“No. By discussing what is happening.”
Tom stopped walking, and fixed his steely gaze on Sam’s undaunted face. “You can’t be serious!”
“I am. The world’s changing rapidly. Not like the disaster movies would have us believe the end of days look like, but really no less dangerously…”
“What’s happened?”
Sam continued to walk to the end of the row of yachts. “I’ll tell you while we walk. I want to be sure he hasn’t made it out of the water yet.”
Tom nodded. “Okay.”
“In the past three months the magnetic pole has shifted nearly two hundred miles farther south. It doesn’t sound like much, but in terms of what is considered normal in the Earth’s continuously shifting magnetic cycle, that’s a giant leap.”
“What were the responses?”
“There’s been a slowing of the world’s thermohaline circulation.”
“How much of a slowing?” Tom asked.
“Not a lot, but enough to cause some pretty major secondary problems. Many skeptics of Climate Change have argued that it’s merely the result of a statistical anomaly, and that over the course of the past decade, the average temperatures have resided clearly within the mean standard deviation.”
Tom stopped at the last yacht within the flotilla. A single-engine de Havilland Canada DHC-3 Otter Seaplane rested in the still water, tethered by a single rope to the last pleasure cruiser. It was painted light blue right down to its pontoons, with a single line of red paint running down its fuselage. The aircraft was close enough that they could see it was empty.
He turned to Sam. “You see anyone?”
“No. Let’s head back to the main dive barge and see if anyone has any recordings of the area before the dive. Maybe someone unwittingly captured an image of my attacker.”
“All right, sounds good.” Tom stared at the perfectly still water of the Great Blue Hole. “You said the thermohaline system has slowed?”
“Yes. As you know the large-scale ocean circulation is driven by global density gradients, created by surface heat and freshwater fluxes. Wind-driven surface currents, such as the Gulf Stream, travel poleward from the equatorial Atlantic Ocean, cooling en route and eventually sinking at high latitudes, forming North Atlantic Deep Water. This dense water then flows into the ocean basins. While the bulk of it upwells in the Southern Ocean, the oldest waters – with a transit time of around 1000 years – upwell in the North Pacific. Extensive mixing therefore takes place between the ocean basins, reducing differences between them and making the Earth's oceans a global system. On their journey, the water masses transport both energy in the form of heat and matter – solids, dissolved substances and gases – around the globe. As such, the state of the circulation has a large impact on the climate of the Earth.”
Tom stepped across to another yacht. This one had a small Robinson 22 tied down on its forward deck, surrounded with teak. “You said we’ve already begun to see the effects of its slowing?”
“Yeah.” Sam stopped again. “I had Elise run a search of any irregular weather or seismic activities in the past twelve months.”
“They showed a spike, three months ago?” Tom asked.
“One heck of a spike three months ago. Individually, any of the events could have been put down to the oddities and irregularities of the environment and the capriciousness of the weather, but together, they are too much to ignore.”
“It’s happening now?”
“Not completely. The asteroid is still out there, but it’s approaching, and already Earth is feeling the effects of its gravitational pull.”
“How long until its effects come into full force?”
“We have no idea. But it won’t be gradual when it does. No, it will be exactly what the horror movies make out the end of days to be.”
Tom leveled his eyes at a single spectator, still wet from a dip in the water, walking toward him. The man wore board shorts, and Tom’s eyes ran toward the man’s lower legs. They were wet, but there was no blood.
Sam glanced at him and said, “Not him, either.”
Tom sighed. “What I don’t understand about any of this is why all the cloak and dagger stuff?”
Sam met his eye, “You mean, why don’t we all simply come together globally and try to save the world?”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t know, but I’m hoping this will help me find out.” Sam stopped suddenly and studied the water, where several bubbles making ripples on the surface indicated a diver was somewhere below. “One thing’s for certain – the Secretary of Defense has kept some mammoth secrets from us, and I want to find out why. What’s she involved in? The only thing I can think of is that someone doesn’t want the truth to be told.”
