Taking the Heat

by Paul McDermott

  “And since they aren’t drilling that deep…” Errol interposed.

  “Correct.” Joey nodded. “We had nothing set that deep yet and therefore no chance of knowing in advance this was coming our way.”

  “What has your contact been able to tell you? Anything?”

  “From the depth and the lapsed-time readings, the shock wave wasn’t particularly strong and continued to move south. It’s passed us by now and will probably run out of steam before it reaches the European coastline. Look at the map a moment, all of you.”

  Joey turned to the chart he’d been working on as they arrived. It showed the familiar outlines of the Americas, Europe and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, not the schematic of the Southern Hemisphere he’d been working on when they left.

  “I haven’t had time to correlate all the data we’ve got on the events which have been reported so far, but there’s a pattern developing. First of all, we’ve got the shock waves from two separate incidents rippling from the same source—the volcano in Iceland. I’ve marked them in two different colours, and you can see the shock waves follow the same general direction. The second eruption was less powerful, and as you’d expect, the effects don’t reach as far south.”

  A green line terminated at a six-figure number.

  “Grid reference,” Joey said in answer to the unspoken question in Dave’s eyes. “This is totally different. I’ve used the minimal preliminary gen I got from Aberdeen to sketch a profile of what’s happening at the oil rig mentioned on the news. There’s a degree of guesswork involved here, but my gut says it will prove to be close enough to what’s happening for us to be able to use it.”

  A red line started from a point in open sea and ran roughly south-southeast, ending at another grid-referenced point in open water some distance short of the European coastline. Errol was reasonably sure an extension of the red line would have made landfall in Germany.

  Joey reached for a metre rule and placed it carefully on the map.

  “I’m adding a back extension,” he explained as he marked a neat line of red dots along the edge of the ruler, running northwest from the marked oil rig. He continued until he reached a major landmass.

  “The seismic event which caused the earthquake in the North Sea this morning had its origin in Iceland. It seems the problems caused by the volcano at Eyjafjallajökull could be returning, doubled and in spades. Now, look at this.”

  Joey flipped the map so everyone could see it. He remained seated, looking at it from the north. “These are the vectors from the two eruptions in Iceland.” He placed his metre rule on two parallel lines very close together. “I’ve drawn them in two different colours to make them easier to see. For the moment, you can forget the dates. They’re not important to what I’m sketching out here.

  “Now, over here…” He referred to a different cluster of readings. “I must admit, these are probably not as accurate as the others. I had bugger all data to work with, for starters, and a lot of it is more guesswork than hard, established fact. All the same, it’s what I expect to see from the oil rig gas leak we heard about in the Elgin field.”

  “How reliable do they need to be?” Dave asked.

  “My source in Aberdeen is one of the world’s leading experts. That’s all I can tell you, but he’s not a scaremonger, and he never makes mistakes.”

  “Good enough for me,” Errol said. “I’ve been at a blowout, and it’s not funny.”

  “This doesn’t feel like a blowout, Errol. According to Aberdeen, the smart money should be on the problem being caused by downhole conditions. They’re drilling some four, maybe five thousand feet below the seabed. He doesn’t think there’s any question of human error or equipment failure involved, so that means there’s only one other possibility.”

  “A fault in the rock formation itself?” Dave guessed.

  “Almost certainly,” Joey confirmed. “Think of it as a layer cake with different strata of every conceivable kind of rock on top of each other—different types of rock with different stresses, strengths and characteristics. Every time the type of rock changes, there’s a potential weak point which can collapse or fracture—”

  Errol interrupted, “And then some son of a gun with a drill bit chomps straight through it like Pac-man, and the whole shebang goes sky high.”

  Regardless of the serious nature of the problem, they all smiled at the apt analogy.

  “That’s why every driller I ever met was paranoid about drill speeds, exact depth readings, downhole temps and pressures and a million other variables. After all those years on the rigs, I’m now beginning to understand why drillers feel the way they do.”

  “These lines,” Brenda said, “are they likely to meet up with the others—the ones you’ve drawn travelling away from Iceland? And if they do, will anything bad—I mean, really bad—follow?”

  She spoke hesitantly, clearly unsure if her question was valid or an unimportant distraction. To her surprise, Doctor Hart beamed at her like a pulp fiction caricature of a university don whose star pupil had uttered the Ultimate Question required to discover the real meaning of life, the universe and everything.

  “Every research group should include someone like you, Brenda. Someone who will ask the one practical question which should be blindingly obvious. I’ve tried to make a guess at what could happen—call it a worst-case scenario if you like—but it’s based on random scraps of information. It could be totally useless.”

  He unrolled a transparent sheet and laid it on top of the map, aligning it against a couple of pre-marked points.

  “This is one of several things which could possibly happen if these seismic events either repeat or increase in severity.”

  He paused, giving them all a chance to study the extra vectors shown on the overlay. These were dotted-line extensions of the colour-coded paths mapped out on the sheet below. They crossed the shoreline of mainland Europe, noticeably closer together than they had been, and continued to converge.

