Frozen Fire

by Evans, Bill; Jameson, Marianna

  “At the moment, we are,” she snapped. “We’re doing everything we can to get back online.”

  “Fuck that. You’re not here to—”

  At that moment, the door to the communications building opened and the director stuck his head out. “We’ve lost communications with the boats.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Dennis exploded. “The boats are on radio channels. We can’t lose that. They have nothing to do with the network.”

  “Well, the radio channels are still open,” the engineer admitted. “We haven’t been using them because of the likelihood of being monitored by all the uninvited company. But our secure lines are encrypted; they bounce off a backup transponder we leased on a maritime bird.”

  “On a leased satellite?” Dennis looked back to Micki. “How the hell does a problem happen with that?”

  “It happens on the ground,” she snapped, her voice rising. “It’s not the transponders that are the problem. The problem is on the island and the boats. The problem is in the system.”

  “Okay, thanks,” Dennis said, glancing at the engineer, who was watching them impassively.

  The other man withdrew into the building and the door closed.

  “How much of this is connected to what happened yesterday, Micki?” he asked bluntly. “And I’m not talking about any God-damned jet fuel contamination or dirty air filters.”

  Micki met his eyes. “I’m not a believer in coincidences, Dennis. Are you?”

  “So the plane was a diversion and the real target is Atlantis?”

  “Seems logical.” She hesitated and glanced away. “I heard one of the guys muttering that it’s almost as if a command were executed that changed the codes. Or code. He might have said ‘code,’ as in it might have been that software was rewritten rather than just a code in the software was changed.”

  Her words ricocheted through his brain. “A command was executed that changed the codes.”

  “What are you doing about it?” he demanded.

  “Well, nothing right now,” she snapped. “The only thing anyone could do is review the monitor logs, but I wouldn’t know where to tell someone to start looking. It would be a waste of time.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, it could be that someone went in yesterday and messed around, but it could also be a rogue executable that’s causing all this trouble. A logic bomb could have been embedded days ago, or even months ago, with a trigger set to activate at a certain date and time.”

  “Who’s authorized to do that? Get into the code and change it, I mean?”

  She paused and gave him a look that chilled him. “There are about four programmers who are authorized to do it, Dennis, but all of them need either Victoria or me to log them on and log them off. And I haven’t logged anyone on in months.”

  His cold anger turned to hot fear, but he refused to show it. “Damn it, Micki. Stop giving me the runaround. Give me some fucking answers.”

  She tilted her head and gave him an oddly calm look. “I’m trying to, Dennis, but, unfortunately, I think that the person with the good answers made a fast getaway. She’s probably having breakfast in some upscale café overlooking the Potomac right about now.”

  He said nothing, just stared at her.

  “Look, I know she’s your little pet, Dennis, and I know what I said last night really pissed you off. So I really hate to say this, but she’s the only one who could be behind something like this.” Micki grabbed his arm and glared at him with hot, furious eyes. “She wrote the rules. She knew the codes, the software, the—”

  “Get in touch with Atlantis. It will take too long to send someone down in a sub, so ping them with sonar. Use Morse code or the underwater telephone. I don’t care what you have to do, but I want the habitat locked down and all those people evacuated topside immediately. I don’t know what the hell is going on, but I’m not going to let anyone hurt the operation,” he said grimly.

  Without another word, Dennis yanked his arm from her grasp, then turned and began walking toward the cottage that housed his office. His field of vision had narrowed to the path and not much more, and all of it was tinged with red.

  Damn it to hell, why can’t I tell who’s lying? Why don’t I know who wants me dead?

  Seconds later, Micki was beside him again, frowning and a little out of breath. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to my office, and then I’m going to the airstrip. And then I’m going to Washington,” he said in a voice so low it was almost a growl.

  “Don’t, Dennis,” she said, something so close to panic in her voice that he stopped and looked at her. Her eyes were wide with alarm.

  “Why not?”

  “We need you here,” she burst out, clutching both of his forearms. “I need you here. The mining operation—What am I supposed to—Dennis, you can’t—”

  “Don’t fucking tell me what I can’t do, Micki. And get the hell out of my way.” He pushed past her and into the building, leaving her standing on the pergola-covered walkway. As he passed the window near his assistant’s desk, he watched Micki turn and sprint toward the low cottage on the other side of the path, which housed her office.

  After one quick look at his face as he crossed the small anteroom, Leanne rose and followed Dennis into his office.

  “I don’t know what the hell Micki is up to but I’m not going to wait on her. Get down to the comms shack and tell them to ping the habitat and issue an emergency evac order. Then send someone over to the dock to let them know to expect everyone to be coming up on the subs,” Dennis said over his shoulder as he rounded the corner of his desk. Before he was even sitting down, he began tapping at his keyboard. “Get whichever pilot is on call and tell him we’re flying. I want to leave for D.C. as soon as I can, on whatever jet is going to get me there the fastest.”

  When there was no response from his assistant, he looked up in annoyance. Leanne was standing in the doorway to his office, wide-eyed, her mouth forming a silent “O” as she stared past him at what he knew was a blank wall behind his desk.