“Who has anything to gain from the annihilation of the human race, not to mention the rest of the mammals and most of the sea life, too?”
“Not just mammals. There are a hundred and eight classes of animals on Earth, give or take roughly five whose class biologists can’t seem to agree on. Based on our oceanographic predictions, if the magnetic poles shift direction suddenly, you can count on at least a hundred of those being destroyed, or reduced to minimal numbers. Brachiopods, cockroaches and water bears will probably get by, because they always do, but who knows? Only extremophiles that live off the hydrothermal vents far under the ocean's surface are going to continue to live happily after this asteroid returns – unless we can stop it.”
“So, why’s the Secretary of Defense trying to keep its solution, written in the Death Stone, secret?” Tom persisted.
“I don’t know, but I intend to find out.” Sam held his breath for a moment. “And it appears someone’s just as keen to stop me.”
Tom met his eye. “You weren’t coming here to clear your mind, were you?”
Sam grinned. “No. I needed a public event to draw my enemy out here.”
Chapter Nineteen
At the main diving barge Sam spoke with one of the organizers, who informed him the entire event was being filmed from the top of Calypso, one of the larger pleasure cruisers with a small viewing deck above the main bridge.
Calypso was a one of a kind yacht for the ultra-rich. It had sleek lines and a carbon fiber hull, with a pristine interior of teak, giving it a unique blend of old and new, that was entirely dysfunctional. It was almost perfectly flat, with a small raised bridge, on top of which was an open viewing platform and a digital camera.
Sam knocked on the side of the glass door that led to the main entertainment area inside. “Anyone here?”
A man came out and asked, “Can I help you?”
He was in his early forties, with thick sea-swept hair and thick dark facial hair that fit somewhere between a beard and what is considered unshaven. He wore casual shorts and a loose fitting, long-sleeved white shirt. To Sam, he looked like the epitome of a rich, handsome, successful businessman who’d traded the hardship of modern entrepreneurialism for a life of luxury.
Sam smiled. “Hi, my name’s Sam Reilly. This is Tom Bower. I was told you might have got a recording of the dive platform when it was being set up?”
The man’s eyes brightened. “Hey, Sam Reilly, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Todd Ridley. That was a crazy stunt you pulled off back there. I figured for sure you’d drowned.”
“Thanks. I didn’t plan to stay down quite that long.”
“Come inside. I’ve got the camera still rolling upstairs.” He opened a bar fridge and pulled out a couple of beers. “You guys want a drink?”
“Sure.”
Ridley opened both drinks and handed them to him and Tom.
Sam took a mouthful. It was cold and delicious. “Thanks.”
Ridley opened one for himself and took a little more than a mouthful. “Follow me upstairs. It’s still recording automatically, but you can view what’s already been shot, simultaneously.” Turning to Sam, he asked, “So what are you looking for?”
“A friend of mine. He
’s meant to be one of the rescue divers here today, but I’m not sure he showed up. We were supposed to all come together this morning, but he wasn’t there, and I don’t see his boat around here.”
“But you think he’s here?” Ridley asked.
“Yeah. It’s not like him to miss the event.”
Ridley’s eyebrows narrowed. “Did you ask the organizers?”
“Yeah, but would you believe it, they don’t have a list of the volunteer rescue divers.”
“Go figure.”
Ridley led them up a spiral staircase and onto the teak-covered top deck. The Calypso appeared almost flat from above, with the lines of teak decking on the top deck perfectly aligned with those on the lower decks. To the aft, a two-seater Robinson 22 helicopter rested. On the top deck, a large tripod with a ten-foot periscope held a digital video camera. Next to it, a laptop on a small wooden table displayed the real-time image of the event from high above as it was being recorded. The camera’s wide lens showed a two-hundred and seventy-degree arc, capturing most of the flotilla, diving barge, and about a third of the Great Blue Hole’s surface.
