Frozen Fire

by Evans, Bill; Jameson, Marianna

  Sam stared at her, blinked, and tried to focus on her words rather than her other attributes.

  “Uh.” He cleared his throat. “What do you mean by ‘troublesome’?”

  She dropped her hand to the table and opened the thick manila folder that had escaped his notice. “The numbers are odd. But they are consistently odd, so I think they may be accurate.”

  She moved around the small table to stand next to him, holding the sheaf of green-and-white striped printouts in her hands. “Here are the values since ten o’clock this morning. Here is what I find odd. Methane in its pure state is lighter than air, and so should rise. This isn’t rising. It’s hugging the water,” she said, pointing to the rows of small print. “The winds have been calm and steady down there and are predicted to remain so until this evening. So the concentration isn’t diminishing too much and the methane seems to be spreading laterally as it moves across the water. The wind is taking it almost directly toward the shore. There is a storm to the east, though, and the winds near the island are already beginning to change direction. That will blow the methane away from Taino and toward the Florida Keys.”

  Sam scanned the printouts. She was right. The numbers were odd. More than odd. They were crazy.

  He glanced at her. “Is something else showing up in the gas?”

  “I haven’t yet identified anything else but the gas is not pure methane. The hydrate beds in this region—can this be some variant of methane? Have the beds ever been sampled?”

  Sam shook his head as he continued to review the printouts, dropping to the next page, and then the next. “The water’s too deep and Taino won’t let anyone in except people associated with its own Climate Research Institute. And if they’ve done tests, they aren’t sayin’.” He frowned as he kept reading. “It could be a more pure form, like what they found in that Siberian lake bed a few years ago. But if it was purer, it would rise faster, not slower.” And we’d be heading for some serious atmospheric trouble.

  “Then could something be mixed into it?”

  “If there was something else in it, it would have shown up in the data,” he muttered.

  “So it’s just an anomaly?” Sabina asked, with such doubt in her voice that Sam looked up.

  “What are you getting at?” he asked.

  “Shouldn’t we do something to find out why the gas is behaving that way?”

  “Something like what?”

  She hesitated. “Well, tell someone.”

  “Tell who? And tell them what? NASA’s aware of what’s going on. GISS has been on it since it began. NOAA knows about it, too.”

  “But is anyone doing anything?”

  Sam put the papers on the table and looked at her. “Sabina, what are you talking about?”

  Even with her brows pulled together in a frown, the woman was stunning.

  She let out an abrupt breath in frustration. “Well, if the gas is not rising, it’s hugging the waterline. That would mean it’s creating an oxygen-depleted atmosphere at sea level, wouldn’t it? I mean, the concentration of methane is high. And if it’s not diffusing as it’s blowing toward shore, wouldn’t it start to have an effect on . . . things?”

  He stared at her blankly.

  “If there is too much methane in the mixture of air, wouldn’t people on the beach and on boats die when they breathed it in?” she said, her voice deepening and cracking a little.

  “Well, I suppose so, in theory. But—”

  “Oh, bugger this,” she snapped. Letting out a harsh breath, she reached out and flipped over several pages in the folder, then jammed her finger onto a page presenting a table. “I graphed it, Professor Briscoe. There’s a plume forming, and there’s nothing to stop it. The wind currents—” She flipped to the next sheet, a map of the area. “This tropical high is stationary, but”—she pointed—“this storm is building. The winds generally shift to the north-northwest here.” She moved her finger along the map. “And the next significant land masses are the Florida Keys, approximately fifty miles away. People live there. And they will die if this plume does not diffuse.”

  She looked up at him, tears shimmering in her eyes. “If I am wrong, please tell me. Please.”

  Shaken, Sam stared at her. “I need to review—”

  She shook her head. “No. No. Just tell me if I’m right or if I’m overlooking something, Dr. Briscoe. It’s a beautiful weekend and the big fantasy festival is under way in the Keys. There are thousands of people in the Keys now, on the beaches, in boats. If I’m right, then they are all in trouble.”

  That’s the fucking understatement of the year. How the hell could I not have seen this?

  Grabbing the folder of papers in one hand and Sabina’s wrist with the other, he pulled her through the sliding doors and into the kitchen.

  “Who else have you talked to about this?” he demanded.

  “No one. There’s no one around.”

  “Okay. Good.” He dropped her hand as he went to the dining room and strode over to the table where his laptop sat humming quietly. “Pull yourself together, Sabina. I need to introduce you to a friend of mine,” he said, sliding into the chair in front of his computer and beginning to type. “You ever had an urge to go to Washington, D.C.?”

  6:30 P.M., Sunday, October 26, Annaba, Algeria

  Sprawled on the low-slung sofa in the luxurious living area of his cliffside villa, Garner Blaylock watched the serious faces parade before him on the American cable news channel’s split screen. TERROR ON TAINO, a suitably sensationalistic title, was splashed in lurid red on a banner across the bottom of the screen, just above the ticker that continually fed the public’s appetite for disaster. Other networks were using similar labels to frighten and, therefore, lure viewers. NIGHTMARE IN PARADISE had been another good one. CARIBBEAN CHAOS was the weakest.

