Frozen Fire

by Evans, Bill; Jameson, Marianna

  “Angela,” Miley cried and dropped to her knees, smoothing back the soft blond hair from the distorted, darkening face. The oxygen tank was too heavy and the tubes had little give, so Miley reached up and pulled them out of her nose, seconds later realizing they were the only reason she was still alive.

  As she breathed in, her lungs filled with a heavy, burning emptiness. Groping weakly for the tubes that lay near to her on the floor, she felt the suffocating pressure of death swelling inside her head, pushing on her eyes, and then she fell forward. She felt the cool stream of air on her weakening fingers as her hand curled around the thin tubes—

  CHAPTER

  33

  8:45 P.M., Sunday, October 26, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.

  When Tom walked into to Lucy’s office after a quick knock on the door, she looked up from her computer screen, then leaned back in her chair. She was exhausted. It showed on her face, in her eyes, in the way she held herself.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “I was just thinking of a term I used to use a lot. I haven’t used it lately, but it just came to mind. Can’t imagine why.”

  “You came over here to tell me that?”

  “I thought you’d enjoy it.”

  She put down the pen she held in her hand and folded her arms across her chest. “Let me guess. Is it FUBAR?”

  “Hell, no. I mean, it fits—this situation is fucked up beyond all recognition—but I use that one all the time. Do you remember what BOHICA means?”

  She didn’t crack a smile, didn’t even blink. “Bend over, here it comes again.”

  He acknowledged her memory with a nod. “Very good. It’s an expression that might come in handy in the next few hours or days,” he replied, seating himself in one of the chairs in front of her desk. “The winds near Taino are holding steady. The plume is maintaining a fast and firm course toward Miami.”

  “Is there any good news?”

  “Yes, actually. A small system from the Gulf brought some rain to parts of Miami tonight, so that will help keep things under control.”

  “So if we cloud-seed—”

  Tom shook his head. “Briscoe doesn’t think that will do much.”

  “So we’re screwed,” she said dryly.

  “I’ve come around to the idea of the microbes.”

  “Somehow, I knew you would.” She stifled a yawn. “Any more reports of deaths?”

  “The coast guard has found a few more boats adrift off the Keys. Some of the bodies showed signs of being cyanotic, but they’d also been roasting in the sun for several hours. We probably won’t know any more for a while. Anyone looking for dead people would be dead soon themselves, right? Unless the wind changes direction.” He sighed. “God, I just love election years in South Florida.”

  Lucy stood up abruptly, as if he’d poked her with a lit match. “I’m not in the mood for your black humor, so just shut the fuck up if you can’t say anything constructive.”

  For the first time in a long time, Tom felt undisguised shock course through him and he rose to his feet, concerned more at her actions than her words. “I’m sorry. What’s wrong?”

  “What the hell is going right?” she snapped.

  “Lucy.” It came out so softly, he barely realized he’d said it.

  She brushed it away and took a harsh breath. “I have family in Miami, okay? They can’t be moved,” she said tightly. “Subject closed. Have any of those bomb doctors come up with any ideas?”

  Knowing she would resent and likely never forgive any show of sympathy, he simply shook his head. “They’re still in a huddle with Briscoe.”

  “Well, I need some answers. Fast.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. Her color was high and her body was so tense she was practically throwing off sparks. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going back to the president. We need gas masks and we need evacuations.”

  “It might already be too late. Even if it isn’t, he’ll never go for it.”

  “The hell he won’t—”

  Tom leaned across the desk and grasped her wrist, jerking her toward him and forcing her to meet his eyes. “Lucy, think about it. There’s nowhere for anyone to go.”

  9:50 P.M., Sunday, October 26, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.

  “Dr. Briscoe, Director Denton said you should see this.”

  Sam looked up to see a young woman standing at his elbow with a manila folder in her hands. He’d been so absorbed by the chaos on his screen that he hadn’t even heard her come in.