Sam studied the live video feed, searching the faces of everyone he could see, as well as the few divers on the water’s surface. His eyes narrowed as he examined a few faces, but nothing stood out to him.
“No luck?” Ridley asked.
“No.”
“All right.” Leaving the continuous feed running, Ridley opened a new window that displayed the previous hour of recordings. He clicked play. “Here, have a look at this.”
Sam took another drink of his beer, and stared at the video recording. It showed some of the organizers setting up the diving barge. “Can you increase the speed?”
Ridley nodded. Pointing at the video controls, he said to Sam, “Help yourself.”
Sam sped up the feed, stopping it intermittently to examine any new divers as they entered the water. Ten minutes later, he reached the end of the recording.
Tom shook his head, “I don’t know, Sam. Your man either got here earlier, or he entered the water from behind us?”
Sam turned to face the clear blue water behind them. No one was on the surface, but that didn’t mean that his attacker couldn’t have entered unseen from that end of the flotilla. It would make more sense to do so, given he’d intended to murder someone.
Ridley looked up. “I’ve got to go meet someone. Feel free to stay here and keep an eye out for your friend if you want. There’s plenty of beer downstairs if you want it.”
Sam said, “Thanks, I appreciate it.”
Tom scanned the area for any divers getting out of the water. “Now what?”
Sam sighed. “Now we wait.”
Chapter Twenty
The warm midday sun glistened overhead, sending rays of light deep into the water.
Tom glanced at the still water and took another drink of his beer. “Tell me about the changes that have already happened.”
“What?” Sam asked.
“You said in the last three months the world has already undergone massive global changes due to this sudden shift in the magnetic poles, and the subsequent slowing of the ocean’s thermohaline circulations. What were they?”
Sam sighed heavily. “I’ll start as far south as Antarctica and work my way back a little closer to home, with what we’ve found so far. Like I said before, all of it could conceivably have occurred in any given year, but together it paints the picture of an impending doom. Some of these changes are small, but anyone with half a brain can see that it’s going to affect the entire world.”
Tom nodded. “Okay.”
“In Antarctica we have two main areas of concern currently, indicating rising global sea temperatures.” Sam removed a digital tablet from his backpack and opened up an image file, handing it to Tom. “Have a look at these.”
Tom took the tablet and studied the image. It depicted an aerial shot over snow-covered Antarctica. In the middle were three stunning blue lakes. Their brilliant shade of sapphire blue indicated the purity of the deep water forming above the ice. Tom recalled that the blue hue of the pure water was a common sight when he was in Antarctica searching for the man behind the Cassidy Project – it was caused by an intrinsic property of water that allowed only selective absorption and the scattering of white light. The effect here was beautiful, to say the least.
He smiled. “They’re quite magical.”
Sam nodded. “Truly stunning, if they weren’t so dangerous.”
“How so?”
“They’re known as supraglacial lakes and form as warm air heats the surface of an ice sheet to create a pond of meltwater. There are now more than eight thousand of them riddled throughout Antarctica like pockmarks.”
“They don’t belong there?”
“No. Such lakes are common in Greenland, silently eating away at the ice for more than thirty years, but are an entirely new phenomenon to Antarctica.” Sam took another drink of beer. “On the Langhovde Glacier in East Antarctica, these lakes have been draining into the floating ice below, which could have serious consequences for the stability of the entire ice shelf. In other cases, some of the fresh water has been documented to flow directly into the sea at the base of the glacier. This in turn has resulted in a massive influx of icy cold fresh water into salt water, which develops a tornado-like underwater current and further destroys the submerged glacier from below.”
“And this is all new?” Tom asked.
“The lakes were first discovered in 2010, but only in the past three months became so significant as to join each other through a series of rivers. The result of which has recently manifested in the calving of a piece of ice-shelf the size of Delaware from Larcen C, off the Antarctic Peninsula.”
“Go on.”
