Ice Fire: A Jock Boucher Thriller

by David Lyons

  In this explosive debut thriller, a judge from the Louisiana bayou goes up against a company on the verge of causing an ecological disaster.

  Cajun-born Jock Boucher has overcome modest beginnings to assume the prestigious position of U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of Louisiana. One of his first cases on the bench involves a scientist who has been hiding in mortal fear for more than twenty years. The fugitive claims that another judge accepted bribes and helped a relentless global energy company steal his intellectual property: a way to recover energy from below the subsea bed that could end America’s dependence on foreign oil.

  Boucher takes on the company and its powerful founder, risking not only his judicial career but his life. He follows a trail of cryptic clues to the bottom of the ocean, and soon finds himself the target of killers—and too far from the law to ever return.

  Packed with suspense, science, politics, and murder, this fast-paced, riveting thriller will have readers on the edge of their seats. Ice Fire is the first in a series offered by this authentic new talent.

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR

  “Grisham fans will enjoy.”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  “A series worth following.”

  —SUSPENSE MAGAZINE

  DAVID LYONS was born in England and was raised and educated in the United States and abroad. After obtaining his license to practice law, Lyons pursued advanced studies in international law and worked in Paris. He and his wife live in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where he is currently at work on his next novel. Visit his website at davidlyonsauthor.com.

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  PHOTOGRAPH OF ICE AND SNOW © NORBERT ROSING/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC/GETTY IMAGES

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  COPYRIGHT © 2012 SIMON & SCHUSTER

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by David Lyons

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Atria Books hardcover edition May 2012

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  Designed by Dana Sloan

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lyons, David.

  Ice fire : a thriller / by David Lyons.

  p. cm.

  1. Political fiction. I. Title.

  PS3612.Y5745I27 2012

  813'.6—dc23 2011028535

  ISBN 978-1-4516-2929-3

  ISBN 978-1-4516-2931-6 (ebook)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I THANK THE GEOPHYSICIST WHOSE name I never knew, who told me one night in whispered tones of his work on a secret government research project involving a new fuel source called methane hydrate. He said that energy companies were beating down his door. He told me nothing more than that, but the idea of such an exotic source of energy at the bottom of the ocean fueled my imagination, and the premise for Ice Fire was born. I would like to acknowledge the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which has done significant research on methane hydrate found on the deep seabed, and inspired the fictional organization mentioned in the novel. I want to thank my friend Adene Corns, whose advice and guidance have been invaluable. Finally, I wish to thank the people of New Orleans and especially the French Quarter, the home of my protagonist, Jock Boucher. Your magical city will always have a home in my heart.

  To Sherri

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Postscript

  Blood Game Excerpt

  PROLOGUE

  ONE OF THE TWO men would die within the hour: the one who should have known better.

  They sat in a small office, identifiable as such only by the cheap desk in the middle of the room. There was no sign outside to indicate what purpose this anonymous space served. Bob Palmetto sat behind the desk. Unruly wisps of sparse blond hair fell down his forehead, but received no attention. An occasional toss of his head kept the errant strands out of his eyes. He was extremely thin, as if eating were a routine largely ignored. His closely set eyes darted from the man sitting across from him to the tinted floor-to-ceiling glass wall, all that separated the room from the sidewalk and parking lot of a dingy strip mall. A frayed pea-green shag carpet sported coffee stains. In an old wooden chair across from the desk, lawyer Dexter Jessup sat in sport coat and tie, the tie loosened, a Windsor knot hanging at his throat.

  “Why’d you set that damn meeting for tomorrow afternoon? I need you in court with me,” Palmetto said.

  “An attorney from my office will meet you in front of the Federal Building,” Jessup said. “Her name is Ruth Kalin. Don’t worry, she knows what to do.”

  “I’m supposed to produce more documents,” Palmetto told him. “Last time the judge said he’d throw me in jail if I didn’t turn them over. He had two federal marshals just standing—”

  “I was there, Bob, remember?”

  “Sorry.” Bob Palmetto looked down, studying the bony fingers splayed across his desktop as if seeing them for the first time. “I wish I’d never started fighting this thing. They’re too powerful.” He looked up. “And what you’re doing scares the hell out of me. What good is a dead lawyer to me?”

  “I’m going to talk to the FBI, Bob, not the Mafia. I have proof of a federal judge accepting bribes, stealing your intellectual property. The bastard belongs in jail, not on the bench. I’m going to see he gets what he deserves, and you can finish what you
’ve started. You’re going to be a rich man.”

