Deep Time

by Rob Sangster

  When they opened the hatch, Jack was edgy, impatient to get out, but the crew helped Drake down first. Drake immediately checked Pegasus’s two starboard wings that had been driven into the gravel. “Lou, I see small cracks. Get your instruments on both of these. They’ve taken much more torque than they were designed to withstand. Must have been close to snapping off. I want experts waiting on the wharf back in Astoria to make repairs. Get on the horn.” He looked into the sub’s cockpit. “Someone get Jack out of there.”

  As soon as he had both feet on deck, Alex handed him a cold beer. The expression “rode hard and put up wet” was exactly how he felt.

  He joined several crew members on the aft deck near the helicopter pad. They were wound up, talking excitedly, shocked by the warplane that had materialized like something out of Apocalypse Now.

  Drake walked up. “Damn, we’re lucky. Don’t see how they missed us at that range.”

  “Those dumb bastards couldn’t hit the Dodger’s scoreboard,” Jeff scoffed, waving a revolver. “If I’d been up in that whirlybird, I could have shot off the top of that antenna over there with my ol’ squirrel rifle.”

  Yeah, right, like you guys weren’t scared shitless. Jack knew how they’d missed. Gano had taught him the answer. If men who know how to use weapons miss at close range, it’s because they intend to miss. Barbas had sent his bullies to deliver a final warning to Challenger to get out. If they came back, they’d shoot to kill.

  Chapter 20

  July 24

  8:00 a.m.

  Astoria/San Francisco

  WHILE CHALLENGER plowed eastward through the Pacific, Drake and his tech crew stayed busy in the main cabin analyzing the data he’d collected around the hydrothermal vent. Their excitement filled the room like static electricity. Jack sat with them as they laid out a strategy for the next dive. He didn’t say so, but, if his alliance with Drake held, he intended to be on that dive too. Drake had made it clear that he’d avoid Barbas if he could, but confront him if he had to.

  Eager to get to work, he disembarked as soon as Challenger tied up at the Astoria wharf and caught a ride to the airport.

  Gano sent him a greeting by waggling the wings of his Cessna Skylane just before he began final approach to the Astoria—or as Gano had begun to call it, “Hysteria”—airport.

  “Greetings, Poseidon, God of the Sea,” Gano said as Jack climbed into the idling aircraft. “You’ll find this baby more to your liking than being cooped up in a tin can.”

  Before taking off, they went through their usual greeting ritual, like orangutans playfully cuffing each other. Then Gano said, “Okay, I bet you’ve made up some damn good lies about summer camp in the big pond. Let’s hear what you got.”

  They’d be in the air for three hours or more, so he gave Gano a blow-by-blow of Pegasus’s journey.

  Gano was fascinated by the sub, Barbas’s high-tech mining operation, the mysterious oil drilling rig that really wasn’t one, and what they’d seen of the HTV. “But what you said about that thing that looked like a giant tank just rang a bell. When I told you what I saw when I flew over Ironbound, I forgot to mention something. Didn’t seem important then. Now I think it is.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Not far from the lodge there’s what looks like a big shed. Coming out of the shed, two narrow-gauge metal tracks run across a clearing and stop on the far side. A small version of what you just described was parked at the end of the tracks.”

  “Maybe you saw a toy train.”

  “No. It was a miniature tank, but why would Barbas take that thing out to a remote island?”

  “I don’t think he did. Workmen had to come to the island to build those three metal buildings, install the big generators, and more we don’t know about. They could have built it as a prototype of what they needed seventy-two hundred feet underwater. I don’t know what that is yet, but it has nothing to do with mining gold. The important thing is that it ties Ironbound to Chaos. I have to get to that island as soon as I can.”

  Gano said with a huge smile, “You’re right, and I must admit that your adventure trumps anything I’ve done.”

  Jack let the conversation lapse so he could think.

