number.

  “Hey Aka. What’s up?” Baumgartner asked.

  “God damn it, Boomer. I need you to be serious. We’re not chasing pirates anymore and hanging out in Arab bars. What the hell is the meaning of this memo?”

  “It’s simple, Aka. We ne
ed you to provide some cover for a private yacht that is in search of a rogue submarine doing some hazardous drilling on the ocean floor that we believe is being funded by the Russian Mafia,” Baumgartner answered.

  “But this is a stolen yacht.”

  “Borrowed.”

  “Really. Did the owner get notification?”

  “A matter of poor communications.”

  “Hmm, is this some Canadian bullshit?”

  “We call it merde in French, and possibly yes. Can you help?”

  “Who’s on the yacht?”

  “An FBI Agent, an RCMP Detective working on behalf of CSIS and several Americans and Canadians who have various warrants out for them for some charges that we won’t go into at this time.”

  Akasawa closed his eyes and let his head sink to his chest. “Do we apprehend the people on board the yacht once we’ve established their safety?”

  “Once they’ve established their objective and stopped this Russian sub from drilling, I think they’d return the yacht to the Coast Guard for its return to its rightful owner. As for laying charges, why don’t we see if they’ve done any good before we proceed?”

  “This sounds as bad as when we were catching pirates off the Somali Coast,” Akasawa said.

  “It has that air about it, yes.”

  “You mean, smell?”

  Baumgartner sighed. “Okay, you were the one who was good at semantics. Can I count on you? Can you send some ships or air support?”

  Akasawa looked at a screen that showed what ships and planes he had available. “This is going to be tough. Most of our fleet is being sent to back up the situation that’s happening in the Arctic. We sent a complete task force of destroyers and cruisers up to the Bering Sea to blockade anymore Russian ships trying to enter the Arctic.”

  “How about aircraft?”

  “Sure, I have a P-3 Orion Sub hunter I can send out, but you need some surface support.” Akasawa scrolled down his screen. “I have two LCS that are in the area. I can send them.”