  Palmetto waved away this last remark.

  “My discovery is dangerous. If it gets in the wrong hands, the damage could be irreversible. I’ve got to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  Dexter looked away from his client to the parking area outside. The afternoon sun hung low in the sky and was reflected in the windshields of less than a dozen cars, one of them his, casting blinding flashes of light. It was so incongruous. In a two-room office in a failed strip mall sat a man who had invented a process that could double the world’s available fossil fuel deposits by withdrawing methane gas from the frozen subsea surface. A leading energy company was stealing from him, and using a federal court to do it. There was no doubt. Photos of surreptitious meetings with the judge, documents stolen from court files; Dexter had found this and more. Tomorrow he would share his findings with the only people who could do something about it, the FBI.

  “I’ve got to go,” Dexter said. He stood and extended a hand over the desk. “I might be late, but I’ll see you in court tomorrow.”

  Palmetto clasped the lawyer’s hand, staring at it, speaking to it, not raising his eyes. “Be careful,” he said. “Be damned careful.”

  The lawyer’s route from Palmetto’s office took him due east, toward downtown New Orleans. He knew the direction he was traveling because the sunset was in his rearview mirror. He adjusted it, rendering it useless for its intended purpose, but at least keeping the reflected sun from blinding him. Five minutes later, the sun had dropped and he readjusted his mirror. That’s when he spotted the car behind him, a black Jeep Cherokee. He knew that car and its driver. What did he want now? Dexter slowed down. There was no other traffic on this little-used secondary road. The Jeep flashed its lights. It pulled up right on his tail and flashed again. He could see the driver waving one arm out the window, motioning him to pull over. He pulled over onto the shoulder and got out of his car, leaving the door open and the motor running. The driver of the Jeep also got out and moved toward him, a little too fast. There were less than ten feet separating them.

  “What do you . . .”

  Dexter saw the gun in the man’s hand. He turned and jumped toward his car’s open door but slipped on the loose gravel of the shoulder, falling painfully to one knee. His pursuer was on him in an instant. He felt the metal against the back of his head. He did not feel the bullet that blew out his brain.

  The body was left next to the car with the motor running, the radio playing the nation’s number one pop single, “Ice Ice Baby.”

  It was October 1990.

  For more than two decades, Dexter Jessup’s death would be all but forgotten. Not by Bob Palmetto.

  CHAPTER 1

  JOCK BOUCHER SANG “ORANGE Colored Sky” in the shower. For a federal district judge, he could do a pretty good imitation of Nat King Cole, his father’s favorite singer. He’d done a fair share of singing, humming, even whistling over the past two weeks since his swearing-in. It had been a long year with the congressional vetting process, but now it was over. His life’s work lay ahead of him, and it was his dream job. He smiled at the recollection that his first act as a member of the federal judiciary had probably been illegal as hell. He had recorded the President calling him at home to extend his congratulations. He’d been informed of the call in advance, of course. You don’t want the leader of the free world calling and getting a busy signal or no one at home. The President had pronounced his name correctly: boo-SHAY. Most people seeing before hearing it mispronounced it butcher. The President said he knew that the judge’s nickname, Jock, was bestowed after lettering in basketball, football, and track in college. The two spoke as if they knew each other, which in many ways they did: two men whose love of country could not be challenged. Judge Boucher did not correct the President’s error. He would have loved to have told him the true origins of his name: that his father, a black Cajun from the bayous of Louisiana, had named his son Jacques. The French pronunciation sounded almost like shock, but with accents of the Deep South and demonstration of athletic ability at an early age, Jock it became and Jock it was to this day.

  The Senate confirmation process had gone smoothly; his credentials were lauded and deemed more than adequate to assume the lifetime post of federal district judge, one of the most powerful positions in the land. “Slam, bam, alakazam,” he sang. He stopped and listened. Had he ever taken a shower and not thought he’d heard the phone ringing? No, there it was. Who could be calling him at this hour of the morning? He cursed, turned off the water, and dried himself in the shower stall. He was not about to track water from the bathroom across his polished hardwood bedroom floor or his mid-nineteenth-century Oriental rugs. The phone rang and rang as he toweled himself dry. I’m a federal judge and you’d better have a damn good reason for getting me out of the shower, he felt like saying as he walked to the phone, but instead answered simply, “Judge Boucher.” He listened and his frown of annoyance became one of concern.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “When? . . . Of course. I’ll be there within the hour.”