  Every hour he spent on Barbas was an hour not spent on the Armstrong lawsuit. And the problem was more than time pressure. He was facing more opposition than he’d expected from businessmen, lawyers, politicians, the massive military establishment, even from ordinary citizens who felt that requiring the military to obey laws that govern everyone else would be outrageous. That disapproval could damage his firm and the reputation he’d worked hard to rebuild. But the principles were worth fighting for.

  Too many people at Armstrong—civilian and military personnel, family members, and neighbors—had suffered or died from poisonous emissions. That was plenty of motivation, but there was more behind the intensity he felt. Winning for the plaintiffs would also be a big step toward paying a debt owed by his father. The bastard.

  If he took any more time away from the Armstrong case, he couldn’t possibly be ready when the trial began in twelve days. The only way out was to get a continuance. The judge should grant it automatically.

  It came down to setting priorities. To do that, he had to figure out what Barbas was doing. If the potential damage was serious and immediate, stopping him had to be number one. If the risks were tolerable or distant, he could give the Armstrong case top priority. He’d gotten himself into a serious bind. Whichever choice he made, something important wasn’t going to get done.

  He looked at Gano. “I have a different kind of adventure coming up, one that may be even more dangerous than the sub.”

  “You’re going to jump out without a parachute?”

  “I may wish I had. I have to tell Debra about all of this.” He picked up his cell phone.

  Gano grinned. “I see what you mean. So let me tell her the part about flying over Ironbound.”

  “If we were in the same room, had all night, and a bottle of rum, you’d do a great job. Since none of those is the case, I’ll handle it.”

  Debra’s tone was noncommittal. When the moment seemed right, he jumped into it. “I didn’t tell you much about what I intended to do in the last day or two, so I’m calling to catch you up.”

  “Actually, you told me nothing at all, and it’s been three days.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been out of circulation. It started with Gano tracking Barbas to see what he did when he came ashore.”

  That part of the tale went well, except that when he finished she said, “So after all that, you don’t know any more about what Barbas does or even if that’s really his island.”

  “Technically, that’s true, but after that we went to a place called the Bridgewater Tavern and we did get some useful information.” He told her about Molly McCoy, and the tight security Barbas imposed on the platform, on “the mill”, and on the mouths of his workers.

  Gano started making motions like a fighter throwing punches. He wanted Jack to tell her about that part. Instead, Jack said, “Since we wound up spending the night in Astoria, I talked with Steve Drake the next morning. He agreed to take me with him to inspect Barbas’s mining site.”

  “Why? What could you tell from Challenger about anything seventy-two hundred feet underwater?” Now she sounded exasperated.

  “Drake had a submarine, a very small one, so we used that.” He heard her quick intake of breath, but she didn’t interrupt. He rushed through a description of the scale and complexity of the mining operation and the damage it was doing to the seabed. Then he dropped out of chronological order and told her about finding the incredible hydrothermal vent and Drake’s excitement about that. He used a brief description of the mystifying tank-like machine as background to say how hostile Drake was now toward Barbas and Renatus.

  He left
out mention of the shock wave and the swarm of isopods, partly because she’d flare up at his recklessness, partly because his emotions about those events were still so raw.

  When he paused, she said, “You’ve been a very busy boy.”

  You have no idea. “Here’s the problem: Barbas is doing a lot more than tearing up the seabed.” He told her about the equipment that looked like an oil drilling rig but wasn’t. “No oil has ever been found in that region, and that’s not what Barbas is after.”

  Her long silence made him glad he was delivering all this from the plane.

  “That’s perplexing, but you still don’t know what he is doing or if there’s anything illegal about it. Anyway, you’ve given me a lot to think about, and I’m not talking just about Petros Barbas. I also mean about the future of our relationship, which I’d rather discuss in person.”

  Future of our relationship? Those words would sound an alarm in any male—and they did. “We’ll do that, but I want you to know right now that—”

  “Remember that I told two of our associate lawyers to research whether there is enough methane in the area where Aleutian went down to make the ‘methane burp’ explanation plausible. They’re set to report to us tomorrow at eight.”