  “Thanks,” he said, taking the folder as he sat back and rubbed his burning eyes. The hours spent in the glare of the computer screen were taking their toll. Taking a breath to clear his head, he glanced down at the folder. The top was covered with thick blue stripes, with the words TOP SECRET stamped in large letters in the center.

  Oh, hell. What now?

  He flipped open the folder and began reading an e-mail sent from some department in NOAA that he’d never even heard of. Seconds later he jumped to his feet, cursing, as a bad excitement flooded his brain.

  “What is it?” Marty asked, already on his way to Sam’s side.

  “God damn son of a bitch,” Sam roared, shoving the paper at Marty, who took it and scanned it as quickly as Sam had.

  Sam barely had time to shove a hand through his hair and tug on the roots before Marty raised his eyes, wide with disbelief, to Sam’s face.

  “This has to be wrong, Sam. It has to be,” he said quietly.

  “No, Marty,” Sam said, his voice full of loathing at the results on the paper, at Dennis Cavendish. “Between the satellites doin’ gas spectrometry and the devices they’ve been droppin’ into the plumes for the last few hours, I gotta believe this.”

  “Sam, that methane can’t be converting to phyrruluxine. It . . . it can’t. It’s got to be—”

  Sam looked at his oldest friend, who seemed to have aged a lot in the last few hours. Even the dancing hula girls on his shirt were starting to sag. “Forget ‘can’t,’ Marty. It is, and all bets are off. What’s comin’ out of the water is adulterated methane. What’s blowin’ ashore is phyrruluxine. You do the math.”

  Marty stared at him. “The dennisium.”

  Sam shook his head. “Whatever is in that dennisium is causing one helluva transformation.”

  Both men looked up as Victoria Clark and Lucy Denton entered the room. Victoria walked directly to Sam, who was trying to ignore the clawing nausea in his stomach. What fresh Hell was she bringing him?

  “The woman our people picked up from the clipper is Cynthia Davison,” she said quietly, searching his eyes.

  Thank God. Sam’s legs nearly went out from under him as relief and emotion threatened to choke him.

  “Excuse me,” he muttered as he sank into a chair. He buried his face in his hands, his breath hard and choppy as it fought its way past the aching lump that had suddenly formed in his throat.

  A light hand came to rest on his shoulder. “I’m so glad for you, Sam. She’s got a dislocated shoulder and a broken wrist, and is pretty bruised and shaken up, but she’s otherwise okay. We’ll get her back to you soon,” Victoria said softly.

  Sam nodded, then stood up, wiping his hands across his wet face. “Thank you, Ms. Clark. Thank you.” Taking a deep breath, he shook his head and looked around the room. “Now back to our regularly scheduled programmin’. Ms. Denton, we got trouble. There’s phyrruluxine in the plume.”

  She frowned. “What is that?”

  “It’s a highly toxic, highly flammable gas. It’s not something that methane typically converts to. Make that never converts to. Not without help.” Sam shook his head. “Phyrruluxine is bad, Ms. Denton. Worse than methane. It’s even worse than hydrogen sulfide, but stinks just as bad. Seriously nasty stuff. You don’t want it blowin’ around,” he said.

  “Do we have a solution?” she asked quietly.

  His heart rate still coming down, Sam shoved h
is hands in his pockets and shrugged. “Marty found some researchers with live methanotrophic colonies. Some have agreed to begin building the colonies and to give them to us.”

  “You don’t sound pleased.”

  “I’ve told you before, this is dangerous, Ms. Denton. We’ll be gettin’ all different bugs, and we’ll be sendin’ ’em into an unknown and unpredictable environment.” Sam shrugged as he watched Lucy’s intelligent, expressionless face. “Microbes can mutate just as fast as their environments do. We’ve gotten an idea of some of what was in that dennisium, but not its original molecular structure, which can make a difference. What we do know is that the interaction between methane and dennisium is supposed to take place under extreme pressure at low temperatures, and the interaction is supposed to be with methane hydrate, not methane gas. So that’s three parameters that have changed already. The new mixture has been exposed to air, sunlight, heat, and surface pressure for about twelve hours, and bad things are happenin’. The steady and, frankly, ma’am, alarmin’ production of phyrruluxine may be just the beginnin’. At this point, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say anything is possible, includin’ some sort of chain reaction.”