  Eddie was the first to look up.

  “I think we can see they’re going to meet up somewhere, eventually, but it seems not in Europe. Is that right?”

  Joey nodded and replaced the Northern Hemisphere map with the one of the Southern Hemisphere he’d been working on earlier.

  “I don’t set too much faith in coincidences,” he said, smoothing out some non-existent wrinkles in the sheet, “and I was very careful to ensure that the data I transferred from the other sheet matches exactly with the coordinates on this one. The point where the shock waves heading south from these two events are likely to come together is a certain lonely stretch of the Pacific we’ve already discussed.”

  The vector lines came together at a point in mid-ocean. The nearest landfall was barely visible, but Errol named it without hesitation.

  “Guam? You’re sure? Doc, I’ll take my chances on the world blowing up this very day before I’d even think of going back to that hellhole.”

  “Easy, Errol. The only people who might be sent to the coal face, as it were, would be mining and geology experts, and that’s if anyone goes there at all. But it’s not Guam we’re interested in. It’s what lies at about twelve thousand feet beneath the waves, the deepest recorded seabed anywhere in the world. The Mariana Trench.”

  ***

  The French president had been chumming along with the German chancellor for several months. During this time, they had blatantly—some would say, shamelessly—taken advantage of their positions as leaders of the two biggest economies in Europe to formulate and trump through policies designed to strengthen the failing Euro, which both countries had adopted as their trading currency with the rest of the world.

  Political lampoonists had sharpened their claws and lashed out gleefully. The president’s diminutive frame had inevitably raised taunts comparing him unfavourably with Napoleon Bonaparte’s supposed lack of authoritative inches.

  The German chancellor had been compared with a more recent political figur
e, but she was so much more than the Iron Lady of Britain in the 1980s. Muhammed Ali in the same ring as the butterfly he famously claimed to be was a fairer comparison.

  Once these two fiscal heavyweights had wrested control of EU funding, it was only a question of time before large-scale projects in both countries became the beneficiaries of frequent and substantial awards from Central European Funding. The opinions of the remaining twenty-five countries which had signed the Treaty of Versailles were simply ignored. The combination of German hauteur and Gallic insolence proved to be an impenetrable defence. France reverted once again to her traditional role as the ‘Foe from the South’, and there were still many British residents who had very painful, personal memories of the most recent conflict involving the efficient German Wehrmacht.

  There were even those who looked elsewhere with fearful concern, half-expecting an unholy three-way alliance with an increasingly vociferous Scotland, where a burgeoning nationalist movement had forced through concession upon concession over a decade or more and was now demanding full independence from a far-distant London-centric government.

  Every country in Europe, it seemed, was hunkering down with growing mistrust against every other nation, trusting nobody. And nobody, it seemed, believed in the brooding menace of the gathering storm.

  Chapter Twenty

  The red phone on the corner of Joey’s desk burred twice.

  “Brigadier Groth. Sitrep, please.”

  “Good morning, Brigadier. I have some figures based on updated data we have received from a reliable source.”

  “Is your source security cleared?”

  “I’m not at liberty to name my—”

  “Doctor Hart, if your informant has security clearance, you can be certain that his name will be on a very short list, which is on the desk in front of me as we speak. I can also assure you that I don’t have a higher authority to refer to. All security clearance is my responsibility. Your informant?”

  “He is based in Aberdeen. There are three others in the room with me whose names you know, but they only have limited security clearance.”

  “For the moment, I’ll accept his codename.”

  “Angus.”

  There was a brief pause. Joey managed to make himself understood with a series of desperate hand signals. His team retreated to the far end of the room, allowing him some privacy on the phone.

  “He seems to be doing more listening than talking,” Eddie murmured.

  Dave grinned. “Par for the course when the brigadier’s on the other end.”

  “And he’ll probably sign off in a hurry. He usually does,” Brenda added.

  The surprised expression on Joey’s face and the way he glared at the receiver before replacing it told the onlookers that Groth had followed the usual procedure. Joey waved at them to return to the desk.

  “It was touch and go, but I don’t think Groth’s going to have me shot at dawn for breaching security. My informant is on his list—for the moment, I’ll continue to refer to him as Angus—so he’s accepted that the information I received from him can be used, but I got a rollicking for not telling him first.”

  “Was he asking for information or giving it out?” Errol wanted to know.

  Joey grimaced. “He has a way of getting more out of you than he gives away, but he fed me some interesting scraps, so I suppose that’s something I ought to be grateful for. And I also got the green light to use anything else I get from Angus without having to ask for permission. That will save time, and time could be crucial if we have to deal with a situation at any of the potential trouble spots.”

  “How many of them are there, Joey?” Eddie was still playing catch-up. “I mean, we’ve got data from Iceland, the North Sea and this one in the middle of the Pacific.” He flapped a hand in the direction of the chart lying on the table.

  Joey brought him up to speed in a few words. “At first, we thought we were looking at two or three separate events. They’re so far apart, we still can’t be certain there is a connection, but I’m beginning to think a link isn’t totally out of the question.