  For sheer entertainment value, the total package of hysteria, lack of information, and wild speculation was better than anything he’d watched in a long time. The reporters’ desperate desires to get the latest information about the crash and landslide was almost as intense as it had been on September 11, and almost as fruitless.

  What made the media scrum all the more amusing was that no one really knew what questions to ask or which expert to grill. The lineup had changed with the incidents. First there had been the aviation experts and so-called terrorism experts, then the diplomats and politicians, and finally the sailors and fishermen who had seen the plane come down and were eager to tell their inane, unnewsworthy stories in return for fifteen minutes of fame. After the landslide, the networks had scrambled to find earthquake experts, oceanographers, hydrogeologists, and tsunami experts willing to have microphones shoved in their faces.

  Despite all this entertainment, Garner’s patience was fraying. So far the media were all keeping quiet about what he considered an unexpected validation of his actions, the methane release. There had been a report of the bodies of twelve humpback whales found floating in the vicinity—regrettable casualties—but the so-called journalists were blaming the deaths on the landslide, not methane.

  The lack of attention was inexcusable. The methane release posed more danger to more people than anything else GAIA had ever done. It deserved the most acute interest. Yet not a single one of the parasites had mentioned it.

  It was just further proof that the slimy bastards were colluding; there was no doubt in Garner’s mind that every atmospheric scientist on the planet knew what was happening by now, yet no one was saying anything. Even the Internet was silent on the subject. It was more than bizarre. It was revealing. The total silence on the subject could only mean one of two things: Either they were scared shitless or they were waiting for someone to claim responsibility for what was going on.

  He stood up and stalked to the window, not seeing the lush landscape that was falling slowly into shadow. The thought of being outmaneuvered by the ignorati made him seethe.

  Spinning in his tracks, he stalked back to the room he’d set up as h
is office.

  If they’re waiting for a message, I’ll bloody well give them one.

  CHAPTER

  25

  11:30 A.M., Sunday, October 26, off the east coast of Islamorada, in the Florida Keys

  Fishin’ for Trouble, his father’s luxurious fifty-foot fishing boat, rode the light swell easily. Griffin Bradshaw, twenty-five, drowsy, sated, and sprawled next to his naked, sleeping girlfriend on the sunlight-flooded deck, enjoyed the motion. The warm breeze and easy rocking should have had him sleeping like a baby, but instead the sensations were keeping him awake. The fact that he couldn’t fall into a deep sleep came as a vague surprise. Considering all the sun, beer, and sex that he’d been indulging in for the last twenty-four hours, he was fairly amazed he could even move, or think.

  He stretched and sat up, then gingerly pulled himself to his feet. “Indulgence” was the word of the day. He was a couple of months into his last year of law school and he was going to enjoy every free moment he could squeeze out of it. Reality was waiting for him onshore as soon as he graduated; he would be joining the workforce without any break. A sought-after job at a top law firm in Miami awaited him, as did a brand-new South Beach condo. His father had bought the high-rise unit for him a year ago, while it was still on the drawing board, and the construction was nearly done. His mother was going to decorate it, and he’d move into it the weekend he graduated.

  Life is good and only getting better.

  The nearest other boat was a few hundred yards away, so he saw no reason to consider putting on any clothes. He rolled his shoulders and walked to the bow, then sank to the deck to watch the sky. It was a pure, eye-popping tropical blue and almost cloudless. The air was so hot that even the faint breeze didn’t help to cool him down.

  A series of heavy splashes pulled his attention toward the starboard side. He couldn’t see any disturbance from where he sat, but just because it had sounded as it if were close didn’t mean it was. Sound carried over water, that much he knew. It had been so clear though, and fairly loud, as if something heavy had fallen clumsily into the water and then thrashed for a few seconds.

  After a minute, he dismissed the sound as just an errant wave, closed his eyes and tilted his face to the sun again.

  Almost immediately, he heard the noise again. Griffin stood up this time, turning his head sharply. Something was thrashing in the water. He could see something cresting, then being pulled under the surface.

  Sharks enjoying a midday snack.

  A little uneasy, he sat back down, coughing slightly as he detected an odd stink in the air.

  Must be the gut gas of whatever that shark just ripped open.

  Before the thought was complete, the back of his throat began burning, and he felt almost light-headed. Figuring that it was a combination of the sun and probably still being a little buzzed from all the partying he’d done last night, Griffin stood up carefully and began to make his way to the stern and his girlfriend. Being flat on his back would help.

  Feeling even more dizzy, he grabbed the low handrail to steady himself but a glance over the side made him stop short. The bodies of three dolphins floated in the dark, sparkling water, bumping gently against the hull, white bellies up.

  He inhaled deeply to clear his head, and the breath seared his lungs.

  The panicked shout he intended came out instead as a dull, scraping bray, and he fell to his knees, leaning over the rail at a precarious angle. Choking, needing air, he instinctively took another deep breath. The toxic atmosphere flooded his lungs and he clutched his throat, tearing at his skin.

  The lack of oxygen in his brain made his equilibrium falter, his vision blur and darken. His last sensation was of pitching head first over the rail, his terror complete.