“In Australia, an entire ecosystem of Giant Kelp off the coast of Tasmania have been destroyed. Do you remember diving there nearly ten years ago, when we first searched for the Mahogany Ship?”
“How could I forget?” Tom’s eyes widened as he recalled the unique habitat. “What happened to it?”
“The East Australian Current, which is the Australian leg of the huge gyre that moves water around the Pacific, traditionally pushes warm water south along the coast of the mainland before turning east toward South America, and long before it hits Tasmania.”
Tom nodded. He knew the EAC well from his experience sailing the east coast of Australia. “With the recent shift in the magnetic poles something has gone awry?”
Sam nodded. “The warming global climate has discombobulated this once-reliable system. Huge eddies of hot, nutrient-poor water keep spinning down toward the Tasmanian coast. This in turn has caused it to become the fastest-warming body of water on Earth, its temperature rising at a speed of nearly three times that of the rest of the world’s oceans.”
Sam took another mouthful of beer and then continued. “The warming seas are now hot enough to support the spawning of the long-spined sea urchin, an invasive pest that scours the seafloor. Giant kelp normally booms and busts, ripped away by storms before reclaiming the territory. But now the urchins move in like plague-causing locusts, nibbling away the new strands of kelp before they can grow beyond their reach. The result is miles upon miles of bare rock, covered with black, spiny invaders.”
Tom closed his eyes and recalled the reef on which the kelp anchored itself, awash with color. Like some sort of unworldly creature, the Giant Kelp rose more than ninety feet from the seabed to the surface. Hues of red and orange glowed bright among the shifting tapestry of mustard, greens and browns.
He opened them again. “What a loss to the world…”
“It’s not just the Giant Kelp that’s been lost. An entire ecosystem has been destroyed with the loss of its habitat. Like the Eucalyptus trees that line Tasmania’s coastline above the water, the kelp themselves are a habitat. Nearly eighty percent of the marine animals are endemic to the area. With the destruction of their habitat, creatures as unique and strange as
the Weedy Sea Dragon, often described as the delicate parrot of the kelp jungle, will also become extinct.”
Tom glanced at two divers who climbed out of the water. Both appeared unharmed. A slight nod from Sam indicated that neither was his attacker.
Sam said, “Heading farther north, the Great Barrier Reef, which has struggled with the global rise in sea temperatures over the past decade, suffered tremendously with coral bleaching affecting nearly seventy percent of is unique reef, stripping its coral of its vibrant colors and suffocating the living organisms that have taken nearly eight thousand years to reach their current size.”
“I’ve heard about the coral bleaching. Australia’s been struggling with it for years now. I read last year that the predicted cost to their tourism if the reef was completely destroyed would mount into trillions of dollars.”
Sam nodded. “It’s not just in the southern hemisphere the world’s having problems. There are a number of signs here in the north that the delicate balance of life on this Earth is teetering toward our destruction.”
“What else?”
“Closer to home. The United States, Canada and much of Europe have suffered more wildfires in the past three months than we have seen in the past decade. There have been multiple minor earthquakes…”
Sam took a deep breath, and then shook his head. “Even last week, Hurricane Hilda formed farther north in the Atlantic than almost any other hurricane in history. It would have destroyed half of Manhattan, if it wasn’t for that sudden freak change in direction, that had it move mysteriously north and then east back out into the Atlantic where it dissipated.”
Tom glanced at a man fishing off his yacht. Despite being a UNESCO world heritage site and protected, some people ignored the rules. “Have you ever considered whether we’re supposed to survive?”
“No. Survival is the one common instinct, shared among all living creatures – we all want to survive.”
“I didn’t mean whether we wanted to or not – simply whether we should?” Tom’s jaw was set firm. “I mean, when you look back on the history of the human race, we haven’t exactly been kind to the planet, or the rest of those animals who we share it with, have we? Globally, when things go wrong, we always look at how to save ourselves and our profits, more than what is right.”
Code to Extinction Page 10