  HE, DEBRA, AND two lawyers in their late twenties sat in canvas chairs on the balcony outside Jack’s office overlooking San Francisco Bay. Pale sunshine was barely chasing away the morning chill. Shouts from longshoremen rang out on nearby cargo wharves.

  Sam Cooper, the older of the two associates, was from Miami. His father had been the first African-American to graduate from the University of Miami School of Law and had gone on to become a wealthy tax attorney. Sam had been president of the Yale Law Journal before joining the firm two years earlier. His face showed he was eager to share what he’d learned. As soon as Jack nodded at him, he started talking at a fast clip.

  “Seabed conditions off the Oregon-Washington-British Columbia coasts, including where Aleutian was, have been studied by marine geologists and by the U.S. Navy. Based on data they collected about the underwater mountain ridges and tectonic plates grinding into one another, they concluded that there are likely to be massive quantities of methane hydrate present out there in the upper levels of the Earth’s crust. Bottom line, there’s plenty of methane hydrate in the region to have produced a methane burp fatal to Aleutian.”

  With that issue finally closed, Jack was about to thank them and get back to work. Instead, he asked an open-ended question that often paid off in unexpected ways: “Do you have anything else to tell us?”

  Sam looked at Tammy Glenn, who had only recently moved from Seattle to join the firm.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “Once we knew there was lots of methane hydrate up there, I decided to learn more about it.”

  “I only took one chemistry class,” Debra said, “so please spell out what it is.”

  Tammy beamed, pleased to show off in front of her bosses. “Picture a tiny cage made of ice. That’s called a ‘clathrate.’ Molecules of greatly compressed methane gas are trapped inside that cage. When they bring it from under the seabed up to the surface, it’s like an intensely cold, hard-packed snowball. If they touch it with a flame, it burns, producing carbon dioxide and water. As soon as it escapes from the immense pressure in the deep ocean, one cubic meter of methane gas expands into 164 cubic meters.” She looked at each of them as if making sure they appreciated what a big deal that was.

  ‘Is methane hydrate only found in the seabed?” Debra asked.

  “Some is also found in permafrost, mostly in the Arctic, but the vast majority is beneath the ocean floor in various concentrations in layers several hundred feet thick. Most people have never heard of methane hydrate, but the so-called ‘natural gas’ that’s piped into homes for domestic heating and cooking is about ninety percent methane. Right now, most of that methane comes from deposits known as natural gas fields on land. A small amount comes from the fermentation of organic matter like manure, wastewater sludge, and municipal solid waste in landfills. As farmers know, cattle, chickens, and pigs also generate a lot of methane gas. Methane isn’t toxic but it blows up once in a while. Also, in an enclosed space, it can displace oxygen and asphyxiate a human. Anyway, now that you have an idea what it is, I’ll tell you the fascinating part.”

  She checked her notes and continued. ‘I found an article in a scientific journal that said, I quote, ‘natural gas locked up in methane hydrate could be the world’s next great energy source if anyone can figure out how to extract it safely.’’’

  As soon as he was satisfied that their research made the methane burp explanation credible, Jack had been only half-listening, thinking more about what he’d say to Hank. What Tammy had just said yanked him back into the present.

  Tammy continued. “Late last night, I turned up an article in the Straits Times about a big trader on the Singapore Stock Exchange who called methane hydrate ‘a windfall profit bonanza without equal in the history of human civilization.’ He said there’s far more methane in methane hydrate than in natural gas fields like the ones where all that fracking is going on. I know traders love to hype stocks they want to push, but this guy doesn’t have a product to sell. Besides, he’s not the only one. The Department of Energy, DOE, estimates there are ten billion billion cubic meters of gas in hydrates. Evidently the amount of energy locked up in methane hydrate is mind-blowing.”

  “‘Mind-blowing’ meaning . . .”