  “What sort of chain reaction?” Lucy asked cautiously.

  Sam shrugged and picked up the top secret file folder, then smacked it with the back of his other hand. “Could be a spontaneous air burst. Or another change in the chemical composition. Hard to say. There’s no way of knowing what to expect or when to expect it. But there’s goin’ to be a lot more dead people on the ground soon.”

  Without commenting, Lucy turned to Marty. “Do you have a list of the colonies that will be made available to us and their locations?”

  He nodded.

  “Good. E-mail it to me.” She paused. “Just out of curiosity, how big are these colonies?”

  Marty adjusted his glasses. “They range from a few thousand microbes to a few million. Lab sized.”

  She frowned. “How long will it take to get more if we need them?”

  “Some of the bugs replicate in as few as six hours, some take longer.”

  “Oh.” She looked slightly confused. “What size containers will we need to transport them?”

  Sam coughed to cover up a choking laugh, and Marty looked at him.

  “A few shoeboxes ought to do it. All the colonies are, Ms. Denton, are petri dishes or lab beakers containing some agar that’s been smeared with a few microbes. You make sure they’re held in an environment at the right temperature with the right amount of light, and let ’em replicate,” Sam replied. “No matter how many microbes you have in one spot, they’re too small to see with the naked eye.”

  Lucy’s face didn’t change color but the way she tightened her lips and straightened her shoulders made it clear that she realized she should have known the answer to her own questions.

  “Thank you, Dr. Briscoe, Dr. Collins. Please continue what you were doing,” she said stiffly, then turned to leave the room.

  2:15 A.M., Monday, October 27, Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.

  Victoria had been delivered to her hotel at midnight. Now, waiting with her security detail in the lobby for a driver to pick her up to take her back to the bland building housing Lucy’s office, she was glad she had taken a shower before crawling into bed for a brief nap.

  No matter how long this meeting lasted, she knew this was just the beginning of her day.

  The driver was unexceptional: clean-cut, silent, and too highly trained to be ferrying even the most high-value guests around the city. Before too long she found herself back in Director Denton’s office, with Lucy’s assistant offering her a cup of coffee.

  “Thanks.” Taking the mug from her, Victoria sat. Lucy was behind her desk, a phone pressed to her ear. How she managed to look so fresh when she obviously hadn’t slept was a mystery.

  With an abrupt word, Lucy hung up the phone and looked straight at her. “Thanks for coming. We believe phase three of Blaylock’s plan has been put into effect.”

  Victoria set her mug on the table next to her with suddenly shaking hands. “There’s nothing left on Taino to blow up.”

  The barest hint of a cold smile crossed Lucy’s face. “Not Taino. Everywhere else. A computer virus has hit every major bank, heading west from Tokyo. We’ve got the North American banks on alert, but based on how it’s been spreading, the virus is already embedded and is just awaiting a timed activation.” She took a sip of her coffee. “You’re a computer security expert, aren’t you, Ms. Clark?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you help us?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. We want you to contact Blaylock.”

  Victoria recoiled. “I thought you meant with the virus.”

  Now Lucy smiled for real. “Thank you, but that’s not necessary. We know who wrote it and what it looks like. It’s been altered somewhat from what we were told it would be, but we’ve got people on it. It—”

  Lucy’s voice faded as the meaning of her words sank in, and Victoria interrupted her, blood surging in anger. “You know who wrote it? You have people inside GAIA? Why didn’t you stop this?” she demanded. “How could you have let this—any of this—happen?”

  Lucy recoiled in surprise for just a second, then met Victoria’s eyes with a cool expression. “Yes, we know who wrote the virus code. Yes, we have contacts inside GAIA. As far as preventing what has happened, Ms. Clark, you know as well as I do that no intelligence or security operation is airtight.”