  Before he hit the water, bouncing off the nearest dolphin, Griffin Bradshaw was dead.

  11:35 A.M., Sunday, October 26, aboard the Marjory Stoneman Douglas, off the coast of Taino

  Cyn lay in the claustrophobically small room that boasted three bunks stacked vertically on each of three walls. The other wall held a collection of nine lockers and the door, which at the moment was locked. She’d been brought to the boat on a Jet Ski. Between the excruciating pain of her broken arm and the shock of seeing what had happened to Günter’s boat, much of that trip was a blur.

  She’d been hauled aboard the research vessel and someone who wasn’t a doctor had set her arm and put it in a stiff sling. Then the captain of the boat, a woman, and an English guy who was the captain of another boat, had grilled her for much too long about who she was and why she was there and what she’d seen. Then the guy who wasn’t a doctor had handed her some Vicodin and told someone else to take her to the cabin.

  Right now, confinement was okay with her. They’d have to take her to a hospital at some point, but as long as they kept the drugs flowing, the pain in her arm was a dull throb, and the rest of her couldn’t get too excited about too much. The steady rocking of the boat and the intermittent hum of voices was relaxing. Sleep seemed like a good thing.

  11:45 A.M., Sunday, October 26, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.

  It was getting late, and all he’d had to eat so far was a stale muffin from the cafeteria early that morning. Not that Tom was particularly hungry, but it would have been nice to have something in his stomach to absorb all the coffee he’d drunk in the past six hours.

  “In other words, there’s been no significant addition to the information we had early this morning.” Lucy’s voice was cool and quiet, and more damning because of it.

  Tom Taylor fought the urge to run a frustrated hand over his face. “Depends on how you define ‘significant’—relevant to the problems or the solutions.”

  “I define it as anything that will move us closer to having some answers.”

  “In that case, no. We’ve gotten more information that has led us to a lot more questions, some of which are of particular interest.”

  “Such as?”

  He glanced at the BlackBerry in his hand as he began to answer her, but stopped before he could finish the first syllable. With only the barest glance up at her, he began walking to her desk. “Are you logged on to an external network?”

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “Looks like Garner got bored a few minutes ago,” he muttered, sitting down at her desk and tapping a key to bring the screen to life. He looked up as she came to a stop next to him. “You really should lock down your computer when you’re not at your desk.”

  “I’m four feet away from it,” she ground out.

  “Yes, but now I’m driving. What if I’d been a bad guy? You’d be tied up in the corner and I’d be reading the last few Presidential Daily Briefings.”

  “Damn it. Get away from there,” she ordered, but he was already logged on to the Web and navigating to the URL that had appeared on his BlackBerry.

  “Well, would you look at that. He’s taking credit where credit is due.”

  Lucy forgot her anger and bent closer to the screen, her head close to Tom’s.

  The digitized image was of the highest quality, as GAIA’s messages always were. Garner Blaylock’s vanity would settle for nothing less. So much of his message relied on his charisma, his personality, his person, and he knew how to maximize it.

  He stood on what appeared to be a stone-walled terrace that rose above a low-slung village. The first fiery streaks of a sunset glowed behind him, throwing into relief his defiant, pirate-king stance. Powerfully built, evenly tanned, and bare-chested, Garner Blaylock stared into the camera, his eyes full of blistering anger, his mouth set, his shoulder-length, dark blond hair blowing in the evening wind.

  Tom clicked on the play button and leaned back in Lucy’s chair to watch the performance.

  “Yesterday, the Western media declared that a tragedy has befallen the world,” Blaylock began, the audio synchronized perfectly with the video. “They are right, but they have labeled the wrong event. The real tragedy is not that the poin
tless lives of six airplane crew members ended and that nine demons of the industrialized world have been eradicated. I take credit for that—full credit. My organization, GAIA, took those lives in order to bring to the world’s attention a greater evil, one that has led to a tragedy of epic, eternal proportions.”

  He paused and swept back his rock-star hair with an elegance that would put a dancer to shame. “Why were so many so-called titans of industry on one plane, headed to a small island that has no industry? That is the question everyone is asking and that only I can answer.”

  He paused for effect, then continued, “Dennis Cavendish was going to show them his latest project, a project designed to make him even wealthier than he already is by raping the Earth to provide humans with more fuel. Fuel. Cavendish has devised a way to mine methane hydrate from the seafloor, which would keep in motion the world’s death march toward oblivion.

  “And the irony is that his underwater operation, which he was preparing to tout as the only source of ‘clean’ fuel, a fuel that would allow polluter nations and rapine industries to maintain their status quo, has now become the world’s biggest nightmare, one from which the Earth and Her inhabitants will never awaken. The landslide that happened in Taino earlier today was triggered by bombs placed by my people. That landslide destroyed Cavendish’s plans. The near pristine waters of Taino are now spewing methane into the atmosphere. This will increase global warming faster than any worst-case scenario has ever predicted.”

  He smiled into the camera, a smile so beautiful, so beatific, it belonged on a cathedral wall. “We can all thank Dennis Cavendish and the miserable parasites who died on his plane for providing an up-close and personal lesson in what a ‘scorched earth’ approach to business really means.”