  He dressed and went downstairs to the kitchen, made himself a cup of instant coffee, and pondered the news he’d just received. District Judge Epson had suffered a heart attack. He was expected to recover, but as the new kid on the block, Jock Boucher was being asked to take over his docket in the interim. Had anyone given a thought to the fact that his own docket was already full? No matter. It had just gotten fuller. Boucher gulped down his coffee. He would have bolted from his house, but it was one of the most historic homes in the French Quarter, filled with period antique furniture he’d spent much of his adult life collecting. From such a majestic presence, one did not bolt.

  The judge was granted admission to the underground parking lot of the Hale Boggs Federal Building without having to show his ID; he was recognized by security after only a short time on the bench. His vehicle had a lot to do with it. Of all the members of the federal judiciary of the Eastern District of Louisiana, Jock Boucher was the only one who drove a Ford F-150 pickup truck. No one knew he was also the only one who made weekly visits to neighborhoods decimated by Hurricane Katrina, where he would pick up and carry off refuse. After the oil spill, he had scoured beaches and wetlands to help with cleanup activities in any way he could, including the heartbreaking task of rescuing oil-soaked wildlife.

  On this eventful morning he took the elevator up to his floor and walked the deserted hallway to his office. His administrative assistant was already at her desk, also having received an early call. She followed him into his chambers. About as good as government offices got, his private quarters were spacious but stark: thick gray wall-to-wall carpet, a large oak desk stained dark, a ponderous suite of sofa, chairs, and tables, and built-in bookshelves, so far largely empty.

  “I’ve already spoken with Judge Epson’s office,” his assistant said. “He has a trial starting Wednesday, motion hearings today and tomorrow. Here’s your copy of his calendar. You have docket call at nine, and it’s a long one. I thought maybe we could just post a sign outside Judge Epson’s court moving his cases here, unless you know how to be in two places at one time.”

  “Give me a minute to study his calendar.” She started to leave, but he motioned her to stay. After a couple of minutes, he said, “We’ll do this. Have Judge Epson’s law clerk ask the lawyers appearing if anyone wants to reschedule. If both parties agree, have them prepare the orders for my signature. I’ll move my docket call along as fast as I can, then I’ll go to his courtroom and deal with whatever’s remaining.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He moved his own docket along at lightning speed and was ushered to Judge Epson’s bench barely an hour late. The courtroom was empty.

  “Where’d everybody go?” he asked.

  Judge Epson’s law clerk sat beside the idle court reporter. “Sir, everybody asked to reschedule. We’ve received dozens of calls from other attorneys asking the same thing. They prefer to wait and se
e when Judge Epson will be back.”

  “They got something against me?”

  “It’s not that, sir.”

  “Okay. Well, I guess I’ll head back to my own territory.” He rose from the bench to leave just as two federal marshals burst through the door next to the jury box, a prisoner held tightly between them, his hands manacled. They saw the judge and looked at each other curiously.

  “Sorry, Your Honor. I thought we were in Judge Epson’s court.”

  “You are. Judge Epson is in the hospital. I’m Judge Boucher. I’ve been assigned his cases till he returns.”

  “I think we’d better wait till Judge Epson gets back,” the marshal said, and began to turn away.

  “Stop right there,” the judge ordered. “Bring that man here.”

  With obvious reluctance, the two federal marshals approached the bench, their prisoner shuffling between them. The man was as emaciated as a human being could be, with a thick gray beard hanging down his chest. He wore raggedy street clothes, not an inmate’s jumpsuit.

  “What’s this man charged with?” the judge asked.

  “Contempt, Your Honor. He was brought in this morning.”

  “Let me see the file.”

  Again the reluctance of the marshals was obvious, but one stepped forward and passed a couple of sheets of paper to the clerk, who handed them up to the judge.

  “This warrant’s twenty years old,” Judge Boucher said. “Is it still good?”

  “Well, Your Honor—”

  “What I mean is, is the underlying judgment still valid? After this length of time, if it hasn’t been revived, it’s probably unenforceable. Is the contempt civil or criminal?”

  The two marshals looked at each other.

  “You don’t have to answer that,” Judge Boucher said, reading the file. “Most judges don’t know the difference. I’m going to give this man the benefit of the doubt. Undo his handcuffs.”