  “But you’ve let people die—”

  “Ms. Clark,” Lucy replied, her words slicing through the air like a razor through flesh, “let me remind you that it was your government that made this possible, not mine. Obviously, had we known specifically what Blaylock was going to do, we would have prevented it. Had we known what Dennis Cavendish was doing, we would have been able to anticipate trouble. As it happens, we didn’t learn about either in time. So might I suggest that you forget about pointing fingers and focus on the issues at hand.”

  Knowing Lucy was right and hating her for it, Victoria reined in her anger and gave her a brief nod.

  “Thank you. As I was saying, the virus won’t melt down the world markets the way Blaylock intended it to. He’s a narcissist and a control freak, so this failure should send him closer to the edge. He may even want to vent. What I’d like you to do is find out what Blaylock wants. I’m fairly certain we can arrange a linkup. Would you talk with him?”

  Her composure nearly back in place, Victoria tried not to react. “Why me?”

  “First of all, he knows you, or of you.” Lucy shrugged. “He’s penetrated your very thorough and very impressive security perimeter at least twice. Once with Lieutenant Colonel Watson and once with whomever is the insider still on Taino, presumably Micki Crenshaw. Secondly, you’re a smart, attractive woman, and we know he likes smart, attractive women. And he likes to be blunt and to shock people. My impression is that you don’t shock easily, and that alone may rattle his cage a bit. He also doesn’t know you’re working with us. Are you willing?”

  Before Victoria could formulate an answer, there was a quiet knock on the door and a young woman with a serious expression on her face entered the room. Without a word, she crossed to Lucy and handed her a sheet of paper, then turned and left.

  As Lucy read, Victoria saw an ominous expression ripple over her face. A muscle in her cheek flexed rapidly.

  Setting the paper face down on her desk, Lucy got to her feet abruptly. “Circumstances have changed. I won’t need to put you in contact with Garner Blaylock. Please excuse me, Ms. Clark.”

  It took a few seconds for Victoria to register that she was being dismissed.

  “Of course. I’ll be in the conference room,” Victoria said hurriedly as she rose to her feet and left the room.

  That son of a bitch. If he were in front of me now, I’d kill him. Slowly. Viciously. With pleasure.

  Livid, Lucy watched the door clo
se behind a wary Victoria Clark. The instant she was alone, she picked up her phone with shaking hands and called Tom.

  “Where are you?” she demanded when he answered.

  Typically, he displayed no surprise. “In my office.”

  “I need some air,” she said. “Meet me at the elevators.”

  She hung up without waiting for his reply.

  Tom arrived at the elevator lobby at the same time she did and they rode in silence to the ground floor. Under the watchful gaze of the MP at the security desk, they swiped their smart cards and exited the rear of the building at street level.

  The night was beautiful, chilly and clear with a breeze strong enough to blow the cobwebs out of her head. But it still took ten minutes of walking briskly along the frosty, artificially bright streets of the base until Lucy considered her thoughts coherent enough to try to put them into words.

  Slipping her hand around Tom’s arm, she tugged him in the direction of the razor-wire-topped fence that ran along the bank of the Potomac. Lucy stopped near the fence, right at the edge of the parking lot, and stared at the dark water.

  Reagan National Airport lay on the opposite bank and the runway lights and ground traffic sent red, white, and blue light strobing into the night, sparkling off the water. It was a sight she’d always enjoyed, but tonight that patriotic glitter seemed to taunt her with a bitter irony as she considered what she was about to do.

  Lucy let go of Tom’s arm and wrapped her arms around herself, glad and not at all surprised that Tom remained silent while her rationality wrestled with her gut instinct. After a long silence, so long that she was shivering in the damp wind and her teeth were chattering, she turned to him and met his eyes.

  “How long have we known each other?” she asked.

  “I believe that’s classified,” he replied lightly.

  She couldn’t help but flash a rare, genuine smile before she glanced away. “We’ve been through a lot.”

  “That we have.”