  “The Pacific location is central and precisely the worst possible location to affect seismic events all around the Southern Hemisphere. Before you arrived, Eddie, we’d had reports of earthquakes in New Zealand, flooding and bush fires in Australia, and a tsunami in Japan which destroyed a nuclear power plant. It’s almost impossible to guess how much collateral damage that’s going to cause.”

  The blood drained from Eddie’s face as he listened to Joey’s terse assessment of the current state of play. He’d heard and read of all these things but hadn’t yet had time to sit and reflect on the overall picture or even consider the possibility that there might be a connection between the events.

  “How does this brigadier fit in? And does what he told you just now help or hinder our work here?”

  “The brigadier and I have never met face-to-face, but I’ve worked with him on training exercises for a good few years. As far as security goes, his remit is absolute, and there isn’t a court of appeal. What he says goes. And just in case anyone thinks maybe I can’t count, I stuck my neck out asking you to join us, Eddie. I’ll have to come clean with Groth next time he rings, but I decided it was better politics to avoid the complication of informing him of the current headcount. You’re as vital to this team as anyone else, but Groth has enough on his plate, and there’s no point in me adding to it.”

  “Bottom line, Joey.” Errol tapped the map. “You were about to give us one possible interpretation of all these…these vectors? Was that the word? Does what you and Napoleon chatted about have any bearing? Does it change your guesswork any?”

  “I’ll have to re-calculate to answer your second question properly, Errol. I need some quality time with my computers for that. But the situation I see, based on what data I’ve had available until now, is this.”

  He took both charts and pinned them onto a blank whiteboard in their respective positions, showing the major landmasses and waters of the world.

  “We have two seismic shocks—one stronger than the other—following almost an identical path originating from Iceland, travelling roughly south-southeast. From the north, we also have a weakish tremor heading almost due south. Providing these forces aren’t deflected by something too solid for them to crush aside, and I can’t offhand imagine anything that strong, these vectors should have them coming together at the point I’ve pencilled in—and for the record, you’re right, Errol. The nearest land of any consequence is the island of Guam.”

  “You seemed more interested in the fact that the region has some extremely deep water, I think?”

  “Spot on again, Eddie. The Mariana Trench has been measured to over twelve thousand feet deep—deeper than anywhere else on the planet.”

  “And this is important because…?”

  Joey shook his head. “At the moment, I’m not sure. But until or unless I can gather more data and we can estimate the scale of the problem and how fast it’s approaching us, it’s going to be well-nigh impossible to work out any effective countermeasures.”

  Errol leant forward to catch Joey’s attention. “What do we know about the Mariana Trench? You said you had a gut feeling it could be important. Go with it.”

  Joey nodded and set up a Google search. “It’s the deepest part of any sector of seabed which has been recorded to date.” He paraphrased the information which flowed across the screen, editing out the technical jargon to make it relevant for non-specialist ears.

  “Depths of over four thousand metres—that’s twelve thousand feet or two thousand fathoms in old money—have been confirmed, but mapping at such depths is always going to be a bit hit and miss. And here’s something interesting. Apparently, some new life forms have been discovered.

  “What can possibly survive at that depth? The water pressure must be tremendous.”

  “Nature’s amazing, Dave. Somehow, things always find a way of adapting to their environment, no matt
er how harsh it is. The organisms discovered appear to be some form of primitive shellfish—I can only guess that the shell forms part of their natural defences against the pressure.

  “The trench runs roughly northwest-to-southeast for a distance of…well, various estimates—a polite way of saying guesswork—between fifty and two hundred miles. And don’t ask me to convert that into kilometres. The theory is it marks where two of the Earth’s tectonic plates overlap. They’ve been coming together, chipping bits off each other’s leading edges for millions of years, until one of them became too fragile and collapsed…”

  A startled look came into Doctor Hart’s eyes as he continued his résumé of the data scrolling across the screen. Instinctively, he reached for a notebook and the nearest calculator.

  Dave completed the sentence Joey had started. “…which would set up a reaction in the surrounding bedrock.”

  “Of the infamous equal-and-opposite variety,” Errol contributed. The logic was irrefutable.

  “On a geological scale, the sort of collapse we’re theorising could have taken started two, three thousand years ago, and it would only just be starting to show the effects now. But the calculations are straightforward. Rocket science, it ain’t.” Joey flourished his calculator as if it were Excalibur. The figures which filled the screen were meaningless to his captive audience, but they evidently meant something to him. He pounced on the red phone which had no dialling buttons and snatched the receiver. He wasn’t waiting long.

  “Brigadier Groth. Permission to use speakerphone at this end, Sir.”

  A nod, a wink and a thumbs-up, Joey hit a squelch button and replaced the handset on its cradle.

  Groth’s clipped military syllables marched out of the speakers. “Sitrep, Doctor?”

  “This is a qualified guess, Sir, and needs to be verified from an independent source of some sort, but I feel it’s worth investigating. Contacts in Australasia are probably best placed to supply this.”