  “What?” he demanded, leaping to his feet. He froze and caught his breath as a bizarre sensation of dizziness passed through him.

  A crash made him spin around to see the tall, heavy crystal vase that Leanne kept filled with flowers on his credenza now lying in a few large pieces in a puddle on the floor.

  “How the hell did that—”

  “Earthquake,” the woman breathed as she turned and ran to the doorway, bracing herself in it.

  God Almighty. The drilling. Something’s gone wrong.

  “This isn’t fucking California, Leanne. Nothing’s going to fall on you. Get the hell outside,” he said, shoving her out the door and sprinting for the beach.

  CHAPTER

  16

  8:45 A.M., Sunday, October 26, Taino

  The first bomb detonated with a muted pop that registered as a small blip on every seismograph within two thousand miles. A few seconds later, those spikes on the seismographs lengthened as the undersea cliff’s face-wall shattered like a mirror tapped with the back of a spoon, with hundreds of fissures simultaneously snaking across the rock in all directions.

  Gentle puffs of dust emerged from the cracks into the absolute blackness of the depths, turning within seconds to terrifying billows reminiscent of thick smoke as pulverized rock was forced from its place in the wall into the now-frenzied churn of the water column. A roar louder than that of a descending jet erupted in the frigid, dense water. Concussive sound waves sped simultaneously in all directions, instantly bursting the delicate sound arrays in the bodies of sharks, dolphins, and humpback whales that lived in pristine security at the foot of the island sanctuary, deafening the people in the habitat, and startling the submariners eavesdropping miles away beyond the mesh barriers.

  Tsunami watchers throughout the Caribbean and Central Atlantic scrambled for their computer keyboards as automated alert systems began to spew high-priority warnings.

/>   Barely two minutes later, the same scenario—the detonation, the shattered facewall, the thunderous roar—was repeated a short distance away, unleashing chaos of apocalyptic dimensions.

  Pockets of air, hidden for millennia deep within the caves that had pockmarked the cliff’s face, exploded as the rock surrounding them fell away. Bubbles churned the water column that was already choked with dense, billowing masses of sand, rock dust, and gravel. Huge slices of rock were sheared from the wall by the explosions. Some slid straight down along the disintegrating face of the cliff, others somersaulted away from the wall in movements that would have been described as balletic in their grace had any human been there to witness them.

  It only took minutes for the first enormous, free-falling slabs of ancient stone and fossils to reach Atlantis. The first impact decided the fate of the habitat and its residents.

  CHAPTER

  17

  8:45 A.M., Sunday, October 26, Taino

  The instant the hypersensitive seismograph in the habitat’s operations center recorded the first shudder of rock, alarms sounded and Marie knew that her brush with glory, and likely her life, was over.

  The noise of the sirens and the roar of the earthquake filled the air so completely that thought was impossible. Knowing that this wasn’t a drill and that they might have only seconds to save themselves, the crew had to rely on their training.

  Without bothering to shut down or secure their terminals, everyone abandoned their workstations and fled in panic to their assigned submersibles, which were docked at strategic places around the habitat and kept continually pressurized and charged for immediate departures under emergency circumstances.

  By the time Marie’s group had reached the airlock at the entrance of their submersible, each of the habitat’s modular pods had been sealed off. An eerily calm automated voice was relating the damage and destruction that was taking place. Far from reassuring, the disembodied voice added an absurd surreality to the moment.

  The brazen roar of effervescing water and collapsing steel resounded through the structure. The structure shuddered with each massive blow; between the strikes, the crew could clearly hear the staccato rain of gravel and rock pummeling the exterior skin. It was as sharp and terrifying to hear as machine-gun fire at close range.

  Marie pressed her thumb to a small screen to open the submersible’s hatch and glanced behind her. The crew who had followed her, all highly trained scientists and engineers, cowered in the tiny space of the airlock. One of the women had fallen to her knees, hands over her ears, and was rocking while sobbing unintelligible words that held the cadence of the Twenty-third Psalm. Another, almost catatonic with fear, had her arms folded tightly to her chest. Her fists opened and closed spasmodically, her fingernails raking bloody bands into the bare flesh of her upper arms. The men were just as bad, one sobbing and two rigid with terror.

  Fools. “Move,” Marie snapped at the woman on the floor. “You have no time to pray. Follow me.”

  To a person, they remained frozen, staring at her, fear transforming their features into grotesque masks.

  With a violence she’d never imagined she possessed, Marie lunged forward and grabbed two people, dragging them to the opening door of the submersible.

  “Get in,” she ordered in a harsh whisper, knowing she had perhaps seconds to spare. “You will die if you don’t. Get in.”

  The two she’d assaulted seemed to regain their senses. They practically fell over the threshold into the small sub and scrambled into seats.

  The other three did nothing. Marie’s brain, suffused with adrenaline, was focused on flight, not fight, and her heart was pumping too fast to allow for any more compassion. “Get in the sub,” she shouted as the pod shuddered ominously. Almost instantly, the structure shook again and the piercing scream of shearing metal stabbed into Marie’s brain.