  “Enough to satisfy worldwide demand for four thousand years. The U.S. Geological Survey, USGS, puts the number of years even higher. If that’s confirmed by more tests, exploiting the seabed for hydrates could dwarf the energy we get from drilling for oil. The DOE Strategic Center has predicted that . . . just a minute while I find the quote. . . .” She referred to her notes. “‘There is more energy potential locked up in methane hydrate formations than in all other fossil energy resources combined.’ If it can be extracted safely, that would mean no more worrying about running out of oil. It would mean total energy security for the U.S.”

  Her words launched a rocket in Jack’s brain. Methane hydrate could be a bigger payoff than winning a galactic lottery. The next step took only a nanosecond. That’s why Barbas was spending all that money. That’s why he was fixated on getting a monopoly. And that’s why he had a stable of attack helicopters.

  It all fit together. What Barbas had said, what he’d concealed, and the size of the platform. The mysterious equipment he and Drake had seen on the bottom. Aleutian. Deepwater Horizon. All of it was about methane hydrate.

  “Mr. Strider?” Tammy said, sounding dismayed that she’d lost his attention.

  “Sorry. Go on.”

  “Today, almost twenty-five percent of all the energy we use in the U.S. is natural gas. In terms of global warming, it’s the least carbon-intensive of the fossil fuels. Some industries, especially public utilities and transportation, are already converting to use it.”

  “But there are problems with natural gas,” Sam put in.

  “Big ones,” Tammy said. “Multinational producers drilling on land rely more and more on fracking. Their TV ads insist they’re doing no harm, but a lot of scientific research shows the opposite. For example, fracking consumes vast amounts of water, including in areas where water is scarce. They add toxic chemicals to the water and inject the solution at very high pressure into crevices deep underground to break up rocks to release oil and methane gas. As a result, fracking often causes small earthquakes and can trigger large ones. And fracking produces huge quantities of toxic, even radioactive, wastewater that has, in some documented cases, contaminated drinking water and groundwater.”

  She pulled a page from her notes. “If the majority of scientific evidence is correct, the costs of damage done could be huge. Obviously, the companies that profit from fracking should pay those costs. Instead, the industry is
lobbying to be held harmless on grounds that the U.S. needs the energy. That amounts to a huge subsidy for highly profitable multinationals. Also, fracking on land won’t produce enough natural gas to solve global energy problems, but it does cut investment in alternative, renewable energy.”

  “Which would be where methane hydrate from beneath the oceans comes in,” Debra said. “Would they drill for it the same way they drill for oil?”

  “No. That won’t work, but the alternatives they’ve come up with haven’t been tested much. Exploring for offshore deposits hasn’t gone far either. They don’t even have a reliable theory about where to search, and marine tests are very expensive.”

  “But given the potential, aren’t a lot of people working on this already?” Debra asked.

  “Some, but they’re in very early stages. Japan, China, India, and South Korea are ahead of the U.S. in government-supported R&D. So far, Japan is the leader in offshore testing. Chinese scientists have discovered a reserve in the frozen tundra on the Tibetan Plateau they think could last them for ninety years.”

  “President Clinton,” Sam said, “signed the Methane Hydrate Research & Development Act in 2000. It directed Energy, Defense, Interior, and Commerce to research use of methane hydrate. For some reason, Congress authorized expenditure of less than fifty million dollars spread over five years. Given the stakes, that was peanuts. Think how much conflict and pollution might have been avoided if that had been a full-out effort.”

  “Sir.” Mei stood in the door to the balcony. “Your 8:45 appointment is here. Ms. Vanderberg, your 8:30 has been waiting.”

  “I’ll be right there, Mei. Sam, Tammy, good work.”

  After the other three left the balcony, Jack stayed behind to reflect. Sam and Tammy had erased any doubt about what sank Aleutian. That had been important, but was dwarfed by the ah-ha moment their research into methane hydrate had generated. That information had brought together all the scraps he’d picked up over the past three weeks about the Chaos Project.