  “I am leaving. Stay here and you will die,” she spat. She flung herself into the sub and gave the group one last look. Wide-eyed with terror, no one moved.

  After pulling the heavy hatch closed, Marie threw herself into the pilot’s seat and wasted no time starting the sub’s motor and initiating the sequence that would disengage the sub from the loading bay. She ignored the suffocating smell of human fear that permeated the small space, tuned out the sobbing of the man and woman strapped into the small seats behind her, and refused to look through the hatch’s porthole to see if any of those she’d left behind had roused themselves.

  It was too late for them. They’d made their choice.

  She and the others had chosen to live and whatever she had to do, she would fight for that. Gritting her teeth, unconsciously murmuring prayers she hadn’t thought of since childhood, Marie moved by rote through the sequences she’d practiced endlessly during her training.

  She began to carefully inch the freed submersible away from the habitat’s failing, buckling structure. Having to navigate using only the instruments was another torment in the Hell she faced, but she had no choice. The visibility on the other side of the porthole was nil and, at this depth, the slightest impact with the habitat—or even a minor collision with any of the falling rock—would mean instant, horrifying death.

  She was so focused on her task that the sound of a voice coming through her headphones startled her for a second. The feeling was followed immediately by a wave of relief: they weren’t alone. Their “underwater telephone”—a hull-mounted transducer that enabled them to send heavily encrypted messages over short distances using high frequencies—hadn’t been destroyed.

  “Atlantis Alpha, over. Atlantis Alpha, over. Please reply.”

  The voice was slightly garbled against a background dense with white noise.

  Never so glad to hear anything in her entire life, Marie grabbed the transmitter with a grip that could have crushed it and replied. “Contact, Atlantis Alpha. This is Atlantis Delta. Three aboard. Transiting away Sub Bay One-Zero.”

  “Copy, Atlantis Delta. We’re clear of the structure. Heading due west and climbing. Five aboard. Atlantis Alpha over.”

  “Copy, Atlantis Alpha. Atlantis Beta reporting. Two aboard. Clear of the structure. Moving west-southwest.”

  Marie bit her lips until she felt the sharp sting of her flesh breaking. The blood welled warm from the puncture and the taste of it seemed overpowering.

  Ten people.

  Only ten of the thirty-six currently onsite had gotten away. There should have been more; had the others on duty not succumbed to fear, they’d have had a chance at survival. Their other colleagues, who had been off shift and probably asleep in the living quarters on the opposite side of the habitat, hadn’t had a chance. Though the diameter of the modular, ring-shaped structure was only eighty feet, the side of the habitat that contained the living quarters had been critically closer to the torrent of boulders. Marie had heard the automated damage control system report the destruction of those pods during the first few seconds of chaos.

  When the head-up display on the cockpit’s dashboard indicated she was completely clear of the structure, instinct drove her to instantly put the submersible into a tight banking turn and maneuver the craft through the roiling turbulence toward the open sea. She had to get far away from the chaos of the island’s waters, which were becoming ever more dense with debris from what had to be a landslide. Whatever had triggered it, the rain of boulders and gravel meant that portions of the four thousand vertical feet of walls above the habitat were turning to rubble. Moving away far and fast was her only hope.

  Although every second she survived boosted Marie’s confidence that they might survive, there was no sense of sanctuary inside the tight quarters of the submersible. Even with the brilliant megawatt searchlights on, utter darkness masked everything outside except the violent swirls of abrasive rock dust that smashed into the sub, rocking it, scouring it. Visibility beyond the now heavily abraded convex portholes was zero. In some ways, their blindness to the chaos outside was a blessing.

  That t
hought had barely formed in her head when, in front of the sub and much too close, Marie suddenly saw a hulking silhouette loom into view. The image was blurred, as if it were a dark and ghostly hologram against a wall of darkest black, but she knew without any doubt that she was looking at the pipeline and its superstructure swaying drunkenly in the churning water.

  She had sent the sub toward the mining operation instead of the open sea.

  A panicked glance at the inertial navigation system display confirmed her worst fear: The sub had somehow lost its bearings. The delicate electronics linking the gyroscopes to the onboard computer had crashed.

  Steering clear of this ripening Hell would be nothing short of miraculous.

  Anger fueled her frustration and fear and, switching to manual override, she performed an emergency reboot, hardly daring to take her eyes off the dim nightmare playing out before her eyes.

  The soft, reassuring beeps that indicated the computer was once again functioning had barely penetrated the tense atmosphere in the sub when Marie began to punch in new coordinates. Glancing up from the keypad, Marie saw a huge, black, amorphous object strike one of the support towers, wrenching it away from the enormous pipeline. She watched in mute horror as the pipeline and its entire support structure lurched precariously and then, impossibly, snapped.

  The graceful descent of the mining platform’s limbs and the ensuing rush of water being sucked into the massive pipe was an amazing sight. One that, should she live, would haunt her forever.

  Choking back searing tears of terror and loss, every muscle and tendon in her body rigid, Marie steadied the small sub on its new course away from the habitat, away from everything she’d spent so many years designing, building, bringing to life.

  CHAPTER

  18

  8:57 A.M., Sunday, October